Today’s Scripture:

Psalm 46         Jeremiah 31:31-34     Romans 3:19-28         John 8:31-36

 

            There is a game called “Telephone.”  The first person whispers a message to the next person in line.  Each person then passes that message on.  What usually happens to that message by the time it gets to the final person?  Yes, the message is changed, usually to an extent one cannot recognize any part of the original message.  Think about how things would be different if the first person wrote down the message.  Then each person would read the message aloud and pass the note along with it to the next person.  As long as the written word carries the message, then the message should not change.

 

            Unless someone along the way says, “I think this is what was meant,” and begins to change even the written message.  Then, because someone does not trust or like or agree with the original message, the message gets changed according to that person’s personal thoughts and prejudices.  We find ourselves as people doing this, putting one’s own “spin” on things as the news gets passed along. 

 

            We find this problem right away in the very early church.  Paul writes to the Corinthians and Galatians about “a different Gospel” that some were proclaiming in those congregations.  [2 Corinthians 11:4, Galatians 1:6]  He was referring to people who were putting their own “spin” on things and teaching works righteousness in place of the God’s grace through faith in Jesus’ righteousness, the first and true Gospel Paul had brought originally.  John writes for Christians to “not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”  [1 John 4:1-3]  John was writing about those who were putting human reason ahead of faith in God’s word in its truth and purity. 

 

In the first decades following Jesus’ ascension, men were injecting their views in place of accepting God’s grace through faith as God’s word clearly directs men to do.  Paul and John were writing to specific instances to keep the new church of Jesus Christ faithful and true to God’s word alone. 

 

            In the first centuries after Jesus’ ascension, the early church had to deal regularly with false teachings that different men and groups kept trying to contaminate the true faith.  The Nicene Creed and Athansian Creed were adopted by church councils in the fourth century.  At those times there were false teachings about the Trinity and about the Divinity of Jesus Christ as the Son of God.   

 

As the centuries progressed, the church body as an institution developed doctrines and practices that turned away from the truth of the Gospel.  For various reasons the church turned to praying to special saints and to Mary as intercessors to God in place of Jesus.  Church practices and rituals including how the sacraments were taught put the burden on the sinner to redeem himself instead of accepting Jesus’ suffering and death on Calvary as the ultimate sacrifice that it is, “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” [1 Peter 3:18].

 

            By Martin Luther’s time, the church, as an institution, came to practice:

1. Salvation – heaven – is available and attainable only through the church as an institution. 
2. To get to heaven, the individual needs to do things to right the wrongs of his sins.  This is called penance.
3. The gift to heaven is owned and dispersed through the church only under certain conditions that are administered by the church and available only through the church.
4. The government and church were so intertwined, the church could and did dictate domestic and civil matters in an arbitrary way.
5. The church as an institution became very self-serving and consumed itself is sustaining itself.  It’s own interests, wealth, power structure, and overall control of the world determined how God’s graces, treasurers were dispensed.
6. Without the church (as an institution) the treasures of the church were not available, therefore heaven unattainable.  The availability of the church was used as a device to control society, government, wealth, etc. 
7. The church established the following sacraments:
1. baptism 
2. confirmation
3. eucharist
4. penance
5. extreme unction
6. order
7. matrimony

Instead of these being gracious gifts of God to his people, they became works that people had to perform to earn salvation.

8. As a person could not do enough works to pay for his sins while he still lived on earth, Purgatory existed where souls would labor doing good works for an unreal amount of time until all sins were worked off.  The theology of the cross was completely obliterated with works of penance both while on earth and in a contrived life after death.
9. To ease the pain of countless years in Purgatory and to raise $$$$ for the church, indulgences were sold to reduce the amount of time one would have to spend working off sins.  You could actually buy your way into heaven.
10. Indulgences worked not only for yourself, but you could purchase them to relieve a loved one already in Purgatory.  Therefore, guilt was not limited to your own sins, but extended to your ability to pay off the sins of others. 

 

How the church piled up guilt resembles today’s credit card debt.  First of all, you could write a check for so much sin.  Then, you were given a credit line to buy off more and more and your indebtedness got greater and greater as your guilt got greater and greater.  It piled up to unbelievable and unattainable amounts of guilt that you had to redeem by yourself.  There was no end in sight, and the interest rates were going up daily.  You were now owned by your sin, the sins of others that were implied that you could do something about, and your inability to do enough penance or purchase enough indulgences to pay off this load.

 

Luther kept struggling in this realm, knowing his sin and trying to confess and work off all he could.  He began to hate God because he saw God as one who punished by heaping the guilt up until one could not stand it any longer.  The more Luther studied God’s law, the more sin he realized, the more he worked to eliminate the sin, the more sin he saw, and he was caught in that vicious cycle until he read and studied this passage from Romans 3.

 

Luther was a brilliant student in the Augustinian order.  He was sent by his mentor, Staupitz, to be professor of the Bible at a new university in Wittenberg.  Staupitz also kept pointing Luther to the cross, to God’s grace.  At Wittenberg Luther studied and taught the Psalms and then Romans.  He began finding God’s grace specifically in Psalm 119.  Then, in Romans, and having the original Greek to translate directly into German he found that righteousness is apart from the Law and found only through faith in Christ Jesus.  The law and the prophets testify to this grace.  Martin Luther found the truth to salvation and comfort in the Gospel of Jesus Christ in God’s word alone and not in practices and traditions made by men.  Martin Luther found a just God who saved by grace in repentance in faith, not by guilt and penance in works.

 

The first disciples knew that the Law and Prophets pointed to Jesus.  Philip found Nathanael and told him, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote-- Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."   John 1:45  After his resurrection Jesus opened the disciples minds to see that he fulfilled all that Moses, the Psalms, and the prophets pointed to.  [Luke 24]

 

            In today’s readings, Jeremiah prophesies the new covenant in Christ where God will forgive and remember his peoples’ sins no more.  Romans 3 explains how the law is that mirror by which we know our sins.  And, in John, Jesus declares his teachings the truth that sets you free.  [John 8:31-32]

 

            Luther’s efforts through posting the 95 Theses and his continuing writings and debates were to bring the church, as an institution, to recognize its errors and to correct them based on God’s word alone.  Neither Luther nor Melancthon nor others close to Luther had any intent to break away from the church.  As we follow how Luther and the team around him presented their statements of beliefs, including at the Augsburg Council in 1530, it was always to declare the truth in Scripture and begging the church to change its teachings to come back to that truth of the Gospel of Jesus.  These men called on the church to discard the different gospel it had been teaching and practicing.

 

            Luther brought back the following:

• The true church is the invisible church of all believers in Jesus as the Son of God and for the forgiveness of sins
• The visible church as an institution and local congregation is to keep the message right and bring it to the people.
• Faith is individual in that one’s faith cannot save another and another’s faith and/or works cannot save someone else.
• I do not need to do good works for salvation.  Christ is my good work.  My neighbor needs the good works that God commands me to do in my work and neighborly and family living.  These are the works that witness God’s love to each other that he has laid out ahead of time for all to do.  [Ephesians 2:10]
• We are saved by God’s grace through faith “alone,” not by works, so that no one can boast.  Paul writes that he boasts not in himself, but in Christ.  [Galatians 6:14]
• The church has been doing it wrong.  Let’s start doing it right!

 

How do you, here and today, expect to receive salvation?  Do you see in your sinfulness your need for a Savior?  Do you see eternal salvation earned completely by Christ on the cross?  Do you see works not a means to save yourself or another, but gifts God has given you to share with others?

 

            Martin Luther put the telephone down and picked up the Word.  Martin Luther accompanied by many others and inspired by the Holy Spirit brought the truth of God’s Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and everlasting life back to troubled hearts and minds.  Through Martin Luther and the technology of his day, the printing press, God brought the truth of his word directly into peoples’ outstretched hands.

 

            Today, the Reformation needs to continue.  We live in a society that is so permeated with false hopes, mystical and mythical explanations of angels, life after death, and what it takes to get there.  We find ourselves and people all around us so ready to read and believe the latest talk show host, celebrity or popular author instead of the simple truth that God credits trust in him as righteousness.  We live in a world that continues to put hope in righteousness each individual can attain instead of the righteousness that Jesus earned for you on the cross.  We live in a world that thinks that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are magical acts that by our doing them we get a prize, instead of receiving them as God’s gifts to assure us that he has already fought the fight, won the battle, and claimed the prize for each and every one.  We live in a world that does not believe God’s will as Jesus spoke, “For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."  [John 6:40]

 

            That is the message of the Reformation.  That is the will of God.  “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”           [Hebrews 12:12]  Jesus is “My Goodness,” by grace alone, through faith alone, in God’s word alone.               Amen.