The Effect of the Reformation on Modern Society

Well, tonight we've gathered to celebrate the Reformation, not just as a historical marker, but as a spiritual awakening.

And we've eaten together as a taste of that glorious eternity that we'll share.

And Isaiah 25 says that the best of meats, the choicest of meats, will be served in that eternal banquet.

Well, our brisket and ribs are only a little bit of a taste of what that's going to be like.

But we've sung hymns that delight in our Savior.

We've listened to Scripture.

We've heard four of the five solas that continue to root and give us form as a body of Christ.

And I want us to turn this evening back to the Reformation, not from a particularly theological point of view.

Sometimes in our Reformation celebrations, we've had sermons on particular passages.

We've had talks about the Reformation in Germany, for instance, from Christian Andresen, who came from Berlin for us.

Tonight I want us to look at some of the effect of the Reformation in society, even in our society to this day.

And in order to begin to do that, I want to take you back to a quiet town in Germany, October 31st, 1517.

And there a monk by the name of Martin Luther walked up to the castle church door in Wittenberg and with a parchment in his hand.

He wasn't trying to start a revolution.

He wasn't looking to start a reformation.

He wasn't trying to be the head of a church other than the one that he grew up in.

He wanted to call the church back to truth.

And he wrote in Latin 95 theses or 95 statements that were a call for debate among fellow scholars.

He wanted to talk to them about what he saw as the abuses of indulgences.

He wanted a conversation.

He wanted to bring clarity.

And that request for debate was largely ignored by his fellow scholars.

But it did catch the attention of some people in the town.

One of them, particularly, was a printer.

And that printer took those 95 theses, translated them into German, and began, without permission from anyone, to print them and distribute them around the town, and they took off.

And the match of Luther's call for reform struck a pile of dry wood and a fire began to spread.

And that moment, grounded in Scripture, born out of the conscience of one man, became the turning point of history.

And the Reformation began as a theological awakening, but its influences reached and reacher still to our generation.

Its effects spread into education, into politics, into economics, into culture, as well as church reform.

It shaped people's spiritual understanding, of course, and we'll see how.

And that's why Luther translated the Bible into German.

And that's why Tyndale risked his life to bring the scriptures into the English language.

And that's why Calvin, when he preached, didn't preach in Latin but preached in the language of the people.

They believed that the authority of Scripture demanded accessibility.

The accessibility required literacy.

Tyndale once said in England to a clergyman, if God spares my life, before many years I will cause a boy who drives the plow to know more of Scripture than you do.

Now, Tyndale wasn't boasting there, and he wasn't trying to taunt this man either.

What he was was saying that he was determined for the Bible to take root in every strata of society.

That it didn't need to stay in the towers, it needed to be in the trenches.

And it wasn't just the reserve of the priests, it was meant for all the people, including the plowboy.

And he had a determination to see a world where the word of God shaped the minds and the hearts of ordinary people.

Farmers, mothers, merchants, children.

Everybody needed the Word of God and needed to read the Word of God.

Michael Horton, a theologian, wrote the Reformation of the 16th century was founded upon the authority of Scripture, and it set the world aflame.

And so their dependence upon Scripture was not a retreat from culture, it became a catalyst for the transformation.

And so the Reformation had alongside of it a literacy movement.

Schools began to be founded.

Catechisms, which people in a lot of our day think are simply those in some denominations.

But in the Reformation, they wrote these catechisms so that even the children might know the scriptures.

And the printing press became a pulpit itself.

The idea that every person should be able to read was rooted not in civic life, but started out of a spiritual root, the route to the Reformation.

Now we take it for granted now in our generation and in our society, an expectation that every child should be able to read, but that is a fruit of the Reformation itself.

Martin Luther urged the political figures of his day, the magistrates, to establish schools so that children might be taught the scriptures.

John Calvin formed the Academy of Geneva, which became a center for learning.

Because the Reformers believed that literacy was not just a civic good, it was a spiritual necessity.

And their educational methods were reflected in their theology.

Sola Scriptura demanded that every believer be equipped to read and understand the word.

And that meant children and lay people.

And so for them, catechisms became key.

For adults and church leaders, confessions of faith served as summaries and even for some standards of doctrine.

Out of the Reformation grew Luther's small and large catechisms, Calvin's Geneva Catechism, the Westminster Standards in England.

The Continental Reformed tradition adopted the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort, all tools that helped shape a generation of believers.

The Reformation also transformed universities.

Medieval scholasticism gave way to biblically founded theology.

The translations of Scripture elevated all the vernacular languages and accelerated linguistic studies in Greek and Hebrew.

And so places that were already formed, like in Wittenberg and Oxford, became transformed, as did newer universities that grew up in Zurich and Heidelberg and Edinburgh.

And when the Puritans came over to New England, they brought this educational vision with them.

And in 1640, Harvard was started.

And a founding statement declared that they started it because they feared, quote, an illiterate ministry to the churches.

They wanted the ministers founded in the Word of God.

And today, International Mission still carries that.

You can go to Wycliffe Translators, or you can even go to our mission wall and see Kevin and Sarah and Matt and Sharina, who are working to establish a school in the very place where they're preaching the gospel.

And so the Reformers didn't just recover doctrine, they recovered a responsibility to hear the word as well as live it and know it.

Another aspect that reverberates into our age is the priesthood of all believers and the rise of conscience, a social conscience.

Listen to these words out of 1 Peter.

You're a chosen race, a royal nation, a holy nation, a people.

Sorry, let me start over.

You're a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Now those words, chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, a people for his own possession, those verses don't describe a select few number.

They describe every believer, the whole church.

Whether you're young or old, educated or untrained, if you're called to Christ, you have been made one of his chosen race.

You've been made one of the royal priesthood.

You've been made a part of the holy nation.

You have become one of the people for his possession.

And this truth was central to the Reformation.

Luther taught that every Christian has direct access to God through Christ Himself.

He did not and she did not need to rely upon a priestly mediator.

There was no spiritual hierarchy that could stand between the believer and the throne of grace.

And so this teaching didn't just change church structure.

Think about it.

What it transformed was how people saw themselves.

I can go directly to God.

Right?

And it gave dignity to the ordinary person, it gave weight to their personal conscience.

And it taught that every person was also accountable to God alone.

And that accountability also led them not only to careful responsibility, but also to courage.

And so at the Diet of Verms, Luther stood before the emperor and said to him, My conscience is captive to the word of God.

Now that wasn't defiance, that was conviction.

It was conviction that God and God alone is the one to whom he should give his mind and his heart and his behavior, not to the dictates of men, even if it meant suffering.

And it elevated the conscience not in the way that we have been taught in our day, as it is your truth and your conscience, and it is autonomous, but rather it is responsible to God who's made us all.

The conscience must be formed by scripture and bound by truth.

Paul said in Galatians 5:1, for freedom Christ has set us free.

Galatians 5:1

Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

You see, freedom is not license, as we're told these days.

Freedom is responsibility.

But this doctrine, as it grew, helped people to realize that they had the freedom to live under God's authority and not to give themselves to human manipulation.

And that bore fruit in democratic participation.

It bore fruit in the insistence that governments must respect the agency of their citizens.

And it also gave birth to the idea that truth cannot be coerced, it must be embraced.

And so the reformers, in teaching this doctrine, also helped to see a change in society because believers began to live like they were, priests before God.

They were able, again, to speak truth with conviction and to follow Christ with a clear conscience.

Whatever you do, do it heartily.

As for the Lord and not for men, Paul said in Colossians 3 23.

Paul, there, when he was speaking, wasn't just speaking to ministers and to missionaries.

He was telling us that this doesn't just apply to the clergy, it applies to the carpenter.

It applies to teachers and nurses and accountants and parents and business owners and those whose realm of service is in the home in which they live.

The reformers understood that work was not a distraction from spiritual life, it was the arena of their worship.

Ephesians 2.10.

We're his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God beforehand prepared, that we should walk in them.

The effect of that, as it grew root into the churches that came out of the Reformation and move even to churches in our day, is for us to understand that our work and our labor is not random and it is not meaningless at all.

Everything we do is a part of God's design.

And the Reformation helped us to recover that truth.

The reformers rejected the idea that was common in their day that only religious work was sacred.

They saw all work as worship.

Luther taught that the milkmaid and the magistrate both served God in their daily duties.

And Calvin emphasized work as a calling and not just a career.

Richard Sibbs, an English Puritan, wrote, the whole life of a Christian should be nothing but praises and thanks to God.

Work for God, talk for God, live for God.

And that vision reshaped how people approached their jobs.

What it helped them to understand was that in their work they were to be diligent, and in their work they were to show integrity, and in their work they were to act as stewards in all that they did.

And it challenges this idea that somehow our success is measured by our status, or our success is measured by our bank account.

It establishes the idea that our success is measured in our Christ-centered faithfulness.

And so if you never get known or never get rich, but are faithful in the work that you do and you do it heartily as to the Lord, then you will enter into the glories of heaven with joy and not shame.

This is the foundation of what some have called the Protestant work ethic, which is not meant to be a drive for wealth, but a commitment to excellence, a commitment to responsibility, a commitment to service.

And so work became a way to glorify God and a means by which you could bless other people.

And that quote echoes Luther's own imagery, doesn't it?

And it reminds us that God works through ordinary people doing ordinary tasks.

And that truth still bears fruit today.

I wish I could have stopped my car and written this down, but in 2011, I was driving my car in London, which demanded more than enough of my attention.

And I was listening to the BBC.

And on the BBC was uh a talk, a radio talk about a documentary titled Civilization Is the West History by a man by the name of Neil Ferguson.

And in that radio talk, uh Neil Ferguson was talking about some factories.

And I, if you're from China and I say this wrong, please correct me.

Winzhou, China.

Is that close enough?

Anybody?

And there was some there was a factory work, a factory owner there who noticed that there were some differences among a particular group of people that were working in his factory.

They were unusually honest, they were unusually diligent, and they were unusually cooperative.

They were giving more than the others were giving.

And he was curious as to what was going on.

And he approached these particular uh workers in his factory and found out that they were Christians.

And found out that they were reformed Christians.

And their work ethic that was marked by integrity and also by joy stood out clearly among the rest of the workers in the factory.

And he found out that as these men worked and these women worked, that the factory was actually producing more.

And there was for him some residual benefits, profits.

But he wanted to know what made them so different.

And Neil Ferguson in this radio broadcast went on to say that some government officials began to discover that this one factory was producing more than other factories were.

And that factory owner and those government officials went to Europe with this question: tell us more about the Reformation, because we want to know what it is that made that make these workers do this.

They saw a difference.

They saw the fruit of the gospel and how these people valued productivity, about how they found meaning in the midst of their labor, and how they approached their jobs, not just as a duty, but as an expression of their discipleship before the Lord.

Royal and I have sung it for years, and uh it's probably best it's kept to just Royal and me when we sing it.

But little is much when God is in it.

Labor not for wealth or fame.

There's a crown, and you can win it if you go in Jesus' name.

The fourth way the Reformation has affected our society today is through political realignment and the rise of religious freedom.

Let me begin with a verse.

Romans 13:1.

Romans 13:1

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there's no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

Now, this verse reminds us that government is not a human invention, it's a divine provision.

God has given it to society.

He gave it to society so that we might live an ordered and peaceable existence in this world.

But it also raises for us a question and creates for us a tension.

What happens when the earthly authority contradicts the divine authority?

The apostles answered that in Acts chapter 5 and verse 29.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

We must obey God rather than men.

And that's a tension, isn't it?

It's a tension between submission and conviction.

And that was attention not only in our day, but back in the Reformation itself.

And when Luther stood before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms, he wasn't just challenging church doctrine.

He was standing against a system in which religious authority and political power were intertwined.

And his refusal to recant was based in his theological fidelity, but it also began to fracture this political connection to the religious authority of his day.

And what it began to do is it began to allow nations to redefine and to define on their own their religious identity.

That the rulers would be able to choose for themselves the realm's religion.

And beyond that, it began to breed the idea that dissenters, even of that religion, had rights.

And so out of the Reformation began the beginning, began religious pluralism as we know it.

It's part of the very fabric of our nation's beginning.

It was the idea that a conscience should not be coerced, that faith shouldn't be demanded but embraced.

That governor governments and governors must respect the spiritual convictions of their citizens.

One historian, Alec Briy, wrote this.

He said, The Reformation taught people to think for themselves, to challenge authority, and to take personal responsibility for their beliefs.

We see the fruit of that doctrine in our day in constitutional democracies, in the principle of religious liberty, in the conviction that the church is not to be a tool of the state, but rather a witness of the truth of the gospel.

And so the reformers rediscovered a principle.

Yes, that Christ alone is Lord.

He alone is Lord of the conscience and Lord alone of the church, and no earthly power should ever take its place.

The last one, and we looked at this a couple years ago, so I'll keep this one rather brief, is the cultural renewal of music.

Let the words of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Colossians 3 16.

A people who are shaped by the truth, a people that are gathered in worship, a people whose voices and hearts together are lifted up in song.

You may not know this, but prior to the Reformation, singing in church was largely confined to the clergy or to trained professional choirs alone.

The laity were silent.

Worship was something they watched, not something they participated in.

The music was in Latin, the melodies were complex, and the congregation was at a distance.

The Reformation changed all that.

The first congregational singing in centuries happened because of the Reformation.

What we did this evening.

Happily singing.

They believed that the church worship was the activity of all of God's people, not just a select few.

Martin Luther himself, a gifted musician, composed hymns in the language of the people with simple melodies that all the congregation could sing.

He wanted the truths of scripture to be carried by the church, not just in their minds, but in their hearts and in their mouths.

And he wrote this: he said, Next to the word of God, music deserves the highest praise.

He called music the handmaiden of theology.

And so his hymns were not just beautiful, they were, but they were also doctrinal.

They taught the gospel and they gave voice to faith and they helped people to know that they shared the act of worship together as God's people.

And the Reformation moved the congregation from passive listeners to active participants.

And it allowed the people to take these melodies to their homes and to sing them among their families and to sing them in the fields in which they worked or walked.

And it also took them to the places where they suffered.

The Reformation, this renewal of congregational singing, also brought into our society the rise of scripture in our poetry and prose, our literature peppered with the word of God.

Because the word of God spread as literacy spread, and people began to read and to learn to read the Bible as they learned to read.

And as they sang, they sang the scriptures.

And so when they began to think and to write and to give it, whether be it poetry or prose, the language that was there from their earliest awareness was the language which they put into the things that they themselves would bring to other generations.

We've walked through five ways, very briefly, mind you, of how the Reformation has shaped our world: conscience, vocation, governance, culture, and worship.

But at the heart of it is this one conviction the word of God is alive and active.

Let me remind us of what Luther said.

I simply taught and preached and wrote God's word.

Otherwise, I did nothing.

God's word did everything.

It is the heartbeat of the Reformation because the Word did the work.

And it's the heartbeat of who we are.

The word is central because it reveals to us our God.

And it reveals to us his plan and purposes for this world and for eternity.

Reveals to us that he is a God who graciously saves the undeserving, receives them to himself because of Christ who gave himself up for sinners.

The Reformation wasn't meant to be more than just a conversation among one scholar to a few others, but it lit a match that has flamed all the way into our day.

It was a movement of truth and a movement of grace and a movement of renewal.

And we don't want to just remember that.

We want to reconnect to it.

We want to connect to it by affirming ourselves that the only authority to which we bow is that of Scripture alone.

That the only Savior that we count in this world is Christ alone.

That the only means by which we might have hope is by grace alone.

And that the only response to God is one of faith and faith alone.

And that we do so for the glory of God alone.

And so we're a church that will sing that truth and live that truth and speak that truth with courage and joy until the Lord calls us home.

May it be so.

Let us uh now hear a scripture reading Solido Gloria.