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The Necessity Now
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We must not leave the Reformation in the 16th century. Aligning our theology and our worship with God’s Word is a needed work in our day. Today, W. Robert Godfrey presents the crucial way forward in reforming the church to the glory of God. For your...
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This is the great way forward, I think, to reforming the Church in our day, to invite people to study the Word on the matters that we're concerned about. And if people won't study the Word, then maybe that's a sign that's not a good church to be in. A necessity of reforming the Church May Mean changing churches.
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In 1544, John Calvin wrote a treatise titled the Necessity of Reforming the Church. The Reformers were facing opposition from church leaders, accusing them of moving too quickly, pushing too hard. But reformation was necessary. And that's our topic today on this Friday edition of Renewing youg Mind. If you'd like a hardcover copy of Kelvin's the Necessity of Reforming the Church, plus digital access to the six part study of this book and the study guide until midnight tonight. Make a donation in support of Renewing youg mind@renewingyourmind.org and and we'll send it to you. However, this is a one day only offer, so don't delay in what is the final message in the Necessity of Reforming the Church series, Ligonier Chairman W. Robert Godfrey reflects on the relevance of Calvin's treatise for the church in the 21st century. Here's Dr. Godfrey.
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When we look at discussions of how to reform the church in Calvin's day, we'll see they're not immediately applicable often to our day, but it will still raise the question, how do we go about improving the church in our day? Well, what does he talk about in this last section? He says, we have been accused of changing things in the church without waiting for a consensus to emerge about it. And he says all we can say in response to that is things were so bad we couldn't wait. Things were so bad we couldn't wait. God's glory was being compromised, Christ's salvation was being obfuscated, the sacraments had been completely distorted and corrupted. Ministers were not doing their work. We had to act and, and so we are unapologetic for that. And then we've been told we acted too violently. And he said, that's just untrue. Luther began gently. Here's another reference to Luther, always positive references to Luther. Luther began with a gentle hand to appeal for change, for reform in the life of the church. And his enemies, Calvin wrote, responded with cruelty and violence. And that's true. There was an effort to destroy the Reformation movement right from the beginning. And Calvin says we shouldn't be surprised about that. In the whole history of the church, wherever truth has come, it's caused commotion because those who oppose the truth, don't want it to prevail, and so stand against it. I came across a fascinating verse that until fairly recently hadn't really struck me in the Book of Jude. Maybe I just hadn't read the Book of Jude often enough. Usually we're so delighted with the way Jude begins that we don't move very much further through it. You know, Jude makes that wonderful statement. Verse three, Beloved. Although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. And that's really a seminal verse, isn't it? The Bible contains the whole of the faith delivered to the saints. The faith doesn't evolve over centuries. The faith doesn't get supplemented by new traditions. The Pope just a week or two ago said, well, tradition is dynamic. I thought tradition was fixed. I thought that was the whole point of tradition. But anyway, what's intriguing to me is at verse 17. But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you in the last time, there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions. It is these who cause divisions. Worldly people devoid of the Spirit who causes divisions in the church. Somehow it's always the orthodox who get blamed for causing divisions. Somehow it's always the conservatives who get blamed for causing divisions, but who always causes divisions. According to Jude, it's worldly people who want to change the church to suit their own passions. And I think Calvin has that somewhat in mind here when he's saying we had to change things, they were so bad, and we did not just change small matters. This can sometimes be a problem with Christians. We get nitpicky about small matters. We fight over everything. That can be a besetting problem amongst conservatives. And you know the difference between a big problem and a small problem? A big problem is one I'm concerned about. A small problem is one you're concerned about. Well, obviously we have to do better than that in prioritizing issues. But we have to recognize that there are some things we can agree to disagree about. We don't have to have perfect uniformity on everything. But certainly what we've seen Calvin talking about are huge issues, huge issues in the life of the church, in the areas of worship and salvation and sacraments and church government. Then he addresses the question, have we made things worse? This is sometimes suggested to people who try to introduce change. Well, you've wanted to improve things, but you've actually made things worse. And Calvin rejects that utterly. And he says, we are not perfect. We have not always done things in the best possible way, but we have made things better in the life of the church. And we see God's truth being exalted. We see many people living more holy lives, and we have not made things worse at all. But they said to Calvin and to Luther, you have divided the church. You have committed the sin of schism. Schism is the sin of unnecessary and inappropriate division in the life of the church. And you have torn the seamless robe of Christ. That was the way it was often put. You remember when Jesus was crucified, they took his robe and they didn't want to cut it up because it was seamless, and so they preserved it. You have torn the seamless robe of Christ. Of course, if you study the history of the church, that's really not true. It's never been a seamless robe. There's always been commotion in the life of the church. And Calvin's response, again, was, we have not left the church. Those who have deserted Christ, those who have deserted his Word, they have left the church. And the question is, how do we deal with that? How do we try to solve that problem? How do we move forward? And Calvin acknowledged that in his own day. The solutions suggested were, first of all, well, submit to the judgment of the Pope. You will not be surprised that Calvin did not find this a useful solution. He said, the Pope is a tyrant. And not only is the Pope a tyrant in the life of the church, but he's a relatively recent tyrant. He's really only had tyranny in the church for about 400 years. Now, we might debate with Calvin on his history on that point, and we might give the Pope tyranny for a little longer than just 400 years. But Calvin is absolutely right that the Pope's claim to authority over the whole church was never recognized by the whole church. The whole Eastern Orthodox Church never granted the Pope's claims to authority over the whole church. So Calvin says, the Pope is, in a sense, the biggest problem we have, so we can't expect him to. To solve the problem. Although Calvin says, remember that early in the Reformation, Luther appealed to the Pope to lead a reform if the Pope would listen to the word of God. Luther was willing to submit to the Pope to lead the reform, and the Pope refused. So again, this is no avenue forward. He also addresses the question, should we hold a universal ecumenical council of the Church to solve this problem? Well, Protestants had been suggesting that particularly Lutheran Protestants had been suggesting that for years in the life of the church. And the Pope didn't want a council because he was afraid he couldn't control a council. A century earlier, councils had gotten completely out of control. And the popes were exceedingly nervous about a council lest it do things the Pope couldn't control. So the Pope didn't want a council. But Calvin says we can't be assured that a council will do the right thing if it won't submit to the Word of God. And so Calvin said maybe we should start locally and regionally in Germany, get leaders of the church together around the Bible study, study the Bible and figure out how maybe we can move forward. And in a certain sense, that was what the Diet at Speier was actually doing. It was functioning as a regional council to think about religious things. And the Pope was furious. He didn't want any religious issues being discussed regionally without his authorization and without his supervision. So the church was so big in Calvin's day, so relatively united by the Pope and the bishops, so wealthy, so influential, so powerful, that we live in a quite different world. We don't have a church that's united that way. We don't have a church that's powerful and influential that way. We don't have a church that's closely related to the political government. The way Calvin faced it, none of us, I think, would think we ought to go to Congress to get the church fixed. This almost invites comments about Congress that I will restrain from making, but we just don't think that way, do we? We don't think that church and state should be so closely related that we would look to Congress to solve our problems. So if we can't follow too much in the steps of Calvin because of the difference of our experience, then what should we be looking for? What should we use as our ideal of reforming the church? And I think, in a sense, my answer is very simple and maybe slightly disappointing. But I think the only answer we have, the only way to reform the church, is to keep studying the Word of God, to keep coming back to the Word of God, to keep looking at the Word of God and then trying to live out the Word of God. The Scriptures themselves so repeatedly talk about the importance of the Word of God. I think sometimes we can lose track of that. As Protestants, we do study the Word of God, but maybe we're not always quite so conscious of how the Word of God itself tells us to study the Word of God. And yet it's almost everywhere in the Bible. It's repeated over and over again in the Bible. It's in the Old Testament, it's in the New Testament. When Paul is taking his farewell to the Ephesian elders, what does he say? I commend you to God and to his word of grace. If you're going to be my disciples, you'll abide in my word. John 8. It's the word that is returned to over and over and over again. Because it's the only objective, reliable statement of the Word of God we have. And that's why we have to keep coming back to it and studying it. You know, our Lord is such an example to us. In facing temptation, what does he do when he's facing the devil? He turns to the Word. You're hungry, Jesus? Turn these stones into bread. And what does Jesus do? He quotes Deuteronomy, and he says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And then when the devil quotes the Bible and the second temptation, Jesus responds by quoting the Bible. It is also written, there's nowhere else to go for us as human beings, except the Bible. To know the will of God, to know the word of God, to know the truth of God, to know the way of God. And so we have to keep coming back to it, to study it. And we see that commended in that familiar verse in Acts 17:11, when Paul goes to the Bereans, and the Bereans are called noble, because when they listened to Paul, they compared everything they heard to the Word of God. Is he telling the truth? Is he explaining the Word in a way that corresponds with the reality of what the Word is saying? That's why they believe Paul. Or we go to Psalm 81. You remember the psalm that stands right at the heart of the Psalter. And what's the central verse of the central Psalm in the central book of the psalter? It's Psalm 81. 8. Hear, O my people, while I admonish you. O Israel, if you would but listen to me. You see, the problem is not with the Word. The problem is with the listening. And that's what God reminds his people of in the Old Testament and in the new. Verses 11 through 13 are so striking. But my people did not listen to my voice. Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own counsels. Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways. Is that a lot for the Lord to ask, that his people would listen and walk in his ways. Does that seem unreasonable? Request from the Creator and Redeemer of his people. And yet that seems to have been controversial through a lot of the history of the Church. We don't really need the Word. We have tradition, we have the Spirit. We have authoritative bishops, whatever it is. How can we not agree to come to the Word and study the Word and look into the Word and ask the Word and to answer our questions. We should be pursuing church unity. We shouldn't be content just to be all divided. It's a sad thing that the Church is divided and we as Protestants maybe are too kind of indifferent to the dividedness of the Church. But the only way to unity, the only way to overcome differences, is to look into the Scripture and study the Scripture is. And not just do that as individuals, but do that in community of the Church. We need to study the Bible individually, but we can get led astray as individuals. We need the social interaction of studying the Word together to see if that's what it really says. And that's a great blessing when that happens. The other thing that has struck me somewhat recently, more powerfully than at other times, although I don't really, really have any new ideas, is how the New Testament letters always assume the responsibility of the whole Christian community to pursue the truth. One of the really bad things in the Roman Church is this tendency to say, I don't have to know the truth. I don't have to study the Bible. It's enough that the priests study and the bishops study and the Pope studies. I just believe what they tell me. Now, that sounds pious. I don't think there's a hint of that in the New Testament. The attitude of the New Testament is you can't blame anybody else for your errors if you haven't studied them and examined them and tried to follow the word of God on it. Listen to what Peter writes. I think we should all urge Roman Catholics to read first and Second Peter and see what Peter really has to say. Well, how does Peter begin his second letter? He says, simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He's writing to the whole Church, and he's saying, I'm writing to you because you have the same standing before God that I do. We have the same faith, we have the same God, we have the same Savior. And his expectation is that they're going to read this letter and listen to this letter and each of them individually as Christians and as a community, follow what God has had to say. But isn't that striking? It's Peter who says, we all have an equal standing before God in faith, and so we all have an equal responsibility to try to think these things through and not lay that responsibility on somebody else. We have to take responsibility for ourselves. On the last day, it will not be enough to say, well, my pastor never told me that, because on the last day the Savior's going to say, did you read My Word? Did you read my Word? Did you listen to what is to be found there in that word? So this is the great way forward, I think, to reforming the church in our day, to invite people to study the Word on the matters that we're concerned about. And if people won't study the Word, then maybe that's a sign that's not a good church to be in. A necessity of reforming the church may mean changing churches. That can be a hard thing, but sometimes it's a necessary thing. If you're not being fed by the Word of God, you need to be somewhere where you'll be fed by the Word of God and encouraged to study the Word of God and grow in the Word of God. Now we might well be tempted to say, well, can't we have a more powerful and successful word than that? And I just have to say, no. That's all you get. That's all I got. That's what the Word of God says. And I think the Word of God does encourage us not to be discouraged by that. The Apostle Paul, in the latter part of his second Letter to the Corinthians, does a lot of sort of reflecting on his own experience, his own suffering, the struggles of his life. And his great conclusion is, your power is made perfect in my weakness. Now, nobody likes weakness. Weakness is for the birds, whether it's physical weakness or spiritual weakness or emotional weakness. We don't want to be weak. We want to be strong. But what Paul is saying here, I think, is God's power is often better displayed. God's grace is often made more clearly known in the situations of our weakness rather than in the situations of our strength. And we, as conservative Protestants in America, have known a long season of a lot of strength, a long season of big churches and filled churches and strong preachers and strong leaders and strong teachers. We've had many privileges, and maybe we're not going to see those privileges all the time anymore. But we shouldn't lose heart because God promises that his power will be made perfect in weakness. Where have we seen one of the most amazing growths of the church in the last, I don't know how long, 50, 60, 70 years in China, in the midst of the most extraordinary kind of weakness, strong opposition. But the grace of God has been manifested there. The grace of God is being displayed there. So we shouldn't be too fearful of our weakness. We shouldn't be too fearful of the fact that there aren't as many of us who love the Word and want to study the Word and want to follow the Word as we'd like to see. And particularly we have to hold on to the confidence that the only way forward is to stick with the Word. Calvin says in the treatise, we can only preach the word God has to give the fruit. And that's true now. We have to try to preach it as faithfully, as clearly, as effectively as we can. But ultimately there are going to be times when there's great fruit and times when there's not so much fruit, times of great apparent success and times of not so much success. But our call is to be faithful. Our call is to love the Word. Our call is to say, speak, Lord, your servant listens, and then to seek to follow him faithfully and to help other people develop that passion for the Word that we have, that confidence in the Word that we have. And together then we'll be growing in grace and will be involved in the necessary reforming of the church.
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Reforming the church, ultimately is a call to return to God's Word, a fitting conclusion as we approach the weekend and another Lord's Day. This is the Friday edition of Renewing youg Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham and I'm glad you're with us. W. Robert Godfrey is the chairman of Ligonier Ministries and is a Ligonier Teaching Fellow. As a church historian, he has observed the trends in the church for decades, and in this series he issues a call for pastors, elders, church leaders, and asks as lay people to remain vigilant to ensure we do not drift. I hope you'll contact us today at 800-435-4343 to request access to all six messages in this series and the study guide. These digital resources will help you understand and apply the Hardcover edition. We'll send you of John Calvin's treatise, the Necessity of Reforming the Church. Make your donation@renewingyourmind.org or when you call us before midnight tonight and we'll get the book to you and unlock the series and study guide in the free Ligonier app. You can also use the link in the podcast show Notes or pinned in the comments section of today's video on our Renewing youg Mind YouTube channel. That's a book, a teaching series, and a study guide on the necessity of reforming the church. When you donate before this offer ends tonight, thank you for supporting the proclamation of Biblical truth around the world every single day. Whether you're a new listener or a long time listener, I trust you'll be helped next week as we feature some classic messages from R.C.
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Sproul.
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That's beginning Monday here on Renewing youg Mind.
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Sam.