Courage from the Reformation

friends in this brief panel before we go off to the bookstore and later talks and the bedtime we would like to do a couple of things one we would like to hear what John Piper thinks about things too we would like to tell stories of courage from the Reformation so John are you a fan of the Reformation thanks though when when you were in seminary in the 70s 60s 60s seven 70s were were were Reformation 'el ideas like we've been talking about tonight where they prominent in your education my memory is not very good and so I would want not want to indict fuller for saying no I think so so the things that give it you seem like a preacher who not only loves the text of Scripture but you seem to love Christian biography from the talks you give annually to the what you've published in your Swann series you seem to gather strength from what God has done in the church in the past through men's lives it's true is there any way that you have have been particularly mentored you feel by somebody from the Reformation period well I did one of those on Luther and I do one on Calvin I did one on Tyndale and I would say all of them ministered deeply to me and for various reasons and and the one that stands out because I knew what we were going to talk about here is Luther because of his struggle to come to the gospel and the solution to the struggle being the text of Scripture so on I love that passage where he describes his entering through gates of paradise when finally Romans 1:16 opens because he couldn't figure how the righteousness of God revealed the gospel because the righteousness of God for him meant the punitive condemnation of God and therefore yet he says like I beat on the Apostle Paul I beat on him and I tell the guys that are seminary you got to do that there are texts that one yield to you until you beat your forehead on the text and scream out to God I must understand I gotta preach on this Sunday I don't get it it's not making sense then and so when he when I read that I thought that's what I have to do all the time texts just don't yield easily to me and so but he was beating on the apostle was a great inspiration we've heard from brothers on either side of you today a good bit about Luther we've heard something about Calvin but you mentioned William Tyndale you only just tell folks briefly why should they care about William Tyndale what would be good for them to know or learn from Tyndale well the biography by David Danielle do you pronounce it Daniel Daniel prized one of the top three biographies I've ever read put it right up there with brown on Augustine and there are copies of that in the bookstore scene awesome off the jacket how I put it down David Daniel perhaps 2/3 if I'm remembering correctly of what you read in the ESV are the words of a man in the 1500s early 1500 is martyred in 1536 I think or 39 something like that and he was so excellent in his use of the English language that we haven't been able to improve on him things like and Peter went out and wept bitterly that's that those are the very words of William Tyndale English words he was English and he was killed for translating the New Testament into common English and that the the Tyndale translation just moved right down through the versions of the King James and then for us then the RSV and then the ESV so that if you if you take the ESV you are reading in 2/3 of it or so the very words of Tindall so he was a master of the English language and he loved the sure so much he died so that ordinary people could read it I mean nobody has said too much about the horrors of the view of a church that would burn you at the stake for enabling people to read a text of Scripture I mean there were there were people who with us day earlier who who were were burned at the stake for teaching their children the Lord's Prayer in English so this is a wicked a wicked time in history when the Bible was prevented from being popularly read for fear that it would be misinterpreted by the lay people and in fact it when it was read liberated the people to be free I've recounted the story before about giving a talk on Puritanism in England at a church and and that mentioning that there were these wrought iron circles to the right of the pulpit you'll find sometimes in churches in East Anglia and I asked if anybody had seen them in this meeting I was that and several people raised their hands and said you know what there were nobody knew what they were I said those were our glass holders and there were gifts of the congregation to the preacher in order to give him one or two turns of the hourglass for his sermon and when I said this people they're audibly gasped and and one person said out loud well what time did that leave for worship and I said well the people who were gathering many of them these were gifts probably in the 1560s 70s 80s many of them would probably able to remember the smell of burning flesh for people who've given their lives for the Bible to be in a language they could understand so they understood the height that their worship was hearing the word of God in their own language and being able to respond to it that's really the center of their worship value that's when I come back on Tyndale for just a moment I shared John's admiration for their two portraits of Tyndale in my study but one of the things I love the most is that it completed his translation in the New Testament and and did not complete his translation of the Old Testament was still working on when he died he is as John said sentenced to death to be burned to death for the sin of translating the scripture but he's not done so he asked the jailer as he's awaiting execution to bring him the Hebrew Old Testament so he continued his capital crime until they killed him we need more Tyndale's a man yes for some warm socks and he wasn't comfortable most of you wouldn't translate the Bible if you weren't comfortable he was miserable he was cold 10 yes for a dictionary speaking of cold and miserable Ligon you wanted to bring some stories from Scotland yeah well done I could serve you that way several several encouraging Reformation era stories that may be less familiar to you John Craig was the man that became an assistant to John Knox at st. Giles in Edinburgh he was a Scottish Roman Catholic he was a Dominican friar and he eventually made his way to Rome where he worked in the Vatican and became the head librarian for the room of indexed books the Inquisition had created an index of forbidden books in what the 12th or 13th century that continued on into the Reformation era and one of the books that had been put on to the catalog of forbidden books was Calvin's Institutes and while John Craig was in the Vatican as the keeper of the room of index books he read John Calvin's Institute's the Christian religion was converted went back to Scotland as John Knox's assistant praised God a man for his gun Kevin you were going to tell us where it was that John Rogers who was gonna piggyback on the Scotland story you know I shouldn't take any from-from League but we were just there a few weeks ago and we were talking about this you know what we tell these stories about the martyrs and rightly so but we all need to realize that the chances are very very great all of us will be forgotten very very great even if we were martyrs and so you can go in Edinburgh and you can go to Greyfriars into the graveyard there where the Covenant errs in 1638 signed the the covenants Kotlin was going to be a Christian nation for Christ and many of them lost their lives and there Charles the first and later Charles the second but before you get there is Greyfriars Bobby which is a statue of a little dog who guarded his master's kneel grave for 14 years it said you go to the the cemetery and I've been there several times you can confirm this there are always flowers there at the dogs grave people rub the nose of everywhere you go everyone oh look take your picture and they walk right past the cemetery where the coven erst sign the National Covenant where many of them were laid to rest forgotten in their homeland without honor now superseded by a dog that that's what the Lord may be asking many of us to do whether we live unto the Lord die unto the Lord you will be superseded in earthly glory by a dog and yet in glory it will be worth it well and to follow on that John Knox is buried under a parking explai space next to st. Giles we didn't even know where it was for many years when I'm sure the place that marks it now a little square under a place where a car parks is where he was buried and he's under an equestrian statue of Charles the second so that's a good that's a good reminder so we say things like Charles the second and and I think a lot of people here go what does this I mean who are the John is it a problem that so much of this is language about history and stories that people don't know how can how can pastors here access more of the goodness there isn't this without having to become experts in history there's a movie you could see called Cromwell and obi-wan kenobe plays Charles the first so I'm just trying to contextualize you you didn't know that Richard Harris Alec Guinness I don't understand the question well I he just mentioned Charles a second algos ooh well I understand second one I didn't say a word but I don't know for sure when he was but a lot of people here have heard us throw out names today with great significance but it presupposes sometimes an interest in history that you don't have to have to be a Christian or even a pastor so how are these brothers and sisters supposed to get the good of the Reformation without having to know all the kings of the Holy Roman Empire and England and Scotland and by reading really good biography ain't John John Piper doesn't read the history he reads biography because I'm slow and biographies seemed to me to put it all together so you got theology and a good biography you got history and a good biography you got really good stories in a good biography you got spiritual input in a biography so find the best biographies they shouldn't just be el cheapo z-- but really substantive biographies that's that are are there and then then you get it all at once is that that's I mean I can only read a little bit I mean it looks like I know history because I write these biographies I don't I just I just get one or two really good biographies I read them and then I just tell them down to 30 pages and publish these little stories and people think I know something and you every time you you all could do the same thing in fact I I think you probably should do the same thing set aside a week in the life of your church call it you know History Week or something or something more exciting than that and and spend the whole year I mean this is what I did spend the whole year reading one 600 page biography taking a lot of notes and and then distill it with an exciting stories for you people in about an hour on on a Sunday evening or sometimes that's and then if you want to you could put those in some little binder in you'll think you know something and all you've done is enjoy the stories of God how do you do any history writing like John does I'm actually getting ready to but I've had more urgent things but that will be a matter I have to do if I'm satisfied I won't necessarily be satisfied but with myself they're there I've been collecting this material for future projects and I will simply say not to correct John but bog raphy is actually a genre of history it just affords you the opportunity to jump into history by means that's the real a person we've mentioned David Daniels biography William Tyndale what would be a couple of other biographies you'd tell the friends here to get to real well on the Reformation that this does not settle everything but you got to read Rowling Bateman's here I stand on Martin Luther Rowland Baynton here I stand on Martin Luther it's much harder to come up with a single biography of Calvin to recommend if you've read the role in vain one here I stand would you just stand up just curious its humble thing I'm the bag I'm just saying so just talk to those people around you want to find out more about it for a quick personal reviews of the book okay what else it's not a good design when you don't have just a name well because we're asking for one I mean the life of Knox that that banner of truth has put out is it's old but it's still it's still very good the new biography of Knox by Jane Dawson is excellent it's as good as Bruce Gordon's biography of Calvin and so I mean those two Bruce Gordon on Calvin and Jane Dawson on knots are two good Reformation they're big stuffy's you don't like oh no it's not the mayor of like just I'm stuck it's like I'm two-thirds of the way through and it's just kind of which one want to give a bad review I'm just not as thrilled about about her book Knox I think it's detailing it's just you were gonna say something story yeah I was going to say that some sometimes you know the little series of biographies that Ligonier is put out yeah are very good Steve Austin's written several of them there's some very good ones the the series I think his PNR has done on X and on the Christian life yeah Crosswhite excuse me that's actually a very very good series apologies to cross way there congratulations for doing it they're very good and they end up having a lot of biographical material in them a few years ago desiring God made available the short THL yes that's still available THL Parker short biography of Calvin available for free on PDF and you could just go to the desiring God page and download it yes and this is a most counterintuitive thing you need to read the short one not too long so was the short ones far better than a long ones true I tried to read the edge over like Italian red to shorten it made all the difference Ligon you had another good story from north of the border in Scotland well Patrick Hamilton was actually the first martyr in the Scottish Reformation and he was from a noble family to Hamilton's are a very famous family in Scotland he was brilliant he was a young professor at st. Andrews University and he went to Germany and studied with a monk named Martin Luther and while in Germany he wrote a book called Patrick's places in which he argued for the doctrine of justification by faith he came back to st. Andrews for a little while his noble bloodline protected him but eventually his Roman Catholic enemies decided they would wait for a month so he could preach enough so that they could convict him of heresy and he was literally tried convicted sentenced and burned at the stake on the same day right outside of Saints elevators College in st. Andrews Scotland and there's a marker in the ground where they built the pie and it was a slow painful death the fire kept going out and it took them six hours of burning him before he died and the the roman catholic leaders around were so horrified because he showed so much trust in the Lord so much fidelity to the doctrine that he was teaching so much confidence that this comes from the Word of God and it's worth dying for they actually went to Cardinal Beaton and said please do not burn any more Protestants at the stake in public take them and burn them at stake in a dungeon so people can't see them die the reek of this man is blowing the Reformation all over Scotland and it was Hamilton that it's fired George Wishard and it was George Wishard who for three months disciples John Knox and so if that story is a great great encouraging story mark that you know we tell these stories and they can seem superhuman to us but they were men of like nature you mean you have Luther when he goes to the deity of worms in 1521 and you know the first day he's so scared and nervous he's almost unintelligible in his defense before he gets to the final triumphant here I stand or Calvin we were talking about I mean Calvin was very aware of his inadequacies he had we would call an anger problem he had all sorts of weaknesses physical ailments and he hated to go to Geneva he wanted to be a quiet retiring scholar and one of the great providential quote-unquote accidents of history is that he's trying to make his way through the Canton's of Switzerland and he has to take a detour and so he goes to Geneva and their fiery william ferrell you know pretty much goes imprecatory on him and says you better come or god's gonna curse your retirement and he goes to Geneva and I mean he was like he was like radical before there was radical I mean he was he was don't waste your life before there were sea shells he was saying go he was in the best way Calvin you need to come in Calvin what we picture him is triumphant from strength to strength his only real power was as a pastor and has intellect in his spiritual authority I mean he would write things like I would rather die a hundred deaths daily than go back to Geneva and you were talking about the story of when he went back to Geneva in the first three years where people were naming their children obscene names so that then when they were brought for abscess baptism whatever that the pastor's would would have to say these obscene names in the middle of a worship service and they were naming their dogs Calvin and kicking them as they went down the street say he was abhorred in Geneva and when he when he left and went to Strasbourg he loved it he loved it in Strasbourg they were kind to him as a french-speaking congregation he kind of white he then suddenly he gets a call back she was taken away out well and he comes back and and if I had been kicked out and in desperation they called me back I think I would preach at least one sermon in the flesh on the fact so who's calling whom now but instead Calvin picked up with the very next verse of his exposition he'd left two years ago by being ejected mark I want to say and I really appreciate what Kevin just said about the fact these are real flesh-and-blood human beings and and they were heroic but but they were real people have real needs I mean and there are a couple of things I think of immediately one of them is I am really thankful for the Reformation because I get to have a wife and then I think that's a great part of the Reformation we all know figure out that the understanding of priestly celibacy Luther I mean it was pretty fast it was so fast that his Catholic opponents claimed that it was his sex drive that actually led to the Reformation rather than justification by faith alone Luther never answered that all in one place but he put all Luther's responses together and you can summarize that as Luther saying I did not lead the Reformation and I did not do all of this in order to have a wife but I am saying it would have been worth it Luther had such a happy home life and and and I love Luther because I'm a Lee and I are seminary presidents and John too and you know Luther had these seminary students and and and he would go to me and he would tell them you need to get married he told famously one of his students he said find your wife or I will find you a wife you need a wife don't you go and talk one more time about your frustrations if you're not married go get married to the glory of God and Luther loved his kids you know handled he suffered the loss of a child that broke is hard a little girl and he had Hans a little boy one of my favorite I love letters as much as John was biographies and I do - I love letters and compilations of letters Luther was out of town for the Reformation one point and Hans is like eight or nine years old and giving Katie a very hard time as 9 year old son so sometimes due to their mother and Luther writes her and says you must thrash him and he goes for this is more than you see Katie and you must thrash him and then he writes but then kiss him and give him an apple and tell him that his father is coming home and you look at that you go oh this is a father anyone who's ever gone out of town there's a father oh yeah this is Luthor you know you got to discipline him Katie but give him an apple and a kiss until his father is coming I mean that's just just a sweet mark are there collections of letters in the bookstore you think people should get John Newton's letters are they right I think they are there's also some bite Alvin pleasure letters yes yeah so there are a number of good pleasures of letters and I agree one of the great things about letters is you're not getting somebody else's take on the guy's life you're getting his own words and you get to kind of make your own picture and they're also often their short you know I'm rereading this is not Reformation but I'm rereading John Newton's letters right now my quiet time and just loving them okay so I want to come back on something ligand said this morning I hey I'm a professor of theology I like a sign like assigning reading everyone should it's free it's on the Internet Lincoln talked about Calvin's letter to Cardinal say dilute oh that should be absolutely required reading it's not short probably 4,000 words oh my goodness yeah I mean that'll make a Protestant out of you and you'll understand again Luther was I mean excuse me count one's 29 when he wrote it I mean here you've got the the Reformation distilled the one letter written to a Catholic Cardinal no you know another series to get pastors and others into church history is the series that Michael Haken has edited with biographies of everybody from Alexander White I mean that's a really good series he gives you a little section of direct quotations from their writings and then good historical biographical commentary on it and they're short you can sit down and probably read them in one night and that series I wish I remembered what it's called somebody knows it shout it out it's but Michael Hagen excellent church historian in Southern Seminary amen and Michael is a wonderful wonderful writer and writes with not only a keen historical scholars knowledge but with a pastoral heart and eye for things that will help and encourage pastoral ministry Marc enter into another thing people Ligon make references I think it was legan earlier today that even secular historians have to deal with the Reformation it's so big and of course Max Weber famously you know argued that the entire Protestant work ethic goes back to the Reformation and and how do you demonstrate the fact that you genuinely have been justified by faith except you know so the whole idea of the Protestant work ethic and all that and by the way it's not completely wrong there there's some very true elements to it but one thing's I enjoy telling students is look you know the reason why people esteem fine watches made in Geneva is because of the Protestants who were jewelers who fled Paris and in France and went to Geneva under Calvin in the consistory Geneva did not allow jewelry as adornment the consistory ruled that jewelry would be allowable and Goldsmith's could do their trade if the jewelry had a purpose therefore the watch industry of the world has been ever since the generation after Calvin located most prestigious lis in Geneva right there on the on the banks of the river because and the lake by the time that the city expanded it it's entirely because under the preaching of the gospel and under the preaching of the New Testament finically about that you know Paul's warning about adornment and jewelry they said only if it has a usefulness one of the things is so illustrative about all these people that the reason why we can still read them not only that the stories and the letters because they were Bible people is what John's saying about Luther getting into the text you read somebody who writes to the controversies of their day as they all did in that's edifying to a degree but they were all in the Bible I think it in a holy way a holy kind of ambition I think if any of us want to have a legacy that outlasts our small little lives it's being Bible people to look at the Bible really hard and tell people what you see that's why I said it's gonna be John Piper's beautiful legacy the guy just looked and stared at the Bible and helped us see things that we didn't see before and that's why you still read these people with prophet when when other people who might have been bigger names or had more impressive credentials have long gone to the dustbin of history because there were such men of their time but when you anchor yourselves to the word you have something to say to generations that come after you why does it somebody do a good movie of Calvin's life it's so dramatic call van I mean I think you know in Girard different of rollies the large Calvin but I mean you know it's just great scenes there are great yeah there are great scenes but Calvin's life is also how are you going to show I mean let's go back to CJ's sermon how are you going to I know what your Couture ly depict for one thing what was a hundred and fifty nine sermons on job that's gonna be really hard to sell the Hollywood but that's the substance of Calvin's ministry I mean it was just and and remember how many times a week he taught and preached you were gonna talk about the pastor school well yeah I just you know I I maybe I had a little idea for a movie on Calvin's life I maybe kind of set out all the scenes and I'm just kind of waiting anyway so if the big money's out there but the the wet the way I would like to end it is with you know Calvin didn't have children and he was tormented by that about that by his Roman Catholic fathers they would actually you know that was Beauty the curse of God exactly that he had no heirs and was was a sort of man was leaving no impression and I would love to do the final scene with with that as Calvin is an older man lecturing it's seen Peters and her right next to the cathedral in Geneva where he had this pastor school and yeah an audit wah and he would he would teach Scripture would be like us kind of like a seminary and then he would see these brothers sent out into the the valleys of France so he had sons in the faith without number and we have no idea where he's buried when when when I was in Geneva for the 500 cell the celebration of five hundredth anniversary of his birth one of the things in the in the museum next to st. Peters is they do have some of their mementos and historical artifacts of the pastor school and one of them is the book that the that the young preacher signed upon their graduation some of which signed it in their own blood and the that one of the things that they said was that the they considered the diploma from the Academy as their death certificate because so many of them went back into France and died in the course of attempting to plant churches and preach the gospel and and yet he sent out man after man after man after man all right friends yes John I just wondered assuming work almost finished if it wouldn't be wise for us to concede that these guys are sinners and some pretty bad sinners at times and I'm thinking particularly just said I'm thinking of anti-semitism I mean Luther's anti-semitism is so scary it makes me wonder sometimes if it was a Christian I mean that's that's to just say how strongly it feel to me how wicked it sounded at times the Apostle Paul would have been absolutely appalled at the things Luther said and I think Calvin was a man of times when it came to what happened with Servetus and and that death but but if you were to ask me then so why do you you know lionize these guys while you read them since they've got clay feet of such terrible fragility and my answer is when you watch both of them die just reread it today their last words they both died utterly destitute of self-reliance utterly aware of their own sinfulness confessing entirely their failures I mean the words they use you'd think they were absolute criminals which maybe they felt like they were but both of them yielded entirely to the gospel they yielded to the righteousness of Christ and and you know we we are beggars that is true Luther so I just think with this many people here and with others who aren't sympathetic to what we're doing here at all I don't want them to walk away saying these guys are utterly blind to the sins of their heroes so I if those three minutes right there would say no they really are not blind and they have thought a little bit about whether you can learn from and appreciate a man's ministry when you just shake your head at some of the awesome things they thought and and did and I mean you won't ever have a hero other than that except Jesus it's really really good yeah I mean these were medieval men it's not it's not just the first generation reformers so you think about a George Whitefield for whom you know Phillip Jensen was thinking God and I thank God for him and amazing work that God did through him in both Britain and in America he's a slave holder so you know racism and slavery huge huge swath everywhere history are littered with great towering Giants of the faith that we're just dead wrong on that and so I think it's actually very important for us to acknowledge the signs of grace that God of God at work in a person's life and also acknowledge very candidly their sin where it's not it's not we're not saint worshiping here well that's why the best of these biographies deal with the whole man right right and on on Luther by the way on the anti syndicate at Carl Truman's book that cross way recently did on Luther and the Christian life is excellent in addressing that very issue candidly George Marsden on Jonathan Edwards who's a little later than the reformer that's right about addressing both sides of a man

Channel: Together for the Gospel (T4G)

Views: 11,579

Rating: 4.7419353 out of 5

Keywords: 2016, Courage, Panel, Reformation, T4G

Id: 2Q6OUE0LC_8

Length: 34min 0sec (2040 seconds)

Published: Fri May 27 2016