Fear God and give Him glory

Sermon for the Festival of the Reformation

Revelation 14:6-7  +  Matthew 11:12-15

The Reformation of the Church, which we celebrate today, was just that: a reformation. Not the beginning of something new, but the preservation of something old, of the Church that was built on the Rock of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, the Church that Christ had been building for some 1,500 years, or, if you will, for some 5,500 years, since the first promise was made to Adam and Eve of the coming of a Savior who would crush the head of the ancient serpent. It was the Church that remained faithful through centuries of unimaginable persecution, the Church that had fought and won one battle after another against heresies of all kinds, by the grace of God, the Church that had established some wonderful, edifying traditions. But by the sixteenth century after Christ, the time of Martin Luther, any number of serious, deep-seated corruptions had infiltrated the Church’s doctrine and practice, obscuring the eternal gospel.

But as St. John saw in his vision, in the Revelation he was given, the eternal gospel would not be silenced. I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the eternal gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and tribe, and language, and people. Now that “angel” John saw was the same kind of “angel” to whom the seven letters to the seven churches in Revelation 1-2 were written. In other words, it wasn’t one of the angelic spirits; they don’t preach to the world. It was a human messenger, a human minister, or more likely, it was symbolic of the office of the holy ministry in general, the duty Christ gave to His apostles and their successors to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

Martin Luther was one of those angels, those ministers who preached the gospel boldly and clearly, and his dealings with the corrupted Church of his day can be summarized well with the angel’s words in Revelation 14, Fear God and give him glory! Because all of the abuses that were going on in the Church of his day were teaching people to do just the opposite.

What were the issues Luther confronted in 1517 and beyond?

Well, his famous 95 Theses focused primarily on the sale of indulgences, documents issued by the pope and sold to Christians throughout Europe that promised the full forgiveness of sins to the buyer, for themselves or even for a person who had died and whose soul was thought to be suffering in torment in a place called purgatory, paying for the sins that Christ had supposedly not paid for. Luther’s response was, Fear God and give him glory! Christ is the One who paid for all the sins of the world with His innocent death on the cross. He is the One who purchased salvation for us and who never sells it to anyone or hands it out piecemeal, but gives it away freely to the one who believes in Him. Stop trusting in your money or in the pope to save you. Fear God! Trust in Christ!

Related to that was Rome’s distorted teaching about grace and good works. The Roman Church had begun to teach that sinners are justified, not by faith alone, but by the good works or the works of love God’s “grace” enabled them to do. Now, Luther knew that love and good works are important, are even necessary for Christians, but not for justification. Scripture clearly teaches that sinners are justified—acceptable to God—only by faith in Christ Jesus, and that good works follow faith, not as a cause or reason for God to justify us, but as the necessary fruits of a living faith, the fruits produced by believing, forgiven children of God. And so his response was, Fear God and give him glory! Stop trusting in yourselves and your works! Stop preaching man and man’s works! Preach Christ and Him crucified! Preach justification by faith alone! Fear God!

Related to that was the issue of the role of the blessed virgin Mary and the saints. Rome had been directing people to pray to Mary and the saints for help in the day of trouble and to trust in Mary and the saints to share their excess good works with sinners. But Luther, who loved and honored the saints and taught Christians to remember them and to imitate their faith and life, warned Christians not to pray to them or to trust in them for help, because there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus. Stop turning to the saints for help. Stop pointing men to the saints! Fear God and give Him glory!

Another issue Luther addressed was the Mass, specifically, the canon of the Mass, which included prayers for the intercession of the saints and the re-presenting of the sacrifice of Christ, so that the Sacrament of the Altar became man’s sacrifice to God, another good work on man’s part for which faith wasn’t even required, rather than the life-giving gift of God to us in which He gives us the body and blood of His Son, once for all sacrificed on Calvary’s cross, truly present under bread and wine for the forgiveness of our sins. Luther said, Fear God and give him glory! Stop trusting in human works, and worship God by receiving from Him the gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation. Fear God!

Those are the main issues Luther brought up with the Church, together with the unscriptural authority that the pope was claiming for himself as head over all Christians. Where did all these abuses come from? They all came from men, who either trusted in their own wisdom more than in God, or who sought glory for themselves and not for God. They came from the insidious notion that popes and councils and manmade traditions in the Church were somehow on equal footing with Holy Scripture, so that the pope claimed authority for himself that God had never given to him or to any man. And so Luther preached, Fear God and give him glory! Stop trusting in popes and in princes and in the authority of man. Stand on Holy Scripture! Fear God!

In every case, the Roman Church had transferred the glory that belonged to God to man, and the Lutheran answer was always, Fear God and give him glory! Why? Because, as the angel proclaimed, the hour of his judgment has come. Not the judgment of human courts. Luther answered before several human courts, before bishops and cardinals and popes and princes. And the Lutherans after him did the same and were judged by the world as dissenters and troublemakers and sectarians. They may have been afraid of those judgments; they certainly suffered because of them. But they didn’t give in to fear, because they knew that “His judgment,” God’s judgment, was coming, and that only faith in the true God who created all things, who sent His Son, who sends His Spirit, would help on that day. So they stood on the eternal gospel and made the good confession. This is what they wrote at the end of the Book of Concord: In the sight of God and of the entire Church of Christ, we want to testify to those now living and those who will come after us. This declaration presented here about all the controverted articles mentioned and explained above—and no other—is our faith, doctrine, and confession. By God’s grace, with intrepid hearts, we are willing to appear before the judgment seat of Christ with this Confession and give an account of it.

That’s the intrepid spirit that needs to dwell in us still today, the faith to fear God and give him glory, and the boldness, courage, and zeal to continue proclaiming that message to every nation, tribe, language, and people. Fear God and give him glory! Because things have not gotten better for the Church or for the world over these last 500 years. They’ve only gotten worse.

It’s easy to point out the errors of the Roman Church, which have only grown since the days of Luther. But listen to what Barna has found in his polling of “Protestant” Christians: “American Christians are undergoing a ‘post-Christian Reformation.’ Unlike the Protestant Reformation, whose goal was to return to the foundational teachings of the Bible, this modern movement is one where Americans are redefining biblical beliefs according to secular values.”

Secular values like what? Well, what was it the angel cried out? Worship him who made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the springs of water. How many churches truly believe and teach that anymore, that God made heaven and earth? Instead, the churches join the world in denying the Creator and His Word through the teaching of evolution, and they join the world in focusing on climate change instead of preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Christ. But I tell you, fear God and give him glory! Believe His Word and stand on it against all the pseudo-science of man.

As “Christians” have joined the world in denying the Creator and His creation, they also join the world in denying the most basic truths of the creation, about man, woman, marriage, children, and family. Speak the truth about “gender,” speak the truth about how God has reserved sexual relations for marriage, speak the truth, in love, about abortion as murder and homosexuality as a grievous sin, and any number of churches will join the world in calling you hateful and calling for your “cancelation” from society. But I tell you, fear God and give Him glory! Believe His Word and stand on it against all the perversions of man.

If we, with the flying angel, call upon men to “worship Him who made heaven and earth,” proclaiming that there is only one true God who is to be worshiped, the God of the Bible who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that every other god worshiped by men is an idol, including the god of the human heart, the world rages in anger. Even Christian churches are hesitant to say such a thing for fear of man. But I tell you, fear God and give Him glory! Believe His Word and stand on it against all the idolatries of man.

And speaking of idolatries, health can become an idol. Over seven months into COVID, and again the Archdiocese of Santa Fe has ordered all its churches to suspend Mass after today, until further notice. You can be sure other churches will follow suit, and the government may again make it illegal for us to gather around Word and Sacrament, even as they have already made it illegal to sing or to worship God and encourage one another with uncovered faces. But I tell you, don’t fear COVID. Fear God! Don’t give glory to man’s safety protocols and human wisdom. Give glory to God. Don’t fear the government or the persecutions it may bring against you. For that matter, don’t fear your family, or your possessions, or your honor, or your life. Fear God and give Him glory!

This is what it means to stand in the spirit of the Reformation, to remain faithful to God’s Word, to hold fast to its teaching, to believe what it says, to trust in the Lord Christ, to be diligent in prayer and in using the Sacraments, to keep yourself clean from the hatred that surrounds you and to live a life of love in the midst of a loveless world—in short, to fear God and give Him glory. Celebrate the flight of the angel today: the ministry of Martin Luther and of all who have faithfully proclaimed, believed, and stood upon the eternal gospel, even in these latter days. Fear God and give him glory! Amen.