Sunday Message: The Church Split - How Martin Luther Sparked a Spiritual Reformation in 1517

Pastor Joe takes a deep dive into the Reformation, a little church history lesson, talking about the BIG split from the Catholic church in the year 1500 that created Protestant Churches (not Catholic) like Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopal, etc. It is the incredible story of Martin Luther and how one man's faith challenged an entire religious system.

Here is what you will learn about in this message:
• The power of personal faith beyond church walls
• Why asking questions about the church is GOOD
• Your faith journey starts with a personal relationship with God

You will also hear about how the 5 Solas (this word means "only", so it is really, "The 5 'Only's' of Faith" that transformed Christianity and are still true today.

// Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone): 
- The Bible is the ultimate authority for Christian faith and practice
- God's Word guides our understanding and life

// Sola Fide (Faith Alone): 
- Salvation comes through faith, not works
- We are justified by believing in Christ, not by our own efforts

// Sola Gratia (Grace Alone): 
- Salvation is a free gift from God
- We cannot earn our way to heaven; it's God's unmerited favor

// Solus Christus (Christ Alone): 
- Jesus is the only mediator between God and humanity
- Salvation comes through Christ's sacrifice, not through saints or priests

// Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God Alone): 
- Everything we do should bring glory to God
- Our lives are meant to worship and honor Him

Key Takeaway: 
The gospel isn't confined to a building - it's a living, breathing movement that YOU carry into the world! Watch the full message and discover how your faith can change everything!

Chapters

• 0:00 Series Recap - Church Shopping
• 3:30 The Church as a Community of Faith
• 6:45 The Neighborhood Church's Journey
• 9:15 Martin Luther's Early Life
• 12:30 Catholic Church and Indulgences
• 15:45 The 95 Theses and Reformation Beginnings
• 18:20 Sola Scriptura: Scripture as Authority
• 21:00 Sola Fide: Salvation Through Faith
• 24:15 Sola Gratia: Understanding God's Grace
• 26:45 Solus Christus: Christ as Mediator
• 29:30 Soli Deo Gloria: Living for God's Glory
• 32:00 Closing Prayer and Invitation

Transcript

Pastor Joe Liles: 0:04

Music. So we're continuing a series today that is called church shopping, and it's really talking about, what should you be looking for in a church home, but then also discovering, really what it means that we are church on a Sunday morning, and what we're looking for in church on a Sunday morning, when people say they're going church shopping, what it literally means is that they're probably going looking for a church on Sunday morning to serve their needs or their family's needs, or something they're looking for in a community. And last week, we talked about the church is really a community of faith. If you are looking for a church home, what we hope you're really looking for, if you break away all the kind of the needs and the consumer side of church. I come to receive this and receive this and receive this. What we really think is that you're coming into church because you crave community. You crave relationship. You need a community that surrounds you and is willing to walk through life with you. And so we talked about that all in week one of the message, and this week we're talking about different years of the church. So we talked about the early church and that we still do the same things as the early church in the year 100 is kind of what we went through, that we still have the gathering, we still have the word, we still have the meal, and we still have the sending, which was kind of the makeup of the early church, and then when they were sent, they went out and served the needs of others. This was what began the church. It was not a building, it was not a time, it was the word. And they gathered to hear the word. They gathered to go out with the word, and they gathered to share what Christ taught them to share that that was the start of the church. And so we went through year 100 and now we're moving up a couple years, 1500 years into year 1500 and this whole time the church has been growing, right? And the church was persecuted, right? So all the way up through the first three, 400 years, the church continues to be persecuted. And then you kind of get this, this establishing Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the apostolic succession, which means that these were the people that succeeded from Christ, right? These were the apostles that knew Christ, and now you have this Roman Catholicism that's growing and growing and growing all the way through the medieval ages. And now you're into, like, the 1500s and we get into what's called the Reformation. And the reformation is what started Protestant denominations, and what Protestant means is not Catholic. And Lutheran was the first Protestant denomination. So you had Roman Catholicism. And there's a little spin off of like Orthodoxy in there, like Catholic Orthodoxy in there, but it's all this Roman Catholicism. And then you have the Reformation, and then the Protestant split. Now, when I say a Protestant split, you're going to hear about denominations that are Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, right? You start to move all the way through these other denominations that are not Catholic, and that's what we call Protestant denominations. And so this, though, is not a single year. If you were to take the Reformation and say, What year is it attributed to, they would say 1517 and we're going to get to why they say 1517, but really what I want to tell you is that the story of the church, if you're church shopping, there's a story to every single church. Every single church that you go to has a story of where they began from, what they've traveled through, and their experiences of God together and where they're at now, and that is the same is true for Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation and the establishment of Lutheran, which he did not want to establish a denomination when he started. So that's part of the story. But there's also stories that are true for every church you've attended, and stories that are true for the neighborhood church. In fact, this past weekend, or actually this weekend, there are Synod assemblies going on right now for the Arkansas, Oklahoma Synod of Lutheran churches right there's about 51 Lutheran churches in Arkansas, Oklahoma and north Texas. We're a part of those 51 churches that make up a synod, S, Y, N, O, D, and the bishop convenes us all for a synod assembly. So we go to Tulsa, we go to a church. We worship together. We hear about the business of the Synod and what's happening. We hear stories from other congregations and what they're doing. And you're allowed to bring congregational representatives. The pastor comes. You can have some guests there. You vote on different things. People bring up resolutions. It's very businessy. It's very exciting. And I didn't attend this year. So that being said, Tom and a couple from our core team, and Roseanne went on our behalf. And Tom texted me yesterday, and he goes, Hey, they recognized us at the Senate Assembly. And I was like, Oh, that's amazing. And he sent me a picture of what they recognized us, and he's here today, and brought this back. They recognized the neighborhood church. For 10 years of ministry at the neighborhood church, we got a certificate. That's amazing. All this work we got a certificate. Yes, that's awesome. And yeah, they give us stickers with our certificate, Jesus stickers. How many of you want a Jesus sticker? Yeah. It's okay. Tom will hand those out of the back after this. So I want to let you know people are saying, well, 10 years, what does that mean? We've been around for 14 years. That is true. But when we started, you don't get to be a church until you prove that you can be a church. And so you start off as like a synodically authorized worshiping community, which is also called a sock, S, A, W, C. I don't think the alliteration is great, but like, here we go. And so you're a sonotically authorized worshiping community or a cud congregation under development, right? And so, and both those means, we hope you make it right. That's what both those means. Um, and sadly, there's a large failure rate of new start congregations. New Start congregations have an over 90% failure rate when they begin and and so when we started as a church, we started in 2012 and planted, right? And it took us three years. It took us two years to be fully sustainable, and a third year to be chartered and organized, which we we became an official congregation underneath the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. That's part of our story. And we started out of nothing, right when we got here, the funds weren't raised for us, like they said. They didn't have enough for my salary. And so we had to make these choices as a family being here. What does this mean for the sake of the church, and is God truly calling us here, or the things that are taking us away from this call here? And so we drove around the city, and my wife and I got to moment where the center was like, we don't know if this is for you. And we're like, we don't know if this is for us. This is for us, even though we've moved here and we've rented a house here and everything else, and we're a new family. We have a baby, right? We have one on the way. Like, I mean, we're in it like, this is all new. And when we drove by Southwest Bentonville, by Central Park Elementary after months of searching, was a stormy day. And literally, as we drove by Central Park, the clouds open and a rainbow appeared before us. No joke, Rainbow appeared before us, and my wife and I looked at each other and we said, good enough for you. We're like, it's good enough for Noah. I mean, like, yeah, it's good enough for me, like, and that was truly the reason that we stayed and plant the church because we felt we had a sign from God that planted this. There is a story to every church and how it began. There's a story about the Lutheran church and how it began, and we call that the Reformation. How many of you have heard of the Reformation before? Like just just in passing. Don't have to know anything about it, just have roughly heard about the Reformation before. Okay, so I want to take you back a little bit through a story, because the reformation is about a person named Martin Luther right, who didn't start as a Lutheran, right? He started as a Catholic, and his family was a strict Catholic family, and his family wanted him to be a lawyer. And so he was born in 1483, and and as he came up through he went through normal family, normal Catholic upbringing. Everything was great. He went to study to be a lawyer. Really wonderful. So unlike the 1501 through 1505 he's studying to be a lawyer, and everything's going wonderful. He's on the track. Everything's great. And then one day there is a thunderstorm that appears. A thunderstorm appears as he's walking away from the university, and it's such a thunderous and lightning rich thunderstorm that he has to hide under a tree. And he hides under a tree, and he prays to God, prays to God, and said, If you deliver me from the storm, I will devote my life to you. And he prays this prayer, and God delivers him from the storm and filled with this good Catholic upbringing. He has enough of this kind of devout nature in him that he literally shifts from becoming a lawyer and devotes himself to becoming a monk. And he goes into the monastery an Augustinian monk. And so he leads right away, leaves the lawyer call. I'm sure his family was super happy with that. Leaves the lawyer call, and then goes into the Augustinian monk, right? To become that in the monastery, becomes a monk, and studies as a monk, and then two years later, is ordained as a pastor. So now I'm in like, 1507 right? 1507 he studies, and he's ordained as a pastor. And then as you move from that, he gets into not only being a pastor, but now he's going to get his doctorate. So he gets his doctorate right, and he starts to teach at the University of Wittenberg, right? And so he starts to teach theology to all the different students that are upcoming in the university, right, learning to be pastors and learning to be teachers and different things like that. And he starts studying Romans and Galatians and the Psalms, and he is gripped with his understanding of sin, his understanding of shame, his understanding of guilt, and how to relate that to God. How can we be saint and sinner at the same time, and what does this mean in our relationship with God? And so He is literally teaching all of the new Catholic priests. He's teaching all of the monks. He's going through this. He's at the University. He's teaching, he's doing everything he should as a pastor, as a doctor of theology, he's in the university. All these things are going well, and then we have the Catholic church at the time. So now imagine he's teaching everything from a Catholic viewpoint. The Catholic church at the time, is growing, and they are starting something that is happening right around the year 1500 a little bit before, but they start selling indulgences in the Catholic Church. And an indulgence is not new to the Catholic Church. It's a remission of sins in a time of purgatory before. So you can basically get time out of purgatory before you went into heaven. So if you had sins that you were forgiven for, but needed to pay penance for in Purgatory, you could literally have an indulgence which would release you from time in purgatory to place in between, which doesn't exist in Scripture, but it's a place in between before you got to heaven. Now the indulgences, when they started, were based on works, were based on prayer, were based on spiritual disciplines, were based on acts of righteousness. They were based on how you lived out your faith. So like, if you were involved in prayer and you're involved in reading the Bible and you said you're at Hail Mary's and all these wonderful things. What could happen is you could have an indulgence that would say, great. You don't have you've been forgiven for you since you get now, time off in Purgatory. But they started building St Peter's Basilica in the 1500s and when they started building St Peter's Basilica, what ended up happening is they needed some funds for that. So they decided, what would it be? What would it be if we sold these indulgences and people could buy their way out of purgatory? They could buy their way from spending extra time before heaven? How many of you would purchase that right? Don't raise your hands. No one raised your hands. No just kidding. What ended up happening is people raised their hands. They said, Oh, hold on. Wait. You're telling me I can purchase and this is coming from the Pope. It's coming from the priests. It's coming from the Catholic leaders. And they're saying, you can buy your way out of purgatory. This is great. And they're saying, okay, great. So they're raising their hands, but here's what's happening. They're taking an advantage of the people who have no other funds to give, and they're giving everything to get out of purgatory, which is not in Scripture, in order to get this remission of sins that they've already been forgiven for. But they're being told by the priest who they trust, that this is the way, this is how you get time off. But, oh, hold on. Do you have a family member that also has sins? Do they need remission of their sins in purgatory also? Hey, you can pay for them too. You can get grandma out of purgatory? Oh, I can do this for family too. How many would you do for family? No one for family. Okay, wow. Okay, that was a moment, all right. Well, I gotta talk about that in our next series. Okay, but now they could pay for themselves and pay for their family. You have the sale of indulgences. Here's what happens. Martin Luther is teaching at the University of Wittenberg, in the small town of Wittenberg, right? And he's teaching and things are going on. And so part of this teaching, all of a sudden you have the most renowned person coming in, right, which is a Tetzel, right? Johan Tetzel, right. Johan Tetzel is a seller of indulgences, right? And now mind you is the basilica is being built, the sale of indulgences becomes a rampant thing. And now it's not just selling for the sake of like a faithful thing. It's selling because they need the funds. And so he comes and he says, For every coffer, when the coin rings, a soul from Purgatory Springs was his line, and they invited people forward, inside the church, outside the church, everywhere they're at, around Martin Luther. Martin Luther goes, I haven't read this in Scripture that I'm teaching. I haven't seen a place that we call purgatory. I haven't seen a waiting place. I haven't seen a place where you can pay for your sins to be forgiven outside of the cross. And he goes, Oh, what? What is happening? And this is happening, and it's getting stronger and stronger, and now it's in his backyard in Wittenberg, and it's coming more and more and more. And so he says, Hold on a second. If I'm teaching a theology about our understanding of God, and I don't see this as part of it, I got some questions. So he took some time and wrote 95 questions down, more statements, right? And the statements were a reality of, here's what I think about the church, and I'm just gonna pin them on the church doors so everyone who walks in and everyone who wants to know about the Catholic Church can see these 95 things I don't think we're in line with and what he did not mean to do was to start a revolt or start a reformation. He meant to start a conversation. That's what he meant. He meant to start a conversation with the church that says, hey, I'm not seeing this, and I think things need to change. And there's going to be a couple things that we learn from the Reformation, but here's the first thing that I want you to know from the Reformation, going to church is not the start of your faith, a relationship with God is it was not the 95 theses posted on this church door in Wittenberg that started faith. Faith that started the Lutheran church. It was an experience of God in a storm where he cried out and said, I will devote my life to God. That experience was the beginning of his faith. That experience was the extending of a life that he was raised in the Catholic faith. So you have that your experience of God is truly the start of your faith, not going to church. And I could ask anyone of you how many of you, how many of experiences of God have you had outside of church, outside of Sunday morning? And I want you to think about that, because we tie so closely our faith to Sunday morning. Let's remove that a little bit. Let's remove that back just a little bit. Here's the second thing. As we're going about to look into scripture, I'm going to take you through what Martin Luther kind of described in his 95 theses. And what Martin Luther was trying to do is he was trying to say, I want to start a conversation. He went into the Word and said, I have a conversation for you. And I think we need to do the same thing today. The second thing I learned from the reformation is, if you have questions about the church, ask them the church is meant to be a conversation. Now, this is kind of scary. Can I just name it out loud, it's kind of scary for pastors, right? When I say, Hey, if you got questions about the church, don't ask them. Now, please, if you got questions about the church, ask me at any time, but you can shout them out now, that would be great. I'll not write them all down. I'll get to em eventually in the next couple series. Um, what's going to happen is that this is kind of a scary moment for pastors. There was a moment actually, I was listening to a podcast, and it was saying, hey, wouldn't it be wonderful to have a coffee with a pastor, just be an open call to society and an open call to community, where you could sit down at any moment and meet with the pastor and talk to them about the life in the church. And I was like, that's great. That's also highly scary, because everything comes up. But should the church be any different? Shouldn't that be who we are? I've always said that the neighborhood is a conversation Church, which means if you have questions, ask them, we have to enter into that together. We have to figure out how we move that. And that's what Martin Luther was doing. He was taking this word, this scripture, and he was saying, this is the moment where we have questions for what's going on with God. This is the moment where we have questions about how we're going to be the church together in culture and in community. And so when he's taking this moment, that's the third thing that we learn from the Reformation, is that scripture sets a foundation for all of our conversations. It begins here. So if you're going through life, and you're wondering where to begin. It begins in the Word. It always begins in the Word. So I want to take you through what Martin Luther called the Five Solas, the five onlys, right? This was the five, basically beliefs, doctrinal things of the Reformation that led into the 95 theses, right? That kind of described everything that was going on. And we're going to walk through these. So do we have anyone out there who knows what the five Solas are? The five Solas from the Reformation? Has anyone heard of these before? How many of you have heard of them before? The five souls? Okay, just a couple. All right, that's great. We're going to walk through them because they are, they are paramount in the foundation of theology, especially for Lutherans. And so there are five of them. Do we know any? Does anyone? Sola scriptura, okay, that means only scripture, right? Only scripture. That's great. What's another one? Okay, it's great. Let's start with scripture. How about that? We're gonna start with scripture, and then we're gonna work it through and understand because that is the first one, sola scriptura. So if you got your Bibles, we love Bibles in the church. We're going to walk through each verse that is attributed to each one of the SOLAS, right? So we can learn that. So if you got your Bibles, we love Bibles in the church. Raise them up. Raise them up if you got them. Wonderful. Yes, wow. Man. Reformation Day bringing the Bibles. That's great with that. If you're not have a Bible with you. We got Bibles in our Bible boxes around the church. You can check those out. But in addition to that, we also are on the Bible app. So there's a church apps card in front of you that says the Bible app. You can scan that. There's a link in the description on Facebook and YouTube. You can go up to there, to the Bible app and get that. So there are some great things that you can do with this, but we're going to open up into Second Timothy. Second Timothy and we're going to be in chapter three, verses 16 and 17. And Martin Luther used this verse to say, hey, if you're going to say that this is true and valid indulgences, and that the power of the Pope and the priests can be to forgive people in Purgatory, something that only God can do. All you have to do is show it to me in Scripture. That's what he said. He goes, if you can show it to me in Scripture, I will remove everything that I've said. Only scripture is his guide. So listen to this. This is Chapter Three in second, Timothy. Second. Timothy is in the New Testament. So you can keep on going through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And then you get acts in Romans. First and Second, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. Keep on going First and Second Timothy, right? And you'll kind of get through there. So you have Second Timothy, chapter three, verses 16 and 17, and it says this, All Scripture is inspired by God. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient and equipped for every good work all scripture. Martin Luther used this because he believed that if you are going through life without being in the word, that there's an emptiness there, that you have to be in the word as a foundational part of your life, to be in the stories of Jesus Christ, to follow in this word, to talk about your Christian living, and how you move through faith, and how you trust in God and all that's happening said, Walk through Scripture and you will discover the depth of your faith. And what he realized is that what the priests were doing is that they had trans they had translated all of the liturgy into Latin, so anyone who didn't know or understand Latin didn't follow any part of the service. That would be like me coming in and speaking the whole service in a different language, and you're like, I kind of knew the tone of that song, but I didn't know what we were singing or why it was said. And then the priest would preach, but they would follow through just on their own theology, and you could never back up what they were saying, Because the Scripture wasn't written in a language that they could understand. So the only word that you were hearing were priests. And now let's go back to it. Priests were selling the indulgences. So now you have this moment where you trust the priest above everything, right? And this priest has an authority over the church, and now all you're saying is that, oh, whatever the priest says must be true, because we trust this. And this has been our faith. Church has been our faith. And Martin Luther said, Hold on. If this is about Scripture. Shouldn't the people be able to read the Scripture? And so when he was brought forward after posting the 95 theses, here's what happened. It was the first social media of the day. So 5500 years ago, they are doing social media. You know what happened? The printing press same time? Coincidence? I think not. Thanks God, right? A really wonderful moment, but the printing press happened. So they took the 95 theses and the printer who was printing off Martin Luther sermons and doing different things like that, took those 95 theses and copied them. Within two weeks, it was all over Germany. Within two months, it was all over Europe, and it was being copied by other printers. So this message had gone far beyond Wittenberg. Had gone far beyond the castle church doors, which is just a bulletin board for the community. It went to everyone, and everyone said, Wait, if this is Martin Luther, who teaches in the university and who's a monk and a priest and a Doctorate of theology, asking these questions about the church, shouldn't we ask be asking these questions about church. And so they took this moment, they went and they they see all these things that are happening and all these printing press that's going on. And so you have this moment where now people are going, hold on. And so Martin Luther was called before in the council called the Diet of Worms, right? It's really weird, but that's what it was called, because it was in worms, and don't worry about it. Don't overthink it. And so what was happening is they called him forward and said two things. One, are all these your writings? Two, recant everything. Tell everyone it's not true. And famously, Martin Luther said, yes, these are my writings. And then he took a day because he knew what it would mean if he said he can't recant those. He took a day and he came back and he said, famously, here I stand and I can do no other unless you prove it to me through scripture, and you show me through Scripture. And that was the start we use that here I stand. First thing he said is, if you can prove it to me through scripture, I will recant everything I've said. But here I stand and I can do no other. And then he was shuffled off because he was considered a heretic, which, at the time, gave them free freedom to anyone to kill him without having to be brought to law for it. That's the church. The church has some issues. Can I get an amen? Well, don't say it that loud or still get me gosh, but it's true. Can I say it out loud? There is no church that's going to be perfect. We are a people of God. And what Luther saw is that we are sinners and saints. And what he saw is that the pastors, the priests, the Pope, was having an authority over the people that was not established by God. In fact, they were trying to really supersede God in some things that only God can do. And he said, if we're in Scripture, prove it to me through scripture. But he said, my my theology, though, is that there are more things here that we need to understand. And that's where you get into the other solas. So right here, I want you to turn to Romans chapter one. So if you're in there, so Matthew Mark, Luke, John, right acts in Romans. So Romans, chapter one, verses 16 and 17. Nine. And listen to this, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed through faith. For faith, sola fide, only faith, the righteousness of God, the right relationship with God, is only revealed through faith. For faith, as it is written, the one who is righteous will live by faith. So what he told them, is only faith. That's the second FIDE, the second sola sola fide only faith, we discover that we are justified by our faith in God, not by works, not by things that we can pay for redemption from sin. Is not something bought outside of the cross. That is a theology of the cross. Christ paid that for us. It is nothing that we can do to pay that for ourselves. Christ had to pay that for us. It is only faith in which we live as a response to the cross that's how we live. He said, This is a paramount theology for each and every one of us. Only faith. But then it goes on. I want you to turn to Ephesians, two, eight through 10, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, you can find that if you keep on turning now, this is what I would call the Lutheran verse. If you want to understand our Lutheran theology in one verse, just like the reformation is not one year, our theology is not one verse. But this is a great verse to understand kind of the tenant of what we believe. Ephesians two, eight through 10 says this, For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast my love 10 is like everything that I love in Scripture. For we are what He has made us. If you just take that for we are what God has made us, created in Christ, Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. If you take that prepared for good works, and you realize that there is nothing that we can do. It's not the result of our works. It's a response of faith by grace. You have been saved through faith, sola gratia, only grace. It is a gift of God. In response to that gift, we have faith, and because of our faith, we do good works, but those good works do not impact our place in heaven. It does not impact what Jesus did on the cross. It does not impact purgatory, which is not a thing, right? None of those are true. It is only by God's grace that we have received this gift, and is a free gift for you, prepared beforehand to be your way of life. Beautiful, he said, Only faith, only grace, only scripture. And then it goes on. I want you guys to turn to First Timothy chapter two. So keep on going back in. We're in Second Timothy to start first Timothy chapter two, verses three through five. Say this. This is the right. This is right and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ, Jesus, Himself human, who gave Himself as a ransom for all this is our theology of the cross, only Christ. Christ is the only person who can stand and mediate for us between God and humanity, between what is the Kingdom of Heaven and the kingdom of Earth, which is our sin, and one who is sinless. Only Christ. We cannot find that any other way, outside of the grace of God, and we cannot respond in any other way than through our faith. Do you see how all these are tying together now? He's responding to all these indulgences being bought, where people believe they can buy their faith, where they can come in and they can feel better about and the church is telling them it's okay. And I'm here to tell you today as a church that your faith is what matters, your discipleship is what matters. You not here on a Sunday morning, living out your faith out there is what we need to be doing. Our faith outside of these walls is what God calls us to. It's an everyday life. And that's what Luther was trying to get into when he was talking about the SOLAS. And here's the fifth solo one that I love deeply. And this is in First Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 31 so you can turn all the way back towards the Gospels, and here's what it says. So whether you eat or drink or whatever. You do, do everything for the glory of God. So whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. This is only to the glory of God. This is where our selfish desires and our pride put us in front of that solo, everything that we do, everything that we say, should only be for the glory of God. This is what Luther was looking at. This is what Luther was talking about. What we learn from the reformation is that the pastor is never above the people. The priest was never above the people. The Pope is never above the people. What it means is that the pastor should be with the people. And what Luther was trying to do is trying to say, hey, take us away from this moment of where you're saying that your excellence is above everyone else, and that you can command us to do these things, that only God can do, that we have a response in faith only through the grace of God, and yet you're telling us that the church is what matters most, that your position is what matters most. And he said, The pastor is never above the people, always with the people, and that's what he was getting towards. But his real command and his real movement was this, is that the gospel cannot be contained inside the walls of a church or a denomination. The Gospel is a living, breathing movement and experience of God. It is the good news of Jesus Christ. It is through the word that we hear about the grace of God that we respond to in faith, that we know it is through Christ alone that we receive that grace of God, and then we know that all we can do in response is give all glory back to God. Do you hear the church anywhere in there? I think the joy of Sunday morning is the fact that we get to gather together. I think the joy of Sunday is realizing that we do have a community of faith, and this is our life together. I think the reality is is that we each have a personal relationship to God, and that's what we learn in the Reformation. You are going to carry the gospel outside of these walls, and the most I can give you is right now walking with you. And the hope I have for you is that you will bring others to Christ, just like the church hopes to do. And all God's people said, Amen, let us pray heavenly and gracious God, we come before you today knowing that our life with you is something that we live and it's something that we don't always get right, Lord, we want to come to you in a way that know that our life with you is meant to be lived in a way that we respond in faith, in everything that we do, giving you all the glory. So Lord, in the times where we are prideful and we take it upon ourselves to control our own stories, let us humble ourselves in prayer when we don't take the moment to share our experience of you. Please convict us to have a testimony, and Lord, let us carry this message beyond these walls, knowing that this is a place where we can engage one another, in a community, where we can respond as disciples, where we can grow deeper in the word, where we can study the Word. But it is not meant to be contained here. It is meant to be carried out of here to so many people for the sake of bringing people to know Jesus Christ. So Lord, let us continue to make disciples each and every day, and we pray these things in your holy and precious name. And all God's people said, Amen, you can join us and join our series.