Living for God's Glory: Lessons from the Reformation

These were wonderful, wonderful instruments for teaching Christian doctrine. We see these catechisms -- Luther wrote one back in 1527 -- remember Luther said, "If we don't teach this next generation all of our efforts are going to be for naught," right? "We've put all this energy into it and if we don't teach the next generation it's going to be wiped out." [00:01:00]

The first question I think is one of the most beautiful pieces of all theological literature. We affectionately call it "Heidelberg One," and the question is, "What is your only comfort in life and death?" And it’s a very long answer, but in short it’s the gospel. But here’s the answer: "That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul both in life and in death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. [00:02:39]

The chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." And what we have there is a beautiful articulation of this Reformation plank soli Deo gloria. That ultimately we are privileged -- stop and think about this -- not only are we redeemed from our sins, not only are we reconciled to God, but you and I are given the privilege of actually glorifying God in our lives. [00:04:38]

We see this Reformation movement, started by a monk and his mallet back in 1517, coming into full maturation, and spreading down to the cities in Switzerland, and then going over to England and seeing the Puritans and the establishment of the Reformation in Britain through John Knox and his time at Geneva and the Reformation in Scotland. [00:06:22]

But we see something about the heartbeat of the Puritans in that first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism when the answer they come back with is, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." Now, in our day you can’t help but thinking about that statement without thinking about John Piper who wants to change the and to by, so we glorify God by enjoying Him forever. [00:14:01]

There’s this interesting text in Psalms, Psalm 115:1. And Psalm 115:1 tells us, "Not to us, oh Lord, not to us, but to Your name give glory." And you have to ask yourself, "Why does the psalmist have to say it twice," right? And we know why the psalmist has to say it twice, because the pull is not to go in the direction of God, the pull is really to go in the direction of us. [00:14:45]

Now the beauty of this is that once we begin to understand this, then we begin to see how this touches on every area of our life. Now to see an example of this, we can go back to that German musician that I was telling you about, Johann Sebastian Bach. It’s said that Bach on all of his music pieces would sign his names with two, or sign his music pieces with two sets of initials. [00:17:13]

He would use his set of initials, J.S.B., and then he would sign next to it S.D.G. -- soli Deo gloria. And he would do that whether he was writing music for the church, and a lot of the music he wrote was commissioned by the church, for events of the church calendar, or for liturgies, and so much of his music is church music, and so he saw his church work as for the glory of God. [00:17:38]

There’s a wonderful doctrine here that’s reflected in all this, soli Deo Gloria, and glorifying God in everything. It’s the doctrine that brings much of what the reformers were about right down to where we live, and it’s the doctrine of vocation, which literally comes from the Latin word calling -- our calling. Prior to Luther’s day vocation only applied to the priests, the monks, the nuns -- they had callings -- you know what the rest of the people did? Worked, right? [00:18:42]

Calvin says in The Institutes, "Whether you’re a pot washer or a preacher you have your sentinel post from God." Now think about that for a while. Sentinel duty was a privilege. You just didn’t put anybody out there, right? In fact, sentinel duty in that day -- that was the elite guard that was on the sentinel post. And so when he says this is your sentinel post he’s saying this is a very serious calling for which you have been trained and for which you have been put in. [00:19:42]

We also glorify God, and I think this is one of the lessons perhaps we could sort of end with the reformers on, we also glorify God when we do what the reformers did, which was so clearly and so persuasively proclaim Christ in a world that desperately needed to hear Christ. [00:21:15]

There’s a wonderful painting done, and since we started with Martin Luther, I think we ought to finish with Martin Luther, but there’s this wonderful painting of Martin Luther done by Lucas Cranach, a famous artist in Luther’s day, and he had painted Luther a number of times. In fact there was Lucas Cranach the elder and the younger, senior and junior, and both of them painted Luther. [00:21:33]