Grace You Cannot Earn

Transcript

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[0:00] Well, our sermon text is from Romans chapter 3, 19 through 28. I know this will be familiar to many of us. But I want to say a few words about Reformation Sunday. I'm so excited about it. As you can tell, like, I'm super excited about Reformation Sunday. At the end of this, I hope that you're, like, super excited about Reformation. Who's here is excited for Reformation Sunday? Yeah. So if you grew up Lutheran like me, like, this was probably, like, this was up there with Christmas and Easter. Like, it was a pretty big deal. Like, this is our day, you know.

[0:34] And the whole rest of the world was like, what? What is that? You know, the whole rest of the world was like, what are you talking about? It's Halloween. It just so happens that Martin Luther did this on All Hallows' Eve in 1517. That was just the day. I guess that's when the ink dried on his stuff. So that's kind of a coincidence. But it's an exciting day. And I'll be honest with you. Like, we, as the Covenant Church here, we are direct descendants. If you look at the church tree, the family tree, we're direct descendants of Lutheranism and Lutheran pietism. Maybe a few other strands got mixed in there. But the majority of the DNA of the Covenant Church comes from the Lutheran Church. And what Luther started, which was really a heavy dependence on God's Word, on the Scripture, that would set what theology is. Not a pope. Not. Not a tradition. Not years of practice. But actually the Word of God itself. And he would say, I am held captive by the Word of God. And I can't go against my conscience or the Word of God. We'll see about that later. So this is the day that Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses, a thesis, plural theses, the 95 theses, to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany.

[1:50] And his 95 theses included a list of all the things that, he thought were wrong with the church at the time. So he was, he wasn't like a positive person. He was like a negative person. He's like, here are all the things that you are doing wrong. You know, it probably took a while for him to start, to start offering something positive. But at the beginning, it really was a critique. And when I mentioned the church in 1517, there's only one church that really was active in Northern Europe at the time. And that was the Roman Catholic Church. The Greek Orthodox Church existed, but it didn't, it did not exist. It didn't exist in that region. So when I say the church, just hear the Roman Catholic Church, which is the same Roman Catholic Church that still exists today, though it itself has changed and has reformed itself in many, many ways that are important.

[2:39] So this is actually, and I, you know, I'm excited. You should be excited, but I'll tell you what, if you know a little bit of history and some of you do, some of you do, maybe all of you do, that this moment, October 31st, 1517, is one of the most important dates in the Roman Catholic Church history. And I'm excited to tell you that this is one of the most important dates in human history. Okay? It really is. It's like, it's a big day. It had all these consequences, well beyond a simple difference of opinion on theology and things like that. For one thing, it actually eventually led to some wars in Europe in which millions of people died. So the consequences were deadly. And that's a very shameful aspect of Christian history, is that people took up arms against each other over theology, which is stunning. And really, now always when there's a war, there's more going on. It wasn't just about theology. It was about land. It was about influence. It was about power. It was about a lot of things. And sometimes the theology became a convenient sort of banner to carry into those battles. But the Reformation did lead to war, and it led to the death of millions of people in Europe. And that itself is both important and terrible.

[3:47] One thing it did is it highlighted the power of an innovative new technology. Twitter. No, not Twitter. The printing press. The printing press had been invented just a little bit before this. But the Reformation and the writings of Martin Luther were quickly taken by people. They were set to type. They were mass produced by the thousands and disseminated in a way that the Catholic Church had no way of stopping. And there was just some amazing dissemination of information. And a literate public. A semi-literate public. And so it... It kind of... I think people watching were like, whoa, this printing press. This is pretty important. We better pay attention to this because it's not some fringe technology that's kind of cool. It's actually... It's like a world-changing technology. The Protestant Reformation contributed to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, which revolutionized civil society and science and art and literature. So, you know, I'm not saying the Protestant Reformation was responsible for the Enlightenment. But it... The Enlightenment definitely rests on... Partly on the Protestant Reformation. And you understand history, you know the Enlightenment is a huge aspect. For good or for ill. All sorts of things.

[5:04] Modernity. All kind of flow from things... Moments like this. Where people challenge the established order. And so it's an important thing to know about just if you're a historian. And we're going to see in a moment that this is a moment that was... It was completely born out of one person being just an ornery, stubborn German monk. Like he's a single bachelor German monk who was very dark and moody. And... But he was captivated by the Word of God and he would back down from no fight. And it is people like this that make a difference in the world. And so he just had this conviction that the Word of God was in the Bible was being incorrectly interpreted. In a way that was endangering the souls of people. Not necessarily the lives but also the lives but the souls of people.

[6:01] And so our reading today is one of the passages that Luther leaned upon to formulate his understanding. That you probably remember from just... As you've learned in the church. That we say this often. That salvation is by grace alone through faith. And it does not depend on us performing any of it. It does not depend on any works that the law requires. And that's... This reading from Romans 3 is very familiar to us. It contains one of the most famous quotes in the Bible. From the Apostle Paul who himself had an experience with the grace of God. After living a life as a Pharisee. And as a Pharisee he always had this hope that his keeping of the law and his zeal to destroy Christianity would save him. But after his encounter with God he realized, no this is... This grace is a free gift. I cannot earn it.

[6:53] So as it was revealed to Paul. Works don't do that. They don't save you. They do not make you right with God even if they are good to do. And we're not saying works are bad. But they're just saying they don't get you what you need. Only faith in the saving work of Jesus. Not our own work. Will put us in a right relationship with God. And from that place many good and helpful works will flow out. But that's the correct order. As we come to God in faith we receive the gift of grace and new life. And from that renewed life. Good works do flow out like a tree that creates good fruit. So now let's go to our reading. It's Romans chapter 3 verses 19 through 28. The Apostle Paul writes this.

[7:41] Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law. So that every mouth may be silenced. And the whole world may be held accountable to God. For no human being will be justified in his sight by deeds prescribed by the law. For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been disclosed. And is attested by the law and the prophets. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They are now justified by his grace as a gift. Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood. Effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness. Because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed. It was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous. And that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

[8:57] Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No. But by the law of faith. For we hold. And this is the important. I mean it's all important. But this is the important part. For we hold. That a person is justified by the law. And by faith.

[9:18] Apart from works prescribed by the law. Let's pray. Heavenly Father thank you for this word. And we ask that you add your blessing to it. In Jesus name. Amen. So Martin Luther got up on October 31st, 1517. He went to the church door. And he got out a nail. This is maybe a bit of an apocryphal story. We don't know if he actually did this. He might have just put it on a table.

[9:46] It was very common for people to do this. To kind of put up a paper that they had written. And it was kind of how they shared it. It was like Dropbox. But way back then. Or like Google documents. Oh I can edit it. And so people would look at it. And they would look at it. So he put up 95. It was pretty long. Put up 95 theses up on there. And his hope. I don't think he really wanted to start the reformation that day. He was just like I'm fed up. I've got to write this all out. I want to see what my other theologians think about this. I want to have a conversation about it. But as it turns out. It kind of caught fire. People took it. They printed it. They sent out thousands of copies of it. And I think he was like I wasn't prepared for this. But I'm not going to back down from it either. And so he put it up there. The very first thesis. And I'm not going to read all 95. We don't. I mean next week. Come early. No I'm kidding.

[10:41] The very first thesis. The only one I'll read. But they're all really good. The first thesis is this. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent. He willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. So he starts right up. He's like we need to repent. We need to have a life of repentance. We need to take sin seriously. And a lot of what the theses were about was how the church was not really taking sin seriously. It was treating sin as a way to make money. Which we'll get into. It's very interesting. Okay. Before that though. I want to give you just a quick history of the life of Martin Luther. He was the son of some well-off middle-class family in Germany. His father wanted him to attend law school. Kids don't always do what their parents want. So he did the preparation for law school. But he dropped out of law school. He hated it. And he turned to philosophy. He was interested in that. One day he was riding through a field in a thunderstorm. And he was frightened because a lightning bolt struck the ground near him. And in that moment. This is sort of this turning point in his life. He's like terrified. That's happened to me before. Like if it happens right near you. You're just like. The adrenaline is sky high.

[11:58] And he cried out to Saint Anne. And that was a practice then. You would pray to a saint. You wouldn't pray. You know. You wouldn't pray to Jesus. So he thought. One of the things in Catholicism. There's all these intermediary saints who have died. That you have to pray to them. And they'll sort of carry your prayers somewhere else. So he prayed to Saint Anne. And he said. If you save me from this storm. I will become a monk. Which is to. You know. To leave normal society. To cloister yourself off. To not get married. To take a vow of poverty.

[12:32] And so he became what we know as an Augustinian monk. Somebody who was in the order of Saint Augustine. And his father was furious. Because he's like. I have paid all this money for private salvation. I have given all these money to private schools for you to become a lawyer. And now you're forsaking everything. And you're not going to give us any grandchildren. If you have. You know. Parents who have children who are old enough to have kids. You're like. Where are my grandkids? Well he's not going to get any grandkids out of Luther. Although later he did. Just because Luther eventually got married.

[12:59] So he joined the monastery. And it quickly became a problem. Because Luther was so burdened with his own sin. He could not stop thinking about all the ways that he had failed God. And so he would get up at four in the morning and with bare knees sit on the hard, cold floor. And he'd pray at his bed and he would whip himself and sort of try to contain his flesh. And he was just all the time saying, God can't have mercy on me. I'm such a bad sinner. And of course, he had joined the monastery to become a monk. He dedicated his life to serving God, so to speak. And this is my interpretation, but I'm not too far off here, is that the other monks at the monastery were like, we have to get rid of this guy. He is totally harshing everything around him. We cannot, you know, he's just like, he's too dark. He's too obsessed with his own sinfulness. He's just not a very happy monk. This isn't helping him. And so his supervisor said, you can't, you got to leave. You got to leave the monastery. We're going to make you. We're going to make you a professor at the seminary. And that will cheer you up, I guess. You know, you've met some grumpy professors. And so they wanted him out of there. You know, he was taking it way too seriously.

[14:19] Can you imagine a monk that's being too serious about being a monk? But that was Luther. This is an extreme person, right? You get the idea. So they sent him to the seminary and they wanted him to be a Bible lecturer. And so he had to also start studying the scripture. And if you want to look at it this way, this was the greatest mistake that the Catholic Church did, is they told Luther to study the Bible, you know, because of course they would have prayers and they would read the Psalms in the monastery. But it turns out that studying the Bible itself and the text of the Bible wasn't always the number one thing you would do in the seminary or in the monastery. It was more about the practice, the monastic practices, than it was about reading scripture and understanding it. So he actually had to leave the monastery to learn, about the Bible. Very interesting. And so he began to study and lecture on more than just these two books, but especially Romans and Galatians. And if you've read Romans and Galatians, and they're very similar to each other in a lot of ways, you know that these are books that are all about salvation by grace. Paul is really making the case in them that you cannot earn your salvation by doing good works,

[15:32] by keeping the law. You can only be saved or made right, or justified by faith in Jesus Christ. And Luther had to study Galatians. He had to study Romans because he had to lecture on them. And as he was reading these, he's like, Oh, well where has this been all my life? You know? And I think at that point some of his gloom began to lift because he's like, I am set free from sin. I am not condemned because I have faith in Jesus Christ. And so he began to have a change in him. And he began to say, I am not condemned because I have faith in Jesus Christ. And he began to teach. And he began to study Hebrew, Greek, so that he could understand the language of the Bible, which is all great stuff.

[16:16] And so there were many. And he began to also compare what he was reading in the Scriptures with the practices of the church. And he began to see that the church was abusing its power, abusing its position, especially in this area, in terms of what you do, what you do, what you do about your sin.

[16:38] The church had a lot of problems. I can't go into it right now, but there were a lot of problems with the Catholic church at the time. One of the problems was the Catholic church owned huge amounts of property that needed to be maintained. It had a standing army at various times in its history. You can imagine that that's just unheard of, right? To us, like the church would actually have an army. And so what the pastor is the general. The church was in charge of countries and cities. So the church had to make sure the water was running. So the church had kind of left its mission of presenting the gospel to the sending the gospel out into the world. And it had become an institution in such a strong way. And it needed a huge amount of money to operate. And they wanted to build a new cathedral. St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. You can go to it in Vatican City. It's beautiful. You can go in there. You go, wow, this place probably cost a lot of money. It cost a lot of money to build. It took decades and decades to build. But it cost a lot of money. And so what the church did, and this is what chiefly what Luther objected to, was that the church began to sell what are called indulgences. And an indulgence from the church was almost like a get out of jail free card in Monopoly.

[17:53] I was playing Monopoly with Asher yesterday. And I gave him my get out of jail free card because he was out of money. So that was grace. That was grace. That was a free gift. But in essence, what it was, it was a person, just a regular German peasant, for example, would have impure thoughts or tell a lie or steal some food or whatever. And then he would go to the priest to confess, which was required before he could receive communion. And if he couldn't receive communion, then he was excommunicated. You get the idea. So there was all these things kind of pulling them into this system. And the priest would say, well, you have to do some penance. Or we can sell you this indulgence. And this indulgence, by giving us money for it, we give you this certificate, that forgives your sins, just magically. And the thinking on this was that there were many saints, this is the thinking of works righteousness, there were many saints who were just, had been such great people, you know, like Saint Augustine or Saint Thomas Aquinas or Saint Anne or Saint Luther. Or Saint Martin, who Martin Luther was named after, because he was born on Saint Martin's feast day, right? They said those saints, they were better than average.

[19:14] They accrued this excess of righteousness. That somebody, I don't know who, you know, could actually store up in sort of an imaginary bank. Do you get the idea here? And who has access to this bank? Who holds it? It's almost the church. The church can dole out this. And to them, it was almost unlimited, because they needed an almost unlimited amount of money. And so they said, they kind of drew up all the theological papers and said, yeah, this can work. We can sell you a little chunk of this storehouse of righteousness that saints before you have had as a surplus in their lives, and we can put it on a paper and we can give it to you, and you can give us some money. And we can send that money to Rome and they can build a cathedral.

[20:03] And so, I mean, you get the idea. Like, this is a great money maker. It's much better than a bake sale, you know. Because people sin. You know, people sin and they want to buy themselves out of heaven. And indulgences were marketed. They were marketed in the crassest possible ways. They made a list of all the things that you could do all this vile stuff.

[20:25] But give us a little bit of money and we'll give you this thing. And, you know, and so there would be somebody just visiting a brothel, for example, and saying, well, I got my certificate so I can get, I mean, even like this idea of I can buy an indulgence for a sin I haven't even committed yet. Like, it's future-proofing, you know. And Luther was like, this is, you know, not just Luther. Others had tried. Jan Hus, other people. But Jan Hus was a Czech reformer. He was killed a century before this. He was put to, burned at the stake. He said, this is wrong. And the reason it's wrong is Romans chapter 3. The reason it's wrong is this. This is the entire book of Galatians. The reason it's wrong is that it's vile. What you're doing is so, it's like Jesus would come and he's like, knock over the tables in the temple. You can't, you can't, you know, everything's getting monetized, right? You buy an airplane ticket and they're like, do you want to sit with your friends? Oh, that's more money. Do you want to use the restroom on the way? Okay. Do you want to buy a snack? You can buy a snack. You know, do you want, do you want three inches more of leg room? I'm sick of it. So the monetizing is not new. The church was like, let's monetize.

[21:33] Righteousness. And they did. They made a lot of money. And of course, if somebody is gonna, if someone's gonna challenge or interrupt the flow of money. Then something's gonna happen right quick to stop that. You know that. So Luther got into a lot of trouble. Right away. Because this was, he was challenging the Pope. He was challenging the teaching of the church. He was threatening a revenue flow that was intense. Right.

[22:03] And so Luther, and this is just a bit more of sort of his life history, is that Luther, and I must think that this is God's providence, is that he wasn't the first reformer and he wasn't the first to complain about these things. Like I said, Jan Hus was killed a hundred years before this.

[22:22] Luther managed to stay alive through an interesting set of circumstances. The printing press disseminated his words widely so people were like paying attention. And so you can't just go kill somebody. It's easier to kill somebody in the dead of the night, right? But if everybody's like, oh, this could be interesting. Let's pay attention to this. That slowed things down. He had friends in the nobility of the German, it wasn't really a country, but just the various fiefdoms. He had friends in high places, as it turned out, and they offered him protection.

[22:55] And so he wasn't killed in Egypt. And so Luther was killed immediately. And the Catholic Church said, oh, we have to debate this guy. We can't just round him up and do away with him. And so they said, we're going to have to have a conference and you're going to have to present your teachings and we're going to have all these theologians come and refute them. And when they called him to the conference, they said, you have to recant all these, not all of your writings, because some of them were okay, but he said, all these writings. They made a list of all the writings. He says, you have to recant, which means you have to denounce your own writings. You have to denounce all these writings that you made or big trouble, right? And this is what Luther said. He says, unless I am convinced by scripture, get that? He's appealing to scripture. Always with Luther, it was appeal to scripture and plain reason. Because you even think that the sale of indulgences is completely illogical, which it was. So he's like, this isn't even logical. Plus it's bad for the soul. Plus it's vile what they're offering. And it's very monetized, right? It's very mercenary. Unless I'm convinced by scripture and plain reason, I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils for they have contradicted each other.

[24:15] My conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor wrong. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen. And that last sentence, some people don't think he said, if you want to hear it in German, it goes like this.

[24:43] Amen. Amen is the same language, right? So that's that moment, right? That's that where he actually stood up and he said, and it really, I think he was, he knew he had protection, but it was a close thing. He was willing to, go to the fiery stake for this one. He says, I can't do it. You know, he knew if they caught him, they, he, you know, he knew what was going to happen to him, but he says, I can't go against my conscience because it is held captive by the word of God. And I pray that we could all say things like that. You know, that our conscience is held captive by Christ himself and by the word of God. And so he was, he was kind of snuck out of there. He kind of snuck away in the dead of the night. Um, and he spent years heading away there, but he put the time to good use. He got the manuscripts of the old and new Testament, and he began to translate them into German. There were German translations, but they were very poor at the time. And so German, he translated the Bible into what was for then a more modern German and the Lutheran Luther's translation of the Bible is not much use today in Germany because it's 500 year old German, but it's really, it's a very modern translation of the Bible.

[25:57] And so he was able to translate the Bible into German and the Lutheran Luther's translation of the Bible is not much use today in Germany because it's 500 year old German, but it's really, it's held up. So that was his, that was his commitment was to scripture, to translating the scripture into his own language so that his country people could, could hear it. So we, you know, we owe him a great debt. All right. You think I'm excited, right? How who's excited now? Who's excited about Luther now? Who never heard that? No, really? Like I know some of you have heard this, but who's never heard this before? Who's never heard this before? George? Yeah. Good. Okay. Isn't it exciting? Yeah. Okay. Now, so there's more to the story though. So I want to say this, and this is going to put the balance on thing is one is that we remember that Luther was not a perfect person and he had a lot of problems. He did eventually get married and he had kids. It's kind of interesting. You know, um, he, he actually went to a convent and, uh, cause Lutheran his, the reformation was spreading. And one of the things he said was he didn't think it was scriptural that priests could not marry or nuns could not marry. He thought that was unscriptural. And so he was, he was

[26:57] so he himself said, I I'm open to getting married, but I don't think any woman would have me. And it turned out he was wrong. And the story is that he went to the convent and he found all the nuns there. And he says, you can leave the convent. You can get married. You can stay in the convent. You can do what you want. And they're like, we're ready to get married. So, so he found husbands for all. It sounds weird. You know, it sounds like survivor or some dating Island or something like that. But he he's like here, you can find you got, you married him and you, I don't know. And there was one woman left, one nun left Yeah. Named Katie. And, and he's like, I can't find you a husband. And she's like, you all here we are, you know, so they got married and they had kids, you know, and, and, and she was intellectually, she was his equal. It seems from what we understand. And she could talk to him.

[27:46] And so, but you know, if anyone gets married and has children, you know, instantly they're not perfect people because they have to live, you know, in their house with all these other people. And if you remember some things remember remember remember great some writings that we have where he condemns the Jews terribly. And we look at that back and back, and maybe it was a bit of a product of his time. But we look back at that now and go, that was misguided. That was wrong. That was racist and wrong. So he's not perfect, right? So he really had a treasure, but it was in a jar of clay, right? But in the main, he was right to challenge the church and the abuses of the church. And he was excommunicated. The Pope excommunicated him, which means it actually meant that they thought he was going to go to hell. He couldn't go into a Catholic church. That anyone who found him could kill him, and that would not be counted as a sin. I mean, that was all that was included in that. And so he was a marked man for the rest of his life, but he died of natural causes. Nobody actually got him. He was protected.

[29:22] And over the years, many Catholic leaders after that, and theologians, and theologians, would be at conferences. They'd go, you know, I know we excommunicated him, but he was kind of right about some of this stuff, which is really interesting. Like these indulgences are wrong. We all kind of get that. And so the Catholic church began to reform itself. It took over a century. It takes a long time, but it did do away with indulgences. The Catholic church no longer sells indulgences. Although maybe about a decade ago, they created some indulgences, but they didn't sell them. And everybody's like, why is this happening? But whatever. So he sparked a reformation even in the Catholic church, but he also sparked a reformation in the whole, all of Christendom. So now the question, and we're almost done here, just honestly, what do we do with the reformation today, right? Now I want to say one thing, because we talk about this a lot. Salvation by faith alone, you know, grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. That's kind of a strong formulation that we have, even as covenanters. We're beginning to understand that Luther was right to challenge indulgences and the notion that some people have excess

[30:35] righteousness that the church could bank and sell to sinners. We know that was definitely, he was right to challenge that practice. And that salvation by faith is core to what Paul writes in Romans and Galatians and even elsewhere, right? But we're beginning to see that the word for right, the word for righteousness and justification, and that's the word for righteousness and justification. That's the same word in Greek, okay? Righteousness and justification are the same word. And so when you see righteousness or justification, you could even interchange them in English, but they're similar concepts even in English, right? That we're beginning to understand that that word has a larger meaning than Luther could discover in his time. And that's partly because we've studied more of Koine Greek, which is the language that Paul used to write Galatians and Romans and the rest of his scriptures. And so righteousness is perhaps not just some virtue that God gives you, which you cannot ever earn or generate on your own, but that's how I was brought up with. They said, you're righteous because God makes you righteous. And righteousness had to do in a sense being declared innocent or free from sin. And that is, I think that is all true. But in recent years,

[31:48] people have begun to understand this word also to mean that there's a relational and covenant aspect to righteousness. And so righteousness is perhaps not just some virtue that God gives you, but it's also a way of understanding righteousness and justification, okay? It means that you are in a right relationship with God. And so it really begins to bring that relational aspect of it more into the focus. And I think that's really exciting because before that, it's just like, oh, you've been absolved. It's like you went to court and the judge declared you innocent, which is all very procedural and it's great. But to kind of get into this deeper understanding of what righteousness or justification means is to say, no, this is really about being in a healthy, good, right relationship with God. And you're fully living into the covenant that God makes with you in Jesus. And from that right relationship, you live in and you have a right relationship with everyone else around you. And so it has, it kind of expands this view of righteousness. I'm excited about that too. And I think if Luther had had the chance to understand that he'd be happy about it, but it wasn't the battle that he was fighting. He was fighting

[32:53] against abuses in the church. So if you have good behavior, what Paul would call works of the law, that would all grow, not just from being declared righteous by God, which you are, but also from that right relationship with God and others. And so when you're in a love, if you're in love with somebody, loving words come out of your mouth, loving actions come out of you. You know, you'll buy each other gifts. You'll think of them all the time. You'll try to help them at all, at all places. And so, so by faith, we receive, we receive this gift of being made right in our relationship with God. And that's really powerful. It really brings it home and close. I'm excited about that, like I say. So, and I think this counters, all of this counters what kind of is our base DNA, how we're wired. It's part of all of our cultures. And it comes, I think, from surviving with scarcity, which is that we have to work for everything we get.

[33:55] Being that good can't be free. Just like Victoria was saying, you know, like, can, can we pay someone to save us? Well, a lot of us want to. Indulgences were really popular because like, oh, this is a really big gift. All my sins are taken away. How much do you want for it? You know, like I need to be able to earn it because then I have control over it, right? But the gift is that you don't work for it, right? And we're, and we have to, this is the thing that Christianity, it's the biggest problem. But the greatest treasure of Christianity is that it goes counter to how we think. We think we have to work for everything. We think we have to cooperate in our salvation. We think we have to do just enough so that God will come down and do just enough and meet us in the middle. There's other religions that think that, but we don't. We have to let go of that part of our DNA that says, I have to work for everything I get. And we have to open ourselves up to this gift that comes to us and it costs us nothing. And we have to believe it with faith, but we don't earn it. We don't make it. We don't get it for some, we don't get it for money or anything else. So this is the, this is the final thing I'll say.

[35:05] This is the promise of the reformation. You cannot earn it. So don't try. You can't earn it. Stop trying. You cannot work your way into heaven or salvation. God's grace, which puts you into a right relationship with him and with others comes as a free gift through faith in the work of the one God. And so the word of the Lord says, I am the one who does all this work and did earn it. That's Jesus himself. And that's a great comfort. So happy Reformation Sunday, everybody. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word. This word that led Luther to stand up and not back down. Father, even though he had his flaws, Lord, we thank you for his ministry and put in us that right relationship with you that will then flow to that right relationship with others. That covenant lovingness that you give us through faith in Jesus Christ. Amen.