GYC 2014: At The Cross

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

How We Can Be Sure Christ Will Soon Come

A. Leroy Moore

1. God Taught Me How to Study His Word

2. How God Dealt with My Pride and Self-Righteousness

3. I Learned Minneapolis Principles Before I Knew about Minneapolis

4. Daniel’s Keys to Scripture Interpretation

5. Daniel 23: Keys to Revelation; and Revelation’s Affirmation of Daniel

6. Daniel Bound to Hebrews by its Design and the Sanctuary

It's good to be together again this morning.

I'm sure you've been receiving many blessings during this past couple of days.

They have prepared so many very excellent things for us here.

This morning we're going to be dealing with, continuing to deal with issues of justification, but we're going to go back in history today so we can understand what's happening now.

We're going to go back to the time of Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon.

By the way, we did have our prayer, didn't we?

Oh, I greeted you and I think we went ahead.

I always like to start with prayers so that they bow our heads.

Thank you, Lord, for your goodness and mercy.

Thank you for bringing us here and for giving us light and understanding.

We Pray for your Holy Spirit's presence in the name of Jesus.

Of the Luther-Melanchthon relation, Ellen White says that when Luther so much needed the sympathy and counsel of a true friend, God's providence sent Melanchthon to Wittenberg.

Young in years, modest and diffident in his manners, Melanchthon's sound judgment, extensive knowledge, and winning eloquence combined with the purity and uprightness of his character, he soon became Luther's most trusted friend and valued supporter, his gentle caution and exactness serving as a complement to Luther's courage and energy.

Their union in the work added strength to the Reformation and was a great encouragement to Luther.

I would just like to say that Melanchthon was the 1 who helped Luther to move more and more away from the papacy to biblical Christianity.

Melanchthon was the 1 that Luther pointed to as being the best or the greatest theologian.

Luther did appreciate Melancthon, and Melancthon appreciated Luther, and they worked very well together.

However, Luther had a problem which he never fully escaped, and that was mysticism.

Whereas the Roman Catholic Church taught that the emblems of the Lord's Supper were actually the body and the literal presence of Christ.

Luther recognized that as false and rejected it, but introduced a concept that was very near the same.

And Luther's position was consubstantiation rather than transubstantiation.

Trans meanings move across, con is move with.

So the concept of, papal concept of transubstantiation is that it changes from bread and wine to the literal body and blood of Christ.

So that the teaching of the papacy was that when they drank the wine, they were actually drinking Christ's literal blood.

And when they ate the wafer, the bread, they would be eating his literal body.

And Luther, instead of teaching that it was changed, he says it was not changed, but he believed in consubstantiation, which meant that with the wine was Christ's blood, with the bread was also Christ's body.

And it was a very important principle with Luther and his followers were very devout in focusing on the consubstantiation principle.

Melanchthon saw in the Lord's Supper that it was symbolic and that it was not literal flesh and literal blood, either transubstantiation or consubstantiation.

I might mention first, however, that Luther had a great deal of an intense conflict with Zwingli.

Because Zwingli claimed that it was not the body and not the blood of Christ, but a symbol of Christ's body and blood.

We would agree with Zwingli, but Luther refused to accept and to acknowledge Zwingli as a fellow Christian.

The followers of Luther and the followers of Zwingli were eager for these 2 men to come together so that the unity of the body could be established.

Luther refused for some time to meet with Zwingli, and finally, as a result of continued pressing by his followers, Luther agreed to meet with Zwingli.

However, in their discussion, no matter what evidence Zwingli brought forth Regarding this being a symbol rather than the reality, Luther's only response is that it is my body.

Jesus said, this is my blood, this is my body.

Therefore it must be the literal body that we actually chew the body of Christ with our teeth.

This is the way Luther put it, that we chew him with our teeth.

Melanchthon recognized that this Lord's Supper was symbolic, but in honor of Luther he quietly countered Luther's mysticism without confronting him.

In other words, he didn't say, this is not the body of Christ.

He simply treated the symbols as symbols.

And Luther appreciated this manner of approach, and although he refused, at the end of that discussion with Zwingli, he refused to shake hands with him, acknowledged that he was even Christian.

But he was willing to accept Philip Melanchthon's approach to it, although it was not something that he actually accepted himself.

Now Luther died the year that the Council of Trent started.

The Council of Trent was the council that went on for years, and the papacy, which was intended to be a reform.

The Protestant world, the Protestant movement had existed because almost everyone felt that there needed to be reform in the church.

And so now the Council of Trent meets, and the purpose of the Council of Trent was very specific, and that was to counter the Protestant Reformation.

Now, in countering the Reformation, the purpose was to play 1 group of Protestants off against the other.

And so what the Council of Trent did was condemn the extremes of Protestantism on this side, Protestantism on that side.

Interestingly enough, all of these things they were countering were really Roman Catholic doctrines.

Roman Catholicism had within itself 2 opposite branches, and by indicting the extremes of both branches, identified those extremes with Protestantism.

And unfortunately, Protestantism did have the 2 extremes and therefore this was very effective.

Because you have Calvin on the 1 hand, and later, Arminius was a little later, but you had your Arminian, those who emphasized the will in the plan of salvation on the other.

And there were extremes both within papacy and within Protestantism, and what the Council of Trent did was to split the Protestant Reformation by pressing on the extremes, causing each of those extremes within Protestantism to protest the other 1, rather than to dealing with the papers itself.

Now, when Luther was still alive, his followers took extreme positions on the side of those who rejected the will, which really was the same direction that Calvin went.

And Philip Melanchthon's role was to emphasize the will, which we will see in just a moment.

Luther had honored Melanchthon's respectful, symbolic view of the emblems and came to agree with his synergistic justification.

That may be a word that you're not acquainted with, synergistic, but it means the union of the objective work of Christ and the subjective response of the human heart.

Now this synergy was claimed by, In other words, those who resisted Melanchthon claimed that his theology was synergistic, which they claimed was heretical.

In other words, their view was based on extreme Calvinistic concepts in which the will of man was claimed but disclaimed at the same time.

In other words, they insisted that it was the will, but actually God determined.

God determines the decision of man before he's born.

Basically what it does is to leave the individual with great uncertainty, was he chosen or was he not?

If he was amongst the elect, he cannot be lost.

However, if he's not among the elect, he cannot be saved.

But Belangton's position was synergistic.

They called it synergistic because it brings together the law and grace.

God's grace, man's response to that grace in obedience, so that it brings together God's law and the grace of God.

Now this was the contribution of Melanchthon, and during the lifetime of Luther, he came more and more to accept this synergistic position, but his followers were opposed to it.

In fact, they were doing all they could to oppose Melanchthon.

However, Luther was a close friend of Melanchthon's and considered him to be the greatest theologian, so he was very protective of Melanchthon.

While Luther lived, Melanchthon had a key role in the Lutheran Reformation.

However, as soon as Luther died, his opponents pounced on him immediately and were greatly They were greatly aided by the Roman Catholic Council of Trent, which did everything they could to divide, which they did very effectively.

And as a result of this counter-reformation, the Roman Catholic Church gained back a great deal of what it had lost.

But the reason was because of division within Protestantism.

And we need to remember that while we stand for truth, that is ultimately important, we must also seek unity.

And if we do not seek unity with as much zeal as we seek truth, we are going to be in trouble.

And if we do not seek truth with as much zeal as we seek unity.

Either way, we do need to seek both unity and truth.

The fact is that when Luther died, Luther's followers zeroed in on Melanchthon and did what they could to actually divorce him from the Protestant movement entirely.

And by the way, I've mentioned here the synergistic justification, which means that Justification is not strictly legal.

I would like to say at this point that the issue really needed to have been discussed in terms of atonement.

Christ did make the atonement at the cross.

Luther's extreme followers insisted on universal justification at the cross.

When Christ died, his death covered all sin of all men, all time.

Justification involves human response to God's atonement.

And as soon as we respond to that atonement, it's ours.

Series

How We Can Be Sure Christ Will Soon Come

5. Daniel 23: Keys to Revelation; and Revelation’s Affirmation of Daniel

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The Inevitable Triumph of Truth

40m

Winning Postmodern Souls to Christ

The Postmodern way of Thinking and Modus Operandi

54m

Religious Liberty

Religious Liberty: Did You Just Say That? Pt. 2

1h 11m

Evening Devotional

The Surprise of Scripture

1h 27m

Keys to Growing a Powerful and Vibrant Prayer Ministry

5. How NOT TO Lead a Disastrous Prayer Ministry

1h 15m

Through the Bible

1 & 2 Corinthians: One Body

35m

David Williams: The Racial Divides

The Racial Divides, Part 6

56m

Disunity in the Name of Unity

52m

Plenary

“Unity” in Living Parables

42m

The Power of Unity: Reflecting Christ in Every Relationship

04 Conflict Resolution

55m

Christ’s Defining Truth Of History

46m

The Book of Zephaniah

02 Prepare to Meet Thy Creator

55m

Sound Doctrine