The Eternal Word – Our Great Heritage! Revelation14:6–7                  

Today we celebrate the 500^th Anniversary of the Reformation, and we thank God for our Lutheran heritage.

What does it mean to be “a Lutheran”?

You might be a Lutheran if…

… you have an uncontrollable urge to sit in the back of any room you enter.

… you're watching "Star Wars", and Obi Wan Kanobe says,  "May the force be with you," and instinctively you reply "and also with you." 

… its’ 100 degrees outside but you still have coffee after the service.

… you think the four major food groups are coffee, hot dish, jell, and desert.

… you know the words to the first verse of "Silent Night" in German,  and that’s pretty much all the German you know.

… your idea of an affirmation is "This is most certainly true."

… you actually get the pastor’s humor and laugh at his jokes.

… you actually understand all this Lutheran humor.

It’s good to laugh at ourselves, and joke around about being Lutheran.

But what does it mean to be Lutheran, and what is our Lutheran heritage?

Being Lutheran doesn’t mean following Luther; it means following the teachings of Scripture which Martin Luther rediscovered in what we call the Reformation.

You might be a Lutheran if you believe that you’re saved by grace alone, through faith alone in Jesus who died and rose for us; and if you believe that Scripture alone is the basis for church doctrine and practice.

These three great truths, grace alone, faith alone, and Scripture alone, are the hallmark teachings of Lutheranism, and more than that, of Biblical Christianity.

So while we’re celebrating the 500^th Anniversary of the Reformation today, it’s really something much older that we’re celebrating, the eternal Gospel; the eternal Word is our great heritage.

Our Epistle today is a small part of the vision given to the Apostle John in Revelation. In his vision an angel is flying over the earth, proclaiming the eternal Gospel to all nations. That’s the spread of the Gospel throughout the generations until Jesus comes again, from Pentecost until the Second Coming of Christ.

A part of that is the story of the Reformation, and the rediscovery of the Gospel.

In our Gospel today, Jesus says, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. Then, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”.

500 years ago a man named Martin Luther was finally set free from the guilt and fear that tormented him. Actually it was about 500 and ½ years ago, as we’ll see.

Luther grew up in a time of extreme legalism. Many people lived in constant fear and terror of God. Jesus was seen more as a punisher, than a Savior.

If you would do your penance, then Jesus would “reluctantly” forgive you; but what he really wanted to do was punish you, so that He could see you suffer.

With a God like that, if one finally did make it to Heaven somehow, who would even want to be there with Him, forever in the presence of an angry God?

These were the thoughts that drove a sincere, young Martin Luther to despair. He came to dread God more than love Him… until, he quit listening to what others said about God, and what the popular culture thought about God, and studied the Bible, to find out what God had to say about Himself. And he discovered that God is nothing like what he had come to believe.

He learned that God is above all, gracious and loving. He’s not secretly happy people when don’t repent, so that he gets to punish them; quite the opposite:

it breaks God’s heart to have to condemn people, although as a just God he will do so. What he really wants to do is forgive and save us.

Luther learned that because God is gracious and loving, you don’t have to earn His favor in order to be saved, and in fact, you can’t.

He saw in the book of Romans, today’s epistle that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; and therefore are not able to earn their salvation, but “are justified freely by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus... For we hold that one is justified by faith, apart from the works of the law.”

As Luther studied that, and in the original Greek of the New Testament, a light bulb went on, so to speak; or for those days maybe we should say a candle was lit.

He saw that it’s all by grace, none by works. He saw that all the penance and the purchase of indulgences, and the veneration of saints and relics, even all the good works and acts of charity, could do nothing to contribute to a person’s salvation; it all came from God, as a gift to those who believe.

Verses 20-22 say, “By the works of the law no one will be justified in his sight… But now the righteousness of God has been manifested (made known) apart from the law… the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ.”     

Years later Martin Luther wrote, There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely, by faith. . . . Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.

Before that he understood the righteousness of God primarily according to the law, a level of holiness we can never attain; but after that he came to understand that the righteousness of God is above all, a gift he gives us by faith, because of the perfect life, and death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Luther called this his tower experience, partly because his living quarters where he studied was in the castle tower, but also because the discovery of a loving, saving God lifted him out of despair, and gave him a joy he had never known.

He was finally free of having to appease an always angry God. As Jesus says, you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free!

Luther’s tower experience actually happened several months after October 31, 1517, the day he nailed 95 theses for debate on the Cathedral door. At that time he didn’t fully understand grace alone and faith alone, but he was well on the road to discovering it.

Last week, my daughter, Danielle, sent me a text of a t-shirt with a picture of Martin Luther on it holding an old hammer, and it reads, “Nailed it!”

Indeed he did; he hit the nail on the head rediscovering grace alone, faith alone, and Scripture alone. Altogether, that makes it Christ Alone.

500 years later we still hold, dearly and tenaciously, to these life-changing truths. They’re like nailed to us; they’re all around us, they’re in us, in our hearts and minds; they’re our identity as Lutherans Christians; our heritage, and our hope to live by.

Imagine how different our lives would be without this heritage of the Gospel to live by.

For example, imagine what your life would be like, it you had to serve a God who doesn’t really love you. There would be no joy in serving.

Imagine dealing with the troubles of life, believing that bad things are happening to you because God is out to get you, or He just doesn’t care about you. Then there would be no comfort for you, only fear for you to live by, always dreading what the next day might bring.

Imagine if you had to do all kinds of things to try to appease God, knowing that He’ll never be happy with you.

Imagine trying to earn your salvation knowing you’ll never succeed, and that God doesn’t really want you to; he’d rather that you fail; he’d rather punish you than save you.

Imagine the despair of being taught that about God, and believing it.

With that kind of false understanding of God and the Gospel, a person might come to resent God, or just quit believing in Him altogether.

But “thanks be to God” that is not the case. In the eternal Word, we have the truth about God, and about life.

In the Gospel God’s love is clearly revealed in His Son, who died and rose for you. Through faith, He gives you his personal righteousness as a gift, to count as your own.

As the Son of God and King of Kings, Jesus has the greatest gifts to give. There’s no greater gift he could give you than his own righteousness, to count as yours.

He had to die and rise to give that gift to you. He didn’t have to die and rise to give you food and water and shelter; but he had to die and rise to give you grace.

How amazing this is. You can see why, after years of living in despair, Luther was exhilarated to discover a loving God who saves by grace.

Claim His grace as your great heritage; revealed to you in His eternal Word; given to you at Baptism; kept in your heart by faith, and rewarded in Heaven.

Jesus saves you by His grace; he does it all, and then He rewards you for what He did for you.

Is that not amazing? What’s not to love about a Savior like that?

What a joy it is to live for and serve a God who loves you so much.

Why would I not want to keep the commandments of a God who does all this for me?

In His love I see what it is to be holy, and it’s a wonderful thing to strive for.

Sin keeps me from it; but His grace covers my sin, and His Spirit draws me to Him.

Who better to repent and believe in, than Christ alone?

What a great and joyful heritage we have to live by, to pass on to the next generation, and to share with the world.

There are many heritages in the world, heritages that have been passed down over many centuries, but none so great as the heritage of Christ in our life; the heritage of His grace alone, faith alone, and the Word alone.

May the true and eternal Word of God always be the great heritage that we live by, rejoice in, and share with the world!

And may our heritage of God’s peace, which passes understanding, always guard our hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus who loves us. Amen.