This week we celebrate Reform Day, the day Martin Luther boldly nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church with nails and hammer: October 31, 1517. Of course, the document was probably glued to the door with a sign. Glue. And Luther probably left that in charge of an assistant. Theatrical or not? The date marks the spark of what would grow and become the Protestant Reformation. In the last episode (1387) of “John Piper Responds,” we saw if I should stop reading dead white writers?Or are they irrelevant today?
And as we approach this year’s Reform Day, let’s take a look at the legacy of reformer John Calvin, and to do so, I will share an excerpt from Pastor John’s 1997 interview with Calvin and his role in forming the Reformation and our reformed Tradition as we know it today. This is what Pastor John said.
- Calvin’s vision of the scriptures.
- Which defined the rest of his ministry.
- Was very high.
- He said.
- “We owe the same reverence to the scriptures that we owe God.
- For they come only from Him.
- And there is nothing that men mix with them.
- ? (John Calvin: A Collection of Distinguished Essays.
- 162).
- His own experience taught him that “the highest evidence in the scriptures is generally the fact that God speaks to him personally” (Institutes of Christian Religion.
- 1.
- 7.
- 4).
- These were the undisputed truths of John Calvin.
- The scriptures were the voice of God.
- We see it in their scriptures.
- And he and they immediately become authorities for our lives.
And for Calvin, what kind of life did God bring him?It was a life of invincible constancy in the exhibition of the scriptures Brochures, institutes, commentaries on all the books of the New Testament except the Revelation, and many books of the Old. Testament, but everything, it’s all an exhibition of scripture.
John Dillenberger says that Calvin assumed that all his theological work would be the display of the scriptures (Jean Calvin: selections from his writings, n. 14). Did you write at the end of your life, “Have I tried, both in my sermons and in my writings and comments, to preach the pure and chaste Word and faithfully interpret the Holy Scriptures?(John Calvin: Selections from his writings, 35) It was all a scripture display, it was the kind of department that provoked his experience.
And then preaching became the main vehicle. Calvin’s preaching was unique and never, ever changed. It was a sequential and explanatory preaching, book after book, after book. On Sunday mornings, he always took the New Testament. In the afternoon, the New Testament and sometimes a psalm on Sunday. During the week, three times, still in the Old Testament. There are less than half a dozen cases where he broke this pattern. Every Easter, every Christmas, progressed in the same pattern, with less than half a dozen exceptions.
Now, to get an idea, imagine the following: it is August 25, 1549, and a series of messages begins in the book of Acts, we know that because it was the first time he had a stenographer recording his sermons. noteless and with nothing, directly from Greek and directly from Hebrew.
He began acts on August 25, 1549. Completed the Acts on Sunday morning, March 1554. Then, from 1549 to 1554, he preached continuously in Actes. Et after that he chose Thessaloniki, 46 sermons; Corinthians, 186 sermons; pastoral epistles, 86 sermons; Galatians, 43 sermons; Ephesians, 48 sermons, until May 1558, when he stopped for six months for being sick, as you can well imagine, he resumed his uncompromising program; then, in 1559, he began the harmony of the Gospels, and died doing so in 1559. 1564.
Well, during this time, during the week, he preached 159 sermons in Job, 200 in The Deuteronomy, 353 in Isaiah, 123 in Genesis, and so on. The numbers are phenomenal. The fact is, it’s not accidental. He chose to do that. Here’s the story I love that shows how completely embarrassed I was: on Easter Day 1538, he was banished from Geneva for the first time, he had been preaching for about a year. He was outlawed for three years and then served as minister in Strasbourg. He returned in September 1541 and ascended to the pulpit and continued the verse following what he had preached before being banished, and comments that he wanted them to know that he was only an interlude in his exse of the word of God.
Why? Why this kind of preaching? Luther didn’t do that, Luther preached a gospel and an epistle, while Spurgeon didn’t do that. Why did Calvin do it this way? Here are three possible reasons.
Then you feel in your conversion the horror he felt. He saw, through the inner testimony of the Holy Ghost, the majesty of God revealed in the word, and looked through the church, and said, “What a terrible abandonment of the saints and precious word?And his whole life became: “I will spread this word every day for the rest of my life. Is that very valuable? That’s reason number one.
May the shepherds courageously challenge all things by the word of God. May they retain all the power, glory, and excellence of the world to yield and obey the divine majesty of this word. Call them all, from the highest to the lowest. May they build the body of Christ; that devastate the kingdom of Satan; that sheep herders should kill wolves, teach and exhort the rebels; Can they stop and release thunder and lightning, if necessary, but do everything according to the word of God?(Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians, xii).
In other words, the code phrase is the divine majesty of his word
Calvin believed that if his purpose in life was to illustrate the glory of God, and if the glory of God is revealed uniquely and authentically in the word of God, the complete exse of the word would be the most complete display of glory. that’s how he argued. And that’s my personal conviction when I ask myself, “Can you do this any other way than preach?How about teaching only with a Datashow?What about the lectures?What about the CDs sent to China?Preaching?
I don’t know what Calvin would say, but I’m a preacher and I need to believe what I’m doing, I want to know why I’m so attracted to him and I think the answer is that nothing will replace and the reason I believe in preaching, not teaching alone, not reading the Bible alone, because the congregation in a text will always be there, because God wants for himself , in the fulness of his glory, to be exalted, glorified, honest and dear.
And something about this act of worship goes beyond analysis, it points to more than an explanation. Explanatory jubilation stands out. That’s what I like to call it. Preaching is the time to worship the word. It’s an explanatory joy. And wherever concentration is alive in God, wherever God’s supremacy reigns in the heart of a people, something will say to him, “Pastor, do more for us than explain ourselves to God. Love him with us, love him with us, with us, try him with us, rejoice in him with us and rejoice in him with us, why do we need to see him alive and burning in you?And that’s called preaching.
? Exultation of the exhibition? It is a book built on the basis of two previous titles:?A peculiar glory and “Supernatural Reading of the Bible”. In this article, John Piper aims to demonstrate that the purpose of the sermon is not only to explain the text, but also to provoke praise by being, in itself, an expression of worship of God.