A reading of the holy gospel according to Mark. Then some Sadducees, who hold there is no resurrection came to Jesus with this question. Teacher, we were left this in writing by Moses. If anyone's brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and produce offspring for his brother. Now, there were these seven brothers.
The eldest took a wife and died, leaving no children. The second brother took the woman and he too died childless. Same thing happened to the third. In fact, none of the seven left any children behind. Last of all, the woman also died.
Now at the resurrection, when all these brothers come back to life, whose wife will the woman be? All seven married her. Jesus replied, you are badly misled because you fail to understand the scriptures or the power of God. When people rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but live like I do not read in the book of Moses in the passage about the burning bush how God said to Moses, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is the God of the living, not of the dead.
You are very much mistaken, And this is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. In the second letter of Paul to Timothy, which we are starting to read this morning, one of the most seriously divisive issues of the sixteenth century and of our present age is raised. Raised.
And that is the problem of salvation, the grace of God, and works. We should put, I guess, quotation marks around the word works. Now, today in our world, in the way we are living and the things that occupy our attention, it's almost impossible for us to imagine how men and women in the sixteenth century, especially in England and in Germany, in Scotland, and in parts of Switzerland, especially Geneva, how this question was so pertinent and so utterly personal that men and women laid down their lives for it. As far as a theological issue goes, this probably was the question of the Protestant Reformation. Now it's hard for us to realize that because today you know people say, Oh, this is all theology.
This is all a lot of words. Let us all be nice to one another and love one another and do good and have nice calm assemblies and and and feel the holy spirit among us, you know, in general, have fun. Incidentally, there's a very good article in the Reader's Digest in this word fun. It ought to be eliminated. But, anyway, come back to the sixteenth century.
This problem of god saving me and me saving myself, because that is the issue, is a frightfully serious, profound question. And how do you resolve it? Now as some of you or all of you will remember, one of the things that keyed Luther off was what they were saying was the selling of indulgences. What do we mean by that? We mean it in making it a more general statement that giving alms was considered a good work, whether it was giving alms to build a monastery, to support a convent, to build a church as St.
Peter's was being built or trying to be built, or for supporting a parish or pastor in a parish to endow a parish. These were good works. And in the sixteenth century undoubtedly in parts of Europe, there was a tremendous emphasis upon good works. Then one day Luther has a revelation, a private revelation. There's we are sure of this.
He says he had it. We don't know what it was. But he was reading Saint Paul, the text that we had Sunday, and where Paul says, we are saved by faith. That's what Saint Paul says. Luther put one little word in there, only, and that changes the whole picture.
Because if we are saved exclusively by God's grace, then what matters? What I do? So that then the problem is, well, then what about good works? Are we supposed aren't we under obligation to be good to our neighbor, to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, and so forth, to visit the sick and bury the dead, the corporal works of mercy? Well, this was the great issue, the great issue of English England in the sixteenth century and the Reformation.
And it is still a very serious question. The only solution I have to it is and it's no solution. It's simply this, that God saves me absolutely completely. Completely. I cannot save myself.
And on the other hand, I have a contribution to make. I am sure of those two things. Now the great problem is how do you put them together? See, here's where free will comes into the picture, man's responsibility on autonomy. And as you know, these were all very live questions in the sixteenth century.
Now here today, Saint Paul is bringing this up. Now there's no question that Saint Paul emphasizes faith in his epistles. Saint Paul is a great favorite with Protestants. Now by Protestant, I mean a follower of Lutheran, a real honest to God Protestant. And rightly so.
There's no problem there. It's just that little word only. Only. Paul never wrote we are saved by faith alone. He never wrote that.
I mean, there's no question about it. There is nothing that anybody can adduce from the text whether you stand on your head or whatever else you do to put to get that little word only into the Greek. It's not there. Nobody ever said it was there except Luther who said that's the way it is. Now the point is this, whatever we may think about Martin Luther, this conception of the part that god plays in my salvation that changed his entire life.
That changed his entire life. Whatever happened on that occasion, and we know something happened, and it is tied in with this text that we are saved by faith, that gave an entirely new thrust to Luther's life. He was a changed man. And all the doubts he was a terribly confused man, as you all know. All this internal warfare that he was going through, these periods of tremendous depression and despair when he felt he was lost, and on the other hand when he zoomed to the heights when he knew he was saved, that all leveled off.
He became a single-minded man, and like single-minded people in general, he achieved a great deal. Now, when we apply this to our own lives, we've got to remember both of these factors that I cannot save myself. Let's not kid ourselves. Christ said without me you can do nothing. He said that.
And let's let's take him seriously. Without me, he said, you can do nothing, and nothing means nothing. And that certainly includes salvation. I cannot save myself. It's the grace of God.
On the other hand, how do you thou bring in my obligation to love neighbor, to do good? And we have to remember the Protestants of England following men like Caldwell and, of course, Calvin and all the rest of them. They did not they did not deny that we ought to do good works. They had a little difficulty to justify, Mauer, because it is difficult. If you say, I am saved by by God's grace alone and that good works have no value, then why do them?
So but you see the church, in this very delicate and sensitive situation, has held to both of these truths truths, that God saves me, period, and that in some way I have an essential contribution to make so that the little that I do, I can say is essential to my salvation. And in that sense, I can say I save myself. If you followed me, and I hope you have, this is delicate stuff. So let us think about this. You know, I'm convinced that we don't trust god enough.
We don't have enough of conviction about god. How often do you think of him in your daily work? How often do you realize at a what you're doing? And I don't care what it is. There is none of us that goes through a day without some kind of no annoying problems.
It may be just the boredom of doing the same thing. A couple well, two weeks ago, I went on a little cruise and I did the shopping for two people. I did the shopping for two people. That was revelation. But then when I saw all these ladies, it was in the mid morning, plus some men over there in safety, going around those aisles and thinking they do this regularly week in and week out.
They know that the stuff they're taking home is all going to evaporate and they'll have to be back there doing this same thing next week. That's enough to drive you up the wall. So that we don't have to go out and look for problems, we are surrounded with them. But now do we, honest to God, say, God is with me here. What I am doing, I am doing with God's grace.
This is his work. How often do we think about that? If we do, our lives will be transformed, believe me. In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.