Reformation Service - 10/31/21

Acts 20:17-38

17 Now from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him. 18 And when they came to him, he said to them:

“You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, 19 serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews; 20 how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, 21 testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. 22 And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, 23 except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. 24 But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. 25 And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. 26 Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, 27 for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. 28 Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. 29 I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; 30 and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. 31 Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears. 32 And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. 33 I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. 34 You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. 35 In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

36 And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. 37 And there was much weeping on the part of all; they embraced Paul and kissed him, 38 being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they accompanied him to the ship.

St. Paul says goodbye in our text, to the elders at the church at Ephesus. He won’t be coming back this way again. The Spirit has made known to him that he must go to Jerusalem, and that he must testify of Christ to those who mean to do him harm (he won’t die there; but he is headed in that direction). No doubt Martin Luther had Paul in mind (among others) when he said in a letter in 1518: “From the beginning God's word is on this wise, that all who cleave to it must with the apostles be hourly prepared to suffer the loss of all things, nay, even to meet death itself.” In another letter a couple of years later, he said, “Take care not to hope that the cause of Christ can be advanced in the world peacefully and sweetly, since you see the battle has been waged with his own blood and that of the martyrs.”

The cause of Christ has been Paul’s very urgent business since being handpicked by Him on the road to Damascus to be His witness to both Jews and Gentiles. He reminds the Ephesian elders in our text, that he has done this work humbly and faithfully in the face of trials. He hasn’t shrunk in the past three years from declaring to them the whole counsel of God (in other words, everything that is necessary for them to know in order to have God’s grace that saves from sin and death). He has spoken of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the gospel of the grace of God, the news of Christ having obtained His Church with the shedding of His own blood. As Paul prepares to take his leave from them, he gives one last exhortation: Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock. 

We observe the Reformation today, and Martin Luther as someone who did just that. Reformation Day is really the anniversary of his having posted on the church door in 1517, in Wittenberg (in what’s now Germany), Ninety-Five Theses (or points of debate). He had come to the conclusion that a long-accepted practice of the church was ungodly, and taught people to put their trust somewhere other than in Christ. The practice was that of selling indulgences. Luther wrote of it in a letter: 

The poor souls [believe] that when they have purchased such letters they have secured their salvation, also, that the moment the money tingles in the box souls are delivered from purgatory, and that all sins will be forgiven through a letter of Indulgence… 

Of course, this wasn’t the truth according to Scripture. Luther wrote to the Archbishop a number of times on behalf of the people, encouraging him to do away with this practice. In one of his later attempts (with his patience having been exhausted) Luther said: I humbly request that your Grace would prove yourself to be a bishop, and not a wolf, permitting the poor flock to be robbed. You know that the Indulgence is sheer knavery, and that Christ alone ought to be preached to the people. He went on to say: Therefore I openly declare that unless the Indulgence is done away with, I must publicly attack your Grace…and [let] the world see the difference between a bishop and a wolf.

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, Paul says in our text. To do so is to do as Luther said in his letter, to preach Christ alone. He followed in Paul’s footsteps, who says in our text: I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. 

The “word” he means is the word about Christ, Who obtained the Church with His own blood. It is the Word about God so loving the world that He gave His only-begotten Son as its Savior from sin. It’s the Word that proclaims God’s righteousness given free of charge to all who believe on Christ. It's the Word that promises resurrection from death to eternal life.

But Paul’s exhortation to pay careful attention is not given without good reason. Fierce wolves mingle among the flock to draw away the disciples after them. They draw them away from the flock by drawing them away from God’s Word. It doesn’t happen through some sort of loudly spoken invitation to leave the Word behind, but more subtly. It happens through a suggestion like was given to our first mother: Did God really say [basically, that you can’t have, that you can’t do - anything you want - is what he meant? Who is God to stand in the way of your happiness, anyway? Why should you be the only one around who limits yourself in this way? There isn’t really going to be any consequence for it. Our first mother was drawn away from God when His Word became less important to her than what she could reason out herself. Her reason told her that she’d be better off disobeying; so she disobeyed.

Fierce wolves mingle among us as well. There is a certain word, relevant, that kind of describes a thing or things that matter, that are kind of worth our time and attention. Relevant things grab our attention, in fact. They’re the things that are important to us. As far as society is concerned, some things are relevant, and others aren’t. The serpent convinced our first parents that God’s Word was irrelevant to them. 

Fierce wolves that attack Christ’s flock today, aim to convince you of the same. So, as far as you are concerned, then, is God’s Word relevant? What would demonstrate that to you, it is relevant? Has it been important to you compared to other things? Has it grabbed your attention? Have you considered it worth your time? Or, is it the case that the things the world considers relevant have occupied your mind and heart to a greater extent? Has their appeal become so substantial in your life that God’s Word is a speck off in the distance by comparison? In Luther’s time the indulgence was an example of something that was replacing Christ in the lives of church people. It was something they were grabbing hold of instead of Christ. The devil has worked hard in your life like in Eve’s life to offer you things to grab hold of instead of Christ. Hasn’t he succeed sometimes? Hasn’t he shown you just the right thing that has turned your head, that has repositioned your heart so that God’s Word was no longer the most important thing to you?

For a little perspective, consider how important it is to St. Paul, as he says to people weeping over him, and embracing him, and kissing him, and praying with him, that they will not see his face again. Testifying of this Word of Christ is so important that even continuing to live in this world isn’t more important than it. 

We observe the Reformation today because by God’s grace, he provided for us about fourteen hundred years after Paul, confessors who believed the same, and who paid careful attention to themselves and to all the flock. They knew that the message about Christ, Who makes sinners right with God was worth fighting for, and worth dying for. It’s the message about the One Whose absolute devotion to God’s Word stands in the place of yours and my occasional indifference to it, makes up for yours and my treating of it at times as irrelevant to us in the pattern of our first parents. It’s the message of the One Who obtained with His own blood your forgiveness for that sin and for all others. 

It was into faith in this message that you were baptized and brought into God’s family. Through it the Spirit has preserved your faith throughout these years of your life. It’s of the same message that Luther writes:

We are unable to accomplish anything against sin, death, and the devil by our own works. Therefore, Another appears for us and in our stead who definitely can do better; he gives us the victory, and commands us to accept it and not to doubt it. He says, ‘Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world’; and again: ‘I live, and you will live also, and no one will take your joy from you.’  

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock. Paul’s words were being spoken to elders in the congregation who were kind of overseeing the members (maybe like pastors do). But his exhortation is relevant to all of us, isn’t it? The message about Christ is the most precious treasure because it makes us right with God. Nothing else does. Christ’s righteousness covers your sins. In Him you are forgiven of sins. The Lutheran Confessors paid careful attention to themselves and to all the flock by uncovering the message of Christ that had been hidden under false teaching, and allowing it to shine so that sinners could know God’s grace, and the eternal peace that comes from it. Nothing is more relevant than that. 

The cause of Christ was Paul’s very urgent business. It was Martin Luther’s. Make it yours as well. No other suggestion, no other promise that would be made as an alternative to it will ever make you right with God. That cause alone is one through which you have forgiveness and eternal life. Amen.