Amen. Good morning, church.
We're going to jump right into the subject matter for this
morning because I have a lot to share with you today.
Hopefully you were with us last Sunday when we walked through
part one of our annual celebration of the Protestant
Reformation.
And the reason we do this every year is because the Reformation,
that is our historical roots, early church Reformation and
that time period and the men that we talk about each and
every year have had a great impact on our lives in so many
ways and in the life of our church.
Now, I don't have time to recap where we were last week, so if
you missed last Sunday or you're visiting with us this morning,
it's my hope and prayer that you can just jump in with us and
pick up the stories we go along.
To celebrate this year in 2024, we are talking about the life
and teaching of one of our great spiritual fathers here at
Oak Hill, one of the great heroes of the Reformation, John Calvin.
Now, last week we looked at the first 28 years of his life, the
foundation that the Lord was building in him and the reasons
why he turned away from his Roman Catholic upbringing.
Today we're going to walk through the last 26 years of his
life and discuss what he believed, what he taught about a
whole range of subjects that we find dear here at Oak Hill,
Scripture, preaching, worship, missions, and more.
Now, before we get started, let me apologize for something.
There are going to be some things that we're not going to
be able to get to this morning when we talk about Calvin's
legacy.
I really, I found out I needed three Sundays to do this well,
but the elders said, nope, you get two.
So, we only have today, but that means we're not going to be
able to get to Calvin's view on civil government, which may be
the most controversial part of his life and very timely in
light of where we are as a nation with the election coming
up and sort of the rise of Christian nationalism in our
country.
So, that's one thing we won't get to.
The other is we're not actually going to get to the five points
of Calvinism or the canons of Dort, mainly because those
things were formulated after Calvin's death, but not by him,
but by his followers.
So, to make it up to you, what I'm going to try to do in the
coming weeks and months is to sit down and record some
podcasts on these particular subjects.
And I think in particular the one on civil government will be
very important for you guys to hear.
So, sorry about that.
I have the time that I have.
So, let's dive right in.
We're going to start this morning.
We're going to go back to our timeline where we left off last
Sunday.
By the way, even though I'm shaving off those couple of
subject matters, this is still not going to be a short sermon.
So, you probably, that's your shocked face, right?
Surprised.
So, buckle up and get comfortable.
Lots to talk about.
So, we left off last week in the year 1538 with Calvin's first
stay in the city of Geneva coming to an end.
Now, remember, when he had first arrived in Geneva and was
convinced to stay there by William Pharrell, the city at
that time and the church was completely unstable.
Pharrell, the guy who preceded him there, had worked very hard
to drive out Roman Catholic influence, but it was not easy
at all.
He records in his memoirs that he was beaten several times
physically by Roman Catholic opponents.
But over time, the population in Geneva had come to embrace the
Protestant movement, but it was still shaky.
And that's why he begged and pleaded that fateful night at
the end when he found out Calvin had come to Geneva for a
stay.
He went and pleaded with him to stay there and help.
But they were fighting an uphill battle because Geneva was run
by a secular city council.
And these were a group of people that enjoyed wielding power.
And so when Pharrell and Calvin teamed up and started laying
down reforms in the city, these secular authorities didn't like
being overshadowed.
And it's clear from the record that they never liked Calvin in
the first place.
In fact, in their minutes of their meetings, they refer to
him as that Frenchman.
They did not like him.
So after less than two years of ministry in Geneva, Calvin and
Pharrell were summoned by the city council and they said, you
have 48 hours to pack up your stuff and get out.
So the irony here is sick.
The city that Calvin never wanted to go to in the first
place was now banishing him.
And I mentioned this last Sunday.
This part of Calvin's story is so encouraging to anybody who
has ever worked in ministry.
Ministry is really hard.
And the opposition is ever present.
And most people, most pastors have at least in their history,
at least one drastic ministry failure where things just go
awry and you have to move on to the next assignment and not
doubt God's call on your life.
But for Calvin, leaving Geneva was something of a sigh of
relief.
He had been treated poorly during the two years he was
there.
And now he felt like he was being released by God and he
wanted to go back to his passions, which was studying and
writing.
So Calvin and Pharrell left Geneva.
They first went to the cities of Bern and Zurich and they
visited fellow reformers and encouraged them.
Then they moved on to Basel once again where they stayed for two
months with the gentleman who had printed Calvin's first
edition of his institutes.
And while they were in Basel, Calvin received a letter from
Martin Buser.
He was the leading reformer in the city of Strasbourg and he
pleaded with Calvin to come to Strasbourg and help him to
teach.
Now we looked at this map last week just to sort of zoom in on
central Europe here.
You see France to the left there.
The blue square is Paris.
And you see that blue squiggly line.
That was the border between France and the Holy Roman
Empire to the east.
The two main cities we'll talk about this morning, Geneva is
the red dot in Swiss territories and the yellow is
Strasbourg in the German territories.
So Buser wrote to Calvin and basically said to him, look, I
know that you've been rejected at Geneva.
And he said, don't be like Jonah.
Don't run away from the call that God has on your life.
And so Calvin went to Strasbourg.
And I told you I was going to become a travel agent, put up
some nice pictures of European cities, went to the city of
Strasbourg, and this was a huge turning point in his life and a
huge turning point for the Protestant movement as a whole.
Calvin did in fact continue with study and his writing, but
he did so much more than that during three years in this
particular city.
He took on the role of pastor teacher of a French speaking
congregation of about 500 people.
All refugees, people who had had to flee France for their
lives, had come to Strasbourg and Calvin pastored them.
And this is where he truly learned that he had to be more
than a scholar.
He needed to be a shepherd.
He had to minister to these persecuted saints, entire
families who had lost everything, had left everything
behind in France and had fled for their lives and ended up in
Strasbourg.
And Calvin would write later on that it was here at
Strasbourg that he finally understood what Paul meant in
Romans 12 when he said, we need to weep with those who weep.
So God was teaching him some great skills here in
Strasbourg.
Now among this congregation he preached almost every day of
the week, twice on Sundays, plus taught in the Strasbourg
Academy.
He brought a greater discipline to the church there.
He established a formal liturgy for worship.
He even taught the people in this French speaking
congregation how to sing the Psalms.
In fact, he published a hymn book of 18 selected Psalms,
translated them into French, and actually wrote the melodies
for them and taught even a choir how to sing them.
This is something that very few people know about Calvin.
Very passionate about music.
It was also during this time that Calvin started a lifelong
project of writing commentaries on the Bible.
At the age of 30 in Strasbourg, he finished his first
commentary on the book of Romans and published it.
Calvin also raised his profile across Europe during these
years.
Not only had his institutes become a sensation, he began to
participate in high level debates with antagonistic
Roman Catholic scholars.
He even worked alongside Luther's primary theologian and
right hand man, Philip Melanchthon.
They worked together on several debates and they developed a
very strong friendship.
Later, Melanchthon, who would say that he was so impressed by
Calvin's mind and his ability to debate on the fly, he,
Melanchthon, called Calvin the theologian of the day.
And he still wasn't even 30 years old yet.
Amazing.
Now, we have to be careful not to get the impression that
Calvin was perfect, or that he was anything other than a
regular man.
He was a sinner, just like us, and there were signs in this
period of his life that he still needed to work out a
whole bunch of things.
He actually writes about an incident that took place a time
when he was meeting with other Protestant leaders from all
over Europe and the discussion did not go well and he was not
getting his way.
And although Calvin was quite reserved, if you got into his
face about theology or practical ministry, we found
out he had quite a temper.
And he blew up in this meeting and he chewed out his
colleagues and he stormed out of the room and later he would
write this.
He would admit, he said, I have sinned grievously.
This fierce beast, this impatience within me is not yet
conquered.
Now, one last happy note about Calvin's time in
Strasbourg.
He fell in love and he married a woman named
Idelette de Bourree.
That's the only portrait that we have of her.
She was a widow when he married her.
Again, he was, I believe, 31 at the time.
She was a widow, had been married to a man that Calvin
himself led to Christ.
She had two children so he became a stepfather overnight
and by all accounts, Idelette ended up being a gracious and
extremely helpful wife to Calvin's ministry.
Meanwhile, in Strasbourg, back in Geneva, the predictable
was happening.
The city was falling apart.
The city council could not control the city.
Not only had immorality set in but Roman Catholics were
returning to the city and were now trying to sway the
population away from reformed ideas and back to Rome.
So in 1541, Calvin's now 32, the city council had to sit down
and write a very humbling letter and they invited Calvin
to come back to Geneva and to put things back in order.
Now what I love about this part of the story is, is in
Calvin's discussions of how this went, he doesn't give us
the standard godly answer.
What would be the standard godly answer?
Well, of course, God's opened the door.
I'll come right away.
Calvin did not want to go back.
In his flesh, he did not want to go back to Geneva.
And I think this is something that every person in this room
can identify with.
When you get to that place where you have an agonizing
choice to make, this is what I want but this is the need that
God has put before me.
And so here's part of what he wrote about this.
He said, I would prefer a hundred other deaths to that
cross, meaning going back to Geneva, on which I should have
to die a thousand times a day.
He really disliked Geneva.
Yet because I know that I'm not my own master, I offer my heart
as a true sacrifice to the Lord.
Promptly and sincerely, I offer my heart.
So he walked away from this beautiful, fruitful time in
Strasbourg and he headed back to the place that he didn't want
to go to, that his biggest ministry failure, the place
where everybody treated him poorly, and not only did he go
back, but then he stayed for 23 years for the rest of his life.
And he labored there in that very difficult city as its
pastor, as its shepherd.
And we'll find out more about this as we go along.
Now we could talk about these 23 years.
Again, this could be a seven week series, just these 23
years of his life.
But I'll give you a few of the highlights.
As we go along, we'll talk about some theology and about
some practical ministry.
And as we do this, like last Sunday, what I want you to do
is to seal some of these truths in our hearts, to see all of
the connections that we have here in this Bible church in
the year 2024 that connect back to the practical ministry
philosophy that Calvin had that grew from his conviction from
scripture.
So we want to seal those truths in our hearts and see those
connections.
And the first thing we have to talk about is Calvin's
preaching ministry, which in a word was quite remarkable.
Once he returned to Geneva, he was appointed the head pastor
at St. Peter's Cathedral.
How many of you guys have been to Geneva?
Anybody?
OK, you've probably seen some of these pictures.
They don't make churches like this anymore.
This is St. Peter's Cathedral in Geneva.
This is where Calvin put down roots and began to teach.
Now, this church has a long history.
There was a church built on this site in the early 400s.
There's been a church on this site in Geneva for over 1,600
years.
So long history, long before Calvin got there.
The building you see in that picture was built in the 12th
century for Americans.
That's like super, super old.
For Europeans, it's like, yeah, that's kind of new.
It's just a different mind.
If you go to Europe, you get it.
You see the buildings.
You're like, we don't have anything this old in America.
12th century.
Originally, it was a Roman Catholic cathedral.
And then it was converted to a Protestant church seven years
before Calvin came back.
And by then, the authorities had scripted of its Catholic
altar, its side chapels, all of its statues and images of
Mary and the saints.
And this is where Calvin preached for the next 23
years.
Look at the inside.
Now, I'm not one to be jealous or envious.
I look at the auditorium we have here.
I'm extremely thankful for it.
But wow.
Wow.
Can you imagine the acoustics, Grant?
This is where he preached right up until his death.
And the centerpiece of this amazing structure was the
pulpit, which, again, I love my little pulpit here.
But man, look at that.
That is where Calvin would climb up into to address these
huge audiences that would come to hear him preach.
And Calvin was a simple man.
But you see how ornate this pulpit was.
And he was OK with that because, again, in his mind,
he thought, well, preaching is the centerpiece of worship.
So it's OK for it to be ornate.
But in terms of his own personal comfort, the opposite
was true.
For 23 years, Calvin sat in the exact same chair in the
exact same location for every single worship service.
And it wasn't a great chair.
You can go see it today in Geneva.
It's still sitting there.
That's the chair he sat in for 23 years.
So as I shared last week, Calvin, the reputation he has
is of a cold, remote academic and a scholar of great
intellect, but somebody who was like stuck in an ivory tower.
Hopefully, I've already convinced you that that is
completely wrong.
And you'll never think that again.
Yes, he was reserved.
Yes, he was modest.
But in Strasbourg and in the second time in Geneva,
Calvin became a pastoral powerhouse.
And I'm convinced that the older he got, the more he
realized, I cannot just live in that ivory tower.
I've got to come out of my shell and be with the people
for this reason.
He realized that the average Christian in that day just
didn't know the word of God, needed to be fed the word of
God in all of its forms.
Otherwise, he knew they would never grow beyond the
traditions and the rituals and the idolatries that they had
been fed all their lives by Roman Catholicism.
So for Calvin, the Bible was a vital daily necessity in the
Christian's life.
And you might think, well, yeah, duh, but you don't
understand, in the 16th century, after all this time,
centuries of Roman Catholic supremacy, the idea that a
Christian could be in the Bible every day, reading it for
themselves, completely new idea, absolutely revolutionary.
Here's how he described this.
He said, whoever would desire to persevere in uprightness and
integrity of life, let them learn to exercise themselves
daily in the study of the word of God.
For whenever a man neglects instruction, he easily falls
into carelessness and foolishness, and the fear of God
vanishes from his mind.
A daily vital walk with God through the word.
Even before returning to Geneva, Calvin was convinced
that for the most part, the lamp of God's word had gone
out in medieval Europe.
And he called it a fearful abandonment.
Yeah, he knew that there were certain corners of Europe where
it was still flickering, but Rome had so badly quenched the
word that the common man and the common woman sitting in
the pews of churches had no idea what the Bible said.
Can you imagine being a Christian, a weekly worshiper,
but you really don't know what the Bible says.
You've never had it in front of you.
So what did they know?
Only what the priest told them.
That's all they had.
So Calvin knew the antidote to that deplorable situation was
to convince medieval worshippers that they had to come and be
patient and sit under the constant teaching of God's
word, one verse at a time, one book at a time, in an
expository fashion.
Again, that was new to this day and age.
So what Calvin often writes about is his overwhelming
passion and devotion to the majesty and the glory of God as
seen through the word.
Here's what he says, illuminated by the Spirit's power, we
affirm with utter certainty, just as we were gazing upon the
majesty of God himself, that it, the word, has flowed to us from
the very mouth of God by the ministry of men.
That's how convinced he was of the inspired nature of
Scripture.
Now according to this man, Theodore Beza, who you should
know as well, who served alongside Calvin through much of
this time and actually succeeded Calvin as the pastor of Geneva
after Calvin passed away, get this now, he said Calvin could
write a sermon in less than an hour.
Now for someone like me, that's terrifying and really
impressive.
Preaching in that day, you have to understand, was a little bit
different in terms of expectations.
When you read Calvin's sermons, they're not carefully crafted
like today pastors would carefully craft sermons in order
to make them appealing, to make them something that can hold the
attention of people.
Calvin's sermons when you read them are more like running
commentaries on the text.
They're just different.
They generally lasted 45 minutes to an hour, I love that, and the
only thing he brought into that pulpit was the Bible in its
original languages, in Hebrew and Greek, nothing in French.
And he would provide his own translation of the Bible on the
fly, again, no notes, no manuscript, no iPad, Adam.
And what's amazing is in all of that, his sermons aren't overly
technical either.
In fact, he's often criticized by modern scholars because it's
such plain language.
But Calvin knew his audience.
He could fly right over them, but he knew he couldn't do that
if he wanted people to learn and to grow.
And so he would simply explain the text, he would do a
translation on the fly from the original language, and then he
would help them understand it and then provide practical
application.
And again, we had this idea in our mind that Calvin must have
been this massive intellect that just couldn't connect with
people.
But when you read his sermons, it's very practical.
He always ends with practical application.
And Calvin was very quiet and reserved and private, but by all
accounts, people who heard him preach, he was extremely
passionate and dynamic in the pulpit.
And he demanded that of himself.
He said, the preacher must use forcefulness so that all
may know that this is not a game.
The preacher must combine sweetness and gentleness with
vigor and vehemence.
He must speak as an ambassador in a way that shows that he is
not pretending.
And that comment raises one of my favorite things about Calvin
that he talked about often.
He understood that the text of scripture was sovereign over
both the people in his audience and also himself.
So he didn't come into that pulpit with a holier than thou
attitude.
In fact, this is what he says, when I mount the pulpit, it is
not to teach others only.
The word that proceeds from my mouth should serve me as well
as you, or it is the worst for me.
Indeed, nobody is fit to teach in the church unless he
voluntarily humbles himself to be a fellow disciple.
That is a level of humility you don't even find among a lot of
pastors today, let alone a genius like Calvin.
He's also on record as saying this very famously.
He said, it would be far better for the preacher to break his
neck going up into the pulpit if he does not take pains to be
the first to follow God.
And that's a scriptural principle.
Let not many of you be teachers, lest you incur a
stricter judgment.
Finally, I'll share this about what made Calvin special as a
preacher.
He had a naturally brilliant mind.
Nobody debates that.
But what set him apart was he took that beautiful mind and he
combined it with just good old fashioned hard work and
devotion and faithfulness.
His production is unrivaled by any theologian that I'm aware
of.
His collected works from the last 25 years of his life fill
68 volumes of about 600 pages each.
That's what he produced.
And that's only partial because not everything he wrote down
has survived.
Catch this now.
Before his death, he had written a commentary on every New
Testament book except Revelation, which I find very
interesting.
And most of the Old Testament as well.
The entire Pentateuch, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the
Psalms, and all of the minor prophets.
His preaching schedule will make your head spin.
Generally, he preached twice on Sundays, both morning and
evening, and almost exclusively from the New Testament on
Sundays.
And then during the week, he would preach from both the Old
and New Testaments every weekday morning.
And then in the afternoon, go to the Academy and lecture there
as well.
So overall, historians believe that he was producing on
average 8 to 10 separate lessons every week of his life
for 23 years.
I don't think even vacations were even a thing.
Back then, we talked about, oh, you need a vacation.
Calvin didn't.
That adds up to somewhere around 500 lessons each year.
Now, I've been told that I work too hard, and that I work too
many hours.
But I started doing the math in my head this week about how
many lessons I create.
I am not even in the ballpark.
I'm in the parking lot, looking into the ballpark of how hard
Calvin worked and how much he produced.
One colleague of his in Geneva called him, I love this, a bow
always strung, meaning he was always prepared, always ready
to lead and to teach.
One of his biographers, though, wrote,
Calvin did not spare himself at all,
working far beyond what his power and regard for his health
could stand.
And that's another amazing factor.
Calvin produced all of this work in the midst
of constant health problems.
He suffered from a whole bunch of things
that honestly, when I look at the list,
I'm not sure I would have survived any of them.
But he survived all of them, frequent migraines and fever.
He had gout.
He had kidney stones.
He had horrible digestive problems.
But on and on, he pushed, always coming back
to what drove him, which was the expository preaching
of the text of scripture.
And some of you guys may have heard this story.
It's one of the best examples, most humorous examples,
of just how devoted he was to verse by verse exposition
of the scriptures.
After he had been banished from Geneva that first time
and gone to Strasbourg, when they invited him back,
the first Sunday he was back in Geneva,
he walked up into that pulpit.
He opened to the Bible to the very place
he left off three years earlier and said, next verse.
And he started the sermon with this, as I was saying.
So before we finish with the historical details
of Calvin's life, I do want to talk about two really big issues
that took up much of his attention.
And the first one will probably come as a surprise to you.
Calvin was extremely concerned about worship.
And let me be clear.
By worship, I don't just mean singing praise songs.
That's one of the major mistakes we
make in the evangelical church today.
We equate worship with just that one thing.
Well, we sing songs.
That's only a small part of it.
When Calvin talks about worship, he's
talking about every element of a Christian gathering.
The order of service, corporate prayer,
yes, music and singing, how to listen to a sermon,
and maybe above all else, coming to the Lord's table.
That's what he means by that.
And the reason for his concern was this.
He said, in worship, God meets with his people.
Right?
God meets with them to receive their praise.
He meets with them to abide with them, to nourish
and strengthen their faith.
And so Calvin wrote, what could be more important than that?
And maybe you've never thought of it that way,
before, but what could be more important than the fact
that the church gathers to meet with the Lord?
And a follow-up principle, if worship is that important,
well, then how much care and planning should go into it?
In his Institutes, Calvin writes this.
He says, there is nothing more perilous to our salvation
than a preposterous and perverse worship of God.
And it was his opinion that the worship of the medieval Roman
Catholic Church that was so detached from scripture
and so filled with superstition had devolved into idolatry.
And to him, the issue of idolatry
was as serious as works righteousness
was to justification.
And here's why.
He said, look, both of those things
involve putting human wisdom above divine revelation.
Both of them involve pandering to human appetites
rather than just trusting what God has said in his word.
So what did Calvin prescribe for Protestant churches?
Well, he believed that the remedy for all the theatrics
and superstition of Roman Catholicism
was to establish an order of worship that was simply rooted
in, here's the phrase, biblical simplicity.
Keep it simple, stupid.
You've heard that before, right?
Keep it simple.
And later on, people would call this the regulative principle.
Anybody heard that phrase before?
Calvin's regulative principle.
It simply goes like this.
Are you ready?
It's going to sound crazy.
When the saints gather to worship,
the church should only engage in activities
that are described in the Bible.
Right?
Crazy.
Calvin writes this.
He says, every addition to his word,
especially in the matter of worship, is a lie.
So do it well.
And do it right.
And do it biblically, he said.
He was well aware of the human tendency
to think that sincerity and religious zeal can somehow
substitute for what is true.
Think about that.
He called this one of the most profound effects of the fall.
He writes this.
Experience teaches us how fertile
is the field of falsehood in the human mind.
Even among Christians, the temptation to idolatry
remains strong.
The mind of man, I say, is like a factory of idolatries.
And every one of us is a master craftsman of idols.
As long as any relics of superstition continue among us,
they will always entangle us.
Think about those words, especially
as it relates to worship.
So Calvin's great caution reflected his belief
that in worship, Christians often
would rather please themselves than please God.
Do we not see that today?
When we talk about worship, we'd rather
do things that make us happy than things
that please the Lord.
Here's what he said.
He said, under the pretense of holy zeal,
superstitious men give way to the indulgences of the flesh.
And Satan baits fictitious modes of worship
with such attractions.
Men are delighted with their own inventions
and choose to be wise in their own eyes
rather than restrain their senses in obedience to God.
Nothing is more abominable in the sight of God
than pretended worship, which proceeds from human design.
It's true.
We see it in churches all the time.
Well, I've got so many new ideas about doing this or that.
This will bring in the crowds.
This will feed the appetites of people.
And Calvin would say, no.
Don't do it.
The importance Calvin placed on worship
is reflected in his active involvement in worship
everywhere he went.
Not only did he have a theology of worship,
but as the preacher, he was deeply
concerned with pastoral involvement in worship.
And again, this is something we don't often see.
Ask Grant about this.
In churches today, you have pastors that say, look,
my job is to preach the word.
You handle the rest.
But he was pastorally involved in every aspect of worship.
We know he wrote hymn books and service books and liturgies.
And this was key for Calvin.
And we've adopted the same mindset at Oak Hill.
Worship is always to be directed by the word.
Not only does the word direct worship, by and large,
the word is the content of worship.
You understand what I'm saying?
It directs the worship, but it's the content of worship.
In other words, when we gather together,
God's word is to be read.
God's word is to be preached.
When we sing, we lift up words that are biblically rooted.
When we pray, we pray biblical things.
It doesn't come out of our inventions or our designs.
It comes from the word.
And so the worshiper is directed to meet with God
through the word in every aspect of the service,
both head and heart, both thoughts and emotions,
but always being drawn back to the majesty
of Christ in the gospel.
This is what Calvin taught.
It's not complicated, is it?
But it requires a disciplined approach that says,
no to pragmatic ideas that are rooted in man-centered stuff,
rooted in entertainment, and just saying,
we're going to stick with what the word says.
And again, in our world today, those types of churches
are becoming fewer and fewer.
So Calvin's Sunday morning liturgy in Geneva
looked like this, a call to worship
where scripture was read, corporate prayer,
with time given for confession of sins, the singing of a psalm,
then more corporate prayer for illumination,
followed by a scripture reading from the Old Testament
and the New Testament.
Then came the sermon, and after that,
a collection of offerings, the singing of another psalm,
and then a closing prayer of thanksgiving
and a benediction.
And you may think to yourself, well,
what's the big innovation there?
We do that every week at Oak Hill.
Yes, we do.
That's exactly the point.
And praise God for it.
Praise God that we have an elder team and a worship
pastor who's committed to this same principle.
But you cannot imagine.
I wish you could study the history
and see how different that was from a typical Roman Catholic
mass in the 16th century.
This was revolutionary in the church in Calvin's day.
And one of the things that came through with this
that Calvin stressed was the active participation
of the congregation in worship.
And again, this ran totally contrary
to the Roman Catholic mass, where the worshipper would come
in and be an observer.
Calvin says, no.
That's not what we're called to.
God has called every Christian worshiper
to be active in listening to the sermon,
both with the mind and the heart,
to be active in the singing of praises
that we lift up to Christ, to be active in praying
with the minister as he prays, and agreeing in prayer.
And Calvin said, this is what true reverence for God
looks like.
Alongside active participation, Calvin constantly
talked about an idea that maybe you've never thought of before.
But worship for him was about spiritually ascending.
Spiritually ascending.
Here's what he means by that.
Christ descended in his incarnation
in order to lift his people up.
And in a mysterious way, worship draws the Christian
into the heavenly realms, where we come into communion
with the ascended Christ.
And Calvin says, this process is ongoing.
Christ continues to draw us heavenward
as the Holy Spirit empowers the Word and the sacraments
in the church.
And when he talked about sacraments,
I defined that last week.
You can go back and look at that.
He calls them spiritual ladders.
The ordinances of the church are spiritual ladders
that take us heavenward in worship,
and especially so at the Lord's table.
So let's talk about communion for just a moment.
In Geneva, on mornings where communion
was going to be celebrated, that order of service
would change slightly.
First, Calvin always insisted on the reading
of the Apostles' Creed, which we did this morning together.
Then came his instruction and exhortation
about the elements.
And then as we practice here at Oak Hill,
the members would come forward and partake
of the bread and the cup while they were singing a psalm.
That was typical.
Now, as you may know, among all the things that
were debated during the Reformation period,
no issue was more discussed than the issue of communion.
And in particular, what is the presence of Christ
in the bread and in the wine?
And Calvin made a very important contribution to that debate.
He brought a unique perspective in his day
that was rooted in that concept of spiritual ascending.
Now, by the time Calvin made his case,
the battle lines over communion had already been drawn.
Luther had come out with what he believed in Zwingli
on the other side.
And then Calvin looked at both of those and said, nope and nope,
and took a middle lane.
Took a middle lane between the two.
So let me try to explain some of this briefly.
So the three views of the presence of Christ, body,
and blood in the Eucharist.
Luther, man, this is, I'm going to try to do this.
Again, this should be a podcast, but I'm
going to do this really quickly.
Calvin rejected Luther's idea that Christ's body had
a real or a local presence that coexisted in and around
and under the elements.
And really, Luther's position was very close to Rome.
The only thing he would say was the elements don't actually
get transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ.
So they remain just bread and juice.
But he talked about the presence of the body and blood
coexisting with the elements.
Then on the other side, we had Zwingli.
And Zwingli took a completely opposite position
that there was no presence at all of Christ in the elements.
It was a purely memorial to Christ.
So it's all about, communion is just about remembering.
And the bread and the cup are just mere symbols,
and that's it.
The position that Calvin took between them
is called the spiritual presence view.
And this view points to the bread and the cup
as signs that are given to believers of the promises
that God makes to his children.
And the supper was given to us as a sacrament of the church
to seal the promise that those who
partake of the bread and the cup by faith
truly partake of the body and blood of Christ.
There are signs that point to that reality.
And you say, well, how is that possible?
Well, Calvin said this.
It's because of your union with Christ.
And that is a completely biblical principle,
your union with Christ.
It's all over the New Testament.
We are called what?
His body.
We are united with him.
We are found in him.
And then Calvin goes on to explain
that Christ's human body will forever be present in heaven.
He doesn't have to descend to earth
to commune with his people.
Why?
Because we already have the Holy Spirit within us.
So while the others were talking about,
oh, Christ descends into the elements,
he was saying, no, Christ doesn't have to move at all.
He's already given us the Holy Spirit.
So in a spiritual sense, Calvin says this.
When we participate in communion,
there is something quite supernatural happening.
The Spirit of God lifts us up into the heavenly realms
to enjoy this meal.
And by eating and drinking the common bread
and the common fruit of the vine,
we are in reality being nourished
by the body and blood of Christ and strengthened in our faith.
So for Calvin, coming to the Lord's table
is the richest experience we can have this side of heaven.
And yet he explains he doesn't fully get it,
which is such a humble position.
He says, now if anyone should ask me how this takes place,
being lifted up into the heavens,
I shall not be ashamed to confess
that it is a secret too lofty for either my mind to comprehend
or my words to declare.
And to speak more plainly, I experience it more
than I understand it.
Whoa, Calvin said that.
Amazing, right?
OK, so I'll let you process that.
If you have any questions, I actually
did a whole sermon series on this years ago.
At some point, maybe we'll reboot that up
so that you can get a more fully rooted inscription,
all that stuff.
But this is a very important thing for us to understand.
Because at Oak Hill, we take the spiritual presence view.
We believe there's something supernatural happening.
Even if we can't fully explain it, we know it's mysterious,
but there is something happening that's more than just a, oh,
yeah, here's a time to remember.
OK, last big issue I want to talk about before we finish
with the end of Calvin's life.
This is, again, maybe a surprise to you.
Calvin was very, very concerned about missionary activity.
Now here's why that might be surprising.
Because you see fools on the internet who hate Calvinism.
And they'll say things like, well, if you're a Calvinist,
why would you be concerned about missions?
Because if God's elected somebody to be saved,
He's going to save them.
And those people just ignore them.
It's ignorant.
It's disingenuous.
They know better, but that's what
they like to throw in your face.
Obviously, the need to send out missionaries with the gospel
doesn't change just because you believe God has chosen some
and not others.
In fact, because the Bible does say that,
that's all the more reason for you and I
to get out there among sinners and share the gospel,
because God does save.
We sang it earlier.
God will save whom He will save.
And He uses people like us to spread the gospel,
to accomplish that work.
Not only does God ordain who will be saved,
but He ordains the means by which those people will
be saved.
And that's us.
But you should know that under Calvin's leadership,
Geneva became the most prolific hub of missionary work
in all of Europe during the Reformation period.
Again, that might be surprising to you.
In spite of the haters, you try to claim otherwise,
Calvinism, throughout history, has always
produced the greatest missionary movements,
precisely because we know God saves
and that He's sovereign to save.
That's why we go out.
That is a historical truth.
And in the 16th century, Protestant evangelists
and preachers, they would travel to Geneva for training
and for prayer and to get counsel from Calvin
on how they could turn their cities toward reform theology.
Geneva under Calvin became the number one location
for refugees from all over Europe who were fleeing
because of persecution.
And some would come and they would settle in Geneva.
Others would train for a time.
And then Calvin would say, now you've
got to go back to your country.
And you've got to preach the gospel.
And you've got to plant underground churches.
By 1553, Calvin was actually sending missionaries back
into his home country of France, back at great risk
to their lives because he knew he was sending them
into the mouth of the enemy.
And it was likely they could be arrested and burned
at the stake.
And entire networks of underground churches
were being established in France by French believers.
You may have heard this term.
They're called Huguenots.
And they were establishing networks.
Within five years, 100 Protestant churches
had been planted in France.
And three years later, that number
was 2,000 because of the work coming out of Geneva.
In fact, by the year 1600, the Huguenot movement
was so strong that 10% of the French population, which
was incredibly Catholic, staunchly Catholic,
had turned Protestant.
King Louis XIV at the pope's command
had to revoke all the privileges of Protestants in his country
just to hold them off, just to keep his country Catholic.
So the missionary work out of Geneva was tremendous.
And that was their blueprint.
Train pastors, equip evangelists, send missionaries,
and fund gospel ministries all over Europe.
And it came from Calvin.
And he kept a watch on the international scene.
We know of his correspondence speaking
with Protestant authorities, even speaking
with kings in letters, and also writing
to all these Protestant pastors and encouraging them,
and welcoming them and saying, look, come to Geneva.
Come spend some time here.
Train with us here.
And then I'll give you space to teach in the academy,
in my church.
And so he welcomed people came.
Protestant pastors came from all over Europe
to be a part of what was happening in Geneva.
And this is something that is kind of special to me.
We're a church that relies on other people
to have space, to have worship services, and to preach.
Well, that's what Calvin did back in that day.
Gave space to all these non-French speaking
congregations and non-French speaking pastors.
In fact, if you look back at this picture
that I showed you earlier, see the white building in the back?
That became known as Calvin's auditorium.
And that whole building was devoted
to other reformed pastors who could preach
non-French speaking congregations.
Calvin shared his space so that the gospel could go out
to all languages and all people groups in Europe.
So at any time you would find teaching going on there
in Italian or German or even English, can you imagine?
But that's what Calvin, that's what his heart was.
The most notable of these, by the way, John Knox.
John Knox had to flee Scotland and then flee England
because Queen Mary I, Bloody Mary, had come to power
and was arresting Protestant leaders.
And he came to Geneva.
He spent 3 and 1 half years in Geneva.
And he taught in that building for 3 and 1 half years
to absolutely overflowing crowds of English speakers.
And he made a huge impact on that city.
How many of you guys have ever heard of the Geneva Bible?
Why is it called the Geneva Bible?
Because it took place in that place at that time
when this amazing hub of activity
was happening in the city.
All the men who translated the Geneva Bible, which,
by the way, preceded the King James by about 50 years.
But it's one of the most important English translations
we have because it's the first one that went back
to the Hebrew and Greek and didn't just work off the Latin.
Very important.
But all the men who did that translating
sat under Knox's teaching in that auditorium in Geneva.
It's an amazing place.
Amazing place for missions.
OK.
I could do this.
I could do this for weeks.
I'm sorry.
And I wish I had more time.
But let me close with just a little bit
about Calvin's final years and his legacy.
As I said earlier, Calvin always had health problems.
By the time he got to his 50s, he was in really bad shape.
And he steadily went downhill.
I'm feeling it in my 60s.
I've outlived him by quite a bit.
I'm really happy about that.
In addition to all those things I mentioned earlier
that he struggled with, later in life
he started to struggle with asthma and with breathing.
Doctors said he had adult colic, which I'd never heard of
before, that caused him to spit up blood on a regular basis.
He was in bad shape.
He rarely slept more than four hours a night.
Grant.
Partially because he was always in pain.
And partially because of so much he had on his plate.
But even when he was sick, eyewitnesses
report that every day in the last few months
he kept four scribes working, both in French and in Latin,
because he wanted to finish as much work as he possibly could.
And then there was the heartbreak of his family.
I mentioned it briefly last week.
His wife, Idelette, died 13 years before he died.
So they only had nine years of marriage together.
She died at the age of 49 of tuberculosis.
Nine years together as husband and wife.
And they were never able to raise
any children of their own.
They had two daughters that were stillborn,
and a third child, a son, who lived for two weeks.
Absolutely heartbreaking.
And he would write later on, the Lord
has certainly inflicted a severe and bitter wound
in the death of our baby son.
But he is himself a father, and he knows best
what is good for his children.
And the saddest thing about this,
I don't know why I'm emotional about this,
the saddest thing is his opponents seized on this.
And in the tradition of Job's awful friends,
they began to say, well, maybe God is punishing you, John.
And so here's how he responded.
And so gracious, he said, the Lord gave me a child,
but he was pleased to deprive me of him.
In his place, he has given me thousands of children
in all parts of Christendom.
That's a minister mindset.
As Calvin neared the end of his life, ministers from all
over Europe came to visit him because they knew
his strength was fading.
And even in the last weeks of his life,
he had a scribe working on his final commentary
on the Book of Joshua.
His close friend, Beza, pleaded with him to rest more.
And Calvin said to him, would you
have the Lord find me idle as he's bedridden?
This is really weird.
This is really hard.
When you get older, you start thinking about these types
of things.
May 27, 1564, just after 8 PM, a nurse
summoned Beza to Calvin's bedside.
By the time he arrived, he'd already
gone home to be with his Savior.
And he'd fought the good fight right to the end.
So one last PS then to Calvin's story.
And this is so cool.
It is very common for important men of the church
to be buried in the vaults in great cathedrals.
If you've gone through Europe, there's always
a basement or someplace where there's
the vaults of all the great churchmen.
Think about Luther.
Luther was buried seven feet below the floor of Castle
Church in Wittenberg.
Philip Melanchthon, his friend, is buried right next to him.
That's normal.
William Pharrell, who served with Calvin,
he's buried in the cathedral at New Cattell,
where he served his final years in ministry.
Beza as well, Calvin's friend and successor,
he's buried right next to the pulpit
there at St. Peter's Cathedral in Geneva.
But not Calvin.
He refused.
He absolutely would not allow it.
At his instructions, his body was carried outside the city
walls to a very common cemetery.
This is where Calvin is buried today.
Simple shroud, simple casket.
And he specifically said, do not give me a headstone.
And of course, the tourism department gave him one.
But he said, I don't want a headstone.
He wanted his tomb to be unmarked,
lest he become the focus and not the Lord.
Or worse, that his grave would become a source of pilgrimage
and idolatry.
And we should take a cue from this, you guys.
I know we're here celebrating the life of a great man,
but we don't worship John Calvin.
And we don't idolize John Calvin.
We worship the God who raised him up.
And we worship the God who gifted him in so many ways.
And we worship the God who accomplished so much
through this man's life.
Beza would write after his death, Calvin's modesty,
forged by his vision of God's glory,
was his most defining characteristic.
You can put that on my headstone.
I'm OK with that.
Now, in Geneva today, on the grounds of the college
that Calvin founded, there is a massive stone memorial.
If you've been there to Geneva, you've seen this.
It's a memorial to the four great Genoese leaders
of the Protestant Reformation.
This is Reformation Wall.
I give you the picture of the girls in that picture
so you can see how big this is.
Four towering figures are etched in stone there.
From left to right, you have Pharrell.
And then you have Calvin.
And then you have Beza.
And you have Knox.
And Calvin, as you can see, is one step
in front of the others, the great leader of all four.
On the base of the monument is a special date, 1559.
That is the blessed year that all four of those men
were teaching at the same time in the city of Geneva.
What a year that must have been.
Listed on both sides of the figures
are various nations that have been impacted
by the Reformation.
On one side, it says Germany, the Netherlands, France,
and Switzerland.
On the other side, it says Scotland, England, Hungary,
and guess what else?
The United States of America.
Stretching behind the wall, behind the reformers,
is the Latin phrase post tenebrous lux, light
after darkness.
It is a spectacular monument.
But I'm going to go on a limb and say
Calvin would have absolutely hated it.
Don't do that, is what he would have said.
Today, we correctly regard Calvin
as a hero of the faith.
But he didn't see himself that way.
He just saw himself as a faithful Christian.
But his legacy for us is too important to ignore.
He is a spiritual father to so many churches today.
Listen to all the streams of the Christian faith.
The Swiss Reformed, the French Huguenots,
Scottish Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, German Evangelicals,
Hussites, Church of England.
Yes, the Pilgrims, and the Puritans,
and the Congregationalists of the early American colonies.
Did you know that for the first 200 years of America's history,
almost every college, seminary, school, and academy
was built and sustained by Calvinists?
That is true.
And of course, today, even here, this Bible church
that we belong to, Calvin's legacy and doctrine
live on in our teaching and in our preaching.
Calvin was, as J. I. Packer said, the finest exegete,
the greatest systematic theologian,
and the most profound religious thinker
that the Reformation produced.
And I'll close with this.
No less than the prince of preachers
himself, Charles Spurgeon, who was an avowed Calvinist
and was not shy about it, he wrote the following.
Hundreds of years later, after the Reformation, he wrote this.
There is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him
crucified unless you preach what is called Calvinism.
It is a nickname to call it Calvinism.
Calvinism is the gospel and nothing else.
He wrote on, the old truth that Calvin preached,
that Augustine preached, that Paul preached
is the truth that I must preach today or else be false
to my conscience and my God.
John Knox's gospel is my gospel.
And that which thundered through Scotland
must thunder through England again.
May that same gospel continue to thunder in this church
until Christ returns or calls us home.
Amen?
Let's pray together.
Father, we thank you for just a couple of Sundays
to walk through this history.
And we will just once again reiterate and pray together.
And I pray that all my brothers and sisters here this morning
are praying along with me that we worship you for all of this.
We praise your name, your glorious, majestic name,
because of the work that you have
done in the history of the church
to bring us back to the anchor of scripture,
to bring us back to what you have revealed about yourself
and, Lord, your faithfulness in raising up certain people,
certain men at certain times in church history
to do your work faithfully.
And I know, Lord, that you are doing it today
in so many places.
And, Lord, if we can here at Oak Hill,
if we could be counted, it's just a smidgen of that work
that you're doing in this world.
We will thank you for that.
And we will be so grateful.
And we will worship you forever because of it.
Lord, we're reminded this morning,
as we talk about all of this doctrine
about the body and the blood of Jesus Christ
and how precious it is that his body was broken for us
and that his blood was shed for the forgiveness of our sins.
That is what binds us here together, Lord,
that we are in union with you and you've given us
your spirit within our hearts.
Thank you for all of it, Lord.
There's not enough time or words that we
can express to communicate how grateful we are for your love.
So help us to just worship well in the time
we have left this morning to worship with all of our hearts,
all of our minds, all of our souls for your glory, we pray.
Amen.