It Is Written Script: 1227 Unpopular Truth Page 1 Unpopular Truth Program No. 1227 SPEAKER: JOHN BRADSHAW I m John Bradshaw. Thanks for joining me today on It Is Written. Have you ever noticed how many idioms or figures of speech we use today in the English language come to us straight out of the Bible? I ll give you a for instance: The writing is on the wall. We use that to express the idea that the end of something or the demise of something is assured and is imminent. It s kind of a portent of doom. When Team A scored that touchdown and went ahead by 10 points, the writing was on the wall for Team B. When Company A released that product and it failed to gain any ground in the marketplace, the writing was on the wall for Company A. It s over. It s done. Things aren t going to work out, something is doomed. The idea comes straight from Daniel. In Daniel 5, Belshazzar, the king of Babylon, had a feast a great big riotous, drunken feast. He invited a whole lot of important people together, and while he was partying, a mysterious hand appeared from out of nowhere and wrote some words on a wall. Those words, when interpreted, were a message to the king that his kingdom was over, and that he was done as king. In other words, the writing was on the wall, and for Babylon, things were history. There are all kinds of other figures of speech idioms and expressions that we use commonly today that you can find in the Bible: The salt of the earth. Straight out of the Bible. Pride goes before a fall. That s another one. The leopard can t change its spots. You read about that in Jeremiah 13. Now, here s another commonly-used figure of speech and expression that I want you to think about. Your goose is cooked. When we say that, what we mean is, it s all over for you. You are done. History.
It Is Written Script: 1227 Unpopular Truth Page 2 The phrase is so well known in the English language that it appeared in a numberone hit song in 1957, the Everly Brothers song Wake Up Little Susie. We fell asleep, our goose is cooked, our reputation is shot. We re in big trouble. Our goose is cooked. Now, you might be wondering, what chapter and verse, or in which book of the Bible do you read that your goose is cooked? Well, you don t. It s not in the Bible. But it does have biblical implications. Today I m in Prague in the Czech Republic. This is a beautiful city that oozes history. And much of the history here in Prague is centered on Prague s religious past. John Huss is Prague s most famous son. He was born around the year 1370, and he died in the year 1415 at the hands of the state and the ruling church. John Huss was one of the early key figures of the Protestant Reformation. Many churches and church groups today have their roots in the Protestant Reformation or, in fact, call themselves Protestant. So what was the Protestant Reformation? What is a Protestant? And how did the Protestant Reformation come about? There were three primary things that were being fought against. One was simony, which meant that you paid to get a particular position. So if I wanted to be, let s say, a canon in the cathedral, or even the archbishop, I would have to pay a large amount of money. But that was okay, because that was an investment in a job that brought with it lots and lots of money. So you might have to pay a small fortune, but you recuperated that in a relatively small number of years. However, we know from Simon Magus in the book of Acts that we don t buy offices. We can t buy positions of grace. Secondly, once you had the position, for many people, they weren t satisfied with simply one position. So you had what was called pluralism. You bought place X and you bought place Y, and maybe bought place Z, and you acquired income from all three places. Which was fine except it posed a third problem: most of us can t trilocate or even bi-locate. So you had to employ some other priest to do your job in the place you weren t serving. And what tended to happen very often was you employed some rather poor priest, and paid him only a pittance of what you were receiving, which led, of course, to a problem of great clerical unhappiness. These were the three things that became the motif of the clerical reform movement here. There were various preachers, including Huss, who would attack these. And so, one of the great questions of the reform was the morals of the clergy.
It Is Written Script: 1227 Unpopular Truth Page 3 We re looking at a time within this monotheistic tradition that had more spiritual variety than perhaps any time since Christianity is formed. The most popular published book of all time is the Bible. In the 14th century, the second most popular were books of hours books that tell you how to pray and make your own spiritual connection with God. People really had this desire because at this time, you have an authority within the church that s really fallen apart, an authority that is laughable, an authority that really does not have authority. And you don t know who the authority is for the sacraments that you are told are crucial to salvation. Instead, you are trying to find your own link to the divine. You are trying to find your own personal connection with your Savior. So there is such an explosion of different ways of devotion at this time that it simply cannot be contained or controlled by a fractured church. About 600 years ago, there lived in the city of Prague a man by the name of John Huss. John Huss was born in Bohemia, and he went on to become a tremendously popular preacher. Now, in that day, that meant one of two things: either you had ingratiated yourself with the church, with church leaders, and with the people by compromising certain standards, or you had dared to boldly proclaim the Word of God. And that s what John Huss did. In a day when the Bible was hardly even taught at all, in a day when the corrupt practices of the church had made it very unpopular with many people, John Huss was very forthright in condemning the abuses of the clergy and in holding up the Word of God as God s rule of faith and practice for the believer. Now, I m calling him John Huss, but his name was actually Jan Hus, and the word Hus in the Czech language means goose. John Huss had some fun with this, and he would very often sign his communication or refer to himself to his friends as the goose. John Huss created a huge controversy in his day through his writings and through his sermons. How well do you think that went down with the leaders of the establishment church? Not very well at all. John Huss, as a matter of fact, ended up being burned at the stake. It is said that when the executioner was about to light the funeral pyre, he said, Now we will cook the goose. That explains where we get that figure of speech from: Now your goose is cooked. It s said that s exactly where it came from.
It Is Written Script: 1227 Unpopular Truth Page 4 Well, what was it about what John Huss said that made people so excitable? Maybe that s the wrong word. What was it about what John Huss said that got people so riled up, so wildly offended, so bitterly opposed to what he was doing? What was it that led a church to condemn him? What was it that led an emperor to deceive him, to lie to him? When John Huss went to his trial in Constance, Germany, the emperor pledged to protect him. But he reneged on that promise. What would drive a man to do that? What was it that led the establishment church to demand that John Huss recant his teachings and turn his back on the very things that he d been saying? What was it that led this peace-loving man to be burned at the stake? What could a person do to lead people to treat him like that? Wycliffe kind of becomes the catalyst for what gets Huss in trouble. You have a Wycliffe party that forms at the university. They take these writings from England, and there is an exchange between England and Bohemia. Bohemia will give England a queen, and in return, there is an exchange of scholars and books. Wycliffe-ite ideas arrive in Bohemia, and the scholars here kind of fall on two sides. Many of the Czech scholars will embrace Wycliffe, and find it as something interesting to debate. They won t take every idea of Wycliffe; for example, Wycliffe will deny transubstantiation, something that is shocking. And it s one of those last things that Wycliffe will really write against. Huss is a firm believer in the Eucharist. Huss and most of his contemporaries will defend the Eucharist and it will become a major part of religious devotion in Bohemia going forward. But there are other issues where Wycliffe will challenge authority. He will state that the sinful authority is no longer an authority. If you have sinful priests and a sinful pope, you have a schism in the church where you have three popes at the time that Huss is doing much of his preaching. So he can point to a lot of these issues, and there are obvious issues with authority; there are obvious problems that are going on throughout Europe. Huss will point those out, and he will become kind of the focal point for a lot of the conservative movement. A lot of those people are trying to maintain their positions, often purchased through simony. And many of his ardent critics are actually former friends of his. When authorities come down on them, they will buckle under the pressure and in turn give up Huss as sort of the sacrificial lamb for these arguments. So he really is wrapped up within these arguments and is accused of things that he never promotes. He s accused of ideas of Wycliffe that his party wants to discuss and wants to really debate, which the papacy whichever one at the time, because it changes wants burned.
It Is Written Script: 1227 Unpopular Truth Page 5 They are supporting this discussion, but the papacy is really trying to stop the spread of Wycliffe s ideas. So Huss is put into the position of leader, the most visible figure, because of the Bethlehem Chapel, of those who are supporting the discussion of these ideas. John Wycliffe s greatest contribution to the Protestant Reformation was when he translated the Word of God into the common language of the people. Until that time, people simply couldn t access the Word of God. But all of that changed. This was back before the printing press had been invented. The Scriptures had to be copied out laboriously by hand. But as they were, lives were changed as now people had access to the Word of God. The Bible was again in the hands of the people. There was no law preventing people forbidding people from owning the Bible when Wycliffe translated the Word of God. But all of that did change, and the penalties were severe. However, now the Bible was able to do its work. John Wycliffe untiringly preached the key doctrines of the Reformation. He preached that salvation was by faith in Jesus Christ. And he taught that the Holy Scriptures were the authority, not the voice of the church. The power of the state church was broken in the lives of those people who trusted in Jesus and not in their works for salvation, and those who trusted in the authority of the Bible rather than in the authority of church teachers. It was very obvious in John Wycliffe s day that the Word of God and the traditions of the church were in very serious conflict. John Wycliffe was a Protestant. He protested against what he saw as the errors and the abuses of the church, and he would not comply with doctrines, dogmas and teachings that he perceived to be out of line with what the Bible taught. If men like John Wycliffe had not done what they had done, it s hard to imagine that today we would enjoy the spiritual freedoms that we now enjoy. John Wycliffe taught that rather than the church speaking through a pope or the church speaking through a priest, true spiritual authority came when God spoke through the Holy Bible. And Wycliffe taught that the true interpreter of the Holy Scriptures was the Holy Spirit rather than a church leader. Those Protestant principles are as important today as they were in John Wycliffe s day. Now, try as it might, the church was not able to secure the demise the execution of John Wycliffe. However, 40 years after he died, at the Council of Constance, it was decreed that John Wycliffe s bones should be exhumed and publicly burned.
It Is Written Script: 1227 Unpopular Truth Page 6 In a moment, the Protestant Reformation takes the world by storm, and the world would never be the same again. Thanks for joining me today. I m in Prague, in the Czech Republic, the home of John Huss, an early Protestant reformer who, along with John Wycliffe and others, laid the foundation for the Protestant Reformation, that great movement that pitted preacher against pope, and the Word of God against the traditions of the early church. Martin Luther is the name you most often hear associated with the Protestant Reformation. As a younger man studying at university, Martin Luther came across a Bible. And as he read that Bible, he was filled with awe. He was also filled with a sense of conviction. He recognized in a very stark way his own personal sinfulness. So Martin Luther made the decision that he would study for the priesthood. While in a monastery, Martin Luther found a Bible chained to the monastery wall. He read it again, filled with conviction, filled with a sense of his own sinfulness. Luther did everything he could to get out from under that sense of sinfulness. He practiced self-denial, even scourging. He fasted often. But Luther was left with a very strong sense of conviction for sin. As a loyal Roman Catholic priest, Martin Luther had the opportunity to travel to Rome. On the way to Rome, he encountered some things that left him conflicted. He thought about his own life of self-denial and then compared that to the luxurious living of many of the priests he encountered. It made him wonder. But it was when he got to Rome that he was absolutely scandalized. He witnessed among the priests and church leaders there the sorts of things that left him horrified. These were the very people that Martin Luther believed ought to be the holiest people of all. It was while Martin Luther was in Rome that the great turning point of his life came. The pope had promised a special indulgence to anyone who would walk up Pilate s staircase on their knees. Now, Pilate s staircase was the staircase on which Jesus walked shortly before he died. Keep something in mind: Pilate s staircase was in Jerusalem. Martin Luther was in Rome. The church s story was that the staircase had been transported from Jerusalem to Rome by a special miracle of God. And now here was Martin Luther climbing this staircase on his knees. As Luther ascended those stairs, he seemed to hear a voice speaking to his heart, saying, The just shall live by faith.
It Is Written Script: 1227 Unpopular Truth Page 7 He thought about what he was doing. He was trying to earn favor with God by his own works. The voice said, The just shall live by faith. Luther got up off his knees and he left Rome a changed man. Luther saw like never before the great importance of exercising faith in Christ for salvation, and the tremendous importance of following the Word of God. The blinders had been removed. Even though he went back to his work as a priest, Martin Luther determined that from then on, he would only teach the truths of the Bible, and he would no longer teach the truths and doctrines of the church if they did not square with what the Bible said. Martin Luther built on the work of those who had come before him. People like Huss, Jerome and John Wycliffe. And there were other Protestants. Menno Simons, the Anabaptists, Knox, Zwingli, Calvin and John Wesley. What these men and women all had in common was that they had a resolute belief that the Bible was the Word of God, and they believed that salvation was a gift of God that came by God s grace and was received by the faith of the believer. Thanks to the Reformists these bold, faithful ones who stood upon the Word of God and thanks to the Reformation, a time in which God s Word became primary again, men and women were able to get out from under the tyranny of the medieval church. They could stand upon the Word of God and receive Jesus Christ by faith and live lives of spiritual freedom. The Bible still teaches that salvation is a gift given to us by God. 1 John 1:9 says: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And Romans 6:23 says: For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. The leaders of the Protestant Reformation taught that church leaders were not to fleece their flocks, but instead were to feed their flocks. And the spirit of the Protestant Reformation taught this: The Christian believer doesn t believe what he or she believes because that s what he or she is being told to believe.
It Is Written Script: 1227 Unpopular Truth Page 8 We don t believe what we believe based on the say-so of a priest or a pastor or a theologian or a cleric. Instead, we believe what we believe because the Holy Spirit has guided us in the Bible to believe what God wants us to believe. It s remarkable that many people do not value religious freedom today, perhaps because they just get used to living this way. They don t realize what it would be like not to have it. Whereas there are multiplied millions of people around this world who know nothing of religious freedom because they have never experienced religious freedom many people don t realize what a high price was paid for our religious freedom. For one, Jesus died on the Cross. That s the greatest price that could possibly be paid for anything. And then during the Middle Ages, there were many millions of people who gave their lives so that they could experience religious freedom. Instead of being told what to believe, instead of doing what the church mandated they do, they stood up and boldly declared their faith in the Son of God, and their faith in the Bible. For that they paid the ultimate price. They valued salvation that much. Today, many people do have a Bible. It is true that the great amount of people don t value that Bible enough to read it and to study it and base their lives on it. If you re a Protestant, what are you protesting? What does the Reformation mean to you? It happened hundreds of years ago. Has it changed your life? Does it mean anything in practical terms in your life today? If you allow it to, the Bible can become the greatest priority in your life. You ll know God like you have never known Him before. You will experience true closeness with Jesus, and you will experience great spiritual freedom. Perhaps the greatest thing that the Reformation can do for you is to help you value the Word of God to help you value this great gift of salvation, that you can experience through faith the great grace of the God of Heaven. And the truth is, you can experience that right now. Let me pray for you. PRAYER: Our Father in Heaven, we thank you that through Jesus, and then through the faith, the bravery, and the actions of great men and women down through time, we have been given your Word, and we have been given the freedom to practice our faith in you according to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
It Is Written Script: 1227 Unpopular Truth Page 9 Father, I don t know how long we will have that freedom, but while we do, help us to treasure it and value it. And while we have the Word of God in our hands, I pray that it will become the counselor of our lives, the guide of our lives, and will truly be to us as the voice of God Himself. We thank you for these blessings and we pray today in Jesus name, Amen. It Is Written Box O Thousand Oaks, CA 91359 USA Tel: (805) 433-0210 Fax: (805) 433-0218 www.itiswritten.com