Of course there's a lot of confusion today about what the Bible really says. But its not the Bible that's confusing. Its those who make it say what they want it to say, who have confused its message.

It takes work to discover ideas that creep into our thinking. They may seem reasonable and good. But if they don't come from Scripture they will change or confuse God's message. Therefore we need to know what facts the Bible contains.

We don't have to work alone in our search for what God has said in Scripture.

That heritage did not begin with Martin Luther. God's word has never gone unchallenged. Ever since the fall of man in Eden, people have developed ideas that are wicked and false. And in each age God raised up Great Reformers.

Noah stood alone in a wicked world of unbelief and immorality. But he faithfully delivered God's message of grace to the taunting world. In 2 Peter 2:5 Noah is called "a preacher of righteousness." He stood by God's word.

Abraham struggled to build a faithful family while they were surrounded by paganism and immoral nations. He had one thing that helped him through his own failures, and that gave him a lesson for his children; God's revealed truth.

Moses didn't just lead a revolution of slaves to set them free from Egypt. He brought them the promises and laws of God.

King David, though a weak man himself, found God's word to be the strength he needed. By it he lead a nation and restored a forgotten form of worship.

The Prophets confronted kings and stood against corrupted cultures. But they stood strong because they knew and respected God's word.

Jesus was attacked by the popular religious leaders of his age. But he corrected the Pharisees and the Sadducees. As our example, he showed us how to use the spoken word of God effectively.

The Apostle Peter was beaten and arrested. But, though rejected by most, God blessed him. He lived by and taught the word the Savior had taught him.

The Apostle Paul was beaten, jailed, and his life threatened repeatedly. But he never ceased to speak humbly and gently the truth of God's word. Even in prison, his closeness to the truths of God gave him a peace that defied understanding.

Each of these reformers did battle with the same weapon -- the word of God. They stood against the shifting tides of persecution, heresy, apathy, opportunism and compromise. They humbly tried to correct their own errors. And they unselfishly sacrificed career, comfort and, in some cases, their lives, for the spiritual well-being of others whom they learned to deeply love. They worked by the basic principle of Reformation...

They didn't compete for public approval, to gather large crowds, to put on big shows, or to organize programs for every interest and age. That was the goal of the Babylonians and Egyptians in OT times. That's what the Pharisees provided in the corrupted synagogues in Jesus' time.

But God's people were to measure success in a different way. Rather than compromise for comfort and ease, they are to settle for simpler things which bring peace, promise and God's approval.

This struggle continued all through church history.
In its early days confusion began to move the church away from its biblical roots. About 300 years after the death of Christ the Roman persecutions ended. Christianity became the state religion of Rome under Emperor Constantine. That for which martyrs fought and died became watered down into a diluted popular culture. Many still held to God's word as the foundation for their faith. But others added superstitious and heathen ideas to the organized church. As Romanism and other sects grew it became harder to know what was right and true.

By the 1300's the Roman church had become more pagan than Christian.

John Wyclif was a scholar at England's Oxford University. His most radical idea was that the Bible was the whole of God's revelation to us, therefore we needed no other teachings from church tradition or from any pope or council.

He further insisted that every statement of popes and councils ought to be tested by Scripture. So he and his disciples translated the Bible into English.

He provided a biblical foundation for moving out from the rule of a corrupt church. He was hated because he was questioning the superstitious grip of the popes. In 1377 the pope condemned 18 of Wyclif's statements. In 1381 they blamed the peasants' revolt on Wyclif, though he opposed the revolt. This became an excuse to further condemn him. He died after a series of strokes but his ideas continued on. 20 years after his death he was condemned by a Roman church council, and some 30 years after his death, the angry church dug up his bones and burned them.

In Bohemia in the early 1400's, a university professor named John Huss began to study and teach the Bible. He was greatly convinced by the work of John Wyclif. Though he didn't see all the problems in the Roman church, he was a true reformer. He wanted to restore the Bible as the standard of truth and practice. But Huss was arrested as a trouble maker. After 8 months in prison he was publicly stripped of his minister's garments, made to wear a paper hat with devils drawn on it, and burned to death tied to a stake.

As the reformation spread in the next 100 years, Luther was called before a church council at Worms in 1521. He was threatened with excommunication from the church. Even his life was in danger. To save himself he was asked to retract the teachings he had found in Scripture. Luther replied with what is often called "the speech that shook the world" His concluding words were these ...

The same reformation spirit drove men like John Calvin in Geneva and John Knox in Scotland. Here in the United States it moved Robert Lewis Dabne, the Hodges, B.B. Warfield, J. Gresham Machen, Cornelius Van Til, Francis Schaefer and others of the reformed camp.

But why did God bring his church through so many hard conflicts? When there are no conflicts the human spirit tends to get lazy. Apathy is a horrible sin. Think of how tragic it is for God's people to be indifferent and uninterested in his word! Mankind lies in spiritual death. She deeply offends the God who made her. Her damnation is eternal. Our Savior took on human flesh. He was ridiculed, rejected, tortured and executed for the sins of his people! How dreadful that so few care to learn about this amazing work of our Savior!

So God challenged his church with heretics, persecutors, opportunists and compromisers.

He has driven his people to take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. That weapon is our only hope of correcting error and apathy. Its the weapon of reformation.

We are the reformers of our own era.
Today we live in a time where the religious, as well as the secular, need to be reformed.
Ethics is in deep confusion.
Truth is denied to really exist.

What makes us feel good at the moment is considered our greatest goal. Some get their emotional high from drugs, some from sex, some from political power, some from riches and career advancement, some from concerts, rallies and campaigns. In Hebrews 11:25 it tells of how Moses chose to endure ill-treatment with the people of God, rather than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. In verse 26 it explains that the reason was, he was looking toward the reward. He knew the temporal and deceptive nature of what sin offeres.

But what makes us feel good emotionally is not to be our standard! We are not the test for what is right. God is. His word is how we know that standard. Emotions are great things to have, and feeling good emotionally is a wonderful blessing. But when feeling good at the moment becomes the test of what we do then we have made ourselves gods, and trampled on the first four commandments.

Those wanting to reform such things back to the form given in Scripture often are hated. Its like the church is on a different wave-length, tuned into a different channel. The reason is; believers are thinking from a different starting point, judging by a different standard. God's word is their rule, not their feelings and their sinful urges.

This shouldn't surprise us. Jesus said we would be hated of men ...
Mt 10:22 "And you will be hated by all on account of My name..."
Jn 15:18-19 "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
The Apostle John wrote ...
1 Jn 3:13 "Do not marvel, brethren, if the world hates you."

This principle of reformation was summarized in a Latin expression:

It means "Scripture alone." The Bible is the only test God has given us of what is right and true.

In time another Latin expression was adopted:

It means "Ever to be remolded," or "Ever being re-formed." We must always be bringing our beliefs and practices under the scrutiny of Scripture. We must make sure that only what God has revealed is our standard and foundation.

So we who are "reformed" believers must be a people of the Bible.
We need to know what God says in it, what it means and how it applies to us.
We need to reflect on it so that it has an hourly effect on the way we think.
We need to submit all that we believe and do to its standard.

But as we make his word our meditation all through the day, and as we limit our beliefs to what the Scriptures say and as we make our actions, attitudes and relationships fit with what it says honors God, we will find the promised inner peace, joy and confidence God promises in that same word.

We must learn to say with full conviction those words of Psalm 119:97,