FQf0A1Ws55A

1:12And that's because he was really, I think, a very humble man. And he did not want to bring attention to himself. He wanted to bring attention to the Christ that he served. And so that's what I'm going to continue to try to concentrate. Of course, in the process. We will talk a little bit more about what he did as well. Also, let me remind you that next Sunday is the last Sunday for the history series, and after next Sunday, we will then, the following Sunday, go back to our normal Sunday school time, and classes will be divided up. We have a great slate of teachers lined up this semester. So, anyway, let's, if yes, can you ask Russell to tell us what he's teaching about? Okay, oh, yes, Brother Russell, go ahead and give a plug.

2:07Ask me next Sunday. Thanks, James. Okay, well, so, Jean Salvin, John Calvin. I can tell you in general. Okay. We're going to do a series called the Truth Project, which is something that we went through with the youth about five years ago. It's a video series that is sponsored by Focus on the Family. And there's going to be a study guide that you're going to go on. It's basically a biblical worldview course. Yeah. 12 weeks. Yeah.

2:41Very, very engaging course, too, I might add. You'll have an opportunity to discuss as well, as I understand. Okay, so, John Calvin, let's start with some quotations again. Who's got my mic? Start us, Michael. Instills his poison and fans the flame of our corrupt desires within us, we are yet not carried by any external force to the commission of sin, but our own flesh entices us, and we willingly yield to its allurements. Okay, let's pass it.

3:21No man is excluded from calling upon God. The gate of salvation is set open unto all men. Neither is there any other thing which keepeth us back from entering it, save only our own unbelief. Okay. The pastor ought to have two voices: one for gathering the sheep, and another for warding off and driving away wolves and thieves. The scripture supplies him with the means of doing both. All the blessings we enjoy are divine desposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the belief of our neighbors.

4:05When he orders you to forgive that man for whatever sin he has committed against you, he calls you to do so, not because that man deserves it, but because God Himself has forgiven you. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light. For in prosperity, we do not experience the worth of his assistance and the power of his spirit, as when we are opposed by men. That seems strange to us, but he who sees more clearly than we knows far better what is advantageous for us.

4:53Now, when he permits his children to be afflicted, there is no doubt but that it is for their good. Thus, we are forced to conclude that whatever he orders is the best thing we could desire. Okay. And let me just say that last one, he literally lived that. As we're going to see, this man suffered a lot. And he never complained, at least publicly. There's some that he privately would, but he was almost Job-like in terms of his suffering. Yea, Lord, though you slay me, I will still follow you. Okay.

5:37We left off last time. We actually want to do a little catching up. We covered the fact that it's not until he goes to law school, ironically, that he's going to really be very strongly introduced to the gospel. And that's because of this guy, Volmar, who was a professor of Greek. He taught, you know, sort of a side study there at the law school, the classics, Homer, Demosthenes, Sophocles, folks like that. But then, as I told you last time, he privately would teach a Bible study, how to read the Greek New Testament, to those of his students who are interested. And you, of course, had John Calvin attending those private studies, along with some leading lights of the Reformation later on. This is where he makes some lifetime friends. And among those is the guy that would later succeed him in his leadership at Geneva, and that would be Theodore Beza. Matter of fact, Calvin dies with Beza holding him in his arms.

6:48So you have Calvin really immersing himself in the scripture in the original language, the Greek language, the New Testament. And of course, this brings him to read the epistles of Paul. And, you know, this, of course, you know, brings him pretty much to the same conclusion on the topic of grace that Luther had already arrived at. Salvation was entirely by the free and sovereign grace of God conveyed through faith alone and Christ alone. And so, you know, this he's going through. And by the way, Calvin, no. Personally speaking, he would just totally exasperate me because I tend to be a little sloppy in my approach to things and hurry-scurry and slap-dash. This guy, you know, stopped, very, very slowly, very, very methodically, would examine every little thing and think about it and then do it again, and then think about it, and then maybe finally make a decision. You know, he was just, his approach was very methodical in everything he did. And so he takes, and that's one reason why we don't know just when he comes to salvation. It's not really clear. It's about a three-year period. We know it happens sometime within that three-year period, but it's not going to be like a lightning bolt striking a tree and knocking him to the ground like you have with Luther moment.

8:29So anyway, but he certainly headed that way at this point. Now, and this is one of the reasons. You know, he had been brought up a Roman Catholic, and he was one of these straight arrows that he totally accepted the whole ball of wax of Roman Catholicism. And if he's going to reject that, he needs to develop in his mind an entire system to replace that. And, of course, that. Takes a little time to do, you know, and really, we know by this period of questioning and coming to Christ, we know it's between 1529 and 1533, about a three-year period that he was really struggling over all this. And we know by 1533, as I'll show here in a moment, that he had come to faith by that moment. You know, he's flat out preaching Christ at that point. But this system had come together by then. We don't see it laid out for us until 1536 when he comes out with the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which just, you know, at first was a small pamphlet, and then it grows and grows and comes a multi-volume work, which, you know, is going to make him very, very famous. All right. So, yet, during that three-year period, he's quite busy.

9:58Around 1529, I told you last time, he and some of his friends went to Bruges. You know, were who was, let's see, Josiah, got to be there this summer and was real impressed with that city. And there, he goes to study a law professor under a law professor that he thought was better than the professor back at the University of Orléans. And so he goes, and this Alciate is the professor they study law under. And by the way, you know, he does. Finish and get his, he will ultimately get his law degree. But while he's there, you see the signs of this moving to Christ, if not had already come to Christ, because he starts giving lectures on rhetoric at the local Augustinian convent. Notice Augustinian. Okay, Luther was with the Augustinians. And it turns out that the prior there, Marlrat, will later, I think, be martyred.

11:01He'll come to Protestantism as well. And so he's giving, he basically starts preaching sermons at this date at this monastery. And in 1531, he produces a commentary that at first glance appears to be just kind of a secular work. It is De Clementia on clemency, is the English translation of that. It's on the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca, which that would be quite a, that would be a whole nother lecture in itself to talk about Seneca. A famous Roman philosopher. He had a very unfortunate student. He's called Nero, who the Christians call the beast. And not a great student-teacher relationship because Nero will later have him killed. After using him as a minister, I mean, you know, government official, he then gets dissatisfied with him, has him killed. But this particular work by this Roman philosopher was on the topic of clemency. In other words, Seneca was an early proponent of not using torture.

12:14And Calvin writes this commentary, which frankly took up where Erasmus had left off. Erasmus had also done a commentary on this guy. And he actually corrected Erasmus in some of his Greek, which is really interesting. And so he comes out with this. And some people say, ah, he's wavering between being a famous humanist writer, philosopher, and he's not sure where he wants to become a Christian or not. And actually, I've come across some who argue that. I think there is a better argument, and that is that actually his audience that he's writing to is the king, which, by the way, in case you don't know it, his original purpose for writing the Institutes was also to address it to Francis I, who's king during most of his lifetime. And I think some argue that he knew that Francis, and by the way, at this point, Francis is starting this very severe persecution. We'll talk about it in more detail when we talk about the placards.

13:30You have Francis was in love with humanistic philosophy, humanistic writings, and scholarship. And remember, initially, he was somewhat friendly towards the Protestants, not because he really liked them, but just because he knew it would tick off his nemesis, you know, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. There's this real political thing going on. France, you know, imagine it right here. Then you have Germany over here, and then you have Holland on the top of France. Germany completely envelops the eastern part of France. Then you have northern Italy, and then you have Spain over here to the south. Well, Charles rules all of that. France politically was being encircled by this Habsburg dynasty. And of course, you know, Francis is fearful that the Habsburgs are going to take over France. And so anything he could do to weaken the power of Charles V, he would do it. And every opportunity to sort of tweak Charles, he would try to do that. And since Charles was so, you know, after the Protestants, he was a little more friendly towards them, so to speak. But anyway, Francis' sister was very much like a humanist. Well, she's a princess, you know, down there of Navarre, but very wealthy, very powerful. Her brother. Of the king of France, but she also was very much like Erasmus. She was approaching towards Protestantism. She never quite got there, but she was very friendly towards people who were going that direction as well. And in fact, she wrote a book under a pseudonym, and it was so leaning towards Protestantism that the college, the Sorbonne, all right, the Sorbonne is like one of the leading schools in terms of law and theology in France. It was the epicenter of fanatical Roman Catholicism. And it was very sensitive to writings that were being published. And remember, there's no freedom of the press like we have today. And the Sorbonne would often put books on the censorship list that they did not like and would condemn the books. Well, when she published this book, it was entitled Mirror of Death, I believe, and that's off the top of my head, might be incorrect there. But when this book came out, the Sorbonne had a fit and they condemned it and all this. And then it comes out, it's written by the sister of the king of France. And Francis was furious with the Sorbonne because it's embarrassing his sister. All right, so anyway, what some think Calvin was up to when he came out with De Clementia was that he was trying to point out to the king that just like the ancient Romans were persecuting minorities and using torture and stuff like this, he's arguing you shouldn't do that. And something Calvin was hoping that the king, who always loved to read new works that came out on matters like this, would read this and think about what he's doing to the Protestants and back off. So whether that's the case or not is still debatable, but that's, I think, really probably is the more likely of why he does this. Now, so I have Philip there. That should be Francis. I don't know why. I keep confusing Francis with Philip, so I forgot to go back and correct that. So now, however, before I leave this work on De Clementia, let me just mention something else. Already, even if he was writing this as a secular piece of publication to get attention, one thing really sticks out, you clearly see his approach to studying anything, any kind of manuscript, including the Bible, and that is he sticks to the text.

18:01In that sense, most definitely, our pastor is similar to John Calvin. If you know anything about Tom, he doesn't care what the popular winds of doctrine that are out there. All he cares about is what that text, our Bible, says, and what was the intent of the writer under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And he was just very much sticks to the text. He attempts to understand the context of the text and the literal meaning of the passage. And Tom plus Brother Clyde, they are killers on grammar. Okay, I mean, and of course, with Tom, I notices even more. You know, a part of this with Calvin, I think, comes from his legal training. With Tom, I think it comes from his engineering. If you know anything about engineers, they are very methodical.

18:58Years ago, when I would host a graduate Bible study of our intervars, you know, we had such a various grouping of students. And we would have from every field of study you could imagine and from every denomination you could imagine. That was a very interesting study in that sense. But one thing that always was kind of humorous to me is if you have somebody that's from like the humanities background, particularly English, and you read the text, and they had a tendency, I think. Think partly due to their training to go off in all kinds of wild allegorical meanings of the passage. And then you've got the engineers sitting over here. But it doesn't say that, you know, they're more to, you know, this is what the passage says. You know, and I really appreciate those engineers and those Bible studies. But anyway, Calvin, you know, he's like that as well. Now, he returns to Paris in 1533. And by now, it's very clear he has had an experience with Jesus Christ of Nazareth, personal experience, because he's going to identify himself with the Protestants located there in Paris. And you have this Etoine de la Florge, and I know my French is terrible, but he had a fairly nice home there, and he would invite people interested in Protestant views. And basically, Calvin would preach to them there. And now, this is in the center, the capital of France, where Protestants are being burned at the stake. And so he does this knowing at any moment he could be arrested and executed. So I think it's pretty safe to say he's really become a Christian now. He's willing to lay down his life for the gospel. Now, He has great success, by the way. Quite a few people come to Christ through his preaching, and of course, some of them he encourages to go forth and share their faith. In fact, he'll do this for the rest of his life, knowing full well that some of these young men that will go out there may lose their life, you know, as a result of sharing the gospel. But of course, he was willing to do it. You know, he's not a hypocrite by any means. He's not asking him to do anything that he had not already done himself. Now, along this time period, he somehow develops a relationship, a friendship, with Nicholas Kopp. And Nicholas Kopp was, you know, a rising scholar, apparently well-connected, and apparently just a very well-liked person.

21:50And incredibly enough, Nicholas Kopp becomes the rector, the guy that runs the Sorbonne. Now, y'all remember what I told you about the Sarbon? This is the epicenter of Roman Catholicism, orthodoxy, in France. How in the world they appointed him to be their rector is, you know, I would need to do further research on that, but it really kind of boggles the mind that they, you know, this, you know, at least from the Roman Catholic perspective, appointing Nicholas Kopp is like, you know, picking the fox to guard the hen house, so to speak. And I think part of the reason was they had no idea that. Nicholas Kopt had come to faith in Christ. And so, Copt, when you become the rector, you're supposed to give sort of an introductory lecture to the gathered members of the Sraban and more or less introduce yourself and kind of show off your speaking abilities and your scholarship and irredition, all this. And so he gives the speech before the members of the Sraban, and it's kind of ironic the date is on the Feast of All Saints Day, November the 1st, or the day after October the 31st, which we all know is Halloween here, but it's actually All Saints Day, right? And do y'all remember what else happened on that is Reformation Day. That is when Luther nails his 95 Theses, you know.

23:29So we don't know if he did this on purpose, but it's kind of interesting that the timing of this, you know, they'd have a feast the next day, you know. And so on that day, Copp gets up before the Sraban and basically preaches a Protestant sermon to the members of the Sraban. And they noticed that it was Protestant, and they are furious. And they are. Course, demand that Copp be arrested. You know, the guy that yesterday they elected, today we want to, you know, we want to burn him, all right? So Copt apparently had expected this, you know, and he fled, you know, beef or boogie, got out of town, you know, and he heads over to Basel. And apparently, we're not quite sure that is a precipitating incident, but shortly after this, the authorities go after John Calvin. And Calvin goes into hiding.

24:38Very wealthy individual is going to hide him in this mansion. This is outside of Paris, which had this splendid library. And he does intensive study while he's there. He's actually quite happy, you know, to be able to. He really loved to study, especially the scripture. Just love that. You know, if he could have his wish of wishes, is just to shut himself off some words, study the scripture. You know, that's what he loved to do. But anyway, while he's hiding out, they, of course, raided his apartment there in Paris, and they find Copp's entire text of his speech that he had given to the Sorbon, word for word, written in Calvin's handwriting.

25:28So we're not quite sure. Either Calvin saw the speech beforehand and thought it was so great he hand-copied it, which doesn't seem likely, or Kopp actually, his speech was written for him by Calvin. Or they certainly seem to have collaborated together on this speech, which, of course, makes Calvin even a bigger target for them, but they can't find it. So, eventually, Calvin winds up in Basel, Switzerland. And meantime, back in Paris, I've already mentioned this previously. You have this affair of the placards, which I think I need to explain a little bit more.

26:13Some very zealous, but not very wise, Christians there in Paris who were excited about their faith and Protestantism. They decide to take just thousands of these little placards, and some of these may have been in paper, but most of them were probably, they had these little thin pieces of wood which they would put signs on. Okay? You know, sort of like poster boards. And so these Protestants fan out over Paris. And let me point out to you, Paris is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, right?

26:54And these placards just really criticize Roman Catholicism. They really go after just certain major points of Catholicism, which they thought departed from Scripture. And they did it in a very blunt, almost in-your-face, insulting way, which is not a good approach to witness. And this angered the Roman Catholic authorities in Paris. And as I told you last time, to top it off, put the cherry on top of the cream, they snuck into King Francis' bedroom and they plastered one on the wall of his bedroom. And so that was it. You know, that just really ticks off Francis. And he orders a massive search for Protestants in Paris, round them up, and many of them are going to be executed back in Paris. And of course, Calvin is very aware of this. He knows about it happening. And he is concerned that Francis is also doing this, partly because he thinks that all Protestants are like terrorists, that they're out of control. You've got to remember that simultaneous with all this, you have the Anabaptists.

28:27And of course, we have covered two of. What I think were very biblical, very orderly Anabaptists, Baltazar Hubmeier, and we also covered Mikhail Stadler. And those guys were very legit, they were, you know, very much under control, very biblical in their approach. But unfortunately, a lot of the Anabaptists weren't. Some of them went off in all kinds of wild directions. And of course, you have the group that took over Munster, and they literally went crazy with some of the things they were doing. And so, just the very word Anabaptist becomes a catch-all for a lot of groups of people doing weird things, even violent things. And a lot of them weren't even really Anabaptists. They just got, you know, they get thrown into the hopper there. And so Calvin is concerned that Francis is operating under this misunderstanding of mainstream Protestantism, which you know anything about Protestants, they're actually very, very orderly, you know, especially the later Puritans who were, you know, famous followers of Calvin. They were just very, very orderly in everything they did. So anyway, Calvin therefore decides he's got to write something that would correct this misunderstanding. And so he's going to come up with, and of course, this is Francis, and he's the one that orders this persecution. You know, he's also. So, the guy that brings the Renaissance is under his reign that the Renaissance fully hits France.

30:07But anyhow, he, of course, writes his almost, you could say, monumental Institutes of the Christian Religion. Now, in writing this, this is to Calvin what the 95 Theses is to Luther. It's quite different. a little lengthier, of course, not that lengthier at this point. You know, he'll later flesh it out. But it's very similar in this sense. Calvin did this anonymously. At first, he didn't put his name to the work. And it wasn't that he is scared or anything like that. He didn't want to bring attention to himself.

30:53Martin Luther never dreamed that writing the 95 Theses would make him world famous. In the same sense, John Calvin, he really intended this for an audience of one, the King of France. But once the 95 Theses, excuse me, the Institutes are published, it just goes international, much like the Nine Five Theses did. And, of course, everybody wanted to know who wrote this. And someone, I don't know who, I suspect is probably one of the printers involved in printing. This let it out that this young Frenchman, John Calvin, wrote this. And this is overnight, once this gets out, is going to make him very, very famous, which he definitely did not want. So you have this quickly becoming a Christian classic, and he wrote it. If you go to the original preface, he addresses the Institutes to Francis. Okay, I got it right that time, King Francis. And, you know, and he wants them to see that, you know, this is all based on the Bible. It's not a terroristic theology. It is scriptural. And, you know, you should be tolerating Protestants, not burning them at the stake. Okay, now, and that pretty much says what I've already said. So, Steel already covered that as well. All right, so, of course, it lays out the Articles of the Reformed Faith in a very, very clear, very systematic manner. You see Calvin the lawyer coming here in terms of his order and everything. All right, so in 1536, he decides to leave Basel, and he wants to go to Strasbourg, which that's where Busser is going to be, and much more favorable climate for Protestants there at Strasbourg. Strasbourg. However, at this moment, Charles V and Francis are at war with each other. And the normal route he would take to go to Strasbourg, he couldn't go that way. And, you know, not quite the same situation with Jesus when he said, I must needs go through Samaria. But with Calvin, I must needs go through Geneva to get to Strasbourg because, you know, the other ways are blocked by this fighting that's going on. So he, his sister, I think two of his brothers, some other friends of his, were traveling in a party, and they stop off at an inn in Geneva for the night. He didn't have any intention of staying in Geneva. Now, he is somewhat familiar with Geneva. A lot of people don't realize this because I've already covered that for you, right? You know, his cousin, childhood friend, Pierre, had been there, had done some tutoring of some of the town council children there, and had run into Pharrell, who Calvin's about to run into, and had worked with Pharrell to bring the Reformation to Geneva. And he had written, a correspondent with his cousin, and knew about all this. But still, he also knew from writing with his cousin that. Things in Geneva were a mess, and he did not want to stay in Geneva. He wants to get to Strasbourg. He wants to be an academic, he wants to study, and he wants to write. And he has no intention of being, you know, a major reformer and get caught up in politics and all that as well. You know, that's not what he's wanting. So he puts into the inn, and of course, William Pharrell hears about almost immediately. Now, Pharrell is a guy who had just recently convinced the city council there to adopt Protestantism, but it was very, very, very shaky ground that he was standing on. He knew this. He knew he needed help.

35:18And so when he hears that, you know, Pierre Allaton's cousin has arrived in Geneva, and he already knows that this guy is the guy that wrote the Institutes. And he's famous already because of that. He thinks, the Lord has sent the help I need. And so he heads over to the inn and he confronts Calvin. And when I say he confronts him, I mean he starts off the conversation along the lines, the Lord has sent you here to help reform the city of Geneva. And Calvin said, no. No, no, no, no, no. I'm just here for the night. I'm leaving in the morning. All right. And so remember, Pierre is not there. Pierre had already left. Remember, Pharrell had convinced him he should translate the Bible into French. And he comes out of this first French translation of the Bible. And for whatever reason, he couldn't do that in Geneva. He had to leave the city. So Pharrell, you know, is there kind of feeling like the Long Ranger. He thinks he needs help. And a heavy gun, so to speak, and Calvin's the guy he targets. All right, so Calvin declines, explained that he desired only to find a quiet refuge for study. And Pharrell refused to take no for an answer, and he's very upset, even angered by Calvin's refusal, you know. And so he forcibly tells Calvin, God would bring a curse down upon him unless he stayed in Geneva and helped reform the city. And he actually said a whole lot than that, okay? And so Calvin, you know, he's very young, he's very impressionable still. Pharrell certainly had a sense of authority about him. And Calvin is really kind of shaken, and he feels like he's hearing the voice of God through Pharrell telling him, son, you're trying to do what you want to do, not what I want you to do. And so, let's just go to Calvin Willie said himself. It says, I felt as if God from heaven had laid his mighty hand upon me to stop me in my course. And I was so terror-stricken that I did not continue my journey. So, 28 years old, he agrees to stay with Pharrell to minister there in Geneva.

37:58Now, he begins his ministry in Geneva. First, start out like a lecturer, then, you know, his talents for speaking quickly come out. You know, I didn't really have time to, I started to put this in, didn't have time to go search it out again. Right after they arrived there, you had a call for another disputation, all right, between the Catholics and the Protestants. And, of course, the city of Geneva is supposed to send representatives. And they have the debate take place, and Pharrell's there with Calvin. And, you know, at first, the Catholics were just, they were just creaming them. You know, they had great speakers, they had great arguers for their side. And Pharrell is getting frustrated. You know, Pharrell, if he gets angry, upset, he couldn't make a good presentation. You know, he just would have problems. And Calvin's just sitting there quietly watching everything. And Pharrell finally looks at Calvin and says, Can you say something, you know? And Calvin finally gets up and he just starts meticulously.

39:08It kind of reminds me of my wife when she used to write me letters. You know, she, I'm one of these, you know, I won't get over and have a verbal confrontation and then, okay, all right, I'm satisfied. Well, no, she kind of soules up and won't say anything, but she would write me a letter, and, you know, she's a scientist, and I'd feel like she'd got out one of her little knives and scalpels and was dissecting me. Okay, well, that's what Calvin does here, but verbally. He took the Catholic position and he systematically destroyed it, you know. And in fact, he is so effective that one of the major speakers for the Catholic cause at the end of Calvin's presentation stood up and says, I ask forgiveness of God. I have been wrong in what I have been believing, you know, and converted on the spot to Protestantism. I mean, that is a rare thing for you to see happen, you know. And, of course, Calvin was just incredible in his knowledge of scripture and how to present it, you know. And in fact, Calvin would preach without notes, which is just absolutely incredible. You know, if you read his sermons, you think. Think every word was laid out long before. I guess mentally it probably was. But he was, you know, he could just give a sermon extemporaneously and have all the materials right there. You know, his head as though it's coming straight from Wikipedia. You know, he knew exactly where he was going. So anyway, so Calvin's there, and he's with Pharrell. But remember, both these guys and Pharrell, I characterized him last time as sort of a bull in a china shop. He sometimes, he's very, very zealous, but sometimes lacked, shall we say, wisdom and would go and do and say things that would really tick off a lot of people. Calvin's a lot more reticent, but Pharrell's leading Calvin. And frankly, they get into a lot of trouble. You know, they had some of these ideas and they're trying to implement them and they're trying to implement them lacking tact in their approach, so to speak.

41:30And I don't have time to go on all the different issues that were going on at the time, but the big one was communion, the Lord's Supper. Calvin felt like if you got somebody who's flagrantly living in open sin and they come to partake of the Lord's Supper, that they would be, you know, and of course, this is scriptural, they are drinking condemnation upon themselves if they do so. So he kind of used the communion almost like a means of church discipline. If it had been brought to his attention that someone is flagrantly in sin and he confronts them and tells them, and they refuse to repent, you should not take the communion. That was his view of it. And he would refuse to give them the communion.

42:17And the trouble about this is some of these were very prominent politicians and powerful, wealthy people in Geneva. And you don't make friends that way. Because when they come and they were expecting to receive the communion, of course, he had warned them beforehand, I'm not going to give you if you come. And of course, they thought, well, no, he won't do that. And sure enough, he refused to give them communion. And this, of course, humiliated them, embarrassed them, caused a whole community is there watching this. And needless to say, after he does this, the power brokers there, they run him out of town, literally, he and Pharrell. And it's more than just the communion, by the way, but that was really one of the key issues. So Calvin's first ministry at Geneva is very short. It's, I think, a little less than two years. He's there. And then they literally run him out of town. And so, but he was actually not too sad about that because he gets to go to Strasbourg, which is where he wanted to go in the first place, right? And when he gets to Strasbourg, he is going to spend some of his happy years there. Strasbourg for a series of reasons. For one thing, Pharrell will eventually be sent off by the leader there, Buser, to another assignment. And Busser, it is kind of indicated in some of the writings that Busser did this on purpose. He felt like Pharrell was a bad influence on Calvin, and he wanted to get him off in a different direction. And so Busser now personally takes on Calvin as sort of his mentor. And Busser was much more, shall we say, moderate type person in personality and approach to things, much more diplomatic. And of course, he was the leading Reformation figure there at Strasbourg. And Calvin still, you know, thinks, well, now I can become my, you know, quiet, scholarly, whatever, you know, and not have to worry about preaching, all this stuff. And Busser immediately says, no, no, you're obviously gifted to God. You need to preach, and I have a perfect congregation for you. There were about 500 French Protestant refugees who had fled to Strasbourg. And, you know, Strasbourg, they speak German. They need a pastor to speak to them in French. And obviously, you're the guy to do it. And so he finds himself as pastor of this.

45:01Little church there, which is really not that little, you know, 500 Protestant refugees there. And he, of course, began preaching there and he starts developing, you know, his views on church governments there. And he starts introducing, you know, the form of worship which would later denote, you know, particularly Calvinistic forms of worship. One of the big things he introduced was Psalms singing. Calvin, you know, one of his best commentaries, without doubt, is his commentary on the Psalms. He was just totally in love with the Psalms. And he felt they should not just be read, they should be done what was originally done with them. They should be sung. And so he begins this massive work of having the Psalms put to music. And he would always insist that part of the worship service they would sing some of the Psalms. Unfortunately, something I'm not happy with Calvin is, he was influenced by some of the early radical Protestant ideas that you shouldn't have musical instruments in church. So some of his services would, at first glance, we walk in there, we might think we just walk into a church of Christ. They famously still don't allow musical instruments. But they certainly had a lot of singing. And now the funny thing is, outside of church, he was in love with musical instruments as well.

46:31He had said very great things about music as one of the most wonderful gifts of God, but he didn't have instruments inside the church. Well, anyway, and the other funny thing about Calvin, everybody thinks he was such a stickler. When he gets to Geneva for the second time, he hired this composer because he's always trying, he's trying to get the entire book of Psalms put to music. And there's this guy who was extremely good at doing that, but he wasn't really a Protestant.

47:08And Calvin says, I don't care. If he can put the Psalms to music, I want to hire the guy. And so he was very pragmatic in that sense. So he's doing that. And, of course, he's preaching. He's preaching verse by verse. And there's the church there, which still stands today. Tried to get an interior view of this, but I just couldn't find it on the net anywhere. They're all exterior views of the church. But that's where he preached. And I already covered that. And oh, but I thought I put this up here because, you know, in one sense, already have the typical Protestant church service in that, you know, you know what psalm you're going to sing, what number, and all that as the services began. He began that practice. And it's also here that he writes his famous commentary. On the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, which is another famous commentary by him. And he also begins enlarging the institutes. He would add to it, add to it, add to it. Okay. And he also, at this time, is going to write what some consider to be one of the greatest apologetic writings. You know, I would say in the 20th century, that'd be Mirror Christianity by C.S. Lewis. For him, it would be when this Catholic cardinal writes a letter addressed to the city council at Geneva, where Calvin had previously been, but of course, the Catholics make sure it gets out to the general population. And the letter was intended to try to convince the Genevans to come back to Catholicism. Cardinal Jacopo Saledo. And Sotoleto. So this starts causing real problems back in Geneva. Some of the Genevans want to go back to Catholicism, and this really kind of accentuates that. And so the city council, which is still Protestant, even though they kicked out Calvin and Pharrell, they need someone, a champion, to stand up to defend Protestantism. And apparently they remembered how good Calvin was at doing that. So they sent a letter to Calvin begging him to write an answer to Sotoleto's letter.

49:31And so he does. He writes a reply to Sotoleto. And boy, does he do a job? He really does a great job. And that becomes a classic work as well, Reply to Sotoleto. And of course, I think that really made an impression back in Geneva, but that's for later. Okay. He also, during this time, is sent by Busser to a number of conferences and disputations again with Roman Catholic authorities. You know, they're having this intense debate throughout Europe. And it's kind of interesting, you know, that you get the impression, you know, you're about to have the 30 years' war and there's constant fighting between Protestants and Catholics. You would think that there's just absolute, total hostility, and there was a large degree of that. But apparently, you would have these meetings of the leading scholars in quiet places and they would formally, you know, really hash it out as to what their differences were. And he was involved in that. And of course, he made a lot of connections doing this. Calvin is kind of interesting in that he would carry on friendly correspondence with people that he totally disagreed with, and they would return. He seems to have an ability that even in disagreement, he's able to communicate with people. You know, not what we have today on the internet where everybody's screaming and yelling past each other. Okay. Back in Strasbourg, he, of course, is preaching. And in the process, he had some Anabaptists come, and he is going to convince them to come back to the Reformed view of faith. And one of these is Jean Strödner. I don't know how you pronounce that, but Jean Ströder, who was an Anabaptist pastor from Liege, and he had become a member there, participated, and then he dies, natural causes. And he has a wife with two kids. And she's a widow. And Calvin was searching for a wife.

51:51And frankly, Busser had got him. Busser was very concerned about Calvin. As we're about to see, he had all kinds of health problems. And Busser felt you need a good wife to take care of you, and you should consider getting married. And he even found this very wealthy, well-connected young lady. You know, most guys would jump at the opportunity back then. And Calvin says, no. He says, I want to marry this widow lady. And that's kind of, you know, even back then, marrying someone with two kids. You know, make most guys think twice, you know, right? And, but, and by the way, Booser was very impressed with this lady, too. He said, well, you know, that she's, in fact, he wrote a letter to him saying she had excellent qualities and this was okay. And so Calvin marries Adelette de Bure, Adelet.

52:55And, you know, basically adopts the two kids. And they, this is some of the happiest times of Calvin's life with Adelette. She would only live nine more years. They, of course, after marriage, have a son, Jacques. But Jacques was born prematurely, and I think after a couple of weeks, he died. I think it was eight days. Was it a day? I think it was eight days. Eight days, yeah. And Jacques, you know, this really, you know, put them in deep grief. Later on, she would, you know, she would have a little girl, same thing. And later on, there's another child. We're not even quite sure even what the sex of that child was. I read one where they thought was another little girl and she would die.

54:06Now, I don't think my wife would mind me saying after Hannah and Zach, which we were internally grateful for, my wife went through the same thing. And that was a tough time. And, of course, well, I'll have this come up later, but I won't just say it right now. The Catholics had a field day with this. They were laughing and ridiculing and saying, see, this shows that God is judging you and He's punishing you. And Calvin's only public reply to that was, Well, I will be content with the children that Christ sends to me by the gospel. In other words, that His children would be those who come to saving knowledge of Christ. Now, it's a good thing he married Ivalette because he did need someone to take care of him. And I did not get near as far as I intended to get today, but we're out of time. So we will finish this next time. I may have to do a real skinny on his actual return to Geneva. I was hoping to get him back to Geneva. We didn't quite make it today. So, with that, protect. Would you pray for us this morning? Heavenly Father, we just thank you for the