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0:57But anyways, all I have to say, though, is that I'm a historian by trade, and I surrendered to the ministry back in 2016. I was a pastor over at Shiloh Baptist Church in Robertson County for a few years, about three years, and then COVID hit. And like most of everybody in this room can say, COVID did a lot of things to us. It changed us in ways that we still don't understand. But my wife and child, Gloria and Caroline, Miss Caroline, is there in the red. You can't miss her. And she's very, very bouncy. And with that said, I'll keep the sermon short.

1:30But all that to say, though, is that tonight's sermon is going to be a bit of a lecture and also hopefully a bit of a sermon. If you would, please open your Bibles up as a kind of a jumping-off point to Psalm 42, and that's where we'll begin this evening. Tonight, I'm going to preach on assurance. And when I read Psalm 42, which for many of you here tonight, Psalm 42 is one of the more favorite psalms that you can read. It's up there with Psalm 23 and a few others. But Psalm 42, this is out of the New American Standard, 95. As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night. While they say to me all day along, Where is your God? These things I remember and pour out my soul within me. For I used to go along with a throng and lead them in the procession to the house of God. With a voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude-keeping festival. Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him for the help of his presence. O my God, my soul is in despair within me. Therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan, and the peaks of Hermon, and from Mount Mizar. Deep calls the deep at the sound of your waterfall. All your breakers and your waves have rolled over me. The Lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime, and his song will be with me in the night. A prayer to the God of my life. I will say to God, My rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of my enemy or of the enemy? As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me. And while they say to me all day long, Where is your God? Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God. If you would bow your heads, good and loving Lord, you give us words. You give us words of joy and high praise. And you also record for those times where we as humans are afflicted and we weep with bitter tears. Gracious Lord, open these words here from the Psalms and other passages of Scripture as only you can. Gracious Lord, I need your help. Open my mind to give the words to this congregation that we may praise you all the more and give them assurance that we all so desperately need at times. In Jesus' name, we pray these things. Amen.

4:10So this is Psalm 42. And for some of you in this room, I know you have heard this all your life. You've read Psalm 42 many, many times. But others in this room, this may be one of the first times to hear the psalm because you're a new Christian. And so in between the elder saint, and when I use the word saint, I mean. Believer here and with a new saint who has just come to a saving faith in Christ, listen to these words because tonight we're going to be talking, I'm going to be preaching on the issue of assurance, assurance. Because assurance is one of those great and important facets of us as Protestants that we depend upon, we rely upon, and frankly is what sets us apart from our friends and our neighbors who are Catholic.

4:57I will say this, and I do not intend to get worked up over the divide between Catholics and Protestants, Catholics and Baptists, but there are some real and different aspects of our dogma and our theology. It's just a simple fact, friends. But the fact of the matter is that when we talk about assurance and you read Psalm 42, you see this kind of a melancholy feel that comes forth from the words. All of us, if we're honest, have been there as Christians. All of us, before we were Christians, had been in anguish and turmoil. And just because we become Christians, and I say this to you who are young saints in the room, just because you become a Christian does not mean that it will all be sunlit uplands on this side of eternity. In eternity, it will be the sunlit uplands. In eternity, there will be no more tears. There will be no more doubts. There will be no more fears. But on this side, while we walk and tread this earth, some of you in this room might, in this room today, tonight, be afflicted. With doubt and fear. And others, you've overcome much. So I hope these words that I have for you tonight will help you. And so, one of the best individuals I can think of to help illustrate and to bring this issue of assurance to us is the, well, he's one of the fathers, in fact, arguably the father of the Protestant movement. And of course, that man's name is Martin Luther. Now, some of you in this room know Martin Luther's story all too well. You know it so well, you could probably teach it for me. And so, this is where the history lecture kind of comes out with me. Outside of perhaps John Calvin, there is no greater pillar within the Protestant Reformation than Martin Luther. Martin Luther, as I tell the biographical background to him, Martin Luther is a German. Martin Luther was born in Germany in about 1483, as I recall. Make sure I get my notes right. This is where the absent-minded professor gets going here and he forgets his notes. And if I knock something over, please have mercy upon me. But when it comes to Luther, he's born in about 1483. And Luther is a typical middle-class young man. He's a boy in a typical middle-class family. His father, Hans, is his dealings, has investments in the mining business. His mother, Margaret, is a very harsh individual. In fact, Luther, well, Martin Luther will talk about his parents just fleetingly at times, and he will say for both of them that they were typically harsh. German in the late 15th century, early 16th century. But Luther's father, Hans Luter, they didn't pronounce it Luther, but Luter. Hans Luter is a tough man. Some of you grew up in households where dad was the rod of the family. He was the man of the family. He was a tough man. And that is Hans Luter. He has definite goals and definite dreams for his son Martin, who is, in a sense, a prodigy.

8:01He, Hans, wants his son to become a lawyer, which is an entirely appropriate and an entirely good, worldly, secular calling. And in fact, it has the potential to make the Luter or Luther family wealthy, prominent, and important. Many people today, as then, become VIPs in life by being lawyers. We just dealt with law and lawyers and justices and judges in the last week, quite famously, with the Dobbs case out of Mississippi. But God had greater things for Martin Luther than to be a lawyer. So, anyways, Luther, Martin Luther, goes on to school. He goes on to the University of Erfur. And with young ears in the room, I've got to be a little bit tender here and be a little bit careful. The University of Erfurt was rowdy. So, for those of you in this room who've lived in College Station more than about five minutes, just imagine. Imagine college station on a Saturday night. Believe it at that. Just think along those lines there. Luther, later on in life, I think it was in one of his table talks when he was sitting around this dinner table later with some of his students, talked about Erfurt and he basically said it was a rowdy place. And he enjoyed life. Luther, by the way, so I'm clear about this to you, is a very compelling figure. Whereas Calvin is more bookish, more like an accountant, certainly very much law-driven. Luther is a driven man. Luther is a rambunctious man. Luther, you want to meet him. I joke in class, and again, if a couple of y'all may have had me before, but if I do joke in class from time to time, I say, when I die, I have a few questions. The first one is, am I getting in? And I say that jokingly here on a sermon with assurance, right? But I say that for my friend Pat Johnson, who remembers a guy named Ron Wright. That's where I get it from. But secondly, I'd like to meet some individuals in heaven. Martin Luther would be one of those individuals. Many others. But historically, Martin Luther would certainly be a high on the list. And everything was fine. And Luther was going through school. He was going through life.

10:16And then July 2nd happened to him. July 2nd, 1505. He is traveling in a back road in Germany. He is traveling home, as I recall. And what Luther does is he gets caught in. A thunderstorm. Now, one of the things we should remember compared to today is back in the 1500s, it is very, very dark in the nighttime. Some of you have been deep-sea fishing in the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, far into the Gulf of Mexico at the night, and you could see the Milky Way. Some of you have been to Canada on a hunting trip or Alaska or something like that, the Outback, or you've been on a mission trip to Mexico, not Mexico, say to Africa, where there is so little electricity perhaps, and it is pitch black in the nighttime. Secondly, what does Martin Luther think that thunderstorm, that electrical storm, is? It's a supernatural act.

11:12The thing to remember about this sermon lecture tonight is one subfacet would be this. Luther believes, and we do too by confession, that sin, and more particularly Satan, the devil, is active in this world. So Luther gets caught in a thunderstorm. He thinks it's the work of the supernatural, and he is scared. He is scared to the point where he cries out, help me, St. Anne. I will become a monk. Now, he was Catholic at that point in his life. Obviously, he had been toying and had been struggling with the idea of a call to the vocations. It just didn't come out of nowhere, but he believed, and for the rest of his life, he will struggle with this. What was that day on July 2nd for me? And it was the turning point in his life, and a few weeks later, he goes and he becomes an Augustinian monk and he goes into the cloistered walls. He surprises everybody. He surprises his friends. He surprises his family to the point where Hans Luter was so put out by his son, and he never really got over it, evidently, Papa Luther. Two years later, when Martin was being ordained and took holy orders in the sacramental system, evidently Hans Luter cornered his boy and said, Son, have you ever heard of the fifth commandment? Honor thy father and mother?

12:36And evidently, Martin was staggered. I wanted you to be a lawyer. You chose to be a priest. How dare you buck me? Throw me off. Refuse me. But Luther went into the cloister. And Luther is an intense man. That man does not take things easily. He does not just accept. And the thing we need to remember as we get into this issue of assurance is that Luther had no assurance. Ultimately, when we talk about Luther and his coming breakthrough in 1517 with a 95 theses, and more, particularly in 1518 or early 19 when he has his conversion experience, as it were, Luther had no assurance. And in the old sacramental system under the Catholic Church, and it's more or less the same to this day, in Unlike the Protestant church, unlike us as Baptists, where we believe that Christ's righteousness is imputed to us, it is laid forth upon us from without. It is like the righteousness of Christ born from his mighty crosswork is laid upon us like a cloak from without. And when God sees us, the Father sees us. When we come before him, he sees Christ. But under the Roman Catholic sacramental system that Martin Luther practiced when he became a monk and became an ordained minister, an ordained priest, it was not imputed righteousness, but infused righteousness. And here's the major difference: is that when you were baptized, the sacraments start to work on you under the Catholic understanding and dogma. And that as time goes on and you partake of that sacramental system, the infusing of the grace of Christ working alongside of the sinner produces a salvation unto purgatory.

14:34But the fact of the matter is that under the Catholic sacramental system, to this day, you can lose your salvation. To say it a little differently, Luther had no, or anybody who practiced the sacramental system, has no assurance. They cannot be sure that they are saved. A sin, a cardinal sin, a grand sin, a grave sin, consisting. Separates you from the love of God once and for all. So, how do you get rid of sin? Martin Luther is not a lazy man. He is not a foolish man. He is not a dumb man. He looks and he studies and he works harder. And as I recall in the Pilgrim's Progress, when you try to get rid of the sin, you sweep, right? And the more you swept, it just kicked up the dust. And the more Luther went to confession, and trust me, from what I can gather reading the historical record about Luther, that when he went to the confessional booth, you could almost imagine some of the priests running out the other end. And the reason I say that is because, unlike others who may have come in and offered a very perfunctory confession more often than not, Luther comes in and he spills his guts, he spills his soul to his confessor. And he can't confess enough.

15:54It's not just the sins of commission, the things you do, it's the things you think and the things you don't do that are sins. And he looked all about him and he saw nothing but sin in his life. Luther was a tormented man. But he's not the first in the history of that church to have been tormented in such a way. So his superior said, Brother Martin, go and get a degree. Go and learn languages, which, by the way, in the future. Brings us the Luther Bible. And it's one of the great hallmarks of the Protestant movement: that we can read and we should read our Bible. Thank you, Martin Luther, and William Tyndale, and all those other translators who have come down through history to give us what sits in your lap right now.

16:50Luther, to be very blunt about it, in fact, actually, to say it quite correctly, Luther, as he goes through his orders and he goes through his growth and his schooling and so forth, and he becomes Martin Luther, Master's candidate, and eventually Dr. Luther, he was asked, Martin, do you, let's see if I get the quote right in front of me, Brother Martin, do you love God? And this is Martin Luther as a monk speaking. He said, Love God? No, no, no. You asked me if I love God. Sometimes I hate God. I see Christ as a consuming judge who is simply looking at me to evaluate me and visit affliction upon me. That is a tortured soul who cannot confess his way out.

17:38There was no relief, no assurance. Yet he still was a priest, and yet he still went. Yet he still went and did his duties. That takes him to Wittenberg and takes him to become a college professor. And while he was at Wittenberg, it was there in the mid-15th century. Where he starts to study two important passages of Scripture, two important books of the Bible. He teaches his students Psalms and Romans. Many of you know the story going forward now. You're like, ah, here comes the breakthrough. Well, in fact, actually, he has two, in a sense, breakthroughs. One that starts to quiet the soul. You can almost see it when he reads and he starts to understand Psalm 22. You can almost see the water starting to go over Luther's levee, or Luther go over the levee, as it were. And he reads Psalm 22, which you know very well. And if you have it and you have your Bible open in your lap, turn with me for just a moment. Psalm 22, if you've never read this before, young Christians, you will have heard it when it was read at Easter or at Palm Sunday. Normally, we'd read it then, or more particularly, we read it through the Gospels on the Passion account. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning. And oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer. And by night, but I have no rest. Yet you are holy. O you who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel. And your fathers, in you, our fathers trusted. They trusted in you and delivered them. To you they cried out and were delivered. In you they trusted and were not disappointed. And on and on I can go. Your eyes can follow through. That is what Christ uttered on the cross. And so, in that sense, you see, when Luther was reading those words, and he may have read those words 10 times, 100 times. Older saints in this room, one of the things you know about growing old in the faith is that when you read a passage of Scripture one time, five times, ten times, or more, maybe it's on the 16th time, perhaps, something snapped. You had a light, a flash, the Spirit enlightened you and showed you something you never thought of before. And for Luther, he makes the connection that the writer of Hebrews does in chapter 4 and verses 14 through 16.

20:10Christ knows what I'm going through. Christ knows my anguish. That was the first breakthrough. And of course, the second breakthrough in Romans 1:17, Luther is still struggling, but as he keeps coming back to the words, righteousness and faith, righteousness and faith, righteousness and faith. Luther looks again and again. And I am not going to be overly, I mean not to be crude, but Luther is an earthy man. When you read him, he is earthy in his writings, in his sayings. Martin Luther, as a master teacher at Wittenberg, was given a choice office.

20:54And Luther, when he was reading and meditating on and praying and struggling over the words of Chapter 1, verse 17, and other words of Paul, but really that verse 17, righteousness and faith. The breakthrough, according to Luther, as he told it later, was in a lavatory. And I don't want you thinking about your bathroom. Think about a construction site port-a-potting. And I do that not to be crude, but I want you to understand: for some of you in this room, your breakthrough moment was when you were in the depths of torment, the depths of Sheol, as it were. You had that breakthrough moment in the most foul of places, just like the breakthrough moment for the prodigal son.

21:48And if you think about it, go with me a little further. Where was Jesus born? In a manger. And where did Jesus die on Good Friday? A cross. For many Christians, they can identify with Luther, who identified with Christ in their birth. By the way, friends, if that was not you, young Christians in this room, if you were raised up in a Christian family, you may thank God for it. You're more like Timothy, who grew up in a Christian family and was brought to the church. He was brought to faith in a different manner. Still a faith, still a saving faith. But some of us don't have that privilege.

22:30God calls us from the depths sometimes. And he called Luther out of that. And when he saw, and he finally, the eyes opened, God pulled the scales away, as it were, and Luther saw the just shall live by faith. Not by faith in works, not by confession, but faith. Simple, positive faith. Luther, who I read earlier, said he hated God. He said later, talking about this moment, he said he loved God with as much love and as great a love as the hatred with which he had before when he'd hated the word, the righteousness of God. Luther stormed the gates of heaven, as it were, and he would never be pulled out.

23:18And it is there, and as he develops it more in his writings, that you get the idea and the understanding of imputation, justification by faith, and so on and so on and so on. Luther was never a quiet man. He was always a bull in the china closet. And Luther was not just a theologian locked in a cloistered tower. He was a pastor. And that's one of the things to keep in mind, too, is that pastors see all types of Christians. Those who are elder saints, those who are struggling saints, those who are new saints, and some who will become saints, and some who won't. That is the life of a pastor.

23:58The pastor... Martin Luther, in addition to all that he wrote, was asked, How do I have assurance? Because one of the touchstones of the Protestant Reformation is that we say, to use a little shorthand, once saved, always saved. The eternal security of the believer, and so forth. Those are little short phrases that we have. In fact, actually, the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent, the great council that was in a sense, the Counter-Reformation, said in no uncertain terms, the great error of the Reformation was assurance.

24:40And the great error was assurance. The writer or the theologian, I still live in Sinclair Ferguson, who's a Presbyterian, he said it like this. He said basically that they shrewdly understood what the Protestant Reformation meant to the sacramental system. When you were saved once and for all, once you understand salvation could never be ripped from your hands. You were a child of God. Assurance was yours to be had and to be held and to be believed. Then the whole sacramental system collapses.

25:17The priest is no longer needed. And the minister, the priest is no longer needed with power, as it were. The minister is ministerial. Who do you pray to? Not through a priest, but you pray to the Almighty. You pray to our Christ. He is the great and high priest, as Hebrews so wonderfully lays out. So, Luther and others are going to be asked the question: how do I know that I'm saved? Because we all admittedly struggle with salvation and assurance at times. Even when we know we're saved, we struggle. How can we know that we're saved? Number one, if you're taking notes, it's the objective salvation, objective salvation. For some of you, you may be struggling with assurance right now, others it'll come later, maybe this week, maybe later this year. Something will happen that will cause you troubles. So, take with me, young Christians, old Christians, young and old alike, aged believers, and no matter the age, what is your object of your salvation? Jesus Christ. Who is Jesus Christ? And this is not meant to be trivial, but this is why Christ and who you say he is matters. Who is Christ? He is the Son of God. What did He do? This is why the driveline of our faith, the driveline of what we believe, is so important. Who was Christ? He came, He is the Son of God. He is fully man and fully God, the God-man, to use Calvin's phrase. How did He come? He was born of a virgin. He was born without original sin. So that's number one.

27:07Two, he lives the sinless life. Three, he is going to be crucified as a propitiation, a sacrifice for our sins, a substitute, if you like. And then, four, he rises again on Easter Sunday, the third day. That basic formula right there, the perfect sinless life of Christ, fulfilling the Father's directives, doing what he is told perfectly, and working in complete harmony with the Father and the Spirit is where we place our objective assurance. Who is Christ? And go further than that. You open your Bibles up and you look in your Bibles and say, well, how do we know that this tells us the truth? What does Jesus do? He fulfills approximately, and some may have better numbers than I do, but from what I can tell, something like 65 specific prophecies are fulfilled by Christ in the Bible. And then on top of that, Jesus Christ, whom we love and whom we adore and whom we pray and whom we have our assurance in, is going to inaugurate a new covenant. He fulfills the old covenants and he brings a new and better covenant that comes forth and gives us hope. So ladies and gentlemen, when you read your Old Testament and you read about the covenants. From Abraham and from Moses, from Moses and Noah and so on, the Davidic covenant. Those covenants point to Christ. And he comes with that new covenant inaugurated on Holy Thursday in the upper room and carried forward by the church. That is the Christ we put our hope and our faith in. That is the Christ who has put his grace upon us. And last but not least, I will say this about Christ, our Lord, our Savior, our King.

29:06Christ is grace personified. There is nothing greater in the history of man, the history of the world, than Jesus Christ coming in and becoming the God-man for us. Greater than creation in the garden itself. And that was great before the fall. But Christ makes it right. And friends, that's who your assurance is on right there. And last but not least, this word, the scripture before us, you read through the New Testament, particularly, you have the prophecies fulfilled in the old. But if you read through the New Testament and you see what Paul says, you see what John says, you see what Peter says, there are eyewitnesses. It is Christ is who we put our assurance on. But by the way, friends, this assurance. This objective assurance is not just an assurance of the Son only, but it is an assurance that the Father loves you. And one of the things that sometimes we struggle with is: Does the Father love me? Yes, He does.

30:16For God so loved the world. But more particularly, God loves you, the elect. He loves the elect, and He brings you out, He saves you, He snatches you away and takes you from Satan. In fact, actually, when we talk about that, as far as the love of the Father, it is in, and this is where I wish I would have kept up on my notes. It is in John 16. I'd like to say, again, this is where the old professor kicks in, and you all just have to bear with me as I flip my note here.

30:59Ah, 16:27. That should have highlighted it. John 16:27, where Jesus says in the upper room, The Father loves you because you love me. Amen. The Father loves you. And then, last but not least, in this great Trinitarian formula of assurance, we place our assurance with the Father who loves us. We place our assurance with the Son who dies for us. And then we place our assurance on the Spirit that is put within us and points us to Christ and ties us and unifies us with Christ again, again, and again. So that when we are weak, the Spirit points to Christ.

31:49The Spirit picks us up. The Spirit brings to memory and to mind those passages of Scripture that say, You are loved and you are a child of God. This is the great Trinitarian aspect of assurance. When all else fails, friends, go to that. Go to the objective. Let's see, 6:51. I've got a few minutes. Number two, subjective. There is the objective, which I've just gone through, and now the subjective. Now, some people will say, How do I know that I am a Christian? Yes, preacher, you can point to Christ, but there's just something bothering me. I can't get over it. What is it? Let's talk about the subjective. How do you know you're a Christian from a subjective interior look? In fact, Paul tells us to look to ourselves and see what our fruits tell us. If you would look with me, you can, if you wish, 2 Corinthians 13:5.

32:54Toward the end of that book, or that little letter, he says, Paul says to the church at Corinth, he says, Test. yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves. Or do you not recognize this is about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you fail the test? Test yourself. Examine yourselves. So we do. How do we know? How do we know? Here's an easy, easy, it may not be, it's easy to say, hard to do.

33:26Do you exhibit the fruits of the Spirit? Not always. I know none of us in this room are perfect, except for a college professor. And that's another story. But the fact of the matter is, do you exhibit the fruits of the Spirit? Do you have patience? Is it increasing? Even when it falls back, do you pray for more? Love, and so on. Here's another one. When you see sin within your life, do you rebel against it? Does it bother you? Does your conscience get worked up?

34:02Is your conscience tweaked? Young Christians in this room, you may have come to a saving faith of Christ, but you may also notice, too, that you don't quit sinning right away. In fact, you'll never quit sinning on this side of eternity. But if it bothers you, friends, if your conscience is provoked, the Spirit is telling you this is not Christ-like. Friends, That is a mark. That is the mark of a Christian. It's called sanctification, growing in Christ, and so forth. If your conscience is tender, that's all to the better. And by the way, do not think you're alone.

34:50Paul, writing quite vociferously, says, as many of you know, O wretched man that I am, who will free me from this body of death? I do things that I do not wish to do. If you're struggling with doubt and sin, you're not alone. And remember, as Luther did, and as Luther believed to his very fiber, this is a spiritual battle. That when you look at your life, the devil will come alongside of you and will say to you things: Remember what you did wrong. Remember that time you did X, Y, and Z. Remember that time when you, well, you shouldn't have. That was against the law. That was against the rules.

35:40The devil knows the Bible better than we do. And he is a crafty, crafty, dangerous opponent. Do not underestimate, my friends. We are children of the Enlightenment because of the age in which we live. But do not underestimate the activity of evil. In the form of Satan and his minions working in this world. So, how can you? Here's a practical way: how can you try to subjectively assure and get more assurance when you might be a little light?

36:16Do you sit under good preaching? Do you read the Bible regularly? By the way, the scriptures are designed to bring faith out, to increase faith. Do you read the Bible, particularly in moments of trial? For me, I'll tell you, this is a practical thing as a growing saint, hopefully. When I'm beset, it's the Psalms. The Psalms are some of the sweetest words in the Bible because of what is in there. And it's not all happy as we've read tonight. Do you pray? Do you pray earnestly?

36:54And just simply being amongst fellow saints is a great way to bring up and help bolster your faith. And by bolstering your faith, bolster your assurance. Do you enjoy the communion of the saints? Do you enjoy being with your fellow saints? I hope so. Because some of those older saints who have been in the room with you, or who are in the room with you, they can say, Brother Joe, Sister Mary, let me tell you, I've been there before. Watch yourself.

37:25Sometimes the fears and doubts we have don't go quietly either. And so it is a long struggle, as Luther had. But when the subjective is not working as well as you hope, and you have the devil whispering in your ear, fly to Christ. Fly to the cross. Go to the crosswork. But go to the object. Go to Christ. For ten times, for one time you look at yourself, ten times look to Christ. Do it that way.

37:58But I want you to hear the words as I come to a close tonight with Martin Luther. Luther was writing to a friend of his named Joe Weller. Excuse me, Jerome Weller. Jerome Weller had worked with Luther, had studied under Luther, and was, this is in July of 1530, so Luther is past his 95 theses, and he's the reformer at this point. And Weller was having serious bouts of doubt. And this is Luther in the objective, and Luther the great polemicist, and also Luther the great pastor. So here's what we have: My dear Jerome, you must believe that this temptation of yours is of the devil, who vexes you so because you believe in Christ. Skipping through the letter. Try as hard as you can to despise those thoughts which are introduced or induced by the devil. In this sort of temptation and struggle, contempt is the best and easiest method of winning. Over the devil, laugh your adversary to scorn and ask who it is with whom you are talking. Laugh the devil to scorn.

39:10There's other things I, by the way, cut out. You can read this letter on your own. But when the devil throws our sins up to us and declares that we deserve death in hell, we ought to speak thus. And this is what I want to leave you with: Luther's words. And then we'll sing the closing hymn. Luther writes and closes with this phrase: I admit that I deserve death in hell. What of it? Does this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means, for I know one who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where he is, there I shall be also. Let Martin Luther's words go with you and point you to Christ when those days of darkness come to you. Would you please stand?

40:07If you wouldn't bow your heads, Heavenly Father and gracious and loving Lord, we thank you for these words. We thank you for the life of Luther, pointing us to where we are weak and where we are strong, but we are strong in you and we are weak in you. But gracious Lord, we love you all the more. Have mercy upon us where we fail you and we are not what we ought to be. Grow us through sanctification. Growest in greater love to our glorification. In Jesus' name we pray these things. Amen.