#1

It would be an utter betrayal of the spirit of the Reformation to regard it either as an end in itself or as a source of itself. The Reformers saw themselves as servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, as spokespersons of the Gospel, and as interpreters of Scripture. What they taught, they found there. They always stood to be corrected on the same basis. Using the best Biblical scholarship of their day, they probed fearlessly for the authentic meaning of Christian truth. We who claim to be their heirs are not faithful to them unless we do the same - not necessarily saying what they said, but surely standing where they stood.

Jaroslavi Pelican

#2

This civilization of ours and all that it contains are not sudden creation. They have been fashioned for us by the mighty spirits who have dreamed and desired, dared, endured, suffered perhaps, and sacrificed, and won those achievements which are ours now, because they first were theirs. Paul passing like a flame across the Roman world until the fire of his passion seemed to be quenched at last in a Roman prison, yet even in his dying rising again to shone like a star of heroic truth before the eyes of people forever; Francis of Assisi bringing the sweetness of Jesus back to a world from which his figure seemed long since to have departed; John Huss going unshaken to his martyr’s death at Constance; Savonarola in the Duomo with Florence awed and eager at his feet; Martin Luther riding on to Worms to confront an emperor in his lonely loyalty to a new and impassioned conviction of his Master’s truth; John Wesley rising in conventional and complacent England of the eighteenth century to bring again the gospel to the poor; Robertson and Bushnell and Brooks revealing in modern times the everlasting glory of the gospel: these are the figures whose strength and beauty are wrought into whatever inheritance of nobility we are aware of in our souls.

Walter Russell Bowie

#3

Today’s Christians are too often like deep-sea divers encased in suits designed for many fathoms deep, bravely marching forth to pull plugs out of bathtubs.

Peter Marshall

#4

There was a period in Martin Luther’s life when he was forced into retirement. In order to stay alive and continue the fight, he had to hide and stay quiet. But idleness robbed him of his courage. "Would that we might live no longer," he wrote to his friend Melancthon. "Our God had deserted us." But a little alter, when he could come out of hiding and throw himself into the center of the struggle again, his courage came back, and he wrote that mighty hymn of the Reformation: "A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing."

(Comments from Bass: You could center a whole sermon around this time in Luther’s life and/or use that great hymn as well for the basis of your sermon).

#5

Luther was the father of a household, the molder of the German people, a new David playing on his harp, an emancipator of certain fetters of the spirit, the divider of the Church, and at the same time the renewer of Christendom. All this he was, and more; but pre-eminently for his own time as well as for ourselves he was a man athirst for God.

(Roland Bainton in HERE I STAND)