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November 25, 2021 12:00 am
Gathering around the table was originally 42 by studios as Katie's table. This was Katie's she prepared the table. She made so she allowed for the discussion to take place. One of the greatest works we have on the Reformation by Martin Luther were discussions that took place at her table without Katie, there's no Katie's table when I gave you by the wife of Martin had a profound impact on the Protestant nation here on wisdom for the hard Stephen Davey has been working through a series entitled legacies of light, as he examines the biographies of several godly men and women from the past yesterday. We began by looking at the life of Katerina Luther but we didn't have time to complete that lesson today Stevens going to do a little bit of review and then conclude that message Katerina is an example of a godly wife and mother as well as a profound theologian in her own right now.
Here Stephen Davey with today's lesson is 42-year-old leader of the Protestant Reformation, challenge the structure theology of the church now for several years old gaining on God's clear design. The church leaders should not be or don't have to be celibate.
They can actually be married.
In fact, the qualifications for the elder would be that Fidelity America qualify those who were married by their observation before the congregation has been faithful to their wives is written about this.
He's married all dozens of monks and priests and nuns is written widely on the blessing of the children and the ideal of God's design for family life by the way, have brazenly and openly ridicule the church leaders, bishops and cardinals, along with a truckload of praise for having their own mistresses. He's exposing this is written extensively on the obvious creative nature of God's delight.
For a man to find all one faithfully love her as his wife but he's never seen the thought of Mary. It literally is not entered his mind. He's immersed in writing and preaching his life as his growing risk and threat.
He assumes the rights of rightly die a martyr at any moment is die and not that way through one of the illnesses and yet he had several now he's just been proposed to buy a 26-year-old runaway non-stun and everybody else's as well. And there's no there's absolutely no way he's going to say yes and then he does. He reminded me of Boaz out there threshing floor. Remember this old bachelor and young Ruth comes along and essentially proposes to amend.
You know when he wakes up after fainting. He accepts well that's Luther shocked and then he's smitten later he'll write tongue-in-cheek.
He's the teaser and everybody else, but he said that he married Katerina to make his father happy who wanted grandchildren. I think it's a perfectly good reason for young people to get married. By the way, to give us grandchildren. So I'm all for that.
He also wrote that he got married to rile up the Pope, whom he hated and he said I married to give the Angels reason the last and the devils reason to wait. He would write as well. Wanted to practice what he been preaching and what he been writing about marriage in the home so that he could become a living demonstration with his wife of the love of Christ for the church. The church for Christ. But I gotta tell you, if you read the biographies of of Martin R Katerina Everett several of them. This is a most unlikely marriage. This marriage has little reason to survive what I want to do is, rehearse for you and I've read much more than I could ever give you but I sort of boiled it down to three or four principles whereby we as we are in the study, observing godly believers in finding in their lives.
Things to imitate the apostles, encourages us to do so as I boiled out 21 years of marriage. Let me give you some principles that are worthy of modeling and framing a person honey me you keep in mind in the 16th century, nobody had a church leader who was married they didn't stated that if you are church leaders. You were then unmarried. They didn't they didn't see an example of a couple, they didn't see this kind of of pastor and wife may affect Philip Shockley historian, wrote that their marriage will become the standard for the Christian family for centuries to come. Nobody seen this before.
Principle number one we give these to you very quickly narrowing marriage is not a matter of compatibility. It's a matter of commitment. The truth is they barely knew each other when they marriage been living with the believing family and Taliban court for nearly a year by guided then ran off. They had few conversations and in the meantime, Martin is living the life of a bachelor in the black cloister he's he's immersed in his studies and in his his writing when they married. He will love books and he will love writing and she will love farming and organizing and cleaning in the me emphasize cleaning by this point in time the monks had all left being performed. It was only Martin living in the black cloister and was falling in disrepair, an older monk, and was living in an attached shed out back and that was pretty much yeah and this house was filthy that one of the first things that she does is order to cart falls of alignment and she will whitewash every wall in that monastery because it was so dirty now me tell you this is the typical marriage of Luther's day. The bride brought her bed into her new home was usually handed down from mother to daughter and along with her bed.
She would bring federal quilts that she made along with embroidered linen and pillows and you can see how life is going to get better here by the presence of the bride, but she didn't own any of that when he met her sitting on a pair of shoes so she came with none of that.
Luther later revealed that their wedding night was spent on his bed and he had not changed the rancid straw for over a year.
He just hadn't thought about it. There are a lot of things he evidently hadn't thought about that Luther would later write. There is a lot to get used to doing the first year of marriage is a change in your bed sheet sleeping on sheets that been changed for a year so you guys if you're going yet was wrong with that, he would write when sitting. No table married man now thinks will before I was alone. Now there are two of us, or when he wakes up in bed. He sees a pair of pigtails on his pillow and they weren't there before.
Hello to married life and all the changes that would come. Luther would write is an older man marriage does not always run smoothly, one must be committed. They would demonstrate that in the most difficult of times. The marriage doesn't work because your compatible or is easy, but because your commitment number to give you a second principle of marriage worthy of imitating marriage is not the pursuit of happiness. It's the pursuit of humility. Martin and Katerina.
They love each other love was part of it but it was the pursuit based on love of happiness but humility. They were both strong-willed, opinionated, stubborn, and extremely verbal. They spoke their minds. Luther would later admit the revelation of his own selfishness.
After getting married he would write good Lord, what a lot of trouble. There is added has made a mess of our nature, and that he would write perceptively. Marriage is the school for character development.
See up until that day. The church was teaching. That was the monastery that was the school for developing virtue you use a class throwing want to get holy get away from everybody, Luther, and he found what he was alone that he was still living with himself and spent six hours confessing sin but sequester yourself away.
You know you know you'll grow in developing holiness. Luther will turn all of that now upside down and say you wanted training ground you wanted education and humility marriage and family demands change in humility and partnership. In fact, one of the things that he wrote randomly, but it became such a telling distinction of his marriage and his commitment and hers and her humility, and in this day men did not get involved in domestic chores for the most part everything including raising the children was reserved for the limit. But, he wrote. Interestingly, this is men should not care if they are mocked for changing diapers or being seen publicly hanging them outdoors to drive after washing them that was revolutionary, effective, wrote even if a man is mocked as an effeminate fool for changing diapers God with all his angels are smiling not because that father is watching diapers, but because he is exercising is Christianity. This is why we look back now and talk about the reformation of the church, we easily miss the fact this was the reformation of the home and marriage and parenting. Luther would refer to it as the holy work of parenting. Keep in mind again. The reformation is gonna make every vocation, a sacred calling, because at that point in time the sacred calling was big church leader unfortunately promises to get that right. The highest calling. There is no high calling of pastor.
It's a high calling, not the highest calling. Guess what, the high calling is because monopoly vocation. Whatever you're doing, you mechanic lawyer housewife Dr. Gardner.
It's a holy calling they they arrested that word Locascio we know it is vocation means sacred calling, and Luther would even write made his milking that cow with the hands of God. This was this was revolutionary. Katerina, of course, believe that even the mundane tasks were glorifying God.
She dove in, as it were vector life never really slowed down but we know from her biographies that she maintained that regimen that she spent so many years in rising early. In fact, she would rise typically around 4 AM, Luther would sleep in in the nickname her tongue in cheek, the morning Star of Wittenberg life just took off for them on their wedding night that and never slowed down after midnight on their wedding night knock on the door there at the black cloister was a pastor needing refuge.
They welcome the men and that sort of was telling and the predictive of what would happen in their lives. It wasn't long before all 40 rooms once occupied by monks would be occupied by professors and pastors and students and political refugees and religious refugees, other nuns and mom and priests who were abandoning the church. It took incredible humility on both their parts especially Katerina to serve her own home her own children. They would have six of them they would adopt for more nephews and nieces 10 children in all of this busyness and they would literally invade their lives uninvited. Most of these vastly common to show up.
And finally, keep in mind that both Martyn and Katerina are used to live there you still years. Why so monastic life.
Now here they are raising 10 children running a 40 bedroom hotel farm school and the church. It was self-sacrificing humility on display.
The school of character was not the quiet of a monastery. But the chaos of family and marriage number three.
Marriage is not an antidote for suffering.
It opens doors for self and I don't really have time to get in all the suffering that they experience what I want to focus on her. She was the target of incredible vitriol.
Everybody was against both on the Protestant side and the Catholics on the Side of course thought that she was disloyal to Christ. She violated her valves safely divorcing Jesus the Protestant side believe she was a distraction to the Reformation to go slow Martin down she's going to get in the way and that was that those were the good rumors immediately after marriage, pamphlets by the church circulated a journey that she was a traitor to Christ and why she was accused of being quoted dancing girl who had seduced the monk and the mariner may know the name Erastus Catholic Church leader Rasmussen accused her of being with child, forcing Martin to marry her. Even though the river would be dispelled because it baby 12 months after their marriage, their first child.
He dresses begrudgingly accepted that he been wrong, but the rumor still up and spoke and she never really did live that down vectors and engraving produced during their lifetime, which depicts Martin, and Katerina and her six children.
This is for the forerunner of Olan Mills to engravings and they have the apartment Katerina six children and lurking in the background is seven child even Henry VIII's living. During this time Alex is on personal condemnation to the audacity of their marriage is if you got a leg to stand on the top marriage, having killed if you year after their marriage to church officials wrote letters telling Katerina to repent and return to the mother church or suffer the torments of hell. I was there for the most part didn't respond to these particular accusations, but he did this time.
He wrote back and he informed these officials that he had bound the two letters in the little booklet any given them to his servants to use as toilet paper there in the household and they were free to continue sending more classic Martin even after Katerina's death. In fact, in an 800 page history of Martin Luther published as late as 1904 continues to promote the rumor that the Reformation was actually started by Luther wanted to distract the world away from his fornication with Katerina, we can imagine the impact of this malicious slander on her heart immediately starting 26 years old. She's the lightning rod so much hatred in it with humility serve the Lord and stay faithful to her husband. Maybe one more principle worth observing number four. Marriage is not a distraction from ministry. It is an expansion of ministry and I've said before about they get there there marriage would become a partnership that especially in that world would be a unique and just as radical as the Reformation which would expand the ministry potential. For instance, I become a quick illustration. Martin could not organize anything about you, but I take great comfort in that fact and I was soon clear in their home but what he did was really radical. He actually handed over the finances and the administration of their property household purchases and all of that to Katerina and it wasn't long before she had the family on solid footing begin. This would be unique in this generation fact he he he went even further and gave her the legal right to purchase additional property which she did. And if you purchase more cattle and it isn't long before the house is actually making money which they desperately needed. This was a revolutionary example to set another example Luther's most famous work is called table talks which is it really a book he wrote it's a compendium of conversations that took place around his table at night every evening there would be like suffer. Katerina would fix it for all the guests and all the professors and all the students around the table and debate theology and ask your questions and we take that word suffered. By the way, that's a derivative of the German word for some horses and so anything that likes to which she fixed and after they ate that this debate and discussion on going and by the way she did not leave her. Luther invited her to stay. She thought the chairs to engage in the debating and she had her own questions which she could freely give Mrs. since you know all Reformation about how that all of these guests are seeing almost accidentally, that would change the way they view marriage and in the home where the wife would be given over to the children of the kitchen and the husband would engage in the debate of the day. A little known fact is that the gathering around the table at night was originally referred to by the students as Katie's table.
This was Katie's table.
She prepared the table.
She made soon. She allowed for the discussion to take place. One of the greatest works we have on the Reformation by Martin Luther were discussions that took place at her table that Katie, there's no Katie's table when I Katie by the winners are super leader there.
They gathered she is frankly one of the unsung heroes of the Protestant Reformation. If you serve him and in unique ways allowed both of them and Martin to serve the students and beyond them the world what a revolutionary model for the home it's presented to these church leaders and the students in these professors is pastors everything radical, which would have included something like the woman handling the finances and Martin willingly giving that to her and Martin taking on a role which included changing and washing diapers. Many women would leave the Luther home profoundly impacted by this couple's household.
This example. This Reformation not only of the church and of true doctrine, but of marriage parent principles of partnership and love, loyalty and commitment ability by the design of from their home spread literally around and more than we know. It's impacted your and the state. I hope you've been encouraged and challenged today by this look into the life of Katerina Luther Katerina Luther is one of the 16 Christian heroes from the past that Stephen spent teaching about in this series called legacies of light. It's a series of Christian biographies looking at the lives and ministries of Christian heroes and martyrs from the past we have two more lessons to go in this series and will bring you those in the days ahead. You're listening to wisdom for the heart. This is the teaching ministry of Stephen Davey Stephen is the pastor of the shepherd's church in Cary, North Carolina.
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