Katharina Luther, Pt.2 2019 - Romans 1:17

A little known fact is that the gathering around the table night was originally referred to by the students as Katie's table. This was Katie's she prepared the table. She made so she allowed for the discussion 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 supreme Katerina, Katerina, Luther, the wife of Martin Luther had a profound impact on the Protestant Reformation here on wisdom for the heart. 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 looking at the life of Katerina Luther but didn't have time to complete the lesson today Stevens going to do a little bit of review and then conclude that lesson now.

Here Stephen Davey, today's 42-year-old leader of the Protestant Reformation, challenge the structured theology of the church now for several years, all gaining incredible on God's clear design. The church leaders should not be art don't have to be celibate.

They can actually be married.

In fact, the qualifications for the elder would be that fidelity in marriage would 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 in the ideal of God's design for family life. He by the way, have brazenly and openly ridiculed 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 man and faithfully love her as his wife but he's never conceived of 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 to 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 old Boaz out there threshing floor. Remember this old bachelor young Ruth comes along and sexually 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 Betty 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 riled up the Pope, whom he hated and he said I married to give the Angels a reason. The last and the devils reason to wait. He would write as well that he 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 marketing and are Katerina Everett several of them.

This is a most unlikely marriage. This marriage has little reason to survive what I want to do this 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 that 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 let me have you.

Keep in mind in the 16th century, nobody had a church leader who was married they didn't stay didn't have that if you are a church leader.

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 talented been courted for nearly a year by guided then ran off.

They had few conversations and in the meantime, Martin is living the life of the 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 is 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 dies his 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 event 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. Some you guys if they're going yet. What's wrong with that, he would write when sitting on the table, a married man now things 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 in the most difficult of times. The marriage doesn't work because your compatible or is easy, but because your commitment number two. Let me give you a second principle of marriage worthy of imitating marriage is not the pursuit of happiness. It's the pursuit of humility. Both 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 merit pattern has made a mess of our nature. And then 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 you sequester what you want to get holy get away from everybody, Luther, and he found what he was alone that he was still living with himself, spent six hours confessing sin but sequester yourself away you know you'll 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 and 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 in 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 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 that was revolutionary. In fact, he 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, we 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, a church leader. Unfortunately Protestants to get that right. The highest calling. There is no high calling of pastor.

It's a high calling about the highest: guess what a 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 that amount made is 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 kind of took off for them on their wedding night back 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 dizziness and they would literally invade their lives uninvited. Most of these tasks common to show up. And finally, keep in mind that both Martin 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 in 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 into all the suffering that they experience what I want to focus on her. She was the target of incredible vitriol. Everybody was against her, both on the Protestant side of the Catholics on the Side of course thought that she was disloyal to Christ. She violated her valves, essentially divorcing Jesus the Protestant side believes 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 throughout Germany that she was a traitor to Christ and why she was accused of being quoted dancing girl who had seduced the monk in the marriage may know the name harassment's Catholic Church leader Rasmussen accused her of being with child, forcing Martin to marry her.

Even though the rumor would be dispelled because it up baby 12 months after their marriage, their first child. He dresses begrudgingly accepted anything wrong but the rumor still up and spoke and she never really did live that down vectors and engraving produced during our lifetime, which depicts Martin, and Katerina and her six children. This is for the forerunner of Olan Mills do engravings and the apartment Katerina six children and working in the background is the seventh 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 top of that marriage had been 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 out of 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 stayed faithful to her husband. Maybe one more principle worth observing before marriage is not a distraction from ministry. It is an expansion of ministry and I've said before El Segundo 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 that she purchased 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 isn't 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 saw 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 the room. Luther invited her station puppeteer should engage in the debating and she had her own questions which she really asked… This is no reformation of a home 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 that 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 soup she allowed for the discussion to take place in 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 liners are sous vide or 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 is 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 diaper men and 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.

Nobody and by the design from their home spread literally around and more than we know. It's impacted your and my staff. I hope you've been encouraged and challenged by this look into the life of Katerina Lynn Katerina Luther is one of 16 Christian heroes from the past that Stephen has been 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 over the next two days you're listening to wisdom for the heart.

This is the teaching ministry of Stephen Davey Stephen is the pastor of colonial Baptist Church in Cary, North Carolina. You can learn more about Stephen and the ministry of wisdom for the heart. If you visit our website which is wisdom online.org. If your travel plans ever bring you through our area of North Carolina.

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