The Goose is Cooked
After this coming weekend we will have completed our year-long, verse-by-verse study of Matthew’s Gospel. What a wonderful study of the pure innocence of the King and the enduring presence of His Kingdom.
I am also very excited for where we’re heading next in our study of God’s Word.
Jude gave a courageous challenge to Christians when he said, “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”
We will finish our Jude series which we started in the spring of 2020 with three messages: Contending for the Faith, Recognizing False Teachers, and Enduring to the End.
In the first message on August 22nd we will take a close look at a man who influenced the Reformation. John Huss was a Catholic priest who through the influential writings of John Wycliffe began to trust the Scriptures, "desiring to hold, believe, and assert whatever is contained in them as long as I have breath in me."
Huss wrote many treatises and his most famous was, The Church. In it he argued that Christ alone is head of the church, that a pope "through ignorance and love of money" can make many mistakes, and that to rebel against an erring pope is to obey Christ.
For this and other reasons, Huss (which means ‘goose’) was apprehended, imprisoned, and publicly defrocked before being burned at the stake. It was a hundred years later that Martin Luther was looking through stacks of material and stumbled upon sermons by Jon Huss. He couldn’t understand why this man was declared a heretic and put to death.
Luther said, "I was overwhelmed with astonishment, I could not understand for what cause they had burnt so great a man, who explained the Scriptures with so much gravity and skill." Luther later said, “They cooked the goose” but Huss was not forgotten as his writings influenced Luther, who went on to help launch the Reformation.
John Huss suffered a martyr's death for simply and accurately dividing the word of truth. Oh, that more pastors would stand firm in the pulpit and accurately divide the word of truth that once for all has been delivered to the saints!
Pastor Greg Sempsrott
To find the original messages that kicked off our Jude Study in 2020, follow this link to our YouTube page, Simple and Pure Truth:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxpwj_tXF5Tc-xcKtI7s-HhoLsNEih4m2
#SimpleAndPureDevotionToChrist
#Bible