Let's pray together, as the Father in Heaven, we do ask that you would speak to us now.

When Moses asked to see your glory, first you spoke, first you gave a display of your

glory through your words. And so would you be pleased Father this morning as we come to your

word to give us a glimpse and more of your glory to us in Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.

In the year 1539, it's about 22 years after the Reformation had begun in 1517, as Ryan talked

about, a Catholic cardinal named Satellito wrote a letter to the Protestant city of Geneva in Switzerland

trying to convince Geneva to come back to the Catholic Church. Geneva had a pastor that they had

exiled just the previous year. His name was John Calvin. Young guy wasn't the senior in Geneva, but

he and William Farrell, who was the senior, were sent away to exile for some complicated circumstances. But when the

cardinal wrote to Geneva and they wanted someone to write a response on behalf of the Protestant city,

they turned to this exiled pastor named John Calvin. And Calvin agreed to write the response to the

cardinal. In it, John Calvin identifies the main issue of the Reformation as this, the glory of God.

Calvin says to the cardinal, your zeal for heavenly life is a zeal which keeps a man entirely devoted to

himself and does not, even by one expression, arouse him to sanctify the name of God. In the words,

glorify God. As the cardinal went on and on about the joys of heaven and heavenly life, he did not

sanctify the name of God. Calvin said, in other words, Catholic theology, Calvin claimed, is man

centered. It does not honor God as it ought. And so Calvin writes, this is an understatement, it is not very

sound theology to confine a man's thoughts so much to himself and not set before him as the prime motive of

his existence, zeal to illustrate the glory of God. It's what Protestant theology is about. Luther

read Calvin's open letter to the cardinal and said, ah, this is a writing with hands and feet.

350 years later, in 1891, a New Testament scholar, Princeton named Gehrhardt's Voss, identified this zeal to

glorify God as what enabled reform theology to grasp the fullness of scripture like no other branch of

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