Katarina von Bora, wife of Martin Luther, played a significant role in the reformation of family life during the Protestant Reformation. She was a household manager, taking care of finances and overseeing various tasks, and was known for her diligence and work ethic. Katarina also took care of the health of those around her, creating a hospital in her home and using herbal medicines. She practiced hospitality, often hosting visitors and caring for orphans. Katarina and Martin Luther had six children together, and she was dedicated to raising and nurturing them. Her marriage to Luther allowed him the freedom to speak on family life and the Reformation. Katarina's final words reflected her faith and commitment to God.

Okay, so we're gonna pick up where we left off, for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. I think we're all very well aware that we're living in the middle of cancel culture. And one of the things that cancel culture wants to cancel is womanhood. It wants to cancel motherhood. It wants to cancel babies.

It wants to cancel submission. It wants to cancel fatherhood the way that God designed it, but we're not canceling it here Forever we will not cancel it in the Church of Jesus Christ and I want to give you an illustration of a woman a spunky virtuous woman Her name is Katarina Vambora and she was the wife of Martin Luther, that famous reformer. Her story is a story of how the Lord first of all reshaped family life and really launched a reformation of family life as a result through a small group of families. John Calvin's family, Martin Luther's family and other families, they really reshaped family life in Europe. At the time of the Reformation, 25% of the population of the young people had taken vows of celibacy.

25% of the population. And they had committed themselves to singleness and a baby-free world. And the Reformers stood up and said, no, no, no, no, no. The Bible teaches the opposite. And I think that Katerina von Bora is a is a great illustration That God has not given us a spirit of fear But of power and of love and of a sound mind which is what we're basing all of what we're doing here You know what her last words were before she died, Katarina von Bora?

I will cling to thee forever. I will cling to thee forever. Why? Because she embraced the word of God, believed it, and she saw the beauty and the power and the love and the sound mind of it and so she said I will cling to thee forever. Now this is the power of the gospel in a woman's life.

She's a picture of Proverbs 31. She's a picture of fortifying your home. She's a picture of washing the feet of the saints as the Apostle Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 5. She loved her husband. She was a homemaker.

She administered her gifts and cared for others as we read The Saints do in 1st Peter 4 9, but what she does is she casts a vision for biblical womanhood, you know when my girls Were young I wrote a book called Feminine by design 12 pillars of biblical femininity You can get it back in that book table there. But I wrote that book to try to define what I understood the Bible to say about femininity. Because all my life, the culture has been wanting to cancel femininity and they want to make boys into girls and girls into boys. But the church is not cancel culture. The church is affirmation culture of God.

And you know, Katarina von Boer was a brilliant example of everything I wrote in that book, A Feminine by Design. She was going somewhere. She was a dominion taker. You know, she had an agenda to do what was right in the world. And she had a focus.

She was a home builder. She was a keeper at home. She was a nurturer of her six children. She cherished children. She was an astounding picture of home economics and the domestic entrepreneurialism that you find in the Bible, particularly in the Proverbs 31 one.

She was a picture of unfading beauty and she wore the robes of righteousness which is why she said what she did when she died. And she was a trainer of children. She was a teacher along with her husband and They taught their children in their home, so that was Katerina Bamboura. Now let me just tell you something about her. First of all as as you know she lived during the Protestant Reformation.

She was born in 1499 and this was you know really just right after the beginning of the Reformation. Her early life was very interesting. She was married when she was 26 years old, but Her father died when she was really young, but her stepfather, when she was five years old, sent her off to live in a convent out of family life in a Benedictine monastery for education. And then at age nine she was moved to another monastery, a Cistercian monastery. But something happened.

She started hearing, along with the other nuns in the convent of the of the preaching of a man by the name of Martin Luther and He was absolutely shaking society from top to bottom and Katie was interested And she was actually she was thrilled by what she was hearing. And many of the nuns around her, their hearts were stirred. You know why? Because you can't kill a womanhood. You can you can you can try, but you're not going to totally kill it." And that's what happened with her.

And she, you know, she longed to hear more of the gospel. And so the nuns started writing to their fathers, asking if they could be released from the convents. And the fathers, most of them said, no, you have to stay there. And in fact, Katie was actually flogged and put into the convent prison for even suggesting that the celibate life was wrong. But then some letters went back and forth with Martin Luther.

And of course Martin Luther was writing against celibacy and so they were receiving his letters against celibacy telling them that it was a doctrine of demons. And then one night, Martin Luther sent one of his friends, who was a fish salesman, with his herring wagon into the convent to self-herring to the convent. And as a good herring distributor he came in, but Martin Luther had him go in with barrels that were empty. And so these nuns got into the barrels and he hauled them out. And it was actually, they drove six miles through hostile territory.

It was on penalty of death to escape the monastery at that time. One student wrote, a wagon load of Vestal virgins has just come to town. All more eager for marriage than for life. God grant them husbands lest worse befall. So Luther helped some of these women get back to their homes and even some of them get married, but Katie wasn't married.

She never got married for two years. Her father disowned her and Because of that she had to stay with other families. We're actually these were reforming families where she learned how to Take care of the home things that she never learned before and how to run a household and All that Luther though hurt his opinion of Katie was I'll quote him she is aloof and appears to be quite proud. And Luther was still not married. He's like 17 or 18 years older than her.

But he continues to preach about marriage. And then something happened and he started calling her in his writings My Katie, My Katie. And Luther tried to marry her off to a couple of different people and she would have nothing of it. And those are very interesting stories, I won't tell them for sake of time. But then Luther decided he wanted to marry her.

So he did what everybody does when they want to marry someone. He took three of his friends and asked her to marry him in front of his three friends. So she said yes. He was 42, she was 26 years old. They were married the same night.

How about that? So I'm going to give you six marks of Katie Luther. She's an inspiring example of what must not be canceled. Do not cancel it in your own heart, and do not let your friends cancel it around you. Number one, she was a household manager.

Katie managed the household finances and the holdings. When they first got married, they moved into a monastery, an old decrepit monastery that needed a lot of cleaning up. And so she went to work painting walls and doing construction, fixing up this decrepit monastery. She was just very, very aggressive. Well, one of the problems was that he, Luther, lived in this monastery.

And She discovered that his bed had not been cleaned in years So she was cleaning up Everything she was very frugal Martin Luther was not frugal. He always gave his money away. He was always running in a deficit and what went one poor college student needed money. And he told this college student, he said, I would give you our family vase, which is very expensive. I'll give you our family vase, but my wife has hidden it from me.

She was great. Hey look at, you know this woman planted fields, she bred and sold cattle. Just write these down if you want. I mean don't write them down, it's crazy. She raised poultry, she slaughtered livestock, she caught pike and trout and perch in the local streams and ponds.

And if not eaten immediately, they needed to be smoked or salted or pickled or stored in a cold cellar. She planted fruit orchards. She grew vegetables. She maintained a vineyard. She raised bees.

She preserved meats and fruits and vegetables. She was an herbalist. And, by the way, everything had to be cooked from scratch all these things had to be cooked over a fire the meat that she butchered, the chickens, the pigs, the cows, the sheep, all of them had to be cooked over and open fire. So, she renovated her own house. She dug a basement in her house.

You know what, she was taking dominion. We do not want to raise a group of frail women who are afraid to work. We want to raise dominion takers. And the way you raise dominion takers is that you teach them how to work personally yourself. Luther said to her one time, You convince me of whatever you please.

You have complete control. I concede to you the control of the household, providing my rights are preserved. Female government has never done any good." Well, it did a lot of good for him, frankly, and he knew it. Luther also said of his wife, he said, if I can endure conflict with the devil, conflict with sin, conflict with a bad conscience, then I can put up with the irritations of Katie Bamboura. Anyway, it was a lovely marriage, it really was.

It was an honest and a fun marriage. But she, first of all, was a household manager. Secondly, she also took care of the health of everybody around her. Medicine was on her mind. She actually created a hospital on site in their house.

She ministered alongside the nurses that were there in her house. She had all kinds of herbal medicines. She was discovering cures from the things that God has made. Thirdly, hospitality. She boarded visitors She was a hostess her house is the center of lots of activity lords ladies the down and out and At any given time she had six to eleven orphans living in her house Her aunt lived there.

She had students living there. There was a waiting list. She prepared 25 meals a day And at meals they would talk in fact their books out there you can buy called Table Talk. All the conversations that took place around the table at Martin Luther's house. Children.

Three sons and three daughters. Their first child was born less than a year after they were married. And one of their daughters, Magdalena, fell ill at age 13 and died in her father's arms. They experienced the troubles that families experience and the sorrows. There was grief and darkness.

Two of his children died and And Katie though she sought to make life sweet and rich for her children and Even fun for her children. Are you ready for this? She built them a bowling alley this woman was pouring out her life for the blessing of the people around her Next diligence Luther called her the morning star of Wittenberg. Why would he call her the morning star? Because every day she woke up at four o'clock in the morning to go do her ministry to her family and the people that were surrounding her.

She was focused. She was hard-working. She was principled. Motherhood was not canceled. Babies were not canceled.

Wifedom was not canceled. She experienced and desired all those things. And her marriage was a blessing to Luther. For 21 years she poured out her life to fill her family with one kind of glory after another for 17 hours a day. And she got up at 4 o'clock in the morning and she went to bed at 9 o'clock every night.

And she gave her energies for the blessing of the next generation. Not just the next generation in her house, but the next generation in the church as men and women were in their home. You know, Martin Luther was the big reformer, but guess what? There was something else going on in the background of this man's life that gave him the freedom to speak the things that were true about family life. There was a family reformation during the reformation.

It wasn't just the doctrine of justification by faith. Everything was being reformed. Why? Because they had embraced the doctrine of sola scriptura. When you embrace the doctrine of sola scriptura, everything changes in your life.

In your family, in your work, in the way you handle your money, the way you raise your children, in everything you do, everything changes. And you don't cancel the things that God desires. And that's what we find here. Luther called her the boss of Zusendorf. You know, right when he got married he complained.

He said, you know, you wake up in the morning and you look over and there are pigtails next to you. Well, Katie was in some ways the head of his house. Not in the way that you might think about it, but she was a vigorous, creative, dominion taking, mothering, feeding, caring woman. And that's the kind of women that we need today. These are the kind of women that God desires in the world.

Not these plastic women that are out there today that are canceling everything that is good. So Martin Luther died before Katie did. She lived six years after his death. One day She was in a wagon and the wagon lurched and she was thrown out of the wagon into a lake and she died a few months later she was only 53 years old when she died and I read her last prayer One of her children wrote out this prayer that she prayed before she breathed her last. You know, before I read that to you, you know, my father died last November And his grave is right over there in the corner of that graveyard.

You can go see it. But the last thing I ever heard my father say was on a Wednesday night. We were getting ready to go to our prayer meeting. And I was standing beside his bed and the last words I hear heard my father say were son the Lord knows what he's doing and that's true well here's Katie's last words. Lord my Savior Thou standest at the door and I must enter in.

Oh come thou beloved guest for I desire to depart to be with thee. Let my children be committed to thy mercy. Lord, look down upon in mercy on my church. May the pure doctrine which God has sent through my husband be handed down unadulterated to posterity. Dear Lord, I thank Thee for all the trials through which Thou hast led me, and by which Thou dost prepare me to behold Thy glory.

Thou hast never forsaken or forgotten me. Thou has evermore caused thy face to shine upon me when I called upon thee. Like Jacob, I will not let thee go unless thou bless me. I will cling to thee forever. And then Katie died.

You know the life of significance is really only found in the ways of God. Walking in the ways of God is the only way you'll ever have significance. Walking with God and walking in His ways is the only way to have a life worth living. You know I woke up this morning and I opened up my Bible to the place and sequence that I'm reading and I opened up to Jeremiah chapter 10 that opens with these words, do not learn the ways of the Gentiles and don't fear them because they're foolish. And if you live by them, God will destroy you.

That's what Jeremiah 10 says. I'd encourage you to read it. Do not learn the ways of the gentiles and don't cancel the things that the gentiles are canceling. Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for these Marvelous examples of those who walked with you.

Honestly, in spirit and in truth. Pray Lord that you would baptize these fathers and daughters without fear, the spirit of power and love and sound mind. Amen.