There are two passages of scripture I want to invite you to look at. The first one is in 1 Timothy chapter 4 and verse 13. And the second one is in Revelation chapter 1 and verse 3. The first one in 1 Timothy 4.13 says this, Until I come, give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation and teaching. The second one is in Revelation 1 3 and it says, Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy and heed the things which are written in it for the time is near. Tomorrow many people will be celebrating Halloween, a day that I believe that many don't know much about. And while the world is doing that, there will be many that will be celebrating and remembering the Protestant Reformation and also the German Augustian monk named Martin Luther who had nailed his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany on October the 31st, 1517, which was 499 years ago. And when he nailed the 95 thesis to the door in Wittenberg, he was giving an invitation to the Catholic Church to debate many of their doctrines, one of which was the doctrine of indulgences for salvation. And by him doing that, that would quickly gain a following in the German states, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Scotland, and portions of France. It would also be a call for Luther to recant his views in the books that he had published in 1520. This recanting would take place in 1521 at the Diet of Worms. where he would not recant. His refusal to recant would result in the excommunication by Pope Leo X. But meanwhile, in England, there was also an English Reformation taking place, just like Martin Luther. Martin Luther desired to put into the hands of the common people a translation of the Bible in which he did in German. That was in 1522. But there was another man named William Tyndale who also desired to put the word of God into the hands of the common man. And he desired to do this in English. And he did accomplish this. And because of his translation of the New Testament, many of you are using the King James Bible, 90% of what you are reading in the King James Bible is the work of William Tyndale. If you have a revised standard version, 75% of what is translated in that translation is also William Tyndale. Many of the phrases that we say today come from William Tyndale, like, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Or, seek and you shall find. Other phrases like, judge not and you shall not be judged. Or, let there be light. All of these come from Tyndale's translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into English. William Tyndall was born in the early 1490s, probably more specifically 1494. He lived in western England in the Slimbridge Valley there in Gloucestershire near the Welsh border. His parents were respectable farmers. They flourished in one of the most prosperous countries in England. He had two brothers, Edward and John. John was a successful land manager that oversaw their farm. Edward was also a crown steward and who would receive rent for the use of his Berkeley land for the king. And William had great influence on his family. On his brothers, for example, after William had translated the New Testament into English, his brother John was arrested and fined for possessing and distributing Bibles. And upon his death, even Edward, and you can see his influence by what he left, which was a number of the Reformed books in his Last Will and Testament. Now, the remarkable stuff about William Tyndall began at this point, because in 1506, at the age of 12, he had entered Magdalene Hall, which was located in Magdalene College, which is a part of Oxford University. And I wouldn't hasten to say that that has also been, in our current day, Hereford College. Of course, it has nothing to do with me. Or would I have to say that he was also of the Hereford Diocese? Again, has nothing to do with me. But I will say this, that my family, did migrate from England. And this is where this takes place. He spent 10 years studying at Oxford. His first two years was in Magdalene Hall. And while he was in Magdalene Hall, listen to some of the things that he had studied in this grammar school. He studied grammar, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music theory, rhetoric, logic, philosophy. Think about what people are studying today. They're trying to study how they can get out of school, not to stay there and learn something. One of my prayers in school for our students is that they would learn something the day that they're there. Two years later, he went on to Oxford. He graduated with a BA in 1512. He continued at Oxford with his, working on his master's degree. And about eight to nine years later, he was then allowed to study theology. Because during all that time, they would only let them study works by Aristotle or works by other Greek philosophers rather than the Bible. And he tells us in one of his writings about that time, how it was very discouraging, how it was very guarded in what they could get, he says, that in the universities they have ordained that no man shall look on the scriptures until he is nursed in heathen learning eight or nine years and armed with false principles which he has cleaned shut out of the understanding of the scripture. The scripture is locked up with false expositions and with false principles of natural philosophy. That's how he felt about that at that time. He graduated from Oxford in 1515. And when he graduated, he graduated as a university-trained linguistic. This man had mastered eight languages. He had mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, French, Spanish, Italian. In addition to English, he had partial knowledge of other languages, even including the Welch language. And he knew these languages so well that the common person listening to him speak in those languages would not know that he was an Englishman because he spoke those languages so well And he had all the dialect that went with those languages. Now according to John Fox, after this he went on to Cambridge. And while he was at Cambridge, John Fox says, he read privately to some of the students and the fellows at Magdalene College in Divinity, instructing them in knowledge and truths of the scriptures. And all that knew him reputed him to be a man of most virtuous disposition and of unspotted life. When I read that, I thought of Psalm 119, verses one and two, which says, how blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. How blessed are those who observe his testimonies, who seek him with all their heart. That's where the blessing comes, isn't it? by being blameless. Now, during his time at Cambridge, he met Thomas Bilney and John Frith, and together, the history of the English Bible says this, they strengthened each other's hands in the work of reading the New Testament and preaching the gospel of repentance to their fellow students. And while he was at Cambridge, he was regarded as Oxford's foremost intellectual rival in England. Scholars suggest that he may even received his degree while he was there. In 1521, though, he felt it was time to step away from the academic atmosphere to give time to study the Greek New Testament. He took a job also in Gloucestershire working with Sir John Walsh. He became their tutor to their children. He was also their private chaplain, as well as a personal secretary to Sir John. Now, when we think about Tyndale's ministry, I read those two verses this morning because you and I heard them in our own language, and that was his passion. During that time, the Hebrew and Greek wasn't as readily accessible. In fact, when he translated the Old Testament, he never, in fact, got to translate the entire Old Testament because he had died before he was finished. And the first time he translated the Old Testament, he had did the Pentateuch, but while he was traveling on a ship, they came into a storm, they had to abandon the ship, and he watched the ship go down with all of his works. He turned around and started over. doing it again. This time he went a little further. But by the time of his death, he had only translated in the New Testament, but was still working on the Old Testament. And in a few moments, I'll share with you how that came about as well. Tyndale was a hardworking man. In fact, he never married. He never had the grace of this life of marriage or having children or grandchildren. He was singularly devoted to the study of the scriptures. He was gospel driven. The passion of his life was to take the original languages of Greek and Hebrew and to put them in English so that even the plow boy could read the Bible in his own language. That was his passion. Just as Luther put the language of the Bible into the hands of the German people and their dialect, Martin Luther sought to do the same thing. That is why he is called the father of the English Bible, the father of the English Reformation, as well as the father of the English language. Much that we speak today in our English language is a thank you to William Tyndale, because it has to do with his work. Shakespeare learned English while reading William Tyndale's translation of the Greek New Testament in English. You'll find many quotations of Tyndall's work in Shakespeare's work. Now, while he was at Cambridge, he had the ministry of preaching the gospel, and he led many people to Christ. John Frith was one of them. You know, the Bible tells us, and I want to have you to look at this too if you're still in 2 Timothy or 1 Timothy, just flip over to 2 Timothy. I want you to see that the desire of the apostle Paul was also to have the Bible written down because there's a statement that he makes in 2 Timothy that gives us this idea. Look at verse 14. Paul is writing to Timothy, he says, you, however, continue in the things that you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them. And from childhood you have known the sacred, what? Writings. which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. If you'll notice there that the scripture is called the Haggios Grafe, which is the holy writings, the holy scriptures, Graphe is writings. And there it was written down. And because it was written down, Timothy had been taught as a child to know the holy writings. As a child he was exposed to the written word of God, and this is what Tyndale wanted. He wanted, again, the commoner to be able to read the Bible. During that time, the Bible was locked up in Latin. No one read Latin. No one spoke Latin. Even many of the priests in the Roman Catholic Church could not read or speak Latin. Many in the Roman Catholic Church could not even understand the Scriptures. And that's why At one of the dinners at Sir John Walsh's house, Sir John Walsh and his wife would entertain many important people. And on one evening, they were entertaining some guests who were leaders in the Roman Catholic Church. And as was a common thing that happened at the table, Tyndale and those leaders got into an argument. And at one point, one of those leaders from the Roman Catholic Church said that it would be better off not to have the scriptures than to defy the Pope's word. And Tyndale said, that I defy all that the Pope has to say. And if God spares my life, I will put the Bible into the language that even the plowboy could understand, and he will know more about Scripture than you." Well, that certainly got him in a lot of trouble. Now let's think about this translation. Again, he was singularly addicted to the study of scripture. Again, he didn't marry, he didn't have the distractions of this life to distract him from his time in the word. In fact, when he had finally decided on this journey and he had left England never to return, he spent 12 years as a fugitive, not something certainly that you would want to take your wife on or your children. But he yearned to see the scripture translated into English. That was his passion. And that was what he felt was the only spiritual hope for England. So by 1516, the Greek New Testament had been printed, and it was translated and printed in German, as I said, by Martin Luther in 1522, but there was no English translation available other than Wycliffe. John Wycliffe in the 1400s had written down an English translation. This is before the printing press. But it was translated from Latin. It had a lot of problems with it. Tyndale wanted to translate from the original Greek and Hebrew. And his translation was also during a time of the printing press. His was the first to be translated in this way. Again, this is why we call him the father. Now, in 1523, he traveled to London. First, he sought to seek official authorization for this translation and the publication into English. He met with the Bishop of London, which was Tunstall, and Tunstall had worked with Erasmus in the Greek New Testament. And Tyndale assumed that because Tunstall had worked with Erasmus that he would be open to this translation project, but he was rejected. But that rejection didn't stop him. It actually deepened his convictions that England desperately needed a Bible in their language. And so while he was in London, he had preached numerous times at St. Dunstan's Church. And while he was there, he met a wealthy cotton merchant whose name was Sir Humphrey. And Sir Humphrey had decided to underwrite all of Tyndale's expenses. Talk about being at the right time in the right place. So he left England in the spring of 1525. He was 30 years old. He sailed the European continent to launch his translation endeavor. And he would do this without the king of England's consent. That would be a clear breach of established law. And so as a result, every biblical text that he would translate would be illegal. This would cause him, as I said, to live in exile for the remainder of his life, never to return to his homeland of England. So for 12 years he would live on foreign soil as a fugitive and as an outlaw of the English crown. Paul told the church at Philippi in Philippians 1, 29 and 30, For to you it has been graciously granted by Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake, experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me and now hear to be in me. Many people believe that we as Christians are not to suffer. There was on local Christian radio a few years back that I heard an advertisement for something. I don't remember what it was about, but I was floored by what that advertisement said, which was this, that it's not God's will that you suffer. And immediately Philippians 1, 29 and 30 came to my mind. It says it has been graciously granted for Christ's sake not only to believe but also to suffer for His sake. We're not to suffer as evil doers, but we may suffer for our proclamation of the gospel. We may suffer when we hand a Bible to somebody. We may suffer when we pass on a track. We may suffer when we tell them that they need to believe on Jesus Christ and Him and Him alone. But to say it's not God's will that we suffer, that is someone who has not truly understood what it says in the Bible about suffering. In 1524, Tyndale arrived in Hamburg, Germany. He journeyed to Wittenberg to sit under Martin Luther. And while he was in Wittenberg, he began the work of translating the New Testament from Greek into English. And it appears that he took on a major portion of this project from May to July 1525. So by 1526, his work of the New Testament was complete and it was ready for delivery. And again, his would be the first to be translated from the original Greek into English and also the first to be mechanically printed. When it was printed, they printed in the first printing 3,000 copies of this New Testament. And over the next eight years, he would add additional revisions to his work. In fact, on one revision, he did 5,000 revisions to it. Also, in his second edition, he included copious notes in the margin, which the first edition didn't have. I spent eight years doing this, taking something and making it better. And by the time in 1600s, when the 1611 King James Bible was ready to be produced and sanctioned, it was already sanctioned by the king, by the time that that came out, there were 50 scholars that worked on the King James Bible. Very interesting, out of those 50 scholars, 90%, as I said earlier, of the work was Tyndall. One man. This man was amazing. There's many things we can learn from him. And as we talk about this, I want to encourage you to think of those things. Think of this addiction that he had to the scripture. Think about this devotion that he had to the word of God. Think about the cause of Christ that consumed him every single day of his life. He was consumed with people knowing the gospel. He wanted from the very little child on up to the oldest adult to know the word of God. Now again, the Roman Catholic Church did not want the people to know the Bible in their language because they were selling indulgences. They were doing things that if they could read this in the Bible, they would find out it would not be there. Even a group Believers known as the Lollards had also confronted England in their superstition and their indulgences and so forth. And they had even taught their kids to read the Lord's Prayer in English by which it cost them their life to do so. To pray the Lord's Prayer, our Father who art in heaven and so forth, that prayer in English caused them to be burned by the stake. Just for that. So in the spring of 1526, Tyndale shipped his Bibles, shipped them hidden in cotton bales. along the international trade routes of England. You had German Lutheran cloth merchants in England who would receive this disguised shipment. They would have it ready for distribution. The Secret Protestant Society, which was known as the Christian Brethren, they would take them all throughout England, all throughout various cities, universities, monasteries. They would sell them to Englishmen, merchants, students, tailors, weavers, bricklayers, peasants, all that were hungry for the Word of God. Even Oxford University received copies of them where Tyndall went to school. Each New Testament would cost three shillings and two pence, which was a week's wages for a skilled laborer. And so by the summer of 1526, Church officials in England had discovered this underground circulation, and they were enraged by this, and the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, they would seek to confiscate every Tyndale Bible that they could find. They would even seek to buy up the copies that they could find, but all that did was finance Tyndale's revisions to bring out more Bibles. They declared that to purchase, to sell, to distribute, to possess a Bible was a serious crime that would result in a serious punishment. And you know what that punishment was? Death. You and I have so much. We walked in here freely this morning. We walked in here with our favorite translation of the Bible. Many of us possess numerous copies of the Bible in different versions that sit on our shelves in our homes. That too was illegal. You could not own a Bible. The only Bible that you could possess would be Latin, and what would be the point of having it? But like many of you having a Greek New Testament in your possession, and all it would be there is just to show people, hey, I have a Greek New Testament. wouldn't do you any good if you could read it, right? If you couldn't read it, you'd be in a lot of trouble. Well, again, he spent 12 years as a fugitive. And when they finally caught him, they imprisoned him six miles north of Brussels in the castle of Villevoorde. He waited more than a year for his trial. He was confined for 500 days. And while he was confined for the 500 days, he was preparing his defense in a treatise called Faith Alone Justifies Before God. That again would add more to his sentence. But he said this in the winter of 1535. He wrote this in his final letter. He says, I suffer greatly from cold in the head. I am afflicted by a perpetual discharge, which is much increase in this cell. My overcoat is worn out. My shirts are also worn out. He requested a lamp in the evening. He says, it's indeed wearisome sitting alone in the dark, but most of all, I beg and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the commissary. Permit me to have my Hebrew Bible, Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew dictionary that I may pass the time in that study. Here again is a man that was singularly addicted to scripture. By the way, in order for him to translate the Old Testament, he had to teach himself Hebrew. It was not available. He had to teach himself that. And here's a man with already seven languages under his belt. Hebrew wouldn't be that much more, right? John Fox wrote that also while he sat in prison, he was affecting his very enemies as he converted his keeper, the keeper's daughter, and others of his household. Again, when you're addicted to scripture and you're addicted to the word of God and you're gospel-driven, that no matter who you're chained to, you're going to share the gospel with them. Just like Paul, when he was chained to the Roman soldier there in prison, as he was under house arrest, he was allowed to have people come and go to his house, and he preached the gospel. Much of the 13 New Testament letters were written. if not many of them while he was under house arrest. You know, that's Matthew 28, 19, and 20. As you're going, therefore make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you, and lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. Here, Tyndale did this. In August of 1536, he stood trial before his accusers, and here were the offenses they had against him. He asserted justification by faith alone. Human traditions cannot bind the conscience. The human will is bound by sin. There is no purgatory. Neither Mary nor the saints offer prayers for us, and we're not to pray to them. All this made Tyndall an enemy of both the church and the state, and he was condemned as a heretic. So during a public service, he would have been excommunicated. He would have been stripped of all of his priesthood, and according to customs during that time, for such ceremonies, he would emerge before a large gathering wearing his priestly robes. He was forced to kneel as his hands would be scraped with a knife or a sharp glass, symbolizing the loss of all of the privileges of the priesthood. The bread and the wine of the mass would be placed into his hands and then quickly removed. He would be stripped of all the vestments and he would be reclothed as a layman. And then he would be delivered over to the civil authorities for the inevitable sentence of death. But that didn't happen. He was forced back into his dungeon cell. And at that time, a steady stream of priests would visit him as well as monks, and they would harass him, and they would try to get him to recant, but he refused. So on October the 6th, 1536, he emerged from the castle. He was paraded to the southern gate of the town where his execution stake awaited. A large crowd assembled. Behind a barricade in the middle of a circular space, you had two great beams were raised in that familiar form of a cross. Hanging from the top of the central beam would be a strong iron chain. There would be brushwood and straw and logs that would be bundled and piled at its base. And even amid all that pomp, you'd have these procurator general and the great doctors that would take their seats as spectators. The crowd would be massive. Tendo proceeded to the cross. The guards would bind his feet to the bottom of the cross. They would take the chain and fasten it around his neck, pulling him tightly to the beam. The wood was arranged around the prisoner to encase him in combustible material. They also sprinkled gunpowder thoroughly throughout the brush. The executioner stood behind the cross. He was waiting for the signal of the proconsul general to carry out the sentence, and it was most likely at this moment when Tyndale would say, Lord, open the king of England's eyes. And two years later, the Lord did. The crowd would watch as Tyndale would gasp for air as he would suffocate and die. I read in one biography about him that he suffered greatly as they strangled him. The procurer general would grab a lighted wax torch at that moment, he would hand it to the executioner who would throw it on the straw and the brushwood, the blazing fire would cause the gunpowder to explode and that would blow up the corpse and what remained would be of the limping, hanging, burnt body of Tyndall which would then fall into the fire. And they said they did all of this in the name of Christ. It was just like Wycliffe. Wycliffe was disinterred, his body burned, and the ashes scattered in a river. This is what they did at that time. All for having a Bible, and all for having a Bible in your own language. Revelation 14, 13 says, and I heard a voice from heaven saying, write, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, so that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow with them. Again, God answered Tyndale's prayer. In 1536, the year that he was martyred, a complete English Bible was already circulating in England, unknown to Tyndale. The work was predominantly drawn from Tyndale's own translation. The first of these Bibles would be the Coverdale Bible, which was printed in 1535. A second English translation of the entire Bible would come as a result of the efforts of John Rogers in 1537 on one of the raids when they had discovered Tyndale. John Rogers grabbed all of his works, and translated them into the English, into the version which is called the Matthews Bible. John Rogers was also the first man martyred by bloody Mary. In September 1538, the king issued a decree that a copy of the Bible in English and Latin should be placed in every church in England. His prayer was answered. And again, that was the Coverdale Bible and the Matthew Bible. In 1539, Coverdale issued a revised version of his translation and they called it the Great Bible because it was so large. It also had received popular acclaim and the official approval of the king. Now, as I studied through this and read through many of these writings, on the biography of William Tyndale, I couldn't help to meditate on things about his life and ministry that he believed. For example, Tyndale believed that the Bible was the word of God or he would not have went through what he did. He would not have given up his life in the grace of life of marriage if he didn't believe the Bible was the word of God or believe that God wanted him to translate the Bible into the language of the people. He even said this, I call God to record against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus that I never altered one syllable of God's word against my conscience, nor would do this day, if all that is in earth, whether it be honor, pleasure, or riches might be given me. He never altered one word, one syllable. And, you know, when you take what is in the Bible and you see how it's translated, you can obviously see that this is what Tyndale believed. He believed in the Trinity, Genesis 1.1, in the beginning God. That's the word Elohim. That is a singular word with a plural ending which could be translated in the beginning gods. This is where we get the concept of the Trinity from. We know the three members in the Bible are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Even though the word Trinity does not occur in the Bible, the concept does. We find the same three members who possess the same attributes, the same characteristics, and all three are called one God. He believed in the Trinity. He started the very translation of the Old Testament with Genesis 1-1 giving us that indication. He also believed according to Genesis 1 too, because we see it printed there in a six 24-hour day creation. We know that because the evening and the morning were the first day, the evening and the morning were the second day, the evening and morning were the third day, all the way up to seven days. He believed in a six-day, 24-hour day creation. He believed God rested on the seventh day. He believed according to Genesis 3, the fall of man. He believed also, according to Genesis 3-5, he believed in sin. He believed in Genesis 6-9, which speaks of the global flood. That's just to name a few things. You go over into the New Testament. He believed, according to Matthew 1-23, that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. He was also God. He was called Emmanuel, which means what? God with us. Luke 2 tells us he believed in the virgin birth because he records it as such. He doesn't alter it in any way. He believed in the miracles of Jesus. All four Gospels give this. He believed in the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. All four Gospels also give us this. He believed in the return of Jesus Christ, the rise of the Antichrist. He believed in the great tribulation, the rapture, the millennium, and the eternal state. All of these things we find in Scripture. Among many other things that he believed, according to Scripture, again, he did not alter in any way one syllable or one word. He translated them faithfully from the Hebrew and the Greek New Testament. So his passion to translate the Bible in the language of the people revealed his belief in the Bible being the word of God. He said in 2 Timothy 3.16, Theopneustos, which means all scripture is God breathed. He believed that. Second thing I would say that he believed is that God is sovereign. You cannot do what he did and run for 12 years if you didn't believe in the sovereignty of God. and also to believe in the fact that the people needed the Bible in their language so that they could read it and be saved. He believed in the sovereignty of God. What do we mean by the sovereignty of God? Well, in 1828 edition of the Webster's Dictionary, this is how the word sovereign is defined. It's defined as supreme in power, possessing supreme dominion, as the supreme ruler of the universe, supreme, superior to all others, chief. And then it says this, God is the sovereign good of all who love and obey Him, supremely efficacious, superior to all others, predominant, effectual as a sovereign remedy. You don't find that kind of definition in an English dictionary. In fact, Dictionary.com defines sovereign as one that exercises supreme permanent authority, especially in a nation or other governmental unit, such as a king, queen, or noble person who serves as chief of state, a ruler or monarch, a national governing council or committee, You do not find any mention of God as an example of sovereignty. But you do in the 1828 edition of the Webster's Dictionary. A.W. Pink elaborates on the understanding of supreme. When he says that the sovereignty is the exercise of God's supremacy, being infinitely elevated above the highest creature, he is the most high, Lord of heaven and earth, subject to none, influenced by none, absolutely independent. God does as he pleases, only as he pleases, always as he pleases. None can thwart him and none can hinder him. Even one of the places that we see this is in his name, El Elyon, which means God Most High. That Hebrew word is occurring 31 times in the Old Testament. It speaks of God's supremacy, of God's sovereignty. Psalm 47.2 says, for the Lord Most High is to be feared, a great king over all the earth. Again, that's the Hebrew word El Elyon. Not only did he believe in the sovereignty of God, But he also believed that man was sinful. He believed in the total depravity of man. He believed and taught that the very moment of conception, all people inherit a radically sin-corrupted nature. Here's what he wrote. He said, By nature, through the fall of Adam, Are we the children of wrath, heirs of the vengeance of God by birth, yea, and from our conception? And we have our fellowship with damned devils under the power of darkness and rule of Satan while we are yet in our mother's womb. And though we do not show the fruits of sin as soon as we are born, yet we are full of the natural poison whereof all sinful deeds spring and cannot but sin outwards. but we never so young, as soon as we are able to work. If occasion be given, for our nature is to do sin, as is the nature of the serpent, to sting." He believed in this depraved nature, as translated in Ephesians 2.1, and you who were dead in trespasses and sins. Verse 5 says of Ephesians 2, God made you alive. Fourth thing that I would say, he believed that man needed salvation. If he didn't believe that, then why did he translate the Bible into the language of the people? Why didn't he just leave it in Latin so no one else could read it or understand it? Why did he risk his life and spend 12 years as a fugitive if he did not believe that man is a sinner in need of a savior? Again, we have much to thank his work for his dedication probably the most familiar verse in the Bible that you and I have learned as a child translated by William Tyndale is John 3 16 and it doesn't read much differently when you look at his translation by the way if you have internet access or smartphone you can download a copy of that Greek New Testament that was translated into English and you can read it for yourself and see the very work that he has done. I watched a video yesterday of a man who actually possesses one of those original copies that was not destroyed. This thing is about this thick and about this tall. And you can see the beautiful print from the movable print in those times of this Bible translated into English. And as you can imagine, it's very delicate. I held in my hands an original copy of Martin Luther's works when I was at a conference some years back, and that was very humbling to hold something like that. I believe there's much that we can learn from William Tyndale. Think about his commitment. Have you ever met a person as committed as he? Or a person that persevered or trusted God or had faith and courage and purpose in his life? that he would spend his life from 30 years old till the age of 42 translating the Bible and running from the authorities who said it was illegal to possess or to translate or to have a Bible in your own language. But that was William Tyndall. I wanna close this morning by having you to turn with me to 2 Timothy chapter two and I just wanna read A few of these verses, and I want you to think of William Tyndale, because this describes what kind of man that he was. Here Paul is writing to Timothy, and he says this, you therefore my son, beginning in verse one, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these the faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangle himself in the affairs of everyday life so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. Also, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules. The hardworking farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of the crops. Consider what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel, for which I suffer hardship even to imprisonment as a criminal, but the word of God is not in prison. For this reason, I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus, and with it, eternal glory. It is a trustworthy statement. If we died with him, we will also live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. Nothing deterred him from his commitment to translate the Bible into English. What has God put on your heart for the salvation of his people? Has God given you this kind of desire? Have you given up because you have been opposed? Maybe you're sharing the gospel or handing out a track at work and your boss says, put that away. There's separation of church and state. By the way, that is not in the Constitution. That was something that Andrew Jackson said in one of his letters. But it was never part of the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights or anything that you can go back and look into our history. But liberals are using that to silence Christians. You have protection in our Constitution to carry your Bible and to talk about the Bible, to believe as you want to believe. That's why we have in America a diversity of beliefs because that is in our Constitution. But I want you to think about this, and I want you to think about tomorrow, as people are out celebrating Halloween, and you may have little kids come to your door, and listen, they're not the problem. They don't know any better. They only know what their parents are teaching them. But what you can do is, one, give them a safe place to come. Number two, you could pass out gospel tracts. I put some there in the foyer for you this morning. You can talk to them about Jesus. You can use it as a day of evangelism. You can do those things. We used to use it as family time and make things about the gospel, make things that we could hand out that would talk about the gospel, give those opportunities to share the gospel. But the biggest question, again, I want you to think about is not even that. I want you to think about your life. I wanted to think about what have you given up for the kingdom of God? What are you pursuing right now in your life so that people can hear and read the word of God? Maybe you sponsor a Bible project where Bibles are being distributed. Maybe you do some things with the Gideons. The Gideons go to places and hand out Bibles. We know all from staying in hotels that right there in the drawer is a Bible and it says placed here by the Gideons. But many people are getting those removed. Atheists are getting those removed. Many public schools can have the Gideons come to them and pass out Bibles. We let them come and pass out Bibles. And we can, we're a private school. So again, ask yourself, what am I doing to get the word of God? Maybe start with your family. Make sure all of the children and the people in your family have a Bible. That's a wonderful Christmas present, wouldn't you say? Is to give somebody a Bible. Well, there's many things that you and I can do, and I want to encourage you to think about these things. Father, we thank you for this time that we've had together this morning. We thank you for this wonderful, godly man who gave up so much so that we could have our English Bible. We thank you this morning we've had an opportunity to hear from the English Bible and, Lord, to also have some time together learning about this man and the commitment that he made. And Lord, we rejoice with even what Martin Luther did just a couple years before Tyndale of nailing his 95 thesis on the door of Wittenberg there 499 years ago and starting a reformation. And I pray, Lord God, that we would rejoice in the heritage that we share, that we have, all because of these faithful and godly men. Thank you for what they gave up for us. We pray now, Lord, as we have a moment to reflect on these things and also reflect on your word, God, that you would draw our hearts and our minds to yourself and that we would examine ourselves, as Paul would say in 2 Corinthians 13, as to whether we are in the faith. Do that work in us, we pray. All this in Jesus' name, amen.