Well, it's very nice to see a good congregation here this evening, and we're thankful to be here to have a part in your Reformation services. My wife was reminding me on the way here, make sure that you let everybody know how much we enjoy the beauty of Maryland in the fall. I'm not sure if you call it leaf peeping down here. I know up in New Hampshire, that's what they call, you know, the tourists that come to see the colors and so on. But certainly we don't have the deciduous trees in there, thousands and millions that you have here, because you know, of course, that Washington out on the West Coast is the evergreen state, and that's because we have evergreen trees. Well, most of the West of Canada is like that, and whether it's summer or winter, spring or fall, It's just green, so there's not the spectacular aspect to visiting the mountains and the countryside as you have here. Buell and I are delighted to be a part of the congregation this week, and we have enjoyed a ready fellowship today, and I trust that that will grow meeting by meeting. On Wednesday evening, when I get to speak on the Canadian Luther, perhaps I'll talk a little more of Canada, and I trust I can share the burden that we have to reach that country with the gospel. Buell and I have been in Canada now for 35 and a half years, and we feel like our work is only beginning. The task is great. There are immigrants coming from all over the world into our country. We have a mission field on our doorstep. And I would ask you to pray for our nation. Morally, it's in decline. Spiritually, the church attendance level is not good. We need to see revival. We need to see the Lord work. And we pray that God in grace will visit his people. Now, I know the need in the United States also is great, and the challenges are many. But what a wonderful testimony this evening's service is to the grace of God at work in this community and to the grace of God in your own lives as you come this evening to worship the Lord to learn of his word, and also to enter into these Reformation subjects. Now, we have had the Bible reading on 2 Timothy, chapter 4. And I'd like to read again the verses 7 and 8 as our text this evening. 2 Timothy, chapter 4, and verses 7 and 8. I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith. Henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but unto all them also. that love His appearing." Let's bow briefly for prayer. Father, we thank Thee that we have the light of Your Word, and that here, in our own vernacular language, we have this Word of God in its entirety, from Genesis to Revelation. We thank Thee, O Lord, that this book has been inspired and preserved. and that tonight that we might declare the great things of thy law. We pray that thou will grant us the power and unction of the Holy Spirit as we learn a little of the life of William Tyndale. We thank thee for raising up this man. for the burden that You put in His heart, that He would give to His common English fellow men the Word of God in their own language. We thank Thee, O Lord, for how England became a Bible-reading nation and has taken this gospel to the ends of the earth. And we pray tonight, O Lord, that Thou will stir us to have a missionary vision and to do more, that we might see thy kingdom extended. For the hour is late, the day is evil, and we know not the hour of thy return. O Lord, put thy Spirit within us, and give grace to speak and also to hear, and that we may go home this evening, knowing that God has given us a word to help us in our stand for Christ. In his precious name, we ask these things, amen. Let me say by commencement tonight that the mark of a man's faith is tested by his readiness to die for it. If it's not worth dying for, it's not worth living for. I have heard of churches, and one of their marks of membership, the question is, are you willing to lay down your life for your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ? If that question was put to you and me, how would we answer it? Would we be ready, if God should call us, to lay down our life for the gospel, for the truth of our Lord Jesus Christ as we have received it. That is a great test. William Tyndale lived in constant threat of death and was finally martyred simply because he translated the Bible and printed the Bible in the English language. He was betrayed when he was in the city of Antwerp in Belgium. He was betrayed by a fellow Englishman. one whom he thought was an evangelical friend, turned out to be a Judas, and he sold him as he thought, although he got really no reward for it, but he sold him into the hands of the authorities. He was arrested, he was imprisoned, and he spent about 18 months in a horrible, horrible prison cell with the squealing of the rats, the windows were without glass, He had very few clothes, they had turned to rags, and the only thing that he wanted was that he might have the tools to continue his translation of the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures into English. And from there, he was taken out and he was chained to a stake, strangled. And then his body was burned to ashes. Just a few hours before he died, he made this public prayer, open the eyes of the King of England. In a marvel, marvelous way, God answered. Not in converting Henry VIII, the King of England, but in giving A Bible to the English people that received royal assent and was to be placed in every church in the king's dominion. A marvelous answer. And this is an amazing providence that encourages us that God is behind not just the translation and the publication, but in the reception of His own Word. As I mentioned in prayer, England became a Bible-reading nation. Who does not know Queen Victoria's answer? What is the secret of England's greatness? And her answer is the Bible. And this was very much the result of a man who single-handedly, in a very lonely fashion for many years, was an outlaw for God. and are a former who gave the English people the word of God in their own language. Now, I want to point out to you tonight that the English Reformation was not the result of a political maneuvers. It was not because of Henry VIII seeking a divorce. Now, he did break off with the Pope, who dragged his feet and held out and held out, and did not give that clear-cut answer that Henry VIII was looking for, and Henry eventually defied the Pope and threw off his tyranny and brought England out from the heel of potpourri. but he did so only to make himself the head of the church and to make himself the Pope of England in his own way. Henry VIII never became a Protestant. He never became a born-again Christian. In fact, there are many things about the evangelical faith that he detested and persecuted. He was as ready to persecute Protestants as he was to persecute Catholics. And so the English Reformation was not a political reformation, but it was a reformation of the word. the translation of the Bible, and the reception of it in the hearts of English people. And to prove it, there are the hundreds who were willing to lay down their lives as martyrs, and the Reformation was bought by their blood. In the city of London, which by the way at that time was no large metropolis as it is now, it was a city of somewhere between 50 and 100,000 people. Depends whether you counted everybody inside the walls or perhaps a little around it. And it was a much smaller population. There was only one bridge in the city over the Thames. Indeed, the whole population of England at that time was approximately three million people. Now, in our day, these 500 years or so later, this is seemingly very, very small. I'm not sure of the population of Maryland, but I'm sure it's up there somewhere. And it would seem that all of England was a very small country. But every martyr that laid down his or her life was a tremendous testimony in that day of the preciousness of the Word and of the gospel of the Lord Jesus. In the area of Smithfield, which is now a marketplace, it was a public square in the city. There were time and time again Protestant mortars taken out. They were hung or burned, and they were disposed of by the King of England. The English First Reformation, and that's the 1500s when God brought the gospel and the people out of the Middle Ages, that was the First Reformation. We refer to the Second Reformation in the 1600s in the days of the Puritans. It was then that the Westminster Confession of Faith was written. And I want you to note this, that it was just 100 years after the death of Henry VIII. 100 years later, you have those mighty ministers and theologians who gathered in Westminster, London, and they compiled together the theological document that has stood the test of all these years and served the Lord's Church in so many places on earth, around the world, to maintain and defend the very light of the gospel. And so every Christian must be interested in the English Reformation, also because of the grand scale of the missionary work that wherever colonialism was taken, missionaries followed along, and they came with the Word of God. who can deny the power and the blessing of God upon the English-speaking people as they brought their Bibles. Think of the Mayflower arriving here on these shores. Think of the Geneva Bible that was used by those early pilgrims, and how the very founders of this nation had a God consciousness. They had a familiarity, at the very least. If they were not converted men, they were men who were influenced by the English Bible. All of these are traced to the life-changing impact of the English Reformation in the 1500s. And these are all reasons why we want to study the English Reformation. And this is why we have this interest in an island nation that struck it out alone, separating from Europe and from their former submission to the Pope. It was really an ancient Brexit. And of course, today we are hearing all kinds of antics and political maneuvers that Britain might free itself from the rule of the continent of Europe. Well, in these days of William Tyndale, during the days of Henry VIII, there was a Brexit. There was a move to come out from the Church of Rome. and it was through the power of the Word of God. The life of William Tyndale runs parallel with Henry VIII. Henry VIII was five years old whenever William Tyndale was born, and he was born in 1496. Their lives ran parallel during the vast changes in the English nation in the 1500s. It was well stated that Henry VIII was the man who dragged England out of the Middle Ages, the Pope from his throne, and the British Navy from the scrapyard. And so there were vast changes in that time. Now, I will argue tonight that Henry VIII would never have broken with the Pope if it was not for William Tyndale. William Tyndale's writings, not just his translation work, but a number of the books that he published, were in a wonderfully providential way, they came into the hands of the king. And as he read the writings of Tyndale, it was that information that gave him the impetus to make the break from Rome. And certainly what Luther was to Germany, Tyndale was to England. In this first study tonight, and I beg your patience, you are a very patient congregation, I thoroughly enjoyed preaching this morning. And I said to my wife, this is the most receptive congregation I have preached to, maybe in all of my life. And it makes a difference. If you have ever done any preaching, when the people listen and take it in, well, it thrills the heart of the preacher. So as you suffer along and give attention to this interest in William Tyndale, and I have it burning in my heart tonight, and I won't be satisfied by Tuesday evening if it's not burning in your heart as well. And I'm glad to see so many young people here tonight. These are things that if you learn them in your young years, they will help you all of your days. So in this first study, I want to give a picture of life in England at the time of William Tyndale, when he was moved, amazingly moved, to give his own people the word of God in the English language. Now, it's a very sad picture, and it's an alarming picture of the English nation that was without the light of God. It's also a picture that stands in stark contrast to what England became under God through the light of the gospel. the liberties, the laws, the ways of government, which Britain has become famous for, at least until this Brexit issue. Britain has the longest parliament, the longest system of government, the great example to the nations of the world how to govern by democracy. And God worked in a mighty way. But prior to that reformation, England had no such liberty. I want to start tonight by drawing that picture of the grip that the papacy had upon England and Englishmen, which was broken by the Bible. It's very difficult for us in the Western world, where we enjoy all kinds of liberties and freedoms, political freedom, religious freedom, freedom of speech, that we can take those things as, well, we've enjoyed them all our lives. We hardly think about them. But in the land of England, it was not so. The Church of Rome today, is cowed by the liberties of our Protestant heritage and our political democracies. In Canada and in America, Rome is very present, but thankfully she is denied total control of our governments and our nations at this hour. Our nations are not under the heel of Rome and the papacy today as it was in the 1500s. Then England was totally controlled by the corruption of popes, cardinals, priests, and monks. And there were no alternatives. There was no religious liberty or freedom. The work of John Wycliffe, who 200 years before had raised up lawyers, his evangelists, to take handwritten copies of various portions of the scripture to the marketplaces of England, that work had been stomped out. And just as John Wycliffe's body had been exhumed, had been burned, and cast into the seven that it may never be remembered, that work and the liberty of the Bible at that time was totally crushed. By the early 1500s, it was against the law to disseminate religious literature and certainly anything that was the word of God. Brian Edwards, the historian, stated this fact in his book, Tyndale, God's Outlaw. And I want you to follow the history line on this. Since the year 1213, when King John was communicated and consequently surrendered his kingdom to the Pope, English monarchs had reigned at the behest of Popes, From that year, England paid an annual 1,000 pounds feudal rent to the Sea of Rome until Henry threw out the landlord in 1534. And that's the history. That's the very tension into which Tyndale was born and the burden that God gave to him that he might produce the Word of God in England. Now, Rome's stranglehold on English religious life in England was brilliantly described in a parable by William Tyndale. And this was in the book Practice and Prelates, the very book that King Henry VIII was to read. And how it got into his hands, there was a maid in his palace who was visited by a young man, and he found this book in the young lady's hand. And so he took it from her and began to read. He got lost in the book, and others saw him reading it and handed it to the queen, who in turn handed it to the king. And in that way, He began to read these exposés of the dominance of Rome over Englishmen. Now, William Tyndale got some of his light from Erasmus, the Greek scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam. who by the way came to England 1511 to about 1514, and he taught Greek in Cambridge University. But in Erasmus' own Greek text, In that portion where it says in Matthew 23, 23, woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. And you know the portion, how it just pours scorn upon those dead religious apostate Jews. Well, Tyndale wrote his parable on the awful control that Rome was making upon Englishmen, and here it is. Now, let me tell you it in my own words. It's a long quote. Tyndale's parable was of an oak tree, and of course, in England, just like in this countryside, an oak tree would be a familiar scene. And he would speak of the ivy that would creep along the ground, and it would find the oak tree. And in the early part of its growth, it would be a welcome sight. It would adorn the oak tree. It would seem to clothe it from the elements. But over time, the ivy would grow and twist its way around the boughs of the tree and enclose the trunk until it becomes now a mass of ivy. And then it begins to suck the life out of the tree to give life to itself and to control it by its power. And Tyndale said, so the Pope of Rome and Romanism. At first, it finds a willing emperor or a king. And at first, there is friendship. And at first, there is familiarity. And then, as it were, the ivy grows. Then the tentacles of Rome continue to increase. And it begins to suck the life out of the very nation that it is controlling. And so this parable was a very powerful message. To see just how accurate his parable was, I want you to think about Cardinal Woolsey. He was supposedly the King's right-hand man, but he was also the Pope's right-hand man, who had all authority from the Pope in the land of England. and you would imagine that he would be living perhaps in a quiet location in a very modest place. But I have learned that it was he that commissioned the building of Humpton Court in 1515. It is about 12 miles upriver on the Thames, and it covers, the building itself covers eight acres, with two, sorry, 1,000 rooms, and it took 2,500 men to build it over a number of years. After it was built, it took 500 servants to maintain the palace, all for the Romish Cardinal Wolsey. He considered the water in the Thames to be sewage, And so he commissioned that a pipe be used to draw water from a mountain spring. And I don't know the distance, but it took 250 tons of lead to bring the water from the spring into the palace. That might be a reason why some of them were a little sickly. We now know what lead can do to the water. But it lets us see the dominance and the unashamed arrogance of these ambassadors of Rome. Cardinal Wolsey became a persecutor of Bible distributors and Bible readers. And indeed, he was the big reason why Tyndale needed to flee England to print the Bible for his fellow Englishmen. Now, England in those days under Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey was no refuge for Protestants. Preachers and Bible lovers were in constant danger of their lives. They fled into exile onto the continent to get away from the strong, cruel arm of Wolsey and Tunstall and other Romish despots. In those times, church men were the richest men. And I give you another little quote from the history book. Woolsey was at one time, and the same time, Bishop of Turnai, Belgium, Bishop of Lincoln, Dean of the Chapter of St. Stephen, and Archbishop of York. and he was only just commencing his spectacular career at this time. Tyndale's own country of Gloucestershire was a stronghold of the church. with six mitered abbeys and numerous priories, monasteries, convents, and cells. For 50 years, Italian bishops held livings at Gloucester and Worcester, and it is doubtful if any of them ever visited England. The 90 monasteries in Gloucestershire owned 65,000 acres of land. Now, 65,000 acres of land may not be so much in North America, but in little England, that small little island country, that was eating up the best, most productive farmland of the nation. And this was the state of England in the days of William Tyndale and Henry VIII. Things were upside down and back to front. The church was all powerful, and even the king was the servant to the pope. Now, the lesson for us tonight is that we must never take our Protestant liberties and heritage for granted. We must never let down our guard what the tyranny of false religion can do against a free people, a people who love to worship, not by government laws, not by ecclesiastical authorities, but by the word of God, and to have our conscience ruled alone by truth and righteousness and by the Savior whom we love. These things are at stake. when people forget the great cost of the Reformation. I want us to look now at the stark ignorance of the English people concerning the Word of God. When Henry VIII was five years old, Tyndale was born, 1486. He was the son of a butcher in the city of Gloucester, on the border of Wales, about a hundred miles out west from the city of London. Now, as a mere teenage boy, he entered university life at Cambridge. He and other students, they sat under cold lectures in cold buildings, On the powers and polity of the church, there was no scripture, no reading of the Bible whatsoever. Students at night, before they could sleep to work up enough heat, they would run around the building in circles to energize heat that they might keep themselves warm. These peel-faced teenage boys could be seen in the local neighborhood begging for their food to supplement the porridge cake that they received inside. And these were to be the priests and the monks of England in the future. The common people of England were just as ignorant of the Bible, and later, William Tyndale described the state of the common Englishman in a picture of John Plowman. Now, I want to take a moment to describe to you who John Plowman is, was. We cannot understand or comprehend what the Bible did for the Englishman until we understand the lot of the common Englishman called John Plowman. In his book, he says, the peasant was allotted strips of land, and each house had its own small garden. If he was lucky, he might be allowed a 20-acre strip on which he could earn himself 35 shillings a year. But an ox cost 13 shillings in the market, and he needed two for his plough. Towards the autumn, Tyndale could watch the scores of plowmen driving the yoke of oxen or pairs of horses up and down these strips. His eyes stopped roving the plain as he fastened upon a plowman. John Plowman was the symbol of the hardworking, ignorant, superstitious, desperately poor country Englishman. No one cared for him, and he was imprisoned in his village. It was virtually unknown for the Plowman to become anything else. Tyndale and all the scholars had the Bible in Latin and now in New Testament Greek, but what was that to the man behind the plow? How could he know that God had spoken, not through the warped and contradictory claims of the church, but plainly through the scriptures? There was only one answer. John Plowman must read the scriptures for himself in plain Plowman's English. As such a people could never be reformed merely by political decisions, not even by Henry VIII who would divorce and behead his wives and also divorce the Pope A reformation would not come to the nation and to the plowman to change his heart and change his life by some political act. It was a reformation of the Word, and it needed to come straight to his heart out of the Scriptures of truth. Paul the Apostle said that if our gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost. And we are living in days when this Bible, there is a famine for the Word of God, when the common person has either never read the book, has never come to accept its truth, or rejected it outrightly. And we can only pray that God will give us a time of revival and reformation through getting men and women the word of God in their own hands. I trust that tonight that we will take from William Tyndale the same burden to reach those around us with the gospel. What about your neighbors? What about your friends? What about those who come into our countries with other religions? They are idolaters and heathen worshipers. They need this gospel, and they need the Bible. That's the burden that ought to come to our hearts. Now, I want to move to the spiritual power of the written word on Englishmen. And there's a history line to this. It didn't just fall out of heaven. It didn't just happen. There are players at work, and behind it, the hand of God. Students at Oxford and Cambridge had their greatest excitement and learning when discussing the new learning from Europe. Now, we're going back to 1519. That's when William Tyndale arrived in Cambridge as a young student. Prior to that, there was the Renaissance. the fall of Constantinople, 1453, the driving out of scholars and literature, and these Greek and learned men, painters, artists, architects, the revival of learning spread across Europe. And some of them arrived in Cambridge. Cambridge became a hub of Bible exposition later. And these learned men began to teach the Greek language. And this learning that was coming from the continent, Luther's books, and the amazing events of the German Reformation was the news of the day. At that time also, Erasmus of Rotterdam, the man who gave the New Testament scriptures, of whom it is said that he led the egg that Luther hatched. Well, this Erasmus of Rotterdam, he came to England and he came to Cambridge. And he was there during the years 1511 to 14 for three years. And historians tell us that he hated every moment of it. He complained of the high inflation and of the English fog. Not a very easy place for someone who would have been used to a more gentle climate to adjust. Now Tyndale probably missed the direct teaching of Erasmus. He didn't arrive until a little later when Erasmus would have been gone. But his influence, his example, his teaching, his knowledge of the Greek language was now spreading in that university. At first, Tyndale did not really join in in all this frenzy of excitement about new learning, nor did he go to the White Horse Inn where there were theological debates and Lutheranism, but much of it was mere intellectual. Tyndale didn't even yet have a New Testament, but it wasn't long until he got one. And it wasn't long until he was spending all his pennies to purchase candles that he might read the New Testament through the night hours. At that time, he was poor, he was finished his university term, and he became a tutor to Sir John Walsh of Sodbury Manor, a country estate At the end of that home, there was a quiet apartment where he was free to do his own studies. He undertook the translation of a more secular book, and he shared it with Sir Walsh, a proof of his tremendous gift of languages. Now Sudbury Hall was a country man's residence where they kept open table. And that meant that there were many visitors who arrived. And I'm sure if you did, you would have many visitors as well. I remember growing up on the farm and our lunchtime or dinner was at 1 p.m. on the dot every day. And there were certain individuals who were friendly with our family. They seemed to smell the dinner and they would arrive on the dot 1 p.m. Well, in Sudbury Manor, there was open table, and the learned, the priests, the scholars of the day would arrive, and they would have many conversations. William Tyndale, the young student scholar, was invited to the table also, and he took his place. As the discussion enlivened, he could not but help share his knowledge of the Greek language and the Word of God. The priests and the prelates that gathered around their table with all their arguments, they neither knew Greek nor the Bible. And so young Tyndale won so many of the arguments. Now, It was at that time when he was at Sodbury Manor that he used to take excursions into the city of Bristol, and there he would preach in the open marketplace. And I give you this sample of his preaching because it will also give you an idea of his views around that table in the Sodbury Manor. When he went to Bristol, he would stand at an elevated place, and gathering around him would be the common people, the monks and the friars and various clerics. And he would preach to them, if thou believe the promises, then God's truth justifieth thee. That is, forgiveth thy sins. and sealeth thee with his Holy Spirit, and maketh thee heir of everlasting life through Christ's deservings. Now, if thou have true faith, so seest thou the exceeding and infinite love and mercy which God hath shewed thee freely in Christ. Speaking of merits, and looking directly at the Augustinian friars around him, Tyndale could preach again as he later wrote. God has promised Christ's merits unto all that repent, so that whosoever repenteth is immediately heir of all Christ's merits and beloved of God as Christ is. How then came this foul monster, the Pope, to be lord over Christ's merits, so that he hath power to sell that which God giveth freely? O dreamers, yea, O devils, and O venomous scorpions, what poison have ye in your teals? O pestilent leaven, that so turneth the sweet bread of Christ's doctrine into the bitterness of the fall. The friars run in the same spirit and teach saying, do good deeds and redeem the pains that abide you in purgatory. Well, you can imagine that they were ready to throw him out of Bristol, and they did. He was, stones and rotten things were hurled at him. And if you can imagine this young man around the table at Sir Walsh's home, Well, there were many fiery conversations. And in his book, Edwards tells us that a learned man around that table had been debating some point and finding he could not get the better of this troublesome scripture-quoting young student. He rose in a rage and stormed. We were better without God's law. than the Pope's." Now that really fired up the blood of young Tyndale and that's when he made the famous statement. He said, I defy the Pope and all his laws. If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth a plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost." Well, that was the end of young Tyndale's welcome at that table. And it really was the event that caused him to soon flee from England. He fled to London. He sought to find a printer that would undertake the task of printing the Word of God, but he couldn't find one. He was given refuge for a short time by a man called Henry Monmouth, a rich merchant, but there were so many people coming and going to the home that it was not safe for him to be there. And from that time Tyndale was an outlaw, for he left England without the king's consent. He banished himself for his beloved Englishmen, that he might give them one day the word of God. Now, the year 1517 has been stated by historians as the year when the English Reformation commenced. And that is because that was the year when the New Testament Greek was translated, or the Bible was translated into Greek right there in Cambridge. But it was not in the English language. And it was not until much later when Tyndale was across the English Channel on the continent, that there he was working on translating the Bible for the common Englishman. And as I said, Tyndale was the Englishman's Luther. And in a marvelous way, God opened a way for his New Testaments to come across that channel. Woolsey, Tunstall, Moore, and other Catholic authorities were watching out for these copies of the Word of God, and they gave orders at every port that every bale of wheat should be searched. But in God's way of dealing, England had nigh famine at that year. Crops had failed. And the demand for wheat and grain from the continent was so great that the ships were coming in so fast that they couldn't all be checked. And so the Word of God entered, and the Englishman right across the country was receiving copies of this Word of God. God made a way for His Word. Now, if we believe in a God who has a covenant of grace, who is going to save his own people and bring them to himself by his way of ruling the world to build his church, God will make a way for his word. And we need that hope in our hearts tonight. We need that understanding and that conviction as we take this gospel to a needy world. We have read in our Bible reading tonight where Paul said to Timothy, do the work of an evangelist. And churches are not just to be places of refuge or places where we are fed the finest of the wheat, and we thank God for such ministries, but churches are to be evangelists, and we are to take this word to the lost. And just like William Tyndale, who was burdened for his fellow Englishman, especially the common, ignorant, untaught, English man without the Bible in his own hand. We need that burden for the lost. I wonder tonight, do you truly have a burden for the souls of men that are perishing in their sin? You see them daily. Do you pray for them daily? Do you come to the church prayer meetings and cry out to God that He will make this church a soul-saving center in this community and in this part of the country? Do we not need gospel ministries where there is fire in the preacher's soul to take this gospel to the boys and the girls, the men and women who need Christ? That's the burden that was in Tyndale's heart. A month ago, my wife and I visited our parents in the north of Ireland. And strangely, the easiest way to travel these days is through the south of Ireland, from the city of Dublin. We had a day in the city. And in the center of Dublin in Ireland, and I'm aware there's a Dublin close to here. I'm not sure what the layout of the land. I saw the sign. But in the city of Dublin, it's about 2 million people. And the city center, much of it is closed off to pedestrian walk. And when you enter that area, it is just thronged with people, many of them young people. Many of them are immigrants from all over Europe and some of them from Africa and the Mediterranean countries. And they have come to Dublin because Microsoft has come, Google has come, and many of those big corporations, they get tax benefits. And if Brexit happens, Ireland will be the only English-speaking country within the European countries. And so Dublin is bustling. Now, I took my iPhone out, and I got the little voice recorder going. And I interviewed a few young people in the streets. And I simply said, I've got my voice recorder, and I'm from Canada. I have a radio broadcast, and I would like to just talk with you about life in Dublin. And that was true. And of course, I would ask, where did you come from? How long have you been here? Is Dublin a good place to live? And all those questions. But invariably, I would get to the question, have you ever read the Bible? One had a Bible, but he never read it. Three young guys, they maybe 17 years old, they don't go to church. Their parents were Catholic. They don't go to church anymore. They went to a Roman Catholic school. And I said, well, surely you would have the Bible there. No, we never read the Bible. Never read the Bible. And then I would say to them, do you know that you can get the Bible on your phone? And I use a software called eSword. And you just download it, put it on whatever device you have, and you can read the Bible anywhere at free, fully free. And I said to them, would you like to do that? No. Another man, he was from Poland. And he had found work there. And I, again, began to talk to him about the Bible and its availability. We're living in times when we have all this technology, what we call the information age. And people are as ignorant as Englishmen in the days of Williamton. And I'm sure if I went to London, Manchester, or back to Gloucester and did the same interviews, I would get a similar response. We have a famine for the Word of God, and we need to pray. Because if we're praying for revival, we've got to pray that God will give our revival through the Word. We don't want just some politician making a sudden decision and we call that God's answer to the nation. It has to begin in the hands and hearts of the people. I wonder, boys and girls, are you reading your Bible? Do you know what it cost in London in the days of William Tyndale to buy a New Testament? It cost a full load of hay for a New Testament. Or it would cost three days work for a copy of the New Testament. I'm sure you have a Bible that someone may even have given you or presented to you. Do you love it? Do you read it? Do you cherish that word as the word of life, the word that comes from God for your soul? Because that's going to make the difference between a scripture man, woman, boy or girl, and a mere empty-hearted Christian, professing Christian. And so tonight I take this cue from William Tyndale. What would he say to you? What would he say to you? I led down my life. I went through all that labor. and you won't read the Word of God that comes to you freely? Surely tonight we need to get back to the book and seek God's blessing upon that Word. Let me give you a challenge. Psalm 119, I know it's a very repetitive kind of genre of Scripture, but You memorize the first eight verses, memorize them, and you will fall in love all over again with the Word of God. Psalm 119 is the compendium, it is the thermometer of your delight in God's Word. Would you do that? And God will use it in your heart. And may the Lord bless you tonight. And I trust you'll be with us tomorrow and Tuesday as we continue on in William Tyndale. We'll be looking at him as he meets with Martin Luther in Germany. And I want to tell you why he got out of there as quick as he could. That's tomorrow night. Please come back. May the Lord bless you through his word this evening. Shall we close in prayer? Father, we thank thee tonight for the privilege of coming to this history of William Tyndale. And oh Lord, we learn that we are very indebted to the work that he has done, to the grace that you granted him, and for answering the prayer that he offered to open the eyes of the King of England. O Lord, make this message, this word to live, that we may have a new devotion, a new delight in the precious word of life. Bless your people here tonight. Bless those who face work tomorrow, or school, or problems that we know nothing about. O Lord, you know them all, and we thank thee that we can cast our care upon thee, for you truly care for us. Bless the pastors of this church. Bless those who have daily and weekly responsibilities. And we pray, O Lord, that you'll make this congregation to be a place of evangelism and of gospel power. O Lord, come down into the midst to bless. Receive our thanksgiving for all your goodness to us this Lord's Day, and dismiss us with your blessing. May the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with your redeemed people now and evermore. Amen.