William Tyndale’s Gift to the World

0:00 Would you pray with me? Father, would you make us willing to walk on the road of sacrifice with Jesus and with William Tyndale so that the face of Christ might be plain for all to see? I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. this is a message about William Tyndale and his life and work in giving us our English Bible Tyndall gave us our first ever translation into English of the Greek New Testament. And it cost him his life.

0:51 That was 500 years ago, as we have heard. 1526, he finished that first edition of his New Testament. before that time if you spoke English you basically had no access to the Bible unless you spoke Latin it was unavailable John Wycliffe a century earlier 140 years earlier with his friends called the Lollards had translated the Bible into English from the Latin Vulgate, which had been used for a thousand years. He had no printed Greek Testament. He had no printing press at that point. Tyndale had both.

1:45 And so there were only handwritten copies available in the 13th and 14th centuries. And you were taking your life in your hand. if you got a hold of one of those or were even found quoting it. It is almost incomprehensible to us how viciously opposed the Roman Catholic Church was to the translation of the Bible into English. laws were put in place so that you could be burned alive for simply reciting a passage from the English Bible. John Bale, as a boy of 11, saw a man in Norwich burned alive for possessing the Lord's Prayer in English.

2:42 John Fox records seven lawlords, that's Wickel's friends, who were burned alive in 1519 for teaching their children the Lord's Prayer in English. That's all. Thomas More, made famous in our day by the movie A Man for All Seasons, was the Lord Chancellor of Henry VIII, radically Roman Catholic, radically anti-Reformation, radically anti-Luther, anti-Tindale. He had, Tyndale's biographer says, a rabid hatred for William Tyndale. He published three quarters of a million words against Tyndale. Tyndale's closest friend, John Frith, arrested in London, tried by Thomas More, burned alive in July 4, 1531, at the age of 26. John Tewksbury was converted by reading Tyndale's works on justification by faith. He was arrested. He was whipped in Thomas More's garden. They put ropes around his forehead and squeezed him until the blood came out of his eyes.

4:07 Then they sent him to the tower, racked him until he was lame, and then burned him alive. And Tyndale was the guilty one, according to Thomas More. He said, I rejoice that his victim is now in hell, where Tyndale is like to find him when they come thither.

4:29 And we've got to ask, why? Why would you hate having the Bible translated into English? there are layers of reasons. I'll give you a couple.

4:52 One, they said, if the Bible is in English, every man will become his own interpreter. They will go astray and be led into heresy and perish. And therefore, to protect the sheep, we will burn people for translating the Bible and for teaching the doctrines of the Reformation that's one layer of why there was such opposition there was a deeper reason Thomas More's criticism of Tyndale can be boiled down to the way he translated five words. He translated presbyteros as elder instead of priest. He translated ekklesia as congregation instead of church.

5:57 He translated metanoeo as repent instead of do penance. He translated exomageo as acknowledge or admit instead of do confession. And he translated agape as love instead of charity. And Tyndale's best biographer, David Daniel, I recommend the biography very highly. said this, Tyndale cannot possibly have been unaware that those words in particular undercut the entire sacramental structure of a thousand-year church throughout Europe, Asia, and North America.

6:50 And with the doctrinal undermining of those ecclesiastical pillars of priesthood and penance and confession, the pervasive power and control of the Roman Catholic Church collapsed in England. It would not become a Roman Catholic nation. The Reformation would flourish in England. the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone is what the Bible translation was about as far as Tyndale was concerned. So that's the volatile background of the life of William Tyndale and what he achieved in his short 42 years. It was an amazing work. So what did he do?

7:45 He was a Roman Catholic priest at first. Erasmus published the Greek New Testament printed it it spread all over and it changed the world when Tyndale read it and studied it he was profoundly converted to justification by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Christ alone to the glory of God alone on the basis of one infallible rule, the scriptures alone.

8:25 Now, what would he do? Now he's a Lutheran. What would he do? he would sing one note for the rest of his life, 12 years.

8:49 1524, he escaped from England to the continent, lived in Germany and Netherlands as a fugitive the rest of his life, never went home again. He would die there. And Thomas Cromwell, not Thomas Moore, Thomas Cromwell was the king's advisor. And he wanted Tyndale back in England so that he could come to justice.

9:24 And he sent an emissary. And the emissary tried to track him down. and finally he wrote a letter to Cromwell, June 19, 1531, and said, I find him always singing one note. and here's what he meant the one note was will the king of England give his official endorsement to a vernacular Bible in English for all his subjects if not I will not come back if he will I will surrender myself to him to do what he please and will never write another word in my life.

10:16 they would not agree to that and he never went back. That was the one note. That was the driving passion of his life, to see the Bible translated from Greek and Hebrew into ordinary English so that every person in England could read it. And you saw on the screen about an hour ago or so, that amazing quote. he was at lunch or dinner with a Roman Catholic scholar who was totally exasperated in talking to Tyndale and he blurted out, we were better off without God's law than the Pope's.

11:05 To which Tyndale responded, I defy the Pope and all his laws, if God spare my life ere many years I will cause a boy that drives the plow shall know more scriptures than you do so by 1526 Tyndale had finished his first edition that's 500 years ago this year it was smuggled in bales of cloth from the Netherlands into England. 3,000 copies of it spread immediately across the nation. It was banned in October of 1526. the first time in history the Greek Testament was translated into English. The first time printed, because there wasn't any printing press before 1516.

12:11 And before he was martyred in 1536, Tyndale had added to the New Testament all of the Pentateuch, first five books of the Bible, all of Joshua to 2 Chronicles and Jonah. That's about half the Old Testament before they killed him. that translation, Greek New Testament, half the Old Testament, became the basis of the Great Bible, Coverdale's Bible, 1539. It became the basis of the Geneva Bible, 1557. The Great Bible of the Nation sold a million copies from 1560 to 1640. you don't get a sense of the greatness of the achievement of William Tyndale until you do some comparisons.

13:06 Let's do one. The King James everybody knows. Not many of us use it anymore. It's a great and beautiful glorious work of God. The King James 1611 translation. David Daniel clarifies the situation because we know that the King James Bible for 300 plus years radically changed the English language everybody speaks the King James we do, you do but here's what you don't know now you'll know William Tyndale gave us our English Bible the sages assembled by King James to prepare the authorized version in 1611 took over Tyndale's work nine tenths of the authorized version that's the King James version nine tenths of the authorized version is Tyndale's word for word the same is true of the first half of the Old Testament which as far as he got before he was killed outside Brussels in 1536.

14:23 Now, one of the reasons that is significant for us right now in this conference and this year is because of the direct lineage to the ESV. It goes like this. So there's Tyndale. And their nine-tenths of Tyndale goes into the King James Bible. The King James Bible Revised goes into the English Revised Version, 1886, which goes into the American Standard Version, 1901, which goes into the Revised Standard Version, 1952, which becomes the lightly edited version of the ESV in 2001. If you hold an ESV in your hand, you are holding mainly William Tyndale. Let me illustrate because we just take for granted phrases as though, well, that's obvious. It's what the Bible says.

15:28 No, it isn't obvious. It could have come over from Greek and Hebrew many other ways than it came over. These are words straight from the pen of William Tyndale. Let there be light. Am I my brother's keeper? The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious to thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace. I spoke that a hundred, a thousand times when I was a pastor. Right? Straight out of William Tyndale. And it could have been so different. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Straight from William Tyndale. There were shepherds abiding in the field. Tyndale. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. How many different ways that word hallowed could have been translated?

16:22 And we still say hallowed. The spirit is willing, but the fresh is weak. In him, we live and move and have our being. And I love this one. Peter went out and wept bitterly. Now, the reason that's significant is because wept bitterly is perfect. It's perfect.

16:47 And NIV kept it. NASB kept it. ESV kept it. New King James kept it. And one modern translation that didn't keep it translated it, he went out and cried hard. and it deserves laughter.

17:10 It's pathetic. I want to be different. I want to be new. wept bitterly. It's just awful. and perfect. Nobody changes William Tyndale on that one. today, 500 years after Tyndale, newspaper headlines are quoting him almost every day, and he has reached more people than Shakespeare.

17:48 Now, that's not a mere literary phenomenon. That's a spiritual explosion. Tyndale's Bible was the kindling that set England aflame with the Reformation so my question is how did he do it how did God do it through him and there are natural answers and supernatural answers let me give an illustration of each and this is just the way God is right it's This is a perfect example. This conference music is a perfect example of natural gifting and supernatural anointing. It's always that way in anything that happens for God in this world.

18:42 Natural. His literary gifting did not come out of nowhere. He was educated at Oxford. and at Oxford in those days, for example, Erasmus' book, translated into English as On the Copiousness of Words, was used to train students in the immeasurable possibilities of verbal expression. and one of the um what would you call it? ways they trained. I can't think of the word. One of the ways they trained students was that you had to give your teacher 150 ways of saying, your letter has delighted me very much.

19:48 Now, if you go to a school like that, give me 150 different ways of saying, your letter has delighted me very much. You're going to be a remarkably gifted user of words.

20:09 It's no accident that William Shakespeare and William Tyndale come out of the same century in the same school or same period. of Education. that was not the main issue. That wasn't the main force. It was real. We've got to own it. It was true for all of you. You were all trained in some natural way. And if you've done any good in the world, that's not the main thing. the main thing was God raised Tyndale from the dead. He took away his spiritual blindness. He revealed to him his true depraved condition. He opened the eyes of his heart to see the glory of salvation by grace through faith. And that's what drove Tyndale's translation work. the desire to see the treasure of the gospel.

21:08 He wasn't trying to display literary skill. He was trying to display the beauty of the treasure of the gospel. That's what he wanted. That's what he died for. But it was hidden. It was hidden behind the Latin language in the mass. It was hidden behind a system of penance and merit. and the only thing he knew to unhide it was to translate the Bible no matter what, which is what he did.

21:45 And it ignited a great reformation in Britain. So the road to sacrifice that we just sang about was a hard road for William Tyndale and the price he paid was enormous. So he flies from his country, 1524. He's killed in 1536, so that's 12 years. He's a fugitive, going from place to place, always keeping his head down because if someone betrayed him, he would be history.

22:25 We get a flavor for what life was like during those 12 years for him. I'll quote his note. My pains, my poverty, my exile out of my natural country, my bitter absence from my friends, my hunger, my thirst, my cold, the great danger wherewith I am everywhere encompassed And finally, innumerable other hard, sharp fightings which I endure.

23:04 Twelve years. And then the last chapter opens with a betrayal. His good friend, Henry Phillips, betrays him. And they snatch him and take him to prison outside Brussels. And he's there for 18 months. and he writes a letter. I just want to give you a flavor of that last chapter. He's there for 18 months. Winter is coming. He can feel it, and he's in a cell, and he writes a note to the officer of the prison. It shows like this. This is September 1535. I beg your lordship to send me a warmer cap for I suffer greatly from the cold in my head and am afflicted with a perpetual catar. I had to look that up.

24:06 Cough. which is much increased in this cell. A warmer coat also for this one I have is very thin. A piece of cloth too to patch my leggings. I asked to be allowed, now it gets amazing. I asked to be allowed to have a lamp in the evening. it is indeed wearisome sitting alone in the dark.

24:39 But most of all, I beg and beseech your clemency to permit me to have the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew grammar and a Hebrew dictionary that I may pass the time in that study. but if any other decision has been taken concerning me to be carried out before winter I will be patient, abiding the will of God to the glory of the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ. You got to love William Tyndale.

25:25 We don't know if those requests were answered, but we do know that he was formally condemned a year later. He was tied to the stake, and because he had been a priest, they strangled him to death instead of burning him alive. And then they burned him. So he never went home. He never married. And he was never buried.

25:56 Now in just a moment, we're going to sing a song. I think, and I think Keith thinks, one of the most beautiful hymns that has ever been written. my song is love unknown. And the third verse goes like this. Sometimes they strew his way and his sweet praises sing resounding all the day hosannas to their king. Then crucify is all their breath and for his death they thirst and cry. Thomas More thirsted and cried for the death of William Tyndale, just like the mobs thirsted and cried for the death of Jesus. Both Jesus and Tyndale could have escaped. Just abandon your mission.

26:58 and both willingly went to death. Jesus died to give us absolutely everything that undeserving sinners will ever enjoy to eternity.

27:18 And Tyndale died to give us the Bible. So I ask you, do you love the Bible like that? If so, you will sing. And maybe you should consider making, knowing the Bible, loving the Bible, memorizing the Bible, living the Bible, translating the Bible, spreading the Bible, the one note of your life. So Father, as we get ready now, our hearts to walk on the road of suffering with Jesus and Tyndale. Come, we love your word, Lord. It is more precious to us than gold, even much fine gold.

28:12 It is sweeter than honey and drippings from the honeycomb. So cause us, I pray, not only to love it, but to read it to believe it to sing it and to spread it in Jesus name