In this sermon, the speaker shares a story about a terrible accident involving a horse, a dog, and a man. A highway patrolman arrives at the scene and, out of mercy, puts the horse and the dog out of their pain with his service revolver. The speaker uses this story to illustrate how sometimes in life we face close calls and trials that make us question if we will make it through. However, the speaker emphasizes the importance of faith and how God brings us through these difficult times, reminding us of His love and greatness.

Well, as we have been going through Hebrews 11, and I'm not going to begin to attempt to, you know, recount any of that particularly. We've got a number of tapes you can go back and look at if you want, but looking at so many, essentially thus far, of the profound blessings of faith through all of the various battles of life. You can't be a Christian for very long without beginning to learn the practical aspects of taking our faith and our relationship with God and applying it to our lives. And life for everyone, the Bible says the rain falls in the just and the unjust. We all have battles. We all have trials. We all have many, many things that we go through in life, and God uses them to temper us, to strengthen us, to deepen our fellowship and our relationship with Him, to strengthen our dependence upon Him, teaching us to require Him more and more and more. How we, in so many times in life, the hundreds and thousands perhaps of battles that a person goes through in their life as a Christian, some of them are very clear and obvious where they're crying out to God desperately, like when a hurricane would come through or something, and many of them are just simply sighs and a cry and a tear, God help me here, help with my child, help with our health, help with this job, and just almost a prayer that's just shot up asking God to bring us through, and yet He does again and again and again. Life is full of them. And all of these little things, sometimes very profound, leaving a very strong mark on our heart. We can remember a day and an hour that we cried out in a miraculous work that God did sometimes, and there's kind of the tip of the iceberg of the great memories of the life of faith, but for most people that's just constantly kind of being delivered again and again. And God allows life to be full of a lot of close calls, of which we've all gone through them, and we've all lived through them, otherwise we wouldn't be here. But sometimes we don't know if we're going to live through them. How many times have we been through? I don't know if I can make it through this. This might be the one, the crisis, the trial that I'm not going to make it through. Sometimes we're a little bit maybe like the old story of the cowboy out west driving his pickup truck down the road, and he's got his dog in the back, and he's pulling his prize horse in the trailer behind him, but he's going too fast to make a turn. He loses it, a terrible accident happens, and a little while later a highway patrolman shows up on the scene, and he's an animal lover himself, but as he gets there, and he sees this horse with its broken legs and the terrible things that happened, he just, you know, just out of just mercy there, he pulls out his service revolver, and he puts the horse out of its misery, and then he walks over, and he looks, and there's this dog just, you know, critically hurt itself, whining in terrible pain, and he looks over at the dog, and he takes his revolver and puts it out of its pain, and then he looks, and he goes over, and here's this man laying over there in the weeds, and you know, with multiple fractures himself, and he comes over, and here's this guy moaning and groaning, and he looks at him, and he says, are you okay? And the fellow looks after hearing the shots and seeing the smoke come out of his service revolver. He never felt better, you know, but a lot of times, I mean, we're so close. We think we've had it. We think this is it, you know, and yet we go through those things oftentimes in life, and God brings us through some way that we go on to live, but hopefully through those close calls and through those struggles and those difficulties, there's been this abiding knowledge and reality of who God is, of his love, and how great it is and how wonderful it is, and as we've been through Hebrew so far, there's been these wonderful stories of deliverances, essentially, wonderful ways in which God, whether taking Abraham and showing him his life and his future and his identity all through faith, giving him the land, Sarah and having their children by faith as God miraculously provided a home and a place for them and a future and identity, and then as you'd go on, you know, with one such as Moses and the battles of life and the confrontations of life and of learning by faith to trust God through all of these things, or Joshua as he brought the children of Israel into the land of rest, and they found a peace and an abiding victory as they learned to trust God and their lives took on a fuller, richer identity, and there he put around them the houses that they didn't build and the vineyards they didn't plant and the olive yards they didn't plant and the wells they didn't dig, and yet God gave them to them, and they began to realize, God, you have given me everything. It's by your hand that every good and precious gift comes from above, and they're the person that is going through in life of faith. They begin to attach God's work and God's deliverance and God's blessing and God's hand and God's amazing grace upon their life and realizing, God, you have truly done it all, and you've brought us through these things time and time and time again, and so, so far through Hebrews, many a wonderful story of God's protection, God's preserving, God's guiding, and yet here as he goes on in verse 35, now he doesn't just tell us some of the blessings, you might say, of faith, but some of the buffetings as well of faith. Women received their dead, raised again to life again, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had trial of mockings and scourging. Yea, moreover, chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with a sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute and afflicted. And here is, you know, it begins verse 35 there with talking about, you know, no doubt Elijah there and the widow of Zarephath that, where his daughter that he, Elijah raised from the dead, or perhaps Elisha after Elijah, who there with the Shunammite woman's son, on how that these women there believed God that could raise from the dead, and God did these wonderful things, you know, for them. But yet at the same time, there's the great suffering that then goes on. Not only here, you know, when of course these mothers losing their children, and this agony and the sorrow that filled their heart, but their pain was alleviated for a time. There is God raised them back. But then there's still the great afflictions. Then he goes on and he gives us this list of buffetings, these lists of afflictions, these lists of trials, that some of which were short-term, some of which were long-term, some of which were lifetime things. Ways that people lived in the way that they would wander about in their lives, and the difficulties that many a life went through. But God gave his power. Sometimes God gives us power to get through a trial, and sometimes God gives us power to stay in a trial. And by nature, we all want to get right out of one. We want, God, I want delivering faith in the, you know, through the trial, out of the trial. But what the greatest faith, I suppose, of all, as we arriving here, as we're watching faith build, and build, and build through Hebrews 11, the greatest and the most important of faith is a faith that totally rests whether I'm in or out of a trial or not. Whether I'm delivered from the trial or God delivers me in the trial. But my life there finds a rest in him, not because I am out of the trial, but even in the trial. God's in a dimension of faith that regardless of what the circumstances are, instead of saying I have to get out of it, there's the thing of, no, God, I don't have to get out of it. You have to get into it with me. That's what I want. There's a whole dimension, I believe, that God wants to bring us into that the greatest issue of life is not deliverance from trials, but that the greatest experience that faith really has is that all that it needs is God in the trial with us. That the Christian would come to the place and realize, God, I don't care whether I get in or out of it. All I care is that you're with me. And wherever I am with you, I'd rather be there. And if it's in a trial, I want to be in it with you. If it's out of the trial, I want to be out of it with you. But above all else, I want to be with you. And there's a whole dimension of life that God ultimately brings a person to that this perhaps is the greatest dimension of faith that we have and where we can come to a rest that totally is in him. And that is where we can literally learn perhaps to suffer and to handle suffering. Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 2.12, he says, yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer. There is the promise, essentially. God tells us there that as we would live and walk and serve before him, that God literally promises. I want to give you a new Bible promise today. You go home and put this one on your refrigerator. Put this one in your promise box. You usually won't find these in your little promise boxes that you get. But what know you not that all they that live godly in Christ Jesus, they will suffer. That there is something there that the Christian realizes, Lord, I want to live in you. And when these times do come, I want to choose you and to rest in you and to find something in you in the midst of whatever suffering that there may be, because I don't care about the suffering. I care about being with you. Isn't that not the greatest aspect of any relationship? When you would look at a marriage that you would say is a wonderful marriage, is it a marriage that is just there because there's two people that are just happy with each other? And hey, you're great. I'm great. Hey, let's hang out as long as we're both great, you know, or something. And then as soon as, you know, something happens, not so good any longer, you break a leg, pull out the service revolver. Sorry, you know, I got to go get somebody else that's great. What kind of a relationship is that? What it is, is that when two people have come to the place that when the inevitable sufferings of life do come, that there has been something so cemented in their heart and in their life that they choose one another and say, I'd rather be with you in whatever it is that we would go through together because of who you are and what we mean to one another than anywhere else in the world with anybody else. What I have found with you, is that not the proof of a love and of a relationship? So also with God. When there is something in the Christian life where I've come to the place, say, Lord, I don't care about any suffering. Alan Redpath used to say, God has had one son without sin, but none without suffering. And everyone that really in the issue of our sonship or daughtership with God, that we find there, God, I do not care the issue of suffering as much as I want to go through life with you. And sometimes I think it takes far more courage to hang in there through the suffering and through a trial than it does simply to get out of the trial. But it is also something that purifies the love and the relationship. It is something that cements that relationship and makes it all the more wonderful. And here there is something that I suppose as well, the person of any real faith, what happens if somebody really has real faith, biblical faith, there is no affliction that no matter how escapable it may be, if it would require me to deny my fellowship or my relationship or my commitment to God or compromise my relationship with God, there is nothing that I want to, I don't ever want to escape that. My faith will never allow it. What I have in my relationship with God, I must have. And wherever it leads me, that is more precious to me than anything else. So any trial I'm in, I would rather be in the trial with him than out of it without him. Here, I suppose, is where faith reaches its highest and its purest plane of all, to where it is something there that even as it tells us back here in verse 35, I just lost it here, but I had it turned the wrong page. 35, women received their dead raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Here, some took death, chose death, rather than being delivered. And here is where faith really is. They look there and realize, this is not a hard decision to make. I have made the decision long before, you know, do I love the Lord? Do I want to follow him? Do I trust his word? Will I stand for his word? And when somebody realizes that, that's where faith reaches its purest and its highest, just as our love and human relationship, so much the same. And here that there are ones that it says others, they were tortured. This terrible aspect of their, this was a referring here, the Greek word that is actually used, it refers to a form of torture that involves stretching a victim essentially over a large drum-like instrument, and where they would literally tie their hands, tie their ankles, and then they would stretch them over this. Oftentimes, there as they would beat them with clubs to weaken all their bones out of joint and their muscles as they would just stretch and literally pull their inner, you know, bones and muscles and nerves and tendons apart in the terrible pain as they would beat them through this. Oftentimes, it was either done leading to and preparation for death, or they would die in it, being beaten in it. But it was something there that they would rather do that than compromise their faith. They would look there when they were given the option, here, you can either deny your faith or you can, you were going to tie you to this drum, what do you want? And to have them look and say, this is not a hard decision. This is not a hard decision at all. Others endured their terrible, you know, it says mockings and scourgings. Some people there, I mean, you know, sometimes they're in your faith and there's mocking. It was just mental. Sometimes it's physical, discouraging. And we live in a country where so often a lot of our, you know, the accusation, it's mental. You go to work and if you take a stand for Christ, you live in the neighborhood or when everybody else is living and doing this, you go to school and there's the mocking. There's the, you know, that you're not part of the world club of mockers and of partiers or of rebels or of selfish, carnal people. And you take a stand for Christ and I want to live for him. I want to honor him within my heart and within my life. And then people want to mock you for that. But here, this is part where faith sometimes has some of its greatest things there. Others were sawn in two. Literally here, this is where history, you know, records for us and believes this was Isaiah that because of his continuous stand for the cause of Christ, while the whole world is going spiritually lukewarm, they're following false prophets, leading them after all sorts of carnal worship. And here Isaiah is standing firm for it and the conviction that he brought. They literally, he was sawn in two there for his faith. But it was something to him, regardless of whatever it was. There he continued to give his faith a place within his life that it was never up for discussion. And this is something I suppose is wonderful for us to ask ourselves. Are we ones there that whatever the affliction may be, have we really ever counted the cost? Jesus said, if a man's going to go to war, he ought to count the cost, assess the strength of the other army according to the strength that he has. Can he win? If not, Jesus said, you better go negotiate some sort of a treaty. He says, if a man is going to build a house, you ought to sit down and decide, can I afford to do it? Otherwise, I'll get halfway through, run out of materials and they'll laugh me off the map, you know. And here, and Jesus says, you know, when you are going to follow me, you might look around and really determine, you know, there, are you willing to follow me? Is it something there to where you would look? And with all of your heart, this is set in stone. This is rock solid. My life belongs to Jesus Christ. I don't care what the negotiations may ever be, what the cost may ever be, what the price may ever be, what the battle may ever be, what the, whatever it is to continue building my life in Christ, I will pay it. And that is something you can determine long before the battle comes. There can be something you can sit here today, I believe, with all your heart in my face, say, Lord, I don't know at all the battles that are ahead of me, but I do want you to know I want to pay whatever the price is to keep in fellowship with you. Whatever it may be this week at the office and the tensions, it may be mocking, it may be ridiculing, whatever it is, you know, some of the suffering or the pain or the disappointments or the losses that can happen in life. But Lord, who you are is not up for negotiation. And we live in a day and age, I think, where a lot of people think, you know, there's nothing worth dying for. But a Christian says, oh, there is. There is truly something worth dying for. In fact, to tell you the truth, my heart goes out for people that have nothing worth dying for, that they would look around. There is no relationship with God worth dying for. There is no relationship in the world worth dying for. There is no cause for which their life is. There's more precious than everything else in the world. We live in a world like that, where people said nothing worth dying for. Stay alive no matter what. But when the Christian says, wait a minute, anybody who created me, who loved me, who redeemed me, who shed his blood for me, anybody who gave me any and every other relationship, I have an all of life. For every good and precious gift comes from above, the Bible tells us. And that I would look there and realize that for my wife, for my children, for my grandchildren, and to realize there's a lot of things I'd die for. And the body of Christ, the testimony for Christ, and hopefully there's something that we would have within us factored within. Who knows whether we could get to a day and age where it'd be needed. We'd, you know, right now in many places in the world, people die every day for their faith. You're a Christian, you're dead. In many places, you know, you go out and you begin to share Christ. You're dead. Right there, right now. And yet it can be something that we like Paul can say, but I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the, with the glory that will be revealed. That there is something to say, Lord, I don't care what it is that may ever happen in it. And you know that. This is, I suppose, the ultimate aspect of faith where it really comes down. We get all of our little lessons in life and faith. We, you know, we, we learn to trust God as a little child where, you know, our mom and dad say, pray and we'll ask, ask the Lord to help you with this and help you with this test or get you through here. And then all the little things that go on through life where Lord help us get a home, Lord, help us through this trial, help us through this, help us through that. And all the things that he helps us through all of our life, you realize how many things he's brought you through. And yet the ultimate thing is when faith comes to its great abiding place, where it's willing to look and say, thank you for all the blessings, all the times I've recovered, all the times you've restored it, all the times it got better. But I am also fully prepared for any day that it does not. I am fully prepared to whatever the sufferings may come to, whatever they may be. Jesus said, a servant is not greater than a Lord than his Lord. If they have hated me, they will hate you. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you. And when there is something that happens within our life, as Peter says, rejoice in as much than you are partakers of Christ's sufferings. For when he is, he shall be revealed that you may be glad with great joy, exceedingly great joy. And on how to realize, Lord, I want this kind of faith. I want a faith that lives for you, that trusts in you, that walks in you, that knows you can do anything. I love Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They're kind of favorites to me in a sense. I love it when there they come and they stand before the king there when they're told there that now that they're going to be thrown into a blazing furnace that's been heated seven times hotter. And there is that they're being brought before it, but they're perfectly confident that God, you know, is able to save them from the blazing furnace. And they say in Daniel 3, 17, it says, but it be so that our God who we serve, he is able to deliver us from this fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of thy hand, O king. Here they look there and the king says, you go in there. I mean, you either bow down or you are dead. They said, this is not a hard thing to decide. They had decided this a long time. There was this furnace seven times hotter than normal. And as it's all heated, they said, here's your choice. You're either going to go in there or you're going to bow down. Not a hard decision, O king. Our God, we also want to tell you, our God is able to deliver us. He's fully capable of doing it. But then in the next verse, but if not, but if he doesn't deliver us, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy God nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. Here there was something where, you know, they had already made the decision. He is able to deliver us. We know this. He's done it again and again and again and again through time. But we all know that ultimately there will be the day that God doesn't deliver us in it and from it. He will take us home through it. And this may be it. They said, God's able to do it. We don't even question that whatsoever. But we, but if not, I've always wondered how much the three of them talked with each other before they actually got up there. I always felt like there's probably one of them that's kind of the spokesman, maybe Shadrach, you know, and hey, he's, you know, you're the eloquent one, you speak, you know, and we're all together and prayed up and they'll go in and he says, God is able to deliver us. This is the, we are not even careful how to answer you, O King. We're not going to do this. God's able to deliver us. But if not, and then maybe the other two. Oh, just a minute. Sidebar. Wait a minute. Let's go over here. We need a little chat. What do you mean? We never talked about the but if not, I thought he was going to deliver us. Didn't you pray and think that? Well, he can, but he may not. Have we got a faith there that we can just say one or the other? We can say God is absolutely able to do anything he wants to, anytime he wants to, anyhow he wants. He's done it so many times. I don't even record most of them. I don't even many remember them. He says, many are they thoughts. The psalmist says towards us, O Lord, I cannot be, they cannot be reckoned up in order under thee. Your blessings, you know, I can't even recount them in order to you, O God. The deliverances, the things that you have done, I can't even, I've forgotten far more than I'll ever remember. But have we one there that God is able, but if not, that is just as good of an answer as all the other ones I've ever had. I am at peace with it. I am excited about it. And when we have that, then I believe we've got something. Martin Luther once said, if he has faith, the believer cannot be restrained. He confesses and he teaches this gospel to the people at the risk of life itself. And of course, Martin Luther did that, spent his life doing it. And he looked there and he realizes, but what is life for? If it isn't for the, to live for the things of God. And you can't restrain a believer who has faith in the things that God has given to him. And I'll tell you to me, I may ask you, do you have faith like this? You yourself have faith like this. It's something there, you know, as you look here and I just think of this last couple of weeks here, hurricane Katrina. And today, of course, the celebration of nine 11, almost overshadowed now by Katrina. But here you look at the thousands, the millions of people that are the hundreds of thousands now still displaced. Everything they have is gone. Literally there. I mean, everything that they have ever lived their life for up to this point, it is disappeared. It will never be found again. It is entirely been washed away and consumed and destroyed. They have lost loved ones. They are losing their health. Many of them, they have every possession that is gone. And ultimately this is going to happen to every one of us, by the way, not the hurricane may. It's funny. I go to Florida. In fact, I'll talk about being insensitive when I literally got there and it's windy. And I'm saying, Hey, this is great. I always wanted to be in a hurricane. So I've been in earthquakes and I've been in fires, never been an earthquake. The people looked at me like their eyes are as big as saucer. You gotta be kidding me. We've been in hurricanes. You don't want to be an earthquake and an earth in a hurricane, you know, and I say, well, just a lot of wind in it, you know, sort of a thing. I mean, just it's funny. See, they don't want to be in earthquakes. You know what I mean? They look, how can you live in earthquake country? That's what they say when they're they've learned how to live with hurricanes somehow. How can you live in earth in earthquake country? That's scary. I look at them and I said, I'd rather be in earthquake country. Earthquake country happens. It falls down and breaks. Hurricane happens. You go to Missouri to find your stuff, you know, sort of a thing in the, but here, but at the same time, people have lost everything in this life. And every one of us will, every one of us, one day, you know, we will be laying on a bed with life flickering out of us. And either something will have happened within this experience we call life, that there's something more precious than all of life itself that we've got, that we are going to a greater reward, that we look and we are now the greatest delight, the greatest, the thing that we have anticipated, prayed about, longed about, wondered about, heaven. We're at his threshold and the excitement and the joy and the crown of it will never be taken from us. That's what God longs for. That's the greatest of all of faith, not just a faith that gets you restored and gets you back what you lost or you want again. But do we have a faith there that is so rich and so strong and so precious that we have this and we know this? And then lastly here, the great, you know, the benefits of faith, that when somebody has this, we're told in verse 39, or actually this, I skipped verse 38, it says, of whom the world is not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth, that those who had this kind of faith, that they could be the mockings and the scourgings and stone and sawn asunder and tempered and slayed with a sword, wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, and they did all of these sorts of things for their faith and their trust and their surrender to God. The Bible looks at them and says the world was never worthy of them. They were way beyond it. They were strangers, they were pilgrims, they live for another world, another kingdom of which God looked at them and loved them for it. And the world was never even worthy of such people like this on it. But here we're told all these, verse 39, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us. Here now the interesting thing is, is we are now told that though they obtained this good testimony through faith, they all died in hope in the Old Testament. They knew very little about the real power of salvation. They had never really heard the words of Jesus. They weren't given to them. Jesus had not yet come. The Savior that they looked forward to, the Lamb of God that they longed for, they all gave up their life for history that had not yet happened yet. A Savior that had not yet come. Words that had not been yet heard. A sacrifice that had not yet been offered. You and I, they all were just in holding. They all died in faith, not having received the promises they're waiting to become apart, the Bible says, with us. And here it is something there where they went through all of this and had this great faith and trust in something that had not even yet happened. We know it's happened. We know He came. We know He lived. We know He died. We know He suffered. We know He took the sins of the world upon Himself. We know He rose from the dead. It isn't something that we are still, this is going to happen, going to happen. We know it happened. It has happened. And here the Bible tells us that God, all these having obtained a good testimony through faith, they did not receive the promise. God having there provided something better for us that they should not be made perfect apart from us. That here there was something that they knew what it was with their heart and with their life to trust God without even history. You and I have Jesus Christ. We know Him by name. We know Him by message. We know Him by His touch personally within our life. We know who our very intercessor is, our intermediator, the one who died for us. And they were able to live like this. How much more should we? How much more should we have a life that desires, no matter what the price would ever be, I'm yours. And when we look at these through this great cloud of witnesses, how ashamed. Sometimes it can make us. And one of the things to me, when I just think back and to give you a little history in my life, not that it's important particularly, but my name is McClure obviously, you know that. But I'm a descendant of a fellow named John Rogers who was born in 1498. There was eight generations of Rogers. And then in 1721, the Rogers family and the McClure family and another family, Morrison, won't get into that one today. But some other families came from Londonderry, England to Londonderry, New Hampshire. They were very close friends, all of them Christians. But as they landed, one of the McClures married, after they were here, one of the McClures married one of the Rogers. Thus, that's how I'm 16th direct grandson of a fellow named John Rogers. John Rogers, he was, when he grew up, he was educated in Cambridge and then a scholar in Greek and Hebrew and a Catholic priest. But he got troubled because of his understanding of Greek and Hebrew as he studied them. And then Martin Luther had been doing this work down in Germany. And 20 years after this happened, when Martin Luther put his famous 95 thesis on the Wittenberg door in Germany, saying there, the just shall live by faith and that salvation is by faith. Not by works. He was so moved by this, he went down to Wittenberg and met a man named William Tyndale of the Tyndale Bible, converted by him to Christ and a fellow named Coverdale. Witten, at the time, Tyndale was being persecuted for his, you know, wanting to get the Bible out in the common language in Germany to the people there. And, but then he ended up actually being martyred for his faith in his work of getting the Bible out before he ended up finishing the translation. And he turned over to Rogers, John Rogers and Coverdale, asking them to complete the Tyndale Bible, which they did. During this time, John Rogers, as he grows in his knowledge and his walk and his depth in the Lord and the word, ends up translating what is known as the Thomas Matthews Bible, the very first English translation the Bible ever done. He did it under another name because of the fact that he would have been persecuted and killed before it would have been done. And it was done in 1535. Your King James Version, the, what most people think is the first English was actually the authorized version, was done in 1608, many years later. He did the very first one. History records John Rogers as the man who then came back to England from Germany and brought the Reformation to England and bringing the Reformation to England and bringing the Bible. He couldn't get it printed in England. They had it printed in Switzerland. Then it was brought back. And then as it began to be distributed, a spiritual revival of people coming to Christ by faith, not by works, was happening there in England. He began preaching in England. As he is preaching in England, he is then brought under persecution. They bring him in to judge him for this thing. But because he was such a great scholar in Greek and Hebrew and could defend himself and explain, there's nothing in the Bible about the papacy. There is nothing in the Bible of salvation by works. There is nothing in the Bible about transubstantiation saying if you take this bread and this cup, you are saved. You are saved by faith in Christ and faith alone. His entire court case is recorded and written down. There's a book on it. And here is all of this. It goes on. Well, then they, because he was smarter than the guys trying to deal with him, they let him out. He then went back preaching. But then the work was so great what was happening in his stand for Christ that many people are coming to Christ. The Reformation is beginning to profoundly grow in England. And at this time, the result of it was they bring him back in again. And Queen Mary, known throughout of history from that point on, Queen Mary the first known as Bloody Mary. Then they begin to accuse him and say, you'll no more preach this message. It's heresy. But he wouldn't stop it. And so there they put him in prison. There he sat for a year while a trial went on in which all of these things were written down and recorded. And then because he would never deny, they gave him opportunity to recant. They told him you're going to, they're going to burn him at the stake. And he still didn't care. I don't care what it is. And finally there when Bloody Mary ordered him, he ended up being the very first martyr under Bloody Mary. And then February 4th, 1555, he was then brought out of prison, taken out in the morning. This is all in Foxe's Book of Martyrs if you'd want to read it there. But there brought out and to take it, it had been taken to a place called Smithfield. Very, very famous place of martyrdom in England back in 1305. That's where William Wallace was executed. Well, he now was brought out to Smithfield. They took him out in the morning. But when they brought him out, they did it, they wanted all the streetlights out because of the fact he had such a tremendous following. They didn't want the people to know, but that the people knew about it, heard about it. So they stood in the streets with candles. But in Foxe's Book of Martyrs said about it, that the place was like the people acted like they were going to a wedding and not a funeral. He was then given the opportunity there. If you will recant, you will be set free. You will not have to be burned at the stake. And he turned and he said probably his most famous words. He says, that which I have said with my lips, I will seal with my blood. The sheriff then turned to him. He says, thou art a heretic. And he said, that will be determined at the judgment seat of Christ. And he said, I will not pray for you, which to them was very important. And he said, but I will pray for you. He was then taken there, you know, to Smithfield and tied up at the stake and burned at the stake. And Foxe's Book of Martyrs said the last of him before he died, his hands were raised in heaven, you know, towards heaven in praise. But is there anything, when you look there, is there anything that you and I have a reason to live for? Is there anything that if somebody came to us and said, you, you know, or you can recant, whatever, you can give up on whatever you believe. You can turn from whatever it is you believe. You're free. You can go. But if you will not turn from this thing, you will die. Do you have a faith like that in anything? Is there anything that God, I don't think that ever happens just one moment of one day. But this is where God wants to bring us all to, to a place there to where we would look there and who knows what may ever happen in this country. But with the little scourgings and the mockings of the ridicule that we have here that tells us, deny your faith or I'll burn you at the stake of ridicule. I'll burn you at the stake of loneliness. I will leave you. You will lose the home. You will lose your job. You will lose this. And I believe the Christian who is the greatest of all, he's been at many stakes before he put ever finally come to the, the stake, so to speak. He's been at many crises within his life, many trials where he's cried out and God's delivered him, but he stood there and he trusted and something there maybe got burned here or some ridicule or there was some price, but each time he came out richer and he came out deeper and he came out stronger. All prepared for finally the day that God says, now I will take you into the greatest fire of all, one of which will consume all that is left of you and take it to heaven. That's a, you know, something many of us, I mean, to me, there's a part of me that says, I'd love to go die for the Lord. There are a lot of people that think that and the Lord says, great, but right now I just want you to die a little here and there and in this and in your marriage and in your home or with your children or with this trial or with your, you know, image or your vision or your reputation of what people think of you, give it up. Go to that stake and stand and say, Lord, I love you. I don't care the persecution. I don't care the difficulty. I'm yours. And when we go through those, you know, then one day, perhaps the great honor. When I look now from John Rogers and I realize now as we've had our entire, you know, actually it's gone now back to about the 12th century, just out of curiosity with our family. But when you realize, I mean, I look back and realize now we're 40 preachers, descendants of Rogers, you know, there that have gone on through it. And then the McClure family also. There were Christians back in England years ago, all of them descendants one way or another in faith of this wonderful work that started by this man. But to realize, God, take my life. One day I was thinking, well, that's quite an honor. And then I realized the Lord spoke to me and He says, what's the great honor about that? I'm your Savior and I'm a direct descendant, not even 16 generations back. I shed my blood for you. I live in you every day. I'm far closer to you than John Rogers. It's a wonderful heritage, but the greatest thing of all is the heritage we all have in Christ right now. We'll say, Jesus, I want to follow you. I don't care the cost. I don't care the price. That's the person I believe who can, the person who has the greatest of blessings is the person who has given them all up to follow Him. May God give us a faith like that. Let's pray. Dear Father, how we thank you for your love and your word. How we thank you, dear Lord, for your desire within our lives to take us deep and strong with you. And Lord, we open our heart this morning and maybe some of us, we struggle in our faith right now. It's tough at the office. It's tough in our neighborhoods. It's tough with our friendships and the people around us to really stand for you. And then, Lord, when we read of those who wandered around in sheepskins and goatskins and dens and in deserts and in caves, destitute, because of their trust and their surrender to you and the price that they paid for it. Lord, would you give to us a faith like that? And Lord, I pray for those that right now in one way or another feel like they're wandering around in a sheepskin or a goatskin or they're in a den already. It isn't literal. They may have a nice house and a nice car, but yet in their home or in their relationships or in the struggles of life, Lord, their faith is being tested. I pray, Lord, that you would strengthen them and bless them. And Lord, you would bring them again and again through these things as we offer up ourselves and we become closer to you through them, deeper in you because of them. But Father, that we would find our heart just loving you, honoring you. Lord, how we thank you. You gave yourself for us. May we count the cost. May we pay the price. May you strengthen every one of us in Jesus name. Amen.