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Preachers Collective- North England Conference of SDA

Craig Gooden

Resolved

Dear Lord, I come before you as your manservant, simply asking for help, for your strength, for your words to be spoken through me.

I'm asking, Lord, that you will take away anything of self from me and hide me in you, Jesus.

Holy Spirit, I pray that you will increase as I decrease and move upon the hearts of everybody who is present.

And I pray that each and every 1 of us will understand the point of the sermon, which is to be resolved to be a follower of you.

Lord, you know what we've been through in the week.

Some have had a great week, some have had a week that's just been troubled, But we're all gathered here today to give you thanks.

Thanks because we come to worship you, to lift your name up on high and to give you all the honor for you are God, the Redeemer of our lives.

And today we remember your sacrifice and we also remember that you created us.

I'd ask you again to turn in your Bibles to the book of Revelation chapter 12, chapter Revelation 14 verse 12.

And it says, here is the patience of the saints.

Here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

This same group is the same group that was mentioned between verses 1 to 5.

And in verses 1 to 5, they're called 144, 000.

And this same group is mentioned again in verse 12, after they've given a message that stirs up the whole world, and they're called in verse 12, saints.

And it's told of these saints that they have a patience.

The patience of the saints and the description of them is that they keep the commandments of God and they have the faith of Jesus.

In the year 1324, There was a man, a bright star was born, a man by the name of John de Wycliffe, who was called the morning star of the Reformation and also titled to be an English divine whose piety and talents procured for him 1 of the highest ecclesiastical positions of honor.

Having openly preached against the corruptions of the Roman Church, he was displaced, the Pope issuing several bulls against him for heresy.

It's remarkable, it is said of John Wycliffe, that although he continued his vehement attacks upon the vital points of the Roman doctrines, that he escaped the fate of others similarly accused.

Others would be hanged, others would be burned and tortured, but John Wycliffe was able to die of normal causes.

Over 40 years after his death, however, because of the hatred that the papacy had towards his teachings, they went all the way to his burial ground, dug up the bones and burned the bones, in hope thinking, oh, we've done something to him.

They took the ashes from those burns and from the bones and they cast it into the river Swift which then took the ashes to the river Severin which then took it to the sea.

They say that his very dust became emblematic of his doctrine which now diffused across the whole world.

You see, John Wycliffe laid the root so deep that nobody coming along to do and be involved in the Reformation could make any changes according to what he had already laid.

He laid it so deep and so wide that all of those who participated were able to take those teachings and simply add to them.

People like John Hus, the Bohemian reformer who was burned in 1415.

It said that whilst he was being burned, he would sing hymns to God and praise God.

And those flames had no power against him apart to take his life.

You had Jerome of Prague who was burned at the stake in 1416.

You had William Tyndale who was not received well in England and had to go to Germany because of his desire to translate the Bible.

His translation, offering a complete translation of the New Testament, provided the model and basis of what we have today being the King James Version Bible.

And some may say, well, if they're all Christians, why would they burn them?

And why would they be willing to be burned?

Thomas Cranmer, the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, burned in Oxford in 1556.

And if you go to Oxford today, you can still see in the streets where they burned them.

Thomas Cramner, though, through fear, signed a document recanting and saying that he didn't want to continue with the faith he was proclaiming.

He signed this document recanting, and then just before his death, he signed the document.

Well, he said, I recant of my recantation.

And then being taken to the place where they were going to burn him.

He put his right hand forward and then it said that he said, oh, my unworthy right hand burned first.

Then Hugh Latimer, who was a chief promoter of the Reformation in England, was burned in 1555.

But we all are hearing about a man by the name of Martin Luther.

Not Martin Luther King Jr., Martin Luther, the reformer.

And we know that in the year 2017, many have celebrated 500 years since the Reformation.

But on that date in 1517, on October the 31st, he nailed 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church in Germany, challenging the papacy.

And they say that this sparked and catapulted the Reformation to new heights and new levels.

Luther did this as a result of his experience when he made a visit to the unholy city of Rome in 1510.

And whilst climbing Pilate's staircase in penance of his sins, he heard a voice like thunder saying to him, the just shall live by faith.

In Romans chapter 1 verse 16 to 17, Paul had those words written, where he said, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.

For it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Then he goes on to say, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith.

And then he closes by saying, the just shall live by faith.

The word Resolved means to be firmly determined to do something.

John Hus was resolved to preach the truth.

Martin Luther was resolved to preach the truth.

They had a strength of will, a firmness, a steadfastness, a strength of mind.

They had dedication and no matter what anyone else says or said they were willing to go forward.

We read in Revelation chapter 14 verse 12 of a group of people who will be standing just before Jesus returns.

And it's as if God is crying out and saying to John, right here are they.

Here is a group of people who will have the patience of the saints.

Here are they that will keep the commandments of God and will have the faith of Jesus.

And I wonder, when we see John on that day, will he say, I saw you?

You see, that group of people have resolved to be faithful and obedient under the clouds of unfaithfulness and disobedience.

And we come here every Sabbath, weeks where troubles are always met.

I know nobody seated here today is sitting knowing they've had a week without temptation.

I love the children's story and nobody was proud enough to say, I am 100%.

Because the truth of the matter is that there are temptations for us to take our eyes from Christ.

But there has to be a resolve within the human psyche to say, I want to make it to the end.

And though I may have fallen through Jesus' power, I can get back up again.

These reformers said that this is what we will do, even if it meant to be burned.

In the book of Revelation chapter 14 verse 12, we read of a group of people that are seen by God and written by John to have a patience and are labeled as saints.

Their characters are painted in a way that the viewer and the writer can say when looking at them, these people keep the commandments of God.

These people have the faith of Jesus Christ.

Just looking at them, they are different from the rest.

This is a group of people who have resolved to be obedient to God and to grasp the faith of Jesus.

And I'm hoping every 1 of us will have that resolve in our mind.

Because I'm sure you are not just coming to church just for the sake of coming to church.

I'm hoping that whilst you're hearing my words, that your voice and that your mind is not somewhere else.

Sometimes we pick up the Word of God and we read, but we're not reading it.

We may kneel down to pray, but we're not really praying, we're just repeating words.

And this group of people had a faith and a resolve that their words were not just words alone, they were filled with faith.

You see, words that are unmixed without faith are hollow.

This group of people as I've said in Revelation 14 verse 1 to 5 being called 144, 000 and then being called in verse 12 saints.

This same group of people in other places of the Bible are called the chosen ones.

They are called those who have endured unto the end.

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