Sermon preached on Wednesday, October 31, 2012 at Garden Valley Chapel during our Reformation Day Celebration based on the Life and Legacy of John Knox.

"O God, give me Scotland or I die!"

To feel such love and passion for your kinsmen is inspiring; it is to be esteemed, to be praised, to be renewed in our hearts this day!

John Knox had the very passion and zeal of the Apostle Paul in Romans 9:3 -

3 ... I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh,

Rightfully did John Knox deliver this saying to God, for such an utterance can only be offered up to the one true God, who so loved the unlovely, despicable, and wicked that He sent His only begotten Son to provide for their redemption.

"Salvation is from the Lord" (Jonah 2:9).

But to be used of God and to be a vessel of mercy and not of wrath is God´s prerogative. He alone chooses, He alone calls, He alone is sovereign. "Who resists His will?" (Rom 9:19).

Some have called John Knox a religious fanatic, a hard man, a giant among leaders. But who was he and why take the time to look at his life?

To that end I want us to consider both the life and legacy of John Knox with the hope that you will come away encouraged, uplifted, and spurred on in this pursuit of Christlikeness.

CONTENT

John Knox was born around 1500. I say "around" because almost nothing is known for certain of his early life, not even his birthday - or his birth-year.

Sometime between 1505 and 1515, John Knox was born in Haddington, about seventeen miles east of Edinburgh.

It is uncertain where he received his education. Theodore Beza, a contemporary of Knox, says that he studied under John Major at the University of St. Andrews, but there is no record of him attending in the defective records of St. Andrews.

One thing was certain though, Knox grew up in a very dark land and time.

It was a time in the church were you were hung for breaking lent and refusing to pray to saints.

It was a time when a woman was arrested for praying in Christ´s Name rather than in Mary´s name during her labor pains. She was later condemned to public drowning.

It was a time in the church when those vested to shepherd the flock of God resisted God´s revelation in Holy Scripture.

Bishop Crighton of Dunkeld is reported by Foxe as saying that he thanked God that he "never knew what the Old and New Testaments were."

As one hyperbole puts it, "Knox was a Hebrew Jeremiah set down on Scottish soil."

God in His sovereign wisdom and grace, placed a vessel of mercy in the climate of darkness.

He placed his servant for such a time as this.

He was a small man, "low in stature, and of a weakly constitution."

How can God use such a small man? How can God use such a weak man?

Have you ever felt that way?

I feel my own weakness and yet I desire to serve my God and King.

Throughout his whole life, Knox would suffer with kidney stones, insomnia, and other ailments.

As Paul declared in 2 Cor 11:28 -

28 Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.

Knox would feel that daily pressure of concern for the Church.

Tonight I want to direct our thoughts to 3 exhortations from the life of John Knox that will help you as you endeavor to serve God.

I want us to know of his life and legacy and resolve with the Apostle Paul with these words from 2 Cor 12:10 -

10 Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ´s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.