This book, and the great sermon that lies behind it, provide a powerful manifesto for living well, living courageously, and living in a way that honors God in uncertain times. I would encourage you to read the sermon, to read the book, and to apply them both deliberately and prayerfully.

Has anyone ever lived in times that were normal? Probably not, I suppose. Every time and every context has its peculiarities, I’m sure. Regardless, there’s no doubt that we are currently living in unusual times—in what seems like a transitionary phase during which old traditions, old morals, and old ways of understanding the world are giving way to new. There are new questions, new concerns, and new challenges to those who want to live well in a world like this one.
Where do we go to learn to live well in new times? There is no better place to turn than to old wisdom—to the very same book that guided our forebears as they lived through the challenges that defined their own eras. The Word of God is, after all, living, active, and powerful, able to teach and to guide us no matter our times and no matter our circumstances.
In The Christian Manifesto, Alistair Begg takes an extended look at Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain (which, though it bears certain similarities, should not be confused with his longer Sermon on the Mount). “This sermon,” he says, is “Jesus’ invitation to you to experience life at its very best. It is his description of what life in his kingdom—a kingdom where all that is wrong is being put right—looks like as we live in this world.”
In this book, we’re going to look at what can be helpfully seen as a “Christian manifesto.” A manifesto is a public declaration or proclamation issued by a monarch or head of state, or by a representative of a company or organization. Here is a manifesto for the Christian life, straight from the lips of Jesus…
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Jesus quotes a psalm. He says, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (Mark 12:10–11, citing Ps. 118:22–23). In the parable the beloved son is rejected, and in the psalm the stone is rejected. Jesus cites the psalm after telling the parable because he is the rejected son, and the rejected son is the rejected stone. 

On Tuesday of the week Jesus was going to die, he was teaching in the temple courts. Religious leaders tried to trap Jesus with various questions, though he evaded their traps with his superior wisdom. In one scene he told a parable followed by a quotation from a psalm, and we should see this parable and psalm together.
Jesus said that a vineyard owner leased the vineyard to tenants while he went to another country (Mark 12:1). During the season for fruit, the owner sent a servant to the tenants to get fruit, but the tenants beat the servant (12:2–3). Another servant arrived, but they treated him the same way, striking him on the head (12:4). More servants came, and some of them were even killed (12:5). Finally, the vineyard owner sent his “beloved son” (12:6). The wicked tenants saw an opportunity to take out the heir, so “they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard” (12:8).
The parable was about the rejection of those who should have been received. The tenants should not have shamefully treated the vineyard owner’s servants. The treatment of the servants revealed the wickedness of the tenants. And since the tenants mistreated the servants, the momentum of the parable prepares us for the hostile way they will treat the vineyard owner’s son. In the shocking narration of the parable, the vineyard owner’s son dies at the hands of the wicked tenants.
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Tyndale had cracked the foundation. Common people began reading the New Testament, for the first time, in their own language . . . and they acted with righteous indignation. They realized they had been kept in darkness, for centuries, from the light of Holy Scripture. A movement swept through England which already was sweeping through Europe: The Protestant Reformation. This reformation spawned denominations we know today as Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Lutherans, and many others who are having an enormous impact on societies all over the world. 

William Tyndale was taken to a high platform in public view. Bishops flanked him, robed in their priestly vestments. Anointing oil, symbolically, was scraped from his hands. The Lord’s Supper was placed before him and then quickly removed, tauntingly. Tyndale was wearing priestly vestments. They were stripped away from his body. Finally, he was handed over to the hangman. In his last moments, he cried-out, “Lord! Open the king of England’s eyes.” They strangled him above a pyre of brush. He was burned. Gunpowder had been placed in the brush. His body was mutilated by the explosions. All for what? What was his crime?
He translated the NT into the English language.
Tyndale, the Man
William Tyndale was brilliant. He was fluent in 8 languages: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and of course, English. He was, first and foremost, a translator, but he was much more than that: A defender of gospel truth, a parser of words, a coiner of terms, a pitcher of phrases, a genius in language, a man of steely conviction. He was God’s English wordsmith. He not only gave us the Bible in our language. He “gave us a Bible language.”[1]
He coined a litany of now-famous phrases:

Let there be light.
Am I my brother’s keeper?
The salt of the earth.
Fight the good fight.
Let not your heart be troubled.
A city that is set on a hill.
As sheep having no shepherd.
Ask and it shall be given.
Twinkling of an eye.

He invented English words never before used: scapegoat, Passover, atonement, etc. His gift for language was magnificent, so much so that 90% of the King James Version Bible comes from Tyndale, directly transposed.
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