Hey, Methodist. Hey, look at that. Why go global? We’re going to be talking about that for the next several weeks.
Last week we talked about because church is beyond us, because God works beyond us, because God works in the crevices and places in the world that we might not even think about happening. And that’s why God is good, because God has more work to do than we can handle. So we first of all know that is beyond us.
So why would I be standing before you as a Methodist pastor? I’ve shared with a lot of you that when God called me into ministry, the first thing I said was, okay, I will leave my career as an accountant, and I will go into ministry, but please, whatever you do, don’t send me back into the United Methodist Church in ministry. I shouldn’t ask direct questions like that. And then when I was looking at what seminary to go to, it seemed like a no-brainer, because there was a seminary where the Holy Spirit was palatable.
I went into the chapel, and I was like, whoa, it’s like there was a revival in here. It was so powerful. Just walking down the sidewalks, the Holy Spirit was there.
And that was Asbury University, and I didn’t get anything when I said, okay, God, this is a no-brainer. Where am I going to go? And when I finally opened up, God sent me to St. Paul’s School of Theology to learn a bunch of stuff I didn’t want to know. And they taught me these new and modern theologies where you can take the Bible, break it down, and then build it back up in something that is more palatable for the world today.
And I know how to do that. I just somehow, by the grace of God, didn’t walk away from there saying, and that is where the Holy Spirit is calling us to go. So when God finally gave me the release to come out of the United Methodist Church, I was relieved.
But I’m telling you, when I went to seminary, I was a bit of a pessimist. Like, what is this Methodist thing? And I start the first year, I took all this general stuff, and I was like, you know, I’m learning a little bit. And they make you focus on yourself so much, like self-reflection and all your flaws and hurts and pains and aches, and that was really uncomfortable.
But then the second year, I started taking Methodist classes, Methodist polity, history, doctrine, and I ended up taking as many Methodist and Wesleyan classes as I could have. If they would have had an emphasis in Wesleyan theology, I would have taken everything I needed for that, but I got my emphasis in evangelism, because that’s what they had, which is good. But as I’m studying this stuff, I’m reading about Methodist history and the movement of Methodism, and we’ll talk more about that in later series, but I remember looking at that going, I have no idea what this stuff is.
I don’t see the reflection of it in the church I’m in these days, in the church I’ve been my whole life. I mean, I was born after the merger of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the United Evangelical Brethren Church, and so I don’t know much outside of United Methodism. When you want to ask me to sing a hymn that wasn’t in the United Methodist hymnal, good luck with that.
It just didn’t, I didn’t know outside of that, but I’m reading this history and seeing the movement and seeing how powerful the Holy Spirit is and seeing how faithful to Scripture Methodists were in the beginning, and I just was like, oh, there’s something to this God. So when I ask the question, hey, Methodist, why go global? What Paul says to Timothy sums it all up for us. This is Methodism.
This is the Wesleyan spirit in which we were called. What makes being a Methodist not just a mundane main line go through the motions thing. You see, Paul was writing Timothy, and Timothy was in 1 Timothy.
I love the greeting that Paul had to Timothy when he said to Timothy, my beloved child. And at the beginning of 2 Timothy, Paul says to Timothy, my beloved child, my beloved child. Paul was Timothy’s spiritual father.
Now he brought up how his aunt and his grandmother taught him the Scriptures growing up, and then Timothy was like a young pastor in a church, and Paul was trying to encourage him, writing to him from a resort vacation, from prison, writing to him from prison saying, don’t let these chains deter you. Now Timothy, although he, I mean, could you imagine growing in faith at the feet of Paul, learning from Paul directly, watching Paul in his boldness, and how he would introduce the gospel. I mean, Paul’s the one who spent 14 years just letting the Holy Spirit feed him.
Actually, he says it was Jesus. You remember after his conversion on the road to Damascus, he learned most of what he learned directly from Jesus, and that’s why he called himself an apostle. And here’s Timothy, who is trying to lead a church, but Paul is letting him know that you’re gonna have people, whether they’re Jews, whether they’re leaders in the community, or even in the church, that are gonna be difficult.
I don’t know if anybody has ever run into someone difficult in the church, but Paul said it could happen. It must have just been something happening over there in the Middle East. He said they would be difficult.
Listen to these things. People will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving God, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such.
I mean, talk about focusing on the negative. But that’s where Paul was telling Timothy, we need to not adopt from those things. There’s two things Paul tells Timothy he needs to pull from.
Let’s look at 2 Timothy 3, 10 through 17, and find out a lot about who we are as Methodists. Will you stand as you are able? You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra. With persecutions I endured, yet from them all the Lord rescued me.
Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which were able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
The word of God. For the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Amen. You may be seated. Wesley, in something that was known as his larger minutes, large minutes, stated this about Methodists.
About the purpose of Methodism itself. Now Methodism wasn’t started to be a new denomination. It wasn’t started to take over everything else.
It was started to reform the church. Which is what I thought I was a part of when I was in the United Methodist Church, a part of the reformation, a part of revival and renewal. But in the large minutes he said, the purpose of Methodism is to reform the nation and in particular the church to spread scriptural holiness over the land.
Scriptural holiness. I mean when I felt, when I would identify a lot of the things that were needed in the church, scriptural holiness almost sums up everything. In fact, when I was driving here this morning, I thought, I hope when my gravestone would say, he spread scriptural holiness.
Because it says it all. It covers it. Now the first part is scripture, and of course the verse I always gravitate to in here is all scripture is breathed out by God.
Does everybody believe that? It’s breathed out by God, which in our language means it’s inspired. You know there were many, many writers of the 66 books of the Bible, but the Bible is inspired. And it’s not just inspired, but it’s God breathed, as in God has breathed over all of this.
Now at that time, Paul would have been pointing to the Old Testament, which the Old Testament is something that we can tend to stray away from in mainline denominationalism and say, hey, let’s just focus on the New Testament. And then we don’t have to see all the depth and everything that Jesus was talking about and basing things on as he was doing his teaching. It’s God breathed and prostable for teaching.
I was actually in the church where one of the officers of the church told my secretary, I don’t know why we’re even teaching the Bible to kids anymore. For reproof. Reproof means to prove it.
If you want to prove who God is, if you want to prove how amazing God is, if you want to prove what the truth is, the Bible’s the best place to turn to and to start. For correction, obviously the Bible is what we look to for training in righteousness, for learning to become right, for learning to become more like Jesus. Now, I don’t know how many of you have seen this book or have this book, but it’s called The Next Methodism, Theological, Social, and Missional Foundations for Global Methodism, edited by Kenneth J. Collins and Ryan N. Banker.
It’s just got a whole bunch of scholars and leaders, including Bishop Jones, who wrote the prologue at the end, who tell us about what global methodism needs to be. And it’s really cool insight. I can’t cover all this in a 15 to 20 minute sermon.
So if you want to read it, if you want to do a study on it, we probably can. It gives you a good indicator of why all these people are saying we need to go global. And I’m also going to talk later about Kenneth Collins’ book that when I was in my third year, I took a self-study class with Hal Knight at St. Paul School of Theology, who was the Wesleyan professor there.
And he gave me this book to base my study on and write papers based on this book. And it’s an incredible way to dig into John Wesley’s theology. It’s very scholarly, but it’s awesome.
It’s called The Theology of John Wesley, Holy Love, and the Shape of Grace. And in it, you see how meticulously Wesley tried to tie every part of Scripture together, as in from Genesis to Revelation. Instead of what we normally learn on taking it apart and breaking it down, he was tying it together, saying it’s all God-breathed, so it’s all connected, it’s all there.
Now, in here, David Watson, who is one of the primary scholars in the global Methodist church now, talked about the primacy of Scripture. Now, in the primacy of Scripture, in early Methodism, he said, Scripture is the measuring rod or the lens, is what Wesley tells us. It’s the measuring rod or the lens of what we have as followers of Jesus Christ.
This comes first, primacy. It’s prime, it’s first, it’s above all. Now, are we not able to get the slides on the screen? The Wesleyan quadrilateral is one of the first things I learned about Wesleyan theology, where they said, how do we understand our Christian life through Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience? And over the 20th century, after Albert Outler wrote this, it was moved to a direction he didn’t want to go, but where all of that became equal footing.
And then it’s all twisted a little bit. Tradition is the tradition of the Christian church all the way through. How does this fit in with tradition? Reason is what we think.
Now, modernism took over in the 20th century in the mainline denominations, and reason became above and beyond Scripture and tradition. Hence, when we started working on what we were going to do with the future, those who were more conservative were called what? Traditionalists. Not traditionalists in the sense of, you know, where are you going to mark your tradition on your style of worship and all that stuff, but traditionalists on looking at Christian history and what does Christian tradition say about this? And then experience is supposed to be experience of the Holy Spirit.
We’ll talk a whole sermon about the Holy Spirit. But Scripture is primary. Everything else is filtered through Scripture.
Now, Wesley called himself a man of one book, but he read many books, but Scripture was always primary. You wouldn’t read a book and go, oh, that’s what it is now, and then read another book and go, oh, I was wrong with Scripture being this because this Scripture is primary and everything else is filtered through Scripture. This isn’t the most controversial thing I’m going to say in this whole sermon series.
But Scripture is something that we turn to. Now, one of the ways in which Wesley interpreted Scripture was looking at the overall drama of Scripture, the story of God and God’s people that occurs throughout the Bible. If you cut out any part of this, then you’re cutting off the lifeblood of what the Bible is.
Creation and fall. Who are the two people we think of with creation and fall? Adam and Eve. We’re all together.
Okay, creation and fall, slavery and exodus, exile and restoration. Who’s the main person we think of with exile and restoration? Moses. And then Christ, the new creation.
How God would deliver the people. They would fall. God would deliver them.
God would send a judge. God would send a prophet. God would send John the Baptist.
And finally, when God sent Jesus, it’s the new creation that God has. And we see all that. And you take all that out, and one of the… Well, if you look at John Wesley’s analogy of faith for reading the Bible, these are the theologies that John would say we cannot separate ourselves from.
Original sin. I know a lot of people who have separated from original sin that they would say we’re naturally good instead of what John would say is we’re naturally propensity. We have a propensity to sin.
It’s tied to the fall. If you don’t believe in the fall, then you don’t believe in original sin. And if you don’t believe in that, then you’re technically not a Methodist.
Sorry. Justification by faith. Of course, God has a plan that we can be justified, that there is a new birth in Jesus Christ.
And then the big one, inward and outward holiness. Personal holiness and social holiness. How do we live? That Wesleyanism, or Methodism, as it was called in Wesley’s time, Methodism was not just about, you know, if you believe the Bible, and Wesley worked really hard to prove different things in the Bible and tell us that there is a… He had something he called a practical divinity.
And we might call that practical theology. But one of the hearts of Methodism is that the Bible is not something we just walk around and we say, hey, I believe this. Or we say, hey, I understand this.
It’s not just mental assent. The Bible tells us how we are supposed to live life with God. So in other words, it’s not just do we believe it, it’s do we live it.
Wesley saw the Bible as something that would guide us to salvation and growing in our faith. Personal and social holiness. Holiness is not just something that is that strict piety that says, if I take a step, I know I’m gonna sin.
So I’m scared to do anything because I’m gonna mess it up. Personal and social holiness says, I wanna be so much like Jesus that I can’t wait. And I know if I trip, then God is going to catch me.
I know there is grace to help me keep growing in my faith, to help me keep moving, and to help me be a part of Jesus. So when we look at the theologies, original sin, justification, new birth, inward-outward holiness, it was all about the Wesleyan way of salvation. The Bible shows us, and this is in the doctrines, the discipline and doctrines of the Global Methodist Church, the holy writings were able to make you wise for salvation and faith through Jesus Christ.
Kenneth Collins, who wrote the book I showed you before the theology of John Wesley, Holy Love and the Shape of Grace. I loved it so much that when I was in Denton, which is the northeast corner of the state, and I heard he was gonna be at a United Methodist Church in Liberal, Kansas, I drove all the way across the state and got my book signed. It says, you are officially a Wesleyan geek.
No, he just asked God to blessly rich me, richly bless me as I read the book. He said in there, describing what holiness and love is, he said, love apart from holiness is soft, naive, naively wishful, and likely self-indulgent. Have you guys ever experienced a love in the church that is soft, naively wishful, and likely self-indulgent? How when you move into that kind of love that’s separated from holiness, then you can just step aside from scripture or put it in any bucket you want, whether you use it or whether you throw it away, however you feel, and then you end up creating your own God.
Holiness, apart from love, is like a consuming fire. Because holiness, the definition of holiness is to be set apart for God. And if we’re gonna be set apart for God, if we’re gonna be more Christ-like, then we’ve got nothing to stand on.
We need God’s love and God’s grace. So holy love is how Kenneth Collins describes what Wesley was talking about. What we have in Christianity, when we get to the heart of it, is something called holy love.
So what do we do with this? Again, gotta read the book. Can’t just watch the movie, gotta read the book. Gotta learn about God.
Have your face in the scriptures every single day. Make it a part of your life because when it’s absorbed into our heart, then we can live it. We can live and not just say, oh, I believe in the Bible, but say, I am doing what I can to live out the Bible, that I’ve fallen short, that God has offered salvation, that I have new birth in Jesus Christ, and that I live a life of personal and social holiness, that I’m growing closer to Christ every day, that because I love what God’s words say so much and teach me about God, that I wanna be more like Jesus than I was last week, more than I was last year, more than I have ever been, that every day we progress in our faith.
That’s the progressiveness we need, right? It’s to grow in our faith, to progress forward, to be more like Jesus. Now that’s progress that we can have in life, and we cannot get there very easily and probably cannot even get there without scriptural holiness. To describe who we are and why God has called us to be this place.
Hey, Methodist. Okay, I’m tired. I don’t wanna go back out in the cold.
Why go global? Scriptural holiness. I need it. We all need it.
Let’s pray. Mighty God, thank you so much for the teaching we have, for the tradition that came before us, for the faith we have, for those who love the word of God. Help us not only to realize that scripture is God-breathed, but just as Paul told Timothy about the importance of scripture, he would say, you have seen me do it.
Paul gave Timothy the example of holiness, the example of scriptural holiness, because he lived it out before Timothy. He didn’t just tell him. He showed him what discipleship is.
May we be livers and teachers and disciples who spread scriptural holiness to a world with hate and anger, a world who says there is no need for the Bible today, a world who says I can know God, but I don’t have to be holy. Draw us in, Lord. Jesus promised us so much, and through those wonderful promises, we can stand.
We can stand in our faith despite those around us who may disagree. Who may mock. Who may try and try and try to get us to change who we are, and even who we know God has called us to be.
May we spread scriptural holiness and stand on your word. In Jesus’ name, amen.