All right, now that we talked about it with the kids, let’s read it out of the Bible. Will you stand as you are able? Matthew 2, verses 1 through 12. Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose, and have come to worship him.
When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all of Jerusalem with him, and assembled all the chief priests and scribes of the people. He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for it is written by the prophet, And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah.
For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people. Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, Go and search diligently for the child.
And when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him. After listening to the king, they went on their way, and behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.
And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.
The word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God, thanks be to God. Amen. You may be seated.
Now the wise men showed up on the scene, and we sing We Three Kings so many times, and we see gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but how many wise men does the Bible say that there were? Maybe I shouldn’t even bring that up. Does that ruin your Christmas? In the East, we talked about how they go by a different calendar in the Eastern Church, so Christmas and Epiphany are at a different time, and in the East they have different traditions, like they believe there were something like 12 magi that came. And there are all kinds of stories where they come from different countries, and people develop these backstories of the background of the wise men, but the truth is all we know is they came from the East, and they were magi.
And what exactly does magi mean? Does that mean magicians? Does that mean astronomers? What does that mean? It’s hard to tell, even when you read all that around there. But what’s easy to know is if they came from the East, they’re saying they’re not from the land of Israel, they’re not from Judea, they’re not from Galilee, they’re not from any of these places. They come from a place that probably has different backgrounds, a different religion, but they were drawn in to Jesus Christ.
Which is something amazing, that God would take people from a different place, and this kind of brings in what our background would be as Gentiles, people who didn’t know God and then brought closer to God, and people who are from other places and other religions, drawn in to Jesus Christ and being accepted at the throne of Christ. It’s a pretty awesome thing, that God would do stuff like this. Now, I promised you that today would begin a new series that we would start, and we’d call it, Hey Methodist, Why Go Global? And as we’re digging into Epiphany, you can see what the different sermons we have, Beyond Us, Scriptural Holiness, One Hope, Autonomy and Accountability, One Spirit, Substance versus Form.
We’re going to go through all that over the next six weeks, but today we’re going to talk about how it’s Beyond Us. Why Go Global? I mean, first of all, how many of you, when you heard Global Methodist, and the reason this is happening is, in case you didn’t know, as of January 1st, we were officially a Global Methodist Church plant. And so, this is our first Sunday as an official Global Methodist Church plant.
So, we’re going to talk about what it means, and who we are, and who we hope to be, and where we hope to go. What does this have to do with anything? And the first question, and I remember, just to be honest with you, when I heard the name of the new denomination was going to be Global Methodist Church, my first thought was, Really? Of all the names that you could have been, I mean, I would have just kept it simple. Why not be simple? Why not just be Methodist? Why not be Wesleyan Methodist? Why be the name Global? When we started talking about the Global Methodist Church at Stilwell, everybody thought, That sounds like the New World Order, like unifying all the governments of the world.
And it was kind of confusing. And the deep theological reason, here, let me step back. A couple years ago, there was a team in the National Football League called the Washington, you can’t say that out loud, the Washington Redskins.
And due to pressure, they all of a sudden became the Washington football team. And it took them a couple of years to name their team. Not because there weren’t a lot of great things people could think of, but because there was an attorney in Washington, D.C., who had copyrighted the names of about 150 different possibilities for the Washington Redskins.
And he copyrighted them. So he owned the rights to it. So Washington football team could not name it any of those.
So eventually they came up with the name Commanders. And everybody’s going, Really? And on the radio they call them the Commodes for a nickname. So why would they do that? Because they didn’t have any other option.
And the deep theological thing that came up is there was almost no other choice of anything that would go. Methodist was taken. Everything had been taken.
There are legal names for so many different. I mean, there’s not just one or two Methodist denominations. There are so many in the world.
And now there’s one more. So the word I heard was global was the only thing that seemed to work that was available. And it does describe a lot of really what the hope is, that following Jesus is not a United States thing.
It’s a full Earth thing. It’s worldwide. I mean, we have to read, the reason we have to read the Christmas story year after year after year, and this will be my 18th time I’ve read it in ministry, is because people really believe Jesus was born in the United States.
That’s just sarcasm. But we think it’s all about us. And the Israelites, I mean, in so many ways, we can become like the Pharisees and the religious leaders who went and studied the scriptures, and he said, Herod was perplexed, and so was all of Israel, at least the leaders, and they were perplexed for different reasons, but they would be perplexed because they would be going, wait a minute, it’s all got to come through me.
It’s not official unless it comes through me. And believe it or not, God has other plans sometimes. God works beyond us.
One of the biggest theological things we have in Methodism that separates us, that other religions, not other religions, other denominations might not emphasize so much, is something called provenient grace. Can you guys say provenient grace? Wesley often called it preventive grace, too. And basically, he would say preventive grace is the grace of God that goes out before us, goes beyond the church.
I mean, how many of you people believe the Holy Spirit is working everywhere in the world, that it’s moving and it’s stirring hearts, and God is doing amazing things in the world beyond the church, beyond Methodism, and beyond One Hope Church? God is doing so much, and it doesn’t all have to come through us. Preventive grace simply means the grace of God that prevents us from sinning. Another way Wesley described that is our, does anybody know, scientific term? Our conscience, common sense, things in us that we innately know right and wrong, but we spend our whole lives trying to ignore that and pushing it away, so we need God’s grace.
Is there anybody who hasn’t needed God’s grace? Oh, good, I’m talking to the right crowd. God’s grace goes out before us and does amazing things, and it’s not just when Jesus was born, but all throughout history. God is surprising us, and God is doing things today beyond the United States.
So global is actually kind of fitting because there is no place on earth that is too far for God to reach. The global part of it is not a globalism standpoint, but it’s to say God is bigger than us, God is beyond us, and the movement of God, that we want to just be a part of this movement of where God is stirring and changing lives and lifting people up, we want to be a part of that, it’s beyond us. And so it’s like when Jesus said, the son can do nothing on his own except he sees what the father is doing, and he jumps in.
We need to, as a global, part of a global organization, open our eyes and see that in places, you know, places that may not be the best vacation spots in the world, but God is working, God is moving. And there are places in Africa where as we count individual baptisms, so they count new church starts because there are so many. There are places in Asia.
Philippines is a place where the global Methodist church is already huge. It’s covering the whole country. But then the Holy Spirit moves beyond Methodism too in South America, in all places in Africa, in other places in Asia, not just Europe and the United States.
The Holy Spirit is doing amazing things and we can learn so much from them and see that like the wise men coming from the East in strange places, places that are foreign to us. As in, if you drink the water, you may be hurting for a few days. But God is moving and living in all those places.
So as we continue forward in this series of discovery, don’t just think of us here as one hope. One of the big things about being a part of a denomination, and not just a denomination that’s in the Southeast of the United States or in the Midwest or just in the United States. Wesley used to say, John Wesley would say, where did he call his parish? The world.
The world is my parish. And so it is that we are a part of something bigger than us and it’s awesome to be a part of that.