Messages From England: Week 3 | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

1:17 hearing and understanding of scripture. 300 years ago next month, a 22 year old John Wesley decided to live every part of his life for the glory of God. He would lead the 18th century evangelical revival that would spread to America where it would shape the heart and soul of our nation. He was born and raised in the small town of Epworth, where his mother's prayers and faith shaped his life, from whom he learned perseverance in suffering and how to bring peace in polarized times. He went to college and seminary in Oxford, where he mentored a small group of college students from which the Methodist movement was born. This movement combined a passionate faith with critical thinking and social action. Wesley eventually moved to London, where his heart was strangely warmed, where he felt called to preach in the fields to reach non-religious and nominally religious people, and where he led Methodists to avoid evil, to do all the good they could, and to pursue practices that helped them grow in faith.

2:12 As we study the story of the 18th century Methodist revival, we may just find the keys to rekindling the flames of our own faith today. If this is your first time to Church of the Resurrection, my name is Adam Hamilton. I'm the senior pastor here. And I usually preach from our Leawood location. But today I'm preaching to you from the heart of London. You're going to hear lots of noise, road noises and sirens and all kinds of things because we're right in the center of London. And we're here wrapping up our three-part series of sermons on early Methodism and John Wesley and what we can learn from the evangelical revival of the 18th century and John Wesley's experience, the founder of Methodism, that might help us have a rekindled faith in our own lives. today. All right, so we began in Epworth, where John Wesley was born, grew up. We moved to Oxford, where John Wesley became a scholar. He became a fellow. He had a fellowship at Lincoln College, where Methodism started when in 1729, John Wesley went back after he was ordained priest to mentor a group of students while he's teaching in Lincoln College. And so we left him there 1729.

3:12 Now, he spends the next six years teaching at Oxford, and he's mentoring students. And finally, in 1735, his father dies. Samuel Wesley, who was a priest at St. Andrew's Church in Epworth, after 39 years, his father's passed. And John and Charles Wesley, the brothers, go back and they bury their father. And then John feels that he's supposed to do more to please God. Now, I just want to remind you, in 1725, 300 years ago, he decided, I really want to do everything for the glory of God. And he was serious about that. And those Methodists were, you know, they wake up at five in the morning to pray, and they were having the Eucharist every day, and they were doing so many things to try to please God. But an interesting thing happened for Wesley, six years of doing that, and he still didn't feel the assurance that God loved him. He's still struggling. Have I done enough to make God love me? Have I done enough to please Jesus? Have I honored him with my life enough? And so after his father dies, he has this idea, you know, maybe there's one more thing I can do. I can give up my entire life here and I can go to America, to the colonies, and I can be a missionary to the Indians in America. That was how he described it. I can be a missionary to the Indians, and I can start a church in Savannah, Georgia. And so he decides to leave everything behind and to go do this. I think he's still, I don't even think this was God's call in his life so much. Maybe it was, but I think it was also largely his attempt to try to win God's approval.

4:33 And I just want to ask this question for you. Have you ever found yourself like wondering, does God really love me? Have I done enough? Has he really accepted me? Am I really saved or rescued or loved by God. Because if you've ever felt that, and then you've tried really hard to get God to love you, or maybe it was somebody else, a parent or someone else, you know what Wesley was experiencing at that time. So it's the fall of 1735, October of 1735. John Wesley boards a ship along with his brother and another Methodist, and they're sailing to America. Along the way, there are multiple storms, and he describes these in his journal, and he's terrified that he's going to die. But he's watching some Christians on that ship who are just singing songs of praise to God or singing hymns or psalms while the storms are raging. And he's asking them like, how can you not be afraid? I mean, you might die. We might die here. And they said, we're not afraid to die. We belong to Jesus. We're not afraid to die. And he feels once more in an adequate faith. He's not sure that God loves him. And he feels like he doesn't have an adequate faith or else he wouldn't be terrified of the storms. He finally makes it to the new world. He finally makes it to Savannah, Georgia, and he goes to start his church, to gather his congregation, an Anglican church or what we've called Episcopal churches in America. He gathers his church in Savannah, Georgia, and he's leading these people and he's trying to be a missionary to the Indians and he fails. He fails at being a missionary. He doesn't convert hardly anybody to the faith.

5:50 In the church that he's leading, you know, the people aren't sure that they like him. They don't really like his preaching. He seems a little too stiff for them. The worship seems a little too liturgical for them. He's pretty much a legalist. When he first lands, he takes their barrels of booze and he pours it out on the ground. Not a good way to win friends and influence people when you first get started somewhere. And so he's failing. He feels it. There's at one point, there's one of the men in his church says this, I like nothing you do. Indeed, there is neither man nor woman in the town who abides a word you say. And so you may preach long enough, but nobody will come to hear you. Those are pretty challenging words if you're a preacher and your people are saying this, they're not showing up for worship. And so what he's feeling like is a failure and he fails in a romantic relationship. And so again and again, there's failure. He's brought up in charges for something he does in the church. He had refused to serve communion to the girl who jilted him. And so her new husband, after she left him, or her new husband brings him up on charges. I mean, all of this. And so finally in December, December 22nd, 1735, 1737, John Wesley leaves Georgia and he goes back to London, a complete failure. So not only is he not sure that God loves him, not only is he not sure he has, you know, he clearly doesn't have faith to not be afraid when things are tough, but he's also failed in ministry. I want to ask you this question. I want to ask all of you. So I've got 36 young adults who are here with me right now. You know, have you ever failed at anything where you got done and just felt horrible? Maybe you got fired from a job. Maybe you had people who said bad things about you or hurtful things about you.

7:20 Maybe you were jilted in a relationship. You were divorced or somebody left you. But if that's happened to you, and if it's not, it's going to happen to you, I promise, somewhere in your life. But if that's happened to you, I want to remind you of this story for Wesley, because what was interesting is all of those things that were painful and hard, Wesley didn't give up. He didn't give up. He felt like it. He didn't give up. And God took all of those painful things and used them to prepare him for this amazing thing that God would do through the rest of his life. And I find that's how it happens often in our lives, that God takes the painful things and the difficult things, and he forces something good and beautiful to come from them. So Isaiah says this, he gives us beauty for ashes and joy for sorrow and praise for a spirit of heaviness or a heavy heart that we might become oaks of righteousness. And he's feeling down on that particular day. He decides to go to Evensong Services at St. Paul's Cathedral. Now you can see on the screen, this is St. Paul's Cathedral, the very place where Wesley was on May 24th, 1738. He goes there for the service and a beautiful place. And there's a statue of Wesley right outside it, kind of marking this moment. And he leaves there and that evening, he's been invited to a meeting of a group of Christians at a society, a religious gathering, right where I'm standing now.

8:28 This used to be a building. It was destroyed years ago. This is on Aldersgate Street. And I want to read to you what happens that night. They're studying, somebody is reading and studying Martin Luther's preface to the book of Romans. And this is what Wesley described happened in his journal. He said, by the way, he didn't even want to go to this meeting. So sometimes we show up at things we don't even want to go to and God does something amazing. So that's what happened here. About a quarter before nine, while Luther was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ. I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for my salvation. And an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine and saved me from the law of sin and death. And that night, often he talked about that as his conversion. He was already a Christian, but as the moment when he finally, finally, finally deeply trusted that God loved him, had saved him, had rescued him from sin and death.

9:22 And his ministry from that time on was different. So he'd still have struggles from time to time, but he began preaching with a new power, a new conviction. He began knowing, look, I'm telling you, I felt lost and I was broken, but God has rescued me and I've trusted that. I didn't have to do anything to earn it. He just gave it to me. And as he's preaching that and teaching that, people began to respond. And suddenly he's being asked to preach here and at Oxford and other places. And as he's preaching in those places, people are throwing, you know, are showing up, throngs of people showing up. He mentions one place where a thousand people showed up to hear him preach. Now that might've been a pastoral estimate. Maybe it was 800 or so. But he had people coming and they're weeping again after this. And there is people criticizing him. But so many people are coming to faith and he's beginning to find his message and his identity and the revival is beginning to happen. And finally, in 1739, early 1739, his friend George Whitefield, one of those fellow Oxford Methodists, is preaching in Bristol, England. And he's preaching to coal miners and he leaves the church and he starts preaching in the fields because the miners wouldn't go to the church.

10:19 And he's seeing thousands of people show up to hear the good news. and again, coming to faith in Christ. And George writes John and says, John, you've got to come to Bristol. You've got to preach in the fields. You've just got to do it. And at first Wesley's not sure, but eventually he goes to Bristol and he begins preaching. And this is where the Methodist revival and the 18th century evangelical awakening just explodes. And it never would have happened were it not for John Wesley's failures, were it not for the fact that he felt like he had totally blown it. He had to hit bottom before finally God can say, okay, now I've got you where I want you and I'm going to do something great through you. Now that you know it's not you doing it, but it's me doing it through you. So I want to take you 114 miles west of here to the city of Bristol. Let's head there now. We're now in Kingswood, which is about a two-hour drive from the city of London. And so two hours west, we've come here.

11:16 And this was, at the time, a city where a large number of coal miners lived. They were called Colliers. There were about 30,000 who lived in this area. And most of them, they were largely uneducated. They weren't actively in part of a church. Many of them were struggling to make ends meet, the working poor. And George Whitefield came out here and he began to preach in the fields. He began to preach actually here. And as he's preaching, this is called hand them out. As he's preaching out of doors, first time he preached out of doors, he had about 285 people who showed up to hear him preach. And they're just curiosity. But as George Whitefield continues to preach, in three weeks, he had 10,000 miners. So I want you to imagine 10,000 miners who were gathered around here and they're coming to hear this man preach. And soon he reaches out to John Wesley back in London. He said, I have to go to America. I need you to come and run this. I need you to come do something. God is doing something amazing here. And I need you to come and preach to these miners in the fields.

12:10 But I wanna read to you what he says in his journal. So the night before, this is April 1st, the night before he was preaching on the Sermon on the Mount within one of the societies, an indoor building. And he's preaching and he thought, wait, Jesus preached outdoors. He preached on a mountain. What am I doing not doing this? You know, how did I come to think you had to preach in a building? And this is what he describes. At four in the afternoon, this is on Monday, May 2nd, April 2nd. At four in the afternoon, so this is about a year after his Aldersgate experience this is happening. At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile. Listen, I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city to about 3,000 people. And think about it, he never preached to 3,000 people in his life. That's how many people we can hold in the Leawood Sanctuary, Church of the Resurrection. But there was no place he would have preached to 3,000 people at that time in his life. And so there are 3,000 people show up.

13:06 And in other places, he describes these coal miners with the blackened, you know, the faces blackened by the coal dust. And coming after they got off work and, you know, and weeping, the tears just running down their faces as they're hearing the gospel. As he's proclaiming the salvation, God's love and grace and mercy to who? to the non-religious and nominally religious. Remember our purpose statement in Church of the Resurrection? Our aim is to build a Christian community where non-religious and nominally religious people are becoming deeply committed Christians. Why are we doing that? Well, we do that because Jesus did that. He came to seek and to save the lost, but it's inherent to Methodism that you go out to where the people are and you try to reach the people who aren't connected to Christ. And that's exactly what John Wesley was doing here. And he preaches on the text, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to preach good news to the poor. And that's who he was preaching to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted. And that's what Wesley was hoping that God would use him to do, was to heal the brokenhearted.

14:02 To preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blinds, to set at liberty, the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. And you can just imagine for people who felt like their lives were hopeless and there was really, you know, that many of them, many of them didn't have families here. Some did. Many of them were struggling to make ends meet. They felt like they were trapped in a life that they didn't want. And in some sense, not really loved by God. The people in the churches weren't interested in having these people show up. The people in the churches, you know, they didn't want to sit next to these folks. These folks couldn't pay the pew tax. They couldn't really afford to give anything. They were going to be contributing members. And so, you know, for the people in the churches, they were largely lost. For the church people, they were largely lost. But John Wesley came and said, no, you're wanted by God. You're wanted by God. I just want to say this to you. There are people I know sitting, listening to Church Day, worshiping with us at one of our various locations in Kansas City or online or on TV.

14:57 And I want you to hear what John Wesley discovered and what he was communicating to these folks is they mattered to God. Their lives matter to God and your life matters to God and your lives matter to God, right? And when the church forgets that it exists for the people who are not its members, I mean, it's the only organization in existence in the world that exists solely for the benefit of its non-members. I mean, we get a benefit as members too. We grow in our faith and find community and all that, but we exist for the people outside the walls of the church. And we can't forget that. And I'm going to retire five years from now. And my hope and prayer, and the reason why we're here with all these young adults is, I need you to remember this. I don't need you to remember it. Jesus needs you to remember that. So it's so easy to become focused on yourselves, for churches to turn inward. And it's all about us, what we need and what we want. But when churches turn inward and turn focused on themselves, they're on a pathway to death. And when churches remember that we exist for the non-religious and nominally religious, the lost people out there, the people who need hope and faith and life, then they're going to find life.

16:00 And that's what Wesley did. Now, Wesley, he finally came to this point where he said, you need to be more vile. In essence, he's saying, I'm going to do whatever it takes. I'll do whatever it takes to reach people who don't know Jesus. And if that means preaching out of doors and having people make fun of me and lampoon me, And they did. They lampooned him on the front page of the newspapers. He's outside preaching and they made fun of him. And as, you know, I might've mentioned in Epworth, they'd throw rocks at him. They would throw rotten, I mean, there'd be people, you know, at one point, you know, tossing manure at him. I mean, but he said, I'll do whatever it takes. After he saw the tears of the people who found that they were actually loved by God as he was preaching. So we'd imagine there's a thousand people that come to hear him on Sunday, April 8th. There's a, at seven in the morning, he's preaching. Seven in the morning. Our 730 service is awesome at Resurrection Leawood. I love you all. And there's about 250 of you show up. But he got a thousand people show up.

16:54 And listen, he says about 1,500 at the top of Mount Hanum, a Hanum Mount in Kingswood. And he said, I called to them in the words of the evangelical prophet, ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. Come and buy wine and milk without money and without price. Isaiah's saying, just come, it's for you. It's for you, this gospel that gives life and water and bread. I mean, it's for you. And, you know, on this place where we're standing, some of you are standing on top where it has that scripture. And then he says about 5,000 people showed up in the afternoon at Rose Green on the other side of Kingswood. And among whom I stood and cried out in the name of the Lord, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, Jesus says, as the scriptures have said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

17:40 And I just want you to think about that. You know, suddenly there's thousands of people. There's just this, it's clear God has done something amazing. And this is where the revival, the 18th century evangelical revival or the 18th century awakening, evangelical awakening in Great Britain, it starts here. It starts at this place when thousands of people show up and all of a sudden they realize God is doing something amazing, which is pretty much how I felt about resurrection when we got started and there was four of us, my wife and I and our two kids. And then pretty soon there was a hundred of us and then 200 of us. But then all of a sudden, I remember the first time we had over a thousand people and then there were 5,000 people. And then, you know, last year on Christmas Eve, there was something like 40,000 people who attended one or more of our worship services in person and then 60,000 people online. You know, I mean, it was just mind boggling. But God was doing something. And that's what we remember here. The other thing I want to mention at this spot is when we think about Wesley's theology. So there were many people who were Puritans in England at the time.

18:36 They were Calvinists. They were people who said that God had predestined some to heaven and some to hell. And Wesley always thought that idea was just obscene. The idea that God would choose some people from the, you know, before they were ever born, he would choose some people to be destined to be instruments of his destruction while other people he had predetermined to be instruments of his grace or, you know, recipients of his grace. And as the Calvinist said, you know, that grace was irresistible to the predestined and it was no way accessible to those who were destined for hell. And, you know, there were, George Whitefield was a Calvinist. He still preached to all these people because he didn't know which ones were destined to be saved and which ones were destined for hell. But for Methodists, we call this Arminianism based upon the philosophy and theology of Jacobus Arminius. But the idea was that grace was available for everyone. Grace was free and anybody could access it. And this was just so important. And that's part of what drove Wesley.

19:29 It's like he wasn't looking for the predestined elect. He was looking for anyone. Jesus wanted everyone to come to know him, not just a certain elect number of people. And this was a passion of Methodists is that we believe that God's grace is free to everyone. There aren't predestined people who are elect and then the rest are gonna be consigned to hell. No, anybody has the opportunity to respond to God's grace and God wants everyone to be saved. So we remember that here at Hannah Mount. I wanna take you back to London and we're gonna finish the rest of the sermon there, but I just didn't want you to miss this opportunity to be here and to remember the outbreak of the evangelical revival and this deep passion to reach the non-religious and nominally religious, which still shapes resurrection today. I want you to know throughout the rest of the sermon series, you've been seeing me with young adults from Church of the Resurrection who were mentoring and bringing into leadership. But this week, so that was the first week that I was here in England. The second week here in England was with 65 young adult clergy from across the country. And this is a program that you started Church of the Resurrection because part of our vision, our vision is to change lives, to be used by God, to change lives, to strengthen churches and transform the world. That's been our vision for 35 years.

21:07 And part of that is this program for emerging clergy. And so you've invested in all of these clergy who are here. Part of your offerings have made possible this program and some of our staff who are here making this possible because you believe in not only the United Methodist Church and our approach to the gospel, but you believe in other churches and in strengthening and encouraging them. So throughout this room, I'm looking down on 65, not looking down on, but I'm looking at 65 young clergy and some of their spouses and so excited to be here with them. And this is the end of their journey right now. And so I wanted you to be aware of who's sitting here with me as we're sharing in the final portions of the sermon. So we've come here to the City Road Chapel, again, the Mother Church of Methodism. And I want you to know just a little bit of the history of this place. So John Wesley, in 1739, we learned in Bristol, built the new room. There were all of these coal miners, colliers and others, who were coming to faith in Christ. And they needed a place for them to disciple them and then a place to minister.

22:01 Because in Methodism, it's never enough simply to invite people to follow Jesus Christ, but if we invite them to follow Jesus, our hope is to turn them inside out from the very beginning. This is a part of Methodist DNA to turn them inside out to serve the present age. We talk at Resurrection about the idea of the world as it is and the world as it's supposed to be and closing the gap. And that goes all the way back to our beginnings, where those earliest Methodists, John Wesley and the others, William Morgan and the others at Oxford, were looking around in the community and saying, where does God need us to be his hands and his voice and his feet? Who are the prisoners that we need to visit? Or who are the children that need to be taught? Or who are the hungry that need to be fed? And so that started early on in Methodism, really from the very beginning. And then once those colliers began to come to faith in Christ, it was how do we disciple them? How do we help them grow deeper in their faith? And then from there, how do we help them serve the community around them? What do they need? And then what do other people need who don't even yet know Christ? And so the new room began serving not only is a place for people to gather to hear great sermons and to sing lustily.

23:03 That's how Wesley described the way we were to sing is lustily, but also to have their basic needs met. And so when this building was built, 1739, June of 1739, the new room was built in the fall of 1739, opening, I believe, in November of 1739. Not this building, but the foundry here in London, not very far from here. It was a dilapidated cannon works, and that dilapidated cannon works was purchased for a small price, I think 100 pounds, and Wesley raised the money to rehab it. And so it created an apartment for Methodist preachers to stay at. It was a place for a food pantry. There was clothing. There were pharmaceuticals or medicines that were distributed to people who couldn't afford them, a medical clinic that was there at times. There was a place at one point, there was a home where women who had lost their husbands and were poor could live together. And so all kinds of ministries that were about leading people to Christ and then turning the gospel inside out to serve the world around us. I don't want us to forget that. When this building was built, so the foundry was finally in a state of disrepair by 1776.

24:05 And in 1776, Wesley said, we have to build a place for Methodists here. Methodism, this was its hub. Wesley was traveling around, you know, across the country. But we need to build a place for Methodism in London. And so it was proposed to build this space. And this was the finest of the Methodist chapels across the United Kingdom. And it opened in 1778. Earlier today, when I was with this group, we had a chance to walk past Methodist Central Hall. And Methodist Central Hall, the largest gathering place for Methodists, built or completed in 1911 here in London, the Methodist Central Hall was designed not only as a place for worship and preaching with 2,300 seats, about what we have at our Resurrection Leawood location, but also to gather people together to meet the basic needs of the community and the world around. So in 1946, when the United Nations had their very first assembly, it was in the Methodist Central Hall. Because Methodists said the gospel is meant to impact the world. We're meant to be engaged and involved in what's happening in the world. I came to faith in a little Pentecostal church, and the people were wonderful, and they cared deeply for each other.

25:03 My family was poor. My stepfather had left our home, and my mother was during a deep crisis economically, and we had virtually nothing. And our little congregation cared deeply for our family. They provided food for us. They loved us. They loved on me. I was so grateful. They brought me to faith in Christ, and they cared for our family. But what we didn't hear about that I recall as a young person was that we were also supposed to serve people outside the walls of the church. And it wasn't until I became a United Methodist that I heard that message, that we were meant to actually be the hands and feet of Jesus for the world around us. Not just telling people about Jesus, but actually meeting the needs of people. I love in Matthew's Gospel, chapter nine, it says, Jesus went throughout all their towns and villages. He didn't stay in his office. He went throughout their towns and villages. He didn't stay in the church. He went throughout their towns and villages and he cast out demons and he healed the sick and he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom. And I love this.

25:56 Matthew says, it's Matthew 9, 36. He says, and Jesus looked on all the multitudes and he had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. That's part of what it means to be a United Methodist or a British Methodist. Part of what it means to be a Methodist is to have compassion for people and to look around at the world and say, what does Jesus need us to do now? And that's captured in our buildings here in the City Road Chapel, in the Methodist Central Hall in the New Room in Bristol. But it's also captured resurrection. I just want to say to you, it's captured in our fellowship hall, which is called the Foundry and named after this building that was Methodism's first home in London. Our Foundry is a place where recovery groups meet, where children come to grow in faith, where people come for support groups for those who lost a loved one or those dealing with mental health issues. I mean, all of this, it's part of what we do at our Resurrection Overland Park location, where we have a food pantry that provides groceries to the people in our community.

26:55 And so I'm going to speak to those of you young clergy here, but I'm really going to speak to those of you at Resurrection for a moment, to say the things that you do in Kansas City. So you are the largest source of blood in the greater Kansas City area. You are the second largest source of food in Kansas City after harvesters. You are the largest source of support for our inner city schools, 13 schools, and you provided millions of dollars and tens of thousands of volunteer hours. The reason why we do that is because, in part, we are Christians who see the world as John Wesley did and say, we're meant to, as we follow Christ, love our neighbors as we love ourselves. That when Jesus looks at the world and sees things that break his heart, and there's a lot that breaks the Lord's heart today, I think, in the world, always has been. But when he sees the things that are broken, he doesn't send angels with wings to go out and to fix things. He sends angels that look like you. He sends people. He sends churches. And so we are the body of Christ, the physical incarnation of Jesus in the world. And so we're constantly asking the question, where does the world not yet look like the kingdom of God?

27:53 So our folks who are here in England, our young clergy are getting ready to have a day off tomorrow. They're gonna explore the area here in London. And some of them for the very first time are gonna ride the tube, the subway. And when they ride the tube, everywhere you stop to get ready to get on the tube, you hear this British voice and she says, mind the gap, mind the gap, mind the gap. And we've often said, that's really our task as the church is to mind the gap. to see where the world doesn't yet look the way Christ wants it to look, and to say, what can we do about that? It's part of why I'm so proud of you as a congregation, Church of the Resurrection, who you are and the way you love people, and the way you give of yourselves to serve the community around us and throughout the world. Today is Sunday focused on our global mission projects and our global mission partnerships. And of course, you built 200 wells in Africa for communities that didn't have clean drinking water. You built schools and medical clinics and churches across the world. And we're inviting some of you to be able to say, I want to be a part of that.

28:50 I want to do that too. Many of you know the story, but our young clergy here don't. Some of you perhaps have been there, but I've had the chance on multiple occasions to travel to South Africa to a community outside of Johannesburg that is the city trash dump for many parts of Johannesburg and further to the north and east. The community has been there for about 40 or 50 years. They have multiple generations of children growing up in poverty. And one of the places that we had a chance to visit, and now we've supported preschool and other things that are happening there. Many of our folks have been there. The woman who was leading that project was a Methodist layperson. She wasn't a clergy person. She didn't see herself as a missionary. She just knew that there were children growing up on a trash dump. And maybe if they had a chance to have a good preschool and a good education, they might be able to escape poverty. And she said, here I am, Lord, send me. Part of what I'm asking you today is you remember who we are as United Methodists is simply, is God calling you to serve?

29:46 The answer is yes. So where is God calling you to serve? How will you roll up your sleeves and be the hands and feet of Jesus for the community around us? And I wanna ask you, I know you're already doing this. I've heard some of your stories, these clergy who are here. What I know is every United Methodist Church that I've ever visited, every Methodist Church I've ever visited around the world, I can tell you two things about them. One is they want people to know Jesus and two is that they wanna serve the community around them in a selfless and sacrificial ways. I've been to Siberia and I've watched a community, a little tiny Methodist church with 30 people serving the prisoners of the prison nearby, or in Latin America, in Honduras, and watching to see how people in these communities who are living on poverty themselves, in poverty themselves, are seeking to say, how do we go out and serve our community around us? And that's part of what it means, not just to be a United Methodist, but to be a follower of Jesus Christ. When John Wesley was asked, what's so special about the Methodists? He said, nothing, really. We're just trying to live biblical Christianity the best we can. And part of what that includes is serving people in the community around you. So that's what I wanted you to hear and remember as we're in this part of this building and this beautiful place. I'm going to now invite you to have a chance to walk through John Wesley's house that was built in 1778, and you'll have an opportunity to see the bedroom where he had died. You'll see the kneeler where he knelt and prayed. And so I want you to have a chance to walk through there, and then I'm going to meet you at John Wesley's grave just behind this church.

31:07 Thank you. So before we close, there's one last idea in Methodism that's really important. It was really important to Wesley. It was considered the distinctive Methodist doctrine, and that's the idea of sanctification. So sanctification, being made holy, being perfected in love.

32:03 Sometimes Wesley called it Christian perfection. And for a lot of people, they were confused by this. It sounded like Wesley, who was just driven to be, you know, to do everything for the glory of God, wanted everybody to be perfect. And Wesley said, no, we're not gonna be perfect. We're gonna make mistakes. We're not gonna understand certain things, but shouldn't we strive to be what scripture calls us to be, to be perfected in God's love, to be sanctified, to be holy like Christ. And when he tried to define what is Christian perfection or sanctification, he had different ways of talking about it, but one of those was simply to love God with your entire being. and to love your neighbor as you love yourself, to really and truly selflessly love your neighbor as you love yourself, to constantly do the will of God. Now, Wesley never claimed he was entirely sanctified, but he thought he'd met some people who in their life by the work of the Holy Spirit had actually been completely perfected in love, not perfect without any mistakes, but perfected in love. And he said, that's what I strive to be and strive to do.

32:58 And so I wanna remind us, we accept the grace of God in Jesus Christ. We are saved by grace through faith. It's not of ourselves and not of our works, as we've said several times in the series before. But we also were created to do good works in Christ Jesus. We were created to, Jesus said, we were to love God with all that's within us and to love our neighbors. We love ourselves. Or as we learned at Oxford, John Wesley in 1725, 300 years ago, right now, as he was preparing to be ordained a deacon, said, I realize I've not been the Christian I want to be, but what I want to do from this time forward is to do everything for the glory of God. And so I want to challenge you. And the way we do that in Methodism, there was a sort of method to the Methodism. It was captured eventually. Well, actually, even at Oxford, it was captured in what later came to be known as three general rules. Avoid, I mean, this is just easy to remember. Avoid all the evil that you can. Anything that you know is wrong. Anything that you know would displease God or would hurt somebody else. Avoid all the evil that you can.

33:51 Do all the good that you can. And Wesley didn't say it quite this way, but this is how we think of it. Do all the good that you can everywhere that you can, to everyone that you can, as often as you can. And so when you wake up in the morning and say, Lord, help me to give glory to you and help me to do as much good as I can today. That's just not that complicated, but that's what love begins to look like. And then finally, do the kinds of things that help you grow in your love for God and in the grace of God. And that includes for at resurrection, we talk about five essential practices, worship and prayer, right? We call you to pray five times a day and worship every weekend. To study and to read the scriptures. So we talk about study and reading scripture. And I invite you to read at least five verses every day. And then finally, not finally, but third is to serve God by serving other people. So every one of us finding some way to serve God in the community and the world. And at Resurrection Today, you're receiving a postcard, I think, at the end of the service about signing up for a global mission trip. But there's tons of ways you can sign up.

34:43 Go to core.org slash next, and you're gonna find ways you can sign up today to serve God. But to serve God by serving others every single day, to give generously first to God and then to other people, to look around and see, how can I give generously to others? And then finally, to bear witness to your faith, first by your actions, and then by your words to let other people, to not be ashamed to let other people know that you're a follower of Jesus Christ. And so in that way, we seek to avoid evil, do all the good that we can, and we seek to pursue the things that help us grow in our love for God. All right, here's how John Wesley's life ended. So Wesley, he lived to be 87 years old, almost 88 years old. And the last time he preached in the pulpit I was just standing in was when he was 87 years old. It was five days before he died, he preached that pulpit. In 1790, just a few months before, he had preached outside for the last time. This man who'd ridden 250,000 miles by horseback, we think, preached 50,000 sermons, is 87. And by this time, he was frail and weak, and it was hard for people to hear him.

35:39 But he stood underneath a tree, and he preached the gospel one more time. Preached here four or five days before his death. And then finally, on the day of his passing, his friends were gathered around him, around his bed. And you've seen the bedroom where he was, and gathered around his bed. And there are several things that Elizabeth Ritchie, who was a friend, a Methodist, and also his caretaker, said that he said, she recorded what happened on that day when his friends were gathered around. And at one point he said, best of all, God is with us. He said it not once, he said it at least twice, maybe more than that. Best of all, God is with us. And then he tried to sing. And when he tried to sing, he tried to sing the Isaac Watts hymn, I'll praise my maker while I breath. And it goes like, all he could get out is, I'll praise. And then he tried again, I'll praise, I'll praise. But it goes like this. I'll praise my maker while I breath. And when my voice is lost in death, praise shall employ my nobler powers.

36:32 My days of praise shall ne'er be passed while life and thought and being last or immortality endures. And then his final word, according to Elizabeth Ritchie, was farewell, farewell. So we look at John Wesley, we don't worship him. He's not even a saint in our church, really. He's just somebody who was trying to live out the gospel in the 18th century in a way that still speaks to us today. And I, for one, am proud to be a United Methodist, not better than anybody else, just proud of this way of living out the faith. And I wanna invite you to be these kind of Christians too, who love God with your head and your heart, who love God with your heart and your hands, who seek to do all the good that you can everywhere that you can, avoid as much evil as you can, and to try to grow in love for God, that together we might give glory to God every single day and in every way we can throughout our lives. So we're going to end with a prayer that was very important to John Wesley. We know it as the Wesley Covenant Prayer.

37:25 He adapted it from other places. And this prayer is one that I've taught our congregation, you at Resurrection to pray. In fact, I pray it every morning. I pray some version of this every single morning. The short version is, here I am, Lord, do with me whatever you want. But the long version you're going to find on the screen, and you all have it in your books. And I like for us not just to say the words and read them, but to actually pray them and mean them. So let's pray together. I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt Rank me with whom thou wilt Put me to doing Put me to suffering Let me be employed by thee Or laid aside for thee Exalted for thee Or brought low for thee Let me be full Let me be empty Let me have all things Let me have nothing I freely and heartily yield All things to thy pleasure and disposal and now, O glorious and blessed God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Thou art mine and I am Thine so be it and the covenant that I have made on earth may it be ratified in heaven