Hi I'm David Bell
Welcome to this episode of Through the Year with John Wesley.
Today's it's all about how Wesley tapped into an astonishing gospel insight.
And how we can earth it directly into our own lives and ministry context.
It begins with Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
Wesley preached a remarkable series of 13 sermons examining the Sermon on the Mount
in detail.
It is around these well known bible verses from Matthew's gospel that a new truth breaks
forth.
Hear what the gospel says first:
You are the light of the world.
A city on top of a hill can't be hidden.
Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket.
Instead, they put it on top of a lampstand, and it shines on all who are in the house.
In the same way, let your light shine before people,
so they can see the good things you do and praise your Father who is in heaven.
Now those are words of power.
On receptive ears they resonate.
They call up from the depths a creative vision of how life is to be lived.
These verses worked their alchemy in Wesley's imagination.
His heart and mind responded with a new and equally profound truth.
He says, When you are the light of the world you can't retreat into a private faith.
Wesley puts in plain language quote
Christianity is essentially a social religion.
And that to turn it into a solitary religion is indeed to destroy it unquote.
Wesley believed with his all in the Sermon on the Mount.
This wasn't an abstract theory.
It was how Jesus applied faith into daily life.
And how Wesley represents that social Christianity through his sermon series is also appealing.
When we read Wesley's journals we soon discover that he really enjoyed preaching these sermons.
Not just on the odd occasion but throughout his life.
Now here's an odd fact.
You may not be aware that Wesley initially found it very hard to do open air preaching.
He actually called it a vile activity.
Listen to this from his journal in 1739 Monday 2 April.
Quote at four in the afternoon
I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways glad tidings of salvation
unquote.
But within a few weeks he had the measure of it.
Quote I began expounding, a second time, our Lord's sermon on the Mount. Unquote
The very next day he estimates about 3,000 people were listening.
But it was a scene of great cruelty.
A press-gang came into the crowd and seized one of them.
What an evil enacted in the midst of faith.
Life is like that.
That is our world in which the gospel must make its way.
What can we do today to make the Sermon on the Mount more real to us in everyday life?
I suggest we do what Wesley did.
He got into its skin by reading, thinking, praying, talking, singing
and eventually writing about it through the 13 sermons.
That exactly what retired music educator Stuart Manins did - unwittingly following in the
steps of Wesley.
Let me explain.
A few years ago he retold the Sermon on the Mount for young people.
With text carefully edited and polished, we published it into a workbook called Lead Worship.
Lead Worship was designed to help small congregations with Sunday morning services.
Recently Stuart decided to turn the prose into a series of nine songs.
He gave them diverse musical settings.
It's a small scale libretto that we've called Gospel.
You can read more about this, in the About section of this You Tube video.
You are welcome to download and use Gospel in your church or for study or personal use.
It's creative commons so please share according to the license.
Now here's the take-away from our consideration of Wesley's 13 sermon series.
The process Stuart and I followed over a number of years, in getting Gospel to a publishable
form, changed us.
We had moved from a private form of faith to a more public expression of it.
We were letting the Gospel be social.
Without realising it we had followed Wesley's method minus the open-air preaching.
Maybe publishing to You Tube does that in a contemporary way.
In sum, we commend the process of retelling the Sermon on the Mount in your own way.
It will have a noticeable effect on you, of creating a better way of daily living.
Join me next week as we look at the spread of Methodism.
And thanks for watching.