This week on the Evangelist Podcast, Why the Reformation Matters. The Evangelists Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to the Evangelist Podcast. This is the show where we hope to encourage you in sharing your faith. I'm Andy Brinkley, and uh with me is Glenn Scrivener and Paul Feesey. Hello. Hello. So we're doing this time, we're talking about the Reformation.
SPEAKER_02Yes, we're the only ones. I can't believe anyone else. They just haven't thought of you know Reformation 500. It's been very low-keyed.
SPEAKER_01Don't they realise?
SPEAKER_02If you're in any kind of Christian circles, what else are we going to do? All throughout October, uh, we'll be thinking about uh the Reformation in all sorts of ways, uh, coming up to the 31st of October to commemorate the time when Martin Luther uh banged up his uh 95 thesis. You've got to say that correctly. These I haven't got a pop shield on this microphone, so I hope that's coming across. I hope you understand, dear listener, what I'm trying to say. You shouldn't stick that on the door. You shouldn't try to. That would really kick things off with the church. Um and uh yes, instead of getting a papal bull, you get an asbow, I think. But yes, 95 things that were wrong with the Roman Catholic Church, and it kick-started what we know of now as the Reformation, and uh 500 years later, we're still feeling the effects.
SPEAKER_01Uh we've just uh we've just come from uh videoing the series on the Reformation. Yes. And as we sit here in the studio, Glenn is sporting a very nice drawn-on beard.
SPEAKER_02You didn't have to tell him it was drawn on. Come on, Andy.
SPEAKER_03Is that drawn on?
SPEAKER_02Just being in your presence, I grow a beard. It's just your your masculinity rubs off on me, Andy. And I just find myself, stop, okay.
SPEAKER_03The challenge for people will be when they watch the video to actually work out when it's a fake beard and when it's a real one. Yeah, the key. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So Paul, tell us what the videos are about.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so we've got this uh series, we're doing five videos. Well, technically there's six because we've got a little introduction video as well. But they're basically based around the five solars. Solars?
SPEAKER_02What's that?
SPEAKER_03So solar from the Latin meaning alone. And um yes, so we're looking at the five solars, uh, which is not something Luther himself actually came up with, is it? Really? It's what's later formulations. Much later. It's like 19th century, I think. Yeah. But uh basically the five solars are Christ alone, faith alone, scripture alone, grace alone, and God's glory alone. There we go. See? Uh not in necessarily in that order. No. Um But yes, we're doing five videos looking at each one of those individually, and then we've also got this introductory video looking at the whole series based around the story of David and Goliath.
SPEAKER_02I'm excited about the David and Goliath story. So we've got a great animator, um, bringing to life 1 Samuel 17. And I've always thought actually that David and Goliath is a great way of teaching the five Reformation truths, because you've got you've got David alone brings the victory. You know, no one in the rank and file of Israel actually defeats Goliath. It's David alone. And he does it by grace alone. It's not because his brothers were like begging him to do it, his brothers didn't want him to do it. His brothers were like disdaining him and deriding him. So it's by grace alone that he does it. By faith alone we receive the salvation, because like the soldiers all they had to do was look. And if they saw David cutting off the head of Goliath, they knew, okay, his victory is our victory. Just look, and you'll live. Faith alone. And then scripture alone, it's kinda like the you know, I think scripture is kind of like the herald of victory on that day. So can you imagine, you know, if you're feeling downcast uh at the front lines of this battle, and maybe you're a bit sunburnt, and you've got blisters, and you don't want to be fighting, you weren't meant to be fighting. I don't like Goliath. And then the herald of victory just says, Look, look, your champion is one. That's what scripture is, actually. Scripture is the herald of your Christ's victory, and then it's all to God's glory alone. You know, nobody nobody can take credit on that day except God who wins his victory through his Christ. So we've got a little video uh that takes you through uh those things, and then we've got five more videos that'll unpack at uh a little l uh a little greater length um yeah, how these five truths impact us today.
SPEAKER_01Good. Okay, well they're they're gonna be on live on our YouTube channel, and I'll give all the links on this episode web post. So we're looking at the why the Reformation Matters. And we're gonna talk about what the Reformation was not, to begin with.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because I I think uh I got pushed through my letterbox a little invitation to a celebration of Reformation 500, and it really didn't really mention Jesus or the gospel or or anything to do with that. It was basically saying 500 years ago Martin Luther stood up for freedom of conscience, and he stood up against the powers that be in Europe, and never have we needed more the spirit of Martin Luther to stand up against the forces of Brussels. And you just think, as though you know Martin Luther was the first Brexiteer, he's gonna jexeteer, I guess, because he was German. But like, a lot of people are gonna want to jump on the bandwagon of what the Reformation was all about. And I think the first thing to say the Reformation was not primarily this political thing, and it was not primarily this thing about freedom of conscience. Certainly, as Martin Luther studies the scriptures and his conscience does not allow him to go along with the Roman Catholic Church, I think it is interesting to reflect back on how the Reformation has shaped our view of conscience and and the fact that, yes, the individual has this private right to judgment through the scriptures. That has been a kind of a fruit of the gospel, but it was not the root of the gospel. It was not the root of the Reformation, and uh it's not really it's not a political thing, it's not about freedom of conscience, um, it's it's not really about being anti-establishment. I think so often as Protestants we sort of think, oh, isn't it great that Martin Luther, you know, won his battles, now the clergy don't need to wear robes anymore. Now now we, you know, we don't really we have we don't have to do the ritual thing anymore. As though Martin Luther was against ritual. He wasn't against ritual. He loved the sacraments, he loved the Lord's Supper and baptism and things like that. So I think I think a lot of people can jump on the bandwagon of Reformation celebrations, but kind of join in for the wrong reasons. And I think what we want to do is say the reason the Reformation matters is because the gospel was rediscovered and reclaimed and put again at the heart of the church. So that that's why I want to get excited about the Reformation.
SPEAKER_03I think it's important, isn't it, as well, to to emphasize that it is that rediscovery when a lot of people will want to say, ah, but this whole thing, you know, righteousness by faith alone and all this kind of stuff, they say that's just something that came about. Right. It was a new thing and you know, at the time of Luther, and before that, no one had ever thought about this. And of course, that's just not true at all, is it? But it is a rediscovery, it's not a a brand new thing that's happening.
SPEAKER_02So one of the great catch cries of the Reformation was ad fontes, which is Latin for back to the sources, back to the sources. And what they really wanted to do was get back to just as uh Renaissance people were getting back to the classical sources of literature and drama and that sort of thing. Um, the reformers were wanting to get back to the scriptures and to the early church, and they were really saying, hey, this is the message that Jesus and the apostles preached, this is the message that absolutely gripped the early church, we lost it. But it was not let's start this new thing starting in 1517. It's let's rediscover uh this ancient truth, this ancient gospel. So that's that's really what we what we want to do, especially because I I was uh I saw some Mormons just yesterday, and they were they were evangelizing uh a fringe member of our church, and so I kind of talked to the fringe member of the church while he was talking to these Mormon evangelists and and saying, you know, you know you know these guys are trying to say that everybody got it wrong until the 19th century, that the whole church fell away from Christ until Joseph Smith pops up. And he didn't know that, he didn't realise, you know, what their teaching really was. But the Mormon teaching is that everyone had fallen away and no one had the truth until Joseph Smith pops up. You know, 1900 years after, eighteen hundred years after Jesus says the gates of hell will not prevail against my church, Joseph Smith says, yeah, they kinda did. But I'm here to restore the church. And we never want to say that about the Reformation. We never want to say that Martin Luther is our Joseph Smith who restores us back to the ancient truths and everyone was a dead loss before then. That's not really what the Reformation is about. There were always people who loved these truths of Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone, and they preached it all throughout what we know of today as the Dark Ages. But there was a particular kind of confluence of economic and political circumstances, which meant that when Martin Luther really got hold of this truth, it was able to go viral in in in quite a serious way. So that's what we're celebrating in 2017, the 500-year anniversary of that going viral, of a truth that had always been in the church.
SPEAKER_01You've also got another video coming out called Uh I Gave My Life to Jesus. That's right. Which is kind of based on your kind of experiences of becoming a Christian.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01But also it's very similar to Luther's.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, in a lot of ways it kind of was. You know, I I describe myself as a medieval teenager, um, which sounds a bit weird, but I I think during my teenage years, um, the sort of youth ministry that I had imbibed was basically telling me to do more, be more sold out for Jesus, get on fire for Jesus, do more, do more, do more, do more. And I tried to do more, and I tried to do more, and I tried to do more. A little bit like Martin Luther's story, you know, he tells the story of climbing up the holy stairs in Rome. Um it was a thing that pilgrims did. They went to Rome, and you would say the Lord's Prayer on every single step on the way up the holy stairs. And when you got to the top, maybe it meant that you would not have to go to purgatory, or maybe your uncle gets, you know, saved out of purgatory if you do it right. And Martin Luther climbed these holy stairs on his knees and kissed each step and said the Lord's Prayer, you know, in Latin on each step, and when he got to the top, famously he said, Who knows whether this is so? Who knows? And and that kind of describes my teenage years, really, just praying again and again to give my life to Jesus in ever more melodramatic ways. And at the end of it, you just think, Who knows? Who knows if it's worked? Um so I've just written this article for Youth and Children's Work magazine called Medieval Teenager, How the Reformation Saved My Life, and we could we could put uh some links to it. But I I think there is a message to us all today, and not just in youth work, but in all sorts of church life. Do we preach that Christ came down from heaven to do it all by grace alone? Or do we preach the holy stairs? And maybe in your church you don't have people who are ascending, you know, literal stairs and praying in Latin. But maybe we do jump through hoops, maybe we do have the stairs, and maybe we are preaching a message of climbing up to heaven rather than the true Reformation message of Christ coming down.
SPEAKER_01Have you seen that, Paul, in your because you've you've come from a youth pastor position. Have you seen that temptation for young people to give themselves to the Lord and to offer themselves up like a sacrifice? I mean I know that the word says that offer ourselves as a sacrifice, but there is that sense, isn't there, in which we put a burden on young people rather than the gospel.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean I think I think there probably there has been that, and I've probably in some ways been guilty of that myself at times. There's that attitude of have you made a decision for Jesus and um Yes, I've made it seventeen times. Well exactly it's like at the 18th then. So-and-so, you know, and I've always been a bit of a cynic, you know, and people would say so-and-so gave their life to Jesus, you know, uh camp this year, and I think, what again? Yes, you know, like Yes, yeah, exactly. I and people say, I prayed the prayer, and you say, Well, why did you why did you pray the prayer? And um I just felt it was the right thing. Didn't you pray it last year as well? Like, you know, it's it's it's that thing, isn't it? And and it and it's difficult to try and try and get out of that mindset because because sometimes people do want to reaffirm in some way, don't they? Yeah. Um Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so I like and I I don't deny, you know, Romans twelve, you know, that's in view of God's mercy, we offer ourselves as living sacrifices. But that's already said to the saved, isn't it? And it's already in view of God's mercy. And so I can only think of of two places in scripture where it where it talks about giving our lives to God. And Romans 12 is one of them one of them, and Romans 6 is another. Uh we offer the members of our body to God as this spiritual act of of worship. Uh, but again, that is addressed to the saints, it's addressed to those who are already saved. And overwhelmingly, the message of the Bible is not you give your life to God. Overwhelmingly, the message is Christ gave his life for you. And that direction of travel, I think, is so important, and it's something that Luther really did rediscover and really helpfully emphasize. So that uh, yes, I can talk to people about what they can do for God, but but you know, it's like JFK, you know, he famously said, you know, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. I think when it comes to the Bible, it's it's it's far more the other way around. It's it's ask less what you can do for God, ask what God has done for you, and now with God you flow out into the world to pass it on to your neighbour. One of Luther's great sayings is uh God does not need your good deeds, your neighbor does. And so I what I'd love to see people, as they are gripped by the gospel, is not to continue to say prayers to give their lives to God. Okay, you belong to God, He's purchased you, fantastic. Now give yourself to your friends, give yourself to your neighbours, give yourself to those who are around you and flow out with the gospel out into the world. And I think that's why the Reformation actually transformed culture. Because it stopped people from constantly trying to, you know, strengthen their vertical relationship with God, and now, because they've received Christ, now they can flow out into the world and pass it on. And I think that's what absolutely transformed Europe, absolutely transformed the West, transformed the world, is this this message of grace alone through faith alone, as I take Christ alone out into the world. That's what transforms the world.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well that's that's great. Uh what are we doing next podcast?
SPEAKER_02Next podcast we're gonna go through. So Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone, uh scripture alone, and God's glory alone. We're gonna go through them all and uh introduce to you our David and Goliath video that'll be out next week. So uh yeah, much more to come.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Well that's it for now. Thanks very much for listening. Don't forget to subscribe if you're not already, and uh always you can leave us a rating and review. I see a few people have been giving us a review on the Facebook page, which is good. Thanks for doing that. Uh but uh until then, it's goodbye from me. And it's goodbye from him.