Today on the Evangelists Podcast, surprising strategy for the gospel number three. Don't tell them that Jesus is God.
SPEAKER_01The Evangelists Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_02This is the Evangelist Podcast, and uh we're looking at uh a series on surprising gospel strategies. Glenn, isn't this a bit of fake news?
SPEAKER_00Fake news, it's a bit of clickbait, let's be honest. It's a bit of clickbait. Sensational clickbait. Don't tell them Jesus is God. But Jesus is God. He is God. He is God. But he's not the God that people believed in before they met Jesus. Right. So I guess the thinking the hit the thinking behind this one is uh John chapter one, it's fascinating. In in verse 18, depending on your translation, it says, uh no one has ever seen God's, but the one and only son who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Now the modern NIV translation of that is so rubbish. It's like um the the one and only son who is himself God and is in the closest possible relationship to God has made him known. It's just it's not you know, you just want the old King James Version that says, the only son who is in the bosom of the Father. That's what you want. You want in the bosom of the Father, which is a lovely kind of um uh it's a lovely phrase that gets picked up again. The one other time that we talk about the bosom of the Father, uh, is actually in John 13. So you've got the Apostle John is reclining back against Jesus and laying his hand in the bosom of Jesus, laying his head in the bosom of Jesus. Um it's this idea that you know the Apostle John is resting in the bosom of Jesus, resting in the embrace of Jesus. And the beginning of John's Gospel says that Jesus has always rested in the embrace of his Father. So it's this beautiful thing. The whole point of John's Gospel is that when you rest in Jesus, he brings you to be where he is, which is in the embrace of the Father. So to trust in Jesus is to be in the bosom of Jesus, to be in Jesus is to be in the bosom of the Father. It's this beautiful thing. Anyway, that's just a side note. Um this verse, John 118, says, No one has ever seen God but the one and only Son who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. And what this does is it flips on its head everything we think we know about Jesus and God. I think you ask people in the streets, you know, do you believe in God? And still a majority of people say that they believe in God these days. Um so and and even if they don't believe in God, they think they know what you mean when you say God. So everyone thinks they know what God means, but then when you ask about Jesus, people are much more uncertain. Is Jesus a prophet? Is he the son of God? Is he a myth? Who is who is this Jesus? Is he just a good teacher? Who knows? We don't know about Jesus, but we know about God. That's what we think. John 118 absolutely flips that on its head. It says, No, you don't know God. But Jesus, he is the one who makes him known. So Jesus is on show, he is the obvious one, God is the non-obvious one. And we get this wrong all the time. And when we get this wrong, we go to people and we can't we kind of say to them, Do you believe in God? And they say yes or no. And if they say yes, we think, Oh, phew, brilliant. Okay, we've we've you know, we've navigated the first hurdle, and now we've only now we've we've just got to convince them that Jesus is the God that they've already believed in. And then they know that Jesus is Lord and and then they're a Christian, right? Or if they say to us that, you know, they don't believe in God, we think, oh no, we're like we're doubly snookered here. Like not only do I have to convince them that Jesus is God, I've also got to convince them that there is some kind of God. And so we, you know, go into our philosophical suitcase and we try to bring out some kind of philosophical arguments for God's existence and give them a go, maybe. Or we just retreat in defeat and think, oh well, that's the end of the conversation. But not if we understand John 1.18. John 1 18 says, No one has ever seen God, right? No one knows about God, but Jesus, the only Son, he has made him known. So actually Jesus is the one that that's on show, and so really our approach should not be to say, Do you believe in God? Well, Jesus is the God you already believe in. Our approach should be, you don't really know about God, do you? Um nobody really knows about God. Let me tell you about Jesus and let me see if Jesus is the God that you could believe in. So this is why I say don't tell people that Jesus is God, as though God in that conversation is an obvious term, and then you and then you end up putting Jesus onto the Procrustian bed. Do you know what do you know the Pro Procrustian bed? Right. It's the it's this idea in Greek mythology, there was there was this guy Procrustis and he had a house, and uh you could stay you could stay at his house, and if you stayed in his bed, he guaranteed that the bed would fit you. But the way he did it was if you were too big for the bed, he'd chop your feet off. And so a procrustian bed is this idea, it's it's it's this um this fixed thing that people have in their heads. And then when you bring something else to bear on the conversation, you've got to chop things down to the size of your procrastinate bed.
SPEAKER_02What a lovely thought.
SPEAKER_00What a lovely thought. It's not the most hospitable thing to do. Um and so we should never think of God uh of God as this procrastinate bed, as as though we all know what to do.
SPEAKER_02So make it fit people's ideas.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. And so you don't you don't say, okay, God is the procrustian bed, and Jesus is this guest who comes and we chop off Jesus, you know, a bit here, and we chop off a bit there, and we try to make Jesus fit into this thing that we already believe to be God. So don't tell people that Jesus is God, right? Tell people that the God who is really there is the Jesus God. Right. Tell people that the God that they had thought of before they were thinking of Jesus is neither here nor there. You know, m maybe maybe that God that you'd imagine corresponds to some kind of biblical truth, probably not. Let's let's leave that to one side. Let's have a look at Jesus and let's see if the Jesus God is a God that you can believe in. So the other the other verse that I'm always thinking of is is Colossians 1, verse 15, which uh you know says exactly the same thing as the as the as the John 1 18. In Colossians 1 15 it says, He, the Son of God, is the image of the invisible God. And again, it flips on its head what we normally think. We normally think that God is the obvious term and that Jesus is the non-obvious term. And this says, no, no, no, God is invisible. We don't know about God. Jesus is the image. He is what shows us what God is like. And so here is this surprising God who shows up as a man who comes and soups and serves and suffers and bleeds and dies, this laughing, crying, shouting, weeping, you know, human sacrifice who would give himself for the world. And you're like, was that the god that you were thinking about? I bet it wasn't. I bet it wasn't. And so, you know, so I'm always saying to people, you know, I I'm not generally warm to the idea of there being some kind of god. That's not really where I come where I'm coming from. It's not that the idea of a deity really does it for me. It doesn't really. I'm I'm much more like the woman who is dead set against marriage the whole of her life. Marriage is a you know corrupt and patriarchal institution, and I'm not into marriage. And then she meets Mr. Wright. And then all of a sudden she gets married, you know. Why? Does she now really believe in marriage? Well no, she kinda she believes in him and he's converted her. And I think that's that's our policy really in evangelism. It's not it's not that we should assume that people are already warm towards the idea of God. Because actually the idea of God is neither here nor there. We are Jesus God people. Like we're into the Jesus God. And so that's that's who we should be in introducing people to, so that he converts them to the idea of God.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so keeping Jesus central, keeping him first. I mean it says in Revelation Jesus says I'm the Alpha and the Omega. Right the beginning and the end. So you kind of keep him first, keep him focused, central and finish with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, the Alpha and the Omega, which is the the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. He's the A to Z. He's not the K to Z. Right? Right. Right? It's not it's not as though Jesus, you know, says, you know, I popped up halfway through human history and now I define what God's like. He's like, I'm the Alpha and the Omega, I'm the A to Z. I'm not the K to Z, right? I'm I like like you've got to begin with me, says Jesus. You know, he says it again in in Revelation 2 verse 10. He says, I am the first and the last. He doesn't say I'm the middle and the end. He says I'm the beginning and the end, right? So yeah, like we really do need to get back to to talking about, you know, if somebody says they they don't believe in God, you just say, Which God don't you believe in? Um, you know, and they'll usually describe a God that's very unlike Jesus, and then you say, Well, I don't believe in that God either. Let me tell you about Jesus. But if they say, Yes, I do believe in God, well still, which God do you believe in? Is it the Jesus God? And you know that this phrase I keep using, the Jesus God. I I've said this before on the podcast, but I I I got this phrase from a uh uh an Iranian believer who grew up in the mosque and and she'd you know memorized all the you know the later surahs of of the Quran and knew all the prayers, but when she read about Jesus in the Gospels, she says, Ah, I realized as I was looking at Jesus that God could not be the God of the Ayatollahs, the God of the religious leaders in Iran. He could not be the God of the Ayatollahs, he must be the Jesus God. Right. And that's what we're doing in evangelism. We're just we we're introducing people, we're saying, Look, whatever God you've thought of before, maybe it's the god of the Ayatollahs, maybe it's the God of Western philosophy, who knows what God you've you've just imbibed, maybe it's just the god of cultural Englishness, who knows? Leave that to one side. Look at Jesus. Is the Jesus God a God that you can believe in? If so, they'll then wonderful. Um So that's that's that's the approach. We don't tell people that Jesus is God, we say that God is the Jesus God.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So that's a really good uh place to finish, you know, that uh keep Jesus central and uh get people focused on Jesus.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Yeah, be a Jesus freak. That's that's the the positive way of putting it. Don't tell them that Jesus is God, tell them that God is the Jesus God.
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