Today on the Evangelist Podcast, does Christianity really offer us freedom?
SPEAKER_00The Evangelists Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_04You're listening to the Evangelist Podcast. I'm Andy Brinkley and here's Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_01Hello, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
SPEAKER_04How have you been?
SPEAKER_01Glenn you've uh I've been away for a little bit. So I've been on a mission to uh Moulton Parish Church, which is just outside Northampton. And uh yeah, a week of great events. Uh I love this kind of mission. We sort of uh did uh interviews with interesting people uh and then off the back of a quite lengthy interview, 35-45 minutes with them, then there's a little musical interlude, and then I get to preach the gospel off the back of it.
SPEAKER_04That's um similar to uh Roger Carswell. It is the Roger Carswell method. We heard Roger on before and he does how he uh Yeah.
SPEAKER_01He's been doing it for years, and um and uh obviously he hasn't always done missions this way, but like pretty much if you want Roger to come to your church and do it uh you know, to speak, he will always really want to speak to somebody about what faith means to them and then uh preach off the back of it. And you know, when somebody with decades and decades and decades of uh evangelism under their belt says this is the thing. In a good way, yeah. Um then you sit up and listen. And actually, this church had Roger Carswell come to it a couple of years ago. So they were used to that, they liked that, and so I was very happy to slot into that kind of method.
SPEAKER_04I mean people are very interested in other people, you know, their stories and you draw people in immediately.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it doesn't have to be, you know, we got this famous MP, or we got this incredible sports person, or we got this millionaire. Um I mean the first person I interviewed was uh a Yorkshire miner who was converted by picking up a bus ticket. And on the back of the bus ticket was half of John 3.16. And he went home and he picked up a Bible that he got given at the end of school uh that he'd never read, and he wanted to figure out where this Bible verse was from, and that sort of started a chain of event events that led to his conversion. But um very um uh yeah, a very humble man who spent most of his working life, you know, a mile down underground, and and um but yeah, his Christian faith just shone through and and yeah, I got to preach on John 316 afterwards, and and people were ready to hear that. So that's just a a a snapshot of so you know we had him on the Wednesday night, Thursday night, we had Joe Vitarley from the Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics. And she was the thinker. So uh Jeff was the uh the the minor was the unlikely convert, and then Joe Vitaly was the thinker, and we uh thought about her doing you know theology degrees and masters and PhDs and and um and does Christianity stack up intellectually? We thought about that on the Thursday and the Friday we had a magician. Um Todd Alexander was a uh an illusionist, um, and then I got to interview him about you know, is is Jesus just a trickster? Um and what kind of tricks does he do? And then off the back of that I got to preach about the water and the wine. And then on the f on the Saturday night I spoke to Peter Spears, who's an archdeacon in Liverpool. He was born with the effect of thalidomite. And so um yeah, there's a profound disabilities that he's he's had to live with in life, but he shines with the joy of Christ, and and you know, almost his story is you know better than anything I could say about suffering and what God does with suffering, and he's a lived example of it. So those stories really open people up um to then hear about the gospel. So I love doing mission that way. So the from there you went to uh London Town, yeah, the EMA, the EMA, Evangelical Ministry Assembly, which has been going for many decades, and uh yeah, a great sort of uh meeting place for people who really believe in preaching the proclamation trust puts it on, and their biggest rapline is when God's word is proclaimed, God's voice is heard, uh so people who really believe in opening up the scriptures and and um coming together. Um great uh great talks, met up with some great people, and um you were saying that people sort of came up to you and said that uh they really you know they'd use 321 the video to speak to people and Yeah, I mean most people came up to me and said Scrivener, Scrivener, Scrivener And uh It was a very very um apt example of this. I was with somebody else and we were chatting away, and then somebody else uh else came up and they they read my name tag and said, Scrivener, scrivener, scrivener. Where have I heard that name before? And this friend who was with me was like saying, uh, from his videos, from his books, from his courses, and then and then this woman went, Are you married to Emma Scrivener? I was like, Yeah, that's right. I love her blogger You know I too have a blog. Yeah, yeah, I that's it. And that's that's actually that's universally how I'm known. Um I'm known as Emma's husband, very happily so. Um So that that kind of keeps you humble. And the other thing that keeps you humble humble when people say, Oh, 321 really helped me, or I've seen people become Christians through reading the book or going on courses. Is just when you think, you know, actually the 321 is just very um basically Trinity. Adam and Christ, union with Christ. And uh I can't really take responsibility for those doctrines. You like that doctrine of the Trinity? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was that's mine. Yeah, I I did that. Um which as I was reflecting sort of coming away, like I I did feel really encouraged by all these things and and hopeful. Um But uh yeah, you d you don't really feel proud of something when like what it is is just so front and center. Well, this is this is Jesus' doctrine of God and Jesus' doctrine of the world, and Jesus' doctrine of you. Um so really it sort of made it doubly my ambition to to kind of create gospel presentations and media and resources that put Jesus so front and center so that when people say, I was so helped by X, Y, and Z, it is just so obvious that it's not me. It's just well well Jesus is quite attractive, isn't he? And let's talk about him. So but yeah, but lots of lots of people saying 321 had um uh yeah, helped them help their church and um just in the last 24 hours, and a couple of people who um seem to be trusting the Lord and the 321 have had a part to play in that.
SPEAKER_04So praise God. Okay, well uh this week we're going to listen to one of your talks. Uh tell us a bit uh about where it comes from.
SPEAKER_01So the Durham uh Durham Intercollegiate Christian Union. Uh no, yeah, yeah, that's right. The Durham Intercollegiate Christian Union is the Christian union for uh students at Durham University, and uh I'm gonna be going up there again at Christmas and again in February. Christmas to do a big Harold thing, and then in February to do their big um week-long mission. And so this was sort of getting to know them. Uh a couple of Fridays ago, I went up and uh I spoke during the lunchtime, um, and that's what we're gonna hear, and then I spoke again at the evening to the to the CU itself. But at the lunchtime, uh they invited in lots of non-Christians to come and hear about this this topic. Um Does Christianity make you free? Um which obviously, you know, most non-Christians would think that don't be ridiculous. Freedom and Christianity, though those two don't go together. You know, Christianity is for those people who don't mind the shackles of religion. Um so it's an opportunity really to turn some of those misconceptions on their head and and uh and say that yeah, John chapter eight, you know, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. It's for freedom that Christ has set us free, and all those things all those things. So um so it was a a case of speaking for about twenty minutes and then uh fielding questions, which tended to be the sort of questions that you'd expect. Um people would would would would want to ask when the question of freedom comes up. So Yeah, see how I deal with them.
SPEAKER_04Okay, let's take a listen.
SPEAKER_03But Glenn, over to you.
SPEAKER_01Over to me, brilliant! I love you you have the technology now to react to me in real time. Um you could do that just visually, actually. Maybe not throw things. Um so we're thinking about this topic, liberate it. Does Christianity really offer me freedom? Uh, on the way here, I tripped over one of these. What does this represent to you? Anyone what is this? The end of exams. The end of exams, right? Does this not represent the epitome of liberation, of freedom to you? Is this not the very essence of there's an event coming up. That's that's something about post-exam bliss. Is that what the next the next thing that the Christian Union here is putting on? Is an event that will tell you all about post-exam bliss. Doesn't that sound amazing? You're thinking about Nirvana, you're thinking about Paradise, you're thinking about Valhalla, you're thinking about this absolute bliss that's going to come upon you when you've transitioned out of revision mode and into post-exam bliss. Um, and that for me is really a great illustration of what Christians mean by liberation, what Christians mean by freedom. Uh, because I think a brilliant illustration of what Christianity really is, is it's the transition from living in revision mode to living in post-exam bliss. Okay? I'll put it like this. Imagine there you are, you're sitting your exams, and and of course, the trouble with revision, isn't it, that you never know if you've done enough, do you? And and you know, you there might be like seven areas you're meant to be revising, but maybe you should have revised nine areas or eleven areas, and you don't know whether that's enough, and maybe some of you are gambling and you're just revising four areas or five areas, and you never know, and no matter how much you do, you could always be doing more, couldn't you? And so often in life it's a bit like that. It's not that we're always all going for grades in our lives, but we all want some kind of verdict on our lives. Whether it's the verdict of yes, you are very clever, or you are very beautiful, or you are very sporty, or you are very witty, or I don't know what it is. Maybe you're very knowledgeable, maybe you're just a cool kid. I don't know, I don't know what you're going for in life, but so much of life is lived in revision mode, isn't it? And you're never sure if you've done enough to get the verdict that you're looking for. So often when I enter into social situations, you're just meeting someone for the first time, and and uh you think of it a little bit like a game of cards, you know, you you're you're dealt a certain hand and you're not sure what to play in this particular social situation. So maybe I'll play the knowledgeable card, and maybe I'll tell them something that they didn't know before, or maybe I'll try and play the cool card and tell them that I just went and saw radio head of the roundhouse, or or maybe which I didn't, but I wish I could have dropped that in. But anyway. And we we try to play these different cards, don't we? About being cool or clever or good looking. And in a sense, we're kind of in revision mode, always trying to do more, always trying to get the grade, always trying to get the verdict. Christianity is about moving from revision mode into post-exam bliss. Imagine there you are in your exam, and uh you're not quite sure of the wording of question two, and you stick a hand up and the invigilator comes to you, and as it so happens, the invigilator happens to be the person who wrote the exam. And you say, I'm not quite sure about the wording of this, and they actually whisper to you, just shove over. And they sit down next to you, and with your name written on the top, or your candidate number, they start answering every single question on the exam sheet perfectly, in your name and on your behalf. And then they get up and and and they say to the rest of the exam hall those words that everybody is waiting for all summer, those words, pens down. Don't you love that phrase, pens down? And there you are, and your hand is kind of like a claw, just you know, you you prise the pen away from the and you put the pen down. The exam is over, the summer has begun. And if your examiner has sat the exam for you, the first is in the bag. Wouldn't that be amazing to think you've transitioned out of revision mode, the exam is over, summer begins. It's post-exam bliss. This is what Christianity is all about, actually. The Christian message is that Jesus Christ has come into this world and he's lived the perfect life that you and I don't live. He's died the death that you and I deserve to die, and he's risen up again and he's said to us, you know what, why doesn't my life count for you? Why don't I give you the first? Why don't I give you the grade? And then you can move out of revision mode. You can move out of that mode of always trying to prove yourself, always trying to get the stripes, always trying to get the grade, always trying to get the badge, the label that says you're okay. Jesus says, Ah, you've got it for free. For free, it's yours. Now you can just go and live. Now you can go and enjoy life. I was just speaking to somebody who's finished their exams. They said they bought a novel and they're going to read it this weekend. Amazing, amazing. How about reading for pleasure? Wouldn't that be amazing? To actually read for pleasure? Not because you're trying to pass an exam or get a grade, but you can just live. Well, Christianity says that somebody has come and given you the grade that you need so that you don't have to prove yourself anymore. You can just live. There was a great uh diver, uh 10-meter Olympic diver, uh, Greg Liganus. He's this American guy. He won every single medal going, got the world records. He was just the greatest in his field, and he was once asked, what's your secret? What do you do? He says, Well, I just climb up to the 10-meter board, I stand there, I remind myself that my mother loves me, and I dive. And it's this wonderfully liberating thing. You know what? If I just completely make a hash of this and it's just this sort of Peter Kay style, just dive bomb splash, it doesn't matter. My mum loves me. That's okay. And it was actually this liberating thing. That he knew the verdict that was on his life, and that enabled him to go and live. Well, my contention is that Christianity is the most liberated you could possibly be. You can live the most liberated life in the world because Jesus has come to live the perfect life, to die the death, and to rise up again and give you his perfect status so that you move from revision mode into post-exam bliss. Okay? Now, maybe that's not your impression of Christianity. Maybe, maybe if you're sitting here listening to me thinking, my impression of Christians is that they spend their time looking like they're sucking thistles and just kind of looking very sour, and they're just prudes, aren't they? Christians, religious prudes, that they've taken this religious yoke onto their shoulders. And maybe you're looking at Christian friends and you're thinking, my Christian friends don't seem very free. In fact, I think they've been enslaved by their religious affiliation. Maybe that's kind of what you you think. Well, I guess we need to start defining what we mean by freedom, don't we? What do we mean by freedom? Uh, in the last sort of 300 years, uh, really since the Enlightenment, we've tended to define freedom as this kind of radical independence. That I am this sort of this sovereign sphere, and I've got my unalienable rights, and you can't come into this sphere and tell me what to do. Nobody can tell me what to do. I am an individual and I will do whatever I please. And that that tends to be our definition of freedom, actually, in the West these days. But I want to make to you the case that that's not a very helpful definition of freedom, and that it's actually not the most liberated definition of freedom that you can think of. I just think of my daughter, for instance. My daughter, last night, as I was putting her down to bed, I laid her in a cage. Okay, we don't call it a cage, we call it a cot. But what do you call this enclosure that she's not allowed out of for twelve hours during the day and and well during the night, right? We do better. We're not monsters, right? And there's a sort of, I mean, we we put toys in there and there's a mattress, but it is a cage. Do you know why it's a cage? Because if she was not enslaved in that particular pen, she would kill herself. My daughter makes a suicide bid on an hourly basis, okay? And if you've had any dealings with any children, you know that kids will kill themselves if you leave them to themselves. If you allow them to make their own free choices on an hourly basis, you know what? They will take that marble and they will swallow it. They will stick their finger into the electric socket. You know, they will dive headlong down the stairs, and it will be their freely chosen decision to do so, right? Now, is your child more free if they are allowed to do every single thing that comes into their pretty little heads? No, they are less free if you allow them to do that. So actually, freedom, it can't simply be being allowed to do exactly what you want to do all the time. Perhaps if you're a psychologist, you know uh certain experiments that people have done. I I love psychology experiments, don't you? That they they tend to tell you a lot more about psychology students than they do about people's psychology. Um there's this one experiment where they they get a rat, put electrodes in the brain of the rat, if the rat presses a button, cocaine instantly in the rat's brain. The most amazing hive, right? That's at one end of the cage. At the other end of the cage, there is food and water. And you know what happens to the rat? He just goes, and starves to death, right? Um and this is a very powerful illustration of addiction, actually. Um addiction, really, is this thing that happens in humans where we just we go for the thing that gives us the instant thrill and we starve to death. Of our own free will, of our own volition, we start to make these free choices that end up enslaving us. So actually, simply allowing people to do exactly what they want whenever they want to do it, sometimes that doesn't lead to their liberation, and sometimes it actually enslaves them. And what I'd love you to do is um on your tables, there are these little booklets. Um these are actually gospels. Would you like to uh pick one up? And I'd love to just draw your attention to some words that Jesus said on page 50 of these. Um this is John's Gospel, actually. It's uh one of the four biographies of Jesus in the Bible. Perhaps you know in the Bible, uh it's actually 66 different books of the Bible, it's kind of a library, really. And this is one of those books, one of the four biographies of Jesus. John, a good friend of Jesus, writes this eyewitness account of the life of Jesus. And at the bottom of page 50, there are some very famous words that Jesus speaks about freedom. Perhaps you know these words. Um, so the last two sentences, there's that heading that says, dispute over whose children Jesus' opponents are. And then it says, little number 31 refers to verse 31 of chapter 8. To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples, then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. If you don't know the Bible, you probably know that phrase, though, don't you? You probably know that verse. The truth will set you free. And this tips us off about one aspect of freedom. Uh, freedom is not automatic. We're not born into this world as these blank slates. That if we are only allowed to be able to exercise our free will, then suddenly we'll become these liberated individuals. We need to know stuff. Um, Jesus speaks about his teaching, he speaks about his disciples, a disciple is just a learner, and he speaks of the truth. So there are things that we need to know in order to be set on our feet, to be mature enough to make our free decisions. Just like my daughter is not allowed out of the cage right now for her own good. When she learns, when she grows, when she matures, when she's discipled, when she knows more of the truth, then she will be more in a position to be a free, liberated, flourishing human being. So that's one thing to say about truth and to say about freedom is that we're not automatically free. We need to know certain things in order to become free. Is it just a matter of the head? Is there just some information that we need to know, and then we can become free? Well, no, actually, over the page, turn the page, and uh you'll see that it's not just a matter of the head, it's also a matter of the heart. They answered him, We are Abraham's descendants, and we've never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free? Jesus replied, Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. That little number 34, verse 34 is very interesting. Whoever sins is a slave to sin. Now I don't know what your reaction is to the word sin. Usually when we hear the word sin, we think of uh breaking a diet or something, or you know, some some kind of naughty but nice transgression. Um, just doing the bad stuff. Is that what Jesus means by sin? No. In the Bible, sin is much more a commitment to the heart, an attitude of the heart. It's very much this looking for love in all the wrong places type thing that humanity is full of. We are always looking for love in all the wrong places. We are always a little bit like that rat that goes to that button to get our fix. And there's something in our lives that diminishes us and diminishes other people, and it doesn't honor God, it doesn't honor ourselves, it doesn't honor other human beings, it doesn't honor the world, and yet it gives us our fix, and we keep going back to it. And for you it might be one thing, for the person sitting next to you, it'll be something completely different, for myself, it'll be something else. Really, it's this attitude of a heart where we throw ourselves at these passions, and then these passions end up enslaving us. And Jesus says, there are things in your life that are enslaving you. And if you simply want to just do whatever your own heart tells you to do, you might end up being like that rat in the cage. The rat freely goes back to the cocaine and freely enslaves itself. But Jesus seems to say that he has a place in the family for us. A place in the family in which we will be liberated, in which we will be at home. If the Son sets you free, you'll be free indeed. Jesus is speaking here of his own family. I don't know what your vision of God is, but if you pick up John's gospel and read through, I'd love you to do that and keep on reading about who this Jesus is. You will meet on the very first page that Jesus describes God as like a family. There is a father who has always loved his son, Jesus, in the joy of the Holy Spirit. There is this family of love that the world has come from. And according to the Bible, that place is home. And according to the Bible, if you want to be free, you need to find your home. That's so true, isn't it? When you are at home, then you start to feel free, don't you? I speak to someone uh just before this uh this event, and uh they were talking about when they love to get home, what they love to do is they love to sit on the kitchen floor. That's the place where they feel at home and just play with the dog, or they sit on the kitchen floor and they have the deep and meaningfuls with their parents or their siblings. You sit on the kitchen floor and you feel like you can kick off your shoes and you're at home and you can just be yourself. Home is the place where you can be yourself. Home is the place where you are free. Now, again, that's interesting, isn't it? If we think in Western categories about what freedom is, we think freedom is being radically independent from everything. And yet, if you're radically independent from your home, then you're not free. You're just lost. Have you ever contemplated how similar it is being free to being lost? I always get this in Freshers Weeks. I'm often asked to come and speak in Freshers Weeks, and it's a it's a real reminder to me of how close it is being free to being lost. Because there you are in Fresher's Week, and you just you just want to be free, no? You just want to go and do what you want to do. I remember when my mother was helping me unpack my uh room at college, and uh she was just about to take the last box of stuff home to the car, and I was just about to run off into Freshers Week to be free. And uh my mother turned to me with tears in her eyes, she said these words, so I I think she's embarrassed by these words now. I'm more to fly by them now. But she said to me with tears in her eyes, she said, Glenn, just fly, Glenn. Just just fly. And because sarcasm is my love language, I said, I will, mother, and you will be the wind beneath my wings. Which is a horrible thing to say. But there is that sense, isn't there? And then you go off and you're gonna fly out into the world, and then in freshest week, you've never met such lost people in your life, have you? Because, I mean, just physically, you don't know where anything is, and you're asking, where's the library and where are the lecture theaters? Some of you are in third year and you still don't know where the library of the lectures is. I mean, that really is lost, but we spend our times trying to be free and feeling like we're lost. And the story of this book, the story of the Bible really is that there is a home that you belong to. And there is a son from that home, and he has come to find you and to bring you home. And when you're home, then you can just be yourself. Then you're liberated, then you know who you are. Then you move from trying to prove yourself in the world and you're in revision mode the whole time. Jesus says that's that's a slavery. If you're just trying to prove yourself, if you're just trying to, if you're just trying to fly by yourself, it can be a slavery. Because how high is how is high enough? How high a grade is a high enough grade? How much of an approval from the world is enough? Jesus says that can be a slavery. But he says, let me give to you, let me give to you the grade that you could never earn yourself. Let me give to you a verdict on your life that means you are liberated. You can reassure yourself of God's love and you can dive. You can reassure yourself of God's love and you can read that book. You can do that exam. You can just live because Jesus has set you free. That's the kind of liberation that Jesus wants to give to everyone in this room. And I'd really encourage you to pick up this book and keep on reading about this Jesus. And maybe you're not used to church things or Christian things, that's okay. You know, it's summer now. You can do this. You can pick up a book and you can read for pleasure. And I would just recommend, why don't you shoot up a prayer and say, God liberate me? Show me who Jesus is, and show me where my true home is. Because that's where you'll truly be free. I'm gonna stop speaking now. And uh why don't we? Um perhaps on your tables where you are, why don't you talk about the one big question that you would like to shoot at me? Um and maybe if uh if you don't have any questions, you could just talk about what do you think freedom is? How would you define freedom? And uh we'll just chat that through the numbers on the screen for you to text in your questions, and in about five minutes, Angus is gonna come up and he's going to ask me your hardest questions. So let's do that. Thanks.
SPEAKER_03Great. So hope you enjoyed the little chat there. There's still a few sandwiches left in the back, and after the time of questions, we're gonna be serving tea, coffee, and donuts. So do feel free to stick around. Um let's let's start with some questions. Glenn, can I wake you back up? So the first uh question we've got, we've had a few, thanks for texting them in. Um feel free to keep uh texting in or um ask some from the floor. Maybe if if uh somebody wants to pluck up the courage and ask the big question that uh you wanted to ask Glenn on your table, that would be great too. So the first one we had was how can we be free if our future has already been decided?
SPEAKER_01Okay, yeah, good question. So uh, I mean, at that point we're getting into issues of free will versus determinism, which is a philosophical area of study that's quite separate from whether you believe in God or not. So you could be uh an atheist and you could very strongly uh want to defend free will as a concept, or you could be an atheist and very strongly uh defend determinism, uh, which tends to be where a lot of atheists these days are going. Uh, that if biology reduces down to chemistry, chemistry bio reduces down into physics, um, then really our future is set in stone in quite a literal way, and so you could be uh a determinist as uh as an atheist. Again, you come over into sort of Christian philosophy, and there are those who very much emphasize freedom, and there are those who very much emphasize God's sovereignty over every atom and act. Um, so I don't see this as a particularly Christian versus non-Christian issue. If the future is already known, are we free or not? But I would I would start to ask whether the kind of God that Jesus is talking about gives you hope for there being some kind of freedom. Because I was talking to you about here is a God who is a family, a father loving his son in the joy of the Holy Spirit. You have this interplay, this back and forth, this give and take, this love relationship. So that the God that Christians are talking about is not just this abstract kind of determinism that presses down on history from on top, but that actually you've got this interplay in which the Son of God comes into history and carries on that interplay between humanity and God. And so actually, within Christian theology, you've got uh a wonderful kind of tool for thinking about, yes, a God who knows the future, but a God who is uh listen, who listens to prayer, a God who listens to the cries of his people because he's always listening to his son. And we are invited into that kind of interplay. And so this God, knowing the future, uh, is different, I think, from a simple single-powered God who just presses his own will down on creation. So I think there's a lot of hope within Christian theology and a lot of tools that Christian theology has for thinking about freedom in the context of the God who knows the future. Because the Bible does say that God does know the future, and yet he's a God who responds to prayer, he's a God who responds to the give and take and the back and forth. So I just encourage you to press into who this God might be, uh, because on the other side, if if there is no God, I do think that the arguments for determinism, in a in a very um naked, kind of forceful way, uh, are pretty compelling, actually. To take God out of the equation, I think, I think you are set down the track of an impersonal determinism. Um and I would just encourage you to perhaps look into the God of Jesus because I think maybe there's more hope for the kind of freedom that we're all looking for in that vision of God. And you can come back to me on that.
SPEAKER_03Cool. Does anyone want to kind of come back on that straight away now? Okay, I'll move to another question. Um this one says, as far as I'm aware, Jesus did not denounce the human slavery occurring in the first century, and the God of the Old Testament actively encouraged it. How is that freedom?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great question. So the issue is slavery, um, and it's not just a question for the past, is it? Um a report came out just this week saying there are what are 46 million slaves in the world and a couple of million in Europe. So slavery is not just uh an issue for the past, and we're now done with it, uh, even in the West, because there's all sorts of issues about slavery that we still need to keep on fighting, and Christians uh are very much strong voices in that fight for freedom. Uh Jesus, you're right, uh, doesn't say anything about slavery apart from what we just read uh in the New Testament. What we just read are Jesus' words talking about our slavery to sin, so speaking about far more a spiritual slavery. But what I think you see with Jesus and the New Testament is really the complete undermining of any institution of slavery. What you've got to do is distinguish between uh slavery in the Old Testament, so in uh if you were a Hebrew, if you're an Israelite, and you got into debt, rather than going to debt as prison, you could become a slave. But it was it was only for a set period of time, only for seven years, and then you're an indentured slave, and then you could get your freedom. And so there's a very different kind of slavery there to the slavery of the Greco-Roman world, um, which again is very different to what we think of when we think of slavery. When we think of slavery, we think of the transatlantic slave trade, don't we? Um, which was absolutely barbarous and uh and overturned by a lot of Christians getting back to their Bibles. And you might say, well, there were some Christians who were opening their Bibles and supporting the slave trade from that. And at that stage, I think the Christians who were opposing it had better arguments. Here's the arguments that they used. They said that the Lord of all, Jesus Christ, became a slave. He absolutely tipped on its head this kind of social pyramid in which you had sort of the emperor and the gods up here, and then you had the the slaves down here. And what you have with Jesus Christ is the God of heaven becoming a slave, becoming even a human sacrifice on the cross, and humanizing people to such an incredible degree. While Jesus never spoke on the particular issue of slavery, the people who he humanized were absolutely at the bottom of the ladder. He humanized the lepers of his day, he humanized the people of the nations that others just thought of as dogs. Here is Jesus who is absolutely absolutely upending that. And then what you see in the New Testament is um the New Testament authors completely outlawing anything to do with uh slave trading or kidnapping people, which absolutely cuts the lifeblood from slavery. And what you see them doing is again saying, look, slaves and slave masters exist on an absolute equal footing inside the church. And with that kind of theology going on, what you get are the seeds of abolitionism. What you get are the seeds of no one is able to look at anyone else and say that they are a lesser human being or a greater human being because the Lord of all has become one of us and stooped down to this level. So we just can't play these hierarchical games anymore. So I think within the New Testament, um, you've got a theology that is that is able to overturn those kinds of slaves trades that we that we see and that we saw happen in the 17th, 18th century. Um big, big subject, but perhaps we could talk about it afterwards.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's worth saying also that at the end Glenn is going to be around uh even for the whole afternoon. So if you did want to come and chat with him one-on-one at the end, um he's he's around and and you're very much free to do that. Um does anyone have any questions from any of their tables? To see what you guys are thinking uh during that little break. Does anyone want to stick a hand up and ask uh uh vocal question? Real time. Yeah. No? Alright. There's plenty more in the text, so we're gonna keep playing through this if that's okay, Clear. Um this one says, okay, so if it's in God's nature to be benevolent and good, then is God enslaved by his own nature? Is God free to make the decision not to be good?
SPEAKER_01Brilliant! Brilliant question. So this is perhaps the oldest question in philosophy. Well done, whoever's asked that. Um is something good because the gods command it? Or do the gods command it and thereby it Yeah, so is something good because the gods command it, or is it good and therefore the gods command it to be good? Does that make sense? Um, and and if that's if that's the case, then is God enslaved by his own nature of goodness? Um and again, I think sometimes we can come at this idea of freedom or slavery in an unhelpful way. We can assume that freedom or slavery is defined by do I have a maximal range of options in front of me? And if I do have a maximal range of options in front of me, then I'm very free. And if I've only got one option in front of me, then I'm unfree and I'm enslaved. Um but I would just encourage us to think: is that the best definition of freedom? Because there are certain choices that you can make that will enslave you. The rat that keeps on pressing the button is free to make that decision, right? But is it an expression of its freedom to keep pressing that button? And perhaps most of us in this room would say, actually, that's not an expression of the rat's freedom to keep hitting the coke button. Okay, that's not an expression of its freedom. That actually that's an expression of its slavery. And that therefore, exercising your will in order to do the good thing, the liberating thing, the free thing, the flourishing thing, the exercising your will in that direction is the true expression of freedom. And that exercising your will in the bad direction is actually an expression of slavery. So the Bible says things like God cannot lie. God cannot lie. And maybe we think, oh, that's dreadful. God is constrained in his choices. But maybe we should start thinking, ah, how liberated that God never enslaves himself to the lie that just keeps on making him lie more and you know, the way that lies enslave us. We feel very free because we could tell the truth or we could tell a lie. And maybe God would say, ah, but if you choose the lie, you are choosing slavery. You're not expressing your freedom in that case, you're actually expressing your slavery. So, um, yeah, the Bible says God cannot lie, he cannot deny himself. There are things that the Bible says God cannot do because of his goodness, but I don't think that's an expression of his slavery. Rather, that is an expression of his freedom to be flourishing. We can talk about it later.
SPEAKER_03Again, does anyone want to come back on that? Okay. We've had, so there's a couple here from the same one. I'm gonna separate them out because they're reasonably different. So this one says, how can one be free when the Bible imposes on us arbitrary and outdated rules which have no purpose? Because what they prohibit is not by any means a source of enslavement, e.g., the entire book of Leviticus. Right? So, so that was quite long. So, how can how can one be free when the Bible imposes arbitrary and outdated rules on us?
SPEAKER_01Brilliant. And very interesting that you you choose Leviticus because within the New Testament, the New Testament also says that that Old Testament administration of laws was a kind of slavery. So even within the New Testament, you know, the Apostle Paul is looking back at the book of Leviticus and saying, you know what, that was a kind of slavery. There were a whole bunch of you know laws and commandments that he says in the New Testament we are not under anymore, and we have come of age, and now instead of being slaves, we are now children, and we are set on our feet, and off we go. So even within the New Testament, the New Testament looks back at the book of Leviticus and says, look, there's a lot of commandments that as a New Testament believer I'm not under anymore. And in fact, the New Testament even talks about being under law as a description of what being in the Old Covenant, under Old Testament laws, was like. It was a bit like being under law. So, yeah, so we don't, a Christian doesn't just pick up Leviticus and go, fantastic, no more shellfish, and off we go. And oh, look, there's 613 more rules that I need to obey. Wow, how liberated. We don't we don't do that. Um we read our Bibles the way that the Bible tells us to read our Bibles, in which the Old Testament is fulfilled by the New Testament. Now that doesn't mean that the New Testament doesn't give us things to do. It does, but it's it's not interested in whether I eat shellfish or not, okay? But the but the New Testament does tell me about things to do. It does tell me that to be generous. It does tell me, you know, Jesus even says if anyone asks you for money, you should give it to them. Isn't that nuts? But he says it. And you're like, wow, okay. And and but the way he presents it is this is the way of liberation. He says, if if anyone strikes you on the right Cheap, you should offer him the other cheek, turn the other cheek, go the extra mile. If someone sues you for the shirt on your back, you should just give them the shirt on your back, give them your jumper as well. And we think, oh, is that just him imposing on us, enslaving us? And Jesus comes back and says, no, no, this is the way to be free. You want to be free of greed? Give. Yeah? You want to be free of bitterness? Forgive. And actually all the ways that the New Testament speaks of the new way to live. It's not in terms of you're sort of free, but you've also got to do these things. The way the New Testament presents it is you are so absolutely liberated. Why would you lie? You are so absolutely liberated. Why would you be bitter? You are so absolutely liberated. You know, why would you be greedy? It's that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_03Cool. And the second one from that question is, let me just find it, sorry about this. I seem to have lost it. Oh no, here it is. It says, You said Jesus died the death we deserve. Why do I deserve to be crucified? I've never killed anyone or cheated on anyone. I consider myself a loving and compassionate person. Why do I deserve that?
SPEAKER_01I think so start with the God that I'm describing. Here is a family of life and light and love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And all of us, all of us, don't like growing up in that home. All of us want to run away from home. We all do. On some level, we all want to, you know, run away from home and say, no thanks to this God. And we've all done it in different ways. Some of us have done it in very, very religious ways, and some of us have done it in very irreligious ways, but all of us want to run away from home. But when you run away from home, if you've run away from the God of love, then you kind of turn into disconnection. Life doesn't work as well. If you run away from the God of light, where else do you turn but into darkness? If you run away from the God who is the life source of the cosmos, where else do you run except into death? And so the Bible just says, look, we're just born into this state, we've run away from home, and we're perishing apart from this life source. And that's what Jesus is doing on the cross. The Bible talks about him perishing there in the darkness, you know, shut out of the family home, saying, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He's kind of taken on the position of the runaway. We are this runaway who says, I don't want you anymore, God, you know, like the teenager running away from the home. And we starve and we perish and we are away from the we are away from the light. And Jesus comes into that. That's what he's doing on the cross, taking onto himself that condition that you and I share. So that he rises up again and he says, I've taken your darkness, do you want my light? I've taken your disconnection from God, do you want my connection? And anyone who says yes, you come home. You come home into that family, and that's where you're fully free.
SPEAKER_03Great. I'm just gonna have uh just one more, and we don't want to uh keep everyone here too long when we have lots of tea and coffee. Don't stick it out. Um so this this last one says, How can someone be free with Jesus as Lord?
SPEAKER_01Ah, yeah, and especially that word Lord, right? It's the key, the key claim of the Bible, the key label that a Christian sort of has over their lives is Jesus is Lord. Um doesn't that mean that we're not free because we've got a Lord? And I guess the Bible just says everybody's got a Lord. Pick your Lord, okay? If you live for the approval of others, the approval of others will be your Lord. And when they do not approve of you, it will be hell. If you live for career success, career success will be Lord, and you will work harder and harder to climb the greasy pole, and when you get made redundant, it will be hell. Jesus is the kind of Lord who we fail him all the time, and yet he forgives us. And yet when we have him, he truly satisfies. I guess a Christian is just someone who recognizes, you know what, everybody lives for something. Think about your daydreams. What do you daydream about? You're thinking about some kind of area of success. That thing is your Lord. That thing is running your life. Think about your nightmare scenarios. What would be the worst thing that could possibly happen? That's diagnosing what it is that's most important in your life, what it is that you're living for. That thing is Lord. And the Bible is just saying, you know what, you won't find a better Lord than this. Because here is a Lord who made himself a slave for you. Here is a Lord who would die for you. Here is a Lord who forgives you when you fail him, and when you get him, he absolutely satisfies. So again, it's this idea of true freedom is found when you come home. And I just love you to keep on reading these John's Gospels and just ask yourself: does Jesus look like home? Does he look like the one I remember reading through with Luke's Gospel, the biography just before John? And halfway through I just I just started thinking to myself, you know, this guy is tox. He's he's incredible, he's number one, he's he's Lord. He's Lord. And at that stage it's like bad luck, you're a Christian. It just sort of happens when your eyes are open and you see he is better than anything else that the world offers. And actually, to call him Lord, that's not slavery, that is your true freedom.
SPEAKER_04So that was you, Glenn, talking um a few weeks ago now. And uh how do you find that people sort of respond to you uh to a to a talk like that? Are they interested in then come along in the evening?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So um we had quite a few people um who were interested. I mean, one question that didn't come up in the QA that often does is um the hot topic issue of what about sex? Because Christians seem to have a very unliberated view of sex. Um there are rules regarding sex in Christians. Um and and yet that didn't so much come up in the in the QA time, but it did it did come up in personal conversations. So lots of people um talking about that. And I had some great conversations after this talk about that and and about saying, um, actually, Jesus is for sexual liberation. Here is here is the most liberated view of sex. Um it it belongs in the context of someone who will love you forever and never let you go, and not trash you, and not walk away from you. And here is a context in which you can be truly sexually liberated, and here is a context in which you can flourish and thrive and and and use sex for how it's intended, because we all know that there are contexts in which when you rip sex out of that context, it leads to not liberation at all, but leads to um people being very damaged and hurt and so um so actually trying to get back in all things to say it is for freedom that Jesus has set you free, um, really helped people. Um and and I refuse to answer any question by saying, Oh yeah, Jesus make you free makes you free, but not that free. Uh let me just rein that back in. That even when Jesus says no in places to things, it is ultimately for our liberation. And let's explore the ways that that's true. So I had um had some good conversations in that area, and I just had one girl who came up afterwards and said, Um, I want to be a Christian. I've been thinking about it for a while, and it was it was nothing to do with the talk. I mean, she'd just been on this journey the whole time, and the fish just jumped into the boat. Um and and we prayed together, and um yeah, and she'd come along with some Christian friends, and so I was like, Well, why don't you go to church with these guys? And she said, Well, that's an idea. I said, Yeah, brilliant, isn't it? Go to church and keep going with the Lord. And so so that was that was wonderful. Um and an yet another reminder that you don't have to be particularly clever in evangelism, and you know because this had nothing to do with the talk, and the fact that she was in the room had nothing to do with what a brilliant title and what wonderful publicity. Nothing to do with that. It's just the Lord had her number and he was in her tractor beam and and in she came. So just a reminder that the Lord is the great evangelist, which I think is very liberating for evangelists to always we need to always remind ourselves it's the it's the Lord who's who's drawing people to himself.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. So what's what's we've got what have we got coming up then?
SPEAKER_01One thing coming up here in Eastbourne is this Sunday we've got uh an Australian evangelist called Jeffrey Hilda, who just specializes in starting conversations with people in public, just on the streets, at the seafront where where we are in Eastbourne or wherever he is. Um his training consists of saying, just build rapport with somebody, talk about Jesus and leave them with some gospel literature. You know, it's it's it's literally that um that basic. And in fact, it was so basic that last year when he came to Eastbourne, he he he basically said that and said, Right, let's pair up and let's go out and hit the hit the seafront. There was one one guy next to me who uh leaned across and he said, We are not ready. Glenn, that is not the real training. Can you come to our church and give the true training next week? And I just said, uh, why don't I pair you up with Jeffrey? And so this this guy who was quite nervous that we hadn't had enough training, he went out with Jeffrey and they just basically did what Jeffrey said, which is try and build rapport, get into a conversation about Jesus. And they had four incredible conversations. Two of them led to praying with people on the streets. Um and so this guy who originally was very nervous about it just came back rejoicing, and we all came back rejoicing. We had we had 32 people, 16 different pairs who went out, and all of us got into some kind of gospel conversation. And so we're we're praying for uh a similar result on Sunday, and that it just m means that people will catch the bug and and wanna keep on doing it. Um because you know, just on on the mission that I was just uh on in um Northamptonshire, I mean we we had a spare hour uh one afternoon and we just went door knocking around the place and origin you know, to for the first thirty minutes really there was a lot of closeness, but then got into three great gospel conversations with giving away gospels and um one person came along for the evening event, you know, off the back of it, and then a whole bunch of teenagers that we saw at the end and got into this very um engaged and and and healthy conversation about Jesus. It was just brilliant, and and that's kind of the case whenever I've wanted to go out and have some kind of gospel conversation, you end up having something. You know, you get a lot of doors shut in your face, but you also get a lot of open doors and a lot of open opportunities. So I'm a big believer in it, and I hope that it uh attracts a lot of people and gives them a real vision for it.
SPEAKER_04Okay, well uh we'll we'll perhaps hear about that next time. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well we're we're coming to the end there. Um if you'd like to get more of the Evangelist Podcast, then uh do subscribe on your iPhone or whatever device you have. Uh to find the links to the subscribe, you just go to speaklife.org.uk slash tep. And uh you can also leave a review there if you wish. Uh also don't forget Reading Between the Lines, which is uh Glenn's daily video on going through the Bible a phrase at a time.
SPEAKER_01And you can get subscribed video and audio.
SPEAKER_04Video and audio on uh as a podcast, or you can get it uh through YouTube.
SPEAKER_01Yep. And if you choose audio, I won't be too offended, that's fine. Sometimes it's it's easier. I'm sh I'm sure it's just about you know memory issues and space issues. The the audio is is a smaller file. I'm sure it's just that.
SPEAKER_04It's just that it's nothing to do with the side.
SPEAKER_01It's not that Lens should be yeah, heard and not seen.
SPEAKER_04Okay. That's it for now. See you next time. See ya.