Today on the Evangelist Podcast we talk to Mike Reeves.
SPEAKER_00The Evangelist Podcast from Revival. Find out what's new in telling people the good news about God, the world, and you. With Andy Brinkley and Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to the Evangelist Podcast. This is the show where we delve into issues regarding sharing the good news of Jesus. I'm Andy Brinkley, and here is my good friend and colleague, and now boss, Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, hello. Yes, have you noticed a change in me now? I've become more despotic. More bossy.
SPEAKER_02More bossy. Yeah. So, Glenn, we're talking today to Mike Reeves. Who is Mike Reeves?
SPEAKER_01Mike Reeves, the Reverend Dr. Mike Reeves, is uh the director of Union Theology, uh, which will hear about a very exciting prospect in terms of training people for gospel work. Um that's a ministry of West Wales Evangelical School of Theology. I don't think, yeah, in the in the interview, I don't I don't think we um unpacked the acronym Wales Evangelical School of Theology there in Bridge End, which is doing a great work in raising raising up gospel workers and training them. Uh and so, yeah, he's with them and he's the author of several books. And uh yeah, and a good friend of mine. How did you get to know Mike Greaves? We know each other from uh All Souls Langham Place. Okay. So um actually he sort of he did the the sort of the toilet cleaning job there that I did uh a few years before me. So yes, we were lay assistants was the fancy title for sort of Hooverer and yeah, toilet cleaner and dog's body. I think I can I I cleaned a thousand loos at uh all souls lang and place. Hoovered a lot of rooms, but then you got to spend time with people like John Stutt and Rico Tyson, Richard Buse, so it was it was amazing.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well, uh we'll listen to the interview. We have got a giveaway that we're gonna do this week. In the interview, Mike Reeves recommends five books, and we're gonna give away a bundle of them all to a random listener to the podcast. We've got uh The Incarnation On the Incarnation. On the Incarnation by Athanasius, Freedom of a Christian by Martin Luther, and also Table Talk by Martin Luther, The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbs, and Christ's Glorious Achievements by Charles Spurgeon. So we're going to give away all five. Do you reckon we could give away Mike's book as well?
SPEAKER_01I've just sprung that on you. What do you think? Yeah? We'll give away Christ we'll we'll give away uh Mike's book, Christ Our Life, as well, which is sensational. During the interview I kind of pick his brains as what would Athanasius say to a young evangelist today? What would Luther say? What would Sibs say? What would Charles Spurgeon say? And uh and that was great. So that yeah, listen out for that part of the interview. But uh if you want to delve deeper into those four giants from church history, then uh what do they need to do, Andy?
SPEAKER_02What you need to do if you want to get a complete collection of these books, six books now, the person who gets the giveaway uh can have a choice of either the physical books or them in uh Kindle format. Uh just go to the web address for this episode, sign up to the Evangelist Podcast by entering your email, and then we'll pick a random email and we'll arrange delivery somehow.
SPEAKER_01Six books. How generous we are.
SPEAKER_02Okay, now this giveaway is going to be open until the end of September. The end of September we'll um select a lucky uh sorry, a predestined winner on the credential winner to get the bundle.
SPEAKER_01Casting lots is uh is the right there in scripture. It's very old testament though, Glenn. Even the apostles do it. But that's interesting, isn't it? Were they meant to? Yeah. Were they meant to have replaced Judas?
SPEAKER_02Matthias. Matthias. He doesn't appear at all.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it seems like Jesus picks his own twelfth, doesn't he? The Apostle Paul. Yeah. So maybe, yeah, maybe that's Anyway. We should we should do an episode on Lots Lots, casting lots. John Wesley was massively into it. He was, yeah. Had his little promise box, didn't he? In a disturbing way, I think.
SPEAKER_02But uh yeah. Anyway. And also to say if you don't fancy doing this, uh the links to all the books will be on that web address as well. Uh revivalmedia.org slash TEP69. So let's hear the interview then.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's great to be joined on the Evangelist Podcast by Mike Reeves, theologian at large at West, Director of Union Theology and author of several books, including Christ Our Life, which is just out. Mike, thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_03Pleasure, Glenn. Good to be with you.
SPEAKER_01Where are you Skyping from this morning?
SPEAKER_03Um I'm at home at the moment, um, which is just a little bit north of Oxford.
SPEAKER_01Okay. And that's because you are you are at large as far as West is concerned.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we want to get theology out there, not just to be on the campus.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So tell me about your your partnership with West. What is your role with them and what are you seeking to do?
SPEAKER_03Well, um I'm I teach on campus, so I teach uh doctrine, I teach uh historical theology, um, I'm teaching a preaching course um there, but I'm also setting up um union, which is making that theological education much more widely accessible in local church contexts. Because we believe that to have your theological education done within a local church context is gonna make sure that it's really pastorally spiritually applied, that you're not just retreating to an ivory tower at all. So you want to make sure that we're doing plenty of that. So that's setting something up that's gonna go live from next September 2015.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so currently there's the union theology.org website, yeah. Which is just a treasure trove. I mean, do you have have people counted up how many articles and things you've got on there?
SPEAKER_03I I don't know how much is on there, but it's a good load on there. Yeah, we want that to be a reach out, bless the church, here you go, here are audio you can just download on your commute, some articles to read, stuff that we hope will be immediately useful and a blessing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and then in 2015, September, you're launching Unithology. And who is that in particular for?
SPEAKER_03Well, it's for everyone, really. We want to be really flexible on saying, hey, look, if you want to just do a course saying I want to find out more about Christian doctrine or the New Testament or preaching or mission, you can do just one of those, and that'd be fine. But if you want a comprehensive education saying you're thinking about being a pastor or you're thinking about being a missionary, or whatever it is, you can say, I want this amount, I think, like the equivalent, say of year one, two years, three years of a Bible college, um, and we'll be able to offer basically anything from a standalone course right up to a master's in theology that will be local church rooted, um, that's caring about raising up people who love God, who love his people, want to serve them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Sounds absolutely fantastic. Well, we'll we'll put uh links on the show notes to uh Union Theology so that people can uh find out more and perhaps get in touch with you about that because that's a a really exciting development in in theological education. Uh but Mike, let's go back to the beginning. Where did it all begin for you in terms of knowing and loving Jesus?
SPEAKER_03Do you know? I'm not absolutely sure. Um I was brought up in a nominally Christian home. Uh and so I was brought up to pray, and I remember praying to Jesus and getting answers to prayer when I was really quite young. But I I I find it very hard to look back and know if that was a living faith or not. So when I was a teenager, I uh when I was 15, I decided to read all the way through Luke's gospel. So it was the first time I'd read a Bible book through in one sitting, and I don't want to project back onto my experience then, so it's really hard to navigate and understand your own history years on. But as clearly as I can put it, something about Jesus stood out to me and he was fascinating to me, and I wanted him. I I don't know if I could say more than that, but from then on I wanted to, I was hungry to read the Bible, so I started reading through the Bible regularly, I was praying. Um so I think by that stage I almost certainly did have a living faith. What then happened around student time was I had a catastrophic crisis of faith where I doubted absolutely everything. So I doubted, is there a God? And if so, how can I be saved? And I just wasn't sure because I thought I love what the evangelicals say about God's salvation by grace alone. I mean, I love that. That would be so great if it's true. Um, but but are they just glossing over difficult verses like James 2.24, you see that a man is not justified by faith alone but by works. And I thought, so are the Roman Catholics right on that? Because if they're right, I'll join them. And so I was just doubting absolutely everything, and where I found myself getting to was life is ultimately Jesus or nihilism. And if it's nihilism, I want to kill myself because it's so depressing. But if it's not nihilism, and I do kill myself, I could drop straight to hell and I don't know the way out. And so I found myself torn in a desperate strait, and that's when I came across Martin Luther. And Luther just seemed to share the same sort of anxiety that I had, and and had it with a seriousness, I just didn't know anyone else who had this kind of serious wrestle for whom theology was no game, um, Christianity wasn't a sort of gentlemanly pursuit you could enjoy doing to be respectable. Luther seemed to really struggle with it as a life and death thing, and I thought, man, that is right where I am. And yet Luther had this struggle, and he had answers that penetrated right to where I was at. So it was reading stuff like the freedom of a Christian that was transformative for me. So reading Luther and a few other people as well, um, reading John Owen on the reliability of the Bible, I began to see actually I can trust the Bible as God's word to me. And when that happened, I realized actually I can base everything on scripture, and that was life-transforming. That that became like a panzer through my beliefs, just driving everything.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_03And so that was a major turning point for me that scripture became the foundation. I was able to trust Jesus, love him, love him, particularly because of Richard Sibbs, who taught me how beautiful, wonderful Jesus is. And so I came through with different foundations to my faith, very clearly scripture now. And before I think I'd basically be an irrationalist. And also seeing these dead guys, they can help us. Now they certainly help me in a way that no one living has quite helped me. And so I thought I I would love to be able to help others with the help that I've been given.
SPEAKER_01That's amazing. It's almost like a mini reformation happened in you, you know, back to the sources, and then you got faith alone from Luther and Scripture alone from Owen.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, absolutely, it's exactly what happened. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01The reformation replayed in your head.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. And who was it who put you onto the dead guys?
SPEAKER_03Do you know it was completely random, so no one did.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_03Um, I was finding no one living was answering my questions very well. And so I just turned to books, and it wasn't that I'd heard that Luther was particularly good. I was reading Luther and Thomas Akempis and Modern Guides and just a completely eccentric array of just stuff that I would come across in secondhand bookshops. Um, and it was just it was what I stumbled across.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, amazing. So Luke's Gospel age 15, and and then the sort of the the catastrophe, the mini-reformation happening sort of in your early 20s, is that sort of how is how have those two kind of really shaping events continued to shape your ministry, do you think, as you look back?
SPEAKER_03Oh, completely, absolutely completely. Um yeah, I was transformed by all that. So uh my beliefs were shaped, so my theology changed in having scripture as my foundation, having Jesus at the center. Um, so the very shape of the gospel changed for me there. Um but also I I think through it I became I I knew I wanted to be a pastor, but through it I I realized that God had raised me up to be a theologian as well. And I realized that in a clear way that I hadn't seen before, that I like reading these guys and finding help in them, not for the sake of playing an intellectual game, but for the fact that these guys turn lives around. And so that's why I I've always been interested in history, old theologians. That's why I've been interested in these particular guys. Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, amazing. So to be a theologian to serve the church, that's that's quite odd, isn't it, these days? I mean that the I don't, you know, reading the Church Times, I don't I don't see a lot of positions for theologian coming up when I read Evangelicals now and look at the the wanted ads, nobody seems to be clamoring for a theologian. What what is the need for theologians in the church?
SPEAKER_03Oh, my heart has actually got racing as you're saying it. Um the thing is, we we've just compartmentalized to say knowledge of God is a private thing that doesn't have direct impact on real life. So what we really need in the church is more of the practicalities. And what we see in scripture is exactly the opposite, that it is the knowledge of God that shapes us spiritually and which builds the church. And therefore, theology is about knowing God. If we're to have a robust and mature church filled with a growing number of increasingly mature Christians, we must be doing uh theology that is God-loving and people loving. Um, so it's it's it's not an intellectual game, but we really are seeking to use our minds to know God better, that we might love him more and love his people more, be conformed into his image. And so theology done rightly simply cannot be divorced from church life without catastrophic results for the church. And it's got to be one reason why the church is a core reason why the church today is so thin, so weedy.
SPEAKER_01And do you do you think sometimes theologians themselves sort of shoot themselves in the foot when they div when they do divorce their kind of uh discipline from that sort of heartfelt pastoring of souls and that kind of thing?
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. I I think the thing is that what's happened is that we've bought into the secular university model of studying subjects in a cold and logical manner that doesn't necessarily directly translate into everyday life. And it's just very easy to slip into that model. And so, for example, teaching at West, it it could be a default that I could slip into. Okay, well, here's how the universities have taught doctrine for the last 200 years, that's obviously how to do it. And so I could, even with my gospel convictions, could slip into thinking, so that's how to do it. I'll just teach it like any other university. And so there's a need to be very self-conscious and deliberate to say, no, that's not what theology is. I'm seeking to do this theology to learn this truth that my heart might change, that my life might be transformed, that I might minister to others that their lives might be transformed. Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Hence union theology and and hence trying to hook that into the life of the church.
SPEAKER_03Exactly, exactly. It's all birthed out of that vision, really.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Now, you were with uh UCCF for eight years uh in sort of student ministry. Uh what did you learn about the student scene in the UK and reaching that demographic?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I think uh I saw that uh increasingly those who are matriculating as students, year on year, there seems to be a greater biblical ignorance. Yeah. So people uh age 18 or so simply they haven't been to Sunday school, they don't have the Bible knowledge in place. But that said, I think I would say strangely, alongside growing biblical ignorance, there's a wonderful growing widespread zeal for Christ. Um, and so I saw hugely encouraging signs of a young generation rising up who aren't learning theology simply to fill their heads. They're filling their heads with the knowledge of God because they love him and they want to know him better, they want to make him known. And so that was hugely encouraging. And I think what I learned in terms of ministering to students was well, basically I never did anything, I'm not a flashy person really, I just never did anything flashy or particularly original. I just taught Christian basics, and what I found really interestingly was all I'd taught in my eight years is who's God, what's salvation, basically. That's all I did.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so nothing fancy. Yeah, and uh possibly the most repeated comment I ever got was people saying, huh, I've never heard that before.
SPEAKER_01I've never heard of this God before. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03And I was thinking, I think that's because people have gone off to do flashy stuff and they've just left behind the basics. Yeah. And by saying basics, I don't mean boring, mundane stuff, let's just repeat. Do you know Jesus as a son of God? I mean pushing in to know what that means. What exactly does it mean to say justification, not just reciting mantras. That's not what I mean by basics. I mean pushing into the central things of the gospel.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And do you think that was sort of behind the good gods? You know, that book that did that come out, what, 18 months ago, two years ago? Something like that, yeah. That seemed to me to sort to very much capture your heart for let's go back to basics, let's talk about who is this God that we're that we love, and let's take a deep bath in the in the truths of the Trinity and those kinds of things. Was that was that really a it that seemed to come from a very deep place in you? Is that would that be fair to say?
SPEAKER_03Um yeah, it I'd say even deeper to be honest, don't. I mean basically, to be honest, in in all my preaching, in all my writing, I'm just writing for myself first, and you know, I hope other people will benefit from it. But so when I my first book was about the reformation, and that was because I experienced the benefit of reformational theology in my own life. It was just I was bathing myself in the story of Luther's discovery of justification, and so the good God was similar. It was just there'd been a reformation, a revolution in my understanding of who God is. And so I was really articulating that, that I'd I'd been nursed in a deeply defective sub-trinitarian understanding of God and been released from that wonderfully, and I wanted to share that. So, in a sense, uh basically everything I do, and that includes the the writing in the books, it's really I'm just expressing the truths that have really impacted and transformed me.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, and they're deeply impacting and transforming uh thousands of others, so that's that's really wonderful to see. Um, with Christ our life, it's really fascinating. On uh quite early on, you sort of uh on page 10, you talk about Trinity or Jesus. And you say some authors will tell you that the Trinity is the governing center of all Christian belief, and you're quoting yourself at that stage. And some will say things like the center, the cornerstone, the jewel in the crown of Christianity is Jesus Christ. Um is that something that you've sort of consciously wrestled with? Am I a Trinity person or am I a Jesus person? And or could I be understood to be a Trinity person more than or something different than a Jesus person? Is that something you've encountered as people have heard your stuff? They're saying, Oh, I like Trinity, but they haven't quite got the Jesus thing? Is that possible?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think so. Um I I think it's something I've just seen around in Christian culture that uh people are a bit keener to talk about Trinity today, which is Wonderful, but my fear is that unless they're talking about God the Father who's made known by Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit, then they're talking about, and this is the sort of talk about Trinity that I I do see around a bit, and I do fear, that's just the abstract heavenly boogie.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's it doesn't really matter that it's father, son, and spirit, it's just three divine guys having a dance. Hey, come join the dance, and it it could be Bob, Sheila, and Andrew. It just doesn't really matter. And so it becomes rather than knowing this God, Trinity can be taken hijacked, I'd say, to just say, hey, isn't the idea of relationship cool? And so almost the abstract idea relationship becomes God. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Love is lovely. And so we love the truth.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yes. To sort of do it to your theology by Facebook status updates, kind of love is lovely. There's a heavenly group hug, join the party.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01You're saying it's Jesus, the Jesus.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, absolutely. And and likewise you can have people who say, look, we love Jesus, but Trinity seems to be irrelevant. And to them, I wanted to say, no, no, no, no, no. To talk about Trinity rightly is really simply to unpack who Jesus is, that he is the Son of the Father. He is the one anointed with the Spirit. So you're just simply robbing yourself of knowledge of who Jesus truly is if you won't talk about the Trinity.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03So if you can't consider yourself a Jesus person, oh well press in to know the one that he reveals. Press in to know the comforter that he has. Yes.
SPEAKER_01I remember talking to some evangelists at a little conference and and uh and speaking about, you know, Trinity in evangelism, and and uh they just had no idea what I was talking about. They they'd heard stuff from you, they had no idea what what you were talking about in in so many ways because they just thought Trinity was a complicator rather than a clarifier.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I just I I remember sort of getting to the end of a sort of a conversation and thinking, if they're not preaching that Jesus is the Son of the Father, then what kind of gospel could they possibly preach?
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. It's got to change not only the nature of the God you preach, but also the nature of the gospel. And there's the great fear that you could have an evangelist with all the good heart in the world holding out this Jesus who actually reveals a God who's nothing like the Father of the Lord Jesus, who is merely this dictatorial figure who's laying down the rules and Jesus deals with the fact that we don't actually live by the rules. I mean, you've got this very warped gospel held out by this apparent Jesus. Yes. Because who Jesus is hasn't been defined. Whereas if you're talking about Jesus as the Son of the Father, he reveals a different God and he shows you that the gospel we're talking about is well, he's coming from the Father to share his own life with the Father, to share his sonship with us. Yes. Come and join that.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. And that unfolds in a very different direction from just, you know, you begin with God, and then there's some kind of fall. And then there's this other guy called Jesus. Or is he another guy? Or he's is he just God in skin who comes? Yeah. And I remember talking to these same evangelists and saying, surely people come up to you afterwards, after your gospel presentations, and ask you the question, well, you know, you said Jesus was God, but he also, you know, dies as a payment to God, you know, what's what's going on? And and actually, very, very many of them said, no, we've never had questions like that. And I can't imagine how people cannot ask that question unless they're not preaching Jesus. If you're preaching Jesus, then the Trinity question comes front and centre, and you can answer he's the Son of the Father full of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_03Well, I think if you preach if you preach Jesus without talking about him as the Son of the Father filled by the Spirit, uh my suggestion is that the gospel you'll preach and the Jesus you'll preach will be so banal people will switch off and not want to ask interesting questions. Because all that you're preaching just seems Sunday school and very, very simplistic. So they're just not going to think you're the sort of person who could answer an interesting question.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Uh, unfortunately, true, but um, yeah, how how wonderful to be prompted and spurred by a a theologian like yourself, Mike, to think in these terms, because it's it's so needed just on the ground in evangelism.
SPEAKER_03Well, and likewise, Glenn, it's good to have evangelists who are theologically minded. That's we're doing the same thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, trying to, trying to. Now, is it my imagination, Mike, or are your books getting shorter? Are you getting what's going on? Are you getting lazy in your old age? Is there is there a strategy behind this?
SPEAKER_03Um, well, uh the one you're probably thinking of most of all is the little prayer book, enjoy your prayer life. And this is something that ten of those, they asked me to do this, and when it came out, um I didn't quite see the value of it as I was doing it. Um, I thought, well, I hope this will be useful. And I've just seen the response from it, um, and that ten of those echo this has been greater than for almost anything I've done. And it just made me see that to have little books that are accessible just is able to reach into people's lives in a way that bigger tomes aren't. So I I've still got some bigger tomes due to come out. Um, but I'm seeing the great value of making theology accessible to where people are at um in lots of different situations. So I do want to be doing some short stuff, some really accessible stuff.
SPEAKER_01And even in sort of the good God and Christ Our Life, you've got um plenty of pictures and little sort of sidebars as you go off and talk about uh figures from history. What's what's the thinking behind that?
SPEAKER_03Do you know that that came from Luther as well? Um, that what was important for Luther in the early days of the Reformation as he was spreading um his rediscovery of the gospel, what he did is he wrote very clearly in plain everyday German, and and in his New Testament had pictures alongside it. And it meant that um ordinary people could read it, relate to it in a way they couldn't relate to the Latin of his theological opponents. And so what Luther was doing is he was writing under the level of his um Roman Catholic opponents and finding he's getting a hearing that he wouldn't otherwise get if he was just simply engaging with them in Latin. Now, there's a place for engaging with the with the theologians at the higher levels, absolutely there is, but we must get theology out there so that people know God. That's really that's the strategy, that's what I want to do.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and it seems like you've sort of you've avoided theological jargon uh at all points, really. And I mean, sort of looking through the contents page of your book, you haven't sort of said the pre-existence of Christ, the incarnation, the life of Jesus, the death of Jesus, the ascension, these these sorts of things. Um has that been a conscious decision as well? You you haven't sort of you haven't given us theological jargon and then unpacked it. You've sort of given us the what it what it means rather than than than the jargon.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, absolutely. Uh I I strongly believe that while there is a very limited place for technical jargon in any discipline, um, we need to learn when you should and when you shouldn't use it. Uh it's a bit like a preacher who's studied his Old Testament text in Hebrew. Great, do that. Yes. Don't show your workings to the people and intimidate them. Remove all references as much as you possibly can. Sometimes it's not possible to remove all references, but as much as you can, don't show your workings, just show people from the text what they can see. And so that's what I want to do, really. I want to do the hard theological work, the kind of research that most people don't have the time to be able to do. But then I don't want people to feel, well, I can't anymore relate to that. I then want to do the hard work of translating that into everyday English. And you know, actually, I found um that's the hardest stuff to write. Um, so I've just been writing some, I better not tell you what it is, I've just been writing some academic stuff, and it's easy peasy to do compared to writing popular level stuff. Yes, yes. Because popular level stuff, you've got to think hard about how do I actually connect to and speak to real ordinary people. Yes.
SPEAKER_01And you can obscure your own misunderstanding of a subject when you use the jargon as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I yeah, exactly. It's a bit like you know, when you you speak to five-year-olds um in a Sunday school and you can't blag your way past them because they're speaking real English. Whereas undergraduates, you know, third-year undergraduates at university, it's easy to blag your way past them because you just use lots of ology and ism.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, totally. I mean it seems to me that so many people want to give you the recipe, either when they're preaching or whether they're when they're writing, they want to give you the recipe. And if they're gonna being good evangelicals, they want to give you the, you know, you must have the flour, eggs, and butter in this proportion and and in this order, and this is what you do. And but it seems to me like you just you just want to cook up a meal and serve it to people.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. I think the thing is, who's your audience? Are you actually preaching to the choir so that everyone's gonna cheer and go, yeah, you're Orthodox, you ticked all the right boxes, or are you actually trying to talk to real people to show them the beauty of the gospel, the truth of who God is, and your your ultimate agenda and aim in what you're doing is gonna show. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And yeah, so sound theology in Titus 1 is healthy theology. That's you know Yeah, yeah. Quite literally in the Greek, it's healthy.
SPEAKER_03No, I'm not gonna say how very intelligent and thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. I hope you'd notice. Um I was really interested on on page 72 of Christ Our Life, and by the way, everyone should get this book and read it and give it to friends, but um page 72, uh, you're you're talking about um the Christian debates between the freeness of salvation people and those who say, Oh, you can't say it's too free. Um you say this. On the one hand, there are Christians who so want to emphasize the absolute freeness of salvation that or any calls for holy living smack to them of attempts to earn God's favor. Quote, surely there can be no demands on us if salvation is truly free, they cry. On the other hand, you find a huge constituency quietly terrified of the language of free salvation, which is an interesting phrase. Yeah. Don't tell people it's completely free, they murmur, else they'll never come to church or live holy lives. As if salvation is some ethereal box of goodies received at death. Then you go on, you say, you can find the same tussle going on in church life between evangelism and discipleship. At special evangelistic events, people hear of the free offer of salvation, get out of hell, heaven for free. And you think, who wouldn't want that? So people sign up in droves. Then they're deeply puzzled by the discipleship classes. All the talk of holy living just doesn't compute with the evangelistic message they heard, so they leave. What's the answer? What's the answer to that split between the free grace people and the holiness people, between the evangelism people and the discipleship people?
SPEAKER_03Jesus.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03My wife laughs at me because she always says, I have nothing to say if I don't simply tell people about Jesus. Um and that's true, I'm a one-trick player, that's all I have to say. But that is the answer to this. That I think the reason you'll have some people talking about grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, it's grace alone that saves us. And so let's not talk about works. There can be a misemphasis there, because it's not talking about the grace that is found in Jesus. That this grace is simply God's kindness in sharing with us his son. Yeah. So what is the salvation that we're freely given Jesus? He is life, knowing him, being in him is life. And that then uh means that so if I preach, rather than saying, look, you can have this abstract package of salvation at death, and you can have it for free, in which case people sign up and say, Well, yeah, thanks, I'll have that, because I love me and I don't want hell. If I say, Look, have Jesus for free, here's what his life means, here's what living with him looks like, have him, then when it comes to you know the discipleship course later, um, I can talk to someone who's struggling with their sin and saying, Look, you're walking away from the salvation to which you're called, which is life with Jesus. Why would you sour your relationship with him? So I'm not adding, I'm not saying you've had a free salvation that I'm now slapping works on. It's all about Jesus. And so I think this evangelism discipleship split will go away if the gospel we offer is Jesus and knowing him.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. And then your message as an evangelist is pretty much the same as your message as a pastor-teacher. As you're discipling down the down the track, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very helpful. Can I can I ask you to put your church history hat on? Yeah. And I thought we we could play a little game. Um, this is the evangelist podcast, so we we want to we want to serve uh gospelers as they seek to share the good news. Um let's see how these particular dead guys might help us in evangelism. Um let's go back to Athanasius. Okay. How would Athanasius help a gospeler today to share the gospel?
SPEAKER_03Oh, in all the ways we're talking about. Athanasius was about defending the idea that Jesus is the eternal son of God. Now, why is that important for an evangelist to hold? Well, it's important for getting clear who God is, and it's important for getting clear what salvation is. E.g., is the centralities of what you're holding out as an evangelist. If Jesus is not the eternal son, then at some point God's created him, meaning that God's not eternally a father. God's not eternally a father who's always had a son that he's loved. So you don't have a God who is eternally loving. You must have just created the son at some point for some reason. Um, so we've not got a loving God. Meaning, well, what's life about then, created in in his image? Well, if God doesn't really love his son, we're probably not to love him either. We're just to, you know, to choose to do the right things or whatever, make the right choice, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03That's really going to affect the nature of your message. And it's going to affect the nature of the salvation you're holding out as well. Along the lines we've talked about that if the Father has not eternally delighted in his son, well, what's what's the life to which we've been called about then?
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03Well, it can't be about enjoying knowing Jesus, it's probably a fairly grim package of, hey, you've been rescued from hell, now you've got to work your socks off to try to get other people out as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03There's no real enjoyment of Christ sharing his passions, and so finding that rather than you being the evangelism starter in your part of the world, you're actually entering into the life of Jesus, who's already going out in mission to the world, and it's it's your joy and your privilege to be going out and sharing his life and mission. Chips aren't all on you. So I think, in terms of motivation, in terms of content, in terms of how you talk about God and salvation, Athanasius is enormously useful.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And it all flows from beginning with Jesus. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Very good. Okay, let's uh skip on uh a thousand years or so more to Luther. Okay, a great hero of yours. What can we learn from Luther as modern-day evangelists?
SPEAKER_03I think Luther kicks right against what everyone assumes that there is something unpleasant in God that means you've got to earn your keeps with him. And Luther kicks against that so powerfully to show no no, we have a fatherly God who sends his son to be with us, who deals with us like a bridegroom deals with his bride, who makes her his simply by his wedding vow. She accepts his life and comes into his status by saying, I do, and being united to him, and then enjoying communion with him because she has this unbreakable union with him. And so that assurance, I think, does two things. One, the evangelist who has Luther's assurance that Christ will never get rid of his beloved can go out and do evangelism without thinking I'm earning my keep. It is I go out and make Christ known because I'm safe with him and he's a delight to know. My communion is founded on a sure and certain union with him. But also it means I go out and preach a thoroughly good gospel, untarnished by the idea that uh God is mean enough to want me to have to be perfect myself. He provides Christ instead.
SPEAKER_01Wonderful. And uh would Freedom of the Christian be a good way in to Luther if people wanted to start with him?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I I think read Freedom of the Christian, which is really easy to get hold of online. Um that's the place, it's really short, really accessible. Um, or if you want some small little nuggets, you know, just uh take some Luther to Lou with you, which would be appropriate, then uh get his table talk, which you can get hold of really easily. You could just read like five lines here, five lines there. He's hilarious. Um, if you always think theologians are stiff, try the Luther.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there are exceptions. Luther is a huge one. Um and probably on the incarnation for Athanasius, would that be a good way in?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, read Athanasius on the Incarnation and particularly get the version with C.S. Lewis's introduction, which is itself is worth the price of the book.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah, brilliant. Okay, so two more theologians to go. Okay. Sibs. Richard Sib. Oh, yeah. How will he help us in our evangelism?
SPEAKER_03Sibs, in his day, he was a Puritan, his uh dates were 1577, 1635, and Sibs was known as such an effective evangelist in his day that it was said hardened sinners refused to go here and preach for fear that they would get converted. And the reason why is he didn't simply morally bash people and tell them that they were failures, he told them about Christ's beauty, not to crush people, but to melt their hearts, to woo them to him. And so, and this was exactly what I found when I was so so at sea, really, in my knowledge of God, and to see it was Sibbs's bruised reed, which was a little series of sermons that he preached, where he simply holds out Christ in his love, glory, beauty, holiness, heavenly compassion. That he shows that Christ is magnetically attractive. And so you want Christ, you want to be with him, you want to know him. And Sibbs models that um even today, hundreds of years later, almost better than anyone else I can think of, he holds out Christ uh so that we might be drawn to him, to love him.
SPEAKER_01So he will help us with some affective uh evangelism.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, heart-changing, truly persuasive and attractive evangelism.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so the bruised read, we'll put that on the show notes as well. Um and finally, Spurgeon. How would CH Spurgeon help us? Obviously, he he kind of is a great evangelist and preacher. Yeah. What have you learnt from spending some time with Spurgeon?
SPEAKER_03Um, I think the the standout thing I was given a while back, I was given a complete uh set of Spurgeon sermons. And what struck me, I just started avidly reading through his sermons. And what's really struck me is how extraordinarily, I mean, really extraordinarily Jesus centered he is. He's always holding out Jesus.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_03Um, and so his very first sermon when he gets into the pulpit, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, the first words that come out in the first paragraph of his sermon are I propose the subject of the Ministry of this house, as long as this platform shall stand, as long as this house is frequented by worshippers, shall be the person of Jesus Christ. And that's a message that he stuck true to right the way through 40 years of preaching there in South London. And if you can find the last couple of paragraphs of his last ever sermon in the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, actually I've just found, I've just found in Christ Our Life, I've just repeated it. Can I read it to you? He finishes with, It is heaven to serve Jesus. I'm a recruiting servant, and I would fain find a few recruits at this moment. Every man must serve someone with no choice as to that fact. Those who have no master are slaves to themselves. Depend upon it. You will either serve Satan or Christ, either self or the Saviour. You will find sin, self, Satan, and the world to be hard masters. But if you wear the livery of Christ, you will find him so meek, so lowly of heart, you will find rest to your souls. He is the most magnanimous of captains. There was never his like among the choicest of princes. He's always to be found in the thickest part of the battle, and when the wind blows cold he always takes the bleak side of the hill. The heaviest end of the cross lies ever on his shoulders. If he bids us carry a burden, he carries it also. If there is anything that is gracious, generous, kind, tender, lavish and super abundant in love, you'll always find it in him. These forty years and more I've served him, blessed be his name, and I've had nothing but love from him. I'd be glad to continue yet another forty years in the same dear service here below if it so pleased him. His service is life, peace, joy. Oh that you would enter on it at once. God help you enlist under the banner of Jesus even this day. Amen.
SPEAKER_01Amen. Wow.
SPEAKER_03And that that's what I want my life to be about. I'd love those were his last words in the pulpit. I'd love those to be my last words in the pulpit. Spurgeon, just read his sermons, they're easy to read. And so he shows you how Jesus is at the centre, and he shows you why Jesus should be at the centre. He shows you Jesus is attractive, glorious, our only solution. Um, if I'm to recommend one thing of his, I think I'd recommend Christ's Glorious Achievements, which is a little series that I think it's seven sermons on Christ. Christ as the defeater of death, Christ as the overcomer of the world, Christ the end of the law, and things like that. Absolutely super reading.
SPEAKER_01We don't really have sermon series like that anymore, do we? I mean, you know, you go online to various churches and you download the sermon series. If there is ever a sermon series on Christology, it will be about his you know, full and perfect manhood and his full and perfect divinity and things like that. What's what's wrong with us?
SPEAKER_03I I I think it's that tragically, for all the many good things that have happened in the church in the last generation, we are pushing Christ to one side, I fear. And so we we talk about being Bible-based and the importance of that, we talk about uh being uh grace people and so on, and th those are good things, but they even such good things, talk about being gospel-centered, even that can push Jesus aside, and so Jesus becomes just one brick in the wall of the system. And when you do that, it it just proves something very different to yeah, what you see there in Spurgeon, where he'll regularly, routinely be wanting to say, look to Jesus, this isn't an academic game, one more doctor interview to fill in to tick off. No, Jesus is at the center, and you must come to know him as the only solution, the only life, uh, the center, what it's all about. He's the father's joy, and the point of your existence is that he might become your joy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Amazing. And let's let's start to conclude with that because as as you were just reading out uh Spurgeon's sermon, I mean, that does something to my heart. That that just kind of what what is his doctrine of preaching that uh that allows him to do that and and that that proves so effective in the hearts of his hearers?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um Spurgeon had a very high theology of preaching, um, which I think today people read as simply a high view of the Bible. Now it's slightly different. Of course, he had a high view of the Bible, the highest view of the Bible. But his high view of preaching was um he believed that he was called 2 Corinthians 5 to be an ambassador of God, imploring you be reconciled to God.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so his motto would be we preach Jesus Christ. We preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. Um, 2 Corinthians uh 4, 5. And so it's really all about not simply depositing information for people, not simply enabling people to see the truths of the gospel, but standing in the pulpit as the very herald of Christ with his authority imploring the world to be reconciled. And I think that's vital for young preachers to know, young evangelists to know that when I talk to young evangelists, so often I find one of the first problems they talk about is nervousness. And I always want to say, why? Why are you nervous? And of course, the answer is people are looking at me. And see, I'm naturally an introvert, I'm quite a shy person. But so if you interview me at the front of something, I always get a bit shy and nervous at that. I don't particularly like talking about myself in public. But when I talk about Christ, the nervousness goes because even though I see all these people looking at me, I know if I'm doing a faithful job, they're not looking at me, they're looking at Christ. Yeah, that's what I'm seeking to do. Um and therefore the nerves disappear because it's it's that old view of preaching that uh Spurgeon shared that Calvin put it, he said, um, when a man ascends into the pulpit, it is so that people may hear God speaking through the mouth of a human being.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03What a high view of evangelism, of preaching. What an honor to be part of.
SPEAKER_01And I I mean, I quote that Calvin quote all the time, as much as I can, and and Luther said many similar things, and the the second Helvetic Confession, you know, the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God's.
SPEAKER_03Is the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01Is the Word and people start, you know, looking at their shoes and sort of twisting their Bible and their hands and feeling very, very nervous at what was a sort of a foundation to the ministry of the reformers. Yes. Why have we shifted so much? And and what are you doing, for instance, in your preaching course to kind of try and address this and get heralding evangelists going?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I I think part of it comes from being reactionary as evangelicalism for too long. I think um for a long time through the 20th century, the problem for evangelicalism was the liberals. So how do we define ourselves? Well, we're not liberals. What's the liberal problem? Well, they have a low view of the Bible. So who are we? We're people who have a high view of the Bible. And I think classic evangelicalism, going back to people like Spurgeon and Sibs and Luther, um, said, well, of course we have the very highest view of the Bible, but that doesn't, that's not the full orb of what we're talking about. We have the highest view of the Bible because we're Jesus people, because we want to proclaim him. And therefore, in preaching in evangelism, I'm not simply seeking to show that I have a high view of the Bible. Of course, it's the inerrant word of God, and I never depart from that. Absolutely, that's bedrock of my beliefs, but I'm not simply seeking to show that, prove it, or explicate it. I'm seeking to bring people to know Jesus, which is the very point of the scriptures that proclaim him. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01And it's about serving up the meal, not giving the recipe. Exactly. He is, yeah, he is the meal. That is so very, very helpful, Mike. Um, final question: what do you what do you hope for your book, Christ Our Life?
SPEAKER_03I would like people to find the joy they have in the Christian life is him. I'd like them to find deeper joy in him and to find that nothing else in Christianity is so satisfying, so beautiful, so desirable, so attractive as Jesus.
SPEAKER_01Wonderful. And I can testify as a reader, that's exactly what it's done for me. It's been like a wonderful soak in a bath of gorgeous Jesus-centered truths, and yes, it's done my soul a lot of good. So thank you for writing it, Mike. And uh Wonderful, thank you. And uh we can pray that it goes out and and uh has a huge effect on the church and uh gets us back to Christ, our cornerstone.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01Wonderful. Thank you so much, Mike, for joining us.
SPEAKER_03Hey, thanks, Glenn. It's been great to be with you.
SPEAKER_01No problem, and we'll see you again on the Evangelist Podcast.
SPEAKER_03Cheers. Bye.
SPEAKER_02Well, that was that was great, Glenn.
SPEAKER_01Uh what what struck you about uh Mike Reeves and his I think what always sort of strikes me is just how he said the core of what he does is teach people who is God and what is salvation. And that strikes people as news. So that's that's both disturbing, but it's also reassuring to know that actually if you do get back to basics and figure out who is the God of Jesus and what is the salvation he offers, if you get back to those basic questions, it then unfolds so fruitfully.
SPEAKER_02It's so good to have a like a fresh look, someone who's kind of uh you know, thought through these things again, you know, because sometimes you hear a Bible teacher and you think they're really good and they are, but sometimes you he you hear the same thing over and over, and then you know, people repeat what they've heard and you know whereas Mike he's gone back and thought through things again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I think that determination not to use jargon helps him to be fresh and clear. Yeah. Um because, you know, as as he said in the interview, that jargon can often obscure your own ignorance and your own lack of clarity of thought in things, and it certainly obscures people's appreciation and and reception of those truths. Um and so him trying to sweep away that jargon just helps these truths to come across with with fresh power. It's great.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, excellent. Good. Okay, well, just to remind you then, uh there's there's six books on offer here for our Providential winner. For our providential giveaway, yeah. The six books are Mike Reeves' book Christ Our Life, uh The Incarnation. On the Incarnation? On the Incarnation with Athanasius with the C.S. Lewis Intro.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_02Because you said that was worth it just for that. Freedom of a Christian by Martin Luther, Table Talk as well by Martin Luther, The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbs, and Christ's Glorious Achievements by Charles Spurgeon.
SPEAKER_01This is possibly the greatest bundle of six books in the history of Christendom.
SPEAKER_02All you need to do to get a chance at this bundle is to enter your email address on revivalmedia.org slash TEP69. And at the end of September we'll pull out one email address from that hat, and we'll send the bundle off. So go and do that. If while you're there you can leave us a rating and review on iTunes, that would be great. Revivalmedia.org slash TEP69. So listen now, next week for an interview with Peter Meade, hopefully. Peter Meade, yeah.
SPEAKER_01No, he's written a great new book called Please to Dwell, all about the incarnation. It's not only about the incarnation and has all sorts of advent and Christmassy themes, but it's also a wonderful Bible overview as well, and he'll be talking about uh Cordeo, uh the course that he runs in trying to train people up for sharing the gospel.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Well, thanks very much for listening and see you next one.
SPEAKER_00See ya.