Today on the Evangelist Podcast, Glenn talks to Paul Blackham about sharing the good news.
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_01So Glenn, we're recording this uh three and a half hours uh after you've been in the pub, is that right?
SPEAKER_03That's right, I've been in the pub for the last three and a half hours. Have you been doing well? Um go online and find our new video, uh Life According to Jesus. And uh we shared that uh recently, and you'll get to see Andy's own handiwork. Because um we we discovered that with a with one of those drawing kind of videos, being left-handed is a bit of a killer.
SPEAKER_01Glenn is left-handed.
SPEAKER_03No, very sinister. So, yes, it it covers up everything that you're drawing, so you can't do that. So Andy stepped into the breach, and uh your artwork is is that the sort of the first bit of artwork you've done since about eight years old? I'm not saying it definitely looks like that, but it kind of looks like that. No. No. How dare you! And his watercolours hang above his mantlepiece. So anyway, life according to Jesus, which is a way of doing 3, 2, 1, on a sheet of paper. And uh a lot of people shared it on their Facebook walls, and a friend of mine shared it, and her brother um made a silly joke about it on his Facebook page. Brother is not a not a Christian. And I sort of made a silly joke back, and I think this is I'm being vindicated for being so frivolous. It's like me, me making stupid gags has actually paid off for once in my life. Because uh he sort of laughed at my funny gag, and then he said, Actually, I've been thinking about Christianity a little bit. Would you like to get up meet meet together and talk about it? So that's what we just did.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_03Um so three and a half hours in the pub, and he brought a friend of his who is um who had a lot of uh questions and we chatted back and forth, and we're gonna do it again uh quite soon.
SPEAKER_01So Well, it's good that these things can sort of spark conversation, you know, and uh get dialogue going really.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Yeah, so so that's a good working day, isn't it? Off to the pub.
SPEAKER_01And what are you what are you doing at the moment?
SPEAKER_03You you're doing um holiday club or yeah, I'm doing a uh a youth holiday club, so talks all throughout the evenings this week. And then next week. I've got to finish off the the final, final, final draft of 321. Right. And uh and then it goes off to the publishers. So I'd uh yeah, value people's prayer for that. I'd uh just get it clear and helpful for people.
SPEAKER_01Good. Okay, well uh what are we gonna do today then?
SPEAKER_03We're gonna have a listen to a video uh dialogue between myself and Paul Blackham, and obviously you won't be able to see it, but um there is a YouTube uh video of it that you can have a look at if you wanna if you want to see uh either of our faces. Um inadvisable probably, but uh so we're gonna play a third of it. Now, which is just uh Paul Blackham and myself uh talking about uh the God that Jesus reveals.
SPEAKER_01Just remind us who Paul Blackham is.
SPEAKER_03The Reverend Dr. Paul Blackham is um an incredible guy and uh a good friend of mine and a very intelligent man and a huge heart for people, and he has been leading a church plant up in Tarleton, which is up near Preston in Lancashire, and he's now um going down to Neath to lead a church plant uh just next to Swansea uh in South Wales. He's a a brilliant mind and a person who loves uh reaching out with the good news of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01And he's a very good communicator, he's easy to listen to, isn't he?
SPEAKER_03He's passionate, which is good. Yes, so we sort of spark off each other for an hour. So we didn't we didn't think you could uh handle an hour of us, so we sort of chopped it into three instead.
SPEAKER_01Great, okay, let's take a listen then.
SPEAKER_02Hey, here we are in on the south coast of England in amazing weather. I'm with Glenn Scrivener here. He's evangelist uh from the Hour of Revival Ministries, and we're really thinking about how to share Jesus with the whole world, everyone we meet, we're looking, there's hundreds and hundreds of people outside, and we keep thinking, let's go out and tell them all about Jesus. But before we do that, we've got to think, how do we do that? And Glenn's been thinking a lot about how to share P the the Lord Jesus with people. How can we actually do that? Is it impossible to do? Is it too difficult? Lots of us think, I don't know how to do that. Well, Glenn's been thinking about it, and he's developed a resource called 3, 2, 1.
SPEAKER_03What's that? Well, 321 is just a gospel outline and it doesn't tell you all the events that happen in the Bible, and it doesn't really tell you all the events that happen uh in the gospel, even, but it gives you a context in which to think about the gospel and think about Jesus and what he's done for us. So 3-2-1 is is sort of the mnemonic, and uh uh three is uh God is three persons united in love. So it's uh a truth about Trinity. So um I I often perhaps go to uh Jesus' baptism, perhaps from Mark chapter 1 or Luke chapter 3, um, and I talk about well, there is Jesus uh at the Jordan River, at the Sinners Convention, and uh all the people who know that they're spiritually rubbish show up and they confess their sins. They show up, they say, Look, I need a wash on the inside, not just on the outside, on the inside. And uh and they jump in the water, and then Jesus shows up, and he actually jumps in the water with them. It's it's this incredible truth that he comes to join us in our filth in order that we might join him in his family. And here's where I start talking about three. What's Jesus' family? As he comes up out of the water, the Holy Spirit comes on him like a dove, and the whole uh and the Father says, You are my son who I love, with you I am well pleased. And that's the three. Jesus, full of the Spirit, the Son of the Father, and I say, That's the family you are made for. This family of love. And Jesus came into our filth to invite you into that family. So that's the good news. Trinity is the good news that God is love and you're invited. That's the truth of three. And then I start talking about two, and I say, sort of, the world is shaped by two representatives. The Bible tells a story that in the beginning there was Adam, and uh Adam was kind of like a ruler over the world, uh, and yet through mistrust, Adam turned from himself, turned in on himself, turned from God, and and kind of plunged the world into death and curse and chaos. Uh, and and the reason why there's such darkness in the world is that uh Adam, uh the head of our human race, has turned away from God, and we're all just chips off the same block. We all participate in that same kind of broken humanity, and we feel the curse of this broken world. It doesn't look very cursed right now, does it? No. And yet, you know, just just out of shot, there's a there's a one of the other peers that was here uh many years ago is just burnt down. It's an old wreck of a thing. And actually, you know, the world is very much like that wonderful beginning, and yet through Adam has come down into curse. Jesus is the second Adam, he is the second one of the of the truth of two, and he comes into our humanity to do right what we always do wrong. So he lives the life that we should have lived, and then on the cross he dies the death that we should uh we should die for all our sins, takes all that sin on himself and exhausts God's anger on that cross, takes the punishment that we deserve, goes down into the grave, rises up again and says, Belong to me. And that's really the truth of one. The truth of one is we are born one with Adam, we're all chips off the old block, we all participate in the old humanity, we're all selfish like he was selfish, and we're all suspicious like he was suspicious, we're all self-justifying like he was self-justifying. Uh, and yet Jesus says, Well, belong to me, come to me, be one with me, and uh and you know what, you can give me all your sin, I'll take it, and I'll take it and I'll pay for it on that cross, and then I'll give you all my righteousness, we'll be one forever. And now, as we're one with Jesus, we're filled with his same spirit, we call on that same Father, and we belong to Jesus forever, we're we're we're part of the three. So that's that's kind of one way of doing it. Three, two, and one.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so that's the overview of how three, two, one works and how we explain all that. But if I can, now let's take that apart a little bit and look at each bit more individually. And if I can just put some of the questions that people might have on, and that I might have two about these. Three, then two, then one. Let's begin with that three. Because I mean, uh, maybe a lot of people would go, uh, three, what's he going to talk about then? It can't be God because God's number is one. One God. And loads of times when you get books on theology, they'll go, oh, the big thing about God is there's one God. And then Christians would tend to go, well, the most important thing about us were monotheists, meaning the most the most important thing about us is we believe in one God, and we're a bit like Muslims, we're a bit like Jews, we're a bit like anyone else who believes in one God. And then, okay, we do have a few other things we believe in as well, and we'll get to those later, but let's do the big stuff first, that there's one God and the number is one. But you're like, no, no, the number is three things. Three is the magic number. You can't can't we just use the word God and then leave all that. I know the Trinity stuff, isn't that like an advanced module? Why do we we don't start with Trinity, do we?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I know you don't believe all of that. Um I think a huge question in evangelism is which God are we talking about? Which God are we talking about? You know, and if somebody on the streets, if I stopped somebody on the streets and started talking to them about God, you know, uh probably more than 50% would say, yeah, I kind of believe in God. Less than 50% would say, yeah, I don't believe in God, but in neither case would they probably be talking about Jesus. And I think the big question if someone says they do believe in God is which God? And if someone says they don't believe in God, the big question is, well, which God don't you believe in? And if you ask someone on the on the beach, which God don't you believe in, you can be sure that they'd start describing pretty much the individual like up in the sky, high on power, low on personality, um, you know, which who is an eminently rejectable God. You know, and and we might find ourselves agreeing with the non-Christian. They say, Well, I I'm not really into God because I think he's like that. And and I think the Christian can say, You're right, you're right, you know, that's not God. Let me tell you about Jesus. And I think the truth of three is trying to put Jesus front and center in the issue of God. Um because I mean, trying to I'm not even trying to be Trinitarian. Like, in a sense, I mean, who cares about the name Trinity? Yeah, yeah. Who cares about being Trinitarian? What I want to talk about is the God of Jesus. Yeah. But as soon as you talk about the God of Jesus, you're talking about the one who is filled with the Spirit, that's what Christ means, and he's Son of the Father, the Son of God. And the most the most obvious way that Jesus is always described in the Bible is he is the Christ, the Son of God. So if you want to talk about the God of Jesus, you gotta talk about three, you've got to talk about Trinity. Um and it's and it's not bad news to talk about Trinity, it's it's it's a fantastic thing, isn't it? You know?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, I think that's so important that if we want to talk about Jesus, you cannot postpone talk about the real and living God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the real and living God, you if we just say, Well, I want to talk about the real and living God, but we'll we'll leave that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whoa! That the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, that is the real and living God. There's nothing to say about God. You can't say, well, let's what about the idea that sometimes people say, well, let's just talk about the being of God. Let's establish that God exists and they let's, you know, whatever. We'll leave all that about who there is, but let's talk about the being of God, the existence of God, and and then let's get that out there first and prove the existence of God. And then, okay, maybe we could go into this other stuff later. Is that feasible?
SPEAKER_03Um, no, uh not not for a second, because I mean, A, A, you've got an eminently rejectable God. You let's let's start with you know pure power in the sky. Let's start with that as a as a as a as a building block. Does that does that help you? Just from an emotional level, that's that's not a great start. But but the real thing that kills it is what are you gonna do about Jesus? If you're not gonna begin with Jesus, how are you gonna get him in later on? And if he comes later on, you're gonna give very much the impression uh that he's just this secondary figure who shows up halfway through human history, uh, you know, who has nothing to do with creation and fall and all the problems of life, but he's this this sort of third party who comes in and then God zaps him on the cross. Hang on, you know, how that's how unfair. Either that or or he just people people very often preach like this, you know, that there's just this God, and then God comes in the flesh, and God dies, and God rises again, and and you know, it's an ancient heresy called modalism, yes, um, uh, and roundly condemned throughout church history, rightly so. If you want to confess Christ properly, you've got to begin with Christ. You can't crowbar Christ in later once you've already defined who God is. It just doesn't work.
SPEAKER_02I think that's helpful because there is a way in which sometimes people say, let's get stuff, reason stuff, and like the existence of God or some kind of God, that's stuff that's reason. We can do, let's do all that, and then we can build on top of that some of this revelation stuff, and maybe we could bring Jesus in at that point and maybe a bit of Trinity. But of course, it seems to me if you do that, you're kind of saying Trinity and Jesus is irrational, yeah. Whereas monotheism, yeah, that's really rational. So then we're really kind of saying, well, the Muslims then and then and and and Unitarians, they're kind of more rational because they're saying we're just gonna do the reason thing, yeah, and we won't we don't want to do the irrational stuff. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03No, that's gotta be wrong. And so often I mean, the prime evangelistic strategy is just to get the scriptures into people's hands, and and so what I'm always trying to do is put is put especially the gospels into people's hands, and and what I see is unbelievers reading through the gospels and they meet this laughing, crying, angry, despondent at times, full of you know, full of life and vitality and dependence on God, and and and this God who bleeds and suffers and dies, and all this sort of stuff. But if we've begun with, I know who God is, God is the unmoved mover, right? Yes, and then they see this most moved, most moving Christ, and they say, Oh, I'm really attracted to that guy. Um, how does that how does that go together with this God who you've already introduced me to? Yeah, and then at that point you have to do some real jiggery pokery and kind of say, ah yeah, well, that's just the humany bit of God, and uh that's the humany bit of Jesus, and there's there's another God bit of Jesus that's not like that at all. And and the non-Christian is not impressed by that.
SPEAKER_02But suddenly what sounded so simple and attractive is this incredibly complicated philosophical system, yeah. And that's and that's never gonna do. And that's because I that's why I know that we both like that quote from Athanasius, where he's really at in his day that was going on, where there were people who were saying, hang on a minute, we already know what God's like. God's like this. Yeah. Ah, now Jesus, um, he looks a bit different. He doesn't quite fit into the God we already know, and we got all the main things about God here. Ah, uh, Jesus, yeah, he doesn't like that. Actually, he's not probably really God. Let's make him a junior assistant. A junior assistant. So, what's the quote? Go on, you give it, it's beautiful.
SPEAKER_03The only system of thought into which Jesus Christ will fit is the one in which he's the starting point. What does that mean in that way? It means that unless you begin by talking about the God of Jesus, you can never put a truly divine, fully, fully divine Jesus into your story. Yeah. Because he's always gonna have to slot in under this other thing that you've defined to be God in the at the outset. So that's why you begin with three. That's why you begin with the God of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02And it's why it's sometimes I I I I will read big theology books since I was quite small, and I look back and I think quite a few of the ones on my shelf have. I'll open them up and it'll be this is the doctrine of God or something. And there might be like 190 pages saying about this is all the things we know about God before we ever mention Jesus or the Trinity.
SPEAKER_03I've got a I've got one on my shelf that's 620 pages.
SPEAKER_02Wow!
SPEAKER_03Until you get to Jesus.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that's a record. I'm gonna have to try and beat. No, I don't want to be too. That's a horrible book. But isn't that nuts where a person and that presumably is written by a Christian? Oh, yeah. Inverted comment, whatever, you know. Yeah, yeah. But it's a isn't that an incredible situation to be in where he probably was trying to write that with good intentions and trying to say, I want to say everything I know about God before I get to Jesus, and we'd want to go, whoa! Yeah, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_03And then the Trinity just becomes one of the many flavorings to God. You know, one of the aspects of God is that he's Trinity, but but not that his fundamental character and nature is Father, loving Son in the power and joy of the Holy Spirit. Once you begin there, oh my goodness, you've you've got such an attractive God, don't you? Right there, you've got 1 John 4. You know, God is love. You know, it doesn't just say God is loving, as though that's one aspect of his character. He's quite loving and he's quite just and he's quite fair and he's compassionate. No, he is love in that. He is a father always pouring life and love in the Spirit onto his son. And when you begin evangelism there, it's very much a case of saying, there is a family, do you want to belong? Yes. When you just begin with the power God from the beginning, how is your gospel gonna sort of unpack? It's got to have to be, God is big, bow. Yes. It's gonna have to be it. Yeah. That's how the gospel will necessarily develop if you don't begin with three.
SPEAKER_02Yes, so then the the it's all about power, submit, all that. And that's why even when we start on page one of the Bible, and then you if you try and read that as if and you've got in your head this one single person thing, you can't make sense of the world, you can't make sense of yourself. But when we read it as it's actually written, the Father creates everything through his word in the power of the Spirit. That's there on page one of the Bible. Then you look at the world and you see there is a way in which it's all held together, it's got an underlying unity, but the diversity of it all and human life like that. Instead of like those views that have this one absolute thing are saying, everybody's got to be the same, speak the same language, dress the same clothes, and nobody's allowed to be different. Yeah. And then the living God's like, no, no, actually, I love everyone being quite different, and then there's also a way in which we're all together.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and there's harmony and all that sort of stuff. So I mean there's some teaching I do on Genesis 1 in which I sort of say, in the beginning, what do you picture? And I reckon you've only got four options, really. In the beginning there was nothing, and then boom, out of nothing comes everything. Life's an absurdity then. Or in the beginning there was chaos, just warring forces and that kind of thing. They're life, therefore life's just a battle these days. Or in the beginning there was power. Maybe there was just this one God. Yes. But then all of life is slavery. Yes. What if in the beginning there was love? In which case, doesn't that make sense of why the greatest things at the end of today will be people?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, when my head hits the pillow, I will love, you know, these interactions and I will love communication and and the things that hurt the most are when relationships are broken. Doesn't this make sense of our world? Doesn't it make sense of our world when we begin with three?
SPEAKER_02I love that. And it just in my own experience, when I uh we first really starting to learn how to share Jesus with people, and Liz, my wife, and I, we go to Speaker's Corner, and then we met uh Muslims and lots of other people with different ideologies and things, and of course, those are the first things they came at us, is like, yeah, what's this Trinity thing? Yeah, and we were we hadn't thought it through remotely enough, and we genuinely were just like, I don't know, it's a mystery. Which we could have got away with before, but of course, these people were quite right now. I'm always grateful to them for saying rubbish. Yeah, you're coming here trying to sell something and you don't even know what it is.
SPEAKER_03And your foundation is the mystery.
SPEAKER_02Your foundation, like when we get to the bottom, you say you don't know what you're standing on, which we were rot, because we of course that's absurd. If I cannot say this is what I mean by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I shouldn't be saying anything. So we have to spend a year like going back to the scripture and saying, surely the Bible tells us what this means, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which of course the Bible does in beautiful ways all the time. I mean, far from it being this incredibly difficult thing to understand, it's actually amazingly simple. And I love the fact the Bible kind of begins where the the Trinity goes, let's make something that's let's can we let's make an example of us so that people will find us really easy to understand. And what happened?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so they so God made humanity, male and fame and female, he he created them uh in in order to bring them together as one to you know to be fruitful and make a third. And you know, so what what does it look like for God to be pictured in this world? It looks like community, it looks like persons united in love. Therefore, what's a good definition of God? What about three persons united in love? And then when the Muslim asks that question and and they get the the straight answer, three persons united in love, it it suddenly you can move the conversation forward. Before you if you if you if you fudged on that question, then you're scuppered. And quite rightly you're scuppered. Because they've just asked you the most fundamental truth about your God, and you don't know. You don't even know. But I mean, th I mean I mean you've helped me so much with with Trinity, and and and I remember going into a university last year, uh, had a very large Muslim presence. The the the Muslim uh the Islamic society was about four or five times the size of the Christian Union. Right. And we were doing these events, and uh the Islamic society were always sending people in to ask questions. Um and in a two hour hour two hour event, they they sent in five different groups of people to ask questions at various points, and then they'd leave again. And of course, the only question they asked was, I don't And understand the Trinity. Can you explain it to me? And and thankfully, because I've done some thinking about it, because I've been helped by you and by the scriptures and by others, I was just able to say three persons united in love. What was fascinating was they would get that answer, have nothing more to say, and leave. The next person would come in and be unaware that that question had been asked and answered. And by the third or fourth time, I was getting non-Christians in the room to answer the question.
SPEAKER_02It's three persons united in love.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and and at that point you can then move the conversation on. That's great.
SPEAKER_02Maybe if I just have one more question on the three and then we'll move on. There's a lot of people would go, I know a way of understanding the Trinity. It's a bit like, hang on, let me get a block of ice and then I'll warm it up and it becomes water and then keep warming it up and it becomes steam. That's the Trinity. That's the Trinity.
SPEAKER_03Is that good? Or there's a banana?
SPEAKER_02I've not heard that.
SPEAKER_03Okay, you peel the banana, you put your finger down on the top of the banana and it peels into three different sections. Would you believe it? Father, son, and spirit. Brilliant. Or is it brilliant? It's not brilliant at all. Or is there's quite a few of these, aren't there? Cheesecake. Somebody came up with cheesecake.
SPEAKER_02Cheesecake. Well, that sounds like I like it already.
SPEAKER_03The base, the filling, and then the chocolate sprinkling. I don't know which of the persons is the chocolate sprinkling, but. Oh man, I'll think of that. What's wrong? Are they good or bad? Well, A, they're hideous for teaching heresy, aren't they? Because I mean the block of ice, let's take that.
SPEAKER_02That's the most famous one, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03H2O is never all three states at once. According to my limited knowledge of the year.
SPEAKER_02That's true, because even when they I've seen it done, when they have a block of ice and then they have a bunsen burner, and then we watch as it goes from ice to water to steam, and then they go, There you go, Trinity. There you go, Trinity.
SPEAKER_03But what's that preaching? The Father in the incarnation becomes the Son, and then in the ascension of Bypentecost becomes the spirit. Oh, that's you've just got that modalism heresy on your hands. What I find fascinating about that is why anyone ever needs analogies. Like literally, you say three persons united in love.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Do you not know any of the examples like that? Can you think of something a bit like that? Like walking along, it's like an egg. There's a shell.
SPEAKER_03Like, why do you even need that? I think it it just shows how how far we are from a biblical understanding of Trinity that we even reach for these illustrations. Why do we need three persons united in love? A three-year-old understands that.
SPEAKER_02A three-year-old And that's why it's great with church as well, where you'll say, I tell you, I love it where the Earth Church Fathers would always go, I'll tell you what, just go to church. You'll know what we're talking about. And that's that John 17, 21. John 17.
SPEAKER_03I pray that they will be one, Father, just as you and I are one. So in what way is God one? Yeah. Go to your local church.
SPEAKER_02You'll see it.
SPEAKER_03See persons united in love. Beautiful. Who is God? Three persons united in love.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well that feels perhaps if we've uh cut it off a bit sharply, but uh you'll have to wait till next week for the second installment. And number two. Unless you're good on Google searches. That's right. So that's that's three, looking at uh God and the Trinity, and that next time we're going to be looking at two.
SPEAKER_03That's right. The world shaped by two representatives, and we'll see what the implications of that are for evangelism. Like should we talk about Adam? How do we talk about Adam? What benefits are there in talking about Adam? What benefits are there in talking about being shaped by different representatives? What happens when you don't have those categories in your evangelism? We'll be talking about all sorts of things like that.
SPEAKER_01Okay, something to look forward to. Well, thanks very much for listening. If you'd like to check out the video for the interview, uh you can go to this episode's webpage, which is revivalmedia.org slash tep64, and we'll have all the links there. Also on that page, if you consider giving us a rating and review on iTunes, there's a link there. Uh, we'd be very grateful if you could do that. It helps us to get seen by more people. So that's it for now. Thanks very much for listening, and uh we'll see you next time.
SPEAKER_03Bye.