Today on the Evangelist Podcast, we're looking at the Gospel presentation 321.
SPEAKER_02The 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_03Welcome back to the Evangelist Podcast. This is the show where we encourage you in your witness to your friends, family, and even complete strangers. If you like listening each week, we'd really appreciate a rating and review on iTunes. It helps us get seen by more people. You can just go to revivalmedia.org slash iTunes. That will take you directly to the podcast page on iTunes where you can leave us a review and rating. We'd be very grateful if you could do that. Or if you'd like to share it on Stitcher Radio or any other platform that you're listening on, that would be great. Now Glenn, we've looked at three from the Gospel presentation 321, and now we're gonna listen to two from the original video presentation.
SPEAKER_00Two. God placed one man, Adam, at the head of the world to bless it and care for it. But through mistrust, Adam turned from God, turned in on himself, and plunged the world into death and curse. It was a cosmic fall from grace. Now we all share in this broken humanity, and we feel the curse of this broken world. The human race is like a Christmas tree that's been cut down and wrenched from its natural habitat. We might dress ourselves up in fancy decorations, we might perform all sorts of good deeds, but we're perishing. We have no spiritual life in us, and we're headed for the rubbish dump. The race of Adam stands under God's condemnation. God has pronounced an eternal no to that way of life. Because he wants something very different for us. He wants us all to find true life in a second Adam. Jesus Christ. At Christmas, Jesus came as a man. He entered into our broken world and took up our lost cause. Like a champion who wins the contest for us, Jesus stepped into our shoes and lived the perfect life we could never live. Then on the cross, he died the cursed death that we should die. He summed up Adam's nature and curse and took it down to the hellish death it deserves. But three days later, he rose again to a new life beyond death and curse. And he invites us into his life and into his family.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so there we have it. Glenn, the Bible doesn't speak about Adam and Christ very much. The phrase original sin is not a phrase in the Bible, so why do we bring it into evangelism?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I guess it's uh it's exactly the same question as last week we were thinking about Trinity, and you know, the phrase, you know, the the term trinity is not in the Bible, why bring it up in evangelism? Uh the phrase original sin is not in the Bible, why bring it into evangelism? And again, I'd say, well, I'm not so bothered about the phrase, but I am bothered about the concept, because again, throughout the history of the church, we as evangelists have seen uh how valuable these doctrines are, and when you do without these doctrines, um it leads to all sorts of trouble. And and actually when you read the Bible with these kind of categories of Adam and Christ, of original sin, when you read the Bible, um actually these concepts unlock the Bible. They clarify, they don't complicate. Just as with Trinity, Trinity is not introduced as a complication, it's actually introduced to clarify things. So Adam and Christ and and original sin uh is meant to clarify things. And and when you when you understand Adam and Christ, you do see that again from the very earliest pages of the Bible, where we're taught these things about uh the the nature of the human race. It's very interesting, isn't it, in uh in Genesis chapter one, how on the third day, you know, day of resurrection, on the third day, um we we're told about uh the seed-bearing plants that produce fruit with seed in it. And and and Moses goes over the ground very laboriously to talk about how, yes, seed grows into a plant that bears fruit that gives seed that grows into a plant that bears fruit that brings seed that goes in yeah, and all according to its kind. So you've got this this very um strict sort of botanical category about seeds reproducing according to their kind, and then you get to Genesis chapter two, and um you could translate it, the Lord planted Adam in the garden. Is he a tree? Well, actually he he and Eve are called to be fruitful and multiply. Is the human race a crop? It kind of is. And it's a crop that reproduces according to its seed, according to its kind. And uh and of course Adam and Eve get it wrong and kind of pervert the c the the the crop. There's a blight on the on the on the human race, on the family tree. There's a blight on the family tree, and yet even within Genesis chapter three, verse fifteen, what is the hope? The hope is the seed. Ah, the seed of the woman's gonna come and crush the head of Satan. So here is another kind of humanity that's that's gonna enter into ours and and kind of be a different kind. So that just as we've borne the likeness of the earthly man, so we will bear the likeness of the heavenly man. That's one Corinthians fifteen. And and and what Paul's doing in one Corinthians fifteen is just reflecting on these big biblical categories. That the human race is like a crop. We are like a, as I said in the gospel explanation, we're like a Christmas tree cut down, severed from our natural habitat, we're perishing. And our problem really is our being, far more than it's our behavior. Our behavior is just the fruit that comes from our being. And once you once you read the Bible in terms of you get Genesis one to three in place, you get Romans five, in which Adam and Christ is really taught very powerfully, you get one Corinthians fifteen, where again Adam and Christ is taught very powerfully, you start to see that the problem with the human race is not so much our behavior, it's our being. And when you start your presentation on that footing, it helps you to have a much healthier gospel.
SPEAKER_03So what happens when you don't mention Adam and Christ, an original sin in your gospel explanation?
SPEAKER_00Well, historically in the church you get uh someone called Pelagius coming along, and uh Pelagius was um probably the the greatest theologian produced um by Britain ever, uh, and he was a heretic. Um certainly in terms of the shaping of the doctrine of the church. Pelagius has sort of contributed to the shaping of the doctrine of the church by being an arch heretic. Um but um he would say, yeah, the problem is we're bad boys and girls. Jesus comes and he kind of there there is a kind of a cross thing and he does he does do a sort of bit of a payment thing for our for our sins, but essentially we copy Adam by doing bad things. What's the solution? We need to copy Jesus by doing good things. And the centre of gravity for his gospel w was me and my behaviour. So he hated the idea of original sin. He hated the idea that that we could be cut off because we just are born into a humanity that's estranged from God. He said, no, no, no, the problem's gotta be with me, you know, the problem's gotta be in in my own hands. It's interesting. Whenever you want the problem to be in your own hands, it's because you want the solution to be on your own hands as well. My problem is I do naughty stuff, my solution I need to start doing good stuff. My problem is I copied Adam, but the solution is I need to copy Jesus. Augustine came out all guns blazing against him and just turned him to especially Romans chapter five and looked at the Adam and Christ stuff and said, No, sin came into the world through one man and death came through sin, and in this way sin came to all men because all sinned. All sinned in Adam, says Augustine. You can't get around that. Therefore, the problem with the human race is our being. Therefore, we must be born again. It doesn't matter how good Nicodemus is. He m it doesn't matter if he starts copying Jesus, does it? He must be born again. That's what Augustine has said, that's what we've said down through the history of of the church, and that's what our evangelism needs to say. If we don't be very clear on Adam and Christ and original sin, one thing that will happen is we will place our hearers at the centre of our message. There was a the ancient um ancient sort of Greek myths of Hercules. You know, Hercules had all his tasks to do, and there's there's one one point where he is at a crossroads, and uh there's virtue and there's vice, and they're both sort of women, and virtue and vice are trying to entice him. One wants him to go, you know, the way of virtue, one wants to to go the way of vice, and of course vice is sort of not dressed very well, and she's kind of you know not got a lot of clothes on. Um virtue is um is a beautiful woman, but you know, very prim and proper, and and and there is Hercules, and Hercules must make his decision. Is he gonna go left? Is he gonna go right? Is he gonna go with vice? Is he gonna go with virtue? And um good old Hercules, he chooses rightly. And so much evangelism can be right like that, can't it? It can sort of be, you know, there's a bad path that way, there's a good path that way, and you, you are at the crossroads. You must make the decision. And and all of a sudden we make the hearer into Hercules at the crossroads. Whereas actually, according to the Bible, the hearer of the gospel is not Hercules at the crossroads, it's Lazarus in the tomb, who has no power within themselves to respond and do the right thing. But suddenly they just hear the voice of Christ. So it's very interesting where where people start denying original sin, they start placing the hearers of the gospel at the centre of their gospel presentation. It all becomes uh uh about decision time. Um you also start if you if you neglect original sin, you s you start to diminish the nature of sin and judgment, because at that stage it's just about the bad stuff that I've done. And when you try to convict an unbeliever of their sin, you'll basically start to uh try and do an inventory of their, you know, past CV. You know, have you uh have you stolen from the office before? You know, have you had an abortion? Has your marriage failed ever? Um and you know, and for some some people m you know, might become very, very convicted about the abortion or whatever. Other people who who haven't had an abortion might might just, you know, feel perfectly fine with their life and and think, well, a few white lies here and there never hurt anybody. And it becomes when it gets boiled down to behaviour, it becomes very difficult to actually convict people of sin in a biblical sense. And in some presentations it's you know, it's you know, have you ever told a liar, then you're a liar. Have you ever told you know, have you ever uh had an angry thought, then you're a murderer. Have you ever lusted, then you're an adulterer. You're an adulterous lying murderer, then. You know. And I think at that stage a lot of non-Christians just think, hmm, I think that's overblown. Um if if you're just trying to nail me on a few different behaviours. But I think the Bible is far more interested in our being, so Jesus is always saying, out of the heart comes evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly, all these evils come from within a man and make them unclean. That's uh Mark chapter seven.
SPEAKER_03Is there not a responsibility then that we have over our own actions?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there totally is. There totally is. But the but our actions are the fruit of our being. So the fruit belongs to the tree, but the real issue, deeper than the fact that you've got, you know, twenty bad apples there, the deeper issue is that there's a blight on the tree and there's a diseased tree. And that's the same problem as the very prim and proper person who has trimmed and pruned their bad fruits, you know, quite well. They've only got one or two bad apples showing. And yet there is that same heart. You know, as I was um reading um through the Psalms recently, and and uh and David after he's just committed murder and adultery, he says, um uh what does he say? Um surely I've been a sinner from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. And it's that that idea that what he did as he's committing murder and and adultery, um, is it just reveals what he's always been like. You know, it's it that's just David with the handbrake off. So when I talk about sort of sin, I want to talk far more about being over behaviour. And for for one reason that's becoming more and more important these days, the non-Christian in the world does not think that Christians have a righteous standard by which to judge them. In the fifties they did. In the fifties, the the the non-Christian agreed, yeah, okay, the Bible's a righteous standard, and maybe I am a sinner, maybe I'm not. But at least we all we all recognize that the Bible has a righteous standard to hold over me. Today, the Bible is wicked. Today the Bible is evil and doesn't have a right to hold sinners to to behavioural account. Um so I think less it it will be less and less effective to try and convict people of behavioural sins according to the standard of the Bible held over them. But what I'm finding is quite effective is talking about our estranged being from God, the fact that we don't know God. I'm finding that much more useful in evangelism, and I think it the reason why it's more useful is because it's more biblical.
SPEAKER_03So, uh how should we speak about Adam and Christ? You know, the two the two natures. What's the practical outcome of it?
SPEAKER_00Well, not yeah, not everyone has um my family history, and very few people have my family history. But um I mean I I I use the example of Anne Forbes from my family history. She was my uh great-great great great great great grandmother, and uh she stole ten yards of printed printed cotton from a London market and was sentenced to death. Um then she had her sentence commuted to transportation to Australia, and so she was a convict, and you know, that's why I'm Austral why am I Australian? Well, one significant reason is one woman committed one crime and was exiled for it. And if you like, you know, I I was sort of shipped over to Australia in her, if you if you like. It's a weird way of thinking about it. But it it kind of does make sense. Everyone's got these stories in their family tree where at some point the family tree has jagged off into a different direction. You know, somebody in your family history crossed an ocean or survived the war or survived the plague or ran off with the servant girl, or you know, turned down the offer of marriage from the rich gentleman, or left the nunnery, or at some point, you know, the family tree kind of went in a in a very different direction. You had no choice in it. And you were just born into this situation. And and I I often say to people, you know, if if you even if you had the exact same genetic makeup and you were born in thirteenth century Prussia, would you be the same person? What uh like and would what would you have in common with your alternative thirteenth century Prussian self? Very little, actually. And it just goes to show that, you know, we want to define ourselves by our decisions, by our choices, because I'm Hercules at the crossroads. And actually, it's just, you know, I was born with the family that I've got, and I'm stuck with them. You know, I'm born with the genetics I've got, I'm stuck with them, born with the upbringing I've got, I'm stuck with them, born at the at the time that I've been born, I'm stuck with it, I'm born with uh the the environment and the culture around me, stuck with it. All these things. We we we j we just do find ourselves coming into this world, and so much has been set in stone, and it's got nothing to do with my choices. I often I often say that in my evangelism because uh our modern Western individualism kind of cuts against that massively, and we we just think we are, you know, we're self-made men and women and we we can do it ourselves. But I think just start talking in those categories about family. Um and the Bible says we have a family history, and that family history is that is that we've been estranged from God, we've been cut off from God. Just as I was born in Australia, far from the mother country, you know, we've all been born in exile, born far from the father's house. And I th I think that actually connects with unbelievers quite a lot. Like the the idea that we're far from God. A non-Christian might think that that's a a a killer argument against the gospel. I want to say actually the fact that you don't know God is kind of testimony to what the Bible's always been saying. The Bible's saying that we're estranged from God, we're alienated, there's been this divorce, we don't know God, and yet we we live in God's world and yet we don't know him. Isn't that weird? Like it's um so but but I think it's also undeniable, you know. And I often I often say, you know, I'll bet you've had the experience that I've had of praying to God and feeling like the prayer bounces off the ceiling. I bet you've felt cut off from God. You've you've at one stage I bet you've wanted there to be a God, but but you don't know know him. You know, Spike Milligan once said um uh he was asked, uh Spike, do you ever pray? And he says, Yes, I do pray desperately all the time, but I have no idea who I'm praying to. And and I think that is just where people are, and people are estranged. So you just say, Well, yeah, the Bible says the reason for that is we share a family history. And we also share family traits. And at that point, I I do want to talk about our fruit, but I want to talk talk about it in a an organic way. I want to talk about our works, our deeds, our sins in an organic way. So I talk about our family traits and uh I I usually reel off sort of five S's. Um First of all, there's suspicion. Just as Adam didn't trust God and thought, you know, he could make life work better if he, you know, mistrusted God and went his own way, so we all just naturally are suspicious of God. All of us, you know, even even Christians who are brought up brought up in the faith, we naturally have this inherent suspicion that God's probably a miser, prob God probably doesn't have my best in mind, and I'd better I'd better, you know, make sure um I do things my way, because I'm not sure I can trust God. We we've got this inherent suspicion. We've also got an inherent selfishness, just as Adam grasps after the fruit. Um so we say, you know, get out of my way, I'm gonna I'm gonna have what I want when I want it. Um there is that selfishness to us all. Then we've got this slavery. And and that that's really interesting, isn't it? When when you decide, okay, God can't be trusted, I need to grasp at life for myself, suddenly whatever you grasp at to give you life, you become enslaved to it. Because that little thing now is your God. That little thing has got to make life work, and so you've got to prop it up and you've got to make sure it doesn't topple over because it's your God. And so you end up start starting to serve this thing and be be enslaved to this thing. The Bible term for it obviously is idolatry. But it's something that we all can identify with. Um and again, you know, whether whether you've stolen stationary from the office, whether you've had the abortion, whether you've had the divorce, whether you know, these are much broader categories, suspicion, selfishness, slavery, also self-justification. Um we all do what Adam and Eve did. You know, what what happens when the Lord comes to them? Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent, and the serpent doesn't have the leg to stand on, and you know, it's the the old gag. Um But we're all into it, we're all into self-justification, like all the time. I I often, you know, tell the tell the gag about um George Carlin, a stand-up comic in in the States, he used to say, um It's a it's a rule of the road, isn't it? When you're driving, everyone who goes slower than you is an idiot, everyone who goes faster than you is a maniac, right? But you, you s you drive just right. You know, we're all into self-justification. And then we we there's you know the f the final uh S is just stuff ups. You know, there's just this just I I manage to sabotage my own happiness, I manage to sabotage your happiness. I I stand in the way of my own human flourishing better than ever anyone else. It's just this weird thing. And I I often talk in those terms, and the non-Christian gets that, you know. We are our own worst enemies. Isn't that weird? And that you know, the Bible says we share in these family traits. We are family. And there's been a family history, there's family traits, and there's a there's a family inheritance. If we're a tree that's been cut off, then we're perishing. And and and and that's the Bible term for it. And and the Bible says we we exist beyond death, but we can either be reconnected to the true tree, Jesus Christ, or we can remain in that perishing state, cut off. And and Jesus talks about the outer darkness and shut out of the feast and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. That's that's our perishing life going on forever. You don't want to do that, do you? You don't want to be there. That's why Jesus came. And once you've once you've preached it in those sorts of terms, then you see, ah, here is Jesus, here here is the true humanity that I can get grafted into. Here is the true family to belong to. Uh and all of a sudden I I I've set up the gospel in a way in which the grace of Jesus makes sense. Um that just as in Adam it's not so much my my behaviour that's got me in this fr you know mess um I am perishing. So now in Jesus, it's not my behaviour that's got me, you know, into the the good family, but suddenly I share in his wealth, I share in his family inheritance, and and I start to start to share in his family traits as well. So works do come into things, but they come into things on the far side of a radical insistence of uh on Adam and Christ.
SPEAKER_03Okay, well we've uh we've gone into it reasonable depth, and uh if you have any comments or questions about today's show, you can ask them by simply going to revivalmedia.org slash TEP twenty-eight. We've been looking at Adam and Christ, which is two out of the three two one gospel presentation. You can see the video of three two one on that page there. Next time we're going to be looking at one.
SPEAKER_00That's right. Yeah. Union with Jesus.
SPEAKER_03Okay, that's something to look forward to next time. Well, thanks for listening to the Evangelist Podcast. Just before we finish, I want to tell you about our daily prayer bulletin. It's a small twenty-four page booklet that tells thirty-one stories of what God is doing around the world. Did you know that the church in Egypt is uniting in prayer despite the recent unrest? Or that the Weyu tribe in Colombia are enrolled in Bible training? Well, you can hear more about it in our prayer bulletin, which you can get free of charge by going to revivalmedia.org slash bulletin. Thanks for listening to the Evangelist Podcast. The web address for this episode is again revivalmedia.org slash tep twenty eight.