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Keller on how this should challenge our hearts as Christians.

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A World of Idols – Timothy Keller [Sermon]

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Tim Keller sermons via Gospel in Life: The gospel should change not just our inner being but also the way we relate to the outside world. Paul engaged with society every day. He was distressed, indignant and compassionate about the Athenians' beliefs, but he kept his eyes on the cross to inform his words.

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A very interesting Bible overview in everyday language! Possibly so 'everyday' it would be weird for students, but a helpful demonstration that it can be done!

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Away in a Manger...Away in a what? Children's Christmas video

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If you want to know 'why the baby in the manger?' then here's a fun animation suitable for children this Christmas explaining the Bible in 117 seconds.

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3-2-1 by Glen Scrivener, a brilliant example of a jargon-free explanation of Jesus in 5 minutes

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321 - The Story of God the World and You!

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- It's an upside-down kingdom
- It's an inside-out kingdom
- It's a forward-back kingdom
3 very quick ideas that help when thinking about how the gospel might apply to different areas of life! Just Ctl+F "upside down" to skip straight to the juicy (ie. relevant) bit!

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Tim Keller Introduction
There are two ways in which, I think, one should 'dwell' in the gospel. The first way is that you must dwell with the gospel . That is, you live with--you deeply reflect upon and grasp--what the Bible means by 'gospel' and you learn to see the gospel of Jesus everywhere in it. That's what Jesus spent so much time teaching his disciples about after his resurrection ( Biblically Luke 24 .) To them the Bible was a mish-mash of narratives, laws, and directions. They didn't see the unifying theme of the Bible-salvation by grace through Christ.

The second way is that you must dwell with the gospel ' This means you must have your inner being and character shaped by the gospel. Everything you do must be 'in line with the truth of the gospel' ( personally. Colossians 3:16 literally says that-the gospel (the ' word of Christ' ) must 'dwell in you richly. Gal 2:14 .)

It is impossible to cover both of these topics today. But since the second kind of dwelling depends on the first kind (and since there are a lot of resources in Redeemer for the second kind-e.g. the Galatians curriculum) I'm going to look at the first. Even so, I can't even cover this topic fully. To dwell with the gospel Biblically not only means I have to understand what the New Testament says the gospel is, but how every part of the Old Testament points us to fulfillment in Jesus. I won't go into this latter subject.
Part 1 - Getting the gospel There is only one gospel.
A generation ago, it would have been hard to imagine evangelicals unable to agree on what the simple gospel is:

1) God made you and you must have a relationship with him,

2) but your sin separates you from God.

3) Jesus, God's Son took the punishment your sins deserved.

4)If you repent for your sins and trust in his work for your salvation, you will be forgiven, justified and accepted freely by grace, and indwelled with his Spirit until you die and go to heaven.

But many today challenge this way of expressing the gospel. In A New Kind of Christian

Dunn and McLaren are not saying that these various gospels in the New Testament are directly contradictory to each other, but that they are so remarkably diverse in their perspective that it is impossible to make a list or outline and point to it and say: 'there is simple gospel.'

I believe we must side with Dodd over Dunn if we are to be true to first century Christians' own understanding of the gospel. Paul in Galatians 1:8 condemns anyone who preaches 'another gospel' than the one he declares. Then in 1 Corinthians 15:10-11 Paul takes pains to show that the gospel he declares is the same as that preached by Peter, John, and the others. "Whether it was I or they, " Paul says, referring to them, "so we preached and so you believed." It would be impossible for Paul to condemn a 'false gospel' and affirm the preaching of Peter as ' gospel' without assuming a single, consensus body of gospel content.

ut surely there is a big difference between the gospel of Paul and the way Jesus declared the kingdom in the gospels? There are thousands of websites by young emerging Christian leaders who complain that the older evangelical church has been in 'Pauline captivity,' focusing entirely on the individualistic gospel of justification and atonement, rather than on Jesus' sweeping declaration that 'the Kingdom of God is at hand.' But the differences between Paul and the Synoptic gospels are basically superficial. A helpful recent article on this is Simon Gathercole's "The Gospel of Paul and the Gospel of the Kingdom" in God's Power ed. Chris Green (Apollos/Inter-Varsity Press, UK, 2006.) (See below.) There one Biblical gospel.
There are different forms of the one gospel.
So there must be one simple gospel, yet there are clearly different forms in which that one gospel can be expressed. Someone might complain: "Isn't that the same as saying that there are different gospels?" The answer is-to say there is one gospel in different forms is the Bible's own way of speaking of it, and we should stick with it. Martin Hengel's Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, makes an excellent case that the early church did not speak of the 'Four Gospels' but of gospel according to Matthew, according to Mark, and so on.

Paul is an example. After insisting there is only one gospel (In Gal 1:8 ) in Galatians 2:7 he speaks of being entrusted with 'the gospel of the uncircumcised' as opposed to the of the circumcised.' 1 Cor 1:22-25 Paul says that when he spoke to Greeks, he confronted their culture's idol of speculation and philosophy with the 'foolishness' of the cross, and then presented Christ's salvation as true wisdom. However, when he spoke to Jews he confronted their culture's idol of power and accomplishment with the 'weakness' of the cross, and then presented the gospel as true power. One of Paul's gospel forms was tailored to Bible-believing people who thought they would be justified by works on judgment day, and the other to pagans.

These two approaches of Paul can be discerned in his speeches in the book of Acts, some to Jews and some to pagans. There are other forms of the gospel. Readers have always noticed that the kingdom language of the Synoptic gospels is virtually missing in the gospel of John, which usually talks instead about receiving eternal life. However, when we compare Mark 10:17 , 23-34; Matthew 25:34,46 , and John (3:5,6 and 17) we see that 'entering the kingdom of God' and 'receiving eternal life' are virtually the same thing. Reading Matthew 18:3 , Mark 10:15 and John 3:3,5 together reveal that conversion, the new birth, and receiving the kingdom of God 'as a child' are the same move.

Why, then, the difference in vocabulary between the Synoptics and John? As many scholars have pointed out, John seems to emphasize the individual and inward spiritual aspects of being in the kingdom of God. He is at pains to show that it is not basically an earthly social-political order ( John 18:36 .) On the other hand, when the Synoptics talk of the kingdom, they lay out the real social and behavioral changes that the gospel brings. The kingdom of God take corporate shape, and it does have major implications for how we live.

It is a new order of things, in which money is not made an idol ( Mark 10 ), in which the hungry, the naked, and the homeless are cared for ( Matthew 25 ). We see in John and the Synoptics two more forms of the gospel-one that stresses the individual and the other the corporate aspect to our salvation.
What is the one gospel?
What, then, is the one, simple gospel? Simon Gathercole distills a three-point gospel outline that both Paul and the Synoptic writers held in common. He writes that Paul's good news was

that Jesus was the promised Messianic King and Son of God come to earth as a

servant, in human form. ( Romans 1:3-4 ; Phil 2: 4ff.)

, by his death and resurrection Jesus atoned for our sin and secured our justification by grace, not our works (1 Corinthians

on the cross Jesus broke the dominion of sin and evil over us ( Col 2:13-15 )

and at his return he will complete what he began by the renewal of the entire material creation and the resurrection of our bodies ( Rom 8: 18ff.) Gathercole then traces out these same three aspects in the Synoptics' teaching that Jesus, the Messiah, is the divine Son of God ( Mark 1:1 ) who died as a substitutionary ransom for the many ( Mark 10:45 ), who has conquered the demonic present age with its sin and evil ( Mark 1:14-2:10 ) and will return to regenerate the material world ( Matthew 19:28 .)

If I had to put this outline in a single statement, I might do it like this:

In the person of Jesus God emptied himself of his glory and became human.

Through the work of Jesus God substituted himself for us and atoned for our sin, by grace bringing us into fellowship with him in the church.

At the return of Jesus God will restore creation and make a new world in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever.

When the third, 'eschatological' element is left out, Christians get the impression that nothing much about this world matters. Theoretically, a grasp of this 3-point outline should make Christians interested in both evangelism and conversions as well as service to our neighbor and working for peace and justice in the world.
Feeling the Tension
However, it's my experience that these individual and corporate aspects of the gospel do not live in easy harmony with one another in our preaching and church bodies. In fact, many communicators today deliberately pit them against each other.

Those pushing the kingdom-corporate versions of the gospel define sin in almost exclusively corporate terms, such as racism, materialism, and militarism, as violations of God's or peace. This often obscures how offensive sin is to God himself, and it usually mutes any emphasis on God's wrath. Also, the impression can be given that the gospel is 'God is working for justice and peace in the world, and you can too.' While it is true that the coming new social order is 'good news' to all sufferers, to speak about the gospel in terms of doing justice blurs the fact of salvation being all of grace, not works. And that is not the way the word 'gospel' is used in the New Testament.

kingdom.' But to receive the kingdom as a little child ( Matt 18:3 ) and to believe in Christ's name and be born of God ( Jn 1:12-13 ) is the same thing-it's the way one becomes a Christian ( Jn 3:3,5 .)

Having said this, I must admit that so many of us who revel in the classic gospel of grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone largely ignore the eschatological implications of the gospel. Texts like Luke 4:18 and Luke 6:20-35 show the imperative of the gospel is that the broken-hearted, unrecognized, and oppressed now have a central place in the economy of the Christian community, while the powerful and successful are humbled. In Galatians 2:14 Paul tells Peter that attitudes of racial and cultural superiority are 'not in line' with the gospel of grace ( Gal 2:14 .) Generosity to the poor will flow from those who are holding fast to the gospel as their profession ( 2 Cor 9:13 .) In Romans 2:16 Paul says that Christ's return to judge the earth was part of his gospel, and if you read Psalm 96: 10ff you'll know why. The earth will be renewed and even the trees will be singing for joy. And if the trees will be able to dance and sing under the cosmos-renewing power of his Kingship-what will

we be able to do? If this final renewal of the material world was part of Paul's good news, we should not be surprised to see that Jesus healed and fed while preaching the gospel as signs and foretastes of this coming kingdom ( Matt 9:35 ).

When we realize that Jesus is going to some day destroy hunger, disease, poverty, injustice, and death itself, it makes Christianity what C.S. Lewis called a 'fighting religion' when we are confronted with a city-slum or a cancer ward. This full version of the gospel reminds us that God created both the material and the spiritual, and is going to redeem both the material and the spiritual. The things that are now wrong with the material world he wants put right. Some avoid the importance of working for justice and peace by pointing to 2 Peter 3:10-12 which seems to say that this material world is going to be completely burned up at the final resurrection. But that is not what happened to Jesus' body, which retained its nail prints, and Doug Moo makes a case for the world's transformation, not replacement, in his essay on "Nature and the New Creation: NT Eschatology and the Environment" available on

line at www.wheaton.edu/CACE/resources/onlinearticles/MooNature.pdf .
Part 2 - Communicating the gospel The gospel and the kingdom
Messianic King and the divine Son of God was born into the world in a stable, as a poor, humble, and mortal man. He took upon himself a human nature and the life of a servant. He spent his entire life serving others-feeding the hungry, healing the sick, raising the dead, preaching and teaching.

substituting ourselves for God, serving as our own Saviors and Lords, putting ourselves were only God deserved to be. In Jesus, God substituted himself for us. He made full atonement and absorbed the punishment our sins deserve, putting himself where we deserved to be. This secured justification and acceptance freely by grace.

God created the world to be a place of community, peace and joy. Sin brought evil and suffering into the world. But at the end of history, God will restore this material creation, destroying death, disease, injustice, and suffering of all kinds. It will be a world in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever.

Sometime in the Bible the good news of Jesus is called the 'gospel of the kingdom.' A new 'kingdom' is an administration, a new order of things. And indeed, the three aspects of the gospel enumerated above brings 'God's new order of things' in three ways:

1) Many kingdom texts talk the reversal of values in Jesus' kingdom (It's an 'upside-down' kingdom. Luke 6: 20ff.) in which the poor, the sorrowful, and the persecuted are above the rich, recognized, and satisfied. Why would this be? It is because Jesus emptied himself of his glory. Though he was rich, he became poor. Though he was a king, he served. Though he was the greatest, he made himself the servant of all. He triumphed over sin not by taking up power but by sacrificial service. He 'won' through losing everything. This is a complete reversal of the world's way of thinking, which values power, recognition, wealth, and status. The gospel, then, creates a new kind of servant community, with people who live out people with a whole alternate way of being human. Racial and class superiority, accrual of money and power at the expense of others, yearning for popularity and recognition--all these things are marks of living in the world, and are the opposite of the mindset of the kingdom.

2) Many kingdom texts speak of the inner spiritual nature of the kingdom. The Pharisees put all the emphasis on externals, rather than on a regenerated heart (It's an 'inside-out' kingdom. Luke 11:39-41 .) It is not a matter of meat or drink but of peace and joy in the Holy Spirit ( Rom 14:17 .) Why would this be? Jesus took our place on the cross and accomplished salvation us, which we receive freely as a gift.

Traditional religion teaches that if we do good deeds and follow the moral rules in our behavior on the outside, God will come into our hearts, bless us and give us salvation. In other words-if I obey, God will come into my life and love and accept me. But the gospel is the reverse of this-if I know in my heart God has accepted me and loved me freely, by grace, then I can begin to obey, out of inner joy and gratitude. We are justified by grace alone, not by works; we are beautiful and righteous in God's sight. Once we get this understanding on the inside, it revolutionizes how we relate to God, ourselves, and others on the outside.
Embodying the gospel in the church
A church that truly in the Biblical gospel will look quite unusual. Because of the

'inside-out' kingdom/substitutionary atonement aspect, the church will put great emphasis on personal conversion, experiential grace renewal, evangelism, outreach, and church planting. This makes it look like an evangelical-charismatic church. Because of the 'upsidedown' kingdom/incarnation aspect, the church will put great emphasis on deep community, cell groups or house churches, and will emphasize radical giving and sharing of resources, spiritual disciplines, racial reconciliation, and living with the poor. This makes it look like an Anabaptist 'peace' church. Because of the 'forward-back kingdom/restoration aspect, the church will put great emphasis on seeking the welfare of the city, neighborhood and civic involvement, cultural engagement, and training people to work in 'secular' vocations out of a Christian world-view. This makes it look like mainline church or perhaps a Kuyperian Reformed church. Very few church movements are able to integrate and inter-relate these ministries and emphases because of a comprehensive view of the Biblical gospel.
Preaching the gospel in all its forms
You would expect the author of this article at this point now to explain how he has perfectly integrated the various aspects of the simple gospel in his preaching. I can't because I haven't. But here's how I try.

1. I don't put all the gospel points into any one gospel presentation. I find it instructive that the New Testament writers themselves seldom if ever pack all of the aspects of the gospel equally in any one gospel address. When studying Paul's gospel speeches in the book of Acts it is striking how much is always left . He always leads with some points rather than others in an effort to connect with the baseline cultural narratives of his listeners. It is almost impossible to cover all the bases of the gospel with a nonbelieving listener without that person's eyes glazing over. Some parts simply engage her more than others, and, to begin with, a communicator should go with those. Eventually, of course, you have to get to all the aspects of the full gospel in any process of evangelism and discipleship. But you don't have to say everything every time.

2. I use both a gospel for the 'circumcised' and for the 'uncircumcised.' Just as Paul spoke about a gospel for the more religious (the 'circumcised') and for the pagan, so I've found that my audience in Manhattan contains both people with moralist, religious backgrounds as well as those with 'post-modern,' pluralistic world-views. There are people from other religions (Judaism, Islam,) and people with strong Catholic backgrounds as well as those raised in conservative Protestant churches. People with a more traditional upbringing can grasp the idea of sin as the violation of God's moral law. That law can then be expounded in such a way that they realize they fall short of it. In that context, the idea of the wrath of a holy God against sin makes sense. Then Christ and his salvation can be presented as the only hope of pardon for guilt. This, the traditional evangelical gospel of the last generation, is a 'gospel for the circumcised.'

3. I use both a 'kingdom' and an 'eternal life' gospel. I find that many of my younger listeners are struggling to make choices in a world of endless consumer options, and are confused about their own identities in a culture of self-creation and self-promotion. These are the people who are engaged well by the more individually-focused presentation on the gospel as free grace not works. This is a lot like the 'eternal life gospel' of John.

However, I have found many highly secular people over the age of 40 are not reached very well with any emphasis on personal problems. Many of them think they are doing very well, thank you. They are much more concerned about the problems of the world- war, racism, poverty, and injustice. And they respond well to a synoptic-like 'kingdom gospel.'Instead of going into, say, one of the epistles and speaking of the gospel in terms of God, sin, Christ, and I point out the story-arc of the whole Bible and so speak of the gospel in terms of creation, fall, redemption,, and restoration. We once had the world we all wanted-a world of peace and justice, without death, disease, or conflict. But by turning from God we lost that world. Our sin unleashed forces of evil and destruction so that now 'things fall apart' and everything is characterized by physical, social, and personal disintegration. Jesus Christ, however, came into the world, died as a victim of injustice and as our substitute, bearing the penalty of our evil and sin on himself. This will enable him to some day judge the world and destroy all death and evil without destroying

form of the gospel gives all the various aspects of the full gospel the same emphasis. If, then, you only ever preach one form, you are in great danger of giving your people an unbalanced diet of gospel-truth. What is the alternative? Don't use just one gospel form in your preaching. That's not true to the various texts of the Bible anyway. If you are preaching expositionally, different passages will convey different forms of the one gospel.

However, Manhattan is also filled with 'post-modern' listeners who consider all

moral statements to be culturally relative and socially constructed. If you try to

convict them of guilt for sexual lust, they will simply say, "you have your standards

and I have mine." If you respond with a diatribe on the dangers of relativism,

your listeners will simply feel scolded. Of course, postmodern people must at some point be challenged about their mushy views of truth, but there is a way to make a credible and convicting gospel presentation to them even before you get into such apologetic issues.

I take a page from Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death and define sin as

building your identity-your self-worth and happiness-on anything other than

God. That is, I use the Biblical definition of sin as idolatry. That puts the emphasis

not as much on 'doing bad things' but on 'making good things into ultimate

things.' Instead of telling them they are sinning because they are sleeping with

their girlfriends or boyfriends, I tell them that they are sinning because they are

looking to their romances to justify and save them, to give them everything that

they should be looking for from God. This idolatry leads to anxiety, obsessiveness,

envy, and resentment. I have found that when you describe their lives in terms of idolatry, postmodern people do not give much resistance. Then Christ and his salvation can be presented not (at this point) so much as their only hope for forgiveness, but as their only hope for freedom. This is my 'gospel for the uncircumcised.'

Follow the lead of the texts and vary the form, and then your people will hear all the

points. Won't this confuse people? No, it will stretch them. When one group-say the 'postmodern'-- hears a penetrating presentation of sin as idolatry, it opens them up to the concept of sin as grieving and offending God. Sin as a personal affront to a perfect, holy God begins to make more sense, and when they hear this presented in another gospel form, it has credibility. When more traditional people with a developed understanding of moral guilt learn about the substitutionary atonement and forensic justification, they are comforted.

But these classic doctrines have profound implications for race relations and love for the poor, since they destroy all pride and self-justification. When more liberal people hear about the kingdom of God for the restoration of the world, it opens them up to Christ's kingship demanding obedience from them in their personal lives. In short, every gospel form, once it hits home in the hearts of its 'target' audience, opens them to the other points of the gospel made more vividly in other forms.

When you preach several different gospel forms with some regularity, you are more true to the Bible, you make your own listeners more balanced and mature in their understanding, and you make your own church more diverse. Instead of having a homogeneous group taken from just one slice of our pluralistic society, you have a mixed body of people from across our cultural spectrum.

Today there are many who doubt that there is just one gospel. That gives them the warrant to ignore Paul's gospel of atonement and justification. There are others who don't like to admit that there are different forms to that one gospel. That smacks too much of 'contextualization,' a term they dislike. They cling to a single presentation that is often too one-dimensional. Neither of these approaches are as true to the Biblical material, nor as effective in actual ministry, as that which understands that there is one gospel in several forms in the Bible.

Dwell Conference - NYC - April 2008

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Dwelling through the Gospel - Tim Keller

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Tim Keller Introduction There are two ways in which, I think, one should 'dwell' in the gospel. The first way is that you must dwell with the gospel . That is, you live with--you deeply reflect upon and grasp--what the Bible means by 'gospel' and you learn to see the gospel of Jesus everywhere in it.

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This is a great talk addressing the way that Paul is "reasoning" with people and "persuading" them in this passage and throughout Acts, and what we should learn from that for our own evangelism. Not really the point of this 5:20, but very interesting and useful for us more generally!

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This talk was the opening keynote address to a meeting of the Fellowship of Evangelists in the Universities of Europe (FEUER), meeting in Pescara, Italy.

It is great to be here with you all at this important conference, where we hope to learn together how to be more effective evangelists. My task tonight is to help us all to see more clearly the role of persuasion in the work of evangelism.

Can I start by saying a little bit about myself? I became a Christian 50 years ago at the age of 20. My parents were not Christians, but I met Christians during my teens - and they impressed me. They were kind and practised hospitality. They always made me feel welcome and included me in their activities. The more I heard, the more I was intrigued. So at the age of 17, I decided that I needed to evaluate Christianity for myself. I bought a modern English version of the New Testament and set out to read just one chapter every night, before putting my light out. It takes nine months to read it like that, and I expected then to be able to make up my mind about Christ, one way or the other. Instead, I finished it full of questions, but different questions from the ones I started with. So having got a measure of it, I started to read it all again, and then a third time, to focus specifically on the issues and the centrality of the resurrection. So after three years of personal and private enquiry, I became satisfied that Jesus was whom he claimed to be, that God had raised him from the dead and I would have to face him in eternity.

We must put ourselves into
the place of unbelievers, and try to understand their perspective

The moment I became a Christian I had a deep conviction, not just that I should tell others about Christ, but that I should tell them in the way I would want to be told. This was Christ's Golden Rule - applied to evangelism - that we should treat others as we would want to be treated. It applies to everything we do and it certainly applies to the way we share the Gospel. We must put ourselves into the place of unbelievers, and try to understand their perspective - culturally, morally and intellectually.

To equip myself for this task, I attended several evangelism training courses. One involved learning a sequence of memory verses to use. Another involved the Bridge diagram. One majored on Church-based initiatives, with guest services, where non-Christians were invited to join in singing the hymns, saying the prayers, even standing to recite the Apostles Creed - before they had even heard the sermon! (which I thought was daft!). The sermon was of course a monologue, delivered from a raised pulpit with a wall around it. Was that to stop the preacher falling out, I wondered, or to prevent angry people getting in? I wasn't quite sure. Another used a little booklet, which assumed the existence of God at the outset, explaining that God has a wonderful plan for our lives. At each point I came away from these training courses, feeling that they were far removed from the atmosphere of the New Testament. "This is not that" I thought - but I struggled to identify the nub issues.

After being a Christian for 18 months, I had started at Medical School. We organised a weekly evangelistic meeting, where students were invited to hear a Christian speaker and some 20-30 students would attend. One afternoon, as some 150 students were assembling after lunch in our large Student Common Room, one of these students asked me a question about Christianity. We sat down and I attempted to answer. As I did so, someone else butted in, then another. Others gathered round and soon we were surrounded by 20 or more students all asking questions or disputing what I was saying. Some stood around listening. Others pulled up chairs or sat on the floor. Some were scornful and hostile, others were intrigued. But they were all engaging in what became a very lively discussion about Christian faith. Now I was a new Christian and completely out of my depth. But I had a great sense that "This was that". This is what was going on in Capernaum, in Thessalonica, in the market place of Athens, in Corinth and in the Lecture Hall of Ephesus. After about half an hour of this lively dispute, a bell rang to give five minutes' warning that lectures were about to begin. Everyone gathered their things and left, leaving me sitting on a sofa with the girl who asked the original question. I turned to her and apologised for not answering her question. In fact, I admitted I couldn't even remember what her question was.

She said, "It doesn't matter."

I said, "No, surely it does matter. You asked a serious question!"

"No it doesn't matter now," she said.

I thought I had ruined it. Then she added, "I asked you what it meant to be 'born again'. It doesn't matter now - because I just have been."

Mary and I remain friends and are still in touch. She is a doctor in Australia. She and her husband stay in our home when they come to England. Her daughter has been working as a missionary in Indonesia. Mary's life was turned around during that chaotic discussion nearly 50 years ago. As a result, we saw a steady trickle of students in our year becoming Christians. The change in Mary was evident for everyone to see. We started the year with just five Christians. Within two years there were twenty of us, in a year of just 96 students. I remember asking the President of the Student Union, a self-confident atheist, what she thought of Christ. To my surprise, she suddenly welled up in tears and said, "How can I not believe? Five of my closest friends have become Christians. They have found a joy in life they never had before. They have found meaning and purpose in life." So many people had become Christians, I wasn't able to work out who her five closest friends were.

So what can we learn from all this? Come with me to Thessalonica and see what Paul was actually doing (Acts 17:1-9). Note first of all that this was (verse 2) his normal custom. This is what he did - here, there and everywhere. There is nothing exceptional about this. This was his normative practice.

the first stage of Christian mission was entirely to the Jews and those God-fearers who attended the Synagogues

Paul started in the synagogue. We need to take careful note of this. Not only were the first Christians themselves all Jewish but until the conversion of Cornelius and subsequent events at Antioch, they only shared the Gospel with the Jews. This is explicitly stated in Acts 11:19. Scattered widely by the persecution that followed the martyrdom of Stephen, they told their message "only to Jews". It was not until some men from the island of Cyprus and from Cyrene in North Africa went to Antioch that they "began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus." And we are told a great number believed and turned to the Lord. "Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul and brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples", Luke says, "were first called Christians at Antioch." (Acts 11:25-26) Why? Because they weren't Jews! They were neither Jews, nor the God-fearing Gentiles who attended the synagogues. Now they were speaking to outright, pagan Gentiles.

So the first stage of Christian mission was entirely to the Jews and those God-fearers who attended the Synagogues and that went on for probably ten years. How can we date this? Because chapter 12 tells us that about this time King Herod put James the brother of John to death and imprisoned Peter. After Peter's escape, Herod went to Caesarea, where he suddenly died. Herod's death is recorded by Luke and Josephus and is dated at AD 44. So for some ten years, the early Christians were all Messianic Jews, who told other Jews about the Messiah, until those Christians from Cyprus and North Africa started evangelising the Greeks in Antioch.

The difficulty for us is that most of the evangelism recorded in Acts is focussed on the Jews, where the Messianic Jews appealed to the Jewish scriptures to proclaim the Jewish Messiah to Jewish people. We must think outside of that box. This is why Paul's appeal to the pagan farmers at Lystra, so briefly told in Acts 14:8-20, and his visit to Athens (Acts 17:16-34) are so important for us. (There is a chapter in my book, The Search for God: and the Path to Persuasion, on Paul's presentation at Athens, and this is also on bethinking.org as Paul at Athens.) In these places, he made no mention of the promised Messiah nor did he appeal to the Jewish scriptures. The pagan Greeks knew nothing about the Old Testament and its promises. Rather he spoke to them from their own culture and their own understanding. And that is the model we must adopt.

the early Christians never proclaimed a book; they proclaimed the historic person of Christ

This has immediate implications for the way we use the Bible. Many evangelists assume the authority of the Bible in their preaching, expecting non-Christians to accept what the Bible says as being true. But the early Christians never proclaimed a book. They proclaimed the historic person of Christ. To the Jews they referred to the Scriptures. These were the Old Testament scriptures, which foretold the coming of the Messiah. They did not ask Gentiles to believe a book but to trust an historic person. Every time we say, "The Bible says this" or "the Bible says that", we are putting the cart before the horse. A cart should be pulled by the horse, not pushed along by the horse behind by it. We ask people to trust Christ. They will learn from him to trust the Scriptures as an article of Christian faith, not the other way around.

Our argument is not circular - "trust Christ because of the Bible and trust the Bible because of Christ". No. We present a linear argument from history. Trust the historic Christ on the evidence of history and he will teach you to trust the scriptures. If you quote 'The Bible', you are appealing to the authority of a Book. But the Bible isn't a book - it is a library of books. If you quote Moses, David, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, Luke or John, you are appealing to their historic testimony recorded in a variety of documents. Their testimony stands or falls on their historic validity.

So after the breakthrough in Antioch, Paul and Barnabas were sent to Cyprus, then Perga, Pamphhylia, Pisidia, Iconium, then Lystra, Derbe,and Attalia and back to Antioch to report "all that God had done through them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles" (Acts 14:27 - N.B. this is half way through the book!). And this first Gentile missionary journey, it seems, happened between AD 46 and 48, some 14 years after Christ's death and resurrection.

Trust the historic Christ on the evidence of history

Now such was the historic dispersion of the Jews into communities across the Roman Empire that most of these places had synagogues, and many Greeks, presumably disillusioned by the trivialities, vanities and flagrant immoralities of the Greek, Roman, Persian and Egyptian created gods, found a much more serious, monotheistic understanding of the moral, Creator God, who was being presented in the synagogues. And these people, who came to understand the Jewish Scriptures, were clearly well prepared then to understand the Gospel. So we have three main groups: the Jews and the God-fearing and biblically literate Gentiles, whom the apostles met in the synagogues, and the pagan Greeks whom they met in the country districts like Lystra, as well as the public venues in the cities and the Areopagus of Athens.

So come back to Thessalonica. "As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures." Now this word confused me. It sounds as though he gave then an academic lecture or exposition of the Scriptures from a podium. This verb 'to reason' is used to describe what Paul was doing in Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth and Ephesus. But the underlying Greek word used here is dialegomai, which is the root of our word 'dialogue'. In other words, he was not giving monologues but was engaging in two-way conversations and discussions, with whoever was present. Neither did he expect them to believe what he was saying without question. And why should he?

Now as soon as you get this picture of two-way discussion in your mind, everything else said here falls into place. So verse 3 tells us he was explaining the gospel. We need to explain things that are not being understood. And the only way we can know whether we are being understood is if we allow our hearers to respond to us. Then we can say, "No, no, that is not what I meant. Let me put it another way." Their misunderstandings are revealed in what they say back to us. It has been wisely said that it is not what we say that matters, but what they hear. We can say all the right things, but if they don't understand us, our communication has failed. It is an important part of putting ourselves into the unbeliever's thinking to make sure we are being understood.

he was not giving monologues but was engaging in two-way conversations and discussions, with whoever was present

The next verb in verse 3 is that Paul was proving that Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. Now Paul was speaking here to Jews from the Scriptures. They presumably did not believe what he was saying and he had to show them from the Scriptures that these things were in fact prophesied. In other words, they had entirely legitimate doubts, which they revealed in this two-way conversation, allowing Paul to identify and address their specific questions and issues.

So there are three distinct features of Paul's evangelism here. He was telling them things they did not know, was explaining things they did not understand and was persuading them of things they did not think were true. In dialogue then, Paul addressed their ignorance, their confusions and their doubts. We must decide what non-Christians need to be told, explain the things they need to understand and establish the evidence for truths they might have good reason to doubt. One of the great problems in evangelism is when evangelists think they need only do one or two of these three things. It isn't enough to speak in a monologue and assume we are being understood. Nor should we assume that they should believe such things about God without being given sound reasons to do so.

What did this amount to? Look at verse 3: "This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ." This is what Paul called proclamation. He did not see proclamation in terms of an exposition of a text, delivered in a monologue, six foot above contradiction, with no opportunity for questions and discussion. Yet this is what the Church does right across the world. I think that this caricature of proclamation is the single biggest reason that the Church in Europe is being so ineffective in our day and generation. It is a bad teaching model.

Luke goes on to record (verse 4) that "Some of the Jews, a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women were" - converted? No, Luke says they were "persuaded". That is what he was trying to do. That was his part in evangelism. Please God, that some of those who are persuaded of the truth of Christianity will subsequently be moved by the Holy Spirit and humbled under the kingly rule of Christ and be truly converted. We must be clear what our part is and what God's part is in effective evangelism. We are called to persuade people that Jesus is Lord. We cannot convert them. That is God's part. By his Holy Spirit, he brings people under his kingly rule.

We must be clear what our part is and what God's part is in effective evangelism

So we have five key verbs here describing what Paul was actually doing when he was teaching the gospel. He was dialoguing, explaining, evidencing, proclaiming and persuading. So what then is persuasion? This I believe to be the key ingredient that is missing today. Just telling people things, just giving them information is not sufficient, if they do not understand it or have sufficient reasons not to believe it.

What does it mean to be persuaded that something is true? Do you believe everything you are told? Did you check the details about this conference? How confident were you that it would take place? As you set out, did you consider it might not happen? That it could be cancelled? That the venue might be changed? Or that you'd booked the wrong flight, or got the wrong month? Or that the efficient Lindsay Brown might not be entirely reliable? Or that an earthquake might destroy the hotel? [ A serious earthquake had occurred in central Italy the week before the conference.]In other words, you could not know beyond doubt that this conference would take place.

All our knowledge is like that. Outside of mathematics and strict logic, all our knowledge including all our knowledge of history, science and theology is always provisional. It is true and certain only providing various other things are reliable - such as our rationality, our memory, our eyesight, our sources of information, the emails we have been sent, the state of shifting tectonic plates and much else. Yet despite the provisionality of our knowledge, we still speak of knowing things and knowing them anyway with sufficient clarity and confidence that we take action in the light of them. We do set out on journeys; we do believe other people's promises, even despite past disappointments.

As we learned about the conference, it was like adding weights to a weighing scale until it reached a tipping point and we were persuaded to go. We might have doubts. We might need more information. We need to work out the costs, and the flight times. Eventually, we were persuaded and set out for Italy.

So it is with the gospel. Paul wrote that now we know in part. Eventually we shall know fully. Now we see but a poor reflection, as in a mirror dimly, then we shall know face to face (1 Corinthians 13:9-12). Just getting the story of the gospel from an unreliable source is not enough. People need to probe the story, see if it makes sense; weigh up the evidence and see if it is true, and having done all that, they still might remain unmoved. Some people really don't want Christianity to be true!

we invite people to trust what they can know to be true and reasonable

We become persuaded when the balance of probabilities shifts in the direction of something being true, and we are unlikely to take action until we are sufficiently confident that it is true. When we do set out, we do so in faith, realising we might yet be wrong. We still carry our doubts. These ebb and flow throughout our lives. Sometimes we are carried along with great conviction. At other times our doubts disturb us deeply. We are not asking people to take a blind leap of faith against the evidence. Rather we invite them to trust what they can know to be true and reasonable.

When Paul made his defence before King Agrippa and Governor Festus in Caesarea, recorded by Luke in Acts 26, Festus interrupted him. He shouted "Paul, you are out of your mind! Your great learning is driving you insane!"

"No, I am not insane, most excellent Festus," replied Paul. "What I am saying is true and reasonable. The king is familiar with these things. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner. King Agrippa do you believe the prophets? I know you do."

Then Agrippa said to Paul, "Do you think that in a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?"

To Paul, the amount of time was irrelevant. It takes as long as it takes. He replied, "Short or long - I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am."

Luke says that Festus and Agrippa then left together. And Agrippa said to Festus, "This man could have been set free, if he had not appealed to Caesar." Agrippa was in no doubt that Paul was trying to persuade him and it seems that he was well on the way to being persuaded.

So at Ephesus, we read in Acts 19:8 that for three months in the synagogue, Paul was "arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God". That is a great phrase to describe authentic New Testament evangelism. Does it describe your evangelism? Is that what you do?

People don't like the word 'argue'. They think is means we getting heated and having a row. Try this one! If A=B and B=C, then A=C. That is no reason to get heated or angry. But it is a good argument. It is a straightforward, logical deductive argument. Of course the conclusion which the argument drives them to might indeed get them heated! A silversmith called Demetrius complained that, "this fellow Paul has convinced a large number of people here in Ephesus ... that man-made gods are no gods at all; our trade will lose its good name and the temple of the goddess Artemis will be discredited" (Ephesians 19:26-27). And a riot broke out.

What happened in Ephesus had happened in Corinth. Acts 18:4 says, "Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks." Paul was attacked and dragged before the proconsul Gallio. "This man," they charged, "is persuading the people to worship God." Paul was doing the same in Corinth that he was doing in Athens.

And what effect did Paul have in Thessalonica (Acts 17:5)? It caused a riot there! They rushed to Jason's house in search of Paul. They dragged Jason before the city officials, shouting "These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here. They are all defying Caesar's decrees, saying there is another King, one called Jesus." This was in AD 49, just five years into the mission to the Gentiles.

Meanwhile in Rome, in that same year according to the Roman historian Suetonius, the Emperor Claudius expelled all the Jews from Rome due to repeated disturbances instigated in the name of someone called Chrestus, which is generally accepted to mean Christus. And Luke refers to the same event in reference to Priscilla and Aquila, the Christians Paul met at Corinth, who had recently had been expelled from Rome by the Emperor.

As a result of this edict, Paul was able to write in AD 57 to Christians in Rome saying, at the beginning of his great letter to the Romans, "First of all, I thank my God because your faith is being proclaimed all over the world" (Romans 1:8). In trying to end the trouble the gospel was causing in Rome, Claudius had compounded the problem. In driving them out, he had scattered them everywhere.

it is our task to turn the tide and persuade a new generation of students to put their hope and their faith in the risen Christ

In that year AD 57 in Caesarea, a lawyer named Tertullus prosecuted the case against Paul. Luke recorded his statements to Felix, "We have found this man to be a troublemaker stirring up riots among the Jews all over the world. He is a ringleader of the Nazarene sect" (Acts 24:5).

Finally, we leave Paul under house arrest in Rome, preaching the Kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ boldly and without hindrance. "From morning to evening he explained and declared to them the kingdom of God and tried to convince them about Jesus. And some were convinced, but others would not believe" (Acts 28:23).

Pilate had asked Jesus if he was a king. Jesus replied, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were my servants would be fighting." The Jews shouted to Pilate, "If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone, who claims to be King, opposes Caesar." "Shall I crucify your king?", Pilate asked. "We have no King but Caesar," the chief priests replied to their great shame. That would be like us saying about our consciences, "We have no higher authority in this world than Donald Trump or Clinton, or Putin." It would be blasphemy. What a mess the world would be in if that was the case!

By AD 64, just thirty years after Christ's death and resurrection, the Emperor Nero was interrogating large numbers of Christians in Rome, soaking them in olive oil and setting light to them, displaying them on crosses in his gardens, and for the next 250 years there were repeated persecutions until the Emperor Constantine bowed himself before Christ. Christian civilisation was then allowed to flourish in Europe for the next 1600 years. Now, you will have noticed, Europe is effectively post-Christian. And it is our task to turn the tide and persuade a new generation of students to put their hope and their faith in the risen Christ.
© 2016 Peter May

This resource is provided by the kind permission of Peter May.

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This talk was the opening keynote address to a meeting of the Fellowship of Evangelists in the Universities of Europe (FEUER), meeting in Pescara, Italy. It is great to be here with you all at this important conference, where we hope to learn together how to be more effective evangelists.