10 Years of Beholding God: Eifion Evans

Thanking God for the Reach of Behold Your God

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder and I'm here to commemorate the 10th anniversary coming up for our Behold Your God Study, Rethinking God Biblically. It has been more widely received than we ever expected.

I only half-jokingly say that I expected the men who contributed to the study, who pastor churches, I did think that they would probably want to get the study and use it in some small groups and I thought my mom and dad would buy some but I thought that would be about the end of it and ten years later we are still getting letters and comments from around the world from, you know, from Africa and Asia, from Australia, from Canada, South America.

It's just been really quite humbling and encouraging at the same time to see the kindness of the Lord to use this material. Now whenever you do videos like this with contributors, the interviews are much longer than what we were able to include in the study.

We had to leave by far the majority of their comments out and so Teddy has been working over the last weeks and and he will continue to work to get all these interviews in their entirety available to you and we think that really that's a great way to celebrate the ten years and I hope that you will be as benefited by them now as we were ten years ago listening to these men talk about such important topics.

Now if you don't want to watch the interviews on the YouTube channel then there's a link to our podcasts and you can listen to them on the whole Council podcast over the coming months. You're about to watch an interview with a Welsh man named Avian Evans.

If you don't know Welsh and the pronunciation of Welsh and you look at his name you might think his name is Iphian but it's not, it's Avian Evans. Avian is one of the contributors to the study Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically and he is the only one of the contributors that has passed away and is now with the Lord.

I met Avian Evans in Wales when studying and working on the PhD there and he was recommended to me because he was an expert in the field but what was unique about Avian was that he was also an evangelical, a minister.

He'd had a number of pretty serious heart attacks so he was semi-retired. Avian would spend time with me looking over my research, you know, giving me academic advice. He was always very gentle with me.

I always expected, you know, the hammer to come down but he was kind to me. He himself had done a PhD on Richard Baxter and the theology of Baxter. Avian was really an expert in the Puritan theology but particularly as it impacted and was reflected in the Welsh Revivals, 18th, 19th century.

When we thought about contributors for the study I thought about Avian because of his rich historical and theological grasp of experiential Calvinism and really that, you know, that's the kind of stuff we were talking about in the study.

Now I need to say something about the interview itself. You're not going to hear a bunch of questions that provoke Avian to give answers because this is what happened. After our first day of filming in Wales, we were pretty tired, you know, going anywhere in Britain takes longer than you expect when you're an American.

So we drove out into mid Wales and we filmed, I believe, Llangeto for the life of Daniel Rowland and Llandewi Brefi and so we spent all day out there and it was our first day of filming and I was ready to quit because I was so bad.

I thought, this is terrible. Is it too late to get someone else? And, you know, as we were coming home we stopped at the house of Avian and his wife and they gave us supper. It was a Welsh stew and so, you know, it was a chilly, cold, rainy day.

We're in this Welsh house. It's very warm. We fill up on food and then we go and we set up to film him in his living room and he has all the questions but he has a pile of books beside him. Avian Evans really was a very academic believer and so I asked the question and I don't remember Avian Evans ever really stopping after that.

He just opened up and just poured forth all this knowledge and it just went on and on and I remember being in this hot room, tired after the, you know, after the plane trip and then filming all day and I had my stomach was full and I thought, I'm about to fall asleep right in front of our first interviewer and, you know, and I felt so bad and I was pinching myself and trying to pay attention.

The things he said were really helpful but he just takes off and he goes. At the end of the day, the film crew pulled me aside and they said, you know, it takes us eight or ten tries, eight or ten takes to get you to do three minutes correctly without any mistakes.

How come you can't do like Avian? He just did two hours without a mistake and so that was very encouraging. Well, I hope the things that Avian says are a benefit to your soul as well.

The Gospel Must Put God First

When it comes to thinking about God biblically and rethinking God biblically, then I would have to start with a biblical reference and the reference I would quote would be the first Thessalonians and the first chapter where Paul is saying about his visit to Thessalonica.

Our gospel came not to you in word only but also in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance and it is that matter of the gospel centering everything, focusing attention on God and the realization that the whole purpose of the gospel is to put God first in our lives and while the gospel is preached and comes across to those who hear it in terms of words, it's verbal but it needs the power of the Holy Spirit to leave an impression and to create that change which brings us from our self-centeredness to God-centeredness and that really is what I believe rethinking God biblically is all about.

It's putting God first and the awareness that in all that we are, in all that we do, in all that we can expect, God must be the one who takes the initiative and it of course issues from his grace, his love, his mercy and the great purpose of salvation in Jesus Christ.

Calvin, the Puritans, and the Call to Live for God

On a personal note about this very issue, when I was considering going into the Christian ministry, this is going back many years, I read John Calvin's Institutes and there is a section in John Calvin's Institutes which deals with the life of a Christian man and listen to these important words and to me it's the crux of the whole issue again and it's vintage Calvin because here he is making this persuasive application of what he believes, fervently believes, passionately believes to be essential.

Here it is, we are not our own. Let not our reason nor our will therefore sway our plans and deeds. We are not our own. Let us therefore not set it as our goal to seek what is expedient for us according to the flesh.

We are not our own. Insofar as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours. Conversely, we are God's. Let us therefore live for him and die for him. We are God's. Let his wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions.

We are God's. Let all the parts of our life accordingly strive towards him as our only lawful goal. Let this therefore be the first step that a man depart from himself in order that he may apply the full force of his ability in the service of the Lord.

The Christian philosophy, that is the Christian teaching, bids reason give way to, submit and subject itself to the Holy Spirit so that the man himself may no longer live but hear Christ living and reigning within him.

That it is to think God biblically. And again, if I may follow through on that same issue, I mentioned this matter of John Calvin and the Institutes. There have been other books which have been of great help in that same way.

I would mention, for example, some of the books of the Puritans, John Owen, The Glory of Christ, Communion with God, Mortification of Sin. They're God-centred, Christ-centred. And the shift from us to God is so evident there.

And again, Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, where we have to think, well, how is it that we come to this position of contentment? And Burroughs makes the point that we come there not by adding to our possessions but by reducing our desires.

So the bottom line is God first, always, foremost. Samuel Rutherford, in his letters, was another book that helps in the same way because there is that kinship which comes through in Rutherford's letters which reminds us of a soul that is obsessed with God, with Christ, with God's love.

This dominates his thinking, it dominates his ministry, his relationship with his people, with his congregation, whoever it is, and that is important. Another book, in a different way, was J. C. Ryle's Holiness because here you have God taking possession of our attitudes, our relationships, our lifestyle, our everyday living, in every aspect, determining our priorities, our standards, our values, living in a world that is hostile with sin all around us and corruption deep within us, but this zeal to be Christ-like, God-like, holy, holiness.

And another book, I'll just mention this again, which is the preaching of Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones on the letter to the Ephesians, particularly on chapter 3, where he makes it so personal, this relationship with God, this communion with God, this awareness of God, this passion for God, this hunger for God, is what should possess us and will influence not only our lives but also in the ministry, our ministry as well.

Revival, Methodism, and Hunger for More of God

Again, thinking of personal experience here, and if somebody was to ask me, well, how have you been brought to think or rethink God biblically from your own experience as you went through the Christian life and in the Christian ministry, I would have to say one of the leading influences has been that of the Great Awakening in the 18th century in terms of Methodism.

I was brought up in what was and what became the Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales, and it stemmed from the Great Awakening in Wales from major leaders like Daniel Rowland, Howard Harris, William Williams, and so on, and here were these men, ordinary men, brought to faith in Christ by God's grace and now preaching the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit, and there were two aspects of Methodism which really challenged me in a very real way.

One was this matter of revival, how it was that God could come down to a locality, an area, and so powerfully that men were gripped with a sense of the presence of God which humbled them, and so God was real, His law was real, His commandments were real, His Son became real, and the gospel became real, and the soul's danger became real, eternity became real, and that was because God came down, and it was this dimension of revival which really, I have to say, stirred my soul to the realisation again, this is God, this is the God of the Bible, and you go through the Old Testament, you come to the New Testament, whether you're in the days of Josiah and the Reformation that started under his kingship, or whether you come to the New Testament in the day of Pentecost, and here you have God coming down in such a wonderful way that people, more than anything else, are aware of God, there's that consciousness, time, the things of time, the pleasures of time, their daily work, it all recedes into the background, God is there, that was one thing.

The other thing which the Methodists did for me in the sense of thinking God biblically was this matter of the society meetings or fellowship meetings where young Christians came together, and they came together for a matter of discipline, they wanted to know whether their experience of Christ and of the gospel was valid, was it genuine or was it false, and so there'd be a leader in the society meeting who would ask very searching questions, and they would be questions along the lines of, well, since you have been converted, have you come to know your own heart in a more profound way, in a deeper way?

Has there come to you the realisation that what you are, you are as a of God only, and that it isn't a bit of you and a bit of Christ, but that it is altogether Christ's doing? Are you growing in grace?

What has God done for you in the last week since we last met, whenever it was? What have you to say about your dealings with God? Have you been able to resist temptation? What is it that bothers you? Does sin really grieve you?

And do you face up to the demands of God in your daily life? Well, questions like that. So again, the Methodists were telling us, well, you need to take God seriously, and you need to do business with him in a one-to-one kind of way, in a personal way, and George Whitefield, for example, was a man who thought very highly of these society meetings.

Let me quote you from something that he said about these societies. The only end which I hope you all propose by your assembling yourselves together is the renewing of your depraved natures and promoting the hidden life of Jesus Christ in your souls.

None but those who have experienced it can tell the unspeakable advantage of such a union and communion of souls. I know not a better means in the world to keep hypocrisy out from amongst you. Now listen to this.

Pharisees and unbelievers will pray, read, sing psalms, but none save an Israelite indeed, a real Christian that is, will endure to have his heart searched out. That was George Whitefield, and that was for him the value of the society meetings.

So the emphasis here is hunger for God, and what goes along with that is the conviction that there is always more of God for the believer. So you and I may be able to say, well, yes, I was converted under such and such a sermon, and now it's been so many years since that happened, and it was wonderful what happened.

Ah, but there's more of God. Am I hungering? Am I thirsting? Am I reaching out for more of God? Well, that was Methodism, and I could continue with that along many strains, and to the realization that these Christians in Methodism were hungering for more.

Here's a description, for example, of an ordinary layman this time, a man by the name of John Thomas, and here he is. He's going from one building to another. It's only a few yards in between, but in the one building he's heard a message on John 17 to 21 to 23, and he says that this matter of the unity that is amongst Christians had been sealed to his souls.

It was, he says, as if lightning flashed into my spirit, and I thought in my heart that the people around me had seen it too, but they had not, and then so at that time my soul was uttering these words, holy, holy, wonderful, wonderful, eternally wonderful.

I felt as though my body and my soul were being lifted from the earth, and this lasted about an hour or more as far as I can gauge, and tears of joy flowed spontaneously from my eyes. In other words, there's more of God.

Puritan and Evangelical Testimonies to More of God

Now, I suppose that we might think, well, this was something that was true of the Methodists. Well, what about other people? I'm going to go back to the Puritan period, and this time I'm quoting from John Flavel, whose works have been republished by the Banner of Truth Trust, and I'm going to quote a passage which, by the way, was used and quoted by Jonathan Edwards in his thoughts concerning the revival in New England.

Listen to this. I have with good assurance this account of a minister, who being alone in a journey and willing to make the best improvement he could of that day's solitude, set himself to a close examination of the state of his soul, and then of the life to come and the manner of its being and living in heaven.

In the view of all these things which are now objects of faith and hope, after a while he perceived his thoughts begin to fix and come closer to these great and astonishing things than was usual. As his mind settled upon them, his affections began to rise with answerable liveliness and vigour.

Thus, going on his way, his thoughts began to swell and rise higher and higher, like the waters in Ezekiel's vision, till at last they became an overflowing flood. Such was the intention of his mind, such the ravishing tastes of heavenly joys, such the full assurance of his interest therein, that he utterly lost a sight and sense of this world and all the concerns thereof, and for some hours knew no more where he was than if he had been in a deep sleep upon his bed.

And then he goes on his way. There's more of God for us. Now, when it comes to rethinking God biblically, we must, I suppose, be aware that in the Christian life, in the Christian ministry, we can be sidetracked.

There are many dangers, many false tracks, and I have as an example of that a man by the name of a Welshman, a Welsh Baptist preacher called Christmas Evans. He was a very prominent Baptist minister early in the 19th century and laboured particularly in North Wales but also in South Wales.

And for a number of years, he was one who found his ministry was blighted by what was known as Sandemanianism. Sandemanianism means that to believe is a matter of looking or hearing God's Word and just saying, yes, it is true, and therefore that faith can take place in the soul without the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit as the cause of it.

And Christmas Evans found that this had extinguished the spirit of prayer for the conversion of the ungodly in his ministry. He said, I had lost nearness to God and walking with him. Something very precious was absent.

I was thus deprived of the spirit of prayer and of the spirit of preaching. And then he tells us about his experience. I was weary, he says, of a cold heart towards Christ and his sacrifice and the work of his spirit, of a cold heart in the pulpit, in secret prayer, and in the study.

On a day ever to be remembered by me as I was going on a journey, I considered it to be incumbent upon me to pray. However hard my heart felt, however worldly the flame of my spirit was, having begun in the name of Jesus, I soon felt as if it were as it were the fetters loosening and the old hardness of heart softening, and as I thought, mountains of frost and snow dissolving and melting within.

This engendered confidence in my soul in the promise of the Holy Spirit. I felt my whole mind relieved from some great bondage. Tears flowed copiously. I was constrained to cry out for the gracious visits of God by restoring to my soul the joy of his salvation and that he was visited the churches that were under my care.

The struggle lasted for three hours. It rose again and again like one wave after another or a high flowing tide driven by a strong wind until my nature became faint with weeping and crying. Thus I resigned myself to Christ, body and soul, gifts and labour, all my life, every day, every hour that remained for me.

To all my cares, I committed to Christ. The road was mountainous and lonely, typical of a Welsh scene, and I was wholly alone and suffered no interruptions in my wrestlings with God. From this time I was made to expect the goodness of God to churches and myself.

Thus the Lord delivered me and the people from being carried away by the flood of Sandemanianism. In other words, there is this awareness that God must be in our experience in a real way before we go into the pulpit, that we cannot raise the people higher than our own souls have been brought to by the Holy Spirit in our dealings with God.

And that our people will never be raised higher in their awareness of God's majesty and glory and grace and love and holiness until the Holy Spirit himself brings to their souls the sense of God's presence.

Puritan Preaching: Exposition, Application, and Unction

When we think of preaching and thinking of God biblically, it would be for me, at any rate, quite convincing to say, well, look at what the Puritans tell us. And the Puritans emphasised, if they did anything at all, they emphasised the absolute authority and centrality, the inspiration of the Word of God.

And for their ministry of that Word, they looked to the Holy Spirit. And there were, in particular, three things in Puritan preaching that left a deep impression upon me, I have to say, in terms of how to present the gospel to a congregation which is, as all congregations are, worldly, self-centred, and sinful, and stubborn, and hard-hearted.

And the three things in Puritan preaching were these. First, exposition. Second, application. And third, unction. And those three things we must always hold together. We must never abandon the Word and say, ah, well, the Holy Spirit will do everything that needs to be done.

No, no, we have to honour the Holy Spirit by honouring Scripture. We have to maintain the centrality of God because God is central in the Word of God. And if we are to preach the Word of God, then God must be central, and God must have the glory, and God must be shown to be great.

And this matter of application, so that presenting the gospel is not a matter of imparting information or conveying a lecture. It's a message. It's a burden laid upon our hearts by God the Holy Spirit himself.

It's about him. It's from him. It's to him. And so it's to his people in order for his people to have that greater view of the majesty of God. Richard Baxter was eminently successful in a place called Kidderminster in England.

And it was said that when he went there, there was hardly one family in a street that ever prayed or sang the Psalms of God. And before he left, that there was hardly anyone in the street that didn't do that.

And what was it that brought about that change? Well, it was convictions like these, and these are his words. Quench not the Spirit. He is the spring to all your spiritual motions as the wind to your sails.

The help of the Spirit is not at our command. Take it while you have it. Use wind and tide before they cease. They must come from God. That unction is dependence on God, looking to God, waiting on God for God to breathe by his Holy Spirit into our hearts and through the minister into the minister's congregation.

So there is that great need for unction. Preaching is not just imparting information. It's conveying a message. I want to quote you at this point from one of the Welsh Methodists, a man by the name of William Williams, Pantycalon, who wrote that wonderful hymn, Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.

And he has something on this very line in verse form. Listen to these two verses. The truth from heaven draws power. From God receives its crown, destroys the dragon's castles and tears their towers down.

The gospel's sole foundation, authority and might owes nothing to man's reason and all to heavenly light. Though learning has great value, I see this every day, that only the experienced will preach the gospel way.

The Spirit makes a preacher and heaven's choicest sound is heard and felt with power when heaven's gales abound. We are dependent on heaven's gales to portray heaven's king to our congregations. That was William Williams.

In another place, he speaks of one of the lay preachers in a rather wonderful way. And he uses, as he was wont to do, some very vivid imagery. But listen to this. It conveys the same thing. Of this man, he used to say, feeling was his life and essence.

Heaven's breeze his only aid. With no breath of God attending, fixed his vessel would have stayed. Sturdy oars not his to row with, but the gale from heaven above all the saints would bring in triumph to the paradise of love.

What's he saying? Well, he's just using a very simple illustration. Here is a man in a boat in maybe a river estuary and it's all mud. He's stuck in the mud. He hasn't got any oars. What's he waiting for?

Well, he's waiting for the tide to come in, yes. But there's the wind and the sails are there. But without the wind, that boat isn't going to move. In a sense, he's ready, he's prepared. But he's waiting for the wind, for heaven's breeze.

And if we are going to convey to our congregations something of the glory and majesty and holiness of God, then we must look to him for the power of the Holy Spirit and the unction of the Holy Spirit to do so.

Scripture, Prayer, and the Knowledge of the Holy

There is a very close connection, I believe, between our use of Scripture and thinking of God biblically. It's a matter of Scripture and meditation. The Scripture itself is God-centred, not man-centred.

I suppose we are very prone to turn to Scripture and saying, well, let's have a nice little juicy bit today that will sort of help me on my way. But when we really let Scripture speak for itself, then it always brings us into the presence of God and into the realities of God's dealings with flawed human nature like ours, miserable, wretched sinners like us.

But it's about God. And so when we come to Scripture honestly, openly, to receive what God has to say, then we will let that Word of God speak to us, not just about us. It will do that, thankfully, yes.

It will speak about our adversity. It will speak about our trials, our difficulties, our disappointments. It will speak about our problems. Yes, yes. But more than that, it will bring the gaze of our souls to the God who is in control of all these things and who is sovereign and whose providence will never fail us.

It's God-centred, not man-centred. It's a means, in other words, of communion as well as of illumination. Yes, I need God's illumination. I need God's guidance. I need God's direction. And we know thy Word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path.

Thank God that we have the Scripture. But it's the God of Scripture that we are brought to when we are honest in our approach to the Bible. It's a means of communion. It's a means of bringing us closer to God so that we are absorbed and we have a passion for Him and, you might almost say, an obsession with God.

That's the Christian when he is thinking of God biblically. That's what it does to us. And so, our response is always one of prayer. And I know all too often in my own life and in my ministry that I have had to grieve over and over again for the weakness of my faith and the paucity of my prayer.

And it's always been because I've taken the gaze of my soul from the God-answering prayer, the prayer-answering God, sorry, the prayer-answering God. That's what matters. So, when I come to God in prayer, it's not just prayer requests that I have.

They are there. But what is there more than anything else is a desire for a deeper acquaintance with God. And Philippians 3 .10 to me is a very precious verse that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings to enter into that closer walk with God, that deeper acquaintance, not just a head knowledge, not just a knowledge that God has touched my soul.

No, I want to enter closer to Him and nearer to Him. And in this respect, one of the books that was a great help early in my ministry was a book by E. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, the Attributes of God.

And that was like a tonic to my soul because it was God-centered and it went over the attributes of God, yes, in a fresh way, yes, almost in a mystical way, which could be frightening, but it didn't frighten because here was something healthy, here was something biblical, here was something God-centered, and it created that hunger and thirst for that deeper acquaintance which so many of these men that Tozer talked about knew in their experience.

Christ at the Center of Worship and Personal Revival

I must say, when you think about God biblically, another help as far as I'm concerned has been good Christian hymns, scriptural hymns, which speak of Christ's person, Christ's cross, and death and passion.

And I mentioned earlier William Williams, well I mention him again, about William Williams, some of his hymns where there is that hunger, given expression, he gives expression to that hunger. He is one certainly who puts Christ in the center of our focus and he has that wonderful gift of imagery.

Take this as an example before I move on to the other thing I mentioned about Jesus Christ's death on the cross. He came to heal the wounded, was wounded in their stead. The air of heaven was pierced, for those through sin made dead.

And here's the imagery. He sucked the awful poison the serpent gave to me, and from that deadly venom he died on Calvary. If that doesn't draw us to Christ, then I fail to see what will. But then I mentioned this William Williams in connection with the passion of the soul and the presence of God.

And in that context, listen to how William Williams puts it. He's speaking about Jesus Christ. He is greater than his blessings. He is greater than his grace, far greater than his actions, whatever you may trace.

I plead for faith, gifts, cleansing, for these I'll yearn quite sore. But on him only, always, I'll look and lean far more. To see thy face, beloved, makes my poor soul rejoice o 'er all I've ever tasted or ever made my choice.

When they all disappear, why should I grieve or pine? While to my gaze there opens the sight that Christ is mine. And just one more verse of that. Tell me thou art mine, O Saviour. Grant me an assurance clear.

Banish all my dark misgivings, still my doubting, calm my fear. O my soul within me yearneth now to hear the voice divine. So shall grief be gone forever and despair no more be mine. That kind of thing tells me something about the God who should be in the very centre, the God who should come first, the God of greatness and the God of glory and the God of majesty.

That reminds me of my need for personal revival and the need of my people for pastoral revival and the need for my society today, my nation, for a general revival and a recovery of the sense of God's greatness into our midst in our day and generation.