10 Years of Beholding God: Richard Owen Roberts, pt. 2

Welcome to the WHOLE Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snider and I'm here to commemorate the 10th anniversary coming up for our Behold Your God study, Rethinking God Biblically. 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 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 10 years. And I hope that you will be as benefited by them now as we were 10 years ago, listening to these men talk about such important topics.

You're about to hear material from the interview with Richard Owen Roberts. Mr. Roberts is a unique man, really kind of a maverick in many ways. He is a very conservative, theologically careful, godly, older man.

And he is a Congregationalist minister in a denomination that is not known for its conservative theology nowadays. Mr. Roberts actually is, of all the contributors to the study, he's the one I met first.

I met him when I was 20 years old. So that's 52 years, 53 years ago. I was converted at age 20 in the midst of studying at a religious college. And I realized through my behavior and through the scriptures that I was a fraud.

I needed to be born again. And God mercifully rescued me. Once that occurred, while I already had a lot of good books in my little library that I was collecting because of the influence of other men, I began to be interested in the preaching of a guy named Richard Owen Roberts.

So back then it was tapes. This was all pre-internet. And so I got every tape I could find by this man. And I would listen to them as I drove back and forth to college or drove back and forth to visit my fiancé at that time.

And I remember some of the tapes, listening to them 20, 30 times, and they would break in the middle because I had listened to him so much. And eventually I was able to hear Roberts in person at a conference.

And then I was able to go and meet Mr. Roberts. Actually, I think the meeting came first. I talked to a friend of mine who's now with the Lord named Shelton Ivey. We were buddies in college. And so I said to Shelton, I'm going to go visit this guy named Richard Owen Roberts.

I lived in South Mississippi at the time. It was a 16-hour drive to Wheaton, Illinois. My friend lived near Memphis. So he said, well, I'll go with you. So we drove up and we made the trip and like, you know, like college guys, we made the trip in one go.

And we got there late that night. And the next morning we showed up at his bookshop and we knocked on the door. I was so nervous. And really, you know, I was about probably 23 at this time. He was my hero.

And I was embarrassed in front of him. And he answered the door. And I said, hello, Mr. Roberts. You know, I must have, my voice was probably cracking and I was talking a thousand miles an hour. And I said to him, I'm the young man that called you and said, I would like to come visit you.

And this was my friend. And I, and I paused and he just looked at me. Mr. Roberts never feels obligated to interrupt the, you know, the awkward pauses. He doesn't mind being quiet. So after this little pause, I got more embarrassed and I said, and I wanted to browse your bookshop, your Christian bookshop, and look at what you had for sale.

And he said to me, we're not really set up for browsing because it was a warehouse. And he shut the door and that was it. We had driven 16 hours and he just closed the door. And so my friend Shelton said to me, man, 16 hours.

And now it's going to be 16 hours back for that. And I was so desperate. I wanted to meet the man who wrote the little book on revival that I read, who had preached those sermons. And so I said to Shelton, you can go get in the car if you want.

I'm going in, he's going to have to call the cops to get me out of his warehouse. So I just pushed in and I found him somewhere in the warehouse working at his desk. And I just shot every 18th and 17th century author that I knew at that time.

I just shot their names one after the next and what I appreciated about their books. So he wouldn't think I was a 12 year old who did, who was at the wrong place. And after a little while, he turned and started to talk.

We ended up spending about eight hours with him. And he was very gracious. He just talked to us about spiritual things, preparing for the ministry, you know, walking with the Lord. Mr. Roberts has been, I would say, the most influential minister on my life personally.

He has changed the way I think about God, about walking with God, about helping other people walk with God more than any other minister. I still am in contact with Mr. Roberts. He's still alive and he is still running all the way to the end.

Sometimes he'll talk about what he's learning about holiness, you know, or whatever topic it is. And it's like talking to a little kid that just came out of a candy shop. He's just so excited that there's so much yet to know, so much ground yet to be taken for Christ.

I hope you.

Benefit from these interviews. How do you personally use the Bible to grow an awareness of God's glory or to promote lofty views of God among the people around you? I remember very distinctly, I think the.

Year was 1961, being in attendance at Westminster Chapel, London, when Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was preaching. And I heard him make the statement, many people use the Bible like a medicine cabinet. If they're feeling a little ill, they search in the Bible for a little something that will make them feel better.

If they're discouraged, something that will uplift them, a pill for this, a pill for that. And that's their use of the Bible, just something to perk them up, to help them along. But that the real purpose of the Bible is to reveal God.

And that ought to be the usage we make of Scripture. Now I think to a small degree, I had used Scripture that way previous, but I determined on hearing that statement from a man whom I greatly respected, that's what I've got to do on a perpetual basis.

I began to realize the Bible is not really about me, but about God. In a sense, it might almost be called his autobiography, certainly, as I said earlier, his self-revelation. And therefore, my primary task is to discover the God who is revealing himself.

That must be the major thing I do every time I pick up the Bible. Now, obviously, there are side benefits of seeking God. And these statements of comfort do come when we need them. These matters of guidance do come.

But the essential purpose must be, at all times, to discover the God of the Bible. And when we discover the God of the Bible, and we become more in awe and in fear of him, then Christ becomes more and more precious to us.

And we become more dependent upon him, more confident in his grace and in his mercy, and more quick to testify to others concerning the power of Christ to transform the life. And when we are negligent in terms of the right use of the Bible, then we are bringing ourselves into a moral and a spiritual decline.

It is so clear to me that one only makes onward movement upward in the direction of God when they're using the Bible right and using it with great earnestness and care. And so it is my heart's desire, if I live another two years or 20 years, whatever, that those years be spent in discovering more fully the God who reveals himself.

And I can look back over my own life and acknowledge, honestly, every failure has been a failure in first seeking God and discovering him. And then it has resulted in some careless action or word that has brought down the glory of God and has even made me look to be more the idiot that I really am apart from the grace of Christ.

So focusing on the God of the Bible is without question our great task. I have often said to groups when speaking to them, there's a correlation between what I think of God, what I think of myself, what I think of sin, and what I think of salvation.

I am personally convinced that a very high percentage of those who call themselves Christians are not. But I'm also convinced you can't correct the problem at that level because that's a fruit. In order to correct the problem, we've got to get back, obviously, to the root.

So what I see is if my view of God is low, my view of self will be high. And with a high view of self, I will think it my right to say what's acceptable and what's unacceptable conduct. I'll be the one to define sin.

I'll be the one to justify certain actions saying, oh, that's all right under these circumstances God understands. And if I have defined sin, then I feel the liberty to declare what salvation is. And if I follow that process, I will declare a salvation that is pure imagination.

I will pronounce people converted who've never come anywhere near Christ. So I've got to maintain that clear-cut, earnest seeking of God in His Word. Most of us have some struggle with pride. And the obvious terrible thing about pride is when you think maybe you've made a little progress, you find out the little progress you think you've made is pride again.

I had a situation some time back that I never shall forget, I'm sure. I had been preaching, excuse me, I'd been preaching in a number of places on the solemn assembly, God's ordained means of dealing with corporate sin.

One of the large denominations had heard my preaching on the subject and had begun to call solemn assemblies both in their local churches and in their state and national conventions. Out of the blue one day, I received a thick, one of those big manila envelopes and looked it over externally and thought to myself, I wonder what that is.

And then couldn't figure it out from the markings and so opened it up and pulled out this packet of information on the solemn assembly. Oh, wonderful, it's from this large denomination. Then I was leafing through the material to see what they said and suddenly it dawned on me what I was doing.

I was searching through that material to discover if they had acknowledged where they learned about the solemn assembly. I was so ashamed, so grieved. I thought, how could I possibly be searching to see if they identified me and gave me credit?

What possible difference does it make? I'm not the originator of the solemn assembly. I never dreamed it up. All I did was find it in the scripture and report what I found. And here I am looking for recognition over that.

I stuffed the stuff back in the envelope and I said to myself, I will not look at that again until I know that I've made some progress on the issue of pride. So I got buried in a heap and a few years passed and we were moving our household.

And so I was packing stuff up and examining things in piles and, well, I wonder what this envelope is. So I pull out the contents and there it is, this material on the solemn assembly. Oh no, I'm not ready for that.

And I went back in the envelope. It's buried somewhere around here. But what a grievous thing that pride has become for many of us, such a vicious part of our lives. And I began to seriously question, how does one really gain some ground in overcoming pride, in living in true humility?

I was preaching at that time a series on Luke 3, the passage where John the Baptist says, I baptize with water for the remission of sins. But when he comes, whose sandals I'm not fit to untie, he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire.

And as I was meditating upon that, I realized there are two contrasts drawn in that statement. John is contrasting himself personally with Christ. And John is contrasting his baptism with the baptism of Christ.

But it came to me with incredible power. There's only one way to make any progress in terms of humility. That's to stop comparing ourselves with one another and to refuse to compare ourselves with anyone other than Christ.

Because it became clear to me, all pride really is built on comparison. The beautiful girl stands next to the homely girl. The guy with huge bra stands next to the little midget like myself. The guy with great brains loves to be around those who are sluggish in their thinking.

And I was absolutely convinced I've got to keep my eyes on Christ. That is the only way that in any consequential fashion will lead to humility. So we have huge incentives for keeping our eyes on Christ.

What passes for the gospel in our day seems to have more in common with pop psychology and self-help books than the glory of Christ described in the scriptures. How do you see this as being linked with a low view of God?

My own deep conviction is that the church by and large has interpreted evangelism as salesmanship. And thus the methodology, sign on the dotted line or verbalize this prayer or make this outward confession with the mouth.

Obviously, salesmen by and large do not think of their calling to speak profoundly about their product. Often they say virtually nothing about what they're selling and their great energy is poured into trying to convince somebody that they need whatever it is that they're peddling.

And I believe that much modern evangelism uses that same approach. The least possible about God, sin, Christ, salvation, the bulk of the focus is upon getting the person to cross the line, to accept the sales pitch, to act purposely.

People often ask me questions concerning evangelism. What do you think of modern evangelism? And I often ask people, do you think that in the New Testament salesmanship is at the heart of evangelism? I don't think I've ever had anybody say yes to that.

Well, what is at the heart of evangelism? Well, without any possible contradiction, we are called to be witnesses. And often I've said to someone, suppose that you had been an eyewitness to a crime and you were called into court and required to testify of what you had seen and heard.

Suppose that when you were in the court, in your place on the witness box, you undertook to convince the judge of how he ought to respond or to persuade the jury as to the decision they must make. You'd be held in contempt of court in a moment's time.

The task of the witness is to testify as to what he's seen and heard. Now, I find modern evangelism lacks that eyewitness testimony. The focus, as I said already, is upon salesmanship. And we desperately need to get back to that place where those who have had a real encounter with the living God of the Bible testify to others what God has done in their life, what they have seen, what they have felt, what they have heard, what they know to be absolute truth.

And I believe it's the witness of those who are close to Christ that profoundly impacts others. Otherwise, it appears to me what we've got is persons who are making decisions who don't even know what they're deciding.

They don't know what the great issues are that are at stake. They haven't been given sufficient truth to even think clearly about what it is they're doing. And certainly some of the decisions I've observed have been merely to get somebody else off your back.

They're pressing, pressing, pressing, all right, I'll pray the prayer. Now, pastors frequently tell me that they give an altar call Sunday morning, people come forward, they baptize them Sunday night, and they never see them again.

And I ask them, why do you do that? Oh, that's the way we do it. We have developed a system that we would rather continue with the system to even think about the consequences of what we're doing. The whole church is in such a wild, upheaval and mess.

It's almost impossible. There are all kinds of things that enter into this. Years ago, when I was a youth, when I began preaching, Sunday morning services were made up of believers. Communion was celebrated Sunday morning because it was a Christian audience.

Sunday night was a special night with the evangelistic sermon, evangelistic music, and often more people came Sunday night than came Sunday morning. And it was very common to have many unbelievers in the services Sunday night.

But all that has turned around. With almost no exceptions in this country, the Sunday morning service is the largest service. Pastors tell me that they're sure that upwards of 70 percent of their people are unconverted.

But they still have the evangelistic meeting Sunday night. They still treat Sunday morning as a worship service. They have a song leader who's pleading, whatever, now really pour yourself into this, get in to the feel and the excitement of this praise song.

Whereas what he ought to be doing is begging them, don't you dare open your mouth, don't you participate for a moment in things you don't believe. If you have not surrendered your life to Christ, don't you dare make a hypocrite of yourself.

And at the communion table, most churches never put a fence around it. In multitudes of cases, they never warrant people. Don't you run the risk of eating and drinking damnation to yourself. What I'm trying to say by all of that is we're not even using our heads.

We're doing things because that's the way they used to be done without even thinking of the consequence. And connected with that, very often I have an opportunity to say to a group of men in ministry, what would you think of a person on the mission field in a truly pagan setting, inviting people to accept Christ and then baptizing them that same day?

Oh, that wouldn't be wise. No, no, no, they shouldn't do that. After all, they're dealing with pagans. They should have some months, maybe even a year to prove that they have truly turned to Christ. Now, what is the most pagan nation on earth?

Seems to me the United States. The bulk of the people who come to the Sunday morning service, if you ask them to turn to the book of Joel, they don't know whether to begin at the front or at the back.

If there's no table of content, they may never find the scripture. Scripture reading will be over before they find their place in the text. We're not using our heads. Some of the men whom I respect say, well, I've been preaching 60 years and I'm preaching the same exact things I preached 60 years ago.

I hope nobody ever heard me make a stupid statement like that. I'm not preaching today what I preached 60 years ago. 60 years ago, I was preaching to a biblically literate people. Today, I'm preaching to biblically illiterate people.

I can't use the same message. The focus must not be the same. Evangelism, I'm saying, is stuck in a rut. Maybe 50 years ago, an oversimplified statement of the gospel was acceptable because the bulk of the people had enough Bible knowledge to be able to fill in the blanks.

But that's not true today. In actual fact, we can't even begin with the message of Christ on the cross. We got to begin with Genesis with the creator and the right that God has to tell a man to sit down and shut up and to tell him he's in great trouble if he doesn't.

But the church, as I've said, is just not thinking clearly about what it's doing. And the reason I expect is they're so in love with masses, with numbers, with being able to slip into the pastor's meeting on Monday and say in a very humble tone, well, we didn't have a very good day yesterday.

We only had 36 respond to the altar call. We only baptized 19 last night. We're hoping for better days. And while he's making that very humble statement, another guy sitting across the table is saying, I haven't had a convert for three years.

But the guy who hasn't had a convert for three years is telling the truth. And the guy who is bragging in this subtle way of humility hasn't had a convert either. The bulk of his converts are no converts at all.

So there is an incredible need to get back.

To the God of the Bible. The Western church seems unsure that personal holiness is essential or even helpful in reaching the lost. How do you see a biblical rethinking of God's character.

Influencing personal holiness? I believe there's a very serious disconnect in the minds of most professing Christians. I don't think they're realist. I don't believe they have an adequate sense of who God is to interpret the subject of holiness in any way that's meaningful.

If you do have the view that God is a Santa Claus type, that he's so anxious to distribute grace that he gladly lays aside his own person, his own nature, his own law in order to give grace to somebody, then that focus upon grace just overrides everything else and holiness goes out the door.

I believe that a fresh look at the subject of God's presence is highly urgent today. I find that most everywhere I go, people have not ever faced a biblical overview of God's presence. The general feeling is that God is as near to us today as he ever was.

That must be held to in opposition to great reams of scripture that declare otherwise. But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit and he turned himself and fought against them. He became their enemy.

Now, if someone doesn't believe those words, if they've just simply rejected the book of Isaiah as the rumblings of an old man with a bad temper, then they don't have to face the reality of them. But if you honestly believe that every word of scripture is true, you just face this incredibly urgent issue.

God turned himself and became their enemy. He fought against them. We very commonly hear people say, if God is for us, who can be against us? The only person ever in my life I heard ask the question, if God is against us, what does it matter who's for us?

It's myself. I think that's a question that needs to be asked with great frequency today. If God is against us, what does it matter who is for us? Now, this has everything to do with the issue of holiness.

The words that lead into those words, they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. We have such a false view of the presence of God that we're unable to cope with statements like that, that rather than think them through, rather than resolve them in a solid biblical manner, they're just simply set aside as irrelevant.

It's just taken as a given that God is always in the midst of his people, never otherwise. But in order to believe that, you've got to throw out vast portions of scripture. I think a study that individuals could wisely make would be to explore with great depth and earnestness every passage of scripture that speaks about God's presence.

My studies have led me to these conclusions. When the Word of God speaks about the presence of God, there are three great areas that are under discussion. My language isn't necessarily the finest and the best way to state these things, but at least I think these are clear words.

There is what we might call the essential presence of God. There is the manifest presence of God, and there is the cultivated presence of God. The essential presence of God is described biblically in language like, I, God speaking, fill heaven and earth.

It could be correctly said there is nowhere that anyone can go where God is not because God fills heaven and earth. Or even to use our imagination, suppose we're thinking now of a 15-year-old boy who has an adventurous spirit and we're in a position to say to him, how would you like to take a rocket ride?

Oh, yeah, sure. Well, this rocket is going to be set off on Friday morning. It's going to travel outward for 10 ,000 years. Still want to go? Well, obviously most would be backing out once they heard anything about the length of the trip.

But when you think of this, if one could travel outwardly from earth for 10 ,000 years, they could never pass a place where God is not because God fills heaven and earth. But when you're thinking along those lines, you have to ask, what is the impact on personal and social conduct from the essential presence of God?

The psalmists use language like, if I descend in the depth of the earth, thou art there. If I ascend the height of the highest mountain, thou art there. Whither shall I flee from thy presence? But what is the impact of God's essential presence?

Well, when you consider that in the deepest dive of iniquity, God is as much present on Sunday morning as he is in the nicest church, that the essential presence of God does not distinguish between the good and the ugly, the beautiful and the holy, and the sordid and shameful.

God is everywhere present. Now, I fear that many who think the presence of God is always with them are hanging on to that nature of God filling every place. But there's a huge distinction in Scripture between the essential presence of God and the manifest presence of God.

One of the studies that I have conducted personally that's been a very great help to me was I do things like a child because essentially that's about what I am. So I use a little simple method. So I take a pen and I'm reading rapidly through my Bible.

I put a P in the margin for presence every time there's any mention of the presence of God. And when it's clear God is drawing away from a people, then I put M-P-W, manifest presence withdrawn. Wow.

The number of pages that I have marked with P's and M-P-W's, that's the vast amount of material in Scripture on the subject of the presence of God. And it is crystal clear while in his essential presence God is everywhere at once, in his manifest presence he is nowhere where holiness is not.

Nothing causes God to leave quicker than the absence of holiness. Time after time he abandoned Israel and later Judah because they sinned and they did not repent and return to him. So we're kind of talking as if we had no brains at all when we pretend that God is with us.

When holiness is abandoned by the church, the presence of God is lost to the church. And therefore it becomes mandatory if the church is to flourish that God's methods and God's message be ditched and that the focus be upon man's manipulation of the message of God to make it simpler and easier for every sin-loving person to embrace.

And we introduce methodology that will encourage people to respond to the fractions of truth that we carefully distribute here and there. God is never with those who are living in sin. He's never with the church that has offended him, that has violated his word.

So the essential presence, the manifest presence, then the third term that I think the church needs to get a hold of, and individuals as well, the cultivated presence of God. And here we come directly to the theme of holiness.

I say without fear of contradiction, the manifest presence of Christ has been withdrawn from the American church. He could not possibly be there. The toleration of sin in the American church is simply so great.

God could not possibly be dwelling there and manifesting himself in their midst. So the cultivated presence is when an individual or a church or even a denomination or conceivably a community or a state or a nation becomes so deeply concerned about the presence of God that they determine to do anything and everything that is necessary to gain his presence.

Now, I don't believe that this has happened to a great many, but some of us have come to grips with that wonderful statement at the end of Psalm 73, the nearness of God is my good. And we've been forced into a situation where we have reflected very deeply on that.

And we come out of deep, deep meditation, knowing and saying with great affirmation, the nearness of God is my good. We can testify right from the very bottom of our beings. Nothing in life comes anywhere near the nearness of Christ in my life.

That is the very best thing that can happen to me. When he's near, life is glorious. When he's far, life is missing all that really matters. And because that and holiness go hand in hand, there is an incredibly powerful incentive to seek holiness and to live a life of holiness and not to make some false testimony.

We've all had some exposure to those who claim to be holy and are a long ways from it. I'm thinking of a crazy incident that happened in my college days when I went into the college library one day to study, and a group of fellows had gathered around the table in the center of the library, and they were so intent on their conversation.

And the conversation was so intense and interesting that it was utterly impossible to pay any attention to what I went into the library to do. So I gravitated over to the table, stood behind someone. The fellow was leading the conversation, looked up, and he knew my name, I knew his name, but we didn't really know each other.

And he said, Roberts, do you have something you want to say? And I said, yes, I'm wondering, do you really believe the Bible is the Word of God? Well, I certainly do. Do you know this statement, let all things be done in decency and in order, preferring one another?

Yes, I know that. What's that got to do with the subject? Well, I said, it's neither decent nor in order to engage in a conversation in the library that is so intense that nobody can tend to their studies.

He flew into a rage. He slammed his Bible shut. He leapt up and raced out shouting, sound just like a dirty Presbyterian. Now, there was a man claiming that he had experienced sinless perfection, that his old nature had been eradicated.

And of course, all the guys around the table burst out laughing and that settled the issue of sinless perfection for them. But I mentioned that because we have on that extreme, those who are making claims that are perfectly absurd and their lives testify contrary to what they claim.

Then we've got this vast array of people who pay no attention whatsoever to the subject of holiness. Then by the grace of God, there's this little group of people who have learned about the presence of Christ and who have set their hearts to cultivate that presence and who have understood holiness is a mandatory aspect of cultivating the presence of Christ.

And because the presence of Christ is worth more than all the gold in the world, holiness then takes on huge value and one gives themselves unceasingly to a longing for it and takes seriously passages like, Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.

But if you don't have any sense of the presence of God, if you get yourself locked into a position of assuming he's always equidistant from us, that it never varies, then you miss out on these incredibly wonderful treasures and these powerful internal motivators that move us towards Christ.