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Stuart Olyott At The Aberystwyth Conference

Author
Category Articles
Date August 18, 2005

The structure of the Aberystwyth Conference is unique. After the prayer meetings (which begin at 9.15) are over the crowds numbering 1200 people gather in the Great Hall of the University for the 11.00 main meeting. There is just one preaching session for the whole morning and that is the conference address. Everything hangs on the speaker. If the Rev Humpty Dumpty falls then there is no one else at a second session or a third session to put the conference back together again. It is a heroic vision hemming a man into God and his blessing. Its origin was sixty or so years ago in the first of the Evangelical Movement of Wales conferences held in Aberavon when Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones spoke. When he had preached then it was time for personal reflection. Deal with God! One did not desire immediately to hear another speaker. So this good tradition of a single speaker for the entire morning began. The Keswick morning Bible Readings in the hands of the main speaker had much the same concept, but in the USA’s conferences there are always three or more morning speakers; too many words, so counterproductive, like their long Sunday mornings in church. Little wonder only a quarter come back for the evening message. Lloyd-Jones soon handed the conference over to a committee and to other speakers. He never returned as a speaker, and the time of the conference moved to an August date rather than Easter when it had started, and also 100 miles north-west to this seaside town where it has been ever since. There is nowhere else it could be held in Wales.

It was to be a conference largely of preachers from Wales. There was unhappiness with other conferences which steadfastly brought in Englishmen who metaphorically patted us Welsh boys on the head and then drove back to their English vicarages. Wales had to raise up a generation of preachers, and in those ranks of men influenced by Lloyd-Jones what splendid preachers were available for us, John Thomas, Hugh Morgan, Gareth Davies, Omri Jenkins, Vernon Higham, Luther Rees and so on. They were admirable for the evening preaching services in which gospel truth was addressed to those yet uncommitted, but the fertilisation of preachers for the morning sessions from Ireland, Scotland, the USA, and England gave the freshness of a new approach and a pleasing confirmation of our old convictions. Generally we Welshmen have not done so well in the morning sessions. Next year Joel Beeke is returning to Aberystwyth to speak, and in the future Edward Donnelly will return for his third visit. This year the conference addresses were given by Stuart Olyott the Pastoral Director of the Evangelical Movement of Wales. He arrived fresh on the heels of the appearance of his new book on preaching, Preaching Pure and Simple (Bryntirion Press). It is one of the best books on preaching to have appeared in the last thirty years. I cannot speak too highly of it. It needs to be disseminated far and wide. Preachers in Africa and Asia would value it as highly as anyone in the English speaking world. It is being translated at this moment into a number of languages.

For the first time the theme and titles of the morning sessions were announced months in advance. Stuart had long chosen Romans chapters 6,7 and 8 to bring to us. It is the first time in thirty years Romans has been dealt with in the mornings, not in fact since Elwyn Davies spoke on these chapters.

Tuesday morning Stuart spoke on Romans 6 without once using the phrase ‘definitive sanctification’ but explaining that concept sweetly enough. He and his wife were standing at the Christian Book Shop in Swansea market when a man asked the assistant what good book on godliness would she recommend. Which one would you recommend? There is Ryle’s Holiness and Bonar’s God’s Way of Holiness and Bridges’ The Pursuit of Holiness. All can be highly recommended, but the best of all is Paul’s letter to the Romans. Romans 6 begins with two questions, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase?†The first question is the lead in, and the second is the important question. Have you asked, “Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase?†It goes back to the previous chapter and the fact of the reality of God. You know that he is eternal, invisible, all powerful. You know that he will judge you. You do know all of this, and yet you may choose to live for yourself, pleasing yourself, while he is actively furious towards you. You are a guilty sinner and always have been. Then the message of the kindness of God comes. Millions who deserve judgment receive forgiveness, and the perfection of Christ is laid to their account. By faith alone in Jesus Christ his righteousness becomes theirs. When did God send Christ? When sin was at its worst. When did God save you? When you were at your worse. If that is the case, why go on sinning. That is the background of the question of Romans 6. From the question we can see what godliness is, negatively, it means not sinning. It is, in other words, a moral quality. Finney in the 19th century was a man of some charisma. There was an occasion when he visited a factory and the workmen felt a strange influence, some stopping working and weeping simply because he was there. Many views Finney taught were ungodly, but he gave off ‘vibrations’. That does not mean that he was a godly man. Godliness is not a mystical quality; it is a moral quality. Godliness is about not sinning. So what is the message of Romans 6? Paul was not writing for academics but for the children and ordinary church members of the Roman congregation. Paul wants to be understood by them and so he speaks in pictures. Verses 1-14 is one great picture of a slave killed and raised again. Verse 15 to the end of the chapter describes the life of the newly risen slave. Firstly the slave is killed and raised; “we died to sin.†A slave was kept by a bully who exploited him daily. From his master he had no escape. A king lived nearby who loved the slave and planned to release him. He did so in this strange way; he killed the slave, and then all the yelling and screaming of his tyrannical master was unavailing. Then the king raised him from the dead and took him into his kingdom. There the slave wanted to serve his new master, his former life being over. That is the picture and so you have the refrain that the Christian has died (vv.2-6) and that he’s been freed from sin. Now reckon that this is the case. Bring it into your scheme of reckoning each day. God has put you as a Christian in Christ, in his life, death, resurrection and ascension. This doctrine is union with Christ and that fact is our status in salvation. You will meet the old master of sin in all your relationships and thoughts. Whenever we bump into him shopping or on the street or reading the paper we respond by saying, “You have no authority over me that I should obey you.†We do not have to submit to him. Henceforth you spend your time and energy serving your new master. From the 15th verse we return to that question of whether we may sin because we are not under the law but under grace. Certainly not. Sin is always intolerable. So what so we say? You know if a slave is telling the truth concerning the identity of his new master when you hear that master giving a straight command and notice how this man is jumping to obey. Everyone is either serving righteousness (or whatever title grace and truth is given) or sin (and that also has a number of titles). Your new master will not tell you to do anything which is not in accord with his nature. So there are two masters; two lifestyles and two rewards. If you are serving the one then you are not serving the other. The proof you are a Christian is not to be found in words spoken but in a life lived. Godliness begins in your mind, reckoning that you have died to the domination sin had over you, and alive to obey your new master. If you go to a church which is all atmosphere and feelings then you are in the wrong church. Godliness consists of not sinning. How can you sin in union with Jesus Christ? You old man no longer has hold of you and daily you are to present yourself to your new master. Do you understand these things? Understanding them is the beginning to living them day by day.

The second address of Stuart’s was on Romans 7 which he described as a cul-de-sac – the dead end road. Many routes are pointed out to us today as taking us to godliness, but they will fail. “If I keep the rules long enough and earnestly enough I will become a godly person.†No you won’t. “If I read the Bible and pray every day I will become godly.†No you will not. That way is a cul-de-sac. There are in the congregation today people I call “Rules People.†There are people here today whom I call, “No Rules People†(their slogan is ‘free from the law O blessed condition’). There are also people here whom I call, “No Rules but Yes Rules†people. They are folk who love the Ten Commandments and would, for example, take them to a primitive people to impose order, conviction and righteousness. In verses 1-6 the apostle is aiming his message at Rules People telling them that they are not slaves of rules but of Jesus Christ. The law applies to those who are alive not to those what are in heaven. It applies to the driver of the hearse not to the man in the coffin. While a woman is married she is bound to her husband while he lives, Everything the law demands of you was met when Christ lived and died. The Christian is married to him who has taken all our liabilities and fulfilled all our righteousness. A housekeeper will do what she is paid to do according to the rules the man of the house has posted on the kitchen wall. When he falls in love with her and marries her he takes the list of rules down but she knows what they are and she freely chooses to keep those same rules out of her love for him. In verses 7-13 Paul aims his words at the “No Rules People.†They say that the law means trouble, but the law is not the problem. It reveals and stirs up sin and condemns it. It is not itself sinful; the problem is our sinful nature. A criminal may grumble, “If it hadn’t been for the law I wouldn’t be in jail.†No, it is the wickedness of your lawbreaking that has put you in prison, not the law itself. Indwelling sin is your problem not the law. We cannot keep the law because of remaining sin. The third section of Romans 7 from verse 14 to the end is aimed at the “No rules, but yes there are rules†people and that is the only group to which a Christian should belong. This final paragraph is different from the earlier ones which are written in the past tense; in these verses virtually all the words are in the present tense. Paul is describing a mature Christian man. Only such a man would say, “I know nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature,†or “in my inner being I delight in God’s law.†The assault on the new nature by the sinful flesh is a characteristic of the Christian only. It is a conflict between what I am and what I ought to be to such an extent that a Christian will acknowledge that he does not understand himself. “Lots of things go on in my life and I don’t agree with them.†Paul is describing his own wrestlings and falls as an apostle to convince us that this is the common experience of every true believer. We can never find deliverance in ourselves but only in an external divine power. The other law at work in Paul is agonising; what a wretched state to be in, battling with indwelling sin each day, and from time to time being overcome. Who can deliver him? He thanks God that it is through Jesus Christ. The Christian life is both the groan for deliverance and the shout of victory that it is through Christ. False teachers will teach either the one or the other, but true believers will acknowledge both. They all know the tension of the two natures.

On Thursday morning Stuart spoke on Romans 8:1-17 which he called the Open Road. The Christian himself is referred to by such terms as the mind, I, me (that is the real inward me), while sin is referred to by such terms as ‘the sinful nature’ (the NIV preferred term), sin that indwells me, another law, the law of sin. This latter we have received from Adam, the former is what we get as a Christian, and how can that be the dominant force in our lives? In chapter eight a word is given a prominence which was absent in chapter 7 (except for a single reference). On 14 or 15 occasions in this 8th chapter the word ‘Spirit’ is found. In 8:1-4 Paul underlines that we are in Christ Jesus. Think of a walled city, and we are inside it. Everything that happened to Jesus Christ has thus happened to us, and everything that has not happened to him has not happened to us. Today there is no cloud between the Father and the Son, and there is no cloud between ourselves and God. The Son always enjoys the embrace of the Father, and so do we. We are not just free from punishment but from the dominion of sin. The Holy Spirit is also within us, and so the previous law is no longer the dominant force. There are two spirits at work in the universe, the influence of evil and its key word is ‘me’ (“What’s in it for ME?â€Â), and there is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the one God. Which one of these two forces is going to control my life? Consider a plane taking off, experiencing the force of gravity as it sits on the runway, pulling it down. Then it begins to move off and while it is still under the force of gravity there is also thrust, and power at work, then lift off and ascent. Gravity is still pulling it down – as much as before – but there is another ‘law’ that dominates the plane which is more powerful. The law of the Spirit of life has made me free from the law of sin and death. In the flesh of the Son sentence has been executed on him as the elect were joined to him. So, living in line with the law is brought about by walking by the Spirit. We have been discharged from the law’s condemnation, but the requirements of the law are fulfilled in us. In vv. 5-11 see what a contrast between the believer and the unbeliever. Those in the flesh (who live for ME) can never please God (v.8), but we, as to our bodies, are dead because of sin. They are prone to accident and dying because of indwelling sin. If Christ is in you, then the Spirit is life because of righteousness. So Christians become senile but still respond to the story of God’s free salvation. The Spirit of Christ, the one raised from the dead, is with us in life and death. So the indwelling Spirit makes resurrection certain. If you are not radically different from sinners then you must come to Christ. If you are not radically different then you are no different from sinners. So you must begin by coming to Jesus Christ. Words about the Lord can’t save you, only he can save you. In vv. 12-17 we are told how Christians should live. We don’t owe indwelling sin anything. We have received a filial Spirit. Do you have him? Then you can’t stay away from your Father. God is also your benefactor and you are his heir. You will enjoy the full delights of God for all eternity. We don’t owe sin anything, but we will yield him too much if left to ourselves. We must walk in the Spirit. He will lead us in the paths of righteousness home. We will grow in godliness and love and mount up with wings as an eagle.

The fourth and final conference address of Stuart Olyott I did not hear. I attended every other meeting in the Conference having preached myself on Monday morning. By Friday the Lord’s Day’s two messages were looming up ahead of me and I had to miss this message to prepare for Sunday, conscious that more than our small congregation would be present with a number of conference people remaining behind for more ministry. I rely on my wife’s briefer notes of this address. Romans 8:17 begins with the theme of suffering for Christ and then moves rapidly to the glory that awaits the Christian in heaven. Persecution is inevitable for the godly while we are here in the body. Creation itself groans, and even the Spirit himself groans, but at the end all this will be reversed. Now there is a muted glory, but one day the glory will be magnificent. Now we have what are the ‘first fruits’ of heaven; we also have the testimony of the Spirit all of which tell us that glory awaits us. We have this certain hope and it causes Christian doxology. There are 76 hymns in our book that begin with the exclamation ‘O’! We are expressing our wonder at God’s glorious salvation and at the pain of our groaning world. The groans encourage us to believe that we are on our way to the glory before us. While we are in this state God works all things together for our good (v.18). Nothing works for the good of the ungodly, but for those called by God, those whom he has intimately and lovingly foreknown, whom he has purposed to be changed into the image of his Son, even the smallest things work for our good. There is therefore good reason for joy. If God is for us, no one can be against us. The God who did not hold back his only Son from us will certainly hold back no lesser thing from us. Who shall separate us from the love of God? Paul examines every force on earth, in heaven and hell, and he is certain that nothing shall come between us and God’s love in Jesus Christ. These great forces listed by Paul at the end of the chapter are the stepping stones to glory.

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