Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Guest (Male): The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals presents the timeless teaching of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: The Lord Jesus took everything that the world could say to him or do to him. The mocking, the scourging, the reviling, the spitting, the death. He took it all because he loved the Father.

And we will become like him as we know him more and love him more and are willing to stand in his place in this world. Not only in what we let him do through us in love and grace to others, but in what we let the world do to us because of the dear name's sake of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Guest (Male): Over a half a century ago, the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, then pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, saw the need to spread God's Word beyond the hearing of his local congregation. He started the radio ministry which has become known as Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.

The application of God's Word as taught by Dr. Barnhouse is as relevant today as when he first taught over the radio airwaves decades ago. The message we'll be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled "No Greater Love".

Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." He went to the cross and laid down his life for our salvation. This was the greatest demonstration of love the universe has ever seen. Have you experienced the redemptive love of Jesus Christ and come to know that there is no greater love than his?

The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans chapter 15 and verse 3. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled "No Greater Love".

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus, we come unto thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. We thank thee, O Father, that thou didst send thine only Son to suffer and die for us. We thank thee, Lord Jesus, that thou wert willing to take the scorn and the taunts of men, the enmity and reproach, and that thou didst give us an opportunity to share these with thee.

We thank thee, O Holy Spirit, that thou hast brought the life of the risen Lord Jesus Christ into our lives. May we so feed upon Christ in this hour that we may be strong to live the day-by-day witness for thee. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus. Amen.

Our text today is found in Romans 15:3: "For even Christ did not please himself; but, as it is written, 'The reproaches of those who reproached thee fell on me.'" It may shock some to be confronted by the bald statement that man actually hates God. Yet the Bible everywhere gives evidence of that fact, and we cannot explain history without it.

This terrible truth is summed up in the statement found in Romans 8:7 and 8: "The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law; indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God." It should be stated at once that man does not hate his own idea of God, but the concept of God which the Creator himself has revealed to us in the Word.

The pagan world is very much afraid of its gods, and well it might be, for the Bible reveals that they are demons. This is told to us in the 96th Psalm. In the world of Christendom, the unbelievers cannot stand to live with the biblical revelation of God. So, he has been reformed in human image. Men can accommodate themselves quite well to such a god, since he is the creation of their own minds and is subject to their whim.

But they hate the true God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Unless a man has been born again, he wants nothing to do with the God of the Bible. For the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the God who is perfect in all of his ways and attributes. He is as perfect in his justice as he is in his love. His curse upon evil is as strong as his blessing on righteousness.

His holiness thrusts sin away from himself as definitely as his love draws the sinner to himself. God's hell is as real as is his heaven. Now, there are those who rant and rave against such a concept. But the honest man must admit that no other concept of God is to be found in the Bible if the entire revelation is accepted.

It can readily be understood, therefore, that when this God came into the world as the Lord Jesus Christ, the enmity of man toward him was none other than enmity against God the Father. When the baby was born, Herod tried to have him murdered. This hatred was incited by Satan. But when the Lord Jesus Christ came to manhood and began to manifest the Father, the world reacted on its own, without the need of prompting by Satan.

And its smoldering animosity quickly blazed into the burning fury of the heart and will that refused to be tamed and which brooked no interference. The Lord Jesus Christ faced this attitude, and he submitted himself to the Father in enduring it. He did not please himself but lived in such a way that he speedily drew the hostility of those whom he loved and came to save.

Our text says that he accepted the reproaches of those who had first reproached God the Father. Before Christ came into the world, men shook their fists at an invisible deity. But when Jesus Christ came, they had a target within reach and soon focused all their bitter malignity upon him. Our text is a quotation from the extraordinary 69th Psalm. It is a psalm that is filled with Christ in every part.

Seven of its verses are directly quoted in the New Testament, and others furnish allusions which are expanded in the gospels. According to early church tradition, the Lord Jesus quoted scripture at great length during the time he hung upon the cross. We know that at least he began at the 22nd Psalm, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

And we know that he said, "I thirst," in order that the scriptures might be fulfilled. And the vinegar that they gave him to drink was prophesied in this 69th Psalm. Our text in its Old Testament form reads, "For zeal for thy house has consumed me, and the insults of those who insult thee have fallen on me." If we read through the whole psalm, we will note that he was denied and slandered by his enemies.

He was estranged from his own brothers and made a proverb by the people, was criticized by the rulers of the people, and was the theme of the obscene songs of the drunkards. "More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause. Mighty are those who would destroy me, those who attack me with lies," we read in Psalm 69:4.

Now, the Lord Jesus quoted this verse of himself, so there can be no doubt of its application. There were those among the scribes and the Pharisees, the priests and the Levites, who violently hated him. The reason is not hard to find. Before he came and stood beside them, they looked like good men. Linen bleaching on the grass seems white until the snow falls. It then looks gray.

Thus, it was for the so-called spiritual leaders of the people. They hated him freely. They hated him without a cause in himself. Oh, there was cause enough, but it was in their evil hearts. We shall see when we turn to the New Testament the channel that their hatred took. Then the psalm shows us that the hatred against Christ was manifested in his own home.

After Jesus was born, the Virgin Mary was fully and completely married to Joseph, and the Bible tells us that she bore him at least six children. We read of sisters in the plural, so there were at least two, and the names of four brothers are recorded in the Gospel in Mark chapter 6 and verse 3. Now, in Psalm 69, we read, "I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons," the sons of the Virgin Mary.

The presence of Jesus in that household certainly caused difficulties. Oh, we know that it's hard to live with near perfection, and how much harder to live with natural and complete perfection. After Christ came to manhood, his younger brothers wanted him to declare himself and use his power. They knew that he had turned water into wine and that he had healed the sick and fed the multitudes.

They could not be unaware that such power held potential for them. And they wanted him to live after the fashion advocated by the modern-day advertisers. In John's Gospel, we read, "Now the Jews' Feast of the Tabernacles was at hand. So his brothers said to him, 'Leave here and go to Judea that your disciples may see the works you're doing, for no man works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.'"

And the scripture adds, "For even his brothers did not believe in him." Truly, he had become a stranger to his brothers, an alien to his mother's children. Still further in this Psalm 69, we see that he became a proverb to the people, a byword. We know how a Christian student may be sneered at on a college campus, called a Christer or a Holy Joe or some other epithet.

We do not know by what slang phrase Christ was jokingly deprecated, but our text leaves no doubt of the fact he was a proverb, a byword to the people. In the next clause, we read, "They that sit in the gate speak against me." Now, to sit in the gate was the privilege of a ruler of the people. Of the diligent woman described in the last paragraph of the Book of Proverbs, it is said, "Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land."

When we read, therefore, that those who sat in the gate spoke against Christ, it means that the rulers of the people, the honorable ones, were against him. When we come to the New Testament in a moment, we'll find many illustrations of this fact. Finally, in the Psalm 69, we read in verse 12, "And I was the song of the drunkards." Solomon reminds us that fools make a mock of sin, but here we find that some men mock the Savior who died for them.

And do not think that this practice was infrequent or confined to ancient times. Let us realize that in the year 1959, the Metropolitan Opera of New York City put on a ballet called "The Sin of Jesus Christ". It portrayed a dance scene in which one of the dancers, representing Jesus Christ, was on a cross throughout the early part of the scene.

Mary Magdalene danced sensuously before him, and an evil character, an angel or whether representing Judas or Satan himself, danced with Mary until Jesus came down from the cross and wooed her away from his supposed rival. The reviews in the leading newspapers and magazines that cover ballet wrote adversely of the music and the dancing, but not one word was written against the horrible blasphemy in the theme.

We must remind ourselves again that all of these reproaches, these insults, this derision, fell upon Jesus Christ because of the hatred of men toward his Father, our God, the God of holiness, justice, and love. He was the target because he was God the Son. And it may be noted that nearly all the reproaches brought against Christ involve the integrity of God the Father.

The verb in our text is a present participle, which in Greek is a continuing thing. The passage might well be translated, "The reproaches of those who continually reproached thee fell on me." When the Lord Jesus Christ began to bore in with the truth about sin, the leaders were greatly hurt. Christ had to continue and show them that they were the children of their fathers, who had stoned prophets and killed those who were sent to them.

"You do what your father did," he said to them. They turned on him with wrath and gave him the worst reproach that can be given to men. They had heard that Jesus was born too shortly after the marriage of Joseph and Mary, and not knowing that he was born of the Holy Spirit, they flung in his teeth the rumor that he was an illegitimate child.

"We were not born of fornication," they replied. And Jesus, who knew of course that he was begotten by the Lord Jehovah, took this reproach but let them know their true origin. "You are of your father, the devil," he answered them. And it should be realized that anyone who joins the Pharisees in denying the virgin birth of our Lord Jesus takes company with the children of the devil and will be judged to the utmost by the Father when he ultimately deals with all the insults that were given to him through his Son.

The fact that the Lord Jesus was a citizen of Nazareth in Galilee called forth the scorn of the leaders. When Philip went to Nathanael to tell him of meeting Jesus, he said, "We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." And the answer of Nathanael cast reproach on Jesus, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

The same charge and reproach was brought against him by the rulers. "Are you led astray, you also?" they asked. "Have any of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed in him?" And when Nicodemus intervened with a suggestion that ordinary civil liberties demanded a proper hearing, they turned on him and said, "Are you from Galilee, too? Search, and you will see that no prophet is to rise from Galilee."

The first time that Jesus ever spoke in public, even before the Sermon on the Mount, his message on salvation by the simple grace of God aroused people to utmost fury. He had not spoken twenty lines before they were filled with wrath and rose up and thrust him out of the city and led him to the brow of the hill on which the city was built so that they might push him over the precipice.

When he reminded them that God saved a Gentile widow and her son and healed Naaman the Syrian, both incidents revealing sovereign grace towards undeserved sinners, he drew the greatest wrath from the people. Men do not want grace from God. They want him to acknowledge that what they find good in themselves, he also counts as good. This he can never do, and they hate him for it, and they hated his Son Jesus when he brought the same message of the grace of God for undeserved sinners.

He had not been long in his ministry before men thought he had gone crazy. When Jesus called the twelve and the crowds began to follow him, his friends, with good enough intention perhaps, sought to apprehend him because they said, "He's beside himself." This idiom is an ancient expression for insanity. They thought he had gone crazy, and they reproached him with this.

When later he showed just a touch of the blazing wrath which God shall one day exercise through him and called men by terrible names that revealed their fallen nature, they again thought he was crazy. And they sent for Mary and his brothers to lead him away quietly. When Jesus showed his power over evil spirits, the leaders reproached him with working through the power of the devil.

"It is only by Beelzebub, this prince of demons, that this man casts out demons." One hesitates to contemplate the depths of iniquity in hearts that can look upon the Lord Jesus Christ and attribute his work to Satan. Surely, if there had been no hell, it would have been necessary to create one for men such as these. While he hung on the cross, they mocked him and reproached him with the claims that he had made.

"You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you're the Son of God, come down from the cross." They flouted the idea of his deity and implied that he was himself nothing more than a great deceiver. So also the chief priests, with the scribes and the elders, mocked him, saying, "He saved others, he cannot save himself. He's the King of Israel, let him come down now from the cross and we'll believe in him.

He trusts in God, let God deliver him now if he desires him, for he said, 'I'm the Son of God.'" And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way. The Word of God takes pains to show us how the Lord Jesus Christ took these reproaches which he knew to be directed at the Father through him. The Father had prophesied of him: "Behold my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased.

I will put my spirit upon him and he shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick till he brings justice to victory." God had also told of Christ's attitude in the prophecy of Isaiah: "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth." The Lord also tells us that we shall be reproached by the world, we too, if we stay close enough to Christ.

Christ said to his disciples, and through them he says to us, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.

But all this they will do to you on my account because they do not know him who sent me." If we're to be like Christ, we are to take our reproaches as he took his. We must first make sure that we are reproached for the sake of God and not because we had it coming to us through not minding our own affairs. God tells us through Peter: "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you.

But rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or a wrongdoer or a mischief maker. Yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God."

Oh, how wonderful it is to bear the name of Christ and to be despised because men truly hate the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and really hate him if they think that following him is to interfere in any way with their own will. And we, following him, must expect that same hatred from the world. Now, while telling us what we are to expect from this world, he also points out the danger of our thinking that we should not suffer for our faults and tells us of the glory of suffering for him.

"Servants," Peter tells us, "be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to the kind and gentle but also to the overbearing." The Greek word here is skolios. It's a word that's used in medicine for a twisted back, a spine that is not straight. And there are people whose spiritual spines are not straight, and the Bible says you're to obey your bosses even if they're thus crooked.

"For one is approved if, mindful of God, he endures pain while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you do wrong and are beaten for it, you take it patiently? But if, when you do right and suffer for it, you take it patiently, you have God's approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin, no guile was found on his lips.

When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but he trusted to him who judges justly." And so quietly, knowingly, trustfully, the Lord Jesus took everything that the world could say to him or do to him. The mocking, the scourging, the reviling, the spitting, the death. He took it all because he loved the Father.

And we will become like him as we know him more and love him more and are willing to stand in his place in this world. Not only in what we let him do through us in love and grace to others, but in what we let the world do to us because of the dear name's sake of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And our God and Father, we pray thee that thou shalt bless this truth to us today. How we thank thee for our Savior God who came and took the reproaches that men had against thee, took them upon himself, showing us how we're to live in the midst of the world that does not know thee. May we know thee and follow thee in all things. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus. Amen.

Guest (Male): As the Apostle Paul reminds us, God demonstrates his own love towards us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled "No Greater Love". To listen to additional Bible teaching by Dr. Barnhouse, visit us online at alliancenet.org. An audio copy of today's teaching is available by calling us toll-free: 1-800-488-1888.

Today's message again is entitled "No Greater Love", or simply request message number R15-3. We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled Led by the Spirit. In this booklet, Dr. Barnhouse discusses how the Holy Spirit works in the lives of his people. The four chapters cover the topics "Led by the Spirit", "How to Know God's Will", "God's Leading", and "God's Sufficiency".

These biblical insights can help you understand and grow in your walk with God. Ask for your free copy of Led by the Spirit when you call or write. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is a radio ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We exist to promote a biblical understanding and worldview.

Drawing upon the insight and wisdom of Reformation theologians from decades and even centuries gone by, we seek to provide contemporary Christian teaching which will equip believers to understand and meet the challenges and opportunities of our time and place.

The Alliance also produces the radio broadcast The Bible Study Hour featuring the teachings of the late Dr. James Montgomery Boice, and Every Last Word featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Philip Graham Ryken. For a full list of radio stations carrying our programs, visit our website at alliancenet.org. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible comes to you through the generous gifts of listeners like you.

If you have benefited from the broadcast and would like it to continue, please prayerfully consider a donation to help us keep this ministry on the air. For more information or to make a contribution to help further our work, contact us by calling toll-free 1-800-488-1888. Again, that's 1-800-488-1888. You may also write to us at Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Box 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103, or visit us online at alliancenet.org.

Be sure to ask for a free resource catalog featuring books, audio teachings, commentaries, booklets, videos, and a wealth of other materials from outstanding reformed teachers and theologians, including Doctors Donald Grey Barnhouse, James Montgomery Boice, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Philip Graham Ryken. Thank you for listening today. Join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.