Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Announcer: The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals presents the timeless teaching of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse.

Host: I never think of Jesus Christ as a historical figure in the past merely. I do not worship a dead savior. I worship the living and risen Christ. There he sits yonder in the heavens, the guarantor of my faith and the assurance of my salvation.

When the winds of temptation blow hot upon me, it is the risen Son of God with power who makes intercession for me. When I have stumbled and fallen, it is the risen Son of God with power who lifts me up and restores me to grace and favor.

Announcer: Over a half a century ago, the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, then pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, saw the need to spread God's word beyond the hearing of his local congregation. He started the weekly radio outreach 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 will be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled, Jesus Christ, Jehovah.

Host: Any courtroom lawyer wants to put witnesses on the stand who will support his case. He will try to find as many trustworthy, reputable witnesses as possible. The most important matter a person can decide concerns the identity of Christ. Is Jesus really God?

History has given us a parade of trustworthy, reliable witnesses who with one voice testify to the deity of Christ. Will you hear their testimony and believe their report?

Announcer: The Scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans 1 and verses 3 and 4. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with the message entitled, Jesus Christ, Jehovah.

Host: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto Thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. We praise Thee for all Thy faithfulness and ask Thee that Thou shalt give to us the spirit of true worship. That we may acknowledge Thee as Thou art, approach Thee as Thou wouldst desire, and worship Thee in spirit and in truth. Convict the lost of their sinful condition and bring them to the Savior, and build believers so that they may show forth Thy mercy to the needy. We ask it through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The text for our Bible exposition is found in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, in verses 3 and 4. The gospel concerns God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. There are two verbs concerning the coming of the Lord to this earth. He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead.

The two verbs speak of his humanity and his deity. Last week we looked at the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ was a true man, made of the seed of David according to the flesh. Now let us examine the fact that he was none other than Jehovah God, declared thus by the Godhead, and the declaration demonstrated and proved by the historical fact that his body was raised from the dead in the literal manner set forth in the Word.

The Bible is filled with witnesses to the resurrection of Christ. Before looking at the facts which prove his deity, let us listen for a moment to the witnesses which attest to his deity. Elsewhere I have extended this list and shown how all testify to the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord.

God the Father testified that Jesus Christ was his beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased. He did this first at his baptism and again on the Mount of Transfiguration. The Father attests the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him."

The Holy Spirit also speaks of the Godhead of the Son. The whole of his work in the Bible attests that Jesus Christ is God. The witnesses agree. Demons also acknowledged that Jesus was the Son of God when he rebuked them. Coming out of the Gadarean maniac, they recognized his divine authority and gave him his name and his title: "Jesus, thou Son of God." The witnesses agree.

The men who were most closely associated with him in his ministry all have left a record of their belief in his deity. Peter, James, and John all acknowledge that the Savior was of the Godhead. The witnesses agree. The authors of the first three Gospels also agree. Matthew names him Emmanuel, God with us. Mark opens his account with the words, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." Luke calls the Lord Jesus, "The Holy One of God, the Son of God." The witnesses agree.

His own cousin, John the Baptist, devoted his life unto death to proclaim that the One that was to come after him was none other than the Messiah. With all his force he cries, "And I saw and bear record that this is the Son of God." The witnesses agree.

If you read the Bible closely enough, you will find many other witnesses to his deity. The shrewd Israelites, Andrew, Philip, and Nathanael proclaim it. The keen perception of the women who surrounded the Lord discerns his Godhead. Martha and Mary worshiped at his feet. The witnesses agree.

The thief on the cross and the centurion in charge of his crucifixion both acknowledged that they were dealing with one who was outside the human sphere: "Truly this was the Son of God." The witnesses agree. After the resurrection, Thomas falls at his feet and says, "My Lord and my God." He is not rebuked by the Savior, but gently chided because he had been so slow in comprehending the truth.

Stephen, the Ethiopian eunuch, Saul of Tarsus, men of the early Church proclaimed the truth of our Lord's person. The witnesses agree. It would be invidious to march through the history of the Christian Church and muster the vast array of those who believed that Jesus Christ was God. Apostles, fathers, martyrs, reformers, the saints and faithful of all the centuries have bowed before the Lord Jesus. The witnesses agree.

But now we turn from the lists of those who have believed and point out what our text clearly indicates: that the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ is declared, manifested by the fact of the resurrection of his body. I am not going to take the time here to present the support for the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Suffice it to say that the proofs have been adduced time and again, and that there are sufficient for all minds which are open to truth.

The keenest minds of agnosticism have attempted to destroy the arguments for the resurrection of Christ. But even keener minds have presented the substantiation of their truth. If you will not believe that Jesus Christ arose from the dead, then you will not believe it. It is a matter of the will and not a matter of the mind. The facts are there. An unbeliever convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.

In hell, the rich man asked Abraham across the great gulf that was fixed between torment and paradise, which was still located in hell before the resurrection, if someone could not go back to earth and warn his brothers. Abraham answered that they had Moses and the prophets. The rich man argued that if one went to them from the dead, they would repent. Abraham answered in words that show the depths of the heart of sin in mankind: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead."

The fact of the resurrection is attested by a host of witnesses. The change of the day of worship from the Jewish Sabbath to the first day of the week, the Lord's Day, is one of the mightiest proofs of the resurrection. The astounding psychological change in the disciples can be accounted for only by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. From a group of hiding cowards, they were transformed into a company of indomitable men, fearing neither life nor death, and all in the matter of a day.

It is totally impossible to explain these things apart from the fact that the historical and literal resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And in proclaiming the fact of the resurrection of Christ, let it be well understood that we are not talking about a resurrection other than a literal one. Jesus rose from the dead in the same body in which he died. C.S. Lewis of Oxford, in one of his notable books, answering the argument that the resurrection might be considered as spiritual, replied that the resurrection of Christ was as literal as broiled fish.

For the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to his disciples broiling fish upon a fire beside the sea of Galilee, and partook of that fish with them. It was a real resurrection after a real death, the death of a man who had lost every drop of blood out of his body, and whose heart had been pierced with a spear thrust into his side. He arose from the dead, and he lives.

Our text now sets forth the fact that this resurrection declares him to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness. If you read the Bible through, you will discover that it presents us three portraits of the Lord Jesus Christ. First, he is seen in the days of his flesh, walking upon the earth, despised and rejected of men, brought to a death of shame and ignominy.

Secondly, we see him seated upon the right hand of God in the heavens, interceding for his Church, furnishing power for his own day by day, that they might live in the same world in which he was crucified. Thirdly, he is seen as the coming Judge and Monarch, putting down sin and reigning in righteousness. The resurrection is the vindication of Christ in his humility, the revelation of Christ in his present glory, and the guarantee of Christ in his coming power.

Let us look at these three points more closely. Christ came here the first time and put himself in the hands of wicked men. He came into the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Yet at the same time, he declared constantly that he was the Lord from heaven. He could not have put it in more outspoken terms. He told them one day that if they had known him, they would have known the Father also. And implied that because they did not know him, they could not know the Father. He then said that he would leave them, and that they would die in their sins. And that if they died in their sins, they could never go where he went, because they believed not that he was Jehovah.

When they quibbled with him, he replied, "You are from beneath, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world." He allowed himself to be buffeted and spat upon. "Can this be the Son of God? Is this the Lord Jehovah, the Word made flesh?" They took him and drove nails through his hands and feet. And after six hours, he dismissed his spirit. And his lifeless body hung there upon the cross until the soldier came and thrust a spear into his side. "Is this the Son of God?"

They put him in a tomb after they had wrapped his body in the linen clothes, treating him as any corpse would be treated. "Is this the Son of God?" The whole universe bends to see. There is a solemn stillness while his soul in paradise, in hell, is waiting the action of the Father. Then on the third day, he arose. He returned to that dark tomb bringing light within it. He passed through the rocky walls of the tomb and was alive forevermore.

Then the angels came and rolled away the stone from the door. They did not do it in order to let the Lord Jesus out. They did it in order to let the disciples in. He was not there, he had arisen. Up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph for his foes. He arose a victor o'er the dark domain, and he lives forever with his saints to reign. He arose, he arose. Hallelujah, Christ arose.

And by that resurrection, the meek and lowly Jesus was declared to be the Son of God with power. By the resurrection he was vindicated, and seen to be what he had ever declared himself to be. "Is this a mere man, born of the natural human sperm?" No. He lives, vindicated and enthroned in heaven, declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead.

The second picture we have of the Lord Jesus Christ is that he is seated at the right hand of God in heaven, occupied with the high priestly work of intercession for his own. It is by the resurrection from the dead that it's possible for us to see him thus. The unregenerate looks back to the historical Jesus and sees nothing more than a dim figure that once walked the earth, and that left behind him a high code of ethics. But to the eye of faith, the Lord Jesus appears as none other than the God of the universe, sharing the heavenly throne with the Father.

There is a great picture of this in the first chapter of the Book of Revelation. The last time the disciples had seen the Lord was when he walked with them in the Mount of Olives and ascended into heaven, received from their sight by the cloud of glory. Untold times they must have lifted their gaze to the sky and wondered about him. "Where is he now? What is he doing? When shall we see him? How are things in heaven? Just what is his place there?"

And then John the Evangelist is taken to the Isle of Patmos and given a vision of the Lord in glory. It is a strange picture if you try to visualize it. The verbal description sounds like a monstrosity out of a Believe It Or Not column. John says, "I saw one like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the breasts with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow. And his eyes were as a flame of fire. And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace. And his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars. And out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword. And his countenance was as the sun shined in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead."

Once, when I was traveling in Germany, I saw a painting on the wall of a museum. It was something horrible. A man dressed in white with hair of white wool, with feet of glowing brass, was standing holding seven stars in one hand. Out of his mouth came a tongue that was a two-edged sword. And two streaks of flame beamed from his eyes, resembling what might be the painting of an automobile headlights through the darkness of night. It was a horrible picture.

I recognized it at once as the attempt to put this vision into a picture. But God never meant that vision to be visualized. Rather, it was an indication of what the resurrection had meant to the Lord Jesus Christ. If you have a good concordance, you can look up every one of the details of that picture and find that they refer you to great scenes in the Old Testament. Our vision is an index of the Old Testament vision.

For example, John's vision of Christ shows him as having hair white like wool. Is there any other chapter in the Bible where anyone is seen with such hair? Yes. We turn back to the Book of Daniel and read the story of one of Daniel's great visions, and we come to the description of the Lord God. "I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool."

The vision of the exalted Lord Jesus Christ then, is to explain that the Ancient of Days whom Daniel saw was none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, enthroned in glory. Follow through every line of the vision, and the result will be the same. Each detail is an index reference to one of the great visions of the Old Testament. The Jesus whom the disciples saw ascend in the heaven is the Lord Jehovah of hosts. And he has thus been declared with power by the resurrection from the dead. It is thus that the Christian sees him today.

For the force of the Greek word which says that he was declared to be the Son of God, does not mean merely that he was proclaimed to be the Son of God, but that he was manifested as the Son of God. In other words, his Godhead is constantly set forth as a flowing stream that meets our every need and encompasses us all along the way with the never failing supply of his blessings, which were bought for us on the cross, and guaranteed to us by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead.

Is it any wonder that the living Christian celebrates Easter Sunday every day in the year? Do not try to limit me to one Sunday fixed by the moon in relation to the vernal equinox. Ecclesiastics have devised a calendar which allows Easter to dance along the calendar from March to April. But the child of God knows resurrection in the dead of winter or the heat of summer.

Christ has been declared to be the Son of God with power because of the resurrection, and to those who are joined to him in salvation, there is no going back from there. Can a young bride and groom tremendously in love with each other, alone in their own home, approaching the anniversary of their marriage, work themselves into a state of concern and try to imagine themselves as they were three or four days before their wedding?

They need not say, "Oh my darling, in three days more we shall be together and know all the delights of our love." That love will long have been consummated, and the joined lovers need never be separated again. The resurrection of Jesus Christ has joined the believer to the risen Lord. And today, today, today he lives. He lives on the throne of God, and he lives in the hearts of his redeemed children.

It would be good in one way to end our declaration here. But in faithfulness to the Word of God, we must go on to the end. The Bible tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who is to return, judge the world. This world. The madness of man runs its way of rejection. As Jesus Christ is enthroned in the hearts of believers, so he is yet despised and rejected of the unbelieving world.

But the fact that he has risen from the dead is the pledge by God that he intends to come back and judge this accursed world. On Mars' Hill in Athens, the great Apostle declared the coming judgment, and set forth the pledge of God's truth. Speaking to the people of Athens, Paul reminded them that all human beings are the offspring, the creatures of God, and therefore responsible to him.

Of course, the Bible does not teach that all men are the children of God, though it everywhere acknowledges that men are the creatures of God. In order to become the child of God, it is necessary to be born again through faith in the finished work of Calvary. Paul proclaims, "We ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver or stones, graven by art and man's device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at. But now commandeth all men everywhere to repent. Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead."

It's one of the most solemn facts on record. Perhaps it is correct to say that it is the most solemn fact on record. It is the declaration that you, if you do not flee to the cross to lay hold upon the redemption that was provided by the shedding of the blood of the Son of God, that you must one day come face to face with Christ, with the Christ whom you have trampled under foot.

Human sin once turned the glory of Jehovah's Christ to shame. But now from heaven he shines, the risen and exalted Christ. And the day of his patience shall come to its end. He shall lay aside the priestly robes of his intercession, and shall gird upon him the sword of omnipotent justice. He was raised from the dead according to the Spirit of holiness. And it is that holiness that you will one day encounter. The resurrection is the pledge and guarantee that you shall face the Lord Jesus Christ.

You may think that you will be able to stand before him, but you will not. If you are not clothed in the righteousness of his providing through the atonement of the cross, you will appear before him in the filthy rags of your own righteousness, and must hear his words of condemnation as he sends you to outer darkness forever.

This resurrection is a combination of power and holiness. Do not think that you can escape it. Holiness will demand to be satisfied. Power will be able to reach you where you are, and to silence your proud lips forever. Jesus Christ has been declared the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of Christ from the dead. That resurrection is the vindication of his humility, the life and comfort of the believer, and the awful doom and despair of the unbeliever. Today is still the day of mercy and grace. The door of salvation still stands wide. Come unto him while it is day.

And our God and Father, we pray Thee to bless the truth to every heart in this hour. Give restlessness to the unsaved, and upon Thine own, grace, mercy and peace, now till our Lord comes, and forever. Amen.

Announcer: One day you will stand before Jesus in all the glory and holiness of the eternal Son of God. Will you be clothed in your filthy rags of self-righteousness, or with the perfect righteousness of Christ? We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled, Jesus Christ, Jehovah.

Listen to additional Bible teaching by Dr. Barnhouse via the internet by visiting us 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, Jesus Christ, Jehovah. Or simply request message number R1-5.

We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled, "Why and How to Study the Bible." Christians have many excuses for why their Bibles never find their way off the bookshelf. "I don't have enough time." "Scripture is too hard to understand." "I just don't know where to begin." This free booklet explains why Bible study is so important and how to dig into the scriptures in a way that will make them come alive. You can enjoy a lifetime of fruitful study and application of God's Word. Ask for your free copy of "Why and How to Study the Bible" when you call or write.

Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is the radio ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 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 stations carrying our programs, visit our website, 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 us toll-free: 1-800-488-1888. That's 1-800-488-1888. Write to us at Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Box 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. 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, Martin Lloyd Jones, and Philip Graham Ryken. Thanks for listening. Join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.