Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

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

All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for teaching, for evidence, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Oh, how certain we may be when we hold this book in our hands, and when we hold it in our hearts in the same fashion that the Lord Jesus did, and as the apostles did, and as all those who would be sincere and honest with God must do if they are to be like Christ.

Over a half 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, "Christ and the Scriptures."

Saint Augustine declared that everything that was hidden in the Old Testament was to be found open in the New Testament, or in the words of a contemporary theologian, what was concealed in the Old is revealed in the New. Do you rely on the Lord Jesus Christ to help you understand all of divine revelation in the entire Word of God? The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible: Romans chapter 15 and verse 4.

Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with the message entitled, "Christ and the Scriptures."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. We thank thee that thou hast given us thy Word, and that thou hast told us that through the comfort of the scriptures we might have hope.

Give us this day that comfort, so that our hope may be strong in thee and that we may live before men as those who have become thine, showing forth thy goodness in all our doings. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

Our text today is found in the 15th chapter of Romans and in verse 4: "For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope." The church of Jesus Christ at Rome was founded by Jews who had been in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.

In the book of the Acts, in the record of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, it is said that among those who heard the gospel in their own language were visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes. These visitors returned to the capital of the empire, and it is not improbable that small groups of believers met in Rome within three or four months of Pentecost to break the bread and drink the wine of the communion service and to baptize new converts, both Jews and Gentiles.

This was done without the presence of any of the apostles or of any other human guide. The Holy Spirit was in charge of his church everywhere, for the Holy Spirit is the true vicar of Christ. And we know beyond question that there soon were gathered together in Rome believers of such spiritual depth and power that their faith, as we read in the first chapter of Romans and the eighth verse, their faith was talked about in all the Christian world.

Now, at the time of the writing of this epistle, almost 30 years have passed. Still there has been no member of the apostolic company to visit the capital, and Paul is eager to go there where no other teacher has laid a foundation. The whole of the latter portion of this epistle shows that the two groups of Christians, those of Jewish background and those who had come out of stark paganism, were having great differences of opinion.

Paul is writing to them under the leading of the Holy Spirit to bring them to a oneness of mind and mutual tolerance. He has just described the yieldedness of the Lord Jesus Christ, that he did not please himself, but bowed in all things before the will of the Father. He then reminds them of the prophecy in the Psalms concerning the reproach of the Father that was to fall upon the Son.

This would be well-known to the Jews, but it would be completely beyond the ken of the Gentile believers. It must not be forgotten that they came to a knowledge of Christ without any frame of reference. Just as in the mission fields of the world today, men and women are saved without ever having heard of Adam and Eve, the Ten Commandments, the Psalms, or any of the stories of the Old Testament, so in Rome, believers came to the cross of Christ from the altars of Venus or Augustus.

It is principally to these Christians of Gentile background that Paul directs his present text: "For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope." This text lifts the entire Old Testament and deposits it in the New.

The law, the prophets, and the Psalms are now declared to be a part of the Christian teaching. Years later, Augustine would write that everything that was hidden in the Old Testament was to be found open in the New Testament. Paul's purpose in writing this whole section of his epistle is to bring the two parties to a place of mutual respect and love.

The Jewish Christians had become weak insofar as they were afraid that they might transgress some of the dietary laws of the Old Testament. The Gentiles easily dismissed these conscientious scruples with a rough intolerance that was far from the spirit of Christ. In quoting a psalm of David and applying it to Christ, Paul has demonstrated to the Jews that the Old Testament was much greater than they had ever conceived it to be and has demonstrated to the Gentile believers that it's possible to read between the lines of the former revelation and to see the great principles which are eternal.

We who live in the 20th century, and all who come after in this church age, can apply this great text to our own problems and find solutions here that have been prepared by God for our every need. It is worthwhile noting that the Lord Jesus himself on the day of his resurrection unfolded the Old Testament to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and that when they rushed back to Jerusalem, they cried, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?" When we learn the lesson of our text, we too will know the burning heart.

First of all, we can deduce from this text that the Old Testament is not the setting down of the essence of the best in human thought about God. The Bible is not the record of man groping after God, but it is the revelation of God to man. It is initiated by God for many purposes, and one of those purposes is revealed here.

The higher critic who departs from the idea of scripture as originating with God and communicated by God is forced to abandon such a text as our present one. One such critic wrote more than a half century ago, "The prophets are no longer regarded as mosaics composed of isolated fragments of Christian teaching clothed in a more or less mystical dress, but the prophets themselves live again and move before our eyes as men who shared the life of their own time and understood its thoughts, even while they rose infinitely above them."

So, he continues, "There is an increasing tendency to find in them more and more the spiritual guides and the practical advisers who directed the religious impulses and feelings of their own day, and less and less the fortellers of a state of things which neither their readers nor themselves would have at all clearly understood." Well, a man may make that criticism, but he does it in spite of what the Bible teaches.

For the enlightened Bible student of our day knows that each of these purposes is true. We do not have to abandon the prophets in the Old Testament in learning that these men were spiritual leaders for their own generation. We merely add to that fact that God Almighty can do two entirely different things with the same set of words.

The intelligent Gentile Christian might have doubted whether he, with his philosophical training, had very much to learn from the Old Testament. Why, he would have asked, why should a psalm written by David and referring evidently to the problems of his life and times, why should such a psalm be used to describe the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ more than a thousand years later? And the answer is that God, the giver of the scriptures, planned them so that we, living in all later times, might enter into the patience and steadfastness which they require and profit by the comfort and consolation which they give.

This text has a great deal to teach us about the trustworthiness of the Old Testament scriptures. Canon Liddon of the Church of England, in a sermon preached 70 years ago in St. Paul's Cathedral in London, spoke of this. "Unless a book or a man be trustworthy," he said, "it is impossible to feel confidence in it or him. And confidence in an instructor is the very first condition of receiving instruction to any good purpose."

Now, if this be so, it shows that the apostle would have had nothing to do with any estimate of the books of the Old Testament which might be fatal to belief in their trustworthiness. We may have noted, perhaps, that when estimates of this kind are put forward, as is occasionally the case, they are commonly prefaced by the observation that the Christian church has never defined what inspiration is.

And it's left to be inferred by the critic that a book may still be in some singular sense inspired, although the statements which it contains are held by the critic to be opposed to the truth of history or to the truth of morals. Now, it's no doubt true that no authoritative definition of what the inspiration of holy scriptures is and what it does and does not permit or imply has ever been propounded by the church of Christ.

Just as she has propounded no definition of the manner and effect of the action of the Holy Spirit on the souls of men. The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes. And our Lord's words apply to an inspired book no less than to a sanctified soul.

But at the same time, both in the case of the soul and of the book, we can see that there are certain things which are inconsistent with the action of the Holy Spirit. Just as willful sin is incompatible with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the soul, so untruth is incompatible with the claim of a book to have been inspired by the author of all truth.

Examples are given of this principle. In the book of Deuteronomy, there are several chapters describing events of which it is stated that Moses was an eyewitness. Now, if it be claimed, as it is by some critics of the Bible, that the book of Deuteronomy was in reality written several hundred years after the real Moses and that he did not know of these events, though the book was later imposed on the conscience of the Jewish people as coming from Moses, then such a theory is irreconcilable not only with any doctrine of inspiration but with the simple veracity of the book. The book claims to be one thing, and the critic claims that it is something quite different.

Another example is found in the book of Daniel, where we read a striking prophecy of a future abomination. Now, the critic knows that the Greek General Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the successors of Alexander the Great, did something that resembles the prophecy of Daniel. He took a pig into the temple of God and had it sacrificed on the altar where lambs were wont to be killed.

And therefore, the critic interprets the prophecy as applying to that king, and since the critic denies the idea of prophecy, he puts a date on the book that would throw it after the event. Well, let's face it. If such an idea is true, then there is no truthfulness or trustworthiness or veracity in the book in which this prophecy occurs.

Liddon well says of such theories, "No doubt language and history are sciences which will have their say about the books of the Old Testament, and I am far from implying that their greatest masters are committed to the things just referred to. What we, you and I, have to take note of is this, that unless there be such a thing as the inspiration of untruthfulness, we must choose between the authority of some of our modern critical advisers and any belief whatever in the inspiration of the books which they handle after this fashion. Nay, more, any belief in the permanent value of these books as sources of Christian or human instruction."

In the course of the ages, there have been historical forgeries which were created by men for base purposes. Can such forgeries instruct us? Can we really learn something from a group of liars who lie in a book for sinister purposes? We remember, for example, that in the ninth century, an unknown writer or writers created the supposed Isidorian Decretals upon which the whole fabric of the church of the Middle Ages was built.

Every scholar today, including all Roman Catholic scholars, admits without question that these decretals are forgeries, false in every part. Does anyone expect to be instructed by such writings? The only instruction that we can gain from them is that the heart of man is deceitful and that it is possible to use pious language as a basis for sheer fraud.

If we had to accept the viewpoint of many modern critics of the Bible, the Old Testament would be relegated to a position along with the false decretals. Isaiah would be nothing more than a pseudo-Isidore, while Amos and Obadiah would be forgotten along with Agobard and Hincmar.

But how different is the Old Testament, and how differently the Holy Spirit brings it before our hearts for our instruction and learning. Any doubts which a believer in Christ might have are banished when we consider the almost casual way in which the Lord Jesus interspersed all his teachings with appeals to the writings of the Old Testament. We know that there are critics who laugh at the reality of some of the stories of the Old Testament, and yet these very stories were used by the Savior to illustrate his points.

When Christ wished to warn the men of his day against the danger of slackness in decision and action, he reached back to the book of Genesis and said, "Remember Lot's wife." When Christ wanted an example to warn men against the danger of allowing the ordinary things of life to destroy spiritual values, he again went back to the book of Genesis, saying, "As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man."

When our Lord was confronted by the wicked leaders of his day who came with oily hypocrisy asking for a sign, he went back to the book of Jonah and replied, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."

When his disciples asked him for an answer concerning the time of his return, he reached back to the book of Daniel, took one of the prophecies which Daniel had given to future events, appropriated it to himself, projected it still farther in the future, and made it the historical fact upon which his future followers will know the imminence of his final return to earth at the end of the time of the great tribulation.

The event that is to be looked for in the future is that which was written in the past. "So when you see the desolating sacrilege, the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains," and so on. Thus, we see that the Lord Jesus Christ took as his illustration Lot's wife becoming a pillar of salt, Noah entering the ark, Jonah in the whale, and Daniel and the details of his prophecy. And Jesus Christ treated these things as historical facts and based his teaching on them.

Now, Liddon comments on this habit of our Lord in linking his teaching to the historical records and prophecies of the Old Testament. "Are we to suppose that in these and other references to the Old Testament, our Lord was only using what are called ad hominem arguments or talking down to the level of a popular ignorance which he himself did not share? Not to point out the inconsistency of this supposition with his character as a perfectly sincere religious teacher."

"It may be observed that in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus carefully marks off those features of the popular Jewish religion which he rejects in a manner which makes it certain that had he not himself believed in the historic truth of the events and the persons to which he thus refers, he must have said so. But did Jesus then share a popular belief which our higher knowledge has shown to be popular ignorance? And was he mistaken as to the worth of these scriptures to which he so often and so confidently appealed?"

"There are those who bear the Christian name who do not shrink from saying as much as this. But they will find it difficult to persuade mankind that if Jesus Christ could be mistaken on a matter of such strictly religious importance as this, that he can be safely trusted about anything else. Yes, the trustworthiness of the Old Testament is in fact inseparable from the trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And if we believe that he is the true light of the world, we shall resolutely close our eyes against any suggestion of the falsehood of those Hebrew scriptures which have received the stamp of the divine authority from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ himself."

Now we shall see in future lessons the rich mine of resources that we have here in this book for the tragedies and the triumphs that befall us in this life which we must lead here on earth. We can close this present phase of the study by noting that this same teaching about the validity and usefulness of the Old Testament is to be found in many other parts of Paul's writings.

Paul writes to the Corinthians about the living that a spiritual worker may be expected to receive for his labor. He sums it up: "Do I say this on human authority? Does not the law say the same? For it is written in the law of Moses, 'You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain.' Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not speak entirely for our sake? It was written for our sake because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of a share in the crop."

And thus he speaks in 1 Corinthians 9, while in the next chapter, Paul writes of the judgments that came upon the rebellious children of Israel in the desert, saying, "Now these things are warnings for us, not to desire evil as they did. Now these things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction upon whom the end of the ages has come."

And to the young man Timothy, Paul gives his dying advice in the last letter that he ever wrote in the phrase, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for teaching, for evidence, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." Oh, how certain we may be when we hold this book in our hands, and when we hold it in our hearts in the same fashion that the Lord Jesus did, and as the apostles did, and as all those who would be sincere and honest with God must do if they are to be like Christ.

And our God, we pray thee to bless this truth to our hearts that we may grow in grace and in the knowledge of thy truth, to thine honor and glory, and that we may have patience and comfort of the scriptures, that our hope may be strong. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

Guest (Male): God has given us the holy scriptures to instruct and encourage us, to build us up in faith and hope, and to continually point us to his Son, Jesus Christ. We hope you've benefited from today's message, "Christ and the Scriptures." To listen to additional teaching by Dr. Barnhouse, simply visit us online at AllianceNet.org.

An audio copy of today's teaching is also available by calling us toll-free: 1-800-488-1888. Today's message again is entitled "Christ and the Scriptures," or simply request message number R15-4.

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.

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Visit our website, AllianceNet.org, or call us at 1-800-488-1888 and find out how you can sign up for the Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible audio commentary series.

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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 Drs. 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.