Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Once we have taken the determined road that we will go back to the love of God and trust in Him, we will be in the place of blessing. Choose you this day which of many lesser things you will serve. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord and let Him do the choosing for us. Don't answer me that after all we must be practical. What I have set forth is the only thing in the universe that is practical. It really works.

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 Conscience: Its Nature and Origin. In the classic animated film Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket gives this piece of advice: Always let your conscience be your guide. But this can be a dangerous practice apart from the divine wisdom of the holy scriptures. There are people whose conscience has been seared as with a hot iron. Sometimes our conscience condemns us while at other times it might be silent.

What valuable insights can we glean from God's word to help us better understand our conscience? The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible, Romans chapter 13 and verse five. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled Conscience: Its Nature and Origin.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto the Our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. How much You have done for us. When we were enemies, You loved us. When we were without strength, You sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die for us. When we were aliens, You brought us home and made us citizens of heaven. Now that we walk in the midst of this sinful world, You give us the strength for every task. You supply all our need and make it possible for us to live untroubled in a world of madness and sin.

And for all our days, You have given us the Bible in our hands and the Holy Spirit in our hearts to enlighten our conscience and show us how we should walk at every step. And we give You all the praise through Jesus Christ our Lord, in whose name we ask it. Amen. In our study of the relationship of the Christian to human government, we've come in Romans 13 to the fifth verse, where we read: Therefore, one must be subject, not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience.

Conscience, conscience, conscience. The word can come like the pleasant flow of blue waters on a tropical beach, or it can come like the stab of a rapier, or it can be like the heavy scar tissue over an ancient burn where the nerves have been destroyed and there is little feeling left. There are three verses in the New Testament which justify these three descriptions. "Beloved," writes John in his first letter, "if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and we receive whatever we ask because we keep His commandments and do what pleases Him."

Now that is, it is possible for a believer to know that he is in the will of God, walking before the Lord with all accounts settled, daily sins forgiven, and the life in deep calm in the presence of the Lord, even though the outward circumstances of life may be raging with storm and tempest. If a believer is out of the will of God, a second verse may describe him. "Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and in truth. By this, we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our hearts before Him whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything."

Note that it does not say if our hearts condemn us, but whenever our hearts condemn us. For the Holy Spirit will always work in the life of the believer who gets out of the will of God to bring us to the place where life becomes intolerable if there is any cloud between us and the Lord. The conscience can stab like a sword in such instances. This is the work of the Lord, who is ever drawing us to Himself so that our lives may be lived in the state that He knows is the best for us.

There is a third verse which describes the lowest state of the Christian life in which a believer has refused to obey the Lord to the point where the Holy Spirit is said to be grieved. In Ephesians 4:30, we read: "Grieve not the Holy Spirit." And this is the terrible state in which a believer has followed his own way to the point where the Holy Spirit ceases to speak to him anymore. The believer is said to be sealed unto the day of redemption, but the tongue of the Holy Spirit is silenced.

There is still another figure of speech that is used for those who are not believers and whose consciences are said to be seared as with a hot iron. We read in the first letter from Timothy that the spirit expressly says that in the latter times, some will depart from the faith by giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, through the pretensions of liars whose consciences are seared as with a hot iron. The Greek word that is translated by the long phrase "seared with a hot iron" is a word kauteriazo, whose nounal form is the word for a branding iron that has been brought into our language as cauterize.

This process is comparable to that which an unsaved man develops in his life. God speaks to the man's heart, and the man refuses the divine call. This in turn makes his heart harder. And when God speaks the next time, the man refuses even more quickly. As the process continues, the heart becomes harder and harder against God, and the whole of determination is deadened and brought to a place that is past feeling, as we read in Ephesians 4:19. Now in the light of this, the study of conscience becomes very important.

First, let us look at the English word "conscience." Con-science. It's simple Latin for "with knowledge." When a man does something with knowledge, he's doing it according to his conscience. When he does something against his knowledge, knowing that it is wrong, he is acting against himself, against right, against God. He is acting for evil. The learned of all history have had their say about conscience. Polybius, in the second century before Christ, wrote that there is no witness so terrible, no accuser so potent as the conscience that dwells in every man's breast.

Shakespeare, in Richard III, says: A man cannot steal, but it accuseth him. He cannot swear, but it checketh him. He cannot lie with his neighbor's wife, but it detecteth him. It is a blushing shamefast spirit that mutinies in a man's breast. Other writers have put forth similar truth under different figures. In Hamlet, Shakespeare says again: Conscience does make cowards of us all. Michael Drayton wrote: A guilty conscience feels continual fear. While Thomas Browne said: There is another man within me that's angry with me.

In Paradise Lost, Milton writes: Oh conscience, into what abyss of fears and horrors hast thou driven me, out of which I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged. And Shelley wrote: Conscience, that undying serpent, calls her venomous brood to their nocturnal task. The German Nietzsche wrote: The sting of conscience, like the gnawing of a dog at a bone, is mere foolishness. Now, if we had only such writers as these, we would believe that the conscience is a terrible thing and always against us.

But there are as many spokesmen for the other side. A French proverb goes: There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience. Robert Burton, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, wrote: A good conscience is a continual feast. Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanac, altered this to: A good conscience is a continual Christmas. In one of his early copybooks, George Washington wrote: Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience. The King of Poland, Stanislaus Leszczyński, remarked that conscience admonishes as a friend before punishing as a judge.

But over against these two pictures, which make of the conscience all enemy or all friend, there is a third group of writers which has noted an intermediate opinion. In his Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes wrote: A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing, and as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous. Benjamin Whichcote added to this: Conscience without judgment is superstition. This opinion comes closer to what is taught in the Bible. We will find certainly some who had an evil conscience and who were pursued by it, as was King Saul when he recognized that David had been righteous and he himself had been unrighteous.

But there are also many instances of men who are able to join David in saying: I will both lay me down in peace and sleep. But is the conscience a safe guide? Can any man, non-Christian or Christian, live by the dictates of his conscience? What is the New Testament word and what is God specifically teaching here in our passage in Romans? The Greek word is syneidesis, and it is found 32 times in the New Testament. The best authorities show that this word was not used in classical Greek in our sense of conscience.

And the great Greek authorities Moulton and Milligan say that the word would seem, therefore, to have been baptized by Paul into a new and deeper connotation and to have been used by him in our modern sense. If we study carefully the New Testament usages of the word, we soon see that the conscience is a poor thing and that it cannot truly be understood apart from a descriptive adjective. 18 times the conscience is spoken of in the New Testament merely as man's awareness of a problem of right and wrong, as in the case where the Pharisees left the presence of Christ as he wrote on the ground and told them that the one who was without sin should first cast a stone at the woman taken in adultery.

Being convicted by their own conscience, they went out, first the eldest and on down to the youngest. The other 14 times the word is used in the New Testament, it's modified by an adjective, so that we read six times of a good conscience, three times of a weak conscience, twice of a pure conscience, and once each a seared conscience, a defiled conscience, an evil conscience. Where did man get his conscience? We go back to the book of Genesis and we find Satan approaching Eve and suggesting to her that if she would disobey God, she would become like God, knowing good and evil.

The knowledge of good and evil then became a part of the curse. How this is so can be understood if we think of the mind of the first couple before they cast off confidence in God and accepted the right of choosing. In the beginning, they were innocent. There was no knowledge of evil and there was no question of choice. They lived in a relation with God that was nothing but love and trust. There was a tree there, and God told them not to eat of its fruit. We must not think that this aroused antagonism in them like the antagonism that is sparked in our hearts by some command that crosses our wills.

Perhaps the true nature of choice can be brought out by Joshua's parting advice to the children of Israel. They knew that God had brought them out of Egypt and had led them through the wilderness. They were aware that they had been brought over the Jordan by His power and established in the land. After Joshua recounted their history, he said: "Now therefore fear the Lord, love the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.

And if you be unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve." Now note well that the choice is not given to them between the true God and the false gods. This is a verse that's very often misquoted. But Joshua is not saying choose between God and Satan, but listen. "Serve the Lord," he says, "and if you will not serve the Lord, then choose." But the choice was between one set of false gods and another set of false gods. Back in the Garden of Eden, there was a situation something like this.

All was well between Adam and Eve on the one side and God on the other. The plan of God was that man should be made in His image and likeness and that man should be like Him. The only way to accomplish this, God knew, was for man to be submitted utterly to Him. When the command came not to eat of the tree, it was accepted by them without question. If they passed the tree, they would have thought: It will not be good for us to eat this fruit. Our loving God has told us not to eat of it.

Now when Satan came along, he made the same offer to Eve that God had already made to her and to her husband. God had practically said, "I have made you in My image. You shall be like Me, the full objects of My love and care, and you shall grow to be more and more like Me." But Satan comes and says, "God is trying to keep something good away from you. Eat this fruit and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Before they could accept this proposition, they had to entertain the idea that God did not love them, did not desire their best interests.

By listening to the voice of Satan, they ceased to trust in God and lost fellowship with Him. This was the first sin. The second sin was disobedience. The consequence was the curse of conscience. God did not intend man to be in a position to make choices for which man had not a shred of data on which to base his decision. Man was to live in trust and not by choosing. Thus, when man accepted the problem of choice, he accepted a curse. True freedom is not choosing. True freedom is serving God and trusting in Him.

We read in the Proverbs: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths." It is the necessity of choosing that makes men schizophrenics. Man is so constructed that he is at peace and in joy when he follows God in all things. The moment he turns away from God, he is faced with a choice of two or more lesser things. Here is the true nature of free will, and here is the true nature of conscience.

When the will flows towards God in loving trust and willing service, then all is well and the will is free, for God is making the choices. When the heart turns away from the complete trust in God, it immediately is in the desperate state of free will, which is nothing more nor less than a choice between evils. Free will does not involve choosing God. It is that which, having departed from God, sets itself as its own tyrant to live for itself. The conscience which thus came with the fall is the property of all of the race, and we can understand all that we have quoted in the beginning about its nature.

But even after the fall, when the knowledge of good and evil had been received by man, it could have turned out well if man had turned back towards God. In a parable which I created for children many years ago, I likened the conscience to a sundial. Now a sundial is made for the sun, even as the conscience, rightfully directed, would reflect God and His will. But too often a sundial is consulted on moonlight nights. By the light of the moon, the dial may say that it's 10 o'clock when in reality it's 2 in the morning.

With a candle or some other light, the dial may be forced to tell any hour at the whim of the one who holds the light. Thus it is with conscience. Conscience which man took from Satan can be a safe guide only when it is turned toward God for His illumination. Once a man has turned away his conscience from God in order to let some other light shine upon it, the conscience is no longer safe in any degree. But let us return to the decisions that must be made by a man who has been renewed by the new life that comes when we are born again of the Holy Spirit of God.

We are made alive in Christ, and the Holy Spirit turns us back to God through Christ. The Bible has been placed in the hand of the believer. And as we bend over this book, the Holy Spirit shines from its truths into our hearts and leads us to moment-by-moment dedication of our being to utter dependence upon God. In our salvation, the direction of trust is reversed. We come back to the place where we know that God is good, that God loves us, and that God is favorable towards us. At the same moment that this life is planted within us, we begin to learn the lesson that no other god is good, that no other god loves us, and that no other god is favorable toward us.

We also begin slowly to learn the even harder lesson that we are not good, that self-love is a wicked thing and not for our good, and that we are not favorable towards our redeemed selves. Having gone all around the field of our chapter and our subject by this long path, we are back where we started and can come to our necessary conclusion. The individual must look to God and live in trust with Him. Do you love and trust God? The answer to this question will settle the problem of your relationship to the civil powers.

Do you love and trust God? The answer to this question will settle the problem of your relationship to the draft board, the military powers. Do you love and trust God? The answer to this question will settle your own personal problems with reference to race relations. Do you love and trust God? The answer to this question will relieve the tensions in your own home life. Do you love and trust God? The answer to this question will settle every phase of whatsoever problem that you may have at this moment or at any other moment of your life.

The solution of our problems will always come in the moment of the crisis of our choice. In Isaiah 30:21, we read: "You shall hear a voice behind you saying, 'This is the way, walk you in it.'" You will look to God and He will prove His promise: "I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go. I will guide you with my eye." Then we will have what the New Testament calls a good conscience, a pure conscience, a conscience void of offense. Once we have taken the determined road that we will go back to the love of God and trust in Him, we will be in the place of blessing.

Choose you this day which of many lesser things you will serve. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord and let Him do the choosing for us. Don't answer me that after all we must be practical. What I have set forth is the only thing in the universe that is practical. It really works. And our God and Father, we pray Thee to lead us back into the clear love of Thyself, that we may trust Thee so much that we will no longer run in our own way choosing this or that of lesser things, but will wait for Thy voice and let Thee do the choosing and walk in the light of Thy love. And we will praise Thee through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Guest (Male): The conscience is a vital part of God-created humanity. We must learn to understand and heed our conscience as we rely on the wisdom of God's word and the work of the Holy Spirit. We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled Conscience: Its Nature and Origin. 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 Conscience: Its Nature and Origin, or simply request message number R13-6.

We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled Abounding Grace. In his book Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, John Bunyan described his despair over the weight of his sin before finally finding peace in Jesus Christ. Perhaps like Bunyan, you feel the burden of your sin pressing in on you. You may feel that you have fallen so often and sinned so badly that you may have given up any hope of salvation. This free booklet will convince you that the superabundant flood of God's grace is available to cleanse you and give you peace. Ask for your free copy of Abounding Grace 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 complete list of radio stations carrying our programs, visit us online at alliancenet.org. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible comes to you through the generous gifts of listeners like you. If you have benefited from this 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.