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: In the 15th chapter of Romans and the 29th verse, we have the text, "And I am sure that when I come to you, I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ." Now everyone who has been born of the Spirit is going to be in heaven, but not everyone who has been born of the Spirit is living a life of blessing while here on this earth. Many people are on their way to heaven with joy, but alas, many others are going to heaven in a most miserable manner.

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 In the Fullness of the Blessing. The scripture text for this edition, Romans chapter 15 and verse 29. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled In the Fullness of the Blessing.

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 all power is in thee, and that if there is to be any blessing, that it will come from thee. We thank thee that we know that thou dost love us, and thou art more eager to bless us even than we are to be blessed.

May our hearts be open to thee in this hour and use thy word as it goes forth to find deep root within us that we may bring forth fruit to thy praise and glory. We pray that day by day we may show forth thy grace, and that men seeing thy life in us may come to glorify thee, our Father which art in heaven. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Several years ago I was preaching in a certain city in the southwestern part of the United States. When I went into the pulpit the first Sunday morning, the preacher sat with me and during the singing of an anthem whispered to me, "Notice that woman on the front row who is badly dressed and who wears a broken shoe." I waited a moment and then let my eyes sweep over the congregation and come to rest on a miserable, pitiable figure of a woman who appeared to be in her late sixties.

One foot was stretched out in such a manner that a large hole was visible in the sole of the shoe. Her dress was patched and dowdy, and her old hat looked like something out of the rag barrel. A wave of pity came over me. After church the minister told me her story. She and her husband had been sheep ranchers, running a large herd on ground that was almost desert. They eked out a miserable existence, living in a cabin on their ranch with toilet facilities 50 yards away from the house in one direction and a well from which they pumped water by hand 50 yards in another direction.

And they lived most simply. And then oil was discovered on their ground, and they became instantly very rich. Not many weeks after the discovery, the husband died, leaving everything to the wife. She was extremely frightened, and she refused to sign any papers when the lawyers brought them to her. The result was that her royalties began to pile up. The drilling went on until there were 100 wells on her ranch.

Within a few years she was worth several million dollars, but she would spend hardly a cent. She still lived in the old cabin. She still used outdoor facilities and pumped water by hand. Possessing enormous wealth, she lived in abject misery. I pointed out to my preacher friend that her manner of life was typical of the spiritual life of multitudes of believers. We have been told in innumerable ways in the Bible that we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.

That all things are ours, that we have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ, that God has given us all things richly to enjoy. God tells us that we have not because we ask not, and that we ask and do not receive because we ask in a wrong spirit. The riches are there. The supply is unlimited, but many simply do not avail themselves of all that God has promised. Many do not avail themselves of even a small fraction of what God has promised for us.

Now Paul did not live like this, nor do we need to. Our text shows his heart and his way of life. "I know," says he, "that when I come to you, I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ." Some very few ancient manuscripts make this read "I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ," but the weight of all the manuscript evidence is against it. And indeed, the Greek has it even better.

Christ is the fountain, and the gospel is a golden cup from which we drink. The fullness of blessing does not come from the cup, but from the fountain. We have all in him, ever flowing, never failing. The reason why many true Christians do not avail themselves of their great blessings in Christ is that they have been taught that the gospel consists only of being saved from a future hell to a future heaven. But the gospel is much more than this.

Some ministers frankly admit that they preach the same sermon every Sunday morning to a different text. It consists in little more than the bare bones outline: man is a sinner, you are a man and therefore a sinner, God is love and so he sent Christ to die for you. Will you accept Christ as your savior and join our church? There can be no doubt that there are preachers who pursue this one theme with variations and that they are good and sincere men.

But they do not see that the church can grow in depth only through wide study of the Bible and mastery of its scores of doctrines. There is no growth apart from the word of God, for that leads us on to Jesus Christ himself. Now another category of ministers fill their pulpit time each Sunday with nothing more than 20 minutes of ethical exhortation. Instead of treating the themes of sin and salvation, they talk about the problems of our world and seek to incite their hearers to adopt ethical attitudes in the political and economic arenas.

Now still other preachers hang ethical homilies on items of current interest that appear in the news of the day. One Saturday church page showed sermons being preached on lessons from a notorious murder trial, lessons from a forthcoming goodwill trip by the President of the United States, lessons from the Olympic Games, and so on. Paul might have used the Olympic Games as a starter for one of his messages, for he knew the Christian life as a race, as a wrestling match, as a fierce striving for championship standing.

But it seems certain that the subjects mentioned in our newspapers would leave most of the hearers with pretty slim fare. One is reminded of Milton's plaintive description of the church in his day: "Their lean and flashy songs grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw. The hungry sheep look up and are not fed, but swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw rot inwardly and foul contagion spread." Now there was none of this in Paul's ministry.

He may have gotten out of the will of God at times, but he never spoke a word contrary to the doctrines of divine revelation. He would come to the Roman church in the fullness of the blessing of Christ because he would not preach himself or human theories. He would be a channel through whom the Holy Spirit could exalt the Lord Jesus Christ in whom is all blessing. And thus those who listened to him would not be swollen with wind but would be filled with the Spirit, the holy wind.

Paul was sure he would come in this fullness of the blessing of Christ because he knew what this blessing was and how much he himself had entered into its fullness. The English word blessing is most interesting. It comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word *blēdsian*, which comes in turn from *blōdsian*, *blōtsian*, and ordinarily this meant to consecrate with blood. It is impossible to go back to the early centuries of Anglo-Saxon usage and to discover the steps whereby our word blessing came to its modern form.

But it is almost certain that it grew out of the early teaching of Christian truth as the gospel came to our savage forefathers and slowly transformed them and their language. They learned that all good things are ours because of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. They realized that the shedding of his blood paid the price to divine justice that forever satisfied all the demands of God. They realized that just as the stream of water flowed from the rock when it was struck by Moses in the wilderness, so the stream of all good things flowed from the side of Christ when he was wounded for our transgressions.

And thus these good things were purchased for us with his own blood, and they were *blōdsians*, *blōtsians*, and then blessings. William Cowper expressed this train of thought when he wrote, "There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, and there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away. E'er since by faith I saw the stream thy flowing wounds supply, redeeming love has been my theme and shall be till I die."

Now Paul understood this, and he was telling the Romans that when he came to them, he was sure that he would come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ. Now we go back of the English to the Greek and we come to another rich lesson. The Greek word translated blessing is *eulogia*, from which we get eulogy. In modern form, the word means no more than high praise and often refers to orations delivered in praise of the character or deeds of a person who has died.

In the Greek, it meant much, much more. In addition to its common meaning, praise and fine speaking, it meant blessing in our modern sense of the greatest spiritual depths. It sometimes conveyed the idea of the act of blessing by which men call down upon other men the grace of God and speaks of God's activity in blessing us. He has spoken so well to us. He has given us all blessings in Christ.

In the opening verses of Ephesians we read, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ." In the paragraph that follows, we find how God loved us so much that he turned the blood of Jesus Christ into the fountain of all blessing for us. The verses which follow this announcement that all spiritual blessings have been deposited to our account in heaven reveal to us a little of the nature and extent of these blessings.

We read, "For consider what he has done. Before the foundation of the world he chose us to become in Christ his holy and blameless children living within his constant care. He planned in his purpose of love that we should be adopted as his own children through Jesus Christ, that we might learn to praise that glorious generosity of his which has made us welcome in the everlasting love he bears toward the Son. It is through the Son at the cost of his own blood that we are redeemed, freely forgiven through that full and generous grace which has overflowed into our lives and opened our eyes to the truth."

"For God has allowed us to know the secret of his plan, and it is this: he purposes in his sovereign will that all human history shall be consummated in Christ and that everything that exists in heaven or earth shall find its perfection and fulfillment in him, in Christ. And here is the staggering thing, that in all which will one day belong to him, we have been promised a share since we were long ago destined for this by the one who achieves his purpose by his sovereign will, so that we as the first to put our confidence in Christ may bring praise to his glory."

Oh, how is it possible for the hearts of redeemed people not to swell with joy when we consider what God has planned for us? We have been chosen to be holy, predestined to be sons, accepted to praise him, redeemed and forgiven in order that we might know the wealth of his grace, given an inheritance to know the plan of his eternal purpose and will, sealed to know the assurance of our salvation, given the down payment of the Holy Spirit in order to guarantee to us the final realization of all that he has promised us, especially the promise that we shall be with him forever.

Now we go back for a moment to our opening thought and realize how great the sin is for any of us to live in spiritual poverty when such riches have been made available for us. All spiritual blessings are ours. We must not live in spiritual poverty. Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 8:9, "Do you remember the generosity of Jesus Christ, the Lord of us all? He was rich beyond our telling, yet he became poor for your sakes so that his poverty might make you rich."

Do you know these blessings? Oh do you, do you know these blessings? Paul was so filled with the thought of it all and the knowledge of what it could do in the life of a believer that he was eager to come to them that he might strengthen them and confirm in them these same blessings. This is why he was so sure that he would come to them in the fullness of the blessing of Christ.

And so we come to the emphasis that must be placed upon the word fullness. For not only is there blessing, but there is the fullness of blessing. If all of these blessings bring great joy to each one of us individually, we can know how much the communication of these blessings can heighten the joy of all of us. Let me share with you an experience which is often ours. A great deal of my life is spent in conducting Bible teaching missions in various churches in different parts of the country.

For many years it has been our custom to drive our loaded car away from our home a day or two after Christmas and begin meetings in various towns on each Sunday, generally concluding on the Friday night and using the Saturday to drive on to the next point of meeting. And this continues for the period between Christmas and Easter approximately, and we generally return home just before that day which especially commemorates the resurrection.

Now in the course of such itineraries, we come to many cities where we have never preached before and to others where we have had similar missions in previous years. As we drive into a town on a Saturday, we look at its strangeness as we proceed to our motel. We pass by stores with the names of people we do not know and pass the crowds in the streets, all of them unknown to us. We have a thrill of anticipation. We know beyond any question that there will be a tremendous change within the next six days.

We are most certainly going to bring blessing into many lives. Husbands and wives who are hardly speaking to each other will be reunited, and in those homes family worship will be established within a week. Young people will completely surrender to Christ, and their lives will be so transformed that they will ultimately land in the ministry or on the mission field. Dear old folks nearing the end of life are going to press our hands and with tears in their eyes they will tell us how the messages have lifted the weight of fear and that they now look forward to death with joyful anticipation because it has been robbed of all its terrors and will usher them to the presence of the Lord who loved and redeemed them.

Many who have been wavering about their salvation will enter into absolute assurance. Some who have lived in doubt will acquire the certainty of the present possession of eternal life. There will be scores of new listeners to our radio programs and scores of new readers for our magazine and books. Some will become friends, close friends, in a way that will tie our lives together for years to come. Now we know that this experience awaits us because we've seen it happen in every town where we have ever held a week of meetings.

This fullness of the blessing of Christ must accompany the teaching of his word as we come to accomplish what he has planned for these people that they may be built up, edified, strengthened, established, settled, and confirmed. It cannot be otherwise, for this is God's purpose and method. And we cannot insist too strongly that it does not belong to us alone. This possibility is for each believer. It is God's plan for the whole church.

Perhaps he may not lead you into this work on such a wide geographical plan. Perhaps your ministry may be in one single place. Perhaps your ministry will be divided between the daily chores of a household and writing eternal truths on the hearts of your children and in living as neighbor to those around you so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Perhaps you may not see the fruits of your work until the day when he shall take you home and say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

But be sure that you can live day by day, live in the fullness of the blessing of Christ. Perhaps you can know this blessing by going to church every Sunday and being in your place as an attentive listener, giving courage and encouragement to your minister, praying for him and telling him your approval when he has the courage to strike out against sin and to stand for the right and to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps you can know it by living in such a way that your neighbors will hesitate to use your ear as a wastebasket for their gossip.

Perhaps you can know it by living in such a way that someone in trouble will come to you for comfort and strength. Or perhaps you will know it only in the warm glow of your heart as you seek in every way and at all times to give Christ the foremost place in your life and being. For there may be moments precious above all others when the fullness of the blessing of Christ shall be in the awe-inspiring silence of your own heart as you feel the presence of the Holy Spirit and know the inner working of God as though he were enlarging your heart, increasing your capacity, stretching your understanding, expanding your outreach, extending your sphere of prayer, spreading your field of love, and in it all, magnifying himself within your soul.

All this and much more, infinitely more, is the fullness of the blessing of Christ. I think of a man in East Tennessee who held my hand in his grip and who looked at me with tears in his eyes to tell me how much God had blessed his soul through our radio ministry. He works in some capacity for the railroad and oh, he said, this has meant so much for us. I think of a simple merchant who had his pack on a little wagon that he took from place to place and he told us how God had transformed his life.

We think of such people and along with them others, doctors, lawyers, merchants, housewives, teachers, nurses, who have known this fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. And my prayer for each of you today is that you may be a similar channel of blessing and you can be if you will say to God from your heart, "Lord, today make me so to be filled with the Holy Spirit that men may take knowledge that I've been with Jesus Christ and that I may reflect him upon them."

Our God and Father, we pray thee that the Holy Spirit shall indeed work this work in each of our hearts, that we may know thee better, that we may love thee more. Speak to us, we pray thee, and use to thy glory the word that has been spoken. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Guest (Male): As God's redeemed people, we must seek to live every day in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled In the Fullness of the Blessing. 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 In the Fullness of the Blessing, or simply request message number R15-30.

We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled The Names of God. Most of us have a first, last, and middle name, and perhaps a nickname or two. But scripture records more than 400 names of God that reveal fresh and profound insights about his character and attributes. This free four-chapter booklet will show you how an in-depth look at the names of God can help you discover a wealth of riches in the knowledge of him. Ask for your free copy of The Names of God 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.

We also produce 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. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible comes to you through the generous gifts of listeners. 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. That's 1-800-488-1888. Visit us online at Alliancenet.org or write Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Box 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. 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. Join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.