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: There will always be voices speaking to us. Some attempting to draw us to serve the flesh, and some that are very subtle, which seek to draw us slightly away from the teaching of the Word of God.

And then there is the voice of the Holy Spirit. Now we can always distinguish between these voices. We can merely challenge them to speak to us of the blood of Jesus Christ and his redemption for us. The voice of the flesh and the voice of Satan's forces will immediately be silenced before this challenge.

Choir: God's Word is good for what he came

To teach, rebuke, correct and train

Equipped by him, we then pursue

The work God has for us to do

God's Word is all the Christian needs

To grow in grace and do good deeds

Guest (Male): 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 Lessons in Living. Wouldn't it be great to take music lessons from Mozart or lessons in painting and sculpture from Michelangelo? These masters are no longer here to give us lessons in the arts.

But we can learn valuable lessons in living from our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. Do you prayerfully search the scriptures to seek his instruction for daily living? The scripture text for this edition, Romans chapter 15 and verse 4. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled Lessons in Living.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit, we rejoice in thee. Thou art our God, and we give all praise and glory to thee in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus. Amen.

We're studying in the 15th chapter of Romans and the fourth verse, which states, "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." Robert Burns, the glory of Scotland's poetry, has given us a beautiful picture of a poor man who knew God and who drew all his strength from the Word of God.

In "The Cotter's Saturday Night," he tells the story of the homecoming of the man who has the life of God upon him. The Bible is brought forth. The family sings praises to God and Burns says, "The priest-like father reads the sacred page / How Abram was the friend of God on high / Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage / With Amalek's ungracious progeny."

"Or how the royal bard did groaning lie / Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire / Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry / Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire / Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre / Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme / How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed / How he, who bore in Heaven the second name / Had not on earth whereon to lay his head."

Well, we shall never know until we reach Heaven how many myriads of believers have thus slaked their thirst in the running waters of the word. How many poverty-stricken folk have found their riches in the manifold grace of God. How many anguished souls have had their tears wiped away by the same God who comforted the holy men of old, and how many sin-torn hearts have found strength by going down to the eternal and impregnable Rock.

Now I'm sure that I was saved when I was very, very young, certainly before I knew anything about it. The life of God was planted within me many years before I became aware of that life working within me. I repudiate, of course, the teaching that God gives eternal life in answer to the faith of an unsaved man.

Salvation is not a reward for faith. Faith is planted within us by the free grace of God. And then as he leads us through the varied experiences of life, we become aware that the source of our strength is the Holy Spirit who has come to dwell within us. Then as we grow, we read the Word of God and the Spirit begins to make it live within us. We feed on it and grow still more.

When I was about 15 years old, a man dealt with me concerning my spiritual life. He showed me in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah the verse that reads, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." My friend had me read this in the first person singular.

"I like a sheep have gone astray. I have turned to my own way. And the Lord has laid on him all of my iniquity." I can never forget it. It was an experience so great that for several years, in my biblical ignorance, I thought that I was born again at that moment. It was only years later that I realized that I had been alive in Christ long before that.

And that what had happened then was that I received full assurance of my forgiveness and knew that my sins were forever removed from me. I knew that I had been accepted by the Father in the totality of my existence and that I was truly a child of God, accepted in the beloved. A day or two after this great experience, I wrote in the margin of my Bible opposite this verse, "Here I met God," and I placed the date beside it.

How many times I went back to that verse when there was an occasion to doubt. I would see some imperfection, some fault, some grievous sin. And immediately there would be the doubt, the wondering if it were possible to have the life of God and still have the life of the flesh to such an extent. There have been times when I've pressed my finger to the page and cried out to God that this was his Word and that he had to make it good because he is God and cannot deny himself.

And time and again, I found certainty there and peace, and learned steadfastness and the consolation of the scriptures as I pressed on in the way of hope. And then there came other days and better days, when I passed on to higher lessons and began to grow still further in the knowledge of God as I found him in his Word. Oh do not forget that it is impossible to find God apart from his Word.

The Holy Spirit does not come to any soul independently of the Bible. He dwells in the hearts of those who trust in Christ. He leads us on from day to day, but he will never lead us apart from the word and he will always lead us deeper into the patience and comfort of the scriptures. Flee any teaching that the Holy Spirit furnishes knowledge apart from the Word of God.

Now I do not mean to say that the Holy Spirit does not speak to the yielded believer in the innermost part of the soul. The voice of the Holy Spirit will joy and rejoice within us and will glorify the Lord Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection. And just as the teaching of the Holy Spirit comes to us only in the word, so that teaching can come to us from any part of the word.

Christ spoke well when he said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." And it should be remembered that the Lord Jesus took this quotation from the book of Deuteronomy. Dozens of Old Testament stories are mentioned in the New Testament either by direct quotation or by allusion. But there is a remarkable difference in the way the histories are set forth in the two Testaments.

Take for example the story of Abraham as told in the New Testament and compare it with the way it is told in the Old Testament. We read in Hebrews 11, "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was to go." If we had no other record than this, we might think that Abraham heard the command of God, clicked his heels, saluted, and cried out, "Forward, march! One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four," and that he hardly stopped for rest until he had fully obeyed the command of God.

But when we turn back to the original story in Genesis, we discover that there was a long delay. Abraham did not fully obey the command of God for several years. In fact, not until his father died did he leave the halfway house of Haran where he had dawdled and dallied and go on to complete the orders that God had given to him. Oh what comfort is for us here.

God does not look at the feeble way in which we perform our work. He has his eyes on us and upon the end goal. And he sees us as already complete in Christ. And then he goes back to where we actually are in our condition and continues his work of completion which he has promised to perform to perfection. Now it would be possible to continue through the Old Testament and bring out the work of God in the lives of the most famous men of the ancient covenant.

But instead of drawing my examples from them, I want to point to certain verses, some of them obscure and almost unknown, which have been of great comfort to me during the years I have spent within the Word of God. With what delight I came upon the story of Benaiah the son of Jehoiada. It's in the first book of Chronicles in the midst of the list of mighty men who were with David in exile and later in triumph.

I read of the deeds of Jashobeam the Hachmonite and of one Eleazar the son of Dodo. And as I went on down the chapter in my meditation, there seemed to be little of spiritual strength. And then I came to Benaiah the son of Jehoiada. It was many years before I understood the meaning of the first of his deeds, that he was brave enough to penetrate to the very altar hearth of the temple of one of the enemy peoples.

But I could understand the next part, for there in the midst of that 11th chapter of 1st Chronicles it says, "Also, he went down and slew a lion in a pit on a snowy day." I leaned back in my chair and began to think about Benaiah. Such a man! What a heart of fire, and what courage beyond compare. When the snow drove a lion through hunger to come down to a village in search of food, this man boldly sought him out in a pit where he had taken refuge, went in after him and killed him.

And it made me feel that God is great. He who can enter into the heart of one who was probably a very primitive man, but who was yielded to God's king David and served him well. No wonder the Lord comforted me here. I knew of pits in my life where lions lurked, lions that needed to be slain. And I learned that the power of the Lord could come upon a man to slay those lions and to lead him on to triumph with David's greater son, the Lord Jesus.

Then I remember another verse in the midst of the Chronicles where the Lord spoke to me in great blessing. The verse came to my attention in a peculiar way. When I was a student in Princeton Theological Seminary, in my first year I think, there was a student who seemed unable to take anything seriously. And I thought it only right when he left school to take a secular position.

I could never have imagined him in the solemnity of a holy ministry for Christ. He was what we would call today a congenital wise cracker. On one occasion at a prayer meeting which he attended, the leader asked each of us to give a verse from the Bible that had been a blessing to us. When it came his turn, the fellow said solemnly, "1st Chronicles 26:18."

There was a pause while we turned quickly in our Bibles to find the place. And he then recited with great speed so that the words ran together, "At Parbar westward four at the causeway and two at Parbar." And when we looked at it closely, we read, "At Parbar westward, four at the causeway, and two at Parbar." There was a moment of silence and he quipped, "If you believe in the inspiration of the Bible, find some inspiration in that verse."

Well several years passed. I had occasionally thought of the incident and once, when I came upon this verse, 1st Chronicles 26:18, in my regular reading of the Bible, I decided to find out all that it meant. I searched the lexicons and commentaries and studied the passage very closely, going back two or three chapters to get the whole sweep of the section.

It is the chronicle of the division of the sons of Levi into the various services of the house of the Lord. The sons of Aaron were divided into 24 groups to maintain the sacrifices at the altar. The sons of his cousin were divided into similar groups to carry on the music of the house of the Lord. Of them we read that some were set apart to prophesy with lyres, with harps, and with cymbals.

They were all under the direction of their father in the music in the house of the Lord with cymbals, harps, and lyres for the service of the house of God. They were trained in singing to the Lord, all who were skillful. Then in the next chapter from which the strange verse had been quoted, was a similar record of the third line of Levi, sons of Kohath. They were to be the doorkeepers in the house of the Lord.

It was humble work. They were the janitors if you like. But the Bible says that they were able men qualified for the service. And after the list of names, there is the statement, "These divisions of the gatekeepers corresponding to their chief men had duties just as their brethren did, ministering in the house of the Lord." How important to note that the service of the doorkeeper was considered by God to be equal to that of the musicians and equal to that of the men who handled the lamb, slaying the sacrifices upon the altar of God.

And now we come to the meaning of our verse, "At Parbar westward four at the causeway and two at Parbar." All these doorkeepers cast lots to determine who should serve in which place. We read, "They cast lots by fathers' houses, small and great alike for their gates. The lot for the east fell to Shelemiah. They cast lots also for his son Zechariah, a shrewd counselor, and his lot came out for the north."

Incidentally, where but in the dealings of our God would we find a janitor picked out as a shrewd counselor? Let no man think that he is too inferior for God's purpose. God can use you no matter how lowly the service you may do or how lowly the world may think you to be. Now at the west of the temple area, there was a colonnade, the place where the first rays of the morning sun lighted the precincts of the house of God, just as hills to the west always catch the sunrays before the hills to the east.

I wonder if it was not in this place that the Lord Jesus Christ came to teach on that morning when they brought to him the woman taken in adultery at the rising of the sun. I believe that it was here that he spoke the words, "I am the light of the world. He that follows after me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." The Hebrew word for this western colonnade is Parbar.

At the time of the translation of the King James Version, there was not sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to get the meanings of some of these words. And thus the older version speaks of Asuppim and Parbar. The newer versions tell us of the storehouse and the colonnade. The lot that fell to these particular doorkeepers therefore was that they should stand four at the causeway and two at the colonnade.

After I worked out the meaning of this verse, I felt great joy in my heart that the Lord God Almighty, in the course of his divine revelation, should take the trouble to give us the names of simple men whose lives were spent on guard in the temple of God, to stand as doorkeepers and to do the ordinary work of the temple. They were lowly men, but they were dwelling and working in the house of God.

Later on, God gave these men the inspiration to sing one of the most beautiful of all the psalms. If you look at Psalm 84, you'll find it introduced as being a psalm of the sons of Korah. And remember that it is the sons of Korah that were the doorkeepers. So Psalm 84 is the psalm of the janitors. "How lovely are thy dwellings, oh Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, fainteth for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God."

"Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young at thy altars, oh Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in thy house, ever singing thy praise. Oh Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, oh God of Jacob. Behold our shield, oh God. Look upon the face of thine anointed. For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness."

Oh how many times I have thanked God for the cynical twist in the mind of that fellow who tossed a seemingly nonsensical verse into the midst of a prayer meeting. He meant it for confusion but the Lord meant it to me for good. For I learned later, as I probed into the depths of the Word of God, that God is interested in the simplest tasks of the simplest of men. Not everyone can slay a Goliath.

Not everyone can go into the fiery furnace and come out unscathed. It takes a mighty man to stand before the Babylonian kings. We may sing and teach our children to sing, "Dare to be a Daniel, dare to stand alone, dare to have a purpose firm and dare to make it known." Oh yes, we can draw strength from these tales of the mighty men, even though we know that we shall never be counted by the world as standing among the mighty.

Yes, all things that were written afore were written for our learning, that we through steadfastness and the consolation of the scripture might have hope. This is why in the New Testament we read in Hebrews 11, "By faith Abel, by faith Enoch, by faith Noah, by faith Abraham, Sarah, by faith Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses' parents, Moses, by faith Joshua, Rahab." And then it says, "What shall I say more? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and of Barak and of Samson and of Jephthah, of David also and Samuel and of the prophets who through faith subdued kingdoms."

They "wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again. And others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yes, moreover of bonds and imprisonment."

"They were stoned. They were sawn asunder, were tested, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. And all of these having obtained a good report through faith received not the promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect."

Oh how wonderful. All these men, the well-known and the little-known and in fact the unknown, they're in God's books. And in the Word of God, we read then of a man whose name we've already forgotten who slew a lion in a pit on a snowy day. And we read of doorkeepers whose names we have forgotten by the time we read the next sentence. And we can learn that God keeps a record of the vast army of little men who serve him truly and give the praise back to him.

And on that day when all hidden things are brought to light, every man will have his praise from God. And the last shall be first and the first shall be last. And I am sure that multitudes will confess that they drew their strength and all their resources from the fact that they learned our text, that everything written by God in the Old Testament as well as in the New was put down for their instruction.

Thus through steadfastness and the comfort of the scripture, we shall come to the end of our road of hope and enter into the deep joy of the Lord. And our God and Father, we pray thee that thou wilt use this today. There are many hearts that know that their lives must be lived in simplicity. Oh be with them and help them to understand that thou dost love them, that thou dost have thine eye upon them and thy hand upon them, and above all, thy love upon them. Bless each listening heart in this hour. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Guest (Male): We can learn valuable lessons for living as Jesus Christ speaks to us by the Holy Spirit through the pages of Holy Scripture. We hope you've benefited from today's message entitled Lessons in Living. 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 Lessons in Living, or simply request message number R15-6.

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 teaching 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, Martin 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.

Choir: The Bible has commanding words

To do God's holy will

His saving work converts

It draws our souls from death to life

And rescues us from needless strife

Amazing gift, on earth so high

The life-imparting Word of God.