Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

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

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: We hear the proud boastings of the Gentile nations, including our own. And we long for that day when the root out of Jesse shall flourish, putting down all might and authority, and every adverse rule, and bringing in the eternal Kingdom of everlasting righteousness. Then there will be peace.

Because the Lord of peace will himself bring and be the peace of all the world. And our hearts cry, "Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus."

Narrator: 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, "The Hope of the Gentiles." The Apostle Paul reminded the Ephesians that they were Gentiles by birth and were once separated from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of promise without hope and without God in this world.

But he emphasized that they, who were once far from God, have been brought near by the blood of Jesus Christ. The same is true today, as any Gentile can turn to Christ and receive the certain hope of salvation. The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible, Romans chapter 15 and verse 12. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled, "The Hope of the Gentiles."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto Thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. Speak to each listening heart in this hour and bless the truth to us, as we ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the 15th chapter of Romans and the 12th verse, we have our text. And further, Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse shall come, he who rises to rule the Gentiles. In him shall the Gentiles hope."

Now if we're to understand the Bible, we must realize that in one sense, it is the record of God's plans to deal not only with individual man, but ultimately with society as a whole. And that it is also the record of how God proposes to do this through the two phases of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The first coming of our Lord was to provide, by the payment of his blood, the expiation for the sins of all who put their trust in him. It also provided the righteous basis whereby he could do all the other things he proposes to do for sinful mankind and for the estranged universe.

But it must be understood that the first coming of Christ does not provide for the saving of society. There is not a line in the Bible which teaches that God is going to save society through the work of the church in this present age. Everywhere the contrary is taught.

And we see that Christ has announced that the second coming will take place when the world is lost and when much of the church, the outward visible church at least, is in a lukewarm condition, fit for serious judgment.

Our text now leaps across the years to the end of the church age and shows us the coming of the Lord Jesus to finish the work which must be done for the vast hordes of Gentiles, who have never yet put their trust in the Savior God, who have never seen the glory that is to be found in him.

Certainly we cannot think for a moment that the prophecy has been fulfilled in the small handful of Gentiles who've come into the church of Jesus Christ in the course of the ages. For while it is true that the majority of the believers in the past 2,000 years have come into the church from the midst of the Gentiles, the far vaster number of the Gentiles have not come.

In fact, it is a statistical fact that the birth rate in the Gentile nations of the world is much higher than the growth of the organized church, let alone the growth of the number of true believers. And the plan of God certainly includes the ultimate redemption of the world.

If someone should ask the basis of our conclusion that the narrative now leaps into the future, I would point to the fact that this is only one of many such examples to be found in the Bible prophecies. For example, on the day of Pentecost, Peter began to speak of the fulfillment of the prophecies made in the Old Testament. "This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel," he said.

And he went on to quote passages that were being fulfilled on that very day of Pentecost. And then, with no more than a breath of separation, his message leaped forward to announce the ultimate fulfillment of the prophecies concerning the work of the Holy Spirit at the time of the Second Coming of Christ and the accomplishment of all God's purposes.

Another similar time leap is in the 40th chapter of Isaiah. The prophet first speaks of some little local warfare and the peace that followed it, saying, "Comfort, comfort ye my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins."

And then in the next line, we pass over centuries to the time of John the Baptist. A voice cries, "Clear ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord. Make plain in the desert a highway for our God." The translators of the Septuagint read this, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord." And the Holy Spirit sanctified this translation by taking it into the New Testament and applying it to John the Baptist.

But immediately the Spirit carries the words forward to the far future, when "Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the rugged shall be made level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."

Now, the whole of the context demands that our text shall be read in this light, and that it shall be made very clear that the Lord God proposes a great work in this world, which has not yet come to pass. And that work is that "The root of Jesse shall come, he who rises to rule the Gentiles. In him shall the Gentiles hope." And this, of course, refers to Jesus Christ.

Certain errors have risen in our day that need to be met at this point. There has risen a very wonderful band of men and women who are proceeding to enter hundreds of tribes in Central and South America and in New Guinea, the Philippines, Vietnam and in other parts of the world. Some, not all, of their leaders have said that the Second Coming of Christ can't take place until the Gospel has been preached in all the world. They say that there are 2,000 tongues to go.

And even under the most hopeful conditions, this would mean that the Gospel could not reach the ends of the earth and the Second Coming of Christ could not take place for almost a hundred years at the present rate of linguistic progress. Now such an interpretation is false and misleading and cannot be established by sound exegesis.

Sure, there shall be representatives of every kingdom, tongue, tribe and nation at the coming of the Lord, but these shall be reached during the great revival that will take place during the rule of the Antichrist, after the true church has been removed. This removal could take place at any moment, even before the end of this sentence, or the next, or the next.

There is no prophecy that remains to be fulfilled before the Son of God shall come to take his church from this world. People should be very careful not to follow any zealous scheme, no matter how high the motives that might seek to channel it, that would make God a respecter of persons, as though he were more interested in getting 10 converts from 10 tribes than he would be in getting a hundred or 500 from one and the same tribe.

Our text is quoted from the 11th of Isaiah, one of the noblest chapters in the whole Bible. It is one of the greatest prophecies of the final work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and what he proposes to do in the redemption of mankind from the evils that have come upon it through the eruption of the iniquity that is in the human heart.

The announcement that there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse is the announcement that Jesus Christ shall come to reign. Jesse was the father of David, and this King of Israel is the type of the Messiah, one of whose names is Son of David.

God proposes to restore the Jews to Palestine, to give them control of the Middle East, and to rule the world from Jerusalem. The 10th chapter of Isaiah is the framework in which we must study our text. The narrative recounts how the armies of Sennacherib, prototype of the northern army of the future invasion of Palestine, comes to a hilltop overlooking Jerusalem, and that they are halted and turned back from that point. The Lord intervenes.

He describes his judgment and his triumph in terms of a forester cutting down trees, and then watching a new growth develop. We read, "Behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, will lop the boughs with terrifying power. The great in height will be hewn down, and the lofty will be brought low. He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an axe, and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots."

It is a breathtaking experience to stand in a great forest and watch lumbermen take the top off a giant tree. Sennacherib had used the vocabulary of forest destruction to boast of what he intended to do with the little nation of Israel, which stood in his path. God turns the language back on him. This dictator had raged against the nations and boasted of his prowess in spoiling his enemies, as one fells the trees of a forest.

We read, "With my many chariots, I have gone up the heights of the mountains to the far recesses of Lebanon. I felled its tallest cedars, its choicest cypresses. I entered its farthest retreat, its densest forest." Against such arrogance, the Holy Spirit cried out, "Why do the nations rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?"

And now, in that Psalm, comes the moment for the laughter of God, which makes the chills run down the spine of even the redeemed believer. What will it do to the Gentiles, when they come to the day of their final judgment before God? What folly for man to boast against God? What certainty that he shall be brought low in the bitterness of utter defeat?

The enemy came, despising and ridiculing Israel, but God said that they were actually despising and ridiculing him. To Sennacherib's boasting, God answered, "Because you have raged against me, and your arrogance has come into my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came."

All of this was literally fulfilled in that typical advance and defeat, and it will be literally fulfilled again in the future, when God brings to pass all of his final plans, which he has made according to the counsel of his will. The fact that the haughty ones shall be humbled is one of the pervading principles of all the Bible and of all God's dealings in history.

Time and again, the Lord Jesus concluded messages to his disciples or others with the words, "He that humbles himself shall be exalted, and he that exalts himself shall be abased." Thus he concluded the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, and of the man who took the best seat. The lesson on the child and the discourse on titles and honors.

The Lord hates arrogance, because it's a manifestation of pride, and pride is the sin of Satan. The Gentile leader, who is the object of this prophecy, is one of Satan's final thrusts to achieve his hopes. He will be humbled. Metaphors are multiplied to show the final doom of all who rise up against God and his people.

There can be no other outcome. No outcome other than that which is spelled out with such simplicity. When men choose self, they choose death. When men seek their own way, they war against God's way.

Now remembering that the metaphors of this paragraph concern trees, let us remind ourselves of one detail about the propagation of trees. When a California redwood is cut down, it puts out so many shoots that it is called sempervirens, always living. An oak also puts out shoots, but when a cedar of Lebanon is cut down, it puts out no new shoots.

Thus, when the power of the Gentile forces against Israel are finally cut down, they will be cut down forever. All of God's works are of necessity on behalf of those who love him and against those who reject him. When he lays the axe to the root of a tree, it shall indeed be cut down without possibility of flourishing again.

Now what is said to the Assyrian in this passage in Isaiah is repeated as an example to Pharaoh in Ezekiel's prophecy. The 31st of Ezekiel, God reminds Pharaoh that the Assyrian was like a cedar of Lebanon with fair branches and forest shade and of great height. Its top among thick boughs, towering high above all the trees of the forest. Its boughs grew large, and its branches long. All the birds of the air made their nests in its boughs. Under its shadow dwelt all great nations.

"Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, because it towered high and set its top among thick boughs, and its heart was proud of its height, I will give it into the hand of a mighty one of the nations. He shall truly deal with it as its wickedness deserves. I have cast it out."

Now the Gentile nations are likened to beautiful trees, with an Assyrian, the future power of the North, the greatest of them all. The forest shall be destroyed. And the mighty one who does this is the Messiah. The forest of the Gentile nations. And the Messiah shall rule.

Then suddenly God announces, after telling of this destruction of Gentile power, that out of the stump of the felled tree of Israel, a new shoot would come forth. Several years ago, I planted a few oak trees near my house, and all but one of them has already passed 20 feet in height. But one of them was damaged and died at the soil line. The whole root system was intact, however, and a shoot came forth.

At first it seemed spindly and weak, and I was on the point of tearing it out in order to plant a new tree, when a horticulturalist friend told me that it would catch up with the other trees which had been planted at the same time. I could hardly believe it. But after two years, the shoot had passed six feet in height, and after four years, it is more than 12 feet in height, with a fine branch system, all being fed from a root system that is the equal of its fellows.

And it is this figure of speech that God uses here. God slices through the Gentile forest like a hurricane, lopping the boughs with terrifying power, hewing down the tallest timbers with his axe of judgment. Then from the most unlikely stump will come forth a new tree. The stump of Jesse, the father of King David, is the royal line of the Messiah from Abraham.

Who would expect that the power of a ruler of little Israel would exceed the power of the Caesars of history? God's forestry is not like man's. When he tells a dead stump to bring forth life, life will come. The Gentile forest is to be ripped apart by the tornado of God's wrath. Desolation and destruction will be everywhere.

In the quiet that follows the storm, one might think that there is no hope, no deliverer, but God is bringing forth the fast growing shoot from the dry stump. Christ will come and deliver his people. Daniel tells the same story in his vision of the stone that comes from heaven, strikes the image on the feet, destroys it, and then rapidly grows to fill the earth. And here in our text, the tree grows quickly to restore all the verdure of the forest.

When Christ came the first time, he was described as the root out of dry ground, despised and rejected of men. But God raised Christ from the dead. And today, the Lord Jesus Christ fills the heavens, and soon he will fill the earth.

Perhaps the most wonderful thing about all this story of judgment of evil nations and the triumph of Christ is that there is a sudden turn to the narrative, and it is stated that the very God who has been the judge and destroyer of the Gentile nations shall become their savior and the object of their hope.

Oh, there is no greater illustration of the sovereignty of God. When Jesus Christ rose from the dead, God sent the disciples straight back to those who had murdered Christ, to declare to them that peace was made and that their pardon was assured. And as it was between the Lord and Israel at the first coming, so shall it be between the Lord and the Gentile nations at his Second Coming.

They rise in their final gesture of vindictive hatred. He sweeps out to judge them as he must, and immediately after their total conquest, he sets himself as their confidence and trust. The quotation from Isaiah has an interesting factor hid within the root of one of the words. The text says, "In that day, the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the peoples. Him shall the nations seek, and his dwelling shall be glorious."

Now we've seen that the root of Jesse is the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. And here we have the added revelation that he shall stand as an ensign, a flag, a banner for the peoples. Jesus Christ will be the rallying center of all the nations of the world in that day.

The interesting fact here is that the Hebrew word, Nase, translated ensign, is the flag or the banner round which the nations of the world shall gather. And this is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. The same word is found in the Psalms, "Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth."

And this banner is identified by one other use of the same Hebrew word, since it is the word used by God to tell Moses to put the brazen serpent on the pole that all the dying people might look and be saved. And this pole, the Lord himself identified as his cross. "For," said he, "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."

Many of us, Gentiles, have come now in this age of grace to put our trust in Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. But we are but a feeble indication of that vast company, which God describes as a great multitude which no man could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues.

Jesus Christ is Lord of the Gentiles. In his name shall the Gentiles trust. Oh, how our hearts long to see that day. We hear the proud boastings of the Gentile nations, including our own, and we long for that day when the root out of Jesse shall flourish, putting down all might and authority, and every adverse rule, and bringing in the eternal Kingdom of everlasting righteousness. Then there will be peace, just and lasting peace.

Because the Lord of peace will himself bring and be the peace of all the world. And our hearts cry, "Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus." And our God and Father, we pray Thee to bless the going forth of thy word. Heighten our expectation and make our hope very real to us, that the Lord Jesus Christ shall come. He whose right it is to reign, and that he, laying aside the sword of peace, shall gird on the sword of war, and shall come to rule. Oh, hasten that day, Lord, we pray Thee. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Narrator: At one time the Gentile peoples were without God and without hope, but today, any Gentile can find eternal life and peace with God, through the Lord Jesus Christ. We hope you've benefited from today's message entitled, "The Hope of the Gentiles." 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, "The Hope of the Gentiles," or simply request message number R15-11.

We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled, "Promises to Live By." We have all been disappointed by people who have let us down or not kept their word to us. But God is always faithful to his word and to his promises. This free booklet will show you the glorious and unshakable promises from the Word of God that will give you strength in any situation in life. If you want to build your life on the strong, sure foundation of the promises of God, ask for your free copy of "Promises to Live By" 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. For a full list of radio stations carrying our programs, visit our website at alliancenet.org.

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