Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

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

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Thomas Carlyle once wrote, "Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a peasant saint." Such a one will take you back to Nazareth itself.

He knew what it was to look around the villages and hills of his native Scotland and see simple men who had been touched by the Lord Jesus Christ and whose lives had been transformed by that touch.

How many, many simple people have known Christ or have been known by Christ in such a way that they have become magnificent witnesses for Him.

Narrator: Over a half a century ago, the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, then pastor of 10th 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 "Little but Great." It may have seemed small and insignificant to onlookers when the poor widow put two small coins into the temple treasury. But her sacrificial gift was great in the Lord's eyes.

And Jesus declared that she had given more than all the others. You may think you have a small, unimportant part in God's plan, but a simple life of love and service is truly great in the sight of your heavenly Father.

The Scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible, Romans chapter 16 and verses 22 through 23. Here, once again, is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled, "Little but Great."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto you, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. We thank you for yourself, that you are love. We thank you that you are interested in little people and that you have done something for us.

We thank you that your greatness did not keep you aloof in heaven, but that your love came down to die for us in order that we might be brought back from our rebellion and be reconciled to you.

In this hour, we pray you that you will bless each listening heart, that we may know you better and love you more. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the end of Romans 16 we read, "I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord. Gaius, mine host and of the whole church, greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother Quartus, greet you."

The first time I was in the Orient, in Hong Kong, I was entertained in a beautiful home which had a whole retinue of servants. One young man spoke English and had everything under control.

I noticed that the other servants were very humble before him. My host said, "He's the best number one boy in China."

I replied, "What are the qualifications of a number one boy?" He explained, "The number one boy is a Chinese institution. He runs absolutely everything in connection with the household. He hires the other servants. He supervises the marketing.

You'd never find him carrying a package. A third boy or a fourth boy would be doing that." Well, the same thing, the same system prevailed in the slave world of the ancient Roman Empire. The same system of numbering slaves gave such names as Primus, Secundus, Tertius, Quartus, and Quintus, to slaves who worked in the great estates of the Roman senators and in the great commercial enterprises which Roman wealth financed in all the provinces.

In Corinth, there was a Roman businessman who had slaves. His number three boy became a believer in Christ. He was near to Paul, and as he knew how to read and write, Paul dictated the Epistle of the Romans to him.

Number four boy looked on. He, too, had become a believer. When the epistle was about finished, Paul began sending greetings from Corinthian believers to the churches in Rome.

Number three boy held the pen and wrote on. As Paul spoke, he wrote, "Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you, so do Lucius, and Jason, and Sosipater, my kinsman."

He paused, and number three boy kept on writing. "I, number three boy, the writer of this letter, greet you in the Lord. Tertius." In that moment, you became immortal in the ranks of men, and your name, already written in heaven, was inscribed among the immortals of the Christian faith on Earth.

There are savage tribes who have heard the Gospel and who now hold it in their hands as the Epistle to the Romans. They spell out its names and come to yours, Tertius. And thus they know about you.

They will live and die without ever hearing the name of Caesar, but your name, number three boy, they know. You are in Christ, and you sent them greetings.

Paul was sitting in the home, possibly in a patio of an influential man. This man had a large house where the whole church of Corinth could gather on Sundays for their worship.

Perhaps he was sitting near Paul as the great words of the Epistle were dictated to Tertius, the number three boy. When Tertius wrote his greeting, Paul picked up the thread, and lifting his hand in a gentle gesture, said, "Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church, greets you."

Perhaps a very influential friend had dropped in to greet Gaius and to talk with Paul about the wonderful faith which had come to possess his being. Paul includes him, saying, "Erastus, the city treasurer, the chamberlain, greets you."

Oh, Erastus, they have found a stone in Corinth with the inscription which bears your name and the name of your office. But though the stone which mentions your name and gives you the honor of your dignity was covered for centuries, your name has been ringing in the churches through all these generations.

How wonderful to know that there have always been, as there are today, men of note, men of position, men of honor, who have followed the Lord Jesus Christ.

Queen Victoria said that she wished the Second Coming of Christ would take place while she was alive so that she might have the privilege of laying the crown of the British Empire at His feet.

Oh, we understand her, as you did, Erastus. As Paul sent greetings from his host and the visiting city official, there was a timid gesture from one of the slaves who stood by. "Greet them from me," said number four boy. And Paul included him in the same sentence.

In the Greek, the verb comes first, and we would hear it thus: "Salutes you, Erastus, the treasurer of the city, and Quartus, the brother." Number four boy, the brother.

When Cuvier, the great naturalist, founder of modern anatomy, was demonstrating his theory of correlation, he took a great slab of stone from which only one tiny fragment of a prehistoric fossil protruded. Everything else lay hidden in the stone.

He said to his crowded lecture hall, "I have never come across such a fossil before, but I believe that from the small bone visible I can deduce the invisible form inside the stone. This animal is an opossum, dating from the early Tertiary period."

The students were torn between faith and skepticism. No one could yet identify the typical pouch bones and the typical opossum teeth. Cuvier chiseled away, chip after chip from the slab.

More than an hour passed. At last, just as one of the students uttered a low cry of astonishment, with a jovial laugh, Cuvier held up the pouch bones to the light. The fossil was, in fact, an early Tertiary opossum, as he had foretold.

Well, in this last chapter of Romans, we have before us the slab of stone of history of that day, and out of it are seen a few names: a rich host, a city treasurer, number three boy, and number four boy.

And from these names, we can reconstruct a whole church, hidden in the slab. Here we see that the transforming power of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, and what it does in men's hearts.

There had never been anything like this before in the history of the world. Here is Quartus. His name is Roman, number four boy, but he lived in Corinth. He was possibly a Greek by birth.

If so, he had to reach across the great barrier of hatred which the Greeks had for their Roman conquerors. The Greeks, in their slavery, still remembered their past greatness and freedom, and rejoiced in their culture which they knew was superior to that of Rome, who had crushed them and who tried to imitate them.

Rome had copied their architecture with the famed Corinthian columns, but the Greeks were contemptuous toward them. Somewhat as those European nations with their culture of 2,000 years are slightly contemptuous of the American civilization that often manifests itself in gaudy imitation and flaunts its wealth before those who have lost their wealth in many wars.

We have little idea of the fissures that existed between peoples, races, tongues, and nations, between slaves and freedmen, plebeian and patrician, conqueror and conquered. All of this was bound together by the chains of Rome.

Alexander MacLaren says, "All this fabric full of active repulsions and disintegrating forces was bound together into an artificial and unreal unity by the iron clamp of Rome's power, holding up the bulging walls that were ready to fall."

"The unity of the slave gang, manacled together for easier driving." Into this hideous condition of things, the Gospel comes and silently flings its clasping tendrils over the wide gaps and binds the crumbling structure of human society with a new bond, real and living.

All of this reminds us that Koinonia was a new thing. Koinonia is the Greek word which in various translations is found as "fellowship" or "communion," the same Greek word.

It had never before been known or even thought of in the world. Here was a new society, held together by love, the love of Jesus Christ.

Anyone who tries to talk about the brotherhood of man apart from Jesus Christ is creating a phantasm out of the fumes of fancy. The idea of brotherhood apart from regeneration and new life in Christ is, to use Shakespeare's phrase, to give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.

The only place this brotherhood works is inside true Christianity. The fact occurred first, and then the imitation theory was created from it, and an attempt was made to extend it to all men, but it works, brotherhood works, only in Christ.

In the first centuries, nobody talked about the brotherhood of man. The believers just ignored all distinctions, and, as we see in the Epistles, gathered together around the table of Christ, the master and the slave, the barbarian and the Greek, the Jew and the Gentile, former worshipers of Jehovah and former worshipers of Jupiter.

It was an actual oneness, absolutely above and beyond all human distinctions. The world saw and marveled. "By this shall men know that you are my disciples, that you love one another."

Nothing short of this could have moved the simple number four slave, Quartus, to ask Paul to send his love to the unknown brothers across the sea.

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." This little message of Quartus should give to each believer a missionary outlook.

Are you interested when you hear that there are new believers in an Indian tribe on the Upper Amazon? Does your heart go out to those who are worshiping in a church in Africa, whose mud pews are baked in the sun before the mud walls are built around them and the palm roof goes over them?

Quartus knew nobody in Rome, and nobody in Rome had ever heard of Quartus, but he loved them, and he wanted them to know it. Here is the real ground for the divine urgency of the ecumenical movement.

Anybody who fights against an ecumenical outreach is fighting against the Holy Spirit. Is there a born-again man in the Church of England? Is there a born-again man in the Pentecostal Church? The two must yearn for each other if they are in the body of Christ.

The separatist idea that fellowship must be on some basis of fancied purity of the church is totally alien to the life of God as it is revealed in the Word of God.

Yes, out of this list of names, we see the whole church, the rich and the poor together, bound in the love of Christ. Gaius could not be an apostle, but he opened his house to Paul and to the whole church.

Look for a parallel in the Book of Acts. Paul was on the way to Jerusalem. He had been staying in Caesarea, and a Cypriot, evidently a traveling salesman, who maintained a house in Jerusalem, accompanied him to Jerusalem in order that Paul might stay in his house.

And how is this man described in the Book of Acts? "Certain of the disciples went with us, bringing one with whom we might lodge, Nason of Cyprus, an old disciple." What do we know about him? He was an old disciple.

That's all. What do we know about Quartus? He was a brother. Isn't this enough? A disciple, a brother. We can build man from a single sentence.

You have your place. You can't be a David Livingston. You can't perhaps become a Bible translator. You will probably not be listed among the martyrs. Though there are those, even in our day, who suffer greatly for the name of Christ.

I remember a Mohammedan who had been wonderfully saved in France. He grew spiritually. The time came when it was absolutely necessary for him to return to his home in North Africa.

His passport was about to expire. He could not get a renewal. He told us goodbye with a constant emphasis that he would see us in heaven. He spoke in such terms of anticipated martyrdom that we questioned him.

He replied that there was no doubt in his mind whatsoever that he would be killed. He knew that he could not deny Christ. "Christ is in me," he said, "and it's impossible to hide Christ. He has transformed me." And then he went on quietly, "They will kill me."

We asked him how it would be done. He reflected a moment and replied, "My mother will try to have it done simply, a dose of poison, but my brothers will want to pull my tongue out with a pair of tongs and put hot coals in my eyes and kill me slowly."

We never heard of him again. A French Christian tried to find him in Morocco. He was met with blank stares and the simple word, "He's dead."

Nobody knew anything about it, and yet there was the air that they all knew all about it. There are many cases of suffering for Christ. God knows.

Oh, you will not be the apostle, the translator, the martyr, but like Nason and Gaius, you can open your house for believers when they are in need.

Christ said, "He that receives you, receives me, and he that receives me, receives him that sent me. And whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because you belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward."

You may not even have a house that you can open in hospitality for those who need it. Well, you have a heart that you can open for Christ. He will make himself known from there.

What holiness and beauty may dwell in an obscure life. Some of the people in this chapter of Romans have nothing said about them other than that they were in Christ.

That is enough. There were no deeds done memorable enough to be recorded. They had no great gifts. What have they done? They have loved and followed Jesus Christ all their days.

Here is the key to the purpose of all living. It's not what we do that counts, but it is why we do what we do.

When we look at these men, we can see what Christ meant when he said, "You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the Earth." If I am to shine forth for Jesus Christ, there will be a price to pay.

There can be no light without an expenditure of force. Both fat and wick must be consumed in burning a candle. But if I am to burn for Christ, I must not grudge the spending.

On the contrary, there is a transfiguration in the flame that consumes me. This will shine again for Christ in eternity, and then without expenditure. We are the salt of the Earth.

Salt does its work not by being seen, but by losing itself. The value of salt lies in its solubility. It is lost, and thus it lives in its flavor.

If the salt remains so that you can see it and feel it, it is harsh, grating, and out of place. The true place of the salt is not found in its manifestation, but in its surrender. It must lose itself in the mass if it is to fulfill its function.

Now this truth is not for those Christians who want to be primadonnas. It's not for believers who are satisfied with themselves. It is for you if you are obscure.

It is for you if you are discouraged. You can say, "I'll never set the world on fire. I will never have a place of great leadership." But I can do that which the salt is to do.

I can keep the flavor of Christ everywhere that I am, and I can keep the life that is near me from spoiling. And the time will come when the man who says this and who does this shall hear the voice saying, "He that loses his life for my sake shall find it."

And such a man will then be able to turn and say to those around him, as Paul said it in his day, "So then death works in us, but life in you." Number three boy salutes you. Number four boy salutes you.

Thank you, Lord. We cannot talk to them, but if you can let them know that we're grateful for their small lives filled with Christ, we know that they will be more than satisfied. For we can begin to understand already what it is to become like Christ by serving others.

Greatness does not consist in being served, but in serving. This message of Jesus Christ melts all our false ideals and our pride.

When President Hayes was governor of Ohio, his wife saw a crowd in the street jeering a drunken woman. She stopped her carriage and took the woman in beside her and drove off. That act glorified her.

Or take the story of the Glasgow policeman, who noticed a poor woman picking up some things from the sidewalk. He demanded to see what they were. She uncovered her basket and showed him pieces of broken glass and said, "I thought I would take it out of the way of the bairn's feet."

Our God is God, not because He's the author of the universe and holds the wind in His fist. God is God, not because He can speak stars into existence or because He holds us all in the hollow of His hand.

He is God because He loves us more tenderly than ever we have been or can be loved, and because He serves us more untiringly, more patiently, and more faithfully than any other. He loves us.

Oh, how He loves us. And when we are loved, our hearts lift. Tertius and Quartus, number three boy, number four boy, what kind of life did you lead?

Must you reply that your master flogged you when he was drunk, and that your food was rough and your tasks mean and dirty? Must you reply that you suffered the indignity of wearing the mark of slavery as you remembered perhaps happier days?

Must you reply that life was hard and black? "No," they answered, "we were slaves. But one day Paul came into the house of our master Gaius. We saw a great transformation in our master."

Gaius was transformed. He began to be kind to us. Soon he had Paul tell us about Christ. For two years, Paul lived in Corinth, and he came to our house often.

We got the bread and the wine ready when the crowd came on Sunday. Oh, it made more work for us, but it was delightful. They broke the bread, and we began to eat from the same loaf as our master.

They filled the chalice with wine, and our master sipped it and smiled as he handed it to us. Day after day, everything was transformed. He put his hand on us and cried as he spoke of the grace of God that had saved us all.

He said that he was our master, but that he realized that he had a master, Christ. He wanted to treat us the way Christ treated him. Love transformed our lives.

Master and slaves. What are your numbers in heaven? Christ said that anyone who did the will of his Father was his brother, his sister, and his mother.

He said that there would be many people whose names were Tertius and Quartus on Earth, whose name would be Primus in heaven. For while many that are first shall be last, there are many who are last that shall be first.

What matters, if we can stand and look at Christ. And while we wait, let us love and serve Him. And our God and Father, bless the Word to our hearts, and deepen us as we see what your transforming love can do for us.

We ask it for all glory through Jesus Christ to you. Amen.

Narrator: Many believers may seem small and insignificant to the world, but God delights in them and takes joy in their simple lives of love and service. We hope you've benefited from today's message "Little but Great." 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 "Little but Great," or simply request message number R16-7. We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled "When Believers Sin."

Many believers become discouraged and defeated in the ongoing struggle with sin in the Christian life. Sin can rob us of our joy, breed insecurity in our spiritual lives, and hinder our fellowship with the Lord. This free booklet will help you understand why genuine believers still struggle with sin and how to effectively and biblically deal with sin in your life.

Ask for your free copy of "When Believers Sin" 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. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible comes to you through the generous gifts of listeners.

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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 Doctors 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.