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 shall come an evening when I do not have to make the prayer that is almost always the last thought of my evening consciousness. Lord, cleanse me once more, and behold me only in the righteousness that thou hast given me in Christ. That prayer will be over forever. For the salvation that is ready to be revealed at the last time will bring us all holiness, all righteousness, all glory.

To look towards this brings a longing so indescribable, so unutterable that we have no language but the sigh too deep for words. That groaning which cannot be uttered, which comes from the Holy Spirit within us, as we realize the amazing truth that God himself is longing for that day.

For it is only then that our love can mingle freely forever with his love. Then we shall know even as we are known. The renewed heart will well understand why the Bible ends with the great cry, "Come quickly, Lord Jesus."

Guest (Male): God's word is good for Godly gain 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 will be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled "Our Future Salvation." The popular movie The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King received positive reviews, enthusiastic praise, and Academy Awards from film critics, fans, and audiences. But Christians know that the return of our King will generate far greater excitement, awe, and wonder than any movie could.

We have been saved from the penalty of sin and we are being saved from the power of sin. But at the glorious appearing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we shall be saved from the very presence of sin as we enter his eternal kingdom. Do you look forward to his glorious return with joyful anticipation? The scripture text for today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans chapter 13 and verse 11. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled "Our Future Salvation."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto the our Father and our God and in the Holy Spirit. We rejoice with great joy that we have to do with thee. Thou art the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The day shall come when the kingdoms of this world will become totally submitted to thee. We know that this will be brought about by thy force, for man is so proud and arrogant, so sinful and stupid that he will not yield unless to the majesty of thy might.

But thou hast told us that the long night of Christ's absence from this earth will come to an end. Thou hast called upon thy sleeping church to awake. Rouse us, Lord, for we are sluggish by nature and we need thy power in order that we may obey thee. Speak to us in this hour. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We turn now to the 13th chapter of Romans and the 11th verse. "Now our salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed." The Bible frequently presents us with salvation in three tenses. I have been saved from the penalty of sin, I am being saved from the power of sin, and I shall be saved from the very presence of sin. Our text in Romans 13 is concerned with the third of these three phases of salvation.

Before proceeding to a close examination of this text, let us look at one or two passages which mention all three phases. Many young preachers have preached one of their earliest sermons on the very simple outline which appears in the last paragraph of the ninth chapter of Hebrews. I know I did when I was yet in my teens. There, the verb appear is found three times and in three different tenses.

Christ has appeared (past tense) to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. There is the work of the cross. At present, Christ is now appearing in the presence of God on our behalf. And as it was appointed for mankind to die once, in consequence of which comes the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Again, the three tenses of salvation are presented by Paul to the young church at Thessalonica. He summed up the work of God in their hearts as they had turned to God from idols, which was a work of God in the past tense, to serve a living and true God, his active present work in them, and to wait for his Son from heaven, the anticipation of their salvation which is not yet fully accomplished.

Peter also groups these three phases of Christ's work in one wonderful sentence. In the opening of his first epistle, he reminds his readers that we have been born anew through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and that we are presently guarded by God's power through faith, even though our entire Christian life may well be a time of fiery trial.

The future, however, is as bright as the promises of God, for all the work of past redemption and present keeping is to the end that we may enter into the salvation which is ready to be revealed in the last time, the salvation that is nearer than when we first believed. Our past tense salvation is justification, which was provided for us by God through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. This salvation was God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. Christ described it in the moment of his dying by saying, "It is finished."

Our present tense salvation is sanctification. It is the work of God for us through the Holy Spirit now. It is comfort in time of sorrow, consolation in time of bereavement, strength in time of weakness, forgiveness in time of sin, and grace for every need. Our future tense salvation is glorification, and of this our text speaks. "Now our salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed."

There are two ways to consider this future form of salvation. We shall have time in this study for only one of them. We might consider our future salvation in relation to the world in which we live, the ultimate salvation of society. For society shall one day be sinless. This will not come by education, science, or political manipulation in any form of United Nations. It will come fully machined and tooled and will be forced upon our world by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ at his coming.

This phase of future salvation would require a series of studies to bring out even its simplest aspects. But we shall confine ourselves to that phase that touches our personal relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ. God deals with the whole man. So we can divide our subject into a discussion of the future of the three phases of our being: physical, mental, and spiritual. In one of our past studies, we have discussed in some detail the fact of the resurrection of the body.

As a result, some questions were raised by listeners which indicated that I had neglected to make one point clear, namely the reason why the resurrection of the body is such an important doctrine. First, let us establish the fact. The great creeds of Christendom show the historic faith of all the centuries. I believe in the resurrection of the body. The only basis that the church has for believing this is the divine revelation of it in the Bible. There is no other way to establish Christian truth.

Our faith in the great revelation concerning the ultimate resurrection of the body comes not from the writings of the Greek philosophers or from anything in the pagan religions. It is more than possible that the source of their garbled hopes was in the earlier revelations that God made to his people. We must not forget that in the oldest book of the Bible, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is clearly set forth.

Before Moses, there was Abraham, and perhaps before Abraham was Job, who said, "I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold and not another." David sang this same faith in the Psalms. "As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness."

In the New Testament, of course, the doctrine of the resurrection is taught in many places. In fact, it is an underlying truth so much taken for granted that it could not be eliminated without destroying the fabric of the New Testament. When Jesus Christ arose from the dead, he held out his hands to his doubting disciple and said, "See my hands and my feet that it is I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have."

His bodily resurrection guarantees what he promised to us. Listen to Christ. "Truly, truly I say unto you, the hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father hath life in himself, so he has granted also the Son to have life in himself and has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man.

Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs shall hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment." Further passages in the epistles are very strong. In the eighth of Romans, we have seen that the redemption of our bodies is the goal for which all creation groans.

Someone has asked why there should be resurrection bodies when our present bodies suffer so much pain and sorrow. The answer is that God has decreed victory in every sphere where man has suffered defeat. Since by the first man Adam came death, by the second man the Lord Jesus comes the resurrection. Not until this mortal body has put on immortality shall the saying be fulfilled: death is swallowed up in victory.

Our resurrection bodies will be like that of the Lord Jesus Christ, absolutely perfect in a spiritual and eternal sense. They can be touched and yet can move from earth through outer space with the speed of thought. Second, the salvation that is ready to be revealed at the last time, the salvation that is now nearer than when we believed, includes the perfecting of our intellectual process.

In his prayer in the garden the night before he was put to death, our Savior pleaded the fact that eternal life would be given to all who had been given to him, the Son, by the Father. How does he define it? "And this is eternal life: that they know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." What will it mean to know him? While in my teens, I chose as my life verse, "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death."

Many years later, I grasped the meaning of our Lord's words, "This is life eternal that they know thee." It means that we shall continue on the ever-widening spiral of knowledge of himself. Astronomers may not be able to decide fully whether we are in a contracting universe or an expanding universe. But the one who knows the Lord Jesus Christ can be sure that our future salvation means that we shall be introduced into an eternally expanding universe, knowing the love that passeth knowledge and being filled unto all the fullness of God.

I cannot pass by this point without noting for all who have a great thirst for knowledge that such thirst can never be quenched apart from Jesus Christ. And to make this point all the stronger, I have a story to tell especially for scientists. The night after the first Russian satellite was launched, many scientists spent long hours laying plans to track Sputnik. A good friend of mine, who is an amateur radio operator, was being entertained in one of the foremost observatories of the East by a scientist who is well known in his field.

During the course of the operations, the scientist wanted to write something down but could not find his glasses. During his frantic search for them, he said with great exasperation, "Oh, why do I have to begin to disintegrate just as the whole universe is opening up? I never had to use glasses until a few weeks ago and I now recognize that my powers are slowing down and soon there'll be an end to all that I want to know."

My friend, a very earnest Christian, said, "But it's going to be so much better then." The scientist, who knew my friend's faith, snapped, "That remains to be proved," and went on with his work. Oh, I wish it were possible to express my pity and sadness for all those scientists for whom Christ remains to be proved, in fact, who rule him out of their lives and therefore are moving toward the great blackness of eternal ignorance.

And yet some lowly Christian who perhaps has no more brain power than the ability to sweep out the laboratory without breaking the beakers will possess knowledge beyond anything the Nobel Prize winners have dreamed of in their most imaginative moments. Truly, the knowledge of Jesus Christ leads to the fullness of knowledge eternally, and without him, there is the emptiness of outer darkness.

Finally, the salvation that is ready to be revealed at the last time, that is now nearer than when we believed, includes the perfecting of our moral and spiritual being. And I must confess that this thought of the future most excites my hope and anticipation. I have long since known that the body is nothing but dust and that it will return to dust. I have recognized that the end is approaching, even as a traveler on a clear day can see the Empire State Building in Manhattan from 20 miles away across the Jersey Flats.

I have discounted the death that lies ahead. Each ache, each pain, each white hair, each wrinkle is a reminder of the mileage covered in the journey. Each funeral of a friend, each change of the calendar, each returning season calls us on to what lies before. When heaven lies before us, the passage of time can be accepted with the greatest equanimity. The same is true in the domain of the mind.

The imperfections of the intellect can be accepted because of the increasing awareness that no man can know all things, even in his own field, while he is in this body. When I was a boy of 10, I began to write an encyclopedia simply because I did not know that such a thing existed. I had pages headed buildings, pictures, music, etc., and as I read of a country, a place, a building, a work of art, I entered it in my childish scrawl with a fixed determination that I would have to travel and see and hear all things.

When I first discovered a real encyclopedia, I was astonished that the idea had existed before me. But I quickly learned that I would have to run faster if I was going to reach my goal. It was not long before I learned that one of the most important functions in the process of learning was to turn the back steadfastly on certain phases of knowledge and resolutely determine not to study in some directions.

But all of the pangs that ever came to body or mind were as nothing with those which have come to me in the realm of the spirit. This is why I look forward with the most eager anticipation to the great salvation that is ready to be revealed at the last time in the domain of the spirit. For in this realm I have learned over the years how terrible is the reality of sin and how tremendous is the fact that sin is exceeding sinful because it is against God.

King David, even after he had committed adultery, murder, and all the other crimes that could be laid to the charge of a king who betrayed his own people, cried out, "Against thee, thee only have I sinned and done that which is evil in thy sight." And if anyone had asked David why he said this when he had sinned against Uriah, against Bathsheba, and against the unborn child and against the nation, he might well have answered, "Oh, when you owe a debt of 35 cents and another debt of 17 million dollars, you somehow lose sight of the lesser debt.

You know that it'll be possible to make some amends there, some restitution in the matter of the lesser debt. But the greater debt hangs over you impossible to pay. You realize that it would be impossible with all of human effort to keep up the payment of the interest on the interest on the interest, let alone any payment on the capital." This knowledge comes to the soul who realizes what the love of God really is. He has come in Christ in order to pay our debt.

Then when this nature breaks out in yet another act of self, the whole being is almost torn to pieces with the thought that we could be so ungrateful and that we could sin yet once again in the face of such love. Then suddenly, the Holy Spirit lifts our eyes to see our blessed hope. There is a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time. Beloved, we are God's children now. It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him. For we shall see him as he is.

And when we see that goal, our hearts melt within us. The fact that we shall have perfect bodies seems relatively unimportant. The fact that we shall have perfect minds and know all there is to know of the universe seems relatively unimportant. But oh, the thought that we shall be able to look at our Lord straight in the eye with the knowledge that our sinfulness has gone forever. That we have been raised in the likeness of the Son of God, that the Father can touch us without defilement and that he can look upon us even as he looks upon Jesus Christ.

These are the thoughts that shake the soul. There shall come an evening when I do not have to make the prayer that is almost always the last thought of my evening consciousness. Lord, cleanse me once more, and behold me only in the righteousness that thou hast given me in Christ. That prayer will be over forever. For the salvation that is ready to be revealed at the last time will bring us all holiness, all righteousness, all glory.

To look towards this brings a longing so indescribable, so unutterable that we have no language but the sigh too deep for words. That groaning which cannot be uttered, which comes from the Holy Spirit within us, as we realize the amazing truth that God himself is longing for that day. For it is only then that our love can mingle freely forever with his love. Then we shall know even as we are known. The renewed heart will well understand why the Bible ends with the great cry, "Come quickly, Lord Jesus."

And our God and Father, we ask thee to hasten this day. Oh, how we long to see thee, and will our very longing give restlessness to those who do not know thee or who allow things to enter in between them and the main goal that lies before us? Hear us, we pray thee, and speak to each heart as we give thee the praise through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Guest (Male): Our hope of future glory is not vain wishful thinking. We have the certain confident expectation of the eternal bliss in the presence of God guaranteed by the saving work of Jesus Christ. We hope you have benefited from today's message "Our Future Salvation." To listen to additional Bible teaching by Dr. Barnhouse, visit us online at AllianceNet.org.

An audio copy of today's teaching is also available by calling us toll-free: 1-800-488-1888. Today's message again is entitled "Our Future Salvation," or simply request message number R13-15. We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled The Cost of Discipleship. Although salvation is a free gift of God, it does not come cheaply. It cost Jesus his life to redeem us, and will cost us something if we are serious about submitting to his lordship.

This free booklet will show you that as pilgrims in this life, we must count the cost of discipleship, learn to travel light, and realize that following Jesus radically changes our relationships. Discipleship is demanding, but the Lord promises that he is always with you. Ask for your free copy of The Cost of Discipleship 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 broadcasts The Bible Study Hour featuring the teachings of the late Dr. James Montgomery Boice, and Every Last Word featuring the teaching of Dr. Philip Graham Ryken.

For a full listing of stations carrying our programs, visit us online: 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 can also 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, Martyn 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.

Guest (Male): The Bible has commanded word to do God's saving work on earth. It draws our souls from death to life and rescues us from endless strife. Amazing gift, unearned, so high, the life imparted by God's word.