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: Is it not astonishing that we should be told that it's necessary to strive to enter into rest? This reveals how ingrained is the rebellious desire of the human heart to declare and maintain its own independence.

The man who strives to enter into this Sabbath rest will turn away from all keeping of days. Christ will be his hope, his aspiration, his energy. Christ will be his desire, his aim, his purpose, his goal. Christ will be his motive, his ambition, his incentive, his impulse. Christ will be his light, his guidance, his road and his end. Christ will be his interest, his attraction, his passion, his love. Christ will be his life.

Anything that obscures Christ or diminishes him in the slightest will be his grief, his pain, his sorrow, and his loss. Christ is my Sabbath. Christ is my rest. I keep no other Sabbath. I have no other rest. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Guest (Male): 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 will be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled Our Sabbath Rest. Christians for centuries have cherished this invitation of the Lord Jesus Christ. "Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest in your souls."

The book of Hebrews declares that there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. A promise that gives us tremendous comfort when it is rightly understood. Have you entered into the spiritual rest that Jesus promises and that only he can give?

The Scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible, Romans chapter 14 and verse 5. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled Our Sabbath Rest.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ we come unto thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. We ask thee, our God, that thou shall speak to our hearts in this day. Thou alone knowest the problems that face thy children and all of the difficulties through which thou didst call us to go. But we do thank thee that thou art greater than our problems and greater than our hearts.

And we pray thee that in this hour thou shalt so speak through thy word to hearts that there may be a rich blessing from thee for our need. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We come now to the last of our studies on the Sabbath question as set forth in Romans 14:5. And I wish to treat one of the phrases there in connection with a verse in Hebrews. From our text in Romans, one man esteemeth one day above another, and then in Hebrews 4:9, "So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God."

The purpose of the Sabbath comes to its climax in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the Lord announces that there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. This passage contains tremendous comfort for all believers when it is rightly understood. It will take our minds off the days of the calendar and put them on spiritual things. It will help us to see how sure and certain is our salvation.

In order to understand these truths, we must first take a moment to see the purpose of the Epistle to the Hebrews. For many years, whenever I have taught this book, I have led my audience in reciting the following memory aid. The Epistle to the Hebrews was written to the Hebrews in order to show the Hebrews that they had to stop being Hebrews.

You see, the Epistle to the Hebrews was not addressed to Gentiles. We, who were Gentiles but ceased being Gentiles when we became Christians, may profit by the truths that are set forth in this epistle. But we shall never fully understand this portion of the divine revelation if we do not take into account the circumstances in which it was written.

We must not forget that there was one generation of the children of Israel, who lived their lives partly before the death and resurrection of Christ and partly afterwards. If John the Baptist had not had his head cut off, he would have been of this group. The thousands who came into the church at Pentecost belonged to it, as did Saul of Tarsus.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is mainly addressed to the other thousands who had seen and known Christ, but who did not come into the church at Pentecost. Before the time of Christ, the religion of Israel had largely been associated with tangible things, things that could be touched. They could see the altar and the smoke curling up from the flame that consumed the body of the sacrificial lamb.

They could see the priests in their vestments. They could smell the sweet savor of the incense that was used in the Temple. They touched the lambs that they brought for their atonement. And then suddenly they were confronted by the divine requirement to abandon all the outward sensory forms in order to yield entirely to worship in the Spirit that needed nothing for the senses.

It is a well-known fact that anyone who concentrates on a liturgy, forms, ceremonies, and sensory aids in religion, can easily become a victim of these mediums. A Buddhist who used prayer beads for many years until he was saved by Christ and delivered from his past, told how his fingers, slipping over the beads while he recited his rote prayers, created a numbness that enabled his mind to be occupied with licentiousness, even while he was supposedly praying.

We must be sympathetic with the people to whom this epistle was addressed. Their bewilderment must have been very great. Imagine if you, who are believers in Christ, were told to enter a church while communion was being served and take the bread and the wine of the service, carry it to the gutter, and trample it.

Well, such change of standards would be small in comparison with what faced Israel in the decades after Christ died. Instead of Moses, they were to consider Christ. Instead of Aaron, Christ. Instead of the law, Christ. Instead of the lamb, Christ. Instead of the temple, Christ. Instead of the priesthood, Christ.

They were to become aware of the fact that there were no more sacred places or buildings. They had to realize that God was now dwelling in the hearts of redeemed men. They had to learn that every believer was now a priest before God, not by ordination of other priests, but by the laying on of the pierced hands of Christ through the Holy Spirit.

And very important, they had to realize that the Sabbath had been abandoned by God as a sign between him and his people, and that another type of rest was to be the happy lot of his redeemed people. The first two chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews are composed of a tissue of quotations from the Old Testament, showing that Jesus Christ is none other than the Lord God Almighty, second person of the Godhead.

He became lower than the angels in order to lift us higher than they, even to the throne of his dominion. The third chapter sets forth the great change that was to take place in the outward forms of religion. These Hebrews had always lived in relationship to Moses, the lawgiver, and Aaron, the priest who shed the blood of the sacrificial victim.

Now they must turn from all this to Christ alone, and enter into his rest. Thus, the third chapter calls them to consider Christ Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession. And for more than a chapter and a half, the argument is presented to show that Christ has taken the place of Moses.

The writer reminds the Israel of his generation what had happened to the Israel of the generation of Moses. Nothing can state the case better than the simple and terrible words of Scripture. "Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, 'Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years.'"

"Therefore, I was provoked with that generation and said, 'They always go astray in their hearts. They have not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, they shall never enter my rest.'" As the passage unfolds, this phrase, "my rest," occurs eight times, and finally is summed up by the extraordinary use of the Greek word in my text, found only here in the whole Bible: "There remaineth therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God."

And even more wonderful, the remarkable statement, "For whoever enters God's rest, also ceases from his labors, as God did from his." The main thrust of the argument is so compact that it is necessary to unravel it a bit in order to understand all that is being communicated to us here. God had promised rest to his ancient people.

To them, this rest meant crossing over the Jordan and entering the land of Canaan. Their life in the wilderness for 40 years was a supernatural life. Since there were at least 2 million people, they could not have stayed alive for more than a day or two if God had not miraculously taken care of them throughout those 40 years.

There was the cloud over them, which provided light by night and shade by day. They were fed by manna and quail, which God provided throughout the journey. They drank, we are told in the New Testament, from the rock which followed them, and that rock was Christ.

But they rebelled against God. They murmured, they complained, they even attempted to choose another leader to replace Moses and lead them back into slavery in Egypt. They died in the wilderness by the tens of thousands. Of all who left Egypt, only two men over 20 years of age at the time were allowed to attain the age of 60 and enter the promised land, which they thought would be a land of rest.

One of these two men who had been faithful to the Lord at Kadesh-Barnea was Joshua. And he was chosen to be Moses' successor. He became the Apostle of Israel's profession, and he led the people across the Jordan and into the land of Canaan. But was the land of Canaan the fulfillment of the rest which God had promised his people?

We are accustomed to think of it as such, but that was not the case. When they crossed the Jordan, they were immediately confronted by the necessity of war. The walls of Jericho stood before them, and battles had to be fought. Sin was within them, and Achan in the camp caused them to be defeated at Ai.

War and captivity, war and bondage, war and slavery. This was their lot. The names of their great ones are the names of men of war, Gideon and Samson, Deborah and Barak, and the other judges. It's not until Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha that we have men of spiritual insight and power as leaders.

And they were despised and rejected by the masses of the people. Certainly, we cannot look upon these first centuries of Israel's sojourn in the land as an age of rest. This was not the great Sabbath promised by God to his people. And then hundreds of years later, in the midst of the Psalms, God begins to speak of the rest for his people as though it had nothing to do with their entrance into the land of Canaan.

And our context in Hebrews states flatly that if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have had to speak later, in the times of David, of another Sabbath rest. This was after the days of Joshua. It was still future from the days of David. It was still future from the days of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Nevertheless, it is attainable by those who rest in Christ. It is possible for us to enter into that rest and to live in it. What does it signify? Look closely at the context. "For he that has entered into his rest, he also has ceased from his own works as God did from his."

Here, in the strongest terms, is presented the truth that God's salvation is by grace, through faith, plus nothing. God does not save a man because of the man's character. God does not save a man because of his good works. Nothing in man can recommend him to God.

If God has loved man, it's not because man is lovely or lovable in any sense. God has loved man because God is love. The reason for the love which God has displayed toward us lies in the heart of God and nowhere else. "Herein is love, not that we loved him, but that he loved us and gave himself to be the ransom payment for our sins."

This love caused God to move toward man and to furnish us our salvation. The moment Christ died, the new day dawned, and God calls it the day of salvation and the day of rest. We read in 2 Corinthians 6:2, "Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation."

This day of salvation is a day that we can esteem above another. One man esteemeth one day above another, oh, surely, this day of salvation is to be esteemed above all else. This is a rest into which we may all enter. It's so simple that it becomes the most difficult truth to communicate to men.

Man wants to have some part in his own salvation. Man wants to take pride in something that he has done for himself. Even in circles where the full atonement provided by Christ is presented to weary men, it is too often flavored with a type of preaching that causes men to look to their own doings, rather than to Christ alone.

The truth of the gospel is that God has made it so that to enter into Christ is to enter into perfect rest. All that a Sabbath rest could have been if man had not been a sinner, became ours in Christ. We can enter into this rest only by ceasing from our own works. This does not mean that we become lawless.

Rather, the opposite is true, but we learn to look upon man's goodness as a contaminated thing. We are like those who have been drinking from a river whose source is polluted. The water has seemingly satisfied the body's urge for liquids, but with every draught we assimilate the hidden poisons which destroy the fabric of life.

Now, the poisons of that Adamic river are such that no chlorination system of efforts, prayers, or works can purify it. To change the figure of speech, consider the fact that some viruses against which strong antibiotics were prepared, have developed strains which can no longer be touched by the medicines that were meant to destroy them.

Sin is so subtle, insidious, and deceptive, that no remedy devised by man can weaken its death grip on the individual. A man may be the victim of some great lust of the flesh, which bids fair to destroy him. He may join some reform movement, or exercise some control that will break the grip of that particular lust.

But immediately he's overtaken by the greater lust of pride. In the sight of God there is no difference. In fact, the second may be worse than the first. Our Lord spoke of the unclean spirit, which when he goes out of a man, passes through waterless places, seeking rest, but he finds none. Then he says, "I will return to my house from which I came."

"And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself. And they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first." Now any man who attempts self-reformation without the incoming life of the Lord Jesus Christ, is doomed to failure in the sight of God, even though he changes in outward appearance.

God will accept nothing short of a new creation, and this can be produced only by God himself. If anyone wishes to gain Heaven by character or works, he must produce the 100% which God demands. If he does this, he can brush aside any angels that may stand between him and the throne of God, and can say to God, "Move over and let me sit down on the throne with you. I have arrived. There are now two of us."

But he cannot do this, and this is why God declares that all men are lost, and that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. This is why God is so sweepingly categorical in saying that there is none righteous, no, not one. This is why God concludes all under sin. But we who believe in Christ have seen the folly of self-effort.

We cannot of ourselves attain the perfection that is required to pass the gates of Heaven. And so, we have accepted God's declaration of our moral and spiritual bankruptcy, and we abhor and abominate human goodness apart from Christ. I have learned to appreciate the remark of one man, who made this estimate of himself.

He meant it in humor, but it revealed his true faith. He said that it required a special dispensation of the power of God to bring him up to the lower levels of total depravity. I sympathize with that man, because I too so desire to live within the teachings of the word of God, that I feel the horror of God against anything that smells of man.

A couple of weeks ago, some young people came to my home for a day of relaxation. They went to a neighboring farm and rode horseback for a couple of hours. When they came back and washed for lunch, some of them complained that they still smelled of contact with the horses.

Now, this is a picture of the world's attempts at righteousness. What is wrong with education? It smells of man. What is wrong with every effort toward moral reform? It smells of man. Now, with this sense of abomination, I have turned away from anything that smells of Adam or myself, in all of my being and doing.

With this sense of finality, I have turned away from self to enter into the rest which God provides in Christ. Now, it should be noticed that this text is followed by the statement, "Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, that no one fall by the same sort of disobedience." Is it not astonishing that we should be told that it's necessary to strive to enter into rest?

This reveals how ingrained is the rebellious desire of the human heart to declare and maintain its own independence. How great is the desire of the old nature to take credit for what has been done, even though we know that God has done it through us, in spite of ourselves, and in no wise because of ourselves.

A woman once gushed to Charles Spurgeon that he had just preached the greatest sermon that had ever been preached. He replied brusquely, "The devil told me that same thing before I left the pulpit." Robert Murray McCheyne understood this principle when he wrote that even his tears of repentance had to be cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Now let us then strive to enter into that rest. This rest is the only Sabbath in which God is interested today. The man who strives to enter into this Sabbath rest will turn away from all keeping of days. Christ will be his hope, his aspiration, his energy. Christ will be his desire, his aim, his purpose, his goal.

Christ will be his motive, his ambition, his incentive, his impulse. Christ will be his light, his guidance, his road and his end. Christ will be his interest, his attraction, his passion, his love. Christ will be his life. Anything that obscures Christ or diminishes him in the slightest will be his grief, his pain, his sorrow, and his loss.

Christ is my Sabbath. Christ is my rest. I keep no other Sabbath. I have no other rest. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And our God and Father, we ask thee that those who listen today may know what it is to enter into the rest that is Christ, to cease from their own labors as thou didst cease from thine, and to relax in Christ, to stretch ourself out upon him, to live and move and have our being in him, to draw all our sustenance from him, and to know thee through him.

We ask these things in the name and for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Guest (Male): The purpose of the Sabbath comes to its climax in the book of Hebrews, which promises a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Have you found everlasting spiritual rest in the Lord Jesus Christ? We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled Our Sabbath Rest. 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 Sabbath Rest. Or simply request message number R14-9. We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled, Happy, Though Poor.

Jesus prayed that his disciples would know the fullness of his joy, but the sad fact is that many believers fail to experience lives of happiness and contentment. This short but powerful booklet calls us to a life of yieldedness to the Lord Jesus Christ, that he may give us fullness of joy and cause that joy to flow through us into the lives of others.

Do you struggle with unhappiness? Ask for your free copy of Happy, Though Poor 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 complete list of 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. 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, Martin Lloyd Jones, and Philip Graham Ryken. Thanks for listening. Join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.