Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Peter tells us in his first epistle, "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby." The milk of the word for baby Christians, irradiated with the light of the Holy Spirit, enriched with the life of God. This is the word which is our food and by which we grow. You cannot find even one Christian on this earth who has developed into strength of wisdom and witness in the Lord, who has attained it by any other means than study and meditation in the word of God.

Guest (Male): 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 weekly radio outreach 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 "Strengthened by Faith." An athlete training for the Olympics will not stay up late, eat a dozen donuts for breakfast, and spend the day on the couch watching TV. Proper rest, a healthy diet, and lots of training will strengthen and condition his body to compete well.

Many believers are flabby and weak in their spiritual lives and in their service for Christ. How can we get in strong and healthy spiritual condition to run the race that God has before us? Let's find out as today Dr. Barnhouse takes us to Romans chapter 1 and verses 14 and 15. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled "Strengthened by Faith."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto Thee our Father and our God and in the Holy Spirit. We're so aware that of ourselves we are absolutely nothing, and we pray Thee that in this hour the word may go forth in Thy power and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance. And we pray Thee that Thou shalt speak to each listening heart in this hour. We ask it through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Now, together we've been studying in this first chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans. The main characteristic of love is unselfishness. Love thinks of the loved one before it thinks of self. Where there is true love, the interests of the beloved are paramount, and so it was in the life of Paul the Apostle. He loved all of the believers in the Lord Jesus Christ with a great and tender love, and thus he desired that they might be strengthened by the truth of God.

All of his great expression of desire that he might see them was in order to convey to them the fact that he had something to give them that was going to be for their great good. And thus we read in the 11th verse of this first chapter of Romans: "For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end that ye may be established." Paul knew that God had given great truth to him, and as soon as he knew of the group of Christians in Rome, he had a great desire to go to them in order that he might give to them that which had made life perfect for himself and which was so capable of making life perfect for them also.

May I point out then the need of being established, the fact that the word of God will establish you, that nothing but the word of God will establish you, and then outline the special truth that Paul had to impart to them, and finally show how that the one who brings the word of God to others can be strengthened by the faith of those who listen, so that the audience becomes the preacher's pastor.

First, the Christian needs to be established. When he's first saved, he has the whole of his past life and manner of thinking, acting, and being to overcome, and it's to be overcome by the introduction of the new life of Christ and the principles that flow from it. To be established is to be made stable, to be placed firmly, to be rendered constant, to be made firm. How many times in the Bible there are statements that tell the Christian that he is to stand fast, that he's to be rooted and grounded, that he's to be strong in the Lord, that he's to be settled, steadfast, unwavering.

The fact that there are so many injunctions to stability shows our need for that which will establish us. We have a hymn which includes the lines, "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love." And it's certainly a truth that we need to understand and admit in order that we may guard against it. We're born with a mind that is the carnal mind, at enmity against God, that is not subject to the law of God and that cannot be.

We're born as natural, soulish men that receive not the things of the Spirit and that have no natural capacity to receive them. The down-dragging force of sin, a gravitational force with a never-ending pull, must be overcome by the establishment of new lines of force that pull upward toward the life of the Spirit. Now, it is the word of God that can establish the Christian and give him strength to overcome the old forces and to live in the new power and life. It can never be done in any other way.

The Lord Jesus said in John 17:17, "Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy word is truth." Now, the word sanctify means to make holy. The Lord therefore prayed, "Make them holy through Thy truth; Thy word is truth." Is it any wonder that Paul, possessed of this supernatural gift, desired to bring it as soon as possible to the Christians in Rome? And furthermore, in the third place, Paul knew not only that the word of God would establish the people, that they needed establishing, and that the Bible would do it, but he knew that nothing else would do it.

There are various other parts of Christian life and worship, but none of them will build the believer in strength and vitality apart from the study of the word of God. Do not think that we are minimizing the other things, but it must be understood that the study of the word of God is the prime necessity. Perhaps we can draw an example from the modern scientific knowledge of the way the body is sustained by its food. The protein is what might be called the building block of the human body, and without it, life cannot be sustained.

The carbohydrate is the fuel that keeps the human engine going, and if there is no carbohydrate in the diet, the body will burn itself up. And so Bible study is the protein of the Christian's food, the building blocks of his whole Christian life and work. The work of the Holy Spirit is the energy of the Christian life, and without that work, the person, with even the greatest knowledge of the Bible, would have a leanness in the soul which would take away all of the joy of Christian living.

Furthermore, it is known that the vitamins in food are the energy transfer mechanism which takes the basic building blocks and the fuel and transmutes them into the properly functioning machine. This may be likened to prayer in our spiritual growth and development. And to carry the analogy to one final step, it should be realized that rich desserts are bad for the body, stimulating the pancreas with free sugar so that the patient may become a diabetic.

Oh, how many Christians there are who wish to live spiritually on a frothy diet that does not make for sound spiritual health. A program of staid and solemn liturgy without Bible study can become spiritually deadening. A program of light, jazzy religion can equally stultify spiritual growth. And too many ministers have not learned that sermonettes by preacherettes make Christianettes. If you want to have a strong spiritual life, you must spend time on it. The growth of the soul is a definite thing, and we must obey the rules of spiritual dietetics if we would come into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Now, there's still another lesson in our text. The truth which God gives may be imparted from person to person. Paul wanted to go to them that he might impart to them some spiritual gift. And we are told that they that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak. What does it mean to impart truth from one heart to another? It should be understood that it's a vertical work and not a horizontal one. There have been those who have attempted to introduce into the Christian vocabulary the idea that they call "sharing."

There was quite a vogue of this sharing a few years ago. One man who had been a drunkard would tell another drunkard that he himself had been that way and that he could share certain experiences with him and certain knowledge of how to overcome the terrible craving of the debased appetite. Now, the idea of such sharing is not to be found in the Bible. For sharing is a work that begins with the human heart and its experiences, and it goes to another human heart on a horizontal plane.

Now, the Bible term is quite different, for the process is quite different. We do not share; we witness. Witnessing begins at the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and at the throne of God in heaven, where our Lord is now seated, and it comes down by way of our heart to the need of those round about us. A very great illustration of this difference is to be found in the book of the Acts in the account of Peter's dealings with the people of Jerusalem.

He and John had performed a miraculous work, and the people were filled with wonder. Peter stood up to preach to them. If ever there were a man who could have stood on their ground and shared an experience with them, it would have been Peter. He could have said to them, "Now listen, you people, and I will tell you how I was in exactly the same predicament as you. I, too, denied the Lord Jesus. I denied Him with oaths and cursings in the house of Pontius Pilate. And I can understand your denial because I passed through the same experiences. I can penetrate into your psychology and into your thinking."

But you see, if you read the Bible, there's not even the remotest trace of such an attitude towards these people. He said rather, "Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? Or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified His Son Jesus, whom ye delivered up and denied Him in the presence of Pontius Pilate when he was determined to let Him go." That's in Acts 3:12 and 13.

And the remarkable thing about the passage is that not only does Peter the denier accuse them of denying Christ without any mention of the fact that he had been guilty of the same denial, but he also repeats the charge in the next verse. For there we read: "But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you." Now, the imparting of a spiritual truth then is not sharing, but a proclamation. It will go forth in the utmost of love so that there will be a part of self in the impartation, but it will be wholly from God, of Christ, and in the Holy Spirit.

The spiritual gift that Paul wished to impart to the Roman Christians was the gift of faith, knowledge, holiness, and virtue. It was the gift of the grace of God that follows the original gift of the grace of salvation. If you read the whole of the epistle to the Romans, we will immediately discover that Paul had new truth to impart to them that he had received directly by revelation from God and that he had that truth to set forth in an orderly, logical manner so that they would not be swayed by the false arguments that Satan raises against the truth.

If we look at the first paragraphs of this epistle and the last paragraphs of the last chapter, there's a striking contrast that cannot be without deep meaning for us. In the first verse of the epistle, Paul speaks of the gospel of God. In 16:25, he speaks of "my gospel." In the second verse of the epistle, he sets forth that the gospel of God had been promised by the prophets. But in the 25th verse of the last chapter, he says that his gospel had come to him by revelation.

In the second verse of the epistle, it's evident that the gospel had been well known and in no wise a secret. But in the last verses of the last chapter, he tells us that his gospel had been a mystery kept secret. The good news in the first chapter had always been manifest. The new phases of the good news in the last chapter were now made manifest. The gospel in the first chapter concerns Jesus Christ. And the gospel in the last chapter concerns the true church, which is the body of the Lord—not an organization, but the organism of all believers.

In the first chapter, the gospel had been committed unto the prophets of one nation, Israel. In the last chapter, it is made known unto all nations. In the first chapter, the truth is set forth as the flowering of the Old Testament prophecies. In the last chapter, the truth is set forth as the seed of the New Testament epistles. In the first paragraph of the epistle, the climax of the manifestation is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But in the last chapter, the announcing of the mystery takes us forward to our own resurrection and the resurrection of all the vast host who are believers in Jesus as the Savior, the Lord of glory. Is it any wonder that Paul was eager to come to them in order to impart these truths? If they could lay hold upon these truths, and above all, if these truths were given the right of way to enter into their lives and lay hold upon them, then there would be established a church that would be strong and vigorous.

And the men of the new phase would be men who were themselves seed plots to furnish the truth to yet unsaved groups. The gospel would go on and grow as the truth flamed from heart to heart. And in watching the blessing of souls and in seeing the truth take root and grow in others, Paul received a great strengthening himself. The active minister of the word of God has few opportunities to hear others speak. He has received the grace and the gift of teaching and must exercise that gift.

There is a woe upon him if he does not set forth the gospel. But in ministering to others, he himself is blessed. The audience becomes the preacher's pastor. Our text continues after the announcement that Paul wished to impart spiritual blessings to them. "That is," says he, "that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me." Our Lord has left us a great illustration of the strengthening of the heart that comes from ministering to others.

You remember in the fourth of John, He sat by the well and talked to the woman of Samaria. As a result of the entrance of His divine word into her heart, she was made alive and went back to her village with a rich testimony of the saving grace that had come to her life. When the disciples spread out the lunch that they had bought, our Lord did not partake of the food, and they pressed Him to do so. He replied in John 4:32, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of."

He knew that He had been refreshed by the going forth of the blessing to a needy soul. I suppose that all of us on a hot summer day have gone to the faucet for a drink of cold water. We turn on the tap, and the water begins to flow. We stand with our hand on the faucet, waiting for the flow of water to come cool and fresh. All at once, we feel the metal become cold in our hand. The pipe has been cooled in bringing the cold water to our need.

Oh, how many times in turning on the flow of the teaching of the word of God, I have myself experienced the cool, refreshing consciousness that comes in the midst of preaching to others. And Paul knew this fact and realized that here was another group to whom he could preach the unsearchable riches of Christ, and his heart moved out to the moment when they would be blessed in the hearing and he would be blessed in the giving. I had an experience that is one of the most blessed in my ministry and which will further illustrate this truth.

Several years ago, I left Texas by airplane on a flight to the east. We came down at Memphis in the middle of the night, and after a few moments, we started on across Tennessee. There were few passengers in the plane, and the pilot happened to come out and sit in one of the passenger seats. Suddenly, I saw in the darkness of the earth below a patch of light that indicated that we were flying over a small town that I judged to be approximately 5,000 in population.

I asked the pilot what town it was. He glanced at a map and said it was Milan, pronouncing it as we pronounce the name of the great city of Italy, Milan. I knew that there were Christians down there on the ground, asleep in those houses, and I prayed for them as we flew far over them. And although they were unknown to me, yet my heart was drawn out to them. Several years passed, and I met the pastor of the Baptist Church of Milan, Tennessee, and I learned that they pronounce the name of the city with the accent on the first syllable.

Shortly after I met him, I received a letter from another pastor in the city, pastor of the church of my own denomination, inviting me to come to that town and hold a series of meetings in the church. He said that the invitation came at the suggestion of the Baptist brother. In the course of another year, the meeting was held. And on a Sunday morning after Sunday school, the entire Baptist congregation came out of their church, singing a hymn, and marching down the block to join with us in our meeting that was held in the Presbyterian church.

There was great blessing. And in the course of the week, there were definite conversions, outstanding among them being one of the leading businessmen of the town. Two years later, I went back once again to Milan for two weeks of meetings held in the high school gymnasium to accommodate the crowd from all over the county. And there was great blessing. I was strengthened by their faith. The way they received the word that God gave me for them blessed my own soul and made it easier for me to continue the hard life of travel and the weariness that accompanies the constant round of meetings and the attendant work.

More than a year passed again, and within a few hours, I received both a long-distance telephone call and two telegrams from that town telling me that the man who had been saved in my first meeting there was entering a New York hospital, very seriously ill. I went to call on him. We prayed together. And as I was about to leave after an hour's visit with him, tears came to his eyes as he thanked me for coming. And he said, "You know, I love you."

I could only grip his hand and put my arm across his shoulder, knowing that the sentence of death had been passed on him by the doctors, but realizing that we were one in Christ Jesus. He had told me how he owed so much to me because I had led him to Christ. But the strength that I received from him in that hour more than repaid any debt he owed to me, as I went out so refreshed in the Lord, so eager to minister to the multitudes of others that have such needs of the Lord.

And as I fly over the continent by night, or as I drive through small towns, as I see from the air the small patches of light that mark out our towns asleep in the surrounding darkness of the fields, I think of the many Christians that there are in all these other places where I've never been. And I know that if the Lord spares me, there will be yet other meetings and other blessings of people that I have not yet seen.

And that seeing the Lord create new life in them through the word that I preach will enable me to go on, will compel me to go on in the work that the Lord has given me to do. And yet there's still another lesson to be gained from this passage. It's the one further proof that there was no such thing as the clergy in the days of the Apostles on the earth. Oh, I suppose I'm a clergyman from one point of view, but believe me, I hate the idea of clerical domination.

Paul was not standing as one apart from the people above them, dispensing the grace of God, handing out something that a lesser order of beings was to take and be thankful for. Paul himself needed blessing from the people by their mutual faith. He later wrote the same thought to the Corinthians, saying that he did not have dominion over their faith, but rather that he was to be the helper of their joy. The great grace of God would never permit even Paul to assume any overlordship before the people.

For his doctrine he did indeed demand an unreserved acceptance as being the ministry of the living God, but he personally took his place among them as one with them, a fellow partaker of the eternal truths and as one who received strength and refreshment from them, even as they received stability from him. The same Holy Spirit that was in him was in them. The same Holy Spirit that was in him was the blessing of their hearts.

The Holy Spirit was not more in Paul than he was in those to whom Paul ministered. He, the Holy Spirit, Himself is one, and in that oneness was drawing the believers and the teacher together into a new confidence in God and a new strengthening of the mutual ties that bound them together. We can also understand the heart meaning of the words that the Lord used in giving to Peter his commission: "Feed my sheep, feed my lambs."

And let me suggest that every one of you who listens in this hour, every one of you who is a believer, pray for the opportunity of imparting a spiritual truth to someone else. Because if you can go out and be a blessing to someone else, it's going to be the biggest blessing of your life. And our God and Father, we pray Thee that the Holy Spirit shall take these words to hearts in this hour. Oh, Lord God, give us great tenderness and love in our attitude towards other Christians and towards the unsaved, that they may feel the touch of Christ in our heart and that they may understand that our life is no longer our own but Christ living in us, and that they may see Him and glorify Thee. And we give Thee all the praise through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Guest (Male): Reading, studying, and knowing the Bible will strengthen your faith. This will firmly establish you in your relationship with the Lord and help you build loving relationships with others. We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled "Strengthened by Faith." Listen to additional Bible teaching by Dr. Barnhouse via the internet; visit us 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 "Strengthened by Faith," or simply request message number R1-13. We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled Temptation and How to Meet It. Temptation comes to us by the world, the flesh, and the devil and pulls us away from God towards sin and disobedience. How can we effectively fight against its powerful influence?

This free booklet traces the history of temptation, identifies its various sources and manifestations, and outlines the biblical strategies for effectively dealing with temptation in whatever form it takes. Ask for your free copy of Temptation and How to Meet It when you call or write. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is the 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 teachings of the late Dr. James Montgomery Boice, and Every Last Word, featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Philip Graham Ryken.

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