Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Guest (Male): The alliance of confessing evangelicals presents the timeless teaching of Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: There is no horror that has been perpetrated by humankind which has not been justified somehow by the conscience of men. The criminal doctors of infamy who performed terminal experiments as they called their murder of victims caught in the camps of Germany. They were able to find reasons for their crimes and if we look into our own hearts and if we are honest with our own experiences, we will be forced to admit that we have justified somehow most of the misdeeds which we have committed.

Guest (Male): Over a half a century ago, the late Dr. Donald Gray 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 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 The Depth of Sin. A public swimming pool has markers along the wall showing how deep the water is in each section.

If children and inexperienced swimmers ignore the markers and wander into the deep section, there is a lifeguard on duty to pull them to safety. The Bible reveals the dangerous depths of sin in every human heart and yet so many people foolishly wander ever deeper into sin and disobedience. Who can rescue us from this desperate situation? The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans chapter one and verse 32. Here again is Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse with the message The Depth of Sin.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto thee our Father and our God and in the Holy Spirit. We thank thee for the assurance that we have reached thy presence, the moment that we have come truly in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ. Use thy word in this hour, we pray thee to reach the need of every heart, whatever the stage of our spiritual growth and development. And bring us closer to thyself through thy word as thou hast promised. We ask it in the name and for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We come finally in our study to the last verse in the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans. It has been a stormy passage filled with great flashes of the lightnings of God revealing his loving kindness, his tender mercy, his grace and his love for his own accompanied by the thunderous announcement of the wrath that shall come upon all who know not God and obey not the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. After the catalog of iniquities committed by individuals, the Lord closes this section of the argument by pointing out that in addition to the sins that men commit in their own hearts and in their own action, there is a collectivity of sin which men commit in the approval which they grant to others who transgress.

For human civilization, it is God who says it is based on an agreement of evil. Men sin, then they condone sin in themselves first of all and finally come to condone sin in others. Our text speaks of men who knowing the judgment of God that they which commit such things are worthy of death not only do the same but have pleasure in them that do them. Now this text is one of the most damning in the Bible. It teaches us first that men have an inner knowledge from God of the reality of sin. Secondly, that they have a consciousness that God must hate and judge sin.

And thirdly, our text teaches us that men persist in the ways of sin in spite of the warning of their own native conscience. Fourthly, that they come to the point where they condone, then approve, and then aid and abet, and finally rejoice in sin in others. And finally that they come to the place where they are the patrons of vices rather than of the righteousness of God. Now let us look at this devolution in some detail. In some of our universities, there are professors who teach that standards of morality are man-made. They attempt to prove their point by reminding us that certain practices which are approved in the western world are disapproved, for example, by some of the islanders of the South Pacific.

On the other hand, our society generally disapproves of some practices which are common in other parts of the world. Some anthropologists say that these various standards of right and wrong are in reality standards of accepted practices and practices that are taboo and that there is no moral right or wrong involved in any question. These men believe that the standards of various societies are the result in variations in an evolutionary pattern of development. Now our text gives the lie to such ideas. There is one standard of moral right and moral wrong. That standard was set by the Lord God Almighty.

It is eternal and unchangeable. It is a byproduct of his own moral being. When God created man in his own moral image, he wrote his moral law into the very nature of man. Man by his sin has become estranged from God and has degenerated in some cases to savagery, in other cases to bestiality, in other cases to an arrogant and proud standard of his own devising. But our text says that man has the knowledge of the sinfulness of sin within himself. While he is committing sin, he is conscious of the fact that they which do such things are worthy of death.

And he knows in his heart that the judgment of God has been pronounced against such things. The fact that he has the knowledge of the worthiness of the judgment of God proves that he knows the reality of sin. In what we call a high civilization, there is a public condemnation of murder. In the lowest civilizations, the anthropologists set before us the evidence that there is a public condemnation of this sin also. Here all mankind is alike. The law of God against murder is written on the consciousness of the entire human race. In the savage civilizations where religious murders are committed, the practicers of this crime surround it with the utmost secrecy and seek to hide its existence from outsiders.

Their attitude shows that they are violating the standards of their own conscience and that they are aware of the outrageous character of their actions. If it be averred that it is not the same with lesser crimes, we can answer that the extent of their departure from God has brought them to the degradation where their conscience no longer functions as God meant it to function. But that it has become seared as with a hot iron so that it is insensitive to the probing conviction of the Holy Spirit. Secondly, our text shows that all men have a consciousness that God must hate and must judge sin.

This shows first that there is no such thing as an atheist. Once in a while in the course of my ministry, I have met men who have claimed to be atheists. I remember particularly a conversation with one such man. When he told me that he was an atheist, I said to him it may be of no concern to you what my opinion of that statement is. But I would like to ask you one question. I know from the word of God that a man who says there is no God is a fool. And in the Hebrew sense, this means that he is insane.

For in Psalm 14 1 it says the fool hath said in his heart there is no God. Now the question is this. Were you telling the truth when you said you did not believe that there is a God? For I want to know whether you are crazy or a liar. For there is no other alternative. Not only do all men know that there is a God, but they know that he must hate and judge sin. Now it's for this reason that I'm convinced that all of the errorists who teach the false doctrines are not only guilty of speaking heresy, but that they know while they teach these doctrines that they are false.

One of the names of Satan is the father of lies. And it is not astonishing that his children should display one of the chief characteristics of their father. Even when they attempt to quiet the fears of the masses by teaching false doctrine, they know that they are teaching that which they do not fully believe themselves. For they are conscious of the sinfulness of sin and of the judgment of God and of the fact that they deserve death at the hands of the creator whom they have outraged by their continued rebellion. This portion of the text also throws further light upon an earlier line in this chapter.

We have seen that there are two things that all men may know about God, namely his eternal power that he is supreme and Godhead, a being. Now our present text amplifies this to show that in the manifest knowledge of God that is available to all the race, there is the sense of his justice and his holiness. Sin should be hated by him and sin will be judged by him. This is written on the conscience of humanity. These truths are frequently obscured or even eclipsed by the advance of sin in an individual life and the deterioration that is caused thereby.

But these facts about the nature of God are a part of the original baggage of the human race and they will be a factor in their ultimate judgment. How important then to warn men to flee from the wrath to come which is announced by God in such certain terms and which is written in the hearts and on the consciences of all. Before we leave this phase of our subject, let me give you one more illustration that may show to someone the terrible state in which he is and the means of getting out of it. I recently spent some hours again in the library of the Vatican.

Exhibited in one of these cases was an ancient palimpsest. In a very early century, men had taken sheets of papyrus and had written line after line until an entire work filled the pages of the manuscript. After a century or two, when paper was difficult to secure, someone took the old volume and wrote by hand a new work across it in lines perpendicular to the first writing. Today the blacker ink of the second writing is the more legible. But the text underneath is still clear enough to read with ease. And scholars frequently have more delight in the older than in the more recent writing.

Such is the heart and the conscience of man. Across the fresh page in the youth of the race, God wrote the eternal truths of his being. His holiness, his justice and the certainty of his wrath against sin. Men turned the page sidewise and wrote with blacker ink the history of their own doings until in some places the earlier writing is almost effaced. But the day will come when the acid of God's judgment will eat away the writings of man and the strong x-ray of the light of God will bring to the surface the original writing by which men will be judged.

Thirdly, our text teaches us that men persist in the ways of sin in spite of the warning of their own native conscience. Let not any man fall into the foolish thought of those who say perhaps facetiously, well let your conscience be your guide. The man who follows his conscience will land in the lake of fire. God put truth originally in the conscience of man. but man has fallen so far in the sin of Adam that conscience is no longer a valid guide. Conscience is like a sundial. Now a sundial will tell approximate time if it is properly oriented and if the sun is shining on it.

But it is false if not properly set and worthless if clouds or darkness shut out the sun. And if another light is brought to bear upon it in the darkness, it may tell any hour which the holder of the false light desires. The shadow can be made to fall at any angle. So it is with the conscience always. The conscience was made for the Holy Spirit to shine upon it. but men have allowed the guttering candle of the human spirit, the fallen spirit to shine upon it with results that have been disastrous for mankind. When first the tempter approaches our conscience, there is a violent outcry.

No. And then the soul begins to look for detours. Can the end be reached with good reasoning to sponsor the desire? We start looking for angles. The second time our conscience still cries no, but the volume of the cry is diminished. The third time we hear it say no, but somewhat apologetically. The fourth time there's a whisper. And the fifth time when we've thought up really good reasons, we try to tell ourselves they're good. The lips of conscience may form the negative syllable, but no sound comes forth. And the sinner jubilantly takes hold of the desired sin.

Now some sinner who's been caught in the mesh of temptation and who has reached the stage where conscience not only does not help but seems utterly insensible may desire help today. There is help only in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible speaks of those whose conscience has been seared as with a hot iron. We know that if we burn our skin badly, the scar tissue that forms over the burn is not as sensitive as was the original skin. Do not look for any hope then in your conscience. The Lord Jesus Christ comes to save you.

And when he has lifted your eyes to the cross, he gives you the assurance that your guilt has been removed. And then he reveals to you that he comes within to guide you by the Holy Spirit in the light of the Bible. And that you are to bring your scarred conscience and surrender it to the final authority of the eternal word of God. There alone can you enter upon the path of triumph and victory in your own life. Why do men persist in iniquity and in rebellion against God when they have written upon their hearts the certain knowledge of God's holiness and his stored up wrath against them and all that they are doing.

The answer can be found only in the doctrine of Adam's fall and the consequent distance to which all of the race was dragged in that fall. Men persist in sin because their heart is deceitful above all things and incurably wicked as we read in Jeremiah 17 9. And they will not come to the Lord that they might have a new heart. They follow the vain directions of their carnal mind which is enmity against God because they will not come to Christ in order that he might be made their wisdom and their righteousness. Our text teaches us in the next place that men come to the public approval of sin and even applaud it in others.

This being one more logical step in the path away from God. The verb that is translated they have pleasure in is rendered in many different ways by various translators. The revised version reads they consent with. Bangster says they are consenting too. Coneybear says they not only commit the sins but delight in their fellowship with the sinner. Darby says they have fellow delight in those that do them. Codea reads it not only they do the same but they applaud those that do them. Kelly says they have a fellow pleasure in those that do them. Meyer enlarges the thought they not only do those things but they are also in their moral judgment in agreement with others who so act.

The venerable bishop of Durham Handley Moule renders it they feel with and abet. Newall says they not only keep practicing these sins but approve of others practicing them. Now the thought behind it all is that when men reject the light of God, they fall into the wrath of God and that the divine wrath manifests itself by allowing the law of decay and deterioration to go to work on the fiber of the man's soul. Even though man is born today as the child of fallen Adam, there is some light from God both in nature and in man's conscience.

But this passage teaches us therefore that man is distinctly responsible before God. For whenever God gives light, he gives help at the same time. If man were to walk in what light he has, God would give him more light and still more. At whatever step a man may find himself at the present moment, it is possible for him to find more light and to walk in that light. If man refuses the light in which he finds himself, he is not only responsible before God but the inevitableness of the wrath of God manifested in present abandonment and future judgment is then certain.

The light of God draws men into its healing, illuminating rays. If the will of man is yielded to the divine revelation, if the will is not yielded, the light then burns the man, not with the quick burn as when one touches a fire, not with a slower burn as when one is overexposed to the rays of the sun, but with a still slower yet much deeper burn of the x-ray or atomic radiation which will ultimately disintegrate the whole of man's being and bring him to the eternal doom of judgment. The terrible effects of the rejection of truth are seen in the moral ruin of the soul.

The final step on this earth is that which leads to approval of sin in others. There may be those who call it hypocritical for a man to commit a sin that he denounces in another. But his state is not as bad as that of the man who commits the sin and applauds it in another. For if a man admits the sinfulness of the sin when he sees it in another, there is the possibility that he may see his own guilt and turn from it. But it must not be forgotten that the easy attitude towards sin is looked upon in the word of God as being the final climax in man's separation from God.

It is difficult to teach that lesson in a civilization where the newspapers, the radios, the magazines and the advertising world in general have their greatest margin of profit in perveying the wares that appeal to the lusts of men. All of these are the seeds of disintegration in human society which mark it for destruction and judgment. It is not pleasant to set forth these truths in the ears of men who do not wish to hear the truth. But it is a faithfulness to God that we thus speak. And as we bring this study and this chapter to a close, there are conclusions that press upon us.

With Griffith Thomas, we must speak of the awful possibility of sin. We observe that sin starts from the neglect of light which in turn leads to the rejection of light followed by madness, idolatry, vice, manifold evil and a malignant badness that takes a positive satisfaction in wrong doing. Perhaps our hearts are tempted to say that although this was possible in the old heathen world, it is now quite beyond the bounds of profanity in a professedly Christian land. But let us not be too sure of this. The words of the psalmist are still true. Who can understand his errors?

The possibilities of evil in the human heart apart from divine grace are as real as they ever were. And no one who knows the plague of his own heart will ever dare to say that even these depths of evil are impossible apart from the restraining influences of the grace of God. One of the saintliest of the English reformers John Bradford saw a murderer carried off to die. It was he who first said there but for the grace of God go I. To those who have never yet accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as personal Savior, we present him again as the great manifestation of the grace of God.

It is because he came that even you in the midst of this civilization which is so corrupt in its heart have many of the common graces that surround you. It is Christ whose mercy still calls you and whose hand is outstretched to save you. It is he who bids you come and who shines his light upon the path he wishes you to take. Do not neglect that light lest you go on to reject that light. Today is still the day of salvation. Today the Savior calls. And to those of you who have believed that Jesus Christ is the eternal God made flesh to save us and who have thrown yourself on his grace as manifested at the cross, I beseech you that you walk in the light of this word which he hath left for us.

Begin by admitting all that he has said about the depths of your own heart. And ask him to dredge to those depths in order that he may fill you with himself and give to you the ever fresh graces of the presence of the Holy Spirit to illuminate and to guide you. For it is in the measure that you yield to the life of God through the cross of Christ and in the Holy Spirit that you shall grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And our God and Father, we ask thee that thou shalt take the word in this hour and use it in many hearts.

Bring men to see that they must not go on in the path of rejection. That it is a slippery path that leads to hell and that thou art calling in thy grace today that men shall leave and forsake it and come back to the fountain of living waters where thou art willing to give pardon and peace and purity and power and hope and heaven and thyself. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and for his sake. Amen.

Guest (Male): Are you drowning helplessly in the depth of your own sin? The Lord Jesus Christ is always on duty ready to reach out in mercy and pull us to safety. We hope you've benefited from today's message by Dr. Barnhouse entitled The Depth of Sin. You can listen to additional Bible teaching by the late Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse anytime, anywhere around the globe via the internet by visiting the alliance of confessing evangelicals website at alliancenet.org. An audio copy of today's teaching is available by calling us toll free at 1 800 488 1888. Today's message again is entitled The Depth of Sin or simply request message number R 1 - 27.

We would also like to make available to you a free copy of Dr. Barnhouse's booklet entitled Overcoming Fear in Witnessing. Are you intimidated about sharing your faith? Does fear hold you back from telling your family, friends and coworkers about Christ? This free booklet will help you boldly and confidently proclaim the good news. Dr. Barnhouse explains how the Lord can help you overcome the barriers to effective witnessing so you can share the gospel clearly in love and without fear. If you want to be a bold, confident witness for Christ, ask for your free copy of Overcoming Fear in Witnessing when you call or write.

Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is a radio ministry of the alliance of confessing evangelicals headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The alliance of confessing evangelicals 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 materials 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 our listeners. If you have benefited from this 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 support and further our work, please contact us by writing alliance of confessing evangelicals, box 2000 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. Call toll free 1 800 488 1888 or visit us online at alliancenet.org. Be sure and ask for free updated resource catalog featuring books, audio teachings, commentaries, booklets, daily devotionals, videos and a wealth of other materials from outstanding reform teachers and theologians including Donald Gray Barnhouse, James Montgomery Boice, Michael Horton and Martin Lloyd Jones. Again our phone number 1 800 488 1888. Then join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr.

Barnhouse and the Bible.