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: Now if you are spiritually concerned about your giving, first yield yourself to the Lord and ask Him to give you discernment so that all that you give may exalt the Lord Jesus Christ. Then you will find your life growing and your soul expanding, and you will not haggle over whether to tithe gross or net income. When you have given yourselves, you will not shrink from giving a son or a daughter to the Lord's service.

Now perhaps is the moment for you to ask the Lord to bring you to the end of yourself so that you may begin with Him. Nothing short of total commitment of yourself is worthy of the price that He paid to purchase you for Himself. When you have submitted to Him as your Lord, He will settle all your problems because He will then be obligated to provide for all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Yes, God is obligated to provide for those who have come to the place of total surrender to Him.

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 radio ministry which has become known as Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.

The application of God's word as taught by Dr. Barnhouse is as relevant today as when he first taught over the radio airwaves decades ago. The message we'll be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled "The Grace of Giving."

We might think it is a sign of great blessing when we unexpectedly receive some money, a nice gift, or an act of kindness. But the Apostle Paul reminds us that Jesus said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Do you experience the great blessing that accompanies generous, gracious giving? The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans chapter 15, looking at verses 25 through 27. Here again is Dr. Barnhouse with a message entitled "The Grace of Giving."

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 that Thou dost transform hearts and turn us from centering in self to centering in Christ. We praise Thee for the grace of giving and pray that it may begin with the gift of ourselves. Use Thy word to lift our hearts to Thee that we may know Thee better and love Thee more. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Near the close of the 15th chapter of Romans, we come to the following verses: "At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem with aid for the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. They were pleased to do it, and indeed they are in debt to them. For if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings."

Now Paul shows us here that raising funds for this charitable purpose was a wonderful thing, and he tells us why it was right and proper for these Gentile Christians in Greece to send money for the relief of the poor believers in Jerusalem. First, let us note that the arrival of the Gospel in the world inspired a new attitude in those who were touched by that Gospel, so that those who had means of any sort, even though but a little, were concerned about those who had less or nothing.

Today we live in a world where charity is common even on a large scale, but this is purely a byproduct of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. This did not exist before the time of Christ. The Turks have an organization called the Red Crescent, which acts to relieve physical needs in time of disaster or war, but they boldly copied it from the Red Cross. They understood that the Red Cross had taken its name from the cross of Jesus Christ, and so, being Muslims, they substituted the crescent.

Whether one is a believer in Christ or not, it must be accepted that His cross is the fountain from which the stream of Christian love has flowed. And this stream has been imitated by those who do not profit by His redemptive work. No charity ever arose from any source in the pagan world. Madame Chiang Kai-shek said that the religion of China was ancestor worship, but that nobody in China ever built an old folks home.

From the study of ancient history, we must conclude that charity consisted in no more than tossing a few coins to the outstretched hands of beggars, so numerous in ancient times. But such charity was given more with the thought of fattening the pride of the giver than of meeting the need of the recipient. The Lord said in Matthew 6: "When you give alms, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret, and your Father who sees you in secret will reward you."

The quiet giving, so well expressed by the phrase "do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing," is charity that comes from the presence of Christ in the heart. The fact that the Greek churches gave so generously shows how deeply the truth of the Gospel had penetrated their hearts. Remember, these people had not been prepared by centuries of teaching about tithing. These were raw heathen who had lived in a world of pagan idolatry, exactly like modern India or China or Africa.

It was a world of penury and toil, of living from hand to mouth, a world of the very rich, cruel and arrogant, and the very poor, cruel and cringing. Into such a world and into such hearts the Gospel came. The transforming power of Christ was nowhere more evident than in this question of giving. Giving to the needs of others is a barometer that shows the weather of the heart.

When Paul first wrote to the Corinthians, he concluded his letter by a word of instruction about this spiritual task. We read in the last chapter: "Now concerning the contribution for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that contributions need not be made when I come."

He knew that there was a deep poverty in Jerusalem, and he was telling the believers in Corinth to help meet the need. We do not know exactly what was the need in Jerusalem, but we can imagine a situation not unlike that which exists today in places where there are many refugees with not enough work to earn wages sufficient to meet life's daily needs. Or perhaps the situation was similar to that of India today, where there is a vast overpopulation and almost no means of earning enough to pay for the basic necessities of life.

For multitudes to starve to death is so common that the sight of the dilated stomachs of starving children excites no special concern. People become like animals, unable to do anything in the face of bitter want and stark privation. And the news of this misery in Jerusalem struck the hearts of the believers in Macedonia. In his second letter, Paul wrote the Corinthians that the Macedonians actually competed for the privilege of giving.

"We want you to know, brethren," he writes, "about the grace of God which has been shown in the churches of Macedonia. For in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of liberality on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own free will, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints. And this, not as we expected, but first they gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of God. Accordingly, we have urged Titus that as he had already made a beginning, he should also complete among you this gracious work."

Now here we see that when the Gospel transforms a life and touches the heart of an individual so that he wants to give to someone in need, it is a work of the grace of God. Where the grace of God has not touched the heart, the individual seeks to get, get, get for himself. But when the grace of God has touched the heart, the individual turns outward toward the Lord and thus toward others.

This account of the believers in Macedonia illustrates a great principle which has come down through the ages. They are described as extremely poor, and yet the abundance of their joy and their extreme poverty overflowed in a wealth of liberality. I've seen examples of this again and again. Recently, we were in Brazil. One morning I stepped into a taxi, a rather rickety affair. The driver was obviously a poor man, very poorly dressed.

I gave him an address and he responded, "Oh, that's the Bible house. Are you an evangelical?" I answered that I was a pastor come to preach in Brazil on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Protestantism in that land. I asked him if he were truly saved and he gave me a heartwarming testimony of his own knowledge of Christ as Lord and Savior. I asked him about his family. He told me that he had never married because he had taken one, then two, then three small boys who were street orphans. He fed and clothed them and took them every morning to their school and on Sundays to Sunday school and church.

At the Bible house, I asked the driver to wait while I went to the fifth floor to meet a friend. The friend said he would drive me back to the hotel, so I went down to pay the taxi driver. In American money, the fare would have been under two dollars. But in Cruzeiros, it was twice that amount at least. But he would not take my money. It was such a joy for him to drive the North American pastor who had come to preach, and he wanted to do this for me in the name of the Lord Jesus.

There was no way in which I could get him to take the money. He never had had an opportunity to exercise hospitality, he told me. The New Testament said that believers should exercise hospitality, and he wanted to do this for the Lord. I want to say this: that moments like this are great moments when we can look into the eyes of a simple man and see to the depths of his heart. It's possible to see a little of the love that Christ has planted within his being and to realize how he is seeking to live for Christ and to do everything in His name.

When I think of the believers in Macedonia, who combined an overflowing joy with an overflowing poverty to produce an overflowing liberality, I think of people like this Brazilian taxi driver. The secret is to be found in the text: "First they gave themselves to the Lord." They put into practice what we sometimes sing: "Since from His bounty I receive such proofs of love divine, had I a thousand lives to live, Lord they would all be Thine." And that other hymn: "See from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown? Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all."

Now these lessons are for our day as well as for the infant days of the church. We belong not to ourselves, but first to Christ and then to each other. If we give ourselves to Him, we shall of necessity give ourselves to others. This is the secret of all true outgoing love in life. The wife who gives herself to the Lord will of necessity give herself to her husband, and there will be no more nagging. The husband who gives himself to the Lord will of necessity give himself to his wife, and there will be the end of neglect or domineering.

And this goes out beyond the family relationships to those of the church and to those with all the world. Remember what we saw in our studies of the 14th chapter of Romans: "None of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's." Now this cannot be understood outside of Christ.

Recently I heard a story about a lovely home where suddenly there came the verdict from the physicians that the young husband could not live more than a few months. The mother of their two children, a boy of 12 and a girl of 8, told them all about it and said, "From now on, we're going to live each day so that if it is Daddy's last day, it will be one of great joy for him." Each morning she prayed with the children and said, "Let us remember that the Lord is going to take Daddy home, maybe today."

And the family was transformed. The boy began to be a man before his time, the girl developed womanly traits of unselfishness, and the wife glowed with the glory of true sainthood. And soon after, the end came. Death struck suddenly, but it was a triumph for the father who went to heaven and triumph for the mother and the children who remained behind. Now here's the postscript to this story. A society matron was told about this incident, how the mother had trained her children in love for the Lord and in love for their father in expectation of his soon homegoing. Her response was: "How gruesome!"

The only gruesomeness was in her own unloving heart, which could not comprehend the full outgoing of the abundance of love. In our text, Paul justifies the financial pressure that was put on the Greek churches on the ground that they received spiritual supply from Jerusalem, and that they were therefore obligated to supply the material needs of these suffering saints. He says, "If the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings."

Now there are a great many calls upon Christians to give from their material surplus to the needs of charity and the causes of expansion of Christ's kingdom. Some people complain that there are too many such calls. I have discovered, however, that the unspiritual complain and that the spiritual never complain. Moreover, the unspiritual complain and usually do not give, while the spiritual give but do not complain.

There's a striking exhortation on this subject in Paul's epistle to the Galatians. It includes the famous phrase: "Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap." Most often the unwitting think that this refers to sowing wild oats, but in reality it has to do with this question of giving. Let me paraphrase the whole paragraph: Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Let him who is taught the word share all good things with him who teaches. Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever a Christian man gives, that he will also reap.

If he spends his money on his own flesh, he will see it lost and gone, and he will have nothing but corruption. The believer who spends his money on spiritual things will from the Spirit reap a great reward in eternal life. So let us not grow weary in well doing, that is, do not complain when there's one more call and one more occasion for an offering. In due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. So then, as we have opportunity, that is, depending on the amount of our income and surplus, let us do good to all men and especially give priority to those needs which arise within the household of faith.

Now just what do these last words mean? I believe that they mean that every believer must establish a system of priorities in his giving. We all know that there are a hundred causes for every dollar that we have to give. How are we to decide which cause shall get the dollar? This text says that if you're a millionaire with a very big budget, you can afford to do good to all men. You can give to secular causes, you can give to the works that take care of physical needs without thought of spiritual needs.

And then also you can give to those causes which put the primary emphasis on the spiritual need. I long ago established the following set of priorities for my own giving. I looked at the propaganda material that was put out for any cause and I said to myself, "Suppose there was a deficit in that cause. Would it be possible for its backers to go to the great foundations or solicit an extra donation from the great industrial firms and factories?" If so, I am not going to give anything to it, or at most only the necessary dollar or dime that will put the sign on my door to keep away the collectors.

But if there is a need in a cause that honors Christ first, a cause to which the great industries and foundations would not give, then I want to give priorities to its claims. It may be that it is a straight missionary project like translating the Bible, or it may be a social work that ministers to bodies and souls. I look carefully for the spiritual phase of the work. If there are two works for orphans, and one merely gives them food, lodging, and education, while the other gives them food, lodging, education, and Christ, then I'm going to obey the word and give to the cause that includes Christ.

Another facet to this problem is brought out by Paul's statement: "They first gave themselves to the Lord and to us." Now why did he include himself? I wonder if he was not anticipating all the causes that are centered in men instead of in Christ. I have heard so-called religious programs on the radio that are fantastic in their blatant coarseness, their offensively obtrusive clamor for money, and their dictatorial manner of asserting the finality of God's will for their listeners.

I have thought while listening to such a program, "How can anyone who is spiritually minded give to such a thing? Can they not discern that this is the flesh and not the Spirit?" And the same thing is true of printed advertisements in religious magazines: the naked emotionalism of the starving child, or the appeal for funds to stop communism singlehandedly by this or that man's little scheme. I wonder if Paul is not indicating that funds should not be spread around as freely as a drunken sailor spends his money.

A woman once showed me a list of about 18 charitable works, to each of which she was leaving a thousand dollars in her will. About 10 of these were magnificent works deserving every penny. The others were carnal, wasteful, and in one case, fraudulent. Now if you are spiritually concerned about your giving, first yield yourself to the Lord and ask Him to give you discernment so that all that you give may exalt the Lord Jesus Christ. Then you will find your life growing and your soul expanding, and you will not haggle over whether to tithe gross or net income.

When you have given yourselves, you will not shrink from giving a son or a daughter to the Lord's service. Now perhaps is the moment for you to ask the Lord to bring you to the end of yourself so that you may begin with Him. Nothing short of total commitment of yourself is worthy of the price that He paid to purchase you for Himself. When you have submitted to Him as your Lord, He will settle all your problems because He will then be obligated to provide for all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Yes, God is obligated to provide for those who have come to the place of total surrender to Him.

And our God and Father we pray Thee that the Holy Spirit shall take the truth to each heart. Help us to understand that Thou hast given us health and strength and prosperity, and that this puts upon us great obligations; that what we have and are we owe to Thee and that we must give ourselves back to Thee. Bless we pray Thee, and use to Thy glory the word that has gone forth in this hour. We ask in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.

Guest (Male): Generous, gracious giving for the glory of God brings great blessing and is the manifestation of a transformed heart and life. We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled "The Grace of Giving." To listen to additional Bible teaching by Dr. Barnhouse, visit us online at alliancenet.org.

An audio copy of today's teaching is available by calling us toll free, 1-800-488-1888. Today's message again is entitled "The Grace of Giving," or simply request message number R15-29. We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled "The Names of God." Most of us have a first, last, and middle name and perhaps a nickname or two.

But scripture records more than 400 names of God that reveal fresh and profound insights about His character and attributes. This free four-chapter booklet will show you how an in-depth look at the names of God can help you discover a wealth of riches in the knowledge of Him. Ask for your free copy of "The Names of God" 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 radio stations carrying our programs, visit our website, alliancenet.org.

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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. Thank you for listening. Join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.