Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Narrator: The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals presents the timeless teaching of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: The Bible is incomprehensible without the realization that Christ came the first time to save individual sinners from their individual sins and that he must come the second time to redeem society and civilization and government. The heart teaching of the whole of the Word of God is that man is incapable of redeeming his society. And the true business of the church of Jesus Christ is to save as many individuals from the wreckage as possible before the final wrecking comes.

Narrator: 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 The Man, Christ Jesus.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: I don't want to bother with a bunch of old creeds. I just want Jesus. I have no creed but Christ. Have you ever heard anyone say something like this? We must not confuse simple devotion to Christ with simplistic devotion. Through the centuries, the church has carefully developed vital doctrines about the person and work of Jesus Christ. When we neglect these important teachings, we can expose ourselves to false concepts about our Lord.

Narrator: The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans chapter 1 and verses 3 and 4. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled The Man, Christ Jesus.

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 the gospel originated in thine heart of love and that it was brought to us through Jesus Christ, our Lord. May we lay hold upon the truth in such a way that our hearts may rest in the rich satisfaction of thy grace that will enable us to walk acceptably before thee. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.

We are studying together in Paul's epistle to the Romans and I trust that you can turn to the first chapter of that book and read with us in the first verses. The theme of these opening verses is the gospel of God. And we have seen how the good news originated in the love of the Father and how truth centers in his son and that the truth was announced before in the Old Testament. We now see in the third verse that the gospel is concerning his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord.

There are two ways in which the gospel concerns the Lord Jesus Christ. It concerns his person and his work. The gospel consists in the definition of who he is and in the setting forth of what he has done. The two are interdependent.

Suppose for a moment that a man owed an impossibly large debt at the bank. Another man walks in and says to the bank official, "I want to be responsible for that debt." If the man is as bad a bankrupt as the debtor, the gesture is meaningless. If the man is rich beyond any boundaries of human debt, then the gesture becomes an act of grace in behalf of the debtor. The value of what he promises to do depends entirely on his own position and worth.

If an angel had come to seek and save that which was lost, his gesture would have been of no value, for an angel could not suffer for an infinite number of sinners. Only the Son of God could come forth to take the place of sinners and be wounded for their transgressions and bruised for their iniquities. One of our greatest hymns sets forth this fact, "There was none other good enough to pay the price of sin. He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in."

It is this fact of the person of our Lord that gives all value to what he says and what he did. At times there are people who become impatient with us for clinging to the creed and pointing out that truth is the essential foundation of all our thinking.

One preacher once said over the radio, "I want no creed but deeds. Give me a deed, then you can have your creeds." Even Paul, struck down on the Damascus road, began his Christian life with the question, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" And that's the end of that preacher's quotation. And I want you to see in it how subtle and satanic such a saying is.

For if you turn to the story of Paul's conversion in the ninth of Acts, you will see that he did not begin by asking, "What wilt thou have me to do?" There was another question that went before this one. The first question was, "Who art thou, Lord?" And the answer to that question constitutes our creed and your creed. You do have a creed whether you will or not. When the question is asked, "What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he?" your answer constitutes your creed.

My answer to that question is found in these verses in the first chapter of Romans. There are two verbs that include the whole of the answer. We read that Christ was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. The two verbs are made and declared. Jesus Christ was made; Jesus Christ was declared. If you understand those two verbs, you will have the Christ of the Bible. If you do not understand those two verbs, you are in danger of having what Paul elsewhere calls another Jesus and another gospel.

Three times in the Bible, the Lord God describes his Son Jesus Christ in terms of two different verbs. In the Old Testament prophecy of Isaiah, we read, "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given." As a child he was born, as a son he was given. In Galatians, the Holy Spirit announces, "When the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law." You see here that he was made in his human nature and sent in his divine nature.

Put the various passages with our text in Romans, and you find the two natures of Christ. In his humanity he was born according to the flesh, made of a woman. In his Godhead, he was declared, given, sent forth. This double line of teaching is found throughout the Bible.

One of the reasons that Jesus Christ was rejected when he was here on earth was because of the fact that people are inclined to look for what they most want to find. The Old Testament has many, many verses about the suffering Messiah, but they are overshadowed by the brilliance of the promises concerning his coming glory. When he came to fulfill the first line of prophecies, they failed to recognize him because they had their minds so full of the blueprint of what they expected Messiah to be.

If you wish to understand the psychology of Israel at the time of the coming of the Lord Jesus, think of the psychology of the Norwegians, the Hollanders or the French under the domination of Hitler. For Palestine was an occupied country when Christ was born. It was in the days of Caesar Augustus that there went out a decree that all the world should be taxed. And Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem because of that Roman decree.

The reason tax collectors were classed with harlots in the New Testament was because they were working for the enemy. During the late war, they would have been called Quislings instead of publicans. The people were looking for relief from the foreign enemy. They turned to the Old Testament and found verses which said that a splendid, resistless sovereign would come forth to rule with a rod of iron and to dash his enemies to pieces as a potter's vessel.

They began to look at every possible national leader in terms of this pattern. When Jesus came forth with his unquestionable supernatural power, they turned to him immediately with questions concerning his identity. They asked him the same questions that they had asked John the Baptist. Evidently the questions were a sort of checklist to be put to anyone who lifted his head above the rock of the oppressed.

But where John the Baptist confessed freely that he was not the Messiah, the Lord Jesus boldly claimed to be the Messiah. When he failed to act as they thought the Messiah should act in accordance with the second line of Bible prophecies, they rejected him and thus refused the first line of Bible prophecy.

The Bible is never afraid to put the twin truths of the humanity and deity of Christ in the same verse. Our text proclaims that he was both made and declared. We must not fall into the theological trap of thinking that Jesus Christ was merely a divine man, or into the other error of thinking that he was a human God. He was neither of these. He was and is the God-man, absolutely human and absolutely deity. He was not the Son of God in the sense that fallen sons of Adam's race are creatures of God.

A few years ago, in a western city, a lecturer of the board of lectureship of a certain modern religion was giving a free lecture on his concept of religion. In the question period that followed, someone asked him if he believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. The lecturer answered, "I would as soon think of denying that Jesus was the Son of God as I would deny that I am a son of God, that we are all sons of God."

The questioner continued by asking if the lecturer believed in the divinity of Christ. The speaker answered that he would no more deny that divinity than he would deny his own divinity. Now when we speak, when I speak of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, I am not talking about any such sonship or any such divinity. Years ago it was possible to speak of the divinity of Jesus Christ and the meaning was popularly understood. Little by little the modernist adulterated the phrase, forcing the Christian to adopt the phrase the deity of Christ. And now the devil is at work on the meaning of that word. We may have to return to the biblical phrase and speak of the eternal Godhead of the Lord Jesus.

If necessary, we will resort to locutions and affirm that we ever believe that our Lord Jesus Christ eternally existed as the second person of the Godhead co-eternal and co-equal with the Father. Everything that the Lord God Almighty is to me, so is Jesus Christ to me. I have no other God than the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Bible teaches the oneness of Christ in his two natures, not only in direct verses like the text we have before us today, but also by the implications of the gospel stories of events in his life. For example, take the story of Christ and the storm. Is there anything more human than that picture of the Lord, tired out and fast asleep in the boat? If you read the narratives closely, you will find that it was at evening time, the evening of one of the most difficult days of his ministry. It was the day when first he pronounced woes upon the cities, the day when first he excoriated the Pharisees, the day when his family thought he had lost his mind, and he announced that he would never listen to any plea that came to him from the Virgin Mary.

It was the day when for the first time he had spoken in parables because he knew that the break with the religious leaders had come, and that henceforth he would no longer cast the pearls of his teaching before their swinish minds. He was tired out, exhausted at the end of that long, hard day. The passage in Mark says that they took him even as he was in the ship. Even as he was, it is a phrase that shows that there was something about his condition that drew the attention of the disciples. He lay down in the boat and went to sleep.

I have been on the Sea of Galilee when it was rough and choppy, but it is capable of real storms. On this night, the storm was so terrible that even the fishermen called it a great storm. Jesus was so tired that the wind of the storm, the rush of water into the boat did not awaken him. Is there anything more human than a man, tired out, fast asleep, with a sleep of sheer exhaustion? The disciples awakened him. The text thrills to the sudden change. He arose and rebuked the wind and said unto the sea, "Peace, be still." And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. The disciples marveled and said, "What manner of man is this that even the winds and the waves obey him?"

The fact is that humanity and deity were together in the same boat, yes, in the same physical body. We need never fear bringing the two doctrines together. Jesus Christ was made and declared. He is man, but he is God. Let us set forth one more example of this double presentation of the two natures of the God-man. We take the story of the tribute money. The world says that there is nothing more sure than death and taxes. Certainly there's nothing more human than being taxed.

The Romans called their poll tax a capitation or head tax. The day came in the life of that little land, dominated by Rome, to collect the head tax. The tax collector said to Peter, "Does your master pay taxes?" The very fact that the question was asked shows that even the tax collector recognized that there was something in Jesus Christ above and beyond all other men.

Now it was not Peter's place to answer for his Lord, but he rushed in as he usually did, according to his impetuous nature, and agreed that the Lord would pay taxes. When Peter arrived at the house where he was staying, the Lord took him aside and began to talk with him quietly. He asked Peter if he recognized that kings exempted themselves from paying taxes, but took money from others so that they might be free. Peter assented to this, and the Lord pointed out that because he himself was king, it would be natural that he should be exempt and his disciples with him. But that no offense might be given to the worldlings, he told Peter to go ahead and pay the taxes. But the method of securing the money is startling. And fact, he said to Peter, "Go down to my Sea of Galilee, which I created. I have had one of my creatures lose a coin in the water, and my law of gravity carried it down where I had one of my fish take it into his mouth. You go fishing and I will have that fish come to your hook. You take the fish and take the coin out of its mouth, and it will be a coin of sufficient value to pay your taxes and mine."

What a human thing to pay taxes, and what a divine way of paying them. Humanity and deity in the same story. Humanity subject to the laws of the land. Deity knows the movements of a fish in the sea, knows the position of a lost coin, regulates the power of the movements of the fish. I sometimes hope that Peter had faith enough not to use any bait. That fish would have climbed the string if necessary to fulfill orders such as these.

Our text is a refutation of those who have attacked the doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Christ on the grounds that it is mentioned only in two gospels. The argument of the attackers is that a doctrine so important would be given a much larger place in the Word of God. But the fact is that the doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Christ is taught in many places in the scripture. We find it in the book of Genesis, when Adam and Eve had sinned, God pronounced the curse upon Satan in the following words, "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed. He shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel." Thus, on the first pages of the Bible, it is announced that the redeemer, who shall come, will be the seed of the woman.

In the prophecy of Isaiah, written long before the time of Christ, we read the same truth. It is interesting to note, by the way, that a complete manuscript of the Book of Isaiah has been found in Palestine, dating to the second century before Christ, the oldest existing biblical manuscript in the world. In the seventh chapter of that prophet, we read, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel."

Enemies of the Lord have sought their utmost to discredit this verse, have attempted to teach that the word virgin did not imply virginity. But the prophecy stands, and the New Testament quotes it, naming the Lord Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophecy and as being Immanuel, which being interpreted is God with us. Matthew and Luke say flatly that Mary conceived the Lord Jesus when she had never known a man. And Matthew states that Joseph first thought to put her away because he knew that he had never been with her, and therefore supposed that the child was the child of her fornication with some other man. It took the heavenly vision to show him the truth of the matter, and lead him to continue the relationship and acknowledge the child when Jesus was finally born, thus protecting Mary from the sneers of the world and fulfilling the divine plan for the coming of the Savior.

One of the greatest proofs of the fact of the Virgin Birth is in the fact that there are two genealogies of Jesus given in Matthew and Luke. When I returned to America in 1925, after seven years of travel and study in Europe, I became an assistant in the history department of the University of Pennsylvania, and in my second year there worked with Dr. Walter Hyde, head of the Department of Ancient History. Dr. Hyde lectured on the rise of Christianity and took the agnostic position before the class. He spoke of contradictions supposedly between the Matthew account of the genealogy of Jesus and that of Luke.

I went to him after the class and told him that in the interests of truth, he should be willing for me to present to the class the absolutely contrary view. The class included Jews, Catholics, Protestants, agnostics, and I detected no small curiosity as I announced my purpose to refute the arguments of my chief. First, I admitted definitely that there were two genealogies. The lines run parallel from Abraham to David, but then Matthew comes down to Jesus by way of Solomon, the son of David, while Luke comes down to Jesus by way of Nathan, the son of David. In other words, the two genealogies are the lines of two brothers, and the children become cousins.

When I state that Luke's genealogy is that of the Virgin Mary, and Matthew's genealogy is that of Joseph, I am not merely following the persistent tradition of the early church, as Dr. James Orr states it, but I am setting forth the only explanation that will fit the facts. The whole point of the difference lies in the fact that Solomon's line was the royal line and Nathan's line was the legal line.

Now Nathan was the older brother of Solomon, but the younger brother took the throne. Nathan's line ran on through the years and ultimately produced the Virgin Mary. Solomon's line ran on through the years and ultimately produced Joseph. Matthew does not say that Joseph begat Jesus, but that he was the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus. And Luke uses a word for son that includes what we would call a son-in-law. But the greatest proof of all lies in one of the names in the account of Matthew.

Someone might wonder of what value would be the genealogy of a stepfather of Jesus. The value is that the inclusion of the genealogy proves that Joseph was not the father. In the eleventh verse of Matthew's account, there is the name Jeconiah, Matthew 1:11. In the use of that name, there is one of the greatest proofs that Jesus is the son of Mary and not the son of Joseph. For Jeconiah was accursed of God with a curse that took the throne away from any of his descendants. You may want to look at this reference, it is Jeremiah 22:30. Thus saith the Lord, we read there, "Write ye this man childless. A man that shall not prosper in his days. For no man of his seed shall prosper sitting upon the throne of David and ruling any more in Judah."

Now not one of Jeconiah's seven sons, as we read in First Chronicles 3, not one of his sons ever possessed the throne. No carnal son of this man could have been the king because of the curse of God. If Jesus had been the son of Joseph, he would have been accursed and could never have been the Messiah. On the other hand, the line of Nathan was not the royal line. A son of Heli would have faced the fact that there was a regal line that would have possessed the crown and would have contested any claim that came from the line of Nathan because of the long rule of Solomon's line.

How was the dilemma solved? It was solved in a manner that is so simple, that it is the utter confusion of the agnostics who seek to tear the Bible to pieces. The answer is this: the line that had no curse upon it produced Heli and his daughter, the Virgin Mary, and her son Jesus Christ. He is therefore eligible by the line of Nathan and exhausts that line. Joseph in turn exhausts the line of Solomon. How can the title be free in any case? There is a curse on one line and the lack of reigning royalty in the other.

But when the Holy Spirit begat the Lord Jesus in the womb of the Virgin, without any use of a human father, the child that was born was of the seed of David according to the flesh. And when Joseph married Mary and took the unborn child under his protecting care, giving him the title that had come down to him through his ancestor Solomon, the Lord Jesus became the legal Messiah, the royal Messiah, the uncursed Messiah, the true Messiah, the only possible Messiah. The lines are exhausted. Any man that ever comes into this world, professing to fulfill the conditions, will be a liar and the child of the devil. The Lord Jesus announced that the attempt would be made.

For in John 5:43, describing the coming of the future antichrist, our Savior said, "I am come in my Father's name and ye receive me not. If another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." The argument that I have just set forth is the argument that I used that day in the classroom of the University of Pennsylvania. I declared to the men that I knew on the evidence of my own spiritual experience that these things were true. I had put my trust in this Savior who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.

When I put my trust in him, he gave me new life through his atoning work, and that my faith was founded on the solid reality of the historical facts of the incarnation of God in Christ, the Word made flesh and dwelling among us. Today, perhaps there are those who will wish to put their trust in that Savior. Made and declared, he stands ready to save you.

May our God and Father bless this truth to every heart that listens. And to thee be all of the glory through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Narrator: Jesus is the unique and only begotten Son of God, fully God and fully man. Two natures in one person and our only Savior from sin and death. We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled The Man, Christ Jesus.

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