Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

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

The doctrine of the virgin birth of our Lord is divinely revealed truth and the denial of this doctrine makes Christ only an inheritor of the sinful nature of fallen humanity. Such denial denigrates him, dishonors the Father and invalidates the whole divine plan of salvation.

But even though my lips declare that Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary without a human father, my heart must call him Lord and accept his Lordship over my entire being.

Thus worthy good Lord, thou didst with truth correct and train, equip by them we can through thy truth the work God has for us to do.

God's word is all the Christian needs to grow in grace and to good deeds.

Over a half a century ago, the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, then pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, saw the need to spread God's Word beyond the hearing of his local congregation. He started the radio ministry which has become known as Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.

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

People sometimes send their pet dogs to obedience school so they can be trained to obey their master's commands. We are disobedient sinners by nature, so our lives are like spiritual obedience schools in which the Lord is training us every day to obey and follow him. Are you yielding to God's work to create a joyfully obedient submissive heart?

The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible, Romans chapter 15 and verse 8. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled, The Obedient Heart.

Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto Thee our Father and our God and in the Holy Spirit. We thank Thee for Thyself and for all the gifts of thy love. We pray Thee in this hour for all who are discouraged, frustrated, lonely and sad. We pray Thee for the sick, the aged, the infirm and the blind.

We pray Thee for those who take care of them and who are bone weary with the struggle. We pray Thee for the gay and the glad, the indifferent and the careless. In this hour, use thy word to bring some supply for the need of every listener. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

In Romans 15, 18 and 19 we read, I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought through me to win obedience from the Gentiles. The purpose of preaching the gospel is to win obedience from those who hear it.

I've spent my life in this work and I'm not at all interested in gaining only intellectual assent to a creed. Now whenever I make such a statement, there are liberal souls who give a rousing cheer because they think that I'm repudiating the creeds.

So before proceeding beyond the creeds, let me stop to say a strong word on their behalf. At times there are those who show a vast impatience toward creeds. They do not wish to be bound fettered, they say, by outworn phrases and old theological clichés.

But what do they really mean? Let us take two examples. What goes on in the mind of the person who seeks to cast aside the creeds? That person immediately sets himself up as final authority and abrogates to himself the right to deny divine revelation.

For example, if you look in Webster's large dictionary under the word Unitarian, you will find the following definition, of a theological group which deny the creeds. The definition in Webster reads, one who denies the doctrine of the Trinity, believing that God exists in only one person. They have never issued any authoritative confession of faith. One of their most distinctive principles being the right of private judgment in theological matters.

Now that's out of Webster's dictionary. But where does such a philosophy lead? And the answer is still found in Webster for the definition ends with the statement, the denomination now includes in its ministry as well as its membership a number of non-theistic humanists, that is people who deny God and put all of their trust in man. And there we have in the dictionary, an illustration of the logical conclusion and the end of those who deny the great creeds of the church through history.

For the creeds were forged by thinking men in the earliest centuries of the church in order to keep out alien philosophies which might infiltrate biblical Christianity. In a recent volume on Luther, the expositor, Professor Jaroslav Pelikan of the University of Chicago, has shown the motives of the men who made the creeds. He points out that all detractors have charged that false doctrines were smuggled into the creeds.

As a matter of fact, by its dogma, the church threw up a wall against an alien metaphysics. Now having said this in support of the necessity of the creeds, let me now go beyond them and say that obedience to Christ is the ultimate aim of all truth. The Trinity is a divinely revealed fact.

But of what value is the confession of the Trinity in the naked mind, if the heart is not yielded in absolute obedience to the divine revelation? But even if my lips declare that God eternally exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, my heart must obey the will of the Father. Pattern its life on the divine life of the Savior Son and seek the holiness of the Holy Spirit.

I do not have to stress that obedience must be won from each believer in the field of morals. This is something that everyone can see plainly. No man can ask God to bless his plans to rob a bank. No woman can ask God to bless her life if she practices adultery. These sins of covetousness and lust are so manifest that anyone can detect them. There's a universal conscience concerning them.

But beyond the field of covetousness and lust, are other sins which are equally deadly, and those who come to Christ must be won to obedience in these fields also. Take for example the sin of envy, which is not a sin that is ordinarily manifest. Envious people usually dissemble to hide it. Fairest words and brightest smiles may cover the deepest envy.

While all the time it is eating like a cancer. I can never forget an experience of my ministry, when I was called to visit a young woman confined in a mental hospital. I had not seen her for many months, and when the attendant unlocked the last door and brought me to her room, I was horrified by her appearance.

Sunken eyes stared at me from hollow cheeks, and dry lips attempted to form words that would not come. I talked and prayed with her for some time before I could get her to talking. Finally, the words began to come haltingly and then with vehemence. It soon developed that she was bitterly envious of other women. She expressed her envy in the strongest language, seemingly without any repentance.

I had occasionally visited the office where she was employed before she was married, and had considered her a charming secretary above the average in looks and bearing. And later, when I talked to her former employer, he told me that this trait of envy showed up while she was in his employ. A problem had arisen and he had talked with her. Bitterly, she complained.

Why hadn't God given her the charm of a certain brilliant woman? Why had she been born with a complexion that was less than perfect? It was a good complexion, but she wanted a skin the equal of that put on an actress by the makeup man. But what did her disobedience finally bring her to?

We can only repeat the prayer of the litany, from envy, hatred and malice and all uncharitableness, good Lord, deliver us. Now it's in this spirit that the one who comes to Christ must be won to obedience. If you're faced with this temptation, take refuge in the one sure cure for envy. A firm belief in the sovereignty of God, you are what God planned you to be. Accept it.

And ask him to bless you in your circumstances, and he will do exceeding abundantly above all that you can ask or think. If you are short, God planned for you to be short. Remember what God did with little Bilney, who led Hugh Latimer to Christ. If you are crippled, God planned for you to be crippled.

God used the cripple, Wilberforce, to free the slaves in the British Empire. If your Christian life is lived in some distant place, where you are unknown, unhonored and unpraised, God planned for you to bloom and flower in that garden as a fragrance for himself. Behold what history has revealed of simple mothers who raised great sons, and humble preachers who have brought great men to Christ.

If you're not as handsome as a Hollywood actor, God planned for your face to be a canvas, whereon he could draw the character of Christ. Look at the beloved granite of the face of Abraham Lincoln. Yes, look at the true face of the Lord Jesus himself, of whom it was written, he has no form nor comeliness. Nor any beauty that we should desire him.

When you look in the mirror, always ask God, show Christ in my face. If you're poor, God planned for you to be poor. Remember how Jesus blessed the two mites of the poor widow and what he has been doing with the sacrifices from poverty of millions of his own.

Whatever therefore may be the cause of your envy, remember that God has planned your life, and when you turn to him in complete obedience, he will give you what he considers the highest and the best. Now take as another example, the necessity for obedience, lest we be guilty of the sin of gluttony.

If we're to be won to obedience in Christ, we must learn to honor him at the table. Gluttony is one of the more subtle of the deadly sins. I mentioned this because gluttony is one of the sins that especially characterize America. And to this sin, the words of Christ concerning a certain demon are especially applicable, this kind goes not out except by prayer and fasting.

Again, I can speak from experience. I allowed myself to become 30 pounds overweight. Beyond question, this was the result of sin at the table. And if I had persisted in it, the Lord could have used it to shorten my life. For two or three years, I tried to reduce, but I could not do it. I was eating compulsively.

And then came the day when I frankly confessed to God that my overweight resulted from the sin of gluttony. I asked the Lord to forgive me and to cleanse me from this unrighteousness. By faith, I accepted the Bible's promises of forgiveness and cleansing. When I approached the table, I asked the Lord to give me his grace and to remind me that I was abstaining for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I never had any trouble with the problem again. I had been won to obedience, and soon I was more than 30 pounds lighter. It was hard, but it was for the Lord Jesus Christ, and it was necessary. Now, I look at snapshots of myself taken in the days of overweight, and I wonder how anyone could have heeded my preaching, when it was so obvious that since our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, I was sinning against him.

Now, I realize that there are a few overweight people who are afflicted with thyroid trouble, and their condition is not sin. But the vast majority of those who are overweight are gluttons. And God has said, be not among wine bibbers or among gluttonous eaters of meat. If you are won to obedience, you can know victory over this temptation.

And now let us consider that sin, which in the old list of seven deadly sins, was called sloth. We know the sin better under the modern name of laziness. I speak with great feeling about this sin because I must confess that even as a child, I was extremely lazy. I became adept at devising ways to avoid work.

It was only after I had a spiritual experience at the age of 15 that I came to obedience in the matter. Since this was an ingrained trait, I asked the Lord to keep me busy and unafraid of hard work. Figuratively, I took myself by the back of the neck and the seat of the trousers and said to myself, get going, in Jesus name and for his sake get going.

And where I was weakest, I became strongest. Because I know so well the tendency to this sin, I see the importance of obedience to Christ. Let me plead with all Christian parents to exact obedience from their children, so that the children may find it easier to obey the Lord.

Oh for a generation of parents who will make their children work. They should perform some manual labor, some household duties, but above all, they should work their minds. C.S. Lewis has presented this need in a remarkable way. In his tremendously searching satire, where his famous character, Screwtape, proposes a toast to the graduates of the tempter's training college in hell, the under-devil talks about what to him are the strengths of the educational system on earth.

Now it should go without saying that what the demons think are strengths, are from the point of view of true man, great weaknesses. Screwtape says, in that promising land, the spirit of I'm as good as you, has already become something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into the educational system.

How far its operations there have gone at the present moment, I would not like to say with certainty, nor does it matter. Once you have grasped the tendency, you can easily predict its future developments, especially as we ourselves, the demons, will play our part in the developing. The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be undemocratic.

These differences among the pupils must be disguised, say the tempters. This can be done on various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all or nearly all citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power or wish to profit by higher education or not.

At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn language and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing the things that children used to do in their spare time. Let them, for example, make mud pies and call it modeling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work.

Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have, I believe the English already use the phrase, parity of esteem. An even more drastic scheme is not impossible, continued the tempter. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back because the others would get a trauma. Beelzebub, what a useful word, by being left behind.

The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career. And a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante, sits listening to his coevals attempt to spell out, a cat sat on a mat. In a word, and I'm still quoting the tempter from Lewis's satire. In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education.

When I'm as good as you, has fully had its sway. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented. Who are they to overtop their fellows? We, the tempters, shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.

And that's the end of Lewis's statement and I add to it that the little vermin who run too many democracies are doing exactly this thing because of the sin of sloth, laziness, laziness of mind. And that, believe me, is a good picture of where we've been brought by the stupidly false definitions of what democracy is supposed to be.

And if we're to live under such conditions, we must come under the impact of my text and be won to obedience to Jesus Christ. Listen to the calls to hard work that run through the Bible. Remember that this is God Almighty speaking. Go to the ant, oh sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise. Without having any chief, officer or ruler, she prepares her food in summer and gathers her sustenance in harvest.

How long will you lie there, oh sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a vagabond, and want like an armed man. In addition to all the wise maxims in the book of Proverbs, let us remember the exhortations of the New Testament.

He who will not work, neither shall he eat. Whatsoever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. Christians are commanded not to be clock watchers. Men pleasers. I service.

They're told to work as hard for bad employers as for good employers. In his parables, the Lord stressed the importance of work and industry. He gave his servants sums of money and said, occupy, trade with this till I come. Is it too much to expect that each believer in Christ should put in a 100-hour work week?

This would include 40 hours for your employer, and 10 more for going to and from work. It would include church time, but that leaves many hours for hard work. What kind of work? Planned reading, including planned Bible study, something that will keep your mind in high gear. I spend more time in solid study now than in the years when I was in college, seminary or graduate school.

We are to redeem the time, God says, because the days are evil. I still spend some time in light reading, not only because I have a sense of humor that must be exercised, but because I frequently get excellent sermon illustrations from cartoons in magazines and from humorous anecdotes in periodicals.

But I've long since learned that I can never allow myself to look at such magazines until I have studied myself tired in the hard disciplines of knowledge. Be honest before the Lord. What word best characterizes your ordinary life, activity or indolence, diligence or delay, perseverance or procrastination, liveliness or laziness.

It was Malbie Babcock who wrote, we are not here to play, to dream, to drift. We have hard work to do and loads to lift. Shun not the struggle, face it, it is God's gift. Finally, in our text, let us consider carefully the verb to win. We often hear of winning men to Christ, and I wonder if we are not hopelessly confused in our concept of that word and that work.

According to the King James Version, Paul says that his work was to make the Gentiles obedient. The revision says that through him God was working to win obedience from the Gentiles. Phillips translated, I do know that through me he has secured the obedience of the Gentiles. In our generation, to win a man to Christ, often consists of nothing more than rote repetition of a formula which does not penetrate the heart.

One who calls himself a quote, soul winner, says to someone, will you admit that you're a sinner? The man replies, yes, I'm a sinner. The winner then says, will you accept Christ as your savior? Yes, I will, says the man. Praise God, says the worker, I've won another soul to Christ.

There's a great possibility that you have done nothing of the kind. You may even have made it more difficult for the needy one to experience the transforming encounter. That encounter with Jesus Christ, which will uproot him from his old ways and bring him into obedience to Christ. For if there is not this obedience, there is not true faith.

Oh it may be like a child's obedience, slow growing, at first almost to the point of rebellion, but if Christ has come into the heart, there will be inevitably, growth in obedience. Sin may block it for a while, but faith and discipline must continue. Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.

In first John, there is a line which Phillips translates as follows, it is only when we obey God's laws that we can be quite sure that we really love him and know him. The man who claims to know God but does not obey his laws, is not only a liar, but he lives in self-delusion.

In practice, the more a man learns to obey God's laws, the more truly and fully does he express his love for him. Obedience is the test of whether we really live in God or not. The life of a man who professes to be living in God, must bear the stamp of Christ. And we pray Thee our Father that our lives may bear this stamp, that men, by seeing our obedience, may take knowledge that we have been with Jesus Christ. We ask it in thy name and for thy sake. Amen.

Let us serve and live for our Lord Jesus Christ with grateful obedient hearts. An audio copy of today's message entitled The Obedient Heart is available for you. Simply call us toll free 1-800-488-1888. Request today's message by name, The Obedient Heart, or simply ask for message number R15-23.

Additional messages by Dr. Barnhouse are available for you to listen to via the internet. Visit us online at alliancenet.org. The Bible declares that every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. But what are the implications of the Lordship of Jesus Christ for our lives today? We would like to make available to you a free CD message called Jesus is Lord by the great British theologian and pastor, Dr. John R. W. Stott.

Dr. Stott preached this powerful message at one of our first Philadelphia conferences on Reformed theology, and it's our pleasure to offer it to you free of charge. Ask for your free CD copy of Jesus is Lord 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 Boyce, and Every Last Word, featuring the teaching of Dr. Philip Graham Ryken. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible comes to you through the generous gifts of our listeners. If you have benefited from the broadcast and would like it to continue, please prayerfully consider a donation to help us keep this ministry on the air.

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When you contact us, be sure and 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 Boyce, Martin Lloyd Jones, and Philip Graham Ryken. Thanks for listening today.

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