Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

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

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Before anyone quarrels with the idea that God hides truth from some men, he should realize that the same principle involved is that which is used in a university for the selection of courses. The school will not allow a student to take Calculus Math 404 until he has had Algebra Math 102. Likewise, the Lord will not reveal advanced Bible knowledge 404 to the man who has refused the prerequisite, salvation ABC. Let us be sure that we are following the Lord Jesus Christ.

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 Parables: Secrets Revealed, Part 1. Classified documents marked top secret are not available to the general public. The information is only accessible to those with proper government clearance.

It is not for everyone to know the secrets of the kingdom of God. Only those who have trusted in Jesus Christ and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit can receive spiritual insight into His parables about the kingdom and begin to comprehend its mysteries. The Scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible, Romans chapter 14 and verse 17. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled The Parables: Secrets Revealed, Part 1.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ we come unto Thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. With believers of all ages, we cry out to Thee as our Lord Jesus taught us to pray: Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

We long for the day when the kingdoms of this earth shall become Thy kingdom, O our Lord and Christ. And we ask Thee to hasten that day and to come quickly, that the miseries and sorrows and evils under which the whole creation groans may be brought to an end, and that true righteousness shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We continue our study in the kingdom of God. In our last study, we noted that when the Lord Jesus Christ began to speak in parables, He revealed to His disciples that He was presenting truth in this form because it would be understood by His true followers but not by others. He further stated that in these parables of the kingdom of heaven, He was revealing truths which had been kept secret since the foundation of the world.

Now, all other phases of the kingdom, the universal kingdom, the kingdoms of Satan and of men, the kingdom promised to David, and the spiritual kingdoms, were well known in the Old Testament. Now, something new has been added to the divine revelation. The parables of the 13th chapter of Matthew are an outline of what we call church history.

Events of the last 20 centuries can be understood by plunging into them from our own day and date and working back through history to the beginning of the church age. They also can be understood, perhaps even better, by plunging into them from the vantage point of Christ's announcement in these parables and moving forward through the centuries to note how the events accord with the promises. Of these parables, four were spoken in the open air beside the Sea of Galilee, where the 12 disciples were in the large audience, the great multitudes that gathered to hear Him.

The interpretation of the first of the parables was also given in the presence of the multitude. The Lord then dismissed the multitude and went into the house, followed by the disciples, who asked Him to explain the second parable. He gave the interpretation and added three more parables, and partly explained the seventh. There is no breath of explanation of the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth parables.

As I seek to present the meaning of these parables, I suggest to the reader as a member of an honest jury, that he must weigh the evidence and decide whether I am right in my interpretations. The main factor which must be kept in mind at all times is that it is wicked and sinful to adopt any interpretation of parables three, four, five, and six which contradicts our Lord's own interpretation of parables one and two. The least common honesty demands this.

If we do not accept this principle, there is no rule or method by which to arrive at truths. Christ was not presenting contradictory confusion, but a reasoned, balanced announcement of the course of the age which lay before Him and the centuries that now lie behind us. He first gave the parable of the sower. A man went forth to sow seed in varying types of soil.

At the edge of his field was a hard path, and some of the seeds fell upon it and were devoured by birds. Other seeds fell upon a soil that was shallow with underlying rocks. The soil was warm and the seed sprouted quickly, but the plant was scorched by the sun, since its roots were shallow. It soon withered. Still other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Finally, still other seeds fell on good ground, where the seed had a chance to root and grow. This produced good grain; in some cases, a hundred grains for one, others sixty for one, and others thirty for one.

Guest (Male 2): "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: After completing this parable, our Lord was asked why He spoke in parables. His answer showed the necessity of divine work in the heart before there could be spiritual understanding. From unbelievers would be taken away even the natural knowledge which they might use in other fields, so far as any application to spiritual problems is concerned. He then continued.

Guest (Male 2): "But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly I say unto you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you are seeing and never saw it, and to hear what you are hearing and never heard it."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: What they saw was Messiah standing in their midst, and what they heard was the proclamation that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. On one occasion, the Pharisees asked Him when the kingdom of God was coming. In line with His teaching in parables, Christ's answer was enigmatic so that some would not understand. Before anyone quarrels with the idea that God hides truth from some men, he should realize that the same principle involved is that which is used in a university for the selection of courses.

The school will not allow a student to take Calculus Math 404 until he has had Algebra Math 102. Likewise, the Lord will not reveal advanced Bible knowledge 404 to the man who has refused the prerequisite, salvation ABC. And so Jesus answered, "The kingdom of God comes not with observable show, for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you." The Revised Standard Version is infinitely superior to the King James Version at this point.

Certainly God's kingdom was not inside the hearts of these Pharisees who were seeking always to trick Him. But since He is God, King of kings, as He stood in their midst, His kingdom was there to be seen with eyes of faith. He used a similar truth in Matthew 13 to explain why He spoke in parables. In such a context, He said:

Guest (Male 2): "Hear then the parable of the sower."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Christ and all who proclaim His good news may be classified collectively as the sower. When the living word, the logos of His kingdom is preached, some hearts are so hard that they receive nothing, and the devil's birds snatch the seed away. A second class of hearers are those who hear the word as a novelty and receive it with joy.

But as soon as any persecution arises because of the word, they fall away because there is no root in them. They were never alive in Christ. They are described in John's epistle: "They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out, that it might be plain that they are all not of us."

The third class of hearers is composed of those who hear the word, but it is choked out by the cares of the world and the delight in riches. The fourth class, the true children of the kingdom, are those who hear it and in whom it finds root and grows until it produces fruit. Understood as a secret of the kingdom, this parable announces that the age which lay before them, 19 centuries of which now lie behind us, would be a seed-sowing age.

There is no hint of the conversion of the whole world by the preaching of the gospel. Rather, we are told that only part of the preaching will ever produce fruit. If the world is to be converted by the preaching of the gospel, there must arise a better generation of preachers than has yet appeared: better preachers than Christ and His disciples, better preachers than Savonarola, Luther, and Calvin, better preachers than Wesley, Moody, or Spurgeon, better preachers than any men of our day.

Throughout church history, there has been an enormous amount of preaching, but the result has always been the same: only some hearts are penetrated and produce fruit. It can readily be seen that this teaching does away with the interpretation which identifies the church as being the kingdom prophesied in the Old Testament. Some teach that the church takes the place of the kingdom that was offered to David and that it will grow and multiply until it fills the earth. But there is no biblical basis for their interpretation.

The second parable of the kingdom in its secret form is that of the wheat and the tares. It is the story of a man who planted a field of wheat and while he slept, an enemy came and sowed a false grain that looks like wheat when it first comes from the ground, and that looks like wheat as it grows and looks like wheat as it begins to head, but it never produces full-sized grain good for food. Instead, its head has little more than the bristles, and its seed is smaller than a pinhead.

As the two plants grew together, there were some differences which caused the servants to note what had happened, and they asked if they should pull up the blades of the imitation plant. The householder told them not to touch the field because they might uproot some of the true wheat. They were to let both grow together until the harvest, and at that time the reapers would gather the imitation wheat into bundles to be burned, but the true wheat would be gathered into his barn.

When He told this parable to the multitude, the Lord did not explain it because He knew the people would not understand. But after they were sent away and the Lord entered the house with His disciples, He told them the meaning of this parable. Christ Himself was the one who sowed the good seed. The field was the world. The good seed were the children of the kingdom.

The imitation wheat represented the children of the wicked one, and the sower of this evil group was the devil. The harvest is the close of the age. The reapers are the angels. The Lord will send His angels to make a great separation, separating the spiritual kingdom from the imitation, gathering out all causes of sin and all evildoers, casting them into the fire. And then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of the Father.

Now, there is an error against which we must guard. Some teachers make the children of the kingdom to be no one but the Jews of the Old Testament, or Jews who come back after the church age during the great tribulation to acknowledge Christ. Bullinger goes so far as to say that Jesus originally spoke in Aramaic and that He used the actual phrase the kingdom of heaven, which he claims Matthew was divinely guided in retaining, while in the other gospels the figure was translated as being what it also meant: the kingdom of God.

To such an extent will these dispensationalists go to make the Bible fit their theories. But the fact that Christ told Nicodemus that the new birth gave entrance to the kingdom of God, while the same truth is spoken of as entrance into the church of Jesus Christ, proves that the church is the spiritual part of the Lord's kingdom today. This does not deny the difference which exists between Israel and the church, nor does it deny the reality of the future kingdom which is to come upon this earth.

There have been those who think the simple explanation which we have given must be false because, they say, there are three groups here: the world, the good seed, and the imitation wheat. But the presence of these three elements is precisely what is indicated by church history, as well as that which has been definitely prophesied. The Lord Jesus Christ sowed the good seed in the world. There were 12 disciples, next about 120 believers in the first of Acts, and then 3,000 at Pentecost, and then a spreading growth. These all are the children of the kingdom planted in the world.

The unbelievers of the world are not children of the kingdom, nor are they the children of the devil. Christ prayed the Father concerning His own which are in the world, saying, "I have manifested thy name to the men thou gavest me out of the world." Now, just as believers were once in the world, so the children of the devil were once in the world. The great mass of unbelievers are children of wrath and children of disobedience, as we read in Ephesians 2:2.

Just as we cease being children of wrath and become children of God, children of the kingdom, by the new birth, so the children of the devil cease being mere children of wrath and become something much worse by a sort of monstrous miscarriage. A pagan from a tribe of Africa or from some other part of the world is a child of wrath, but not a child of the devil.

A child of the devil is a person who pretends to be a Christian, standing alongside true believers, but denying the great truths of the virgin birth of Christ, His absolute deity, His sacrificial atonement, His bodily resurrection. Christ did not speak to the ordinary crowd, but to those who had made an outward pretense of believing in Him. It was soon revealed that they did not believe in Him at all, and when they saw the thrust of His teaching, they answered, "Are we not right in saying that you're a Samaritan and have a demon?"

We conclude then that the Lord took men out of the world and by means of the divine begetting with the supernatural seed of the word, turned them into the good seed, the children of the kingdom. The devil also persuaded some men out of the world to become his children and to be apostates and counterfeits of the true children of the kingdom.

We will not have to look very far to discern the present reality of this division and to see the true and the false mixed together. We should be very careful to note, however, that the Lord refused His disciples the right to decide which was which. What He says in effect is that some of His children look so much like the children of the devil that the disciples could not tell them apart. Let the divisive spirits of our time pause with great care before deciding that some who profess Jesus Christ as both Lord and Savior are really children of the wicked one.

I want you to note that this divisive spirit in no small measure rises out of the ultra-dispensational interpretation of the Bible. For when they come to the conclusion that the Jews are the children of the kingdom and that the church is a heavenly people, which is true of course in one sense, they then come to the place where they're forced to make a separation and go forth and found new denominations that are totally pure. This of course is absurd in the light of what the Lord Jesus Christ taught. In fact, it is definite disobedience to Him.

The problem confronting us in the third parable is quite different because Christ did not give even a hint of its meaning. And yet we're bound to admit that He did not contradict Himself. He does not use parable three to deny what He taught in parables one and two. Another parable He put before them, saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it is grown, it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

When I was a boy, I was taught out of the Sunday school literature, and not out of the Bible, that the mustard seed was the gospel and that the Lord planted it in the world as an insignificant seed that grew, first into a bush and finally into a tree, so that in the end the birds of the air come and lodge in its branches. And so the kingdom of God ended in triumph. We're told of the spreading branches of the tree, hospitals in Africa, schools in China, and so on.

The great disadvantage of such interpretation is that it makes nonsense of Christ's own interpretation of the first two parables. There the seed-sowing process was to continue and only part of the seed was to fall on good ground. Furthermore, the devil would plant imitation wheat to grow along with the true wheat until the end of the age. This teaching does not admit the idea of the conversion of the world by the preaching of the gospel.

Rather, we see that the kingdom in mystery is to have the good and the evil growing together till the end. The Lord planned it this way. We do not know why. But as the world looks upon the church and sees it from without, it sees a fantastic mixture. Only the eye of God can see the true in the midst of the false that grow together till the harvest.

Now, there is a legitimate interpretation of this third parable of the mustard seed which does not contradict Christ's teaching but which parallels it and expands it. The secret of its interpretation is in the element of abnormality. What was meant to be a shrub became a tree. In all the history of horticulture, there has never been a mustard seed that grew into a tree. Portola, who explored California in 1769, saw mustard growing so high that a horse and rider could hide in it. Nevertheless, it was only a shrub. It had neither trunk nor branches.

The Lord Jesus was describing an abnormal plant. Put in other terms, it might read: a gardener planted a rosebush and went on a trip, and when he returned, he found that it had become a California redwood. Now, surely our Lord is describing the abnormal growth of Christianity and Christendom in general. He planted a mere 12 disciples, instructed the early church to ordain seven deacons and then to ordain elders in every place.

But immediately the abnormal growth began. How utterly contrary to the simplicity of biblical Christianity that there should be church organizations with pomp and circumstance, men bowing before men, even prostrating themselves before ecclesiastical figures. Surely the shrub has become a tree when such procedures become common. And are not the birds of the air the same birds of the first parable who devoured the good seed that was sown on the hard ground by the wayside?

And does this not warn that unsaved men, even children of the wicked one, would come into places of power and domination and lord it over God's heritage, as Peter admonished the elders not to do? How well Milton described the birds in the branches of the tree in his Lycidas, when he wrote of those who "creep and intrude and climb into the fold."

When Christ said, "The kingdom of God comes not with observable show," He was setting forth the true nature of the humble thing He meant His church to be in the midst of the world. Dean Alford makes a deeply spiritual comment on this passage: "The kingdom of God was begun among them, and continues thus making its way in the world, without observation of men; so that whenever men can say, 'lo here' or 'lo there', whenever great revivals or triumphs of the faith can be pointed to, they stand self-condemned as not belonging to that kingdom."

Thus we see that every such marked event in the history of the church is by God's own hand, as it were, blotted and marred so as not to deceive us into thinking that the kingdom has come. So it was at the Pentecostal era, so at that of Constantine, so at the Reformation.

Now, in putting forth this explanation of the parable, we cannot insist too strongly that no man is to judge within the church of Jesus Christ. If any man says that he believes in Jesus as Lord and Savior, you and I may not go into a deep ecclesiastical examination of the man to find out what he is saying. Of course, if he writes in definite terms that he does not believe that Jesus is God or that salvation is not of the cross, then of course we know indeed that he has become a child of the devil and is not merely a child of wrath.

Oh, how solemn these things are. Let us be sure that we are following the Lord Jesus Christ and judge no others. This is one of the most solemn truths in the Scripture and must call all who are spiritual to discern between what is of God and what is of the flesh or of the devil. The Lord willing in our next study, we will continue with the remaining parables in the chapter. And our Father, we ask Thee to bless the truth as it has been spoken and use it to Thy glory. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): In His parables, Jesus reveals the secrets and mysteries of the kingdom of God. As we come to Him in prayer and study His teachings, He will give us the spiritual insight and wisdom we seek. We hope you've benefited from today's message, The Parables: Secrets Revealed, Part 1. To listen to additional studies by Dr. Barnhouse, visit us online at AllianceNet.org.

An audio copy of today's message is available by calling us toll-free: 1-800-488-1888. Request The Parables: Secrets Revealed, Part 1, or simply ask for message number R14-32. At the heart of Dr. Barnhouse's ministry was the bedrock conviction that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God.

But many people believe that the Bible is just a man-made book of fantastic tales, or that it merely contains the Word of God mixed in with errors and human ideas. That's why we are making available to you a free CD copy of the message "What Difference Does Inerrancy Make?" by Dr. Francis Schaeffer. This powerful message reinforces the vital doctrine of biblical inerrancy and its critical importance to every area of your life. Ask for your free CD copy of "What Difference Does Inerrancy Make?" 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 broadcasts 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 listing of radio stations carrying our programs, visit our website at AllianceNet.org.

Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible comes to you through the generous gifts of listeners like you. 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. For more information or to make a contribution to further our work, contact us by calling toll-free: 1-800-488-1888. Again, that's 1-800-488-1888.

Write to us at Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Box 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19103. Visit us online at AllianceNet.org. Remember to request your 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.

Song Lyrics: The Bible has commanded words to do God's saving work.

To do God's saving work on earth which draws our souls from death to life and rescues us from needless strife.

Amazing gift on earth so high, the life-imparting Word of God.