Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

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

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: The day will come when the Lord Jesus will rise from his father's throne, lay aside the robes of his priestly mediation, and gird the sword of divine justice. Then he will come forth, accompanied by all the hosts of heaven, and he will do all that the prophets have spoken. He will establish his kingdom with a force which Daniel likened to that of a great stone, which falls upon the feet of the earthly image, crushes it to powder, and then grows rapidly until it dominates every phase of life on earth.

Choir: Thy Word is good for God He gave truth is revealed correct and straight it by Him we can understand your truth. The word is all the Christian needs to grow in grace and to produce.

Introducer: 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 will be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled What Is This Kingdom. As Jesus hung on the cross, blood pouring from the wounds covering his body, he looked nothing like a majestic, triumphant king. Yet one of the thieves crucified alongside Jesus said to him, "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Jesus responded to the man's faith in his coming kingdom with a glorious promise of eternal paradise.

What does the Bible teach us about the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ? 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, What Is This Kingdom?

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto the our Father and our God and in the Holy Spirit. Thou art our God, and there is none like unto thee. Thou hast made our Lord Jesus Christ to be king of kings and Lord of lords. And we know that he shall someday come, take his power and reign. While we wait, aliens in this world which crucified our Savior. We would never forget that we are thy subjects, as well as thy children. And we give thee the glad allegiance of our hearts. Thou art our God and our king.

And we delight to pray, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, in me as it is in heaven. We pray this in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

In our study of the Epistle to the Romans, we now come to a phrase and a verse which will occupy us for several weeks. The kingdom of God is not meat or drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. The kingdom of God. The phrase rings in our ears, and if we've gone very far in spiritual knowledge, it must ring in our hearts like the clapper of a bell, calling us to worship, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God.

We look into human history and see the parade of human kings pass across the pages. There they go. How great men thought that they were. Proud Nebuchadnezzar, and the golden king of Babylon. How great this king imagined himself to be. But when he was dead, and the Lord God Almighty was about to rend the kingdom from his grandson Belshazzar, it was Daniel who was chosen to deliver the epitaph, which is the story of every kingdom of man which has ever been upon earth.

Oh, king, Daniel said to the quaking man who had seen the divine handwriting on the wall, "The Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar, your father, kingship and greatness and glory and majesty. And because of the greatness that he gave him, all peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him, whom he would, he slew, and whom he would, he kept alive. Whom he would, he raised up, and whom he would, he put down."

But when his heart was lifted up and his spirit was hardened, so that he dealt proudly, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and his glory was taken from him. He was driven from among men, and his mind was made like that of a beast, and his dwelling was with the wild asses. He was fed grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven until he knew that the Most High God rules the kingdom of men and sets over it whom he will.

That very night, Belshazzar was slain, and Darius the Mede reigned in his stead. Sic transit gloria mundi. Thus passes this world's glory.

And that's the course of all the kingdoms in human history. God allows men to have power. They grow proud, they think that the power is derived from themselves, then they must go down to the dust of death. But the kingdom of God is forever. What is this kingdom? A great many of the difficulties surrounding this question can be resolved if we take the time to find out what the Bible has to say about the words that are used to give us the idea of the kingdom of God.

It is a matter of so much importance that I have noted every verse in the Bible which refers to any aspect of the kingdom of God, and have collated all the references with their context and with each other. In addition, I have weighed most carefully all that has been given to us in Kittel's giant study of the New Testament vocabulary, especially Gerard von Rad's study of the kingdom teaching in the Old Testament, and Carl Ludwig Schmidt's exhaustive study of the doctrine in the New Testament.

Although I differ sharply with them on certain points, because they do not approach the Bible as conceived and set forth by God alone, I am much indebted to them. I had to begin this study with complete freshness, setting aside all preconceived and previously held positions, as though I were studying the subject for the first time.

God chose the people of Israel for his own purpose and for his glory. He set up a form of government by which he was to rule the people through his priests. But the people sinned, and he had to turn his face away from them. They immediately were in trouble and at war with the people who surrounded them. They recognized that they were defeated because the Lord did not work for them when they were separated from him.

They began to believe that they would be better off if they had a king, like the neighboring tribes. They came to Samuel and asked for a king. The request displeased Samuel, and he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, "Hark to the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Now then, hearken to their voice."

"Only you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king, who shall reign over them." Although Samuel described the severity of the despotism which a king would bring to them, the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel, and they said, "No, but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may govern us, and go out before us and fight our battles."

It was in such circumstances, kingship came to Israel. Men preferred a human ruler to the divine ruler. Men have always wanted self-rule instead of submitting to God. But God is full of grace, and just at this time, he showed the eternal purpose which he had had from the beginning.

He was going to bless the universe by means of his own son, the Savior King. And so, he made a covenant with David. This covenant is the basis for all of the teaching in the scriptures concerning the kingdom of God in any and all of its manifestations. Through Nathan the prophet, the divine word came to David. We read, "Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house."

"When your days are fulfilled, and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son. When he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you."

"And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever." Now, this covenant of the eternal kingdom is repeated and sealed in many places in the scriptures. One example from the Psalms, and one from the prophets will be enough. In Psalm 89, we read, "I have found David my servant. With my holy oil I have anointed him, so that my hand shall ever abide with him. My arm also shall strengthen him."

"And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. My steadfast love, I will keep for him forever, and my covenant will stand firm for him. I will establish his line forever, and his throne as the days of the heavens. I will not remove from him my steadfast love, or be false to my faithfulness. I will not violate my covenant, or alter the word that went forth from my lips."

"Once for all, I have sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David. His line shall endure forever. His throne as long as the sun before me. Like the moon it shall be established forever. It shall stand firm while the skies endure."

In Jeremiah, God again links his covenant with the heavens. Thus says the Lord, "If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night will not come at their appointed time, then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the descendants of David my servant."

It's almost astonishing that the great German philologians who explained the Hebrew concepts so clearly, stumble and fall in one important matter. They show that there will be a redeemer king. But their problem arises through misunderstanding those passages which speak of the kingdom of Messiah and the kingdom of Jehovah. Von Rad in Kittel says, "It is clear, however, that the hope of a Messiah is by no means paramount in the Old Testament, but occurs relatively seldom in it."

"There is much more evidence for the belief in another supernatural kingship which directs the present and the future, namely, the sovereignty of Yahweh." Oh, if only von Rad had realized that the Messiah is none other than Jehovah himself. If that had been, then the difficulty would be resolved.

I therefore will take the rich explanations of von Rad and Schmidt and telescope them into one explanation: the kingdom of the Messiah is the kingdom of the Lord Jehovah, which is also the kingdom of David. There is but one kingdom. In the Old Testament, but one kingdom is foreseen. For the writers of the Old Testament, Jehovah's sovereignty and kingdom were already existing, even though there were enemies which had not yet been put down.

The coronation Psalms are all prophetic. They could be used in the present for the enthronement of any earthly son of David, but they will also be most valid when the kingdoms of this earth become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. The exact nature of Jehovah's kingdom can easily be traced through the prophecies of the Old Testament. The Lord is to be, first of all, king of Israel. And through this people, he is to be king of the world.

There is no hope for this world apart from Israel. And there is no hope for Israel apart from her God. Jehovah, the Lord Jesus, is to reign over the whole earth. To have his throne in Jerusalem and be worshipped there by all peoples. From the passages that describe Jehovah as king, we go on to those which describe his kingdom.

I hold, of course, that the Old and New Testaments form one book, a complete entity, and that both are given to us by God. The different words used for kingdom in the two Testaments, therefore, have a common origin. They were selected by God from the vocabularies of men in order to communicate truth to us.

The general term for kingdom, therefore, must be the same in all parts of the scripture. Although we shall see most importantly that there are different aspects of this kingdom. In both the Hebrew word Malkuth and the Greek word Basileia, we find the same divine revelation. Schmidt in Kittel is most helpful at this point. The word which we most frequently translate as kingdom, realm, originally meant only the being, the essence, the situation of a king.

Since it refers to a king, it's best to think in terms of his dignity, his sovereignty. But there's a second meaning of the word which flows inevitably from the first. The dignity of a king shows itself in the territory over which he rules, in his sway or dominion. This is a lesser meaning, certainly, since it relates to what is controlled and ruled, rather than to the dignity or power of the one who rules. In the Bible, both meanings are found.

The Lord God Almighty, Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the sovereign Lord of the universe. His kingdom, the kingdom of God, includes heaven, earth, and hell, and anything else that there may be. There is no being who is not subject to God. This includes Satan. We state this in its most absolute form.

This thought must be considered as being ultimate and final. God runs all things. God runs hell. God runs Moscow. God runs Washington. God runs the labor unions. The midgets who swarm around these various stages think that they are pulling the ropes, but all they are doing is inside the pattern which the sovereign king has set.

And when his moment comes, he will bring to an end their prancings, and all the universe will acknowledge that he alone is God, and that he alone is able to establish righteousness and bring peace and joy to hearts. And he will do it as easily for all of the kingdoms of this world as he did it for Nebuchadnezzar, in the story with which we introduced this study.

How great these words, until you have learned that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will. Oh, how we must praise him, we who already bow to his Lordship. This small outline of the current situation already shows that there are different aspects in the divine kingship.

One of the very revealing verses of the prophecy of Daniel contains references to three different aspects of rule and dominion. After the presentation of the great image with the head of gold and the feet of iron and clay, and the revelation that the image depicts a succession of earthly rulers, God reveals the following. "And in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people."

"It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever." Here we see first, the earthly kingdoms that are at enmity with God. Second, the great kingdom of God in heaven and the future kingdom of God which is in heaven at the present moment. And third, the localized aspect of that kingdom as it shall be brought down and enforced, imposed on this present evil world.

Now, perhaps no aspect of Bible revelation is more hated. The theological schemes which have been devised to get rid of this idea. Oh, they are many and varied. On the one hand, we find those who make a complete denial of any earthly kingdom, and who with effrontery rob Israel of all her promises, and make God's oath to David of no value.

And who seek to substitute Christendom for the kingdom. The fact that many of these no-kingdom people are strong supporters of the great fundamental doctrines concerning the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ does not help matters. I'm sometimes inclined to believe that we should be harder on such doctors of error than on the men who openly deride and flout the word of God.

For the latter can be dealt with by quoting plainly their flagrant and openly confessed denials. For they say, "We just do not believe the Bible." But those who make a complete denial of any earthly kingdom, write books in vigorous defense of inspiration and revelation, and then explain away with their vagaries the simple, stark and very literal announcements concerning God's definite purpose to bring his kingdom down from heaven and establish it on earth.

On the other hand, there are those who hold that there will be a kingdom of God upon this earth, and that we who are within the church today are the builders, if not quite the architects of that kingdom. This idea dominated the theology of the 19th century. But as time goes on, fewer and fewer men are willing to look our world in the face and hold that Satan is bound, his force ended, and the power which was given to the church sufficient for the triumph of God.

Satan is not yet bound. The Lord Jesus still sits upon the throne of his father, carrying on his ministry of praying for the believers while they endure conflict as his ambassadors on earth. But the day will come when the Lord Jesus will rise from his father's throne, lay aside the robes of his priestly mediation, and gird the sword of divine justice.

Then he will come forth, accompanied by all the hosts of heaven. And he will do all that the prophets have spoken. He will establish his kingdom with a force which Daniel likened to that of a great stone, which falls upon the feet of the earthly image, topples it, crushes it to powder, and then grows rapidly until it dominates every phase of life on earth.

This was foretold by our Lord himself. We read in Luke 19 that as they heard these things, Jesus proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. He said, therefore, "A noble man went into a far country to receive a kingdom and then returned." That he was talking about himself is evident.

He was saying that he was the king, and that the kingdom was in heaven with the Father. He was not going to establish it at that time. He was going back to heaven, where he would receive the kingdom, and then he would come back as king and rule the earth in strictest judgment.

Perhaps the last parable that Jesus ever used was in the temple after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In it, he taught the same truth. A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants, and went to another country for a long while. This is certainly the vineyard of this earth. The Lord God is certainly the planter. He has gone into that other country, that fair country for a long while.

But in the remainder of the parable, he described how the tenants mistreated all the messengers that were sent to them, and finally, how they killed the son with the thought that they could seize the inheritance for themselves. But he announced that the lord of the vineyard will come and destroy these tenants. And when he does, he shall establish his full dominion in complete righteousness.

This is a subject at which we must stop at the present moment, and we shall hope, the Lord willing, to see more in our next study, the kingdom of God as it shall come upon this earth. And our God and Father, we pray thee that the Holy Spirit shall take these great truths to us. We acknowledge that thou art our king and our God. There is none like unto thee. And we pray, as so often we pray, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in me as it is in heaven. And we give thee the glory through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Introducer: The kingdom of God is a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. It is the everlasting inheritance of all who come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith. We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled, What Is This Kingdom? To listen to additional studies 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. Request What Is This Kingdom, or simply ask for message number R14-29. We would also like to make available to you a free CD copy of Dr. Francis Schaeffer's message entitled, What Difference Does An Errancy Make? 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 An Errancy 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 An Errancy 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 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 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 Dr. 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.

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