Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: God would never have had to say, "Do not lie to one another," if there were not believers who continued to tell lies after they had been born again. God would never have had to say, "Let him that stole steal no more," if there were not believers who continued to steal after they had been born again. God would never have had to say, "This is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication," if there were not believers who continued to commit fornication after being born again.

Singers: God's Word is good for godly gain, to teach, rebuke, correct, and train, equipped by him, we then pursue the work God has for us to do. God's Word is all the Christian needs to grow in grace and do good deeds.

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 "Works of Darkness." Years ago, a well-known minister was approached by a woman after one of his sermons. She lavishly praised and complimented him for his powerful preaching and godly character. The minister replied, "Madam, if you knew me as I really am, you would want to spit in my face."

The wise man of God well knew the sinful heart of man and the wicked deeds that even mature Christians can commit when we fall out of fellowship with God. How can we learn to put aside the works of darkness and grow towards maturity in Christ? The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible, Romans chapter 13, we're looking at verses 12 through 14. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled "Works of Darkness."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto the hour Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. Thou hast saved us by Thy love and grace, and hast called us to become like Thyself in holiness and righteousness. May we look at life in the light of eternity, so that we shall be willing to put off the things of the flesh and to glorify Thee in our bodies and our spirits. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Savior God, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

In more than 30 years on the radio and in my own pulpit, I have never before preached a sermon mentioning specific sins by name. I've never preached a sermon against drunkenness. I've never preached a sermon against adultery, naming these things by name. But now, in the course of our studies in Romans, we come to a verse where God names certain sins by name. And since we preach on everything we find in a book when we are giving an exposition of the book, we face this hard sentence and we preach on it.

The phrase is found in the close of the 13th chapter of Romans. "Let us then cast off the works of darkness. Let us conduct ourselves not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires." The 13th chapter of Romans closes with a great exhortation to Christian living, following the great declaration concerning the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He is coming back again. The time in which we live is the day of salvation, but it is also the night of this earth's rejection of our Lord. However, this night is far gone, and the bright day that will be ushered in by Christ's return is at hand. In the light of the return of Christ, we are to live for Christ. This living is described both in negative and positive terms, under the figure of taking off dirty garments and putting on clean ones.

We shall look at the negative aspects first and, the Lord willing, in our next study at the positive aspects. It is heart-wrenching to be forced to begin with such a terrible admission, but this paragraph addressed to believers tells us some of the things of which we are capable. We must not forget that it is possible to discover what some people do by the laws that are passed in an attempt to stop them.

Historians have pointed out that more than 50 laws were passed in a single century in Athens to keep people from slicing the edges from the gold and silver coins made of soft metal that circulated in that day. The collections of ancient coins that have come down to us reveal that almost every coin in circulation in the ancient world had been whittled by people who evidently thought that if they took enough scrapings from the coins that passed through their hands, they would have enough metal to make another coin. The laws prove that the practice existed.

In our own country, we have the same proof in the number of laws which have been passed to regulate the operation of automobiles. In 1900, there did not exist even one law against traveling at 30 miles an hour. The simple reason was that nobody in the world had yet driven more than 30 miles an hour. But as men reached higher and higher speeds, the laws were made to meet the new conditions. The wrecks in the automobile junkyards prove the sins of the drivers and the need for the law.

Now, in the same way, we learn what sins can be committed by Christians by reading the commands of the Holy Spirit against these things. God would never have had to say, "Do not lie to one another," if there were not believers who continued to tell lies after they had been born again. God would never have had to say, "Let him that stole steal no more," if there were not believers who continued to steal after they had been born again.

God would never have had to say, "This is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication," if there were not believers who continued to commit fornication after being born again. Unfortunately, this list could be prolonged to show that believers are capable of committing any sin in the calendar, even after they have believed in God and have been covered by the atonement that is in Christ Jesus.

This brings us face to face with the teaching put forth in some quarters of Christendom to the effect that becoming a Christian brings the believer into a state where he no longer sins. From long study of the Bible, I am convinced that the Word of God teaches no such thing; that it teaches, in fact, the very opposite. I have already shown that believers whose salvation is taken for granted are confronted by the Holy Spirit with exhortations to stop lying, stealing, and immorality.

The last of these, indeed, is both preceded and followed by clear-cut statements that the words are addressed to brethren who have already taken the first steps in the Christian life and who are exhorted to do so more and more. They are contrasted with the unsaved Gentiles and are, therefore, saved men and women. They are not being exhorted to salvation, justification; they are being exhorted to sanctification. Finally, it is said that they have already been given the Holy Spirit.

Now, this should be enough, but some people have not distinguished between sin and sins. The difference is the same as poison in a bloodstream and the outbreak of a boil. Poison in the bloodstream is like sin. The outbreak in a boil is a particular committing of a particular sin. Now, these are quite different in the Bible. Sin is dealt with by our first faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and sins are dealt with in our day-by-day dealings with God through the Holy Spirit applying the work of Christ to our hearts.

And thus it is that these people who have not distinguished between sin and sins weary themselves in a legalistic pursuit of a fancied perfection. This removes them from the path of grace and makes true holiness of living impossible. I wish that it were possible at this point to insert once more all that I have written concerning this subject while treating the 6th to the 8th chapters of Romans.

Before passing on, however, I make but one further statement about the man who believes that it is possible to go through some experience that leads him into a state of sinlessness. Eventually, he gets to the place where he believes that what he is doing is not sin. And this lowers his views of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of sin. Having said this, we now return to the formal exhortation in our text. Six items are listed under the general heading of works of darkness which believers are to cast off, and we are told that we are not to make provision for them.

These works of the flesh are: reveling, drunkenness, debauchery, licentiousness, quarreling, and jealousy. Phillips in his paraphrase reduces the number to four, but he sets them forth in such bold language that we may well profit from the interpretation. His work reads, "The night is nearly over; the day has almost dawned. Let us therefore fling away the things that men do in the dark. Let us arm ourselves for the fight of the day. Let us live cleanly as in the daylight, not in the delights of getting drunk or playing with sex, nor yet in quarreling or jealousies. Let us be Christ's men from head to foot and give no chance to the flesh to have its fling."

The older version speaks first of rioting, the newer revision of reveling. The Greek word originally spoke of a festal procession in honor of the god of wine. Then the word took on a bad meaning which indicated carousing and orgiastic feasts. The Christian is to have nothing to do with these things. Practically, this means that no Christian should attend functions where sin is glorified and the base passions are aroused.

The believer in Christ will not smear himself with the smut of this world, calling it humor. And a Christian will make discriminating use of the radio and television, giving ear and eye to those things which will make him a stronger Christian. The second, the companion word in our text, is drunkenness. The Christian, as Paul shows the Corinthians, lives in perfect liberty and is not under legalistic rules. But at the same time, his liberty does not permit him to indulge in the works of the flesh.

To get drunk is a definite sin, and there can be no argument about it in the light of the teaching of the Word of God. It is very sad that this exhortation must be addressed to those who have named the name of Jesus Christ, but the scripture shows that believers in the early church became drunk with the wine of the communion table. And there are many people today whose hands are so shaky from too many drinks taken on Saturday night that they have difficulty holding the communion cup on Sunday morning.

Against this practice, the voice of God thunders, "Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit." And it should be noted that the things which men think they will get from excessive use of alcohol are never produced by that intoxicant, while the things most desired and sought after can be obtained truly only by the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit will turn an introvert into an outgoing, warm personality; will make a miser properly generous; will make a weak man strong, bold, and courageous. A man who seeks for these things in drink will always be deceived, will never get what he starts for, and will have a headache when it's all over. The Holy Spirit produces blessings with no hangover. The third work of the flesh against which the believer is specifically warned is that which is called chambering or debauchery.

The lexicon defines it as sexual excesses. Ministers who have the confidence of both parents and young people know the terrible effect of the overemphasis which our nation places on sex. It is safe to say that if the battle of sex is lost in the minds and lives of young people, they have lost the battle of life. The converse is also true, that if the question of sex is brought into its proper place, the victory of life is largely won.

The great divorce rate in our country is in no small measure due to the fact that young people enter marriage with a false concept of the place of sex in married life. The New Testament has a great deal to say about the glories and abuse of sex. In his first epistle to the Thessalonians, Paul writes a wonderful paragraph that is somewhat of a commentary on our text.

And Phillips renders it, "We beg and pray you by the Lord Jesus, that you continue to learn more and more of the life that pleases God, the sort of life we told you about before. You will remember the instructions we gave you then in the name of the Lord Jesus. God's plan is to make you holy, and that entails first of all a clean cut with sexual immorality. Every one of you should learn to control his body, keeping it pure and treating it with respect, and never regarding it as an instrument for self-gratification, as do pagans with no knowledge of God.

"You cannot break this rule without in some way cheating your fellow man, and you must remember that God will punish all who do offend in this manner, and we have warned you how we have seen this work in our experience of life. The calling of God is not to impurity, but to the most thorough purity. And anyone who makes light of the matter is not making light of a man's ruling, but of God's command. It is not for nothing that the Spirit God gives us is called the Holy Spirit."

The following word, wantonness, licentiousness, or lasciviousness, is a near synonym to the preceding word. Perhaps it is put in here to shut the mouths of any who would argue that they are not guilty of one form of a given sin. We might well look at the whole text and say that God has commanded us to abstain from any form of physical excesses. The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which we have of God, and we are not our own; we are God's.

For this reason, we are to glorify God in our bodies. We are to present them a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. Our text carries the added incentive that the coming of the Lord is near, and because we are about to see Him, we must give special thought to living a holy life. I would like to add that when God says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," it's not because God is a puritanic old man up in heaven trying to keep you from enjoying life.

When God says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," it's because God knows what adultery will do to any man or any woman. The same reason is involved when we tell our children, "Do not play with matches." It's not that we do not want our children to enjoy the fun of having fire, but that they have to learn that fire burns. In the course of my ministry, I have had in my office, I suppose add them all up and it would run into several hundreds of men or women or couples, and sometimes two couples together, where the lives and homes had been hit by this terrible sin.

And if you could see, as I have seen, what this sin does to the fabric of people, you would see why God hates it. Because God has created us in such a way that if we live cleanly and are in true marriage, enjoying all the wonders and privileges and the pleasures of marriage, that this builds the life and strengthens the man. While if these rules are violated and if we attempt to move in some other direction, this is going to tear into the fabric of life and make you eligible to see the psychiatrist.

But when you remain filled with the Holy Spirit, God can take these very things which debauch in one direction and cause them to be factors in your upbuilding. The next two items against which the Lord warns believers have to do with our Christian attitudes. It is sad to have to remind believers that they must not quarrel and strive with one another. The Lord Jesus Christ said, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another."

But too frequently, Christians are known for their disputes rather than for their kindness to one another. The Greek word translated quarreling is the same as that translated debate in Romans 1:29, where God describes reprobates as full of envy, murder, and debate. In the light of the second coming of Christ, the believer is to avoid these attitudes. Paul wrote to Timothy, "Turn your back on the turbulent desires of youth, and give your positive attention to goodness, faith, love, and peace, in company with all those who approach God in sincerity.

"But have nothing to do with silly and ill-informed controversies which lead inevitably, as you know, to strife. And the Lord's servant must not be a man of strife. He must be kind to all, ready and able to teach. He must have patience and the ability gently to correct those who oppose his message. He must always bear in mind the possibility that God will give them a different outlook and that they may come to know the truth. They may come to their senses and be rescued from the power of the devil by the servant of the Lord and set to work for God's purposes."

The last of the evils that the Christian is here warned against is envying or jealousy. The Greek gives us our modern word zeal, used in both a good and a bad sense. Here, of course, it is evil. We frequently run across examples of this evil thing in the writings of Christian leaders who feel themselves called to protect and defend God against some whom they have judged to be false teachers. One instance recently shocked me greatly.

One writer, an outstanding Christian leader, quoted another seeking to attack him through his own statements. But he printed a paragraph supposedly written by the man whom he was attacking and actually lied about him by quoting only a part of what had been written. For the first man wrote a paragraph and put it in quotation marks as though he were quoting the second man, but he formed his paragraph out of a sentence from the 12th paragraph, a sentence from the 14th paragraph, omitting the first 11 words of the sentence and a complete phrase later in the sentence.

There were no dots to show that he had left out part of the passage, and the result was that he made a heretic out of a Christian brother. Worst of all, when the second man pointed out to him how badly he had been treated, the first man refused to rectify the error and acknowledge it publicly, thus leaving his readers under a false impression that actually amounted to base slander. Now, these things ought not to be.

Certain religious papers seem to exist like the scandal sheets of the world, to attack godly men whose only crime is their failure to agree with all the whims of the attacker. In the light of the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, believers are commanded to abandon such attitudes and to live in peace and love with all who profess to be disciples of Jesus, the eternal Son of God.

Finally, the chapter ends with the clause, "Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires." How do we make provision for the flesh? In the light of the six words used here, a believer is to abstain from anything that might lead him to transgress in the points that are set forth here. He is not to attend revels where base passions will be fed. He is to abstain from reading the pornographic material that appears on our newsstands.

He is to turn his eyes away from all that glorifies sin. He is to see to it that evil does not enter his home. Christian women are not to dress in the indecent fashion that excites a man's thoughts to adultery. They are to accept God's verdict that the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit is in the sight of God of great price. No provision whatsoever is to be made for the flesh.

Craig writes of this, "We no longer find it necessary so to order our plans as to make provision for satisfying the clamors of unregenerate instincts. It does not follow, of course, that physical passions are ruthlessly suppressed. That kind of attempted solution usually reaps its own revenge. The essential thing is that in Christ, the proper balance of life is restored and the fierce tyranny of lawless instinct is overthrown."

Now, in our next study, the Lord willing, we shall proclaim the positive side of the truth that is presented here: that God has given us Christ to be our life and that He does offer to come in to be our new life and to run our lives for us. And we pray Thee, our God and Father, that Thou shalt work holiness in the lives of Thy children who listen in this hour. We ask it in Jesus Christ's name. Amen.

Guest (Male): Sexual immorality, drunkenness, debauchery, quarreling, and jealousy must have no place in the life of the child of God. We must make no provisions for the flesh to gratify its evil, sinful desires. We hope you have benefited from today's message by Dr. Barnhouse entitled "Works of Darkness." To listen to additional Bible teaching by Dr. Barnhouse, visit us online at alliancenet.org.

An audio copy of today's teaching is available by calling us toll-free: 1-800-488-1888. Today's message again is entitled "Works of Darkness," or simply request message number R13-18. We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled First Things First. If we are to experience peace and victory in the Christian life, we must have a firm grasp of the primary foundational concepts about God.

This six-chapter booklet focuses on spiritual priorities, including the Word of God, the lordship of Christ, witnessing, fellowship, and repentance. You will learn the tremendous benefit of putting first things first in your spiritual life. Ask for your free copy of First Things First 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 all 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 full list of radio stations carrying our programs, visit us online at alliancenet.org.

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Singers: The Bible has commanding words to do God's saving work on earth. It draws our souls from death to life, and rescues us from needless strife. Amazing gift, on earth so broad, the life-imparting Word of God.