Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

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

The man who sets himself up above the truth of God has really set himself up against God. The touchstone of all judgment will be the attitude of men toward the truth of God. There are those who treat the Bible lightly and who seem unaware of the position to which God has elevated it.

We who hold the truth in righteousness have a Bible that contains the entire revelation of God for our needs and that is in very truth, the Word of God. Not merely that it contains the Word of God, but that it is the Word of God, inerrant and eternal.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: God's word is good, for God we came. Truth teach, rebuke, correct and train. Equip us with him, we can know and do 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 outreach which has become known as Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible. The application of God's Word as taught by Dr. Barnhouse is as relevant today as when he first taught over the radio airwaves decades ago.

The message we will be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled, "Wrath Revealed." Imagine a dam that holds back a mighty river from a valley. The people in the valley can live in peace and security as long as the dam remains sturdy and strong. But if the dam suddenly breaks, it will unleash a powerful flood that will destroy everything in its path.

The patience of God is like a dam that holds back the mighty floodwaters of his wrath. One day his patience will end, and that dam will be removed. What can we do now to be safe in that day to come?

The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans chapter 1, and verse 18. Here once again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled, "Wrath Revealed."

Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto Thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. We would seek to be emptied channels in this hour, through which Thou mayest flow to the hearts and minds and wills of the listeners.

Would Thou bring us all to bow before Thee in a fresh way and acknowledge Thee, not only Thy justice, but Thy love. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

We are studying together in the first chapter of Romans. This chapter sets forth the Gospel as God's answer to the problems created by the sin and rebellion of men. In the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, and in the Gospel, the wrath of God is revealed, as we saw in our last study.

In the 18th verse, we read that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Now we should note first that while the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, that is from the faith of one believer to the faith of another man, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. We can tell men of grace and communicate faith to them, but the wrath is from heaven and is entirely God's province.

We have the privilege of announcing the one and the duty of announcing the other, but we can communicate only the righteousness. We are to forbear wrath. When we exercise our proper function of retaining sins, as every Christian may remit and retain sins, on the authority of the Word of God, we must understand that we are acting only as agents for the Lord. While when we remit sins, we are acting as agents and as channels.

The Lord Jesus said to us, "Whosoever sins you remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosoever sins you retain, they are retained." If a group of a dozen men should meet in an office in New York and decide to call themselves the Atomic Energy Corporation, and say that they now control atomic energy, it would be a claim that would be laughed at by the government and by the public, and these people would not even be allowed to set their feet upon the soil of Oak Ridge and the other atomic projects.

Every believer, whether called clergy or laity by men, it makes no difference. Every believer is gloriously authorized to tell those around us that their sins are remitted if they put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that their sins are still upon them if they reject the Lord Jesus Christ. And thus we remit and retain sins, and we do it every time we witness.

However, God from heaven is the channel of His own wrath. He will use angels in the work of judgment. There is no line in scripture which says that the bride is to send forth any wrath in this day of God's patience. In the future, we shall be associated with Him, even in the dashing of the nations in pieces.

But today, it is still the accepted time; it is still the day of salvation. The wrath of God is like the great waters impounded behind a dam. I can remember the first time I ever saw Hoover Dam. It has been thrown across the waters of the Colorado River, and these waters have backed up for scores of miles, and have penetrated into every little cove and valley.

Thus it has been with the wrath of God. The first time there was ever a sin committed, the wrath of God was stored up against that sin. As more men lived upon the earth, and as their hearts grew more wicked, and the outbreaks of their sin more violent, the store of wrath grew greater and greater, held back by the dam of God's patience.

God's patience, lying across the valley of His judgment like a great dam across the river. And in His eternal foreknowledge, God the Father foresaw all of the sin that would be committed after the time of Christ. Your sin and my sin. And He stored His wrath against it behind the dam of His patience.

And the wrath of God against sin that even today has not yet been committed is all stored up, waiting for the day when His patience shall come to its holy end. What a thing to contemplate, the patience of God. For thousands of years it held back His wrath. Only occasionally in the course of history did He stoop to dip His hand into the pent-up flood and pour a few drops of wrath upon some especially vicious outbreak of rebellion.

But for the most part, God seemed to overlook all of the sin of man in the centuries before the cross. It looked as if sin were condoned. Paul speaks of the fact that the times of ignorance were winked at. Now this is a figure of speech, striking in its form, but lights up the thought we are setting forth. The day of such seeming condoning is over.

The cross is the revelation of the fact that God really means business with this question of sin, and woe to the man who thinks otherwise. The Lord Jesus Christ came and stood before the dam of God's patience. There was placed the island of Calvary, on which the cross was erected. When Christ was made sin for us, He became a curse. For it is written, "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree."

This was the judicial basis whereby a just and holy God could put to death His sinless Son. In transgressing the law in even one point, the Savior became technically guilty of all, as we read in James 2:10. In that dark hour, the storm of God's wrath reached its peak. The sun grew dark, night fell upon the earth at noon. God broke down the dam of His patience, and the raging waves of wrath flooded upon the Lord Jesus.

All who had ever believed the Word of God about the shedding of the blood of the Lamb in the Old Testament, and all who ever would believe in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ in the ages since that day, were seen to be standing on Calvary with Christ. When the dam broke, the Lord Jesus Christ died.

Is it any wonder that the church breaks forth in song, "Beneath the cross of Jesus, I fain would take my stand. The shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land, a home within the wilderness, a rest upon the way, from the burning of the noontide heat and the burden of the day." "Oh, safe and happy shelter, oh, refuge tried and sweet. Oh, trysting place where heaven's love and heaven's justice meet." "As to the holy patriarch, that wondrous dream was given, so seems my Savior's cross to me, a ladder up to heaven." "There lies beneath its shadow, but on the farther side, the darkness of an awful grave that gapes both deep and wide. And there between us, stands the cross, two arms outstretched to save, like a watchman set to guard the way from that eternal grave."

And since God has done all this for us, since there has been the prodigality of love in our behalf, is it any wonder that He should reveal His wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men? Why does the Lord speak of these two qualities as evoking His wrath? The words in the original language show that they refer in the one case to acts against God, and in the other, to acts within the heart or against men.

It's strange to think of men committing acts against God, and yet it's a fact, for we see men crucifying Christ. When we see that, we can realize that man is capable of any indignity against his Creator. This is one of the reasons why the Lord Jesus came to earth. How else would the true depths of the nature of man be revealed? It was impossible for man to climb to heaven to fight against God. If men were to attack God directly, it would have to be by the willingness of God to allow Himself to be attacked.

And when the Word was made flesh to dwell among us, that fact immediately revealed what was in man. For hatred was manifested against Christ from the time of His birth, when Herod sought to have Him killed, lest there be some danger to his own power. Truly, "the carnal mind is enmity against God," even as He said.

And if men are capable of terrible acts against God, is it to be thought a wonder that they should be capable of terrible acts against one another? We have only to read the newspapers to know some of the capacities of the human heart. Daily, in all our great cities, there are crimes committed so terrible. Now, whatever you do, as you listen to these words, be sure to apply these truths to yourself.

If you draw back in horror and say that you have nothing to do with the terrible state of things described here, you defeat the purpose of the revelation. For God is wanting to tell you and everyone exactly what is our state by nature. You may see a meadow that is green and fair with wildflowers, and you may think that it's all beautiful. But a sheep herder knows that some fields have to be withheld from the sheep because of parasites in the soil that may not hurt the flowers but which will destroy the sheep.

And so it is with the human heart. You may appear like the green meadow to the outward onlooker, but God says that the soil of your heart is by nature, filled with all the parasites of unrighteousness which kill any growth Godward, and which must be dealt with only by redemption.

There is a paragraph in Newell's commentary on Romans that deserves quotation. He writes, "It will not only fail to help us, but will seriously harm us to study the awful arraignment of God against human sin, unless we apply it to ourselves, thereby discovering our own state by nature." Therefore, we have sought to make plain these terms which Paul uses in view of today's sin. Christendom is rapidly losing sin consciousness, which means losing God consciousness, which means eternal doom.

As it was in the days of Noah, and it came to pass in the days of Lot, they knew not. Because iniquity abounds, the love of many professing Christians is waxing cold. So we see a Sardis condition everywhere. A name to live while dead. On many faces, the horrid lack of spiritual life. The lightless, sightless eyes, the chill, the corpse-like chill of the lifeless, the unfeeling.

Therefore, let all who have ears to hear give the utmost attention to what God says about our state by nature. Do not apply the threefold, "God gave them up, God gave them up, God gave them up," that's found here in Romans 1. Do not apply it to the heathen, as most do. Behold, we are those of whom God says, "There is no distinction, all sinned and fell short of the glory of God. All are brought under the judgment of God."

Oh, saints, beware of the select circles, the "we are better" societies of pride. For all human beings are alike sinners. For the scripture shut up all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. The more you discover yourself to be a common sinner, the more you will realize God's uncommon grace.

And the more deeply you despair of man, the more deeply you despair of yourself, the more simple and easy it will be to rest in Christ and in His work of salvation for you. This text in the Epistle to the Romans concerning the revelation in the Gospel of the wrath of God from heaven is very interesting because it is one of the few references to judgment that is to be found in Paul's epistles.

Paul was a great preacher of the sovereign grace of God. The word hell is never found in Paul's writing. The doctrine of eternal punishment is peculiarly the doctrine of the Lord Jesus Christ. The one who is often referred to as the meek and lowly Jesus is the one who blazed forth most fiercely against the great outbreaks of iniquity and who announced most firmly that cities and individuals would be brought down to hell.

It's strange that the bitterest foes of the doctrine of judgment and eternal punishment frequently seek to take refuge in the doctrine of the love of God and the love of the Savior in order to promote their error. The fact is that the love of God and the love of the Savior are the surest guarantees of the wrath of God.

If a home has been infected with epidemic disease, a man might conceivably go back to it himself without thought of disinfecting the house. But if he's about to bring his bride to dwell in the house of death, how great will be his care to cleanse, to purify, to disinfect every part of it, lest she be touched by the diseases that have found refuge in the home?

And shall not the Lord Jesus Christ take care of His bride? And shall not heaven be purified? Will He not even go to the length of dissolving earth and the heavens and creating a new heavens and a new earth in order that righteousness shall be complete, and in order that sin may be banished forever? Yes, thank God, He will.

And our redeemed hearts rejoice in the love that will pluck out of His kingdom all things that offend, and all persons that offend. One day, several years ago, a man came to me after a meeting, and it soon developed that he was a member of one of the little cults that have grown up in America on the fringes of Christianity, and whose main reason for existence is their denial of the doctrine of eternal punishment.

The man asked me if I believed in hell, and I replied that I certainly did. He pushed the question and asked if I believed in the literal hell. I again replied that I believed that hell was a place to be spelled with a capital initial letter. Capital H, just as much as any city or state should be so spelled. Hell to me is a place within the boundaries of space, though far off from the small number of universes that man has been able to discover with his feeble 200-inch telescope.

Finally, the man said to me, "Doctor, would you take any animal, I do not ask you if you'd take a child, but would you take any animal and put it alive into a fire and see it burn?" At the time, I was not able to answer as I would answer today. At the moment, I replied that I would not do so. And before he had time to ask me if I thought that God were worse than I to do such a thing, I set forth the fact that we are creatures and that God is the Creator. We are in point of time and God is eternal. We are unholy and God is holy.

My answer still did not satisfy him, and he asked definitely if I thought God to be worse than I was myself. If I were answering today, I would reply that I could conceive of some conditions where I would gladly commit an animal to the flames. If a rodent were communicating a fatal disease to loved ones, I would destroy it without question if I had the opportunity. If a monster of a man were endangering the purity of a child, I would gladly destroy him.

We are men and women living in physical bodies that are destructible. We take a murderer and we put him in an electric chair or a gas chamber and snuff out his life. We do it collectively, for the judge and the executioner are but the agents for the whole of the citizenry. Now if we deal thus with men who have destructible bodies, how should we deal with them if they were indestructible souls? For that is exactly what men are.

Oh, there have been those who have attempted to teach the mortality of the human soul, but there is no scripture that can be thus rightly interpreted. And it is only correct and right that the holiness of God manifests itself in wrath against those who refuse the gift of divine righteousness. When the believers are ultimately in heaven, the final judgments of the earth will take place. What will be our attitude toward the final revelations of the wrath of God?

Scripture is not silent on the subject. We find chapter after chapter of the most terrible judgments described in the Book of Revelation. And so, even now, the true believer will accept with profound calm and a sense of being joined to the holiness of God the fact of the wrath of God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness. Lastly, it is set forth that the wrath of God is revealed against these terrible characteristics as they are found in men.

Inanimate nature is struck with decay and erosion. Matter is but energy in another form and can easily be sucked back into the power of God in order to be put forth in another form in which it will be perfect. But man has been given qualities that make it impossible to deal with him as with sticks and stones. Calvin paraphrases Romans 1:18 to read, "Wheresoever a man may look around him, he will find no salvation. For the wrath of God is poured out on the whole world to the full extent of heaven."

But I think there's something more in the verse. If we look over the next 63 verses that take us through the case history of the race to the revelation of the remedy in Christ, we must see that God is showing all classes under sin. He speaks of Jews and of Gentiles. He speaks of those who are in the vilest forms of idol worship and of those who are in the morass of natural religion. He deals with all.

And in this verse, it seems to me, He deals first of all with those who pretend to hold to divine truth, but who truly suppress it by failing to surrender to it. There are men having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. The believers are told to turn away from such. Do we not have here the chief objects of the wrath of God, namely those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness?

The British revisers translate the passage as, "Men who hold down the truth." The American revisers have rendered it, "Men who hinder the truth." The attitude of the men of the Old Testament was certainly that which we adopt. For David in the Psalms, Psalm 138:2, points out that the Lord has magnified His word above all His name. There are men who would not think of using the name of God lightly or blaspheming that name, who nevertheless take a light view of the inspiration of the scriptures. They hold some of