Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Guest (Male): The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals presents the timeless teaching of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: If we are to act toward others as Christ acted toward us, we must receive all who come to us, even those who are weak, not for the sake of arguing with them about forms and ceremonies and patterns of conduct, but rather with an attitude of warmth and love which makes for peace. When we see the heavy laden, we should try to help bear their burdens. We should be on the watch to do good to all men and especially to those who are committed to Christ.

We should obey the command which is given to us as believers to put away lying and speak every man truth with his neighbor. We must listen to the Lord when he says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you with all malice and be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Then we shall be living our text in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together with one mind and one voice we shall glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Guest (Male): 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 When God is Glorified. If all the instruments in an orchestra play different pieces at the same time, it creates noisy disharmony. But when the conductor gets all the musicians on the same page, the different instruments blend together in unity to create a beautiful symphony.

The people of God must learn to submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ and pursue genuine spiritual unity. We can then glorify God with one mind and one mouth and create a harmony of praise that is pleasing to him. The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans chapter 15, and we're looking at verses five and six. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled When God is Glorified.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: 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 that daily thou art teaching us to become a little more like thee. Teach us, we pray thee, and make us willing to be taught by thee. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

We come now to the sixth and seventh verses of the 15th chapter of Romans. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The first question in the Westminster Catechism is: what is the chief end of man?

This might be simplified as follows: what is the main purpose of life? What end are we to have in view in all of our living? What is to be the basis of all our thinking and our decisions? What are the principles for orienting the course of our life? The answer given in the catechism is: man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

Our text is a prayer that we may live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together we may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord Jesus gave us this exhortation: let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. In other words, we're to live in such a fashion that those who know us will think better of our God.

We can all remember early experiences with a magnifying glass when we discovered that through it we saw things made greater. Remember that David cried out, "O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together." Our text is a New Testament expression of this same joyful desire. Let us live in such a way as Christian believers joined to Christ that men will have a greater vision of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, our text is not a profound theological treatise. The apostle Paul is not giving us a philosophical definition of the glory of God. He's telling us that if believers live in harmony with one another, they give the outside world a better view of God. How terrible then when our disagreements give men the excuse to follow their own ways and to remain aloof from all groups of believers. We are to glorify God. We are to magnify him.

The Greek word for glory is doxa, and we meet it in several English words. The earliest meaning of the word was opinion. And if a man had a straight opinion, he was orthodox. If he had other opinions, he was heterodox. If two opinions which are not the same but each seemed right, you had a paradox. If we hold an opinion so firmly that we stake our lives upon it, we are glorifying the object of our life.

Now, an illustration of this is to be found in Paul's epistle to the Corinthians. He writes: so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to the Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please all men in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage but that of many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me as I am of Christ.

He is speaking, of course, of the Christian life. There will always be the offense of the cross, but here we are told to avoid the offense of the Christian. To the Galatians he said: if I were still pleasing men, I should not be the servant of Christ. We do not please men in what we preach, for it is a deep wound to human pride to be told that human character will land you in hell but not in heaven.

You must have the righteousness of Christ, the character that grows out of the divine nature, implanted within us by regeneration, and not the character taught by Lord Chesterfield in manners or by Marcus Aurelius in morals. Nevertheless, holding the offense of the cross, we must live in such a way that we shall not offend a Chesterfield by our manners or a Marcus Aurelius by our morals. Then unregenerate men who are good by the world's standard will see their own dire need of a savior from sin.

The phrase that links these truths together is that all this is to be done in accord with Christ Jesus. Now, how did the Lord Jesus Christ glorify his Father? We have his own words about this in his prayer recorded in the 17th of John. He glorified the Father by dying on the cross. He could say, "I have glorified thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which thou gavest me to do."

When I quote from the 17th of John, I am in sympathy with the Puritan divine of 300 years ago who wrote three or four large volumes of exposition on this one chapter. Read it again and again to see how the son glorified the Father. But we shall not go beyond the opening verses of this 15th of Romans to see how our Lord glorified his heavenly Father by exercising true humility.

He who is the strong one accepted the weak. He provided everything that was necessary to build and strengthen us in our lives. He pleased not himself. He, the living word, left a record of himself in the written word that we might have precept and example clearly set down for our instruction, so that we, through steadfastness and the encouragement of the scriptures, might have hope.

And above all, he left us the clear revelation of his purposes, attitudes, and desires, telling us that he was coming into our lives in order to reproduce these purposes, attitudes, and desires. One of the great verses of the New Testament is the soul-rending revelation that in our regeneration, we have the mind of Christ. It is with this mind that we're to live and act.

I believe that the King James Version is the best rendering of the Greek of our text: that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God. Or perhaps better yet, to take one phrase from the King James Version and one from the Revised Standard Version and make it read: that you may with one mind and with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, since it's so certain that the one mind refers not only to a commonality of thought among all true believers but a domination of all believers by the presence of the mind of Christ within our lives, let me suggest that the one voice also includes not only union with one another but unison with our savior God. The mind is Christ's mind thinking in us. The voice is Christ's voice singing through us.

We should not be astonished at the thought of the singing Christ. We have it beautifully expressed in the second chapter of Hebrews. Again, I prefer a blending of the two translations, read it thus: for he who sanctifies, that's Christ, and those who are sanctified, that is the church, have all one origin or are all of one. Christ is God, and the church is begotten by God. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brethren.

In passing, that does not justify the irreverence of calling Christ our elder brother. For he continues, saying: I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I, Jesus Christ, sing praise unto thee. Oh, that to me is one of the most blessed, gracious words in all the book. How wonderful to find this declaration of Christ, the leader of the worship and praise in the church.

A deep contemplation of this revelation may explain much in church life today. Why the introduction and establishment of so much liturgy into what is called worship? The honest historian must admit that there was no liturgy at all in the early church. It is inconceivable to think of services in the time of the New Testament without a note of joy.

Where the spirit of Christ is, there will always be joy in the music and a swell in the song. There can be no true song where the Lord is not exalted. There can be no true praise where the content of the gospel is not understood and personally appropriated. In the course of my ministry, I have noted that in some churches, the music is often nonexistent.

Oh, there may be a large audience, but the people are no more than murmuring the words of the hymns. But in other churches, the crowd will lift a swell of song that moves the heart. The explanation is that the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ is singing in the midst of the church, and there is harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus.

And with one mind and one voice, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is being glorified in the midst of his church. Now, it is evident that if the mind and voice of the Lord Jesus Christ are to be manifested and heard in the church, they must first of all be manifested and heard in the individual heart. If you are not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, it is evident that Christ's mind and voice cannot be manifested and heard in you.

There is a least common denominator of truth that is necessary if the Lord of all truth is to enter your heart. You must acknowledge your sin, and you must accept God's statements concerning the atoning death of the son of God. If you are going to walk with God, you must meet him at the cross of Jesus Christ. But these words of our text are addressed to those who have been touched by God through the Holy Spirit.

And the words of my text are certainly not addressed to the unbelieving world but to those who have named the name of Christ. The thrust of this message is that those who have called Jesus savior may learn more fully what it means to know him as Lord. For only when the people of God become like the Lord Jesus in their life and service for him can they truly glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The direction of this exhortation concerns the attitude of believers toward one another. How many such exhortations there are in the epistles. The frequency of such appeals is a commentary on the Old Testament revelation: he knoweth our frame; he remembers that we are dust. Oh, how this should humble us. We are to have the mind of Christ one toward another.

If we act towards others as Christ acted toward us, we must receive our brothers in Christ, not as a matter of law, nor as a result of any merit in them, but because Christ in love received us solely according to his grace. We must never look at the past of any individual in our church, nor must we look at his present behavior.

His attendance at our services may show a deep longing to be made whole, like those who approached Jesus with heart-rending cries appealing to him for cleansing. Let me quote an illustration which I have taken from an article written by Dr. Arthur R. McKay, president of McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and published in the little paper Monday Morning which is sent to every minister of our denomination.

After a magnificent statement concerning the necessity of having ethics along with good doctrine and of having good doctrine along with ethics, Dr. McKay speaks of the necessity of combining these two in order to face the needs of the world. He says: the failure of the church to speak a clear and definite word about Jesus Christ has prevented many contemporary men and women from having any clear idea as to what the church of Jesus Christ really is.

But its failure to exhibit many living acts of love for the community as a whole has led equal numbers of today's men and women to regard the church as irrelevant to the crucial issues of their lives. Sometimes the church is guilty of a kind of pietism which seems to cut it off from all the agony of a broken world. It declares the gospel of the resurrection and calls men and women to newness of life.

It promises regeneration to all who enter its doors, but it shows little love and compassion on the matters which troubled members and outside seekers find most burdensome. He then goes on to mention specific problems which have devastating personal and social consequences, and among these, that of alcoholism. He asks: what is the good word from the church on this problem?

And then answers: well, the alcoholic is not welcome in our church. The good and decent folk can't be expected to associate with him. After all, First Church is not a skid row mission or a unit of the Salvation Army. If an alcoholic persists in seeking help in the fellowship of the church, naively assuming that the folk who do all this talking about love and acceptance really mean business, he's due for a real shock.

Of course, a compassionate pastor may refer him to Alcoholics Anonymous and a magnanimous elder may send a basket of food to his distraught family, but to find acceptance, the alcoholic must ordinarily go outside the church for it. In the main, this is so because the church moralizes the problems of men. It treats the symptoms if it does anything at all and ignores the causes.

It doesn't really care. It prefers peace and quiet and order to disturbance, disquiet, and the order which is prerequisite for the reclaiming of troubled men and women. Is this too harsh an indictment? I think not. The failure of the church to be a fellowship of the concerned, to be a community in which the members bear one another's burdens is all too easily documented.

And what is true of the church's failure to meet the needs of alcoholics is true in many other fields, and the problem is worldwide. We recently learned while in Brazil that one of its great problems is that of public prostitution. Every town of any size has its red-light district. They are patronized by all classes. What is the church doing for them?

The Maryknoll Fathers say that only nine million of Brazil's sixty million population are practicing Roman Catholics. The Protestants claim a few less than five million. In one small town where a fine Protestant hospital has been built to serve the people and where a growing Protestant church ministers to some of the needs of the community, the American missionary doctor told me the following incident.

We were walking with him through the town. Near the hospital were some nice houses which he identified as the local houses of prostitution. With a sigh, he said, some of the girls came to the hospital two or three years ago and I treated them. I spoke to them of Christ and invited them to church. Some time later, half a dozen of them came timidly into the morning service.

They sat by themselves; nobody spoke to them, and they went out hurriedly at the end. They came back the next Sunday, and soon there was an uproar. The good ladies of the church were outraged. They did not want those women in the church, the very idea, and they let it be known in such a way that the girls never came back.

Oh, what an incomprehension of salvation. What a failure to realize our servant position as those who have been redeemed. What lack of appreciation of the nature of grace. When we have such an attitude toward sinners, how dare we pray: forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors? And if some reply indignantly that such people are not our debtors, they need to go back and read the story of the Good Samaritan and learn who our neighbors are and what is the nature of our debt.

And again, if we are to act toward others as Christ acted toward us, we must receive all who come to us, even those who are weak, not for the sake of arguing with them about forms and ceremonies and patterns of conduct, but rather with an attitude of warmth and love which makes for peace. When we see the heavy laden, we should try to help bear their burdens.

We should be on the watch to do good to all men and especially to those who are committed to Christ. We should obey the command which is given to us as believers to put away lying and speak every man truth with his neighbor. We must listen to the Lord when he says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you with all malice and be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Then we shall be living our text in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together with one mind and one voice we shall glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray thee our God and Father that the Holy Spirit will bless in a wonderful way the going forth of thy word. Speak to the hearts that are in need and may they make another try to come to us and know that they will be received with love and tenderness. Oh, bless thy people that they may have a heart for thee and therefore a heart for those who are weak in the way. We ask it through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.

Guest (Male): Let us pursue authentic spiritual unity in Jesus Christ in order that we may praise and glorify our God and Father with one mind and one mouth. We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled When God is Glorified. To listen to more Bible teaching 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.

Today's message again is entitled When God is Glorified, or simply request message number R15-8. We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled Promises to Live By. We have all been disappointed by people who have let us down or not kept their word to us. But God is always faithful to his word and to his promises.

This free booklet will show you the glorious and unshakable promises from the word of God that will give you strength in any situation in life. If you want to build your life on the strong, sure foundation of the promises of God, ask for your free copy of Promises to Live By 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 full list of radio stations carrying our programs, visit our website at alliancenet.org. Would you like to build your own audio library of Dr. Barnhouse's timeless messages so you can listen to them anytime, anywhere? Then you will be interested in our Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible audio commentary series. Visit our website at alliancenet.org or call us at 1-800-488-1888 to find out how you can sign up for the Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible audio commentary series.

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Write to us at Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Box 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. Visit us online at alliancenet.org. Be sure to 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 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.