No Escape

Guest (Male): The alliance of confessing evangelicals presents the timeless teaching of Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse.
Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Every individual sees himself in the distorted mirror of his own imagination. We've all of us seen mirrors in amusement parks which make tall men look short, thin men look fat. The human imagination makes the individual see himself in some sort of comparison with others and always in a light more favorable than is justified by the truth. The coming of the judgment will destroy that distortion. Your judgment will be according to truth.
Guest (Male): Over a half a century ago, the late Dr. Donald Gray 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'll be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled No Escape. The motto of the Canadian Mounties is we always get our man, but in reality, many criminals get away with their crimes. In our justice system, criminals often go free because of a fast-talking defense lawyer, a procedural mistake by police, a poor case by the prosecution, or some legal loophole. But no one will escape God's perfect justice through some flaw in the system. If we are all guilty before God, what hope do we have to be set free? The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans chapter two and verses two and three. Here again is Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse with the message entitled No Escape.
Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto the our Father and our God and in the Holy Spirit. We thank thee that we can be sure that we may come into thy very presence because he has died and made it possible for us to come boldly into thy presence. Bless each listening heart in this hour. We ask through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. When I was a young man, I heard an evangelist preach a sermon on the text prepare to meet thy God. I remember but one sentence in the sermon, but it was a sentence that struck my mind with great force as I listened and the logic behind it is just as important today as it was in the day when I first heard it. The preacher set forth the first point of his argument in these words. The greatest reason why you should prepare to meet your God is because you must meet your God. Now people exercise common sense in a thousand matters of daily need. If a man is asked why he's going to the dentist, he needs hardly reply that the reason he's going to the dentist is because he must go. Why do you bury the dead body of a loved one? The answer is that the body must be disposed of. Why do you take the trouble to eat and drink? Because you must eat and drink. There is an imperious necessity that governs many of our actions. We prepare for taxes, though we might like to spend the money on something else. We call the workman and we have the roof repaired because priorities must be given to such things. Now the preparation for our meeting with God is even more important than any preparation for physical or material needs. Perhaps the commonest phrase to indicate certainty is that which says a thing is as sure as death and taxes. Now there can be no doubt that there have been people who have been able to avoid or even evade taxes and go free. The Bible tells us that one generation of believers will not see death, but will be transformed at the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it may well be that a generation of the lost who live up to the moment of the Last Judgment will be swept directly into the presence of God without passing through the judgment of the tribulation. And if someone to counter that idea quotes the verse which says it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment, I'm convinced that he's missed the point of the verse. For fully translated and understood, it sets forth that it was appointed unto mankind once in Adam to die spiritually, in consequence of which there is the judgment of God upon sin and the sinner. Be that as it may, unless your case is settled out of court through a meeting with the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, you are going to come to the judgment bar of God and you are going to meet with yourself in the presence of God. Now the second chapter of Romans sets forth the principles under which the divine judgment shall be rendered. These are several and shall take us beyond the time we have for this particular study today. But if we read the opening verses of this chapter, we see that first of all, the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. And thinkest thou this, oh man, that judgest them which do such things and doest the same that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? Now the first important point in this declaration from God is that your judgment will be according to truth. The Bible says in Isaiah 28:17, a hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies and man will be forced to look upon himself as he is in reality. That is as he is in the sight of God. And the next verse says there will be no escape. No escape. Now don't forget that. No escape. The world has proverbs to show how man considers himself. They say he puts his best foot foremost. He makes the best of a bad job. In Plato's Republic, we find the Greek philosopher saying just as poets always like their own poems and parents love their own children, so those who have made their own fortunes are delighted with their wealth as the work of their own hands. In the 17th century, Granville wrote while all complain of our ignorance and error, everyone exempts himself. William Hazlitt wrote nature is incorrigible. There is no crevice so small or intricate at which our self-love will not contrive to creep in. Now there are, of course, some men who attempt to deny that they are motivated by self-interest. But as Christ said to the wicked servant, out of thine own mouth will I judge thee. And that judgment will be according to truth. And there will be no escape. No escape. Don't forget that. There will be no escape. One of the greatest men of all time was Goethe. Yet we find him running away from the truth and seeking to hide from what he found in himself. It is recorded that in a conversation with Eckermann, Goethe, the greatest of German writers, said man is a darkened being. He knows not whence he comes nor whither he goes. He knows little of the world and least of himself. I know not myself and God forbid that I should. Now let us take Goethe as one of the great representatives of humanity and let us apply the words of Christ to that statement of Goethe. Out of thine own mouth I will judge thee, says Christ. For the judgment is going to be according to truth. And in that day of judgment, all of the truth which man has wished to avoid will come to light and will be the light that penetrates the being of man until every part will stand naked and open before the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Goethe's first phrase is that man is a darkened being. That is true. Goethe found it out by natural examination and long experience. The Christian finds it out from the beginning by accepting the verdict which God sets forth in the Bible. But Goethe goes on to say that man knows not whence he comes. Here is a confession that Goethe has put his own reasoning above the revelation of God. We open the Bible and we know whence we have come. We have come from the hand of God by direct creation. We have come by the Garden of Eden and it's terrible experience of original sin. We have come by way of rebellion and spiritual death which passed upon the race. Goethe says we do not know and God forbid that we should. God says I have told you and though you may run away from the truth through a long lifetime, death will bring you to the clear revelation that truth is in the word of God, the Bible, and you will be judged according to it. Goethe then says that man does not know where he's going. There is stark tragedy in that sentence for again it reveals the blindness of the human heart and above all the stubborn unwillingness to accept the truth of the divine revelation. You may know where you are going because God has revealed it to you. You are a traveler through this world and there is but one problem that confronts anyone of us. It is to be brought face to face with the fact that man was completely ruined in Adam's fall and that there is no possibility of man's doing anything for himself beyond making himself as physically comfortable as he can, as he approaches death and hell. Unless, of course, he is willing to bow before the facts and be freed by the truth which Christ gives. Our text is the definite revelation from God that you are going to face the truth. You can face it now and be saved through Christ or you can face it after death and go to the lake of fire. Believe me, there is no alternative. Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee. Finally, the full darkness of the mind of man is revealed by the end of Goethe's statement. He says I know not myself and God forbid that I should. Now here is a direct turning away from the truth. Here is the expressed repudiation of truth. Man is in revolt against God. He has renounced the divine lordship, rejected the light of God's word, shunned the knowledge that the Holy Spirit is ready to give, denied his responsibility to God, opposed the wooing of the gospel and daily refuses the evidence of his lost and helpless condition. Then to add insult to injury, he dares to cry out man is a darkened being. But God forbid that I should know myself. And the Lord Jesus says out of thine own mouth will I judge thee. Now Goethe was so great that Heine said the gods pass out. Goethe is dead. But much closer to the truth is that which Irving Babbitt said. When Goethe suffered from a spiritual ailment of any kind, he got rid of it by inoculating others with it. We remember our studies in the first chapter of Romans that even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. In Goethe we find a supreme example of that abandon. A mind given over to rejection, but a mind so great that myriads were carried along with it. The day of truth shall dawn, however, and woe unto that man who has built on human reasoning instead of on the word of God. Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, saith the Lord. The natural blindness that is on the mind and heart of man can be dispelled only by the breath of God. Yet our text now tells us that man actually thinks that he can escape the judgment of God. Man really thinks that he can get away with something so far as the creator and judge of all the universe is concerned. This is seen especially in the third verse of Romans two. In our authorized version, it reads and thinkest thou this, oh man, and judgest them which do such things and doest the same that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? In the original language, the phrase is much stronger. We might well translate the Greek and do you really figure that you will escape, you? If I have changed the word from do you think to do you really figure, I have eminent reason for doing so. The Greek word logizomai is a favorite with Paul. He uses it 27 times, though it's found only four times more in all the rest of the New Testament. It is a mathematical word. The lexicon gives to reckon, count, compute, calculate, count over. Do you really figure is very near to the Greek. Now it 's rare that I ever use any slang in connection with my preaching. Yet I am going to dare to translate this verse into modern American slang. It is because the Greek is so down to earth and above all because I want the force of the truth to strike you a sledgehammer blow. This third verse might be paraphrased for I will not dignify the following with the name of translation. You dummy, do you really figure that you have doped out an angle that will let you go up against God and get away with it? You don't have the ghost of a chance. There is no escape. Do you understand? No escape ever. And this means you, the respectable person sitting in judgment upon another fellow creature and remaining unrepentant yourself. Now let us examine this question of escape. An English writer, Govett, in his book The Righteousness of God points out that there are four chances of escape for the man who transgresses a human law, but that none of these are available for the man who transgresses the law of God. Let me expand these possibilities of escape. If a man commits a crime, it is possible that the offense should remain undiscovered. Secondly, it is possible that the criminal, even though his crime is made known, may escape beyond the bounds of the jurisdiction which could punish him. Thirdly, it's possible that even though detected and captured and brought to trial, there may be some breakdown in the legal procedure and that he may thus go free. And lastly, it is possible that a convicted criminal may escape from prison. But we shall see that all of these possibilities of escape from human law can never be considered as possibilities in connection with the law of God. First of all, it is possible that a human crime shall be committed on earth and remain undetected by human authorities. When I was in my late teens, I went to preach for a week of special meetings in a small church in a California town. There were about 200 people present each evening and the meetings grew in power as the days passed. There was a movement toward God and many people professed to accept Christ as their personal Savior. On the fourth evening, a woman in her 60s came to me and asked if it would be possible for her to have a private interview with me. I asked her about her spiritual state and finally she said I have a great burden on my conscience and I decided after hearing you preach these four evenings that I would make my confession to you, no matter what the consequence. I expected to hear some simple story of a difficulty that would be met most simply from the word of God. Instead, I was astounded to hear her say 38 years ago I murdered a man. And then as though the confession had taken a great burden from her shoulders, she started to tell me the details. She was dry-eyed, but I sensed an emotion even greater than that which stirred in me face to face with a woman so respectable, such a pillar in that California village who had taken human life. Looking back on it today, the story does not seem so astonishing for there are hundreds of similar stories in the papers from year to year. When she was 22, she had lived in a boarding house in an eastern city. A man who lodged on the same floor had wronged her and brought her to a place of terrible fear. One night he came to his room drunk. He fell on the bed in a stupor. She turned on the gas in the small heater without lighting it. She pulled the rug close to the door and closed the door. She went to her own room and lay sleepless through the night until the alarm was given. Someone knocked on her door and told her that their fellow boarder had committed suicide and that was all there was to it. Her part in the murder was never detected. She soon left the city and went to the west coast and began life anew. In the eyes of all her fellow citizens, she was highly respected and lived a life that was above reproach. Her crime had been undetected, but she knew that her crime was known to God. And she had become increasingly aware under the preaching of the gospel that she had to meet God someday. She had learned that the sin which she had carried for 38 years could be transferred to the Lord Jesus Christ and that she could rest quietly in the work which he accomplished in shedding his blood for the remission of sin. 10 years later, a friend told me about her death saying that the woman had borne a splendid Christian testimony during her closing years and often spoke of having been born again during the meetings that I had held in that little church. She had followed my advice to speak of the matter to no person for the sin was cast behind God's back, remembered against her no more forever, removed as far as the east is from the west, forgiven, forgotten, cleansed, gone, atoned for, covered, cast into the depths of the sea because she had come face to face with God before whom no sin is hidden, no iniquity can be covered. And from that incident, I can speak to anyone of you who carries the burden of some sin within your life, whether it be what men call a great iniquity or whether it be the normal routine life of sin that you have lived without any violent eruption of evil. The record of your sin may not be known to men, but it is known to God. If you do not come to the cross of Jesus Christ, you can never escape and your iniquity will meet you one moment after you have drawn your last breath. Now the second possibility of human escape is to flee beyond the bounds of the law's jurisdiction. In the far places of the world, there are wrecks of men today often living under assumed names who have fled from homes and friends and kindred in order to escape the consequences of their evil deeds. I have seen them in various places in my travels, in Shanghai and Macau, in Central American republics or in African coastal towns. There are men living as derelicts afraid of recognition and extradition. But they think themselves safe because they have come beyond the jurisdiction of the law, but they offended. It cannot be so with the law of God. David knew it and sang in the Psalms whither shall I go from thy spirit or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me and thy hand shall hold me. If I say surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. Now there is no escape. Thirdly, there have been men, guilty men, who have been brought to trial and who have been freed because of some weakness of the jury, because of the trickery of some lawyer, because of some technicality of the law. But there will be no such escape from the law of God. Two men were discussing the difference between English law, so much more stern and dignified than most American law, and one was asked which system he would choose to be tried under if he were arrested. He thought a moment and said if I were innocent, I would wish to be tried under British law for they would go to every extent to free me. If I were guilty, I would prefer to be tried under American law for there'd be a hundred loopholes that might open a way of escape. But the law of God stands certain. He has said that there are no loopholes. He has said in Numbers 14 that he will by no means clear the guilty. And finally, there have been those who were guilty, who were convicted, but who have escaped from their prisons. But do you think you will find a way of escape from hell? Oh, you might if the devil were the keeper. But let's not forget the Bible teaches that God runs hell. That's the most horrible thing about it. The devil has passed the lie around that he runs it. But it is not true. He will be there as the chiefest victim. When you know that it is God who orders and controls even in the outer darkness of man's separation from him, it will easily be seen that there is no escape from the one who pervades all the universe. No, there is no escape. There is no escape. There is no escape. But wait, there is a way of having your case settled out of court, but you must move fast. You must come to Christ now for now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation. Everywhere the Bible teaches us that the issues of eternity are settled in this life. There is no second chance. The Lord said if he die in your sins whither I go, ye cannot come. And if ye believe not that I am he, Jehovah, ye shall die in your sins. Today his mercy calls. You are guilty, but you can yet escape through Christ. If you refuse his mercy, you must face his wrath. And our God, we pray thee that thou shalt bless this to every heart who listens in this hour. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Guest (Male): Believers are not forgiven because of some loophole or flaw in God's legal system. Through God's great mercy and grace, Jesus paid the full penalty for our sins on the cross. We hope you've benefited from today's message by Dr. Barnhouse entitled No Escape. You can listen to additional Bible teaching by the late Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse anytime, anywhere around the globe via the Internet by visiting the alliance of confessing evangelicals website at alliancenet.org. An audio copy of today's teaching is available by calling us toll-free at 1-800-488-1888. Today's message again is entitled No Escape. Or simply request message number R2-2. We would also like to make available to you a free copy of Dr. Barnhouse's booklet entitled Overcoming Fear in Witnessing. Are you intimidated about sharing your faith? Does fear hold you back from telling your family, friends, and co-workers about Christ? This free booklet will help you boldly and confidently proclaim the good news. Dr. Barnhouse explains how the Lord can help you overcome the barriers to effective witnessing so you can share the gospel clearly in love and without fear. If you want to be a bold, confident witness for Christ, ask for your free copy of Overcoming Fear in Witnessing when you call or write. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is a radio ministry of the alliance of confessing evangelicals headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The alliance of confessing evangelicals 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 materials which will equip believers to understand and meet the challenges and opportunities of our time and place. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible comes to you through the generous gifts of our listeners. If you have benefited from this 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 support and further our work, please contact us by writing alliance of confessing evangelicals, box 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. Call toll-free 1-800-488-1888 or visit us online at alliancenet.org. Be sure and ask for a free updated resource catalog featuring books, audio, teachings, commentaries, booklets, daily devotionals, videos, and a wealth of other materials from outstanding reform teachers and theologians including Donald Gray Barnhouse, James Montgomery Boice, Michael Horton, and Martin Lloyd-Jones. Again our phone number 1-800-488-1888. Then join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.