Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Be well assured that the presenting of any part of our bodies without the presentation of the soul, heart, mind, and strength is but a vain gesture. Our text is the call to the innermost depths of the invisible within us, a call to manifest itself through all that is visible.

Love to God and love to those around us must manifest itself in every gesture, word, and look, if He is possessing our being.

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, Dominated by the Spirit.

When the angel appeared to Joseph and announced the birth of the Savior, he said, "You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." But sadly, many people seem to want Jesus to save them in their sins rather than from them. Are you pursuing a life that is dominated by the spirit of God?

The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans chapter 12 and verse one. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled, Dominated by the Spirit.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto Thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. We worship Thee and acknowledge Thee to be our God. There is none like unto Thee, perfect in justice and holiness and love and in all Thy attributes.

Speak to us in this hour and use Thy word to build Thy people that we may know Thee better and love Thee more. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our study today continues in the 12th chapter of Romans and the first verse.

With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give him your bodies as a living sacrifice, consecrated to him and acceptable by him. We come to a very practical application of this verse to our everyday life.

What is it to present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice? First of all, it must be realized that we know that we have contact with this world only by means of our bodies. We can communicate with God by our minds and hearts, but we can communicate with the world about us only through our five senses.

There is no biblical evidence and there is no modern scientific evidence for telepathy. Everything that has been brought forth by those who believe in such things has been rationally explained by competent scientists. Now, this being the case, it is very important that our spiritual life shall have control over our physical life.

For only when the body is dominated by the spirit can there be the life which is pleasing to God and thus satisfying to man himself. It is the teaching of the word of God and also the teaching of sanctified experience that misuse of any of the bodily functions ultimately causes ill to the one who misuses.

I'm going to begin with a story that is very pertinent in our American life today. We all know that the number of deaths on the road through automobile accidents is even greater than the number of casualties in our greatest wars. If the Christian Church has a right to speak against war on the grounds that it is devilish in its destruction of human life and property, we have an even greater right to speak of the sin of wicked driving.

I learned a great lesson on this subject a short time ago, and it has made me personally much more careful of my own driving and has given me a new insight into the text that I am expounding today. I was riding with a friend between two large cities, a friend whom I consider to be a very good driver.

Although she is a woman, she is a better driver than most men, and her life is so ordered that she drives many thousands of miles each year. As we were going along, we came to a small town and she slowed down to 35 miles an hour and then to 25 miles when the sign so indicated.

I believe that most drivers go 30 in a 25-mile zone, 40 in a 35-mile zone, and 55 in a 50-mile zone. This Christian woman was going exactly 15 in a school zone, and I commented on the nature of her driving. I knew that her overall time from one city to another was approximately the same as my own, and I had not been as careful as she had been to obey the letter of the law.

Her answer was something like this. She said, "I can think of three reasons why a Christian should obey the law. The first is because the law has a penalty. Most people would not consider this reason, especially since there would be too great a tendency to take chances by trusting more in our own judgment of what was careful than we would in the speed indications that have been posted by the authorities.

The second reason is that our own personal safety is involved, and we should take care of ourselves. But most people do not consider this reason either, as they trust their own judgment in driving and think that they are exercising sufficient and proper care even when they are not doing so.

But the third reason, and this was the reason which concerned my friend, the third reason was the fact that the Bible commands the Christian to keep even the petty ordinances of the municipality. We read in Peter's first epistle, 'Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake.'

She then continued, "I prayed about this a great deal when I came to this verse in the Bible, and I concluded that since I delight to worship God, and since he has told us that we are to obey him, and since he tells us to submit ourselves to every ordinance of man for his sake, that I would consider that I was worshipping the Lord with my accelerator foot."

Well, I had to admit in my heart that I could find no way to excuse improper driving when the matter was considered as an act of worship of our Lord. The whole of the passage in Peter reads, "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme," that would correspond to our federal law, "or unto governors," and that would correspond to our state laws, "as unto them that are sent by God for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of them that do well.

For so is the will of God, that with well doing you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, as free and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God." There is one other detail of this same story that merits recording. I lamely explained that I sometimes speeded, but that it was because my mind was on other things, my foot grew heavy on the accelerator, and that when the road was clear I just drove by road conditions and that I didn't mean to break the law.

My companion answered, "That's like the story of the little girl who was reproved by her mother for something she had done, and the little girl said, 'But mother, I didn't mean to do it.' And then after a moment the little girl said, 'But mother, I didn't mean not to do it either.' Ah, it is the meaning not to do it that really counts.

The next time I was driving was on an 80-mile trip into New York. I started down the road and found myself consciously keeping the car at exactly 50 miles an hour, not 51. In my heart, I was saying, "Lord, I have a good car and I'm a good driver and I could do 58 here without difficulty, and I believe that the police wouldn't stop me if I didn't go over 58 in the 50-mile-an-hour zone."

But I said, "I am submitting myself to the 50 ordinance for Thy sake," and I found myself feeling good about it. Not just smug, but spiritually good. And there came a 35-mile zone to test me and then a 15-mile school zone. I poked along, doggedly determining that I was going to worship the Lord with my right foot on the accelerator.

I soon found that I was getting a great joy out of this. Beyond any question, the Lord was answering me within my heart. But the thing that amazed me most was that I found myself making very good time. It seemed also as though there was an opening in the traffic at every turn.

Fifty cars would be piled up behind an intersection and somehow I had the chance of going right through and passing so many that had passed me before. And when I finally swept down into the Lincoln Tunnel and came up in Manhattan, I had just about tied my best record for the distance, which I had previously made without any thought of anything except what car I might see coming up in my rearview mirror.

And thus it may be that we, as true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, may help solve the terrible problem of traffic deaths by taking this text in the Epistle to the Romans and listening to it as though it read, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your accelerator foot as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."

Now, once we have established this principle, we can readily apply it to all parts of our bodies. Let us consider for a moment the tongue. Perhaps the most terrible words spoken about any member of the body are reserved by God for the human tongue. In the epistle of James, we read, "We all make mistakes in all kinds of ways, but the man who can claim that he never says the wrong thing can consider himself perfect.

For if he can control his tongue, he can control every other part of his personality. Men control the movements of a large animal like the horse with a tiny bit placed in its mouth. And in the case of ships, for all their size and the momentum they have with a strong wind behind them, a very small rudder controls their course according to the helmsman's wishes.

The human tongue is physically small, but what tremendous effects it can boast of. A whole forest can be set ablaze by a tiny spark of fire, and the tongue is as dangerous as any fire with vast potentialities for evil. The tongue can poison the whole body; it can make the whole of life a blazing hell.

Beasts, birds, reptiles, and all kinds of sea creatures can be and in fact are tamed by man, but no one can tame the human tongue. It is an evil always liable to break out, and the poison it spreads is deadly. We use the tongue to bless our Father God, and we use the same tongue to curse our fellow men who are created in God's likeness.

Blessing and curses come out of the same mouth. Surely, my brothers, this is the sort of thing that never ought to happen." I have read Phillips' translation of James 3:1-10. Now, in the light of this indictment, we can well accept the proverbs of the world which speak of the misery that is brought by human speech.

The Turks say, "The wound from a knife heals, the wound from a tongue never." The Chinese say, "In the tongue, there lurks a dragon's den. No blood is seen, and yet it murders men." It is on the basis of the mercies of God that we are exhorted to present our tongues unto God, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto Him, which is no more than our reasonable service.

In presenting our tongues unto God, we demonstrate that we desire to worship Him and that we desire to let Him live in us, showing forth His love to all that are around us. For be well assured that the presenting of any part of our bodies without the presentation of the soul, heart, mind, and strength is but a vain gesture.

Our text is the call to the innermost depths of the invisible within us, a call to manifest itself through all that is visible. Love to God and love to those around us must manifest itself in every gesture, word, and look, if He is possessing our being. If we should give the body to be burned and not have His love within us, it profits us nothing.

It is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. And so then, when the Lord tells us, exhorts us, to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, we must not transgress to the point where we say, "I didn't mean to," but we must be able to say, "I mean not to."

Now, it can readily be seen that this same principle may be applied to the throat and its appetites. God gives us a definite commandment, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be ye filled with the Holy Spirit." We shall consider this principle later in the chapter when the Lord devotes a special verse to it.

But finally, let us apply this same principle to the eyes, which the Bible links with adultery. Christ said, "Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her in his heart hath committed adultery with her already." Now, we live in a civilization where sex has been magnified beyond all else in our nation.

The foreign writers who come to our shores and then return to write about our life all remark on the overemphasis of sex in this country. Now, don't misunderstand. God is the author of the pure and true relationship between man and woman, and when this relationship is within the bounds which He has established for it, it can be one of the most constructive features of life.

We must not forget that our God is the God who gives us richly all things to enjoy, and this certainly includes the joyous giving of self to the enrichment of the life of our partner in marriage. From the hundreds of problems in this field that I have dealt with in the course of my pastoral counseling, I have reason to believe that not enough mothers obey the command of the Bible to teach the younger woman how to love their husbands, as we read in Titus 2:4.

And this command of God includes much more teaching about the joys of marriage than most young people get from their mothers. The presenting of the body to the Lord certainly includes the presenting of the body to the spouse in marriage. The Bible even teaches that the husband does not have the authority over his own body, but that authority belongs to the wife.

While the wife does not have the authority over her own body, but that authority belongs to the husband. This is possible in Christian marriage because such a union is an illustration of the Trinity. And the oneness which can exist between a loving couple and the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst is like the oneness which exists between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

But outside of that trinity of oneness with God, any attempt to reproduce these experiences with just anyone is adultery. Now, we must realize that God does not give commands to us because of some whim in Himself. If God tells us that we are not to commit adultery, it is not because God doesn't like or dislike adultery or because the act in itself is offensive to Him.

God knows that there are laws which govern all of human nature and all of human relationships, and God doesn't want us to hurt ourselves by hurling ourselves against these laws. This is why he tells us not to commit certain acts. They are sins only because they set up chain reactions of hurt and harm.

We tell a child not to play with fire for exactly the same reasons that God tells us not to commit adultery. A child might play with fire without hurt, but two people cannot debase the marriage relationship without great hurt to themselves. Psychologically, such acts leave great scars.

Ask any child of a broken home. Deal as a pastor must deal with people who have gone through these horrors. I once had two couples in my office seeking to restore the home life of each couple after one member of each had broken away for adulterous acts. Never as long as I live shall I forget the cry of the woman involved as she groaned, "But how can a thing which started out seemingly so beautiful end so hideously?"

And if a guilty person hearing these words thinks that he or she has come through such an experience unscathed because undetected, he may look down deep into his own soul and know that he has destroyed something that was holy and good and that there will always be a spiritual limp in his walk, unless by the grace of God the Lord shall work a wonder in the life to restore that which was cankered.

As I was preparing this message, I began some research in the meaning of the word adultery. The English word means to corrupt, to falsify, and has been used in addition to the moral meaning of the word for the debasement of a coin by putting in less silver and more base metal than is called for.

But when I went back of the English to the Greek and went beyond the usual Greek dictionaries to the most scientific of all works of research on Greek etymology, I discovered Debrunner saying that the original Greek word derives from a root that was used for one of the basest of bodily functions.

I cannot use the original terms in print or on the radio, but I can use a lesser, similar function and explain that the original Greek word for adultery described the act in terms worse than a man using his partner as a spittoon. Nothing ennobling can come from such an act, but only that which is debasing.

Let me conclude with a description of the practitioners of such wrong. I quote Phillips' translation of Second Peter. "But these men, with no more sense than the unreasoning brute beasts which are born to be caught and killed, scoff at things outside their own experience and will most certainly be destroyed in their own corruption.

Their wickedness has earned them an evil reward, and they will be paid in full. These are the men who delight in daylight self-indulgence. They are foul spots and blots, playing their tricks at your very dinner tables. Their eyes cannot look at a woman without lust. They captivate the unstable ones, and their technique of getting what they want is through long practice highly developed.

They are born under a curse." Now, that is God speaking. To all who have named the name of Christ, our text comes as a beseeching, wooing word from the Heavenly Father who loves you and who died to redeem you from such slavery. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies," your foot, your tongue, your eyes, your every bodily part, "a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."

The Lord willing, we will take it up from this point in our next study. And our God and Father, we pray Thee to bless these great truths to us. Thou hast put them in the word for our own good, and we ask Thee that we may learn what it is to know the high joys of righteousness and purity and truth in Thee. And we give Thee the praise through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Guest (Male): The presence of divine life in every believer makes it possible to pursue lives of holiness and obedience service which are pleasing and acceptable to the Lord. We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled, Dominated by the Spirit. 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, Dominated by the Spirit, or simply request message number R12-4. We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled Sex, Marriage, and Divorce.

God designed the marriage relationship to be a picture of our eternal union with Jesus Christ. And yet, Christian marriage is often falls short of this lofty ideal. This free booklet shines biblical truth upon this vital subject. Chapter titles include Lust and Christian Marriage, Marriage and the Home, Divorce and Remarriage, and For Time and Eternity.

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Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Be well assured that the presenting of any part of our bodies without the presentation of the soul, heart, mind, and strength is but a vain gesture. Our text is the call to the innermost depths of the invisible within us, a call to manifest itself through all that is visible.

Love to God and love to those around us must manifest itself in every gesture, word, and look, if He is possessing our being.