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: The unsaved man cannot do anything that will satisfy God. It is necessary that we realize this. We've already seen in our study of an earlier chapter of Romans that they that are in the flesh cannot please God. It is even true that Christians who attempt to perform acts that are sometimes called self-sacrifice cannot please God unless there has been, first of all, the surrender of the inner core of self to the Lord.

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, "A Living Sacrifice." The Bible exhorts us to present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God. But as one Christian writer observed, the problem with a living sacrifice is it keeps crawling off the altar. How can we learn to lay aside our sinful, self-centered desires and yield ourselves fully to the Lord? 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, "A Living Sacrifice."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto Thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. O bless the Word to each heart that listens in this hour. There is no power in any message from man, but Thou canst speak beyond the human word with the Divine Word which shall reach the center of will. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We now come to our study in the 12th of Romans. The first verse reads, "I beseech you therefore, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your spiritual service." One of the most wonderful things about the Christian faith is that we have the promise of God that Jesus Christ came into this world to save his people from their sins. This was the word that was given to Joseph by the angel when he was told to marry Mary, even though he was not the father of the child that was growing in her womb.

That child was supernaturally conceived by the Holy Spirit, and the angel said, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins." We are not to be saved in our sins, but from our sins. We are not to be redeemed and then go on wallowing, but we are to have a divine life given to us that will make it possible for us to live lives of holiness that are acceptable unto God. The whole problem of Christian ethics is now squarely before us. We are told that we are to present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice.

There are two things that are involved here: our innermost self that does the presenting, and our bodies that are presented. It should almost go without saying that it's useless to give our bodies if we have not first of all given ourselves. This principle is that which is applied to the matter of giving as we read in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. There, he's telling them of the bounty and the liberality of the believers in Philippi and he says, "In a great trial of affliction, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality. For to their power, I bear record yes and beyond their power, they were willing of themselves." And the explanation is found in the next lines: they first gave their own selves unto the Lord.

In the church of which I have been pastor for many years, we do not spend much time on financial questions. When the moment comes to take the offering, I say, "We are about to take an offering. If you are not a believer in Christ, you are not invited to give. The offering is like the communion service: it is for believers only. But if you are a believer, pray about your part in this and give as the Lord guides you in your heart." Now this is certainly the biblical method of financing the work of the church. And this same principle is that which is set forth in our text in the matter of giving our bodies in Christian living.

The unsaved man cannot do anything that will satisfy God. It is necessary that we realize this. We've already seen in our study of an earlier chapter of Romans that they that are in the flesh cannot please God. It is even true that Christians who attempt to perform acts that are sometimes called self-sacrifice cannot please God unless there has been, first of all, the surrender of the inner core of self to the Lord.

The love of Jesus Christ must suffuse our being, and we must be allowing Him to fill us in every part. For as Paul says to the Corinthians, "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing." Now there are many illustrations in history of those who attempted to give their bodies without giving their inward beings, and some of it makes pretty terrible reading. The whole horrible idea that man can pay for sins of the body by causing the body to suffer—there is no such teaching in the Bible.

I have been greatly pleased to note the most important change that has been made in the translation of the New Testament scripture by Roman Catholic authorities. The recent Confraternity Edition of the New Testament which they have issued, with the imprimatur of one of their bishops, is a magnificent thing and long overdue. For the older translation which it supplants had translated the Greek word metanoia by the English rendering "do penance." But the Confraternity translation has omitted "do penance" in every instance and has now correctly translated by this strong and moving word, "repent."

Now it is possible to do penance without repenting, and it is the heart that must be brought down before God. The great French romantic novelist, Dumas, has given us a curious picture of penance in his novel, Chicot the Jester. This droll character was allowed to tease the king and the court in outrageous fashion, especially he made light of their efforts at doing penance. Chicot had discovered that the pipes of the heating system in the palace made it possible for him to speak in a certain place and have his words heard in hollow sound in the apartment of the king.

Chicot talked, and the king in great fear cried out to know who was speaking. Chicot spoke as the conscience of the king. The next day, the king caused all of his courtiers to take whips—the men in one circle, the women in another—and to march around in their circles, beating the person in front of them. The king himself sat aside watching them and crying out in words of pain, though no whip was touching him at all. Each time the king would commit some great sin—another adultery, or another scheming connivance to get funds—Chicot would take him to task over the heating pipes, and the next day the courtiers would have to take their whips once more.

Now it may be argued that this story tells merely of a court jest in a decadent age, but it has been abundantly proven that life in the religious houses of the Middle Ages was little different from this. The form of godliness which denied the spiritual power of that godliness was prevalent throughout all of Europe. Only the ignorant would dare to say that there was widespread Christian living in Western Europe during the five centuries before the Reformation. The theological idea behind all this was a deep spiritual perversion, for man's sins are not removed by punishment, whether inflicted on another or taken in oneself.

Sin is removed by God through the virtue of His having put the Lord Jesus to grief as an expiation for sin. Another unfortunate group of those who have attempted to give their bodies without first giving the innermost core of being are those who have attempted to take literally the words of the Lord Jesus Christ when He said, "If your right eye offend you, pluck it out and cast it from you, for it's profitable for you that one of your members should perish and not that your whole body should be cast into hell. And if your right hand offend you, cut it off and cast it from you, for it's profitable for you that one of your members should perish and not that the whole body should be cast into hell."

A blind man once told me that the lascivious images which were etched on his brain were even more vivid since he had lost his sight than they had been when he could see with perfect vision. Sin is not in the eyeballs; it is in the center of man's being. And yet, having established the fact that the central sphere of victory in Christian living must be within the hidden man of the heart, it is nevertheless true that the war must be waged in the body.

There is a terrible sense in which our bodies are ourselves. There is a terrible sense in which the body may well dominate the spirit. We know that when sickness comes, there can be an engulfment of the whole being, so that the only theme of consciousness is the dull throbbing will to live for one more moment, and then for one more moment. In those times when every nerve seems to have become a racetrack along which the speed demons of pain come hurling their screeching force, the spirit can do no more than throw out its will to live. And somehow, life continues.

I know from acquaintance with incurable invalids that there are noble Christians who are living lives of torture, and they have learned to live with a calm victory, yielding the body to God breath by breath, stab by stab. And there are other believers who know the tremendous warfare of living—just living day by day and struggling with a body which has its desires and appetures seemingly in independence of the spirit. I am not seeking to set up a division of responsibilities within man so that it might be possible for a part of the being to retain some aura of respectability by shunting the onus of sin upon some baser part of the being.

I believe that I have made the point more than clear in our studies of Romans 5, 6, and 7 that the Lord wants self—the ego, the I, me. If there is an attempt to divide the being, and if the individual says, "God, here is my old flesh, I yield it to thee for crucifixion," God may well answer, "I don't want your old flesh. I want you." But having said this and made it by far the most important part of the conflict, we come down to the fact that there is a sense in which the "I" has to yield the body to the Lord for special dealing. Paul speaks of the Christian as an athlete who must fight according to the rules.

We might well bring his sporting illusions up to date and translate his famous paragraph in modern terms. I express 1 Corinthians 9 and the last paragraph in these modern terms: "There are many men who might be on an athletic squad," Paul writes to the Corinthians, "but there's only one first place in each competition. If you're going out for athletics, be a prize winner. Every man that wants to be a champion keeps training rules. In sports, they do it because they want the passing title, but in the Christian life we do it because we want the eternal reward. That is the reason why I do not run a zigzag course, and when I fight, I do not lead with my chin nor do I pull my punches. I keep my body in complete subjection to my spirit. If I don't do this, I'm likely to be counted as one who did a lot of talking but finished up with the crowd, far from the prize winners."

"I keep my body under," says Saint Paul. So there is a sense in which there is both "I" and the body. "I beseech you by the mercies of God," says our text, "that you present your bodies a living sacrifice." Here too, there is both the body to be presented and the self that does the presenting. Now with the strict understanding that we have already dealt with the question of presenting self—the heart, the whole inner being—we turn to the examination of how a Christian in good health, normal in every outward way, shall present the body to God as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto Him, which is our reasonable spiritual service.

In the first place, we should realize that the life that we live must be lived in this world, and that it must be lived in the flesh. The Bible teaches these two great truths. "The life that I now live in the flesh," Paul writes to the Galatians. And in John, we are "in the world." The ascetic, monastic life finds no justification in the Word of God. The man who would crawl off into a cave or climb to the top of a column in order to get away from other human beings is not following the example of our Lord Jesus Christ. He was able to get away from the crowd for occasional nights in prayer alone on a mountain, but he was thronged with people.

If a woman could not get near to Him because of the crowd, a man had to climb a tree to see over the heads of those who surrounded Christ. 5,000 on one occasion and 4,000 on another had to be fed by Him because they were hungry. A beautiful verse tells us that "He could not be hid." Now following His example, we will be living out in the world of people where He in His providence has placed us. We are to grow up as Christian young people and take our place in life, whether in school, office, store, shop, military service, factory, hospital, home, apartment house, farm, or wherever our lot may lie.

We are to meet life and to live life. Moreover, we are to enjoy life. Whenever you find someone claiming to be living the Christian life and they are morose, surly, glum, whining, ascetic, puritanic, you may be sure that they have not seen life as the Lord Jesus has set forth the life of the Christian in the Bible. The young man who has a strong and vigorous body has the right to run his race and play his games and to excel if he can. The young woman to whom God has given form and beauty need not be ashamed of those gifts and, providing that she does not flaunt her beauty for evil, has every right to rejoice in it for good.

There is no reason that the body may not be well dressed, well housed, well fed, if we are holding all that we have as a trust from God and are not living in selfishness that allows the needy to suffer because of our greed. We read in 1 Timothy, "Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy." And as I spoke of the strong young man and the beautiful young woman, there is no reason why they should not love and marry and enjoy all of the joys of married life. All of this is the Christian life. There is no puritanism; there is no asceticism in it.

And yet, our text has in it the hint, yes, the command of something far more wonderful than mere normal or average living. Paul describes the Christian in terms of life that rings strangely if we do not understand what it is to present the body as a living sacrifice. He writes to the Corinthians, "Always bearing about in my body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of the Lord Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, so that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." We turn the page and find him saying, "What agreement does the temple of God have with idols? For you are the temple of the living God, as God has said, 'I will dwell in them and walk in them.'"

This is the reason why we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. God does not dwell in buildings today. There is no sanctuary on this earth in the biblical sense of the term. God dwells in some people—in those who are trusting Jesus Christ. This is why we're to consider our bodies as being sanctuaries. Nothing defiled shall be there. Our bodies are to be made a living sacrifice. And seeing this, we're on the threshold of something that is very great, and which will take the next study in this series also. The Lord willing, we'll continue it there. And our God and Father, we pray Thee that the Holy Spirit will bless the truth to each listening heart, and may there be many who enter into the joy of a full surrender to Thee through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Guest (Male): Jesus Christ gave himself as a sacrifice for our sins in order to save us. If we love Him, we must sacrificially offer our lives every day in service to Him. You've been listening to Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible, a ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. We hope you've benefited from today's message entitled, "A Living Sacrifice." You may listen to additional teaching by Dr. Barnhouse via the internet. Visit us at alliancenet.org. An audio copy of today's teaching is available by calling toll-free 1-800-488-1888. Today's message again is entitled, "A Living Sacrifice," or simply request message number R12-3.

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 far 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." Ask for your free copy of "Sex, Marriage, and Divorce" when you call or write.

Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is a radio outreach 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. The Alliance also produces the 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 listing of radio stations carrying our programs, please visit our website at alliancenet.org.

Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible comes to you through the generous gifts of listeners like you. If you have benefited from the 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 help further our work, contact us by calling toll-free 1-800-488-1888. That's 1-800-488-1888. You might also write us at Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Box 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. You may visit us online at alliancenet.org. Don't forget to request your free resource catalog featuring books, audio teachings, commentaries, booklets, videos, and a wealth of other materials from outstanding reformed teachers and theologians including Donald Grey Barnhouse, James Montgomery Boice, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Philip Graham Ryken. Thanks for listening. Join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.