Spirit,soul and Body 02 What to Expect From Body

I've been told that this is to be a 30-minute session, which means I have the responsibility of stopping the meeting. You had the responsibility of starting it. In the reverse vision of your Bible, in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, you have a time to start a meeting and a time to stop the meeting.

And because this is an informal service, you're not necessarily to wear your tuxedo to this meeting, we are relaxed, and that means I can stop in the middle of a sentence at 10 o'clock, and that may create a little interest for you to come back tomorrow morning to get the last half of the sentence. Besides, this is going to be informal because we are gathered in an informal fashion. I don't think it was Bobby Burns, I think it must have been the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, when he was in office, had a tremendous task, that of lifting us out of the Depression, and he gave us what he called some fireside chats instead of sermons or lectures.

And I think you're getting too many sermons at this part of the Palms. You need to have some fireside chats. So, I'm just going to talk to you this morning, and by the way, the fireside is right here, and this is very convenient.

Sometimes it's necessary to build a fire under the preacher to make it a little more interesting. I would like you to turn in your Bible to the last part of 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5, the closing verses of 1 Thessalonians, and that's chapter 5, and I begin reading at verse 14. 1 Thessalonians 5, 14.

Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be faithful toward all men. See that none render evil for evil unto any man, but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves and to all men. Rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

Quench not the spirit, despise not prophesying, prove all things, hold fast that which is good, abstain from all appearance of evil, and the very God of peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray, God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. Brethren, pray for us.

Greet all the brethren with a holy kiss. I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Amen. The concluding words of a letter are usually very important, and the person who writes it perhaps is concerned that in the very last page he has something important to give to you. When you are reading Paul's epistles, you will discover that they have a certain pattern.

Nearly all of them, they begin with relationship followed by responsibility, or precepts followed by practice, or if you want it under the d's, doctrine followed by duty. And his epistle to the Thessalonian church is no exception to that rule. And in these verses that I have read to you, there's quite a cluster of things that God wants us to examine ourselves with, and they cover a wide variety of things.

I suppose that some of them are Godward, some of them are selfward, and some of them are worldward. Included in this, and I am particularly interested in verse 23, where Paul offers a prayer unto the very God of peace, sanctify you holy, and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The expression, the God of peace, is a wonderful expression because, really, the only peace that this poor world knows is what comes from God.

And, in contrast to the restlessness of the world in which we are found, it's delightful to have this expression, the God of peace. When the angel Gabriel came to announce the birth of Christ, behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people, suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of a heavenly host that said, peace on earth, and the only peace this earth shall ever know is that which comes through Jesus Christ. In the fifth chapter of Romans, you will read, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and to have peace with God is tremendous.

In fact, that was a part of the early joy of our salvation to be delivered from our sin. The burden, the load of our sins, and John Bunyan illustrates it so well when he has that poor sinner with that terrible bundle upon his back growing heavier each day, and then at the foot of the cross that burden rolls off, and for the first time the poor man can stand up without a load on his back. What a tremendous blessing to learn that my sins have been put away, that I have peace with God.

Until that time, I was afraid of God. I feared him. I didn't want to be in his presence, but after that I found that I can come into his presence with holy boldness.

He wants me to come without any fear, because I have peace with God. But then in Philippians 4 there's something even better when he says, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God shall keep your heart. That's tremendous enough, that there is peace in our hearts continually.

The man who wrote those words could speak from experience, because there was a day when he was going up to Jerusalem, and there was a good possibility that bonds and afflictions would be his portion when he got there, but he was able to say, none of these things move me. Ordinarily that would move a person. There may be something dreadful awaiting, but that won't move me, because my God is on the control.

Our Lord Jesus Christ told us something about the future, and told us there will come a time when there will be wars and rumors of wars, and we are living in that day, and previous generations of Christians have also been living in that day. But added to that is, are these words, see that you be not troubled. When there are ominous things about us, let me go back just a few years when Khrushchev was over here, and he said very boldly, by 1980 we're going to bury you.

And a number of people said, you know he might do it. Wouldn't that be terrible if he buried us? And there are other things that disturb us so far as the news is concerned, and yet Christians have a wonderful privilege in the day in which we are living to exhibit that peace of God in our hearts. And if the Savior said, see that you be not troubled, then we have the right to stand among all the rest in the world that are trembling and shaking, and saying, I've got no cause for trembling and shaking.

Everything is under control. My Savior is at the controls, and as long as he is, I have no reason. I have a suspicion that if I could go to Washington some day, and stand around the Capitol steps, and see a few of these big fellas come out, and I stop one of them and say, how are things going with our country? Is there anything that ought to trouble us, or are we getting along all right? I think that fella would say, everything's just wonderful, just fine, just great.

Senator, there's nobody around, would you mind telling the truth? If you don't tell anyone, I promise I won't tell. I tell you, we're scared. We don't know what's going to happen.

We have no idea. Don't tell anyone. We've got to be brave.

Now, that's a poor thing to rest upon, is it not? But the peace of God in our hearts. The Christian can say, nothing can happen to me unless God allows it, and if he allows it, do we want it otherwise? See that you be not troubled. So, when all the world around us is shaking, you think, what in the world is the world coming to? Christian can say, I don't have anything to shake about it.

You must be queer. But that's true. The peace of God in our hearts.

Then when I think about this expression, the God of peace, I think of that millennial reign of our Lord Jesus Christ for one thousand years, there will be absolute peace on this earth, and I wouldn't believe it if it wasn't in my Bible. It doesn't seem possible. Oh yes it does.

Because the dictator that will be on the throne then will be a good dictator. We always associate something bad with the dictator, don't we? And I guess we have reason. But really, Jesus Christ will be the dictator.

And as long as you have a righteous dictator, you're all right. But we've never had any of those. We've had the other kind.

But to have absolute peace for one thousand years is wonderful. On Wednesday night of last week, we had James Starr from Letters of Interest with us for the Wednesday night, and he told us about his school days down at Dallas, Texas, and he said Louis Perry Chaper was a very small man. And he said, I distinctly remember him one day getting involved with the reign of Jesus Christ, his reign of peace.

And he said that wonderful hallelujah chorus which includes, He shall reign forever and ever. He started out by saying, Jesus Christ shall reign for a thousand years. Jesus Christ shall reign for a thousand years.

No! No! No! He shall reign forever and ever. It starts with a thousand years, but it keeps right on. It doesn't stop at the end of a thousand years.

It keeps right on, and he shall reign forever and ever. There's an awful lot of peace standing ahead of us. The future, the God of peace.

But really, that is not what I wanted to preach about this morning. In the 23rd verse, we have the answer to the young people who are saying, Who am I? And they're still asking that question, and our Bible answers it. We are spirit, soul, and body.

If we go back to the book of Genesis, where God created, he said at that particular point, Let us make man in our own image. And whatever that means, in our own image, it certainly includes the fact that God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He said, Let us make man in our own image.

Then we have learned from this verse that we are in his image in this respect, too. That we are a tri-unity, or would you rather have a tri-part being. We are spirit, soul, and body.

To answer the question, Who am I? We can do it by the process of elimination. We can say, Well, I'm not mineral, although my body is made up of certain minerals. I am not vegetable, although there are certain things that the vegetable kingdom has in common with man.

I am not animal, and that can be proved in many, many ways. Although I breathe the same air as the animal, I may eat the same food as the animal. The composition of my body may be very similar to that of an animal, which has blood flowing through its veins, has a heart that pumps the blood, and all of those things, but I am not animal.

There are differences definitely, and we must recognize from the Word of God that I am a different person from all the rest of God's creation. It was a separate creation. Spirit, soul, and body.

Spirit that makes me God-conscious, that allows me the privilege of communicating with God. Soul, that has to do with my emotions, which perhaps includes the will of man. And body, well, we're familiar with that, are we not? We communicate, or we are world-conscious through hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching the five gateways of knowledge.

I suppose that some of the people in the world today still have a difficulty in turning down the fact that we did evolve from animals, and it was just mentioned at our breakfast table and on the news that in California right now, Bible-believing Christians are rising up and saying it is not fair that our children have to be sent to a school where they must teach evolution, the Darwinian theory of evolution, and are not allowed to teach the Bible account of creation. They are rising up and saying this is not fair, this is not constitutional. If you're going to teach evolution, you must also teach what the Bible has to say about creation, and that's unreasonable, and I think that some of our authorities are concerned that there are so many private schools rising up today, in defiance of the fact that our children are forced to hear one philosophy, and are not allowed to hear the most reasonable one of these.

I think as Christians we have a right to say those who want to believe in the evolution theory that we did evolve from animals, I think we have a right to say I admire your faith. I don't have that much faith. You don't have any proof for it, but you believe it.

We have all the proof on our side, and that's why we believe it, so let's congratulate the infidel for the tremendous faith that he has to believe something for which there is no evidence at all. I was in New Jersey some years ago, staying in a home of people who were, I guess in their fifties, maybe in their sixties, and at that age of course the children are married, and they have no more opportunity to lavish their affection upon their children, and so they usually have a dog, and they had a dog in this home, a black cocker spaniel, and they were interested when a visitor came to show how much they had trained this dog, and they said he has been trained to give thanks for his food before he eats, and this I wanted to see, and they were anxious to show me. The dish of food was there, the dog came in and stayed about this far from the dish of food, and he looked to his master, and the master said pray.

Absolutely silent. I could see through he was peeping. I saw a little spark of eye.

He had his eye on the master. When the master said amen, he was right there. Now I was supposed to believe that he said his prayers, and there is no way I can prove he didn't.

On the other hand, there's no way that he could prove that he did either, but I was interested in the fact that animals really can be trained and enough, but there is a definite difference between us. Now in this tripartite being spirit, soul, and body, in Christ's Sermon on the Mount, he reminds us that it is the tendency of man to put all the emphasis on the care of the body, and neglect the spiritual side, and that's why you have, what shall it profit a man? He shall gain the whole world and lose his soul, and in verse 25 of the sixth chapter of Matthew, these words, Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what you shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Verse 31.

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? Verse 33. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you, because man has a tendency of saying, Let's get everything out of this life what we can to satisfy the desires of the body, and he neglects the spiritual thing, and since that is true, this emphasis is necessary, but having said that, we must admit that we are creatures that swing to extremes, and easily we come to the place the body doesn't mean a thing. God is not interested in the body, he is only interested in spiritual things, but this verse says, I pray God your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, I have to admit God is interested in my body. Will you let me give you a few verses that are familiar to you that emphasize this truth. Romans 12.1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.

1 Corinthians 6.19 What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, for you are bought for the price? Therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's. Aren't you surprised that the body is ahead of the spirit in this verse? There must be some emphasis or some importance. Philippians 1.20 Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death.

3 Peter 2. Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper, and be in health, even as thy soul prospers. Hebrews 10.5 speaks about the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, sacrifice and offering. Thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou prepared me.

1 Peter 2.24 To his own self there are sins in his own body on the tree. 2 Corinthians 5.10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive that the thing is done in his body, according that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. In the Great Commission, men are sent out to proclaim the gospel, and that is being carried out during the book of the Acts, and it is evident that they had to have strong bodies to be able to stand the rigors of the duties that were before them.

So, I want to bring before you the importance of the body. Where did it begin? Well, there are only four possibilities of how you would be here this morning. God has had four methods of making bodies.

The first one was the dust method, and you wouldn't like that one. The second one was the rib method, and that you have in the beginning of your bible. Someone has said, ladies have come a long way from Adam's rib to women's lip, but that's where you began.

Ladies began with the rib method. Then you have the virgin birth method, and that only happens once, and all the rest of us by natural generation, by having a father and a mother. I'm not sure if my statistics are right, but I suppose that you weigh approximately seven pounds more or less when you came into this world.

You were 18 to 20 inches tall or in length when you came into this world. I'm not sure about that, but I do know that we were absolutely helpless. Unless there had been a mother, or a father, or a nurse, or a grandmother, someone taking care of us, we would have perished from that moment on.

Rather different from the animals, are we not? Very, very helpless, dependent entirely upon someone else. These bodies began just like that, and one of the first concerns of the parents is whether it is a normal body. The doctor examines that baby immediately, and if he has a smile on his face it means that everything as far as I can see is normal.

He doesn't smile, there's apprehension. There is a slight defect here, or there, or there, and immediately there is concern. There is the interest in seeing that body develop, and as it develops physically, also mentally, and God put into the mind of the little baby to have an ambition to change, and to be able to do things, to eat by himself, to handle the ravel, and to eventually being able to dress himself, to tie shoestrings.

This is the idea of making progress. Somewhere along that line, we have to learn that we have a sinful nature. That we have a will of our own, and that begins rather early, where we try to get across to our parents what we want, when we want it, and we don't want any opposition.

Temper, and all of the ugly things we learn from that come with that body as it matures. The psalmist says we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and he must have looked at his body when he said that, and it's absolutely true in many, many ways. Doctors who have gone to detail in figuring out how the body functions will tell us that in one year's time, there are 80 train tank cars full, 81 rather, tank cars full of blood that circulate through our body by that little pump, that little heart that's going on.

That's amazing, is it not? And that for 80 or even 100 years, that heart has been pumping, pumping, pumping, during waking hours, during sleeping hours, keeping right on. It's amazing that God could make an instrument, an organ, that could do just that. When I think of the variety of things, I guess when we think of our bodies, we have to say that God must have had a sense of humor when he made us, because we are all different.

Now that would be impossible so far as man is concerned, with that many millions of billions of people, and every once in a while, you know, that man reminds me of that man. But when you look not quite, not quite, how hot could possibly God make that many people, even those that are dead? There's nobody exactly like that person. Amazing! God's creation.

There are certain things about our bodies over which we have no control. The color of our eyes, and well, there's just many things over which we have no control, whether we are tall and skinny, and they eventually call us string beans, or whether we are short or tall, or many of these things we have no control. But as we grow a little older, we recognize that at a certain point, and this comes gradually, the parents no longer have the responsibility of taking care of the body, but it shifts to the individual, and I become responsible before God for that wonderful body that he has given to me.

It has to last for the duration, and I have a responsibility to care for that body, and the length of my stay on the earth is somewhat in my hands. If I neglect that body, then I may live a shorter time upon the earth. Now, this may seem strange for a preacher to talk about the importance of the body, but I believe it's in the Bible, and when we read this, that our whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, I don't want you to overlook that God in his wisdom gave you that body, and put you in charge of that body, and you have a responsibility to take care of it, and your service for the Lord may depend to some extent as to whether you will be careless or indifferent about it.

I visit hospitals, visit patients, and I visit people who have a very low regard for doctors. One in particular, a man who had a heart attack. I went to see him in the hospital.

He was sitting on the side of the bed, and I said, Are you supposed to sit on the side of the bed? No, I don't think so, but the doctors think I have a heart attack. I know better than that. I've just got indigestion.

I don't have a heart attack. I said, Well, I'm surprised to see you sitting on the side of the bed. That was about four o'clock in the afternoon.

Eleven o'clock at night, I got a message. The man is dead. He did not.

He knew better than the doctors. Now, there are all kinds of doctors, those in which you have confidence, and those in which you do not have confidence, and I think we're justified to say there are doctors, and there are doctors, but if you have confidence in your doctors, then we are responsible to behave. Now, I didn't get to the place where I wanted to, but the clock says ten o'clock, and I will not be guilty of going overtime, but tomorrow I have some more to tell you about that terrible body of yours, and your responsibility of taking care of it.

We're going to stick to this same portion of the Word of God, and we're going to deal with some of the limitations of the body, and some of the things that God has to say regarding the care of the body. Let's dismiss in prayer. Our Father, we thank Thee that Thou hast given these bodies of ours.

We do not understand why some people from the day of birth have deformed and bodies that are very sick. Others of us are very healthy all of our lifetime. This is in Thy hands, and we have no way of explaining it, but we thank Thee that Thou dost love all individuals, and regardless of the kind of body Thou hast given us, Thy salvation is available to all of us.

We thank Thee that Thou art concerned about our bodies. We thank Thee for that body Thou hast given to our Lord Jesus Christ. That body was so marred more than any man.

We thank Thee He suffered in that body. He bore our sins. We bless Thee for that wonderful day when Christ in His body bore our sins and pounded His cross.

It is our desire that we shall take seriously the possession of this body, and that we shall use it to honor and to glorify Thee. We ask Thy blessings, and this company of believers, and ask our Father that Thou wilt by Thy Spirit make us aware of the tremendous blessing that Thou hast allowed us to have these bodies. And for those that are sick, we pray Thy blessing upon them.

We pray, our Father, that Thou wilt give them joy in their souls to know that they are saved. And we ask our Father, if it is Thy will, Thou wilt give to them a greater measure of health and strength. And while they are passing through some days of pain, we pray that there may be spiritual enrichment during those hours.

We thank Thee for the future that tells us that someday we shall have bodies that will have no limitations, that will not be subject to illness, and we praise Thee for the delightful future that lies ahead for each one of us. Meanwhile, we commit ourselves to Thee, spirit, soul, and body, asking Thy blessing in Jesus' name. Amen.