If you weren't with us last week,
I'm going to be doing a second part on the topic of biblical
counseling. And so the idea here is I've
been preaching on some various distinctives of our church, and
we're going to be kicking off a new counseling center that
starts the first week of January. So I'm just trying to make sure
that our whole body is on board, understanding these important
principles and ready to live them out as we serve in this
ministry together. So why don't you pray with me,
and then we'll dive into our time together. Father, thank
you for this morning. I'm so thankful for our church
and the songs that we can sing in the heart of our leaders here,
just to be in devotional worship and an adoration to Christ, our
Savior. Thank you for seating us at your
table. Bless this time in the preaching
of your word that you would grow and change us to make us more
like Christ, and it's in His name we pray, amen. Well, imagine
that you notice that there are some termites in your house.
And so you decide to go online and check out what exterminators
are in your area. And you find three different
exterminators that you want to check the price on and kind of
check their assessment. And so you call each one. The
first exterminator comes over and examines your house. And
he says, well, it's not that bad. We caught it just in time. A simple spraying will take care
of the problem. So just in order to do diligence,
you call the second exterminator and he comes over and says, well,
look, it's a little worse than it looks. But if we, you know,
there are some termites that have infested parts of the ceiling
and certain parts of the walls, but we think we can still get
to it. We can fix it by replacing some of the boards. And so in
order to, again, be very thorough, you call that third exterminator
anyway. And he comes over and he says this. I don't know how
to tell you this, but termites have totally infested your entire
house. The only way to get rid of them
is to tear your house down and to build another one. Now, you
think about that illustration in some ways, you're like, that's
a bummer. But in other ways, you need the truth. And if termites
have infested the whole house, you don't want to keep patching
it up if you just need to build a new one. Now, this illustration
is, I believe, a good picture of how psychology has infested
the church. The assessment of the third exterminator
accurately pictures the amount of damage that secular psychology
has done in the church and what must be done in order to repair
the change. Total infestation requires total
demolition. And in our first message on biblical
counseling, we investigated the house of Christian psychology
through the lens of scripture and found it not only to be totally
infested with atheistic and humanistic philosophies and practices, but
we were also reminded that there's really only one solution and
the solution is Christ. The solution is coming to Christ
and being changed by Christ and living for Christ. The solution
is not to try to repair the house, but rather to build a new one. And in our first heading of our
four-part outline last week, we just looked at this introduction
to biblical counseling. You see there in your notes,
we talked a little bit about how psychology is diametrically opposed
to the Bible. And last week, we discussed four
reasons for that, that psychology was wrong because of who founded
it. It was founded by unbelievers
who did not know or love God, who desired to set up their own
religion of reaching men's souls without the gospel. We also talked
about how psychology was wrong because of what it teaches. It
doesn't teach that men and women are sinners before an angry God
who need to repent and to be restored in a right relationship
through the gospel. But rather, it teaches that you
be who you are. And whatever that is, learn to
live with it with a positive view of yourself. We also talked
about last week that psychology is wrong because of how it works. It doesn't work through internal
transformation of the heart through the gospel, but it works rather
by behavioral modifications of changing the outside. And then
also we talked about how psychology is wrong because it hasn't worked.
I mean, it just it doesn't work. It's a broken cistern that holds
no water. And the only thing that can really
change anybody for the rest of their life, and certainly for
eternity, is the gospel. So we talked about that for all
these reasons that psychology cannot be integrated with Christianity. And so we've got to build a new
house. We can't take the wisdom of the world and mix it with
the wisdom of God. Oil and water do Do not mix. And so this morning, we're going
to find that the Bible really is sufficient for all we need.
I mean, if we're going to tear down that house of psychology,
then we better build something better. We better build something
that we have more confidence in and that we have more conviction
about than what man has to offer. And so the first and the most
important step in building a house is to lay the foundation. And
if it's not laid correctly, then the rest of the house will be
unstable. And so the same basic principle applies in constructing
a model for counseling. The first and most important
step is to lay a strong biblical foundation. So that's what we
want to do this morning by looking at our second heading, number
two, what is the foundation to biblical counseling? And the
following that we'll be giving this morning are eight foundational
principles of counseling. And these eight principles form
an accurate foundation of which to build a counseling ministry.
Here's the first one, number one, the sufficiency of the word
of God. So obviously, biblical counseling
is built on the Bible. It's not built on man. It's not
built on man's wisdom. It's not built on research. It's
built on the true divine revelation of God, the Holy Bible. You're there already in 2 Timothy
3, 16 and 17. All scripture is breathed out
by God and profitable for teaching for reproof, for correction and
for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete,
equipped for every good work. Now, last week we talked about
how some psychologists would say that if you're sick physically,
then you need to go see a doctor. And if you have questions about
God or faith, then you should go see a pastor. But if you're
struggling with internal turmoil of an emotional or psychological
nature, then you need to see a psychologist. And what I'm
saying this morning is don't see a psychologist, see rather
a Christian who knows and understands the Bible, because the only thing
that will really help you is the word of God. The sufficiency
of the word of God is proclaimed boldly by the Holy Spirit who
inspired the word of God. Notice again, it says all scriptures
breathe out, inspire, breathe out utterly given by God, and
it's profitable for counseling. That's what teaching, reproof,
correction, and training in righteousness That's what those things are.
That's biblical counseling, that you're teaching somebody what
the word of God says. You're reproving or rebuking
somebody who's living in unrepentant sin. You're correcting them by
showing them the right way with God's help to bring about change. And you're training them about
what it's all about. And notice verse 17 says that
it's in this way that the man of God is what? Complete doesn't
say, but the man of God is still incomplete and therefore needs
secular psychology in order to really be equipped for certain
works. It's not what the scripture says.
It says, no, no, it's all in the Bible. The Bible is sufficient
for all that we need for life in Godliness. There's not one
problem that you would ever have that you would come to the Bible
and say, ah, there is no biblical principle or truth whatsoever
that will help me. Therefore, I must go seek secular
thoughts on the issue to help me with my problem. I mean, the
Bible is the only inerrant, infallible, and authoritative book in the
universe. It is totally sufficient. It
is complete. It is God's word. So either we
believe what it says about counseling or we open up ourselves to all
kinds of corrupt thinking. Psychology is not necessary or
needed for the Christian. There is no technique or therapy
or program that holds a key to your recovery. The scripture
is the only manual that we need for counseling. The scriptures
don't need to be supplemented or integrated with anything else.
The Word of God is the primary means by which we change. In fact, you could just jot down
2 Peter 1, 3 that reminds us that it's Christ and His Word
that brings about all that we need for life and godliness.
You're familiar with this passage. His divine power has granted
to us all things. that pertain to life and godliness
through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory
and excellence. And so what we're saying is that
all that we need for life and godliness are found in Christ
and in his word. I mean, it was Jesus himself
who said in John 17, 17, sanctify them in the truth. Your word
is truth. And so the way that you're sanctified,
the way that you change to become more like Christ is not in the
secular research of the world, but rather in the divine revelation
of God's holy word. The Bible is the key to spiritual
growth. The key to counseling is to know
the word of God and to help the counselee apply God's word in
their life. So better than taking a dose
of medication or better than going to a secular psychologist
would be coming to God's word and receiving a regular dose
of the living word of God, which can bring about change in your
life on a day by day basis. The second principle for counseling
would be this. It's built on the supremacy of
the glory of God. If you'd like, you can turn to
1 Corinthians 10 31. Most of you know the passage
already. So whether you eat or drink and whatever you do, do
all to the glory of God. So what I'm saying here is that
the supreme purpose of all things is the glory of God. That includes
counseling. When you are counseling somebody
as a Christian to a Christian, you're to point them to the glory
of God. Counseling must be God centered and not man centered. That is, it must be focused on
God and his word instead of on ultimately the counselee. And
you say, well, Adam, what are you talking about? Well, in many
secular psychological settings, the idea is that the counselee
comes in and spends all the time talking. And then the counselor
just says, hey, that's great. I'm glad you figured it out.
I mean, you've seen the movie. What about Bob? Right. He comes
in. He's like, I'm struggling with this. And he's like, define
this. And so he talks about that. And then he says, define this.
And he talks about that. So define this. Right. It's almost
like they just kind of prod people to talk about what they want
to talk about and say, well, you see there, there's your problem.
All right, I'll see you again next week. Not every counselor
does that, but you get the point. The point of counseling isn't
just to let a counselee talk and talk and talk. I mean, to
some degree it is. Let me just be clear here. We're
going to talk later in the message about receiving data, asking
good questions, getting to the heart of the matter. So yeah,
in so many ways, you're going to ask them a ton of questions.
But I'm just saying at some point as counseling moves on, you've
got to do some instruction for the glory of God. And if the
counselee comes in and all they want to do is talk, talk, talk
and not receive instruction for the glory of God, then what they're
actually concerned about is talking about themselves instead of listening
to what does God's Word say about my life, my situation, my problem. Because the most important thing
in counseling is about what that person's relationship to God
is like. And so in counseling, no matter
what's going on, we're talking about the glory of God and the
greatness of God. Sometimes I'll even assign A.W.
Pink's book, The Attributes of God, or Tozer's Knowledge of
the Holy, so that the counselee is growing and be like, Wow,
it's all about God and His glory and I'm so focused on my problem
that I need to have a better perspective. I mean, if you don't
have any other idea where to go in counseling, I take them
to 2 Corinthians 5, 9, which just simply says, so whether
we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him. It's our ambition in life to
please God. And so it's not about me and
my problem so much as it's about focusing on God and His glory. Number three, the centrality
of the son of God. Here you could jot down Colossians
128. It's him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone
with all wisdom that we might present everyone mature in Christ. So our goal is to lead people
to Jesus. Biblical counseling is about
evangelism. It starts with people coming in who aren't sure what
to do in their problem, and so you begin to share with them
the solution is Christ. And when the person says, well
I'm not interested in Christ, I just want to change my problem,
the response is that I can't help you. You're welcome to go
to secular counseling if you want, but if you want biblical
counsel, which by the way, we have them read through a description
of what biblical counseling is before they come to our counseling
center. So they already know what they're getting into. It's
not a bait and switch. We have them fill out information.
They read, here's what we stand on. Here's what we believe. Here's
how we're going to counsel you. But sometimes still they come
in and they're like, no, no, no, I don't want the Bible. I just need help on
my marriage to which I'll just say, well, I can't help you.
I can't help you in your marriage, but I can help you come to Christ
and he can help you in your marriage because it's all about knowing
Christ. It's about his sacrificial substitutionary death on the
cross, which is the real key to counseling. His death broke
the power of sin and provides us freedom from sin. And so we no longer have to live
as slaves to sin, but can now overcome every sin. who Christ
is and what He has done is what makes change possible. I mean,
how many times do people come in and they say, well, I've been
this way my whole life, or these bad things happened to me, and
so that just made me who I am. to which I'll respond, if they're
in Christ, that it's Christ who makes you who you are. Christ
can change you. I don't care if you've been this
way 30 years. Jesus Christ changes people,
and he could change you if you'll look to Christ. So Christ not
only makes counseling possible, he is the ultimate goal of biblical
counseling. I mean, the goal is to become
more like Christ. Turn with me, if you will, to
Romans 8.28. I use this passage in almost every counseling scenario
because there's a general principle here that we must not overlook.
As soon as I say turn to Romans 8, 28, most people who have had
any experience in the Bible roll their eyes. They're like, oh,
pastor, you're going to tell me God's in control of everything.
Well, I got a real problem and I don't want to just hear about
the sovereignty of God. Well, that might show you a lot
about the counselee if they respond that way. But, you know, typically
I would say if somebody is in an emergency of great trial,
I probably don't go to Romans 8 28. But most of counseling
is a chronic problem that's been going on for weeks and months
and years. And so I think going to Romans 8 28 is the best place
to go to help them understand this truth. And we know that
for those who love God, all things work together for good for those
who were called according to his purpose. Now, if you have
an NASB in front of you, it obviously reads, God causes all things
to work together for good, right? But it's the same truth. We believe
in the sovereignty of God, that he ordains and brings about all
things that happen in life. He is the ultimate cause of all
causes. So with that theological underpinning,
the idea is, do we believe as Christians the verse is really
true? Do all things really work together for good? I mean, in
theory, we all say, yeah, yeah, it works for good. But what if
you get that phone call about your teenager who wrecked the
car? Is your first response, oh, this is going to be good?
Or is your first response like, did you look both ways before
you crossed the street? I mean, the idea is like, it
doesn't always feel like all things work together for good.
What if you show up to work tomorrow and your boss pulls a Donald
Trump on you and says, you're fired? Are you immediately going
to be thinking, wow, this is good. It's going to be a great
Thanksgiving. You know, I mean, you understand that we know how
to give the Sunday school church answer, but there's something
in us that says, oh, that's not good. That's just not good. What
if you get the horrible news from the doctor on the phone
that that diagnoses you with terminal cancer? Are you going
to get off the phone thinking, this is good? Probably not. And so council leads ask these
same questions. Well, I'm here with a great crisis
of either depression or divorce or a rebellious kid, or I have
ADD or whatever their problem is, right? They're going to come
and say, how can this be good? This is what I have. Help me.
And so I try to just remind them that God is at work and he's
at work in your life and in this situation and in this trial for
good. And the good is he wants to change
you to make you more like Christ. And so that's why you then look
at verse 29 and say what that verse says. For those whom he
foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image
of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And so what is he saying? God
is causing all things to work together for good, even bad things. It doesn't say only the good
things work for good, but the bad things work for bad. That's
not biblical truth. All things work for good. How
can good become of it? Because he wants to use that
trial, that difficulty to conform you, to make you more like Christ,
to allow you to see that all you really need in this life
is Christ. and that he can change you and
conform you. And oftentimes he uses the crucible
of trials to change us so that we can understand all I need
is Christ. And then that begins to give
the counselee hope like, oh, OK, now I'm starting to see some
good. I can become more Christlike. Would you help me grow to be
more like Christ in my broken marriage? Would you help me to
grow to be more like Christ, even though I have a kid in jail?
Would you help me grow to be more like Christ, even though
I'm feeling really depressed and I can't hardly get out of
bed? Help me to become more like Christ." And then we implement
some of the truths of God's Word in biblical counseling. Well,
let me move on. The fourth principle in counseling
is this, the efficacy of the Spirit of God. So here we're
talking about the Holy Spirit, right? It's God, it's God's word,
it's Christ, it's the Holy Spirit. Titus 3, 5, he saved us, not
because of works done by us in righteousness, but according
to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of
the Holy Spirit. So I'm just reminding here that
in counseling, the Holy Spirit is alive and well. And the Holy
Spirit is at work. You can't counsel without the
Holy Spirit. You're trusting in the Spirit
of God to work through the Word of God to bring about true change. It's the Holy Spirit who is ultimately
responsible for salvation and for sanctification. It's the
Holy Spirit that convicts us and grants us repentance and
teaches us all things and helps us to change. And so you want
the Holy Spirit to be at work. Consider Consider ephesians 6
17 that says that we ought to take the helmet of salvation
and the sword of the spirit Which is the word of god? So if you
take the word of god out of your hand, then you don't have the
sword of the spirit That's the only offensive weapon in the armor
of god passage And so the idea is that the holy spirit uses
god's word which is why i'm counseling I usually counsel with nothing's
on my desk except my bible I have my Bible typically open to whatever
passage I was reading last. So as the counselee comes in,
they know I'm coming from this book. I don't have a DSM 4 or
5, the Diagnostics Statistics Manual of Psychiatric Diseases,
but rather I have the Bible. That's what's on my desk, one
book. And so as they come in, I want them to know that I'm
going to be asking and talking and interacting and say, hey,
open, open your Bible. I usually ask them to bring a
Bible. If not, I pull one off my shelf, turn it around, say,
hey, open it up to Romans 828. Let's talk about this. Open it
up to whatever passage that you want to provide for them, because
you know that the Holy Spirit of God is going to work through
the Word of God to bring about change in that person's heart. And so our limited knowledge
and experience are not our only resources. The biggest resource,
I would say, is God's Word and the power of the Spirit of God.
Let me move on to the fifth principle of counseling would be this.
You need to make sure that your counselee understands the depravity of
man. Genesis 127 says we're created
in the image of God, but it's Romans 5 12 that says that therefore
just as sin came into the world through one man and death through
sin and So death spread to all men because all sent in other
words in counseling you got to make sure that people understand
you're not just a evolved animal that acts on animal instincts
and so that's why you do what you do and No, you need to have
a healthy, robust anthropology that you came from God, that
God created you and he created you to have a relationship with
him. And the problem is sin entered the world. And so we've been
separated from God. And you must be restored in a
right relationship with God through repentance and through faith
and through God's divine work of grace in your life. And the
problem is people rather think of themselves as, well, I'm pretty
good, or this happened to me, it's not my fault, or they want
to find some other answer than the fact that they were born
in sin. Listen to what one biblical counselor
has written on this, quote, man is not a victim, but a violator,
not sick, but sinful, not codependent, dysfunctional or deprived, but
depraved. His problem is not self-protection,
but self-promotion. His problem is not low self-esteem,
but high self-esteem. He does not struggle with unfulfilled
needs, but with unfaithful deeds. Close quote. I think that kind
of describes it for us. Too many people have been so
psychologized that we always want to blame shift everything
on everything else instead of understanding that I'm in sin
and I need to repent and I need to come to Christ. And even if
it's something bad that happened to you, you understand every
counselor Lee comes in and the problem they're dealing with
is either a result of their own sin or it's something that did
happen to them that they couldn't help, but they responded in a
simple way to that circumstance. So either way, the problem's
sin. Either I'm suffering from my own sin and this is the consequence.
So I'm a drunkard, I committed adultery, I stole money from
the bank, and now I'm in this real mess. I got fired at work
because of my negligence of my work ethic. And so they get depressed
and so they need help. Or it could be someone comes
in and they're abused. or it's the innocent party in
the divorce due to adultery or something to that nature. And
so the idea is that you still have to respond biblically. And
if you respond out of hate or out of bitterness or out of wanting
to fight back and have revenge, then you don't understand that
you still have a problem that you need to work on because you
are depraved. And without Christ, you can't
change and grow in this situation. Let me move on the sixth principle
that counseling should be built on would be this number six the
sovereignty of salvation And so here I'm just trying to stress
again the fact that they must be saved They must understand
that it's not about me working hard to earn favor with God and
therefore I'll be a Christian but it's Ephesians 2 8 and 9
that by grace you've been saved through faith and that none of
yourselves it's a gift of God not of works lest any man should
boast of So you're just trying to make sure that your counselee
understands that it's the lack of salvation in the heart of
a person that oftentimes is the problem. Meaning this, sometimes
I'm counseling with somebody, I'm two weeks in, I'm four weeks
in, I'm five weeks in, and I realize, you know what? It's this person
doesn't understand the gospel. which is why we encourage our
counselees to start with the gospel so that when somebody
comes in, oftentimes, again, they'll come in sharing their
problems. This is what's going on. We're having a horrible marriage.
Here's all the problems and they dump it out on you. And then
I just simply stop and say, hey, look, I don't know how to tell
you this, but your problem is actually way bigger than you thought.
You thought you had a marriage problem. The truth is you've
sinned against a holy God and you deserve hell and eternal
torment forever. And I just kind of stop there
for a moment. They start squirming like, hey man, I thought you
were gonna help me with our marriage. And I'm like, I'm trying to help
you, but it starts with you looking to Christ. And so the solution
is way greater than you thought. You could turn to Christ this
day, repent of your sin, embrace and believe in the gospel, and
God will save you for all eternity. And not only will God save you,
but he'll begin to change you and to conform you into the image
of his son. And he'll give you great hope
in life's worst trial. Well, it's talking to them about
the sovereignty of God and doing the work of salvation in the
heart of sinners. Well, the seventh principle in
counseling would be the primacy of the local church. Acts 20,
28 talks a little bit about Paul addressing the Ephesian elders,
where he says, pay careful attention to yourselves and to the flock
in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for
the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. Here's the
deal. Counseling, biblical counseling,
is to take place in the local church, not in a counseling center. When I was living and working
as a physician's assistant in Savannah, Georgia, for four years,
I was serving at my local church, the Baptist Church in town. Our
Baptist Church, along with all the other churches, gave money
to support the counseling center which was Christian psychology,
and it was called the Barnabas Center. And so all the churches
in our town, instead of their pastors and their own church
counseling the issues from God's word, would refer everybody to
the Counseling Center. And the problem with the Counseling
Center is it was staffed with men and women with psychological
degrees who were from very theological backgrounds. So you had one from
the Methodist church and one from the liberal Presbyterian
church, one from the Baptist church, you know, one from the
Episcopal church. And those are the counselors.
And I'm not saying that's all bad if they all stand in Christ.
And if they all believe in the gospel, I trust that there's
some redeemable thing that could happen there. Right. But the
idea is if you're not careful, you begin to get into like, well,
what what do we teach on this or what do we teach on that?
And and so the wisdom would be let a church hold a counseling
center within the church so that they have some consistency with
what we believe the Bible teaches about complementarianism, for
example, or what the Bible teaches about discipline, or what the
Bible teaches about sexuality, because some of those different
denominations have different views that it might actually
affirm a sinful activity that's happening in somebody's life
instead of condemning it as the Bible would, and then giving
hope about how to bring about true change. And so our conviction
is that we want to not practice a parachurch type organization,
but rather counseling would take place in the local church. I
mean, first of all, every church has a pastor. So at least there's
some theologically equipped individual, in this case, a board of elders
and additional counselors who are able to counsel and to help
somebody. Secondly, the church is filled
with believers. What the person needs in changing
and growing to become more like Christ is not one meeting, one
hour, once a week with one person. But what the person needs for
change is implementation into a local church body that's thriving
and that's loving and serving and practicing the one in others.
And so part of our assignment for our counselees is that while
they come to counseling during the counseling process, we ask
them to attend our church for one service once a week during
the process. So we don't we don't demand that
they join our church. We don't tell them they have
to leave their former church. We don't tell them that they can't
be involved in their other church. We just say, hey, look, you came
to us for counseling and we're happy to counsel you. We want
to help you. We're glad you're here. But during the process,
part of your homework is we want you to attend at least one service.
And what that does for us is that assures us that it gives
you a chance to love on them. It gives them a chance to hear
a biblical message in case the church they're from doesn't really
teach the Bible. But it gives you that opportunity to be looking
for visitors who come in and to be thinking, aha, we're starting
to see a lot more visitors come to our church and it's obvious
that God's doing a work. So how could I be a part? I'm
going to love on these people. I'm going to invite them over
for lunch. I'm going to get to know them. I'm going to ask them,
how can I be a blessing to you? We're so glad you're here. And
you just give them a hug and you embrace them. You might even
see a couple come into church with real tension between them,
but you're going to go and you're just going to love on them and
help them and get to know them. That's what a great way for our
whole church body to be involved in helping each other. And then
thirdly, I would just say a church has church discipline. So we
preached a message on this just a couple of months ago, but this
is biblical counseling with teeth. This is if you're a member of
our church or a regular attender and you're living an open, unrepentant
sin, then we get involved in what Christ defines for us in
Matthew 18, 15 through 17, the steps that a church is to carry
out of church discipline. And so that's why counseling
needs to take place in a local church setting. And then our
eighth principle that counseling should be built on is this. It's
about the imminency of Christ's return. And so this whole one
is just talking about we have a doctrine that teaches Christ
is coming back. And however you want to sort
that out may differ. We have a particular view on that. But
the most important thing is the idea Christ is coming back, which
holds us accountable to live today in light of that day. And
so the fact that we have a eschatology of any sort about the return
of Christ means that we are now responsible to live because judgment
day is coming. Like it's coming. Your life will
one day be over. And so realizing that in the counseling room helps
us understand that, man, I've got to, I've got to change. And
so what we've just done, and these eight foundational principles
are nothing more than the eight major systems of systematic theology. I mean, all we've done in these
eight things is we've talked about the theology of God and
we've talked about bibliology, Christology, pneumatology, anthropology,
eschatology. We're talking about all these
things that you study in seminary and which are also written up
in our doctrinal statement. And what we're showing is that
Biblical counseling is systematized on good solid biblical theology
Before you can get into a methodology of how do I counsel you have
to have a good foundational biblical Theology so that you're counseling
the right thing in other words your theology must control your
methodology and if you don't have good theology, then your
counseling will be worldly instead of being wordly and And our desire
is to teach God's word and have that have the impact and the
change of people's life. And so we would say that our
method of counseling must be consistent with our theological
convictions. Therefore, we're compelled by
our theology to reject the methods of secular psychology as broken
cisterns that hold no water. And instead we remain satisfied
and committed to the one and only well that God has provided
in Christ that contains living water enough to quench your thirst
and to fill every broken cistern on the planet. Well, that moves
us into our third major heading, biblical counseling. Let's talk
about the definition of biblical counseling. I gave this definition
to you last time. I just want to explain it a little
bit further. We talked about last time that
biblical counseling is confronting, admonishing, instructing people
with the word of God and the power of the spirit of God to
help them, what, change their thinking and behavior to make
them more like Christ for God's glory and their good. Okay, so
we're talking about here the methods of counseling are to
help people change. Now again, in psychology, there's
no real goal. I mean, the goal is to help you
accept yourself as you are. That would be the goal of psychology.
Just have a piece about your present situation and who you
are and just accept it as it is. The opposite of that is,
though, you need to change. You're a sinner in need of salvation. And with Christ in your heart,
he can change you and give you true, lasting satisfaction. And so in order to do that, we
do what's called new thetic counseling. Now, all of you have heard that
term, but maybe not everybody knows what it means. You've heard
even previously, the Biblical Counseling Association that we're
working with previously was called NANC, right? The National Association
of Newthetic Counseling. And so that word newthetic is
something we need to talk about. And here it is. B, biblical counseling
is often referred to as newthetic. counseling. And here are about
seven or eight passages in the Bible that use this word, nuthetic. And so biblical counseling is
nuthetic counseling. This term comes from the Greek
word, nutheteo. It's the Greek word, nutheteo,
where we get nuthetic counseling. And it's a combination of two
words, nuos, which means mind, and tithemi, which means to put
into. So literally, what we're trying
to do in biblical counseling is to put into the mind of somebody
God's Word. We're trying to put in their
mind the Word of God. Now, in the Bible, the word mind
is also equivalent with the word heart. In other words, mind and
heart. Sometimes in our Western culture, we think, well, I know
it in my mind, but I don't feel it in my heart. That's not a
biblical concept. In the Bible, those words are
used interchangeably, that your mind is your heart, is your soul,
is your conscience, is your inner man, is your everything. I mean,
it's just like the idea that you're made out of material,
flesh and blood that you can see and touch, and immaterial.
And it's the immaterial that we're trying to put into that
immaterial part of who you really are, God's truth, God's word. So here's how the word New Thetic
is used throughout the New Testament. Acts 20, 31. You can turn to
some of these if you want, but for the sake of time, I'll read
some of them and then you can maybe look at them later. But
Acts 20, 31 says, therefore be alert Remembering that for three
years, I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with
tears. So this is Paul talking to the
Ephesian elders of how for three years, he knew they owed them. He admonished them. He worked
with them by putting into their mind God's truth. Here's how
it's used in Romans 15, 14. I myself am satisfied about my
brothers that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled
with all knowledge and able to instruct one another. So in that
passage, it's the word Newt the Tao is translated as instruct.
And notice in that passage, it says that you will instruct who? one another, that we're all offering
counsel to one another every time we open our mouths. And
so we are to be new, though, tailing each other or offering
admonishment and instruction. First Corinthians 414. I do not
write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you
as my beloved children. So again, he's writing to the
Corinthians. He's like, look, I'm going to correct some of
your, uh, immoral behavior because I love you. And so I need to
admonish you in these areas. Colossians 1 28, him, we proclaim
warning. That's the word new to Tao warning
everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we might
present everyone mature in Christ. I mean, how else do we help people
mature if we're not offering them biblical counsel or new
static counseling or offering them a warning that if they continue
in their unrepentant sin and unbiblical thinking, they'll
never find lasting hope and satisfaction. How about Colossians 3, 16, that
the word of Christ dwell in you, richly teaching and admonishing
one another in all wisdom. So again, the word Nutheteo used
in the idea of us admonishing one another. Same thing in 1
Thess 5.12-14, admonishing each other, admonishing the idle,
encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with
all. 2 Thess 3.15, do not regard him as an enemy, but warn, Nutheteo,
warn him as a brother. So even in the case of church
discipline in that particular passage, it said, hey, you better
warn him. You better offer him biblical counseling that he's
got to change. And so here's what we're learning
from these references. We can deduce two things. One,
newthetic simply implies a verbal confrontation for the purpose
of change. Now, again, we live in a time
where it's not popular to confront somebody and say, you can't do
that. As soon as you try to do that in the workplace, you get
sued. So the difference between biblical counseling and secular
counseling is, look, that's got to stop. And I'm standing with
a loving heart from the authority of God's word. I mean, I'm not
that strong with every person, right? It just depends on what
the sin is and what's going on. Sometimes if they're really rebellious,
I'll get in their face and say, hey, dude, you can't keep doing
that. Not in claim Christ. If it's somebody who's maybe
already broken, it may be much more gentle and kind. Right.
But the point is, we've got to verbally address what's going
on and confront this person for the purpose of change. The second
thing we learn from this word, new to tell you is that it's
this biblical admonition is the duty and the responsibility of
both the pastor and every believer. This isn't just new that it is
only for pastors and elders and certified biblical counselors.
No, the word Nuthoteo is used for all Christians to be applying
all the time, which means husbands and wives need to be counseling
each other daily. Parents need to be counseling
their children daily. You and me as members of our
church, as we interact in small group, ought to be Nuthoteo-ing
each other daily. We're all offering biblical counsel
all the time. You say, Adam, I just feel like
you're still talking in theory. You're still talking way up here.
I need something really practical. All right, look at point C. Biblical
counseling is about identifying and crushing idols of the heart. When it comes to changing to
become more like Christ, the question is, where do I change?
How do I change? Where is the battle fought? Where
must the battle be won? What exactly is it that must
change and grow? And the answer to all these questions
is, The heart. It's got to be your heart, which
remember is the same thing as your mind, which is the same
thing as your inner man. It's that part of you that's
really you. That's what's got to change. It's got to happen
in the heart. And the Bible talks a lot about the heart. Proverbs
4, 23, keep your heart with all diligence. For from it flow the
springs of life, Jeremiah 17, 9 and 10. The heart is deceitful
above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it?
I, the Lord, search the heart and test the mind to give every
man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds. How
about Matthew 7, 23, 23, Jesus says that it's, that he says,
what comes out of a person is what defiles him for within out
of the heart of a man come evil thoughts, sexual immorality,
theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality,
envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these things come from within
and they defile a person. And so what we're saying is this,
after examining all the biblical data, we're trying to help this
person get down to what is the real idol of the heart. And let me explain how you can
help somebody do that. I mean, the idea is there's really
an idol. Maybe you could think of, you
know, in our Western culture, everybody's like, what are you
talking about? I don't have an idol. I don't sit down and worship a wooden
statue of Buddha. I mean, the closest I get to
that is when I walk out of a Chinese restaurant, I might rub his belly
just because it's fun. You know, but I don't like, I'm
not tempted with like, okay, I'm going to bow down before
this idol. So we're talking about idols of the heart, which are
desires. And you say, well, that could get really complex. Well,
it could. I mean, it was church theologian, John Calvin, that
said your heart is like an idol factory and it's constantly putting
out idols all the time. But we could also keep it simple
by saying that it's probably going to fall into one of three
categories. According to 1 John 2, 15 through 17, the lust of
the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life.
So every desire that you have could be categorized as the lust
of the flesh, which would be the controlling desire for sensual
pleasure or for ease and comfort or for physical gratification.
Or maybe your desire that you're struggling with is the lust of
the eyes. And that would be more of the controlling desire for
profit and for material things. Or maybe it's the pride of life,
which would be the controlling desire to be great in your own
view and everybody else cowers and capitulates to whatever your
view is because you're the one in control. Well, these three
desires serve as a good place to identify the idols in a person's
heart. And so if you want to just get
right down to it, I've suggested here, here's two questions that
you could ask to help somebody identify if this is an idol in
their heart or not. Okay. So how do you know if something
really is an idol? Well, number one, you could ask
these questions, or that's one A, what did you have to do to
get it? So you can know whether something
has actually become an idol if you have to do X in order to
get Y. For example, let's say there's
a teenager who says, man, I really want to watch this movie, but
it's rated R, my parents won't let me, so whatever. I'll get
up late at night, they sneak out of the house, they go hang
out with their buddy, and they go to the theater to watch the
R-rated movie. What just happened? That person demonstrated they
are an idol worshiper. Well, what idol did they worship?
Well, they worship their idol of entertainment or the movie
was particularly sensual in nature, could be a lustful desire there.
That's why they wanted to go see it and why the parents said
no. But the idea is that they wanted it so bad. What did they
have to do to get it? They had to disobey God by disobeying
their mom and dad. not following God's clear word
of Ephesians 6.1, children obey your parents and the Lord for
this is right. And they disobeyed mom and dad to go do what they
wanted to do. Now that's demonstrating that that person is actually
an idolater. Not only are they rebellious,
not only do they have sensual desires that they wanna have
met, but now they're outwardly rebelling against God because
they're worshiping something else. They're worshiping their
own desire to do what they wanna do. And so one question again,
you can ask is, well, what did you have to do in order to get
that? help you identify the idol of
the heart. The second question is the flip side of that. Well,
what did you do? What do you do when you didn't
get it? So what did you have to do in order to get it? Or
what did you do when you didn't get it? In other words, when
you ask mom and dad, hey, can I go watch this movie? It's like Rambo
10 and it's out and I want to go see it. And your mom and dad
are like, nah, that's too bloody. You can't go see that. Then how
did you respond? Did you say, but mom, dad, come
on, all the other kids are going. You make me sick. You know, if
that's your response, that was still the child speaking to the
parent, by the way. If that's your response, then
you're demonstrating that that had become an idol because you
either had to sin in order to get what you wanted, or if you
didn't get what you wanted, you responded sinfully. So now we're
dealing with here's an idol of the heart. Let's apply this maybe
in marriage. I mean, here's what happens in
marriage, right? A husband and wife will come
in. They're in conflict. They're upset at each other.
You could tell there's a lot of tension in the room. They
come in and you say, hey, let's talk about it. What happened?
Well, she never blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And before you know
it, the husband begins to say, it's all about her. This is what
she does. This is the problem. So you look at the wife and say,
well, what do you think? She says, oh, it's all his fault. He never
appreciates me. I cook, clean, wash his blue
jeans. He never says thank you. That's the typical stuff you're
going to hear, right? So you're going to hear something like
that. And it's going to go on and on and on. And then I just sometimes
stop and say, you know what? I know exactly what your problem
is. And they say, you do? And I say, yeah, open up to James
4. So we'll open up, why don't you turn there with me? James
chapter 4, verses 1 and 2. You know where I'm going, right?
But here's the idea. One person in their mind is convinced
the problem is the other person. The other person in their mind
is convinced that the problem is the other person. And so what
we need to understand is what James chapter four verses one
and two says. I said, you know, I'll say, hey,
I know exactly why you quarrel and fight all the time. I know
exactly what the crux of your communication problem is. Right.
Because so many people come in while we just have trouble communicating.
We just can't communicate. We're always arguing. I know
why. Here's what the Bible says. What causes quarrels and what
causes fights among you? Isn't that a great question?
We're about to diagnose what's going on in the heart. What is
the problem? Is it the other person? Surely it must be. Well,
according to this verse, is it not this, that your passions
are at war within you? Where does the Bible put the
blame on verse one? You got a problem. You are convinced
it's my wife's problem. She doesn't respect me like she
should. And so we're having major problems in our marriage. No,
not according to the Bible. The problem's you. You wanted
something so bad that you didn't get it. Then when you didn't
get what you wanted, you began to respond out of anger or bitterness
or words that cut to the heart because you weren't getting what
you wanted. Verse two says you desire and do not have. So you
murder. You covet and cannot obtain,
so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do
not ask. So you say, well, I haven't murdered
anybody. Well, according to Christ, you have. Right? The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew
5. You've heard it said anyone who
commits murder, you know, is in sin. But I tell you that anybody
who has been angry at his brother has already committed a murder
in your heart. Right? So the idea here is that,
guys, this is what's going on in our heart. And what's going
on in our world today is the popular Christian psychology
for marital counseling is what's called Love and Respect. Anybody
heard of it? Love and Respect. It's a book. It's a conference. It's Christian
psychology. Now, I'm not here to try to throw
stones in one regard. I'm just here because I think
it's important that we understand this concept. And so, generally
speaking, the idea of love and respect would be this. Oh, well,
psychology research shows that the biggest need for the husband
is to be respected. That's what he needs more than
anything else. And so women, wives, if you'll respect your
husband like he needs to be respected, then he'll love you like you
need to be loved. Because a woman's greatest desire
would be to be loved. I need to be loved. I need to
be appreciated. I need to be romanced. I need
somebody to appreciate who I am and what I do all day. Now let
me ask you something. Is there anything wrong with
a man wanting to be respected? Anything wrong with that? Is
that a sinful desire for a man to honestly want his wife to
respect him? Absolutely not. If I had said appropriate desire,
the Bible talks about it in Ephesians 5, 33, right? See to it that
each woman respects her husband. The whole passage talks about
a husband should love his wife like Christ loved the church,
and the wife should see to it that she submits to and respects
her husband. So there's nothing wrong with
a husband wanting to be respected and for a wife wanting to be
loved. But what's the problem? The problem is when they want
that so bad that when they don't get it, they respond sinfully. So let's say that the wife's
not respecting the husband. She does whatever she wants and
she doesn't really ask him, talk with him, communicate with him.
And she purposely does things that she knows he disagrees with.
So she's not respecting him. Does that give him a right to
say, woman, come here and pull her by the hair, drag her back
into the cave and pull out a club. Does that give him the right? Does that give him the right
to do that? Of course, of course, that's pretty rare. It happens,
right, in our culture, so we shouldn't laugh too much about
it. But that's kind of like what we act like, right? That's what
we act like with our words and how we react. We start to say,
hey, look, this is the way it is. I'm the head of the house.
God's called you to submit to me. And it's like, whoa, whoa,
time out, big guy. Time out. The problem right now is you. Your desire is so strong to get
what you want, and you're not getting it, that you're now lashing
out sinfully by saying things that you ought not say, and it's
certainly not out of a loving heart for your wife. The same
is true for the wife to respond in a similar way. And so what
I'm saying is simply this. What if the wife is told, hey,
if you love your husband and you love your husband, you'll
have a better marriage. Well, what if she does that or respects
her husband, respects her husband? What if he continues to sin against
her? then if we're not careful, that horizontal focus can, it's
possible it can never get better. So what I'm saying is, what we
try to do in biblical counseling is first say, ma'am, you gotta
look to Christ. You gotta look to Christ to fill
that desire you have to be loved. Because let me tell you this,
your husband will never fully fill it. I mean, the idea is
that you have this cup. This is an illustration that's
used a lot, right? You have this love cup and the cup's half empty
because you're not getting the love that you need. So your love
is half empty. You're asking that husband to pour more love
in. And once your cup gets to overflowing, then you can respect
him like you want. I would say that there's some
truth there, but that's a secondary application. The primary application
has to be, I'm looking to Christ. I'm looking to Christ to fill
my love cup. God so loved the world that he sent his only son,
Jesus, that whoever would believe in him would not perish, but
have everlasting life. If my husband never, ever, ever
loves me like he should, I'm going to be okay. Because my
only true need is to be saved and to be forgiven and to be
one with Jesus Christ. And if I demand a husband who
loves me in the way I think he ought to, and even in the way
the Bible commands him to, in order to show him respect, then
I now am in sin. Because I'm not responding in
a loving, God-honoring way. So the idea is that we first
have to look to Christ. to which we can promise that
person, if you look to Christ, you will find satisfaction in
Christ, whether your marriage changes or not. Now, with that
comes secondary application of, sir, you need to love her like
Christ loved the church. Ma'am, you need to respect your
husband. And we get very practical in talking about all of those
helpful horizontal applications. But if you take it away from
the vertical application of the gospel, then there's really no
hope because now your hope is in what? the other person changing
instead of in Christ. And if your hope is contingent
on the other person changing and they don't change, then you're
like a fish out of water. You are up the creek. You'll
never get better. But if your focus is on Christ
and on his glory, then you could be filled and satisfied and contented
because of Jesus. And so once we've identified
these problems a little bit more clearly, then we can ask the
second question, well, how do you destroy the idols of the
heart? And I'll just have to give these
to you quickly and you can do a little work on your own if
you want to mind down on this. But here's four ways that you
can destroy that idol of wanting something too bad in your heart.
You could do it like this. Number one, it's repentance.
Right? First of all, you've got to repent from your heart. God,
would you change my heart and change my attitude? I have been
a bitter old man and I want to be gracious and giving. Secondly,
after repenting, you've got to perform some radical amputation
from your life. So you've got to be willing to
burn some bridges, to break off some relationships, to stop some
bad habits by just getting it completely out of your life.
Christ talks about plucking out your eye, cutting out your hand.
C, you've got to renew your mind. There's got to be renewal of
your mind. Do not be conformed to this world,
but transform by the renewing of your mind. That's where the
counselor and the Word of God is being put into your mind.
Lastly, you've got to replace sinful habits, the replacement
of sinful habits with godly ones. And so this is where we get very
horizontal talking about, hey, look, first, it's about the gospel.
It's about Christ. It's about understanding this. Now that
we've got that, now we can do some of the practical. Look,
you've got to stop these bad habits and you've got to put
on new ones. The Bible says, put off your
old self. and put on the new self. And
there's lots of practical ways that we can help people grow
in their marriage and to help do that. And so lastly, let me
just talk fourthly about last main point, implementation of
biblical counseling. How do we do this? Just practically,
so you get a big picture. The first thing we try to do
is get to know the person. Sometimes, in secular psychology,
they don't really want to get to know you. They want to maintain
a professional client relationship. Remember, again, what about Bob?
Did he want him to come on vacation with him? Absolutely not. Biblical
counselors take their counselees on vacation. I'm just kidding,
I'm just kidding. But the idea is you gotta get to know them
by spending some time. There's no such thing as like,
you're there and I'm here. It's like, hey bro, you're my
brother in Christ. I'm here to help you, pray with
you. We'll invite you over to our house. I'm happy to meet
you guys where you are, because I wanna get to know you and what's
going on. Secondly, we could say that it's
about getting information. And this is where we ask a plethora
of questions to get a good history about what's really going on.
Proverbs 18 is very clear about getting both sides of the story.
So if you're just questioning one person, but you're not getting
the other side, the Bible says basically you're being a fool.
If you give an answer before you hear both sides of the story,
that's extremely important as you're gathering information.
Third, you want to get to the bottom of it. And this is where
you begin to help them identify what are the true idols of the
heart. For example, the man comes in, he's like, well, I struggle
with anger. I'm just mad all the time. I'm yelling at my wife,
yelling at my kids. I struggle with anger. To which I say, hey,
I can see that you do. Let's ask some questions. Let's
ask some questions about what's what's behind that. It may be
it may be that the reason he's angry is because he doesn't make
as much money as the Joneses. And his family is always asking
him, when are we going to buy the new car or the new bike?
And every time they ask the question, he feels inadequate as not being
a provider to the degree that this family unit wants to live
on. And so then he gets angry. So what's the problem? Is it
anger or is he desiring maybe too much materialism? You know
what I'm saying? So the idea is you've got to
get down a little bit deeper and say, this might be the problem. And then you're
responding out of anger. That's what I mean by getting
to the bottom of it. It's helping them identify what is the true idol
of the heart. And then that's when you fourth
give instruction. Once you've analyzed the problem,
you help explain it to the counselee so they can see it for what it
really is, you begin to instruct them. Just like a good physician
or a pharmacist knows exactly what medicine to prescribe in
order to help with a particular illness, a good counselor has
to know the exact passages of scripture that would help be
particular to the problem of the counselee. So the better
you know the Bible, the better of a counselor you will be. And
then fifth, you want to give hope. The idea is like, you know
what? There is hope for your situation. No matter what's going
on, no matter how bad you've been abused, no matter what your
past is, no matter what your present is, you can have hope. It's about looking to a living
person. His name is Christ. And even
if he doesn't change your circumstances or your situation, he wants to
change you. It's about changing your perspective. You might still be in the thick
of it, but if your perspective changes, all of a sudden you
begin to develop a little hope. And then six, we try to get a
commitment. Counseling is about seeing them
more than once. But contrary to popular psychology,
we don't usually see them for years. In other words, some psychologists
are like, well, this is going to take three years to get you
out of this one. We typically would see people from eight to
12 weeks teach the main biblical principles on their issue and
then say, look, we're going to kick you out of the nest. You
guys got to live this out. Now with that in mind, I see a lot
of people longer than 12 weeks, and sometimes they come back
regularly, and that's fine too. I'm just saying the general principle
is we want to teach them, and then we want to see them implement
it, and then we encourage them to move on, and then hold themselves
accountable with God's Word, right? And then the last one
is give homework. If you're not giving homework,
then you're not aiding them to help in the growing process over
time. For example, if you want to learn
a new language, you want to learn Spanish, and you show up to Spanish
class one hour, once a week, and you don't do any homework
between the Spanish class, how much Spanish are you going to
learn? How long is it going to take you to learn it? a long time. I mean, how much Spanish are
you going to be speaking 10 years later? poquito, right? Just a little
bit. So, I mean, the idea is you got
to do your homework. So we give homework. So the idea
of people come in, we talk, we say, Hey, look, this is your
homework. I need you to read this chapter of scripture. or
passage, or several passages. I need you to pray 10 minutes
a day, and we'll teach them how to pray about that particular
problem. I need you to memorize this verse that talks about how
God's using this trial to conform you into the image of Christ.
I want you to read this chapter out of a good biblical counseling
book that's on this topic, and then I want you to do something
practical. It may be, let's log down every argument you have
this week, and as you write down the time and the content of the
argument, let's talk about what you contributed to the argument.
And based on James 4, 1 and 2, what desire did you have that
caused you to enter into this argument? And let's talk about
it next week. So they come in and they're like, wow, we realize
now every time we argue, it's about the in-laws. Or every time
we argue, it's about money. Or every time we argue, it's
about the fact I'm demanding this. And so the idea is that
it helps us identify a little closer what it is that we're
working on. And it's so neat to see that Councilor Lee kind
of see it themselves. Then they begin to diagnose their own.
situation, right? So let's go to the take home,
just a couple of applications real quick. Sometimes the most
loving thing you can do is admonish someone else. Again, we live
in a politically correct society where it says you can't tell
anybody they're doing anything wrong. The Bible says we're to warn,
instruct, confront one another. That's true love. Number two,
you must be filled with the knowledge of God's word in order to properly
instruct someone else. You got to know God's word in
order to help others know God's word. And then number three,
identifying idols of the heart Crushing them by the power of
Christ in her heart should become a daily habit guys This isn't
like an epiphany of once a year you start to look at idols every
day You should be examining and asking Christ to help you identify
Idols in your heart and then crush them so that you can become
more like Christ. Let's pray together father. Thank
you for the patience of our congregation this morning as we go over here,
just to make sure we have an adequate and a biblical view
of what counseling is all about. God, I pray that you would help
us all grow and change to become more like Christ, that we would
always be dependent on the Word of God, and that you would do
a great work starting with me and working on our elders and
our deacons and our small group leaders. I pray for every marriage
and every young person that you would help us to take to heart
what your word says about growing and changing and becoming more
like Christ. Would you bless our counseling
center as we formally kick this off? Would you help us as a church
body to be really invested in our prayers and serving time
and loving people as they come to our body? And it's in Jesus'
name we pray. Amen.