14. The Persons in Counseling: Part 2

All right, we're continuing with our study on biblical counseling. And just catch a little review.

We started off by giving an introduction, what is biblical counseling? And we followed that up with showing that there is a crisis in counseling, even within the church across our society today.

Then we looked at the role of the Holy Spirit in counseling. Then we asked and answered the question, what is euthetic counseling?

Why is that important? We looked at the difference between directive and non -directive counseling, solving problems.

Then we looked at communication. And we're in part eight, the persons in counseling.

Last week or the week before that, we looked at the role of the

Holy Spirit in more detail, even than we did in the third section. So today, we're going to pick up on that theme of, who are the persons involved in counseling?

And today, we're going to look at the human counselor. Now, in one sense, every

Christian is a counselor to his brothers and sisters in Christ, OK? That's a fact of scripture.

And we'll go through some of that. But we're also going to see that, while that is true, the role of counselor is particularly unique and particularly a function of the eldership of the church.

It's unfortunate. And going back to the second session that we had, we talked about the crisis in counseling.

And one of the things that we've seen is that many pastors, many elders, have given up the idea of counseling, which is a shame.

And I believe very strongly that it's reneging on our responsibilities if we don't counsel.

Counseling is the personal application of what is preached from the pulpit. The pulpit is the proclamation of the gospel and given for the edification of the saints for sanctification.

And counseling is just taking the word and doing it one -on -one or one -on -two or three.

So it's important that we understand that, in that sense, every

Christian is a counselor. The only question is, are you a good one? Are you a biblical one?

So I got ahead of myself a little bit. The work of counseling is the special calling, particularly to the pastor.

The Christian minister should see counseling as his God -given responsibility and duty.

And as I mentioned, unfortunately, you even have seminaries that are telling their pastoral candidates, don't get involved in counseling.

And they have their own reasons, I think, which are very invalid. Now, this should be obvious as we've examined the role of the counselor.

And if you examine the role of the counselor, what is the counselor doing, and compare that with the qualifications or the role of a pastor, and you'll find out that they dovetail very adequately, very nicely.

Just a reminder. According to the scriptures, there are only three sources of personal problems,

OK? One is personal sin, and that's the bailiwick, if you will, or the area of expertise of the church, and particularly the eldership of the church.

You have demonic activity, which is a very real thing, or organic illness.

Organic illness is not something that we normally, as pastors, get involved with, all right?

But that's not to say that we can't help in those situations. Notice, there's no such thing as non -organic mental illness.

A lot of things that people categorize as mental illness today is just the result of personal sin, and not the result of an organic cause.

That means if a person does not have an organic cause for his problem, then it falls directly under the domain of the pastor.

Too often today, what happens is they diagnose a situation based upon observations of behavior, and then say, oh no, this is organic.

But if you can't prove that it's organic, then it falls under the idea of personal sin.

That being said, the pastor can even assist in the treatment of organic mental illness to a certain degree.

What I mean by that is he can assist the doctor treating the organically mentally ill person by dealing with sinful patterns that have developed in response to the organic disorder.

There are people who legitimately have mental disease, mental illness, but can still be helped by ministering the gospel, and by ministering the word of God to them.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the pastor has the ability to heal the person.

Only God can do that. Getting back to what we were talking about, the minister is identified in Ephesians 4 as the pastor slash teacher.

And if you look at that, those two designations correspond to both counseling and teaching.

So you can see that counseling is certainly part of the job description for the pastor.

However, this special calling of the pastor does not exclude the responsibility for teaching, exhorting, and counseling by every

Christian. We are supposed to do that. When we come across a brother or a sister who is struggling in a certain area of life, we have the obligation to come alongside them.

And just as Paul instructed the Romans, he instructed the Colossians, and you'll see that a little bit later.

There's no biblical example of a freelance counselor working outside the church. Now let me explain that a little bit further.

A freelance counselor is limited in his authority and is unable to bring church discipline to his situation.

One of the things about biblical counseling, when it's done properly within the context of the church, if a person is confronted in their sin and they refuse to submit, refuse to repent, there are steps that the eldership can take, according to Matthew 18, 1

Corinthians 5, and a few other places, to bring pressure to bear on the person to persuade them to repent.

A freelance counselor who is working not under the authority of an eldership does not have that available, because those are tools that are given specifically to the church, not to individual people.

So the ability to speak authoritatively in Christ was given to those who rule. And the biblical mandate is clear on this point.

Hebrews 13, 17. Obey your leaders. And by the way, the context of this is definitely the leaders of the church.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.

Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you. That verse is just so packed, in fact,

I preached a whole message on just that verse at one point. But you get the gist of it, is the eldership of the church are those men who have been appointed by God to keep watch over your souls, and therefore, there is an equal authority that is given to them, as well as the responsibility.

And it tells us we should do it with joy. If you walk into my counseling room,

I usually put a smile on my face. Most of you do.

Not everybody. No, everybody. 1

Thessalonians 5, verse 12, but we request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, that's your elders, that's what they're talking about,

Paul's talking about, and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction.

And that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work and live in peace with one another.

You can see how this authority is granted to the eldership.

We don't get our authority from the state, from any other source other than from God, and that's ratified by the congregation at the ordination process.

In fact, I have a little pet peeve when

I officiate at a wedding, okay? When I make the pronouncement that your husband and wife,

I never say, by the power vested in me by the state of New York. It's the power vested in me by Almighty God and Jesus Christ, who's the head of the church, who supersedes the authority of the state.

So, just a little pet peeve. Now, if you notice those two verses that we just looked, those three verses we looked at, they do not describe an outside counselor.

Now, that doesn't preclude, when we talk about not being a freelance counselor, that doesn't preclude members of the church from assisting the eldership in the counseling ministry.

In fact, for 25 years, I was a board member of a New Theta Counseling Ministry, and our primary counselor specifically worked underneath the eldership of about five or six different churches.

That's exactly what he would do. But always, he was a very well -trained counselor and was a very great blessing to the churches of Southern New Jersey.

But he always worked underneath the authority of the local eldership.

So, and that's what I'm saying here, that this doesn't preclude members of the church from assisting the eldership in the counseling ministry.

By outside counselor, we mean someone not under the authority of the eldership. And there's just no biblical warrant for that.

Now, I'm going to give you two verses in particular to give the basis for biblical counseling and New Theta confrontation.

And these are important verses if you're ever going to be involved with counseling in any sense.

Romans 15, 14, notice what Paul says. And concerning you, my brethren,

I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to admonish one another.

That word admonish, that's that word nuthateo, okay, which means to confront one another.

That's what Paul is saying, is that the Roman church was of such maturity that they were able to admonish one another.

They were able to counsel one another, all right? And notice in that verse also, it gives somewhat of the qualifications for a counselor.

Full of goodness, has to be a good person. Filled with knowledge and able, so there you have wisdom as well.

Colossians 3, 16 is another verse. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom.

Notice, another qualifications for a counselor is it has to be a wise person.

Teaching and admonishing, there's that same word again, that nuthateo, where you get nuthetic from. Admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness to your hearts.

I'm going to break this down a little bit for you in the form of a chart. We're going to look at what the counselor's qualifications are, the scriptural basis for it, and then how that would work out in nuthetic confrontation.

Knowledge of God's word. You cannot be a biblical counselor if you do not know God's word. I mean, that should be axiomatic.

I mean, how can you counsel biblically if you don't know the word of God, right?

Both those verses that we looked at, Romans 15, 14 and Colossians 3, 16, both talk about having the knowledge of God's word.

And what do we mean by nuthetic confrontation in this context? Finding what's wrong, then doing what needs to be done to effect change.

Remember, biblical counseling is all about change. Nothing is going to change unless the individual changes.

And that's why we spend so much time talking about the role of the Holy Spirit. Remember, in the scheme of things, in the counseling arena, the

Holy Spirit is the true counselor. All the human counselor is doing is leading the person to the word of God and praying that the

Holy Spirit will take that word and impress it on the heart of the person, which brings about true biblical change.

Second qualification is divine wisdom. That's specifically found in Colossians 3, 16, okay?

And that's verbal confrontation with the word of God to effect change.

Notice, the goal is always to effect change, love towards one another.

You can't be a biblical counseling and be an authoritarian, being harsh.

It's not tough love. It's genuine biblical love with a heart of compassion, loving

God's people and ministering God's word to them. And that's specifically in Romans 14, 15, 14, confrontation for the person's benefit.

Remember, confrontation is, unfortunately, we, in our society, we have a negative connotation to confrontation.

Confrontation is just presenting the facts to the person. And notice, in love, you're not beating somebody over the head with the word of God.

You're ministering it to them in love. So it's confrontation for the person's benefit.

I just wanted to go through this, again, to show you this thing. If you go through the qualifications for the minister, for the elder, found in both

Titus and in 1 Timothy, what you'll find is, interestingly enough, they are more focused on the personal qualifications than on doctrinal prowess.

There's only two, maybe three qualifications that have to do with the learning and being a student of the scriptures.

Now, of course, you must be that. We've already highlighted that. But it's also important that, for an elder, that his personal demeanor, his personal life is one that demonstrates that he is filled with the

Holy Spirit, that he is a mature believer. And more of them are focused, the overwhelming majority of the qualifications for an elder has to do with those personal qualifications and not as much focus on the word.

Jay Adams said that a ministerial candidate should be examined carefully in three areas.

Doctrine, of course, doctrine is the foundation of everything, personal fitness, and ability for biblical confrontation.

Now, notice what those three things are telling you. One, he's got to know the word, all right? Two, he's got to be personally fit to all the qualifications of giving in Titus and 1

Timothy, and then he has to be of somebody who can communicate and communicate effectively.

I'm going to go out on a little limb here, which is difficult for a guy of my size and dangerous.

I believe one of the reasons that we are seeing so many men in the ministry fail is because we are not following the biblical mandate for bringing them into the eldership.

A person, a young fellow who wants to be a pastor, what does he do?

He goes to Bible college, then he'll go to seminary, he'll graduate from seminary and be called by some church someplace and ordained.

That church doesn't know him. We need to examine the person, not only for doctrine, which is important.

I mean, we're a Reformed Baptist church. We love doctrine, you know, and we're staunch and steadfast in our purity for doctrine.

But the personal qualifications, like I mentioned before, are there for reasons, all right?

There has to be a maturity. And then the person has to be able to communicate in a loving yet truthful manner.

And I think we have lost sight. A lot of churches don't even have an ordination process anymore.

You're a seminary graduate? Come on, all right? We're going to install you as a pastor. There should be this examination procedure.

By implication, then, that means that the pastor must be a man of faith and of hope and a man of love.

And these qualifications are essential since there's a need for divine authority in the counseling process.

It just makes sense. Misuse of authority is a problem within the church in general, but is magnified in the counseling process.

If you go back and you look at some of the big names, and we all know who they are that have fallen to moral failure, most often it comes out of a counseling situation, becoming too intimate and not keeping their guard up and violating biblical mandates.

Pastors must understand the proper function of divine authority and its limitations. There's nothing worse than heavy -handed eldership, elders who put their nose in where it doesn't belong.

There are limitations on the eldership. We need to remember that God grants authority to three covenant institutions, okay?

One is the church, second one is the family, and the third one is the state.

And we run into problems when any of those three move into an area that is not authorized by scripture, because each institution has its own area of authority and responsibility, and if any of the three overstep that authority given by God, it becomes illegitimate.

And we've seen it in many different ways. Middle Ages, the church overstepped its bounds and was taking on a role that it was not created for.

We've seen the family do in other areas, and of course, all we have to do is look around our nation and see how the state has usurped its responsibility.

The clearest example of the priority for God's authority is in Acts 5 .29.

Remember they were, Peter and the apostles were hauled in and told, don't preach the gospel.

We forbid you to preach the gospel. And remember what their answer was. You must obey

God rather than men. Crystal clear. In Acts 5, the government was overstepping its

God -granted authority. Remember, the authority, Paul makes it clear in Romans 13, every leader, every government has its authority from God.

God is the only one who can give it authority. But when they overstep it, it becomes illegitimate.

The authority set forth in Romans 13. When the counselor exceeds the biblical authority of God, he is not his own authority.

The counselor must understand that he works within the framework of the scriptures, and he can't exceed that.

And we know that's a recipe for a cult when you see a heavy -handed eldership.

Therefore, he cannot exceed the biblical limits of that authority, and counselors cannot advise people to disobey criminal or civil laws.

That's not the job of the pastor or the counselor. Counselors cannot counsel children to disobey their parents, and the counselor cannot exert authority that conflicts with the three legitimate authorities.

When the biblical counselor gives advice, they must always remember there's a difference between advice and an underlying biblical principle.

You may have some great advice, but if it's not a principle from scripture, the person does not have to heed it.

Advice need not be heeded, but biblical principles must. Let me give you an example.

This is a biblical principle. You have no grounds for divorce. It would be sinful for you to divorce. There's a biblical principle.

If there's no legitimate grounds, then it would be sinful to divorce. Here's an example of advice.

Why not see a financial advisor to help you invest your money for the future? That's good advice.

The counselor can do that, but the person is under no obligation to follow that advice no matter how good it is.

So this is a little test. I'm going to give you a statement that a counselor's made.

Tell me if it's proper or improper. Sell your car, pay off your loan.

Everybody agree? Improper. Why? Yeah, there's no biblical principle involved.

Confess this sin to God and forsake it. That's authoritative.

Proper. Proper. Every morning you must read your

Bible one half hour and pray for 20 minutes. That's improper.

Not a bad idea, but the counselor has no right to make that authoritative statement.

You must regularly study the scriptures and pray. Yeah, that's proper.

Catch up on your housework before the next session. It's improper.

No, I was going to say something, but I'm not going to. I get myself in enough trouble.

Now, in order to engage in biblical counseling, the counselor must understand the scripture and develop skills by which he may confront others in a directive manner.

Remember, we went through the difference between the directive approach and a non -directive approach.

Notice that it is a skill, and don't shy away from that. Just as preaching is a skill that must be developed, counseling is a skill that must be developed.

You just don't pick up the Bible, have Bible -willed counsel. And by the way, personality is not relative, relevant,

I'm sorry. It's not relevant in determining whether or not to use the directive approach. The reason

I put that in there is there are some people who say, well, it's not my nature. I'm not confrontational, so I can't really confront people.

My answer to that is then don't counsel people. Because you need everybody, to be biblical, you have to confront somebody in their sin.

And again, in a loving manner, I'm not talking about being harsh, but you have to confront.

Non -directive counseling is not counseling at all. Remember who the proponent of non -directive counseling was?

I'm gonna ask you to think back now, way back to the second or third session. Who was the proponent of non -directive counseling?

That's right, Carl Rogers. What is Carl Rogers known as?

As in why we, just to mention his name, should send up some warning signs.

What was he called? Well, that's his name.

The father of humanistic counseling. That tells you something.

Every biblical counselor must use the directive approach regardless of their personality.

Doesn't matter if you're an introvert, an extrovert. If you're gonna do biblical counseling, you have to use the directive approach.

Remember, biblical confrontation is neither harsh nor unloving. In fact, by definition, it is an act of love.

If somebody is in sin and you point it out and explain it to them and give them the remedy for it, what could be more loving than that?

It's unloving to leave a person in their sin and tell them and just walk by, say it's none of your business.

Are we our brother's keepers? We bet we are. The counselor must protect the integrity of scripture and that means to use it properly, use it in the right way.

So any ideas of relativity must be abandoned, okay?

The Bible is not relative, the Bible is dogmatic and we can say, thus say it the

Lord if we're quoting the scriptures. However, now those things being said, a counselor can vary in style based upon his individual gifting and his experience.

Two counselors approaching the same situation can approach it differently, has to be authoritative, it has to be directive, but it's a question of not only your own personality but your relationship with the person.

If somebody has been referred to me, let's say for marriage counseling, from outside of our church, okay,

I'm gonna approach that differently than I'm gonna approach somebody from within our church who I know, who

I love and have a history with. It's gonna be a different approach.

So again, that's using wisdom. But the fundamental authority of God in counseling must be evident always and that's why the counselor is constantly taking the scriptures, pointing to the scriptures, there's the authority, not my advice.

And the more faithfully the counselor ministers the word, the more he is conformed to the word.

This is what we call a blessed benefit. As the counselor becomes more adept and more proficient administering the word, he himself changes.

Remember, the goal of biblical counseling is to change and that goes for the counselor.

And any pastor will tell you, you know, you hear a sermon, my sermons are typically 45 minutes, you hear it for 45 minutes

Sunday morning. I've lived with that word all week long. So if I point my finger and say, you must, et cetera, et cetera,

I've been pointing my finger at me all week long in preparation for that. Same thing with the counselor.

Every man who is called by God to the task of counselor experiences change. You can't help it.

You can't be in the word that much, that deep and be ministering and showing, pointing to somebody else how they must obey the word without it affecting your own life as well.

Even if you come across a scenario or somebody who is in certain circumstances and it seems unique, like you haven't,

I haven't seen this, I haven't heard this before. In principle, it's not. The principle always, the underlying principle will always go back to the scriptures.

And as Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun. So here's an important fundamental fact.

The biblical counselor knows there is a biblical solution to every problem. There is no personal sin problem that does not have a remedy in the scripture.

And it's just up to the biblical counselor to rightly apply that word.

That's why he has to study and know the word of God. God's word is given to enable the

Christian to meet every problem in a biblical way. Remember, there is no problem for life in godliness that the

Bible does not address. The counselor is seeking to learn which problems the person is handling unsuccessfully.

You don't have to go get all the details of a person's life. You want to get to the nitty gritty, where is the problem?

Now one potential obstacle faced in counseling is the possibility the counselor has not sufficiently studied and prayerfully the scripture.

That's a recipe for disaster. Which again is one of the reasons why

I prefer to see counseling done by the eldership. An abstract approach to Bible study is not adequate enough for the counselor.

You have to know the word and then know how to be able to apply it to the given circumstances.

In fact, in the initial process, anybody remember the three types of problems?

When a person walks in and says, I have a problem, what do you call that? And he sort of explains the problem.

Anybody remember? The presenting problem, yeah, because that's what the person says.

And then what is the problem that's underneath that, that's causing that problem?

Yeah, the performance problem, okay. And then what's the long -term effect, what do we call that?

The preconditioned problem, all right. So as you're trying to figure out where the person is and where they're having the problems, there are three specific questions that need to be answered.

First, what is the specific problem? And don't be afraid to use the word specific.

Then you got to ask yourself, what biblical principles apply to the problem the person is presenting to me?

And then thirdly, what must be done to bring understanding and solve the problem or problems?

Okay, and on that note, are there any questions?