ACBC Theology Exam 21 - The Role of the Holy Spirit
Chapters
0:015:28 The Role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian Life
24:39 Biblical Counseling as a "Trialogue"
34:31 The Promise of the Holy Spirit
46:4 The Baptism of the Holy Spirit
54:45 The Spirit as our Helper
00:00:00.000 | do welcome you tonight to our 21st meeting of Intermediate Biblical Counseling. It's a joy to
00:00:05.680 | have this time together and to study God's Word, and it's a joy to meet together in this online
00:00:12.400 | format. I know that there are many who are joining us from all over California and even outside of
00:00:18.080 | California. I want to just welcome you, and thanks for continuing in your studies. I trust that these
00:00:25.760 | sessions have been a blessing to you, and trust that the Lord is continuing to bless your time in
00:00:31.360 | His Word. I just wanted to give a personal thanks to all of you for your encouragement and for your
00:00:37.920 | prayers this last week. It was a joy to pass my doctoral oral defense, and it was a little bit
00:00:46.320 | nerve-wracking there. I didn't sleep much the night before, but God was faithful, and I do
00:00:51.840 | want to thank you for your prayers. That was very kind of many of you to pray for me, and I do
00:00:57.520 | believe that many have prayed me across the finish line here, and so just thank you for
00:01:04.640 | all of your words of encouragement and your words of support. All of that has been a tremendous
00:01:10.800 | blessing to me. As you may have known, my faculty advisor in my doctoral studies was Dr. Stuart
00:01:18.800 | Scott, who is also the biblical counseling professor at the Master's University and the
00:01:23.920 | Master's Seminary, and he's adjunct at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Dr. Scott said
00:01:31.200 | a statement during the defense that I've heard him say often in many different settings, and
00:01:38.080 | he often says this, that we're just passing on to others what has been passed on to us,
00:01:45.840 | and he reminded of that truth to me as we completed that defense,
00:01:53.600 | just that we're passing on to others what's been passed on to us, that many invested in Dr. Scott,
00:02:01.520 | and he has been faithful to pass that on to others, and we're now called to pass that on to
00:02:08.160 | those whom we minister to, and I was just reminded that that really is the heartbeat and the focus of
00:02:15.760 | why we exist as an ACBC training center, why we have this class, Intermediate Biblical Counseling.
00:02:23.120 | We are seeking to pass on to others what has been passed on to us, and many have invested in
00:02:32.480 | my life and in my wife's life, and this class exists to pass what we have received on to you,
00:02:39.840 | and we hope and we pray that you will take what you have learned, and you will pass that on to
00:02:46.480 | others, and that we will see the ministry of the Word of God multiply in this way, and so
00:02:53.920 | we do trust that that will be the fruit of our study and our time together. So thank you again
00:03:00.240 | for joining us tonight. Tonight we are looking at theology exam number 21, and we are looking at the
00:03:08.000 | role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life, the role of the Holy Spirit in your life and in my
00:03:18.240 | life, and I was just thinking what a joy to be able to study this topic and to devote an hour
00:03:23.760 | to this great subject of the role of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit's ministry
00:03:30.960 | in each of our lives, the Holy Spirit's ministry in the church, and our dependence upon the Holy
00:03:38.640 | Spirit in our counseling ministry. What a joy it is to be able to devote an hour to this subject.
00:03:48.480 | I do pray that the hour we spend tonight will lead us to a fresh dependence this week,
00:03:57.600 | a fresh reliance upon, and a fresh passion for the ministry of the Holy Spirit in each
00:04:06.240 | of our lives, and I do pray that our study tonight will lead us to a fresh expectation
00:04:14.240 | and anticipation of the Holy Spirit's work as we are faithful to His Word,
00:04:21.920 | and as we simply submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit's leadership and desire to be
00:04:29.120 | used as members of Christ's body to bless and to encourage other believers,
00:04:36.240 | and so I'm looking forward to our time tonight. Let me pray for us, and let's devote our time to
00:04:42.880 | the Lord in prayer. Father, thank you for this class. Thank you for each of my brothers and
00:04:49.280 | sisters in Christ who are joining us on this webinar in this online format that we may study
00:04:58.400 | your Word, that we may express once again our need for the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us,
00:05:06.880 | our need for the Holy Spirit to use your Word to change our hearts and our lives for your glory.
00:05:16.480 | We do rejoice in this topic. We thank you that you have given to us not only your Son,
00:05:23.360 | the Lord Jesus Christ, to be our Savior and to be our perfect substitute, but you have given to us
00:05:30.880 | your Holy Spirit to be our helper, to be the one who comes alongside of us in our daily lives,
00:05:40.240 | and indeed, not only alongside of us, but you have given to us your Spirit to live in us.
00:05:47.920 | We thank you that all of fruitful ministry is accomplished by the power and through the
00:05:56.880 | ministry of the Holy Spirit, and so we pray that you would teach us of how we need to rely
00:06:04.640 | upon the Holy Spirit in each of our lives, how we are to rely upon Him for our counseling ministry,
00:06:11.440 | and help us to study your Scriptures well that we may come to an accurate understanding of these
00:06:19.280 | truths and that we may live them out in our daily lives. And so we place ourselves once again
00:06:26.320 | in dependence upon your Spirit to take your Word and to work in our lives, and we pray all this
00:06:32.720 | in Christ's precious name, amen. Amen. Well, we are looking at, as I mentioned, theology exam
00:06:40.960 | number 21, the role of the Holy Spirit, and I'll go ahead and read the question for us.
00:06:49.280 | The question is this, "Explain the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life, describing
00:06:55.200 | the importance of this role in the counseling process." And so just generally, the question
00:07:03.760 | is asking you to explain the role of the Holy Spirit in all the Christian life, which shouldn't
00:07:09.840 | be difficult because really all of the Christian life is to be lived in dependence on the ministry
00:07:17.440 | of the Holy Spirit, and we'll talk about some of those features tonight, and then specifically to
00:07:25.040 | apply the doctrine of the Holy Spirit to the counseling process. How are we as biblical
00:07:31.040 | counselors to be dependent on the ministry of the Spirit in counseling? And just a brief note here
00:07:40.400 | that every time I counsel, I try to remind myself of the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
00:07:48.080 | I try to remind myself to trust in the Holy Spirit, and that gives me hope in the counseling
00:07:54.560 | process. It is not my job to change people's lives. It's not my job to fix all of their problems.
00:08:02.480 | It's not my job to be able to address every issue. It is my job to place myself in
00:08:11.200 | dependence on the Holy Spirit, to make myself available for what He wants to do through me
00:08:18.800 | in the lives of others, and to trust that the Holy Spirit will use His Word to change lives
00:08:25.280 | for the glory of Christ. And so as you look at the second part of that essay question,
00:08:32.560 | that really is a question that should be easy to answer. How important is the Holy Spirit
00:08:41.200 | in the counseling process? And I would just say that it is vitally important for counselors to be
00:08:49.840 | filled with the Spirit, to be led by the Spirit, to walk by the Spirit, and to be dependent on
00:08:57.440 | the Holy Spirit in the counseling ministry. So if you look at your handout on page one,
00:09:03.360 | I've noted a number of helpful resources that will be helpful in your study. I do encourage
00:09:09.280 | you to read Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, Paul Enns' The Moody Handbook of Theology,
00:09:17.040 | and then Heath Lambert's A Theology of Biblical Counseling. I encourage you to read those portions
00:09:24.480 | in those good works, and that will be helpful to you, and just to refresh your understanding of
00:09:30.560 | the person of the Holy Spirit and how He works in believers' lives. And then a couple of additional
00:09:38.320 | resources, you have chapter six of How to Counsel Biblically, edited by John MacArthur. That's a
00:09:46.880 | work that we assigned in the year one biblical counseling curriculum, and specifically chapter
00:09:53.360 | six, The Work of the Spirit and Biblical Counseling, is a very helpful read if you
00:10:00.080 | want to refresh your understanding of how vitally important the Holy Spirit is in counseling
00:10:07.600 | ministry. And then I sent to you as a PDF chapter three of Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling,
00:10:16.000 | written by Justin Holcomb and Mike Wilkerson, The Ministry of the Holy Spirit. That too is a very
00:10:23.520 | helpful chapter in relating the doctrine of the Holy Spirit specifically to counseling ministry.
00:10:31.760 | So I do encourage you that PDF is available as a sample online. That one chapter is free. You will
00:10:39.520 | want to get the entire book. The entire book is incredibly helpful, but that one chapter is
00:10:46.560 | available as a PDF sample, so I wanted to put that in your hands. I'd encourage you to get
00:10:54.640 | Jay Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual. As you know, Adams was in many ways the founder of
00:11:01.920 | the biblical counseling movement as we know it. He's considered to be the one who led the movement
00:11:08.800 | in the first generation in opposition to the church's reliance upon secular psychology,
00:11:15.120 | and he has a chapter in The Christian Counselor's Manual called The Holy Spirit is the Principal
00:11:22.160 | Person. This actually is a doctrine that Adams was very passionate about and emphasized greatly
00:11:30.320 | in his defense of biblical counseling, in his defense of the idea that the church
00:11:36.880 | is able to counsel. Adams emphasized the fact that we as the body of Christ,
00:11:44.240 | we who are in the church, are the only ones in this entire world who have
00:11:50.400 | the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We have the person of the Holy Spirit living in us. Our bodies
00:11:57.280 | are temples of the Holy Spirit. The church is filled with the power and the influence of the
00:12:03.680 | Holy Spirit, and so Adams' question was this. If we really want people's lives to change,
00:12:09.920 | what on earth are we doing as the church sending our people to secular psychologists who do not
00:12:18.320 | have the Holy Spirit? How would we expect our people, members of the body of Christ,
00:12:25.440 | to become more like Christ if we send them to unbelievers who do not have the Holy Spirit?
00:12:32.320 | And so Adams greatly emphasized the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the first generation of
00:12:40.160 | the biblical counseling movement, and so you will want to read firsthand a lot of what he wrote
00:12:46.560 | about the Holy Spirit, and chapter two of the Christian Counselor's Manual is a good read
00:12:51.920 | for that purpose. I'd also want to just note that Greg Heisler's book, Spirit-Led Preaching,
00:13:02.000 | the Holy Spirit's Role in Sermon Preparation and Delivery, that is a book that changed my life,
00:13:09.920 | and I would just note that for your reference. It's relating the doctrine of the Holy Spirit,
00:13:16.320 | specifically to sermon preparation and not so much to counseling, but you will find that the
00:13:21.520 | principles in that book apply to every ministry of the church, not just preaching. Before I read
00:13:29.680 | Heisler's work, I really was a preacher and a teacher who was dependent upon the mechanics of
00:13:36.560 | teaching. I wanted to get my outlines right. I wanted to get my content right. I wanted to get
00:13:41.440 | my illustrations right and my applications right. I was really dependent upon a lot of the routine
00:13:48.480 | of sermon preparation, and none of that has changed. I'm still as devoted to trying to get
00:13:56.080 | those elements of preaching and teaching right, but what Heisler helped me to see is that apart
00:14:03.920 | from a reliance upon the Holy Spirit throughout the process of sermon preparation and delivery,
00:14:11.440 | the preacher's ministry comes without power. You can get the mechanics right, but if the Holy
00:14:20.960 | Spirit does not bless and use what you have done, then your sermons will not come with power,
00:14:28.720 | because it is the Holy Spirit's ministry that changes people's lives. Now, please don't get
00:14:33.600 | me wrong. A dependence upon the Holy Spirit, I believe, leads to more diligence and more study,
00:14:41.120 | not less. We are not advocating this idea that you just become dependent upon the Holy Spirit,
00:14:47.920 | and then you don't study or you don't strive for excellence. That's not what Heisler is teaching.
00:14:54.480 | That's not what I believe as well, but there is this idea that we must pursue excellence and study
00:15:02.800 | and be diligently devoted to the text as we are reliant upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit,
00:15:10.960 | and Heisler's work helped me to see that. That's a book that changed my life, and so I just want
00:15:16.080 | to commend that reading to you, and you'll find many of those principles apply to counseling
00:15:21.840 | ministry as well. Now, let me move to the next page and get into your notes, and just I'll begin
00:15:30.240 | with this statement, which should be an obvious statement to all, and that is this. "Effective
00:15:37.200 | biblical counseling is impossible without the Holy Spirit." Now, you will know that that statement is
00:15:43.680 | not that effective biblical counseling is difficult without the Holy Spirit. I want to emphasize
00:15:50.560 | the idea that it is impossible. We could say this of every ministry of the church,
00:15:58.160 | that every ministry of the church, it is impossible to achieve its true objectives apart
00:16:04.640 | from the ministry of the Holy Spirit. In fact, we could say this about every aspect of the Christian
00:16:13.200 | life. We could do a study which would demonstrate throughout the New Testament that we worship as we
00:16:21.920 | are dependent upon the Holy Spirit. We serve as we are gifted by the Holy Spirit. We pray and we sing
00:16:30.960 | as we are filled with the Holy Spirit. We relate to one another in love and in graciousness and
00:16:38.720 | kindness and in mercy because we are filled with the sweet fruit of the Holy Spirit. We develop
00:16:46.880 | discipline and self-control and learn how to set priorities in life and manage our schedules as
00:16:52.320 | we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to bear the fruit of self-control, and as we are mastered
00:17:02.400 | by the influence of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Scriptures would demonstrate to us that
00:17:09.840 | we grow in holiness only as we are filled with the Spirit, led by the Spirit, walked by the Spirit,
00:17:17.760 | and bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and as we are taught by the Holy Spirit. I would ask you
00:17:26.480 | this question. Is there any aspect of the Christian life that can be lived apart from the Holy Spirit?
00:17:35.920 | I mean, you could name any aspect of the Christian life, and you will find that the Scriptures tie
00:17:41.200 | that aspect of life to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So, when I say that effective biblical
00:17:50.400 | counseling is impossible without the Holy Spirit, I hope I'm not making a controversial statement.
00:17:58.480 | All of the Christian life is impossible apart from the Holy Spirit working in us and through us.
00:18:09.680 | We are completely dependent upon the Holy Spirit for every aspect of the Christian life.
00:18:18.960 | That realization, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, ought to fill us with a fresh sense of
00:18:27.120 | humility and dependence. We ought to acknowledge our need for the Holy Spirit to work
00:18:36.160 | in our life and pray to the Father that the Spirit would work in our lives to glorify Christ
00:18:45.360 | and to lead us to become more like God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. I just want to add this.
00:18:53.040 | The realization that all of the Christian life is lived by the power of the Holy Spirit
00:19:00.480 | ought to fill us with a fresh sense of excitement and anticipation, and dare I say, even expectation
00:19:11.040 | of what the Holy Spirit will do in our lives for the glory of God. We ought to wake up every morning
00:19:18.880 | and ask the question, "What is the Holy Spirit going to do in my life today to make me more
00:19:26.000 | like Christ? How is the Holy Spirit going to use me as one of the members of the body of Christ to
00:19:32.880 | bless someone else in the church and even in the community as we proclaim the gospel to
00:19:40.400 | a dying world? How is the Holy Spirit going to work today?" Because the Holy Spirit is
00:19:47.200 | active in this day and in this season of life. He is working all across our nation to glorify
00:19:55.440 | the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He's using us as His vessels, as His instruments
00:20:02.880 | to simply achieve that end of glorifying the Son, Jesus Christ. You and I can't manufacture this
00:20:12.800 | work. We can't make people change. We can't make people bear fruit. We can't change people's hearts.
00:20:22.000 | We can't do this work in people's lives where they start to live for something different other
00:20:29.040 | than themselves. All we can do and all we're called to do is to be faithful servants, vessels
00:20:37.120 | who are submitted to the ministry of the Spirit and then approach ministry with a fresh sense of
00:20:45.760 | anticipation and excitement and expectation that the Holy Spirit is going to use His word
00:20:54.720 | in people's lives to change their hearts for God's glory. This ought to fill us with
00:21:02.320 | fresh encouragements for ministry. Do you know how much pressure it takes off me to realize that
00:21:09.680 | ministry doesn't depend on me? It's not dependent upon my eloquence or my ability to say things
00:21:16.640 | perfectly. It's not dependent upon my charisma or my ability to do certain things in an excellent
00:21:24.400 | way. Yes, I want to glorify God and do the best I can with my abilities, but ultimately how freeing
00:21:31.040 | it is to know that it's not up to me. It is by the power and the ministry of the Holy Spirit
00:21:39.920 | that's people's lives and hearts change. I tell you that gives you a sense of freedom when you
00:21:45.680 | enter into a counseling session. It just kind of takes the pressure off where you realize that
00:21:51.520 | that's not my job to change this person's life. It's my job to be faithful and to allow the Spirit
00:21:58.080 | to use me for His glory. Zechariah 4, verse 6, "Then he said to me, 'This is the word of the Lord
00:22:05.840 | to Zerubbabel, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit,' says the Lord of hosts." Ezekiel 36,
00:22:14.480 | verse 27, the great language of the new covenant, "And I will put my spirit within you and cause
00:22:21.760 | you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules." 1 Corinthians 6, verse 19 says,
00:22:29.760 | "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?
00:22:36.320 | You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God with your body." It's not
00:22:46.080 | just that the Holy Spirit has come upon us. It is indeed the reality that the Holy Spirit lives
00:22:53.600 | in us. Our bodies are literally temples of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit lives in us,
00:23:02.240 | and He empowers us to faithful ministry. It was said of C. H. Spurgeon that the true explanation
00:23:11.040 | of Spurgeon's ministry, then, is to be found in the person and power of the Holy Spirit.
00:23:16.960 | He himself was deeply conscious of this. It was not men's admiration he wanted, but he was jealous
00:23:23.520 | that they should stand in awe of God. "God has come unto us not to exalt us, but to exalt
00:23:29.440 | himself," so writes Iain Murray. Spurgeon, it is said, would ascend to the pulpit, repeating
00:23:37.520 | over and over to himself, "Trust in the Holy Spirit. Trust in the Holy Spirit." And applying
00:23:44.160 | that concept to counseling ministry, Justin Holcomb and Mike Wilkerson said this, "Rather
00:23:51.440 | than asking about the role of the Holy Spirit in counseling, we should be asking about the
00:23:58.000 | counselor's role in the Holy Spirit's counseling." Biblical counseling is not merely a dialogue
00:24:05.360 | between the counselor and the counselee. Rather, it is a trilogue in which the counselor
00:24:11.760 | participates in the Spirit's work already underway with the counselee. The Spirit is
00:24:19.280 | actively engaged in counseling, working directly on the counselor and the counselee,
00:24:25.120 | and through each to help the other. Well, that'll give you some fresh encouragement to do
00:24:33.680 | counseling ministry. And this is the diagram. I'll place this on the screen.
00:24:38.320 | This is the diagram that's found in their book when they talk about biblical counseling as
00:24:44.000 | a trilogue. You have the Holy Spirit who is working in the life of the counselor. You have
00:24:51.680 | the Holy Spirit who is working in the life of the counselee. And then you have the Holy Spirit
00:24:58.160 | working through the conversation as the counselor and the counselee interact with each other. That's
00:25:05.760 | a very helpful conceptual diagram that gives us great encouragement to counsel. As you submit to
00:25:15.040 | the Holy Spirit's ministry in your life, you can experience this dynamic. And I have had my share
00:25:24.080 | of counseling sessions that have gone awry. And I've also had my share of counseling sessions
00:25:30.000 | where someone will come to me later down, perhaps months later after the counseling session and say,
00:25:35.680 | "Those meetings changed my life." And I have to just confess, that wasn't me. I can't do that.
00:25:45.200 | I can't make a person's life change. But the fact that it was the Holy Spirit's delight to
00:25:53.040 | use a member, a servant of the body of Christ as a means to minister His word. And in the end,
00:26:01.600 | you just marvel at the power of the Holy Spirit, that the Spirit works through this counselor-counselee
00:26:09.200 | relationship to change both the counselee and the counselor. It is this dynamic relationship,
00:26:16.080 | and that ought to give you fresh encouragement to counsel. Back to your handout, Heath Lambert
00:26:23.440 | writes this, "The Holy Spirit is vital to a biblical approach to counseling. In fact,
00:26:29.600 | if biblical counselors were to offer any qualifications to their theology of the
00:26:34.960 | sufficiency of Scripture, it would have to do with the doctrine of the Spirit." In other words,
00:26:41.920 | Lambert is saying, what we don't mean by the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture
00:26:47.760 | is that we don't need the Holy Spirit. If your understanding of the doctrine of
00:26:54.240 | Scripture sufficiency leads you to a place where you are not reliant upon the Holy Spirit,
00:27:01.280 | then you have not understood the doctrine of sufficiency. Lambert continues that biblical
00:27:09.280 | counselors do not believe that the Scriptures are sufficient without the ministry of the Holy
00:27:14.960 | Spirit. The Bible does not work automatically and on its own as a sacred words wash over people.
00:27:21.120 | The word of God is only effective when the Spirit of God renders it effective in the lives of
00:27:28.400 | individuals. What he's saying there is it is not only that we minister the word and we minister
00:27:36.000 | the Scriptures. It is that we minister the Scriptures as we are empowered by the Holy
00:27:44.000 | Spirit and people learn the Scriptures as the Spirit teaches them what is in the word of God.
00:27:52.400 | The Spirit of God uses the word of God in the life of the child of God to change his life
00:28:03.040 | and her life to the glory of God. As I mentioned, J. Adams made a huge point of this in the first
00:28:09.520 | generation of the biblical counseling movement. He emphasized this point that counseling is the
00:28:16.000 | work of the Holy Spirit. Effective counseling cannot be done apart from him. He is called
00:28:24.000 | the paraclete, the counselor who in Christ's place came to be another counselor of the same sort that
00:28:31.120 | Christ had been to his disciples. Because unsaved counselors do not know the Holy Spirit, they ignore
00:28:38.880 | his counseling activity and fail to make avail themselves of his direction and power.
00:28:46.560 | All of the personality traits that might be held forth to counselees as fundamental goals for
00:28:54.000 | growth. Here it is. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
00:29:03.520 | self-control. God declares to be the fruit that is the result of the work of the Spirit.
00:29:13.680 | Now look at that list. I said this in the year one basic training course and I'll repeat it again.
00:29:21.040 | For emphasis, I don't know of a single counseling issue that is being dealt with in the world today
00:29:29.200 | that would not be greatly helped if not completely transformed if the counselee simply bore the fruit
00:29:38.800 | of the Spirit. There isn't a single marital issue that I can think of that would not be
00:29:45.200 | transformed if husband and wife simply started to bear the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience,
00:29:52.720 | kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control. I can't think of a single personal issue from
00:29:59.600 | anger to anxiety to depression to conflict to an eating disorder or a cutting issue. I can't
00:30:08.160 | think of a single counseling issue that is not addressed by the fruit of the Spirit and that
00:30:14.960 | would not be transformed if the counselee simply bore the fruit of the Spirit. This is the power of
00:30:25.040 | the Spirit's ministry. So Adam says not only is it futile to attempt to generate these qualities
00:30:34.960 | apart from him, the Holy Spirit, as non-Christians and even some Christian counselors try to do,
00:30:42.000 | but such an approach, and here's the bluntness of Adams. You have to love his approach. He was
00:30:48.240 | very blunt when he got to some of these issues. Such an approach is at bottom rebellion against
00:30:58.560 | God-grounded humanistic assumptions of man's autonomy. Bypassing the Spirit amounts to the
00:31:06.720 | denial of human depravity and the affirmation of man's innate goodness. The need for grace
00:31:14.000 | and the atoning work of Christ are both undercut and the counselee is left instead with the husk
00:31:21.040 | of a legalistic works righteousness which will lead ultimately to despair since it divests itself
00:31:29.440 | of the life and power of the Spirit. That's Paul's statement, right? In Galatians 3 verse 3,
00:31:37.440 | Paul said to the Galatians, "Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit,
00:31:45.440 | are you now being perfected by the flesh?" So here's the encouraging thing at the bottom of your
00:31:55.840 | page on page 2. God has not been stingy with the Holy Spirit in our lives. God has not just given
00:32:05.360 | us a little bit of the Holy Spirit or a taste of the Holy Spirit. God has given to us the ministry
00:32:12.160 | of the Holy Spirit in fullest measure and the Spirit is not against us. The Spirit is for us.
00:32:21.280 | 1 Corinthians 2 verse 12, "Now we have received not the Spirit of the world but the capital S,
00:32:31.760 | Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God." How good is
00:32:41.280 | God? How gracious is He? How generous is He to give us the ministry of the Spirit in fullest
00:32:49.120 | measure, to pour out His Spirit upon us, to literally baptize us in the person and in the
00:32:57.360 | ministry of the Holy Spirit, to seal us with the Holy Spirit of God as Ephesians 1 talks about so
00:33:05.360 | that we are permanently indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Oh, we can grieve the Spirit. We can
00:33:12.640 | not be filled with His influence, but we cannot lose the Holy Spirit. We have been sealed with
00:33:21.200 | the Spirit and we have been given the Holy Spirit in fullest measure. This is what we pray for. This
00:33:30.800 | is what I was praying for each of you in this class and this is what I was praying for for our
00:33:35.280 | biblical counseling training. Lord, grant us biblical counselors who are filled with the
00:33:40.400 | Spirit of God, who have the fruit of the Spirit growing in their lives, who have the fruit of
00:33:48.560 | love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, so evidently growing in their lives,
00:33:55.600 | who are gifted by the Spirit and who are able to minister the Word by the power of the Spirit.
00:34:02.800 | Grant that our counseling ministry would be filled with Spirit-filled counselors. Lord,
00:34:11.120 | grant us this, and that was my prayer for each of you as you work through this essay, that
00:34:14.960 | God would impress upon you your need to be dependent on the Holy Spirit for your life
00:34:24.160 | and ministry. So, as I move to page three of your notes, I want to
00:34:30.880 | give, as in the short time we have remaining, give you an overview of the teaching of Scripture
00:34:38.880 | as it relates to the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life. I'm going to move through some
00:34:44.720 | of this fairly rapidly, but I hope it'll provide a good framework for your understanding of the
00:34:51.040 | Holy Spirit and also a good foundation for you to write this essay. So, let's begin with the
00:34:58.560 | promise of the Holy Spirit, Roman numeral number two on page three. This is mostly in the Old
00:35:06.560 | Testament. We see the promise of the Holy Spirit as you work through the Old Testament. The Old
00:35:15.120 | Testament prophets anticipated a time when the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon God's people.
00:35:22.480 | In the Old Testament, we had what we now know as the Old Covenant. It was called back then the
00:35:31.120 | Mosaic Covenant or the Covenant of Law. This is the covenant that Israel broke time and time again
00:35:39.040 | through Old Testament history. There comes a point in Jeremiah chapter 31 and Ezekiel 36
00:35:46.080 | that God says He is going to institute a new covenant. The Old Covenant is a covenant that
00:35:53.600 | Israel broke, but God is going to establish a new covenant. He says in Ezekiel 11 verse 19,
00:36:03.120 | "And I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart
00:36:09.200 | of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh." So, this was the characteristic of
00:36:17.600 | the New Covenant. The Old Covenant focused on the external law. The New Covenant will focus on a
00:36:25.360 | transformed heart, a heart of flesh that is softened to the things of God. And we find that
00:36:34.800 | central to the provision of the New Covenant will be the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We read Ezekiel
00:36:42.880 | 36 verse 26, "And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I'll remove
00:36:50.880 | the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you
00:36:57.120 | and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules." In the Old Testament,
00:37:05.520 | the Holy Spirit would come upon certain individuals for certain tasks in ministry,
00:37:11.200 | but as we see in David's life, the Holy Spirit could be taken away. David prays in Psalm 51,
00:37:17.840 | "Take not thy spirit from me." But we see under the provisions of the New Covenant that there
00:37:24.560 | would come a time when the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon God's people. And God would not
00:37:32.560 | only place the Spirit's ministry upon certain individuals for specific tasks of ministry,
00:37:39.440 | but he would place the Holy Spirit within the hearts of God's people.
00:37:45.600 | And this is just beautiful language that describes the New Covenant ministry that was promised
00:37:54.400 | and foretold in the Old Testament. As Bruce Ware writes, "What then is the novelty of the
00:38:02.880 | future covenant? The principal novelty is, I believe, that the covenant is not written on stone
00:38:09.760 | but on their hearts. The location of the law in Israel was identified most prominently with
00:38:16.240 | tablets of stone or with a book of the law, not with tablets of human hearts." All of that would
00:38:24.640 | change with the establishment of the New Covenant. Robert Soce says this, "The New Covenant therefore
00:38:32.080 | looks to the time when the law of God would be a part of the mind and will of the people so that
00:38:38.480 | they obey God, not because they are supposed to, but because they want to." Now, if you've taken
00:38:49.280 | year one with me and you've been through our basic training course for biblical counseling,
00:38:54.080 | you ought to love this language because we emphasized in our training that biblical
00:38:59.200 | counselors focus on the heart. What we are after is heart change. What we pray for is that our
00:39:06.320 | counselees will not only behave differently, we pray that their hearts will be changed so that
00:39:12.480 | they would think differently, that they would desire differently. I don't just want a husband
00:39:19.280 | in the counseling session to say, "Fine, I'll do what you want. I'll love my wife even though I
00:39:26.160 | don't want to." I want the Word of God to work in that husband's life and the Spirit of God to work
00:39:34.160 | through the Word so that the husband says, "I want nothing more than to love my wife. I want nothing
00:39:42.720 | more than the glory of God. Help me do that. Help me find ways to do that, but I want nothing more
00:39:50.960 | than to honor God with my marriage." We long for that. We love that because that is the ministry
00:40:00.240 | of the Spirit to change hearts under the provision of the new covenant. As Carl Hotch writes, the new
00:40:08.480 | covenant comes with batteries included. The Spirit internalizes the new covenant so that the people
00:40:16.000 | of God are motivated to do God's will. By contrast, the old covenant stood over the people of Israel
00:40:22.800 | like a judge demanding obedience but providing no enablement. By the way, that is why if I'm
00:40:29.680 | assured that a counselee is a believer in Christ, I can say to that counselee, "You can change.
00:40:37.680 | You can change because you have the ministry of the Holy Spirit working in you for God's glory."
00:40:46.320 | So the Old Testament promised that a new covenant would be provided. Letter B,
00:40:52.000 | the Old Testament promised that the Spirit would be poured out.
00:40:56.480 | The Old Testament promised that the Spirit would be poured out. That's beautiful language,
00:41:05.440 | the pouring out of the Spirit. It's what my theology professor Dr. Larry Pettigrew called
00:41:11.120 | a liquidy, watery metaphor that emphasizes the fullness of the Spirit's provision and person.
00:41:22.720 | Isaiah 32 verse 15, "Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high and the wilderness becomes
00:41:32.720 | a fruitful field and the fruitful field is deemed a forest, then justice will dwell in the wilderness
00:41:39.760 | and righteousness abide in the fruitful field and the effect of righteousness will be peace
00:41:45.600 | and the result of righteousness, quietness, and trust forever." I mean, these are just
00:41:50.320 | beautiful passages. Isaiah 44 verse 3, "For I will pour water on the thirsty land
00:41:58.400 | and streams on the dry ground. I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring and my blessing
00:42:05.760 | on your descendants." Joel 2 verse 28, "And it shall come to pass afterwards that I will pour
00:42:13.040 | out my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream
00:42:20.400 | dreams and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days,
00:42:27.760 | I will pour out my Spirit." So in our study, we could spend a lot more time on this, but I want
00:42:34.480 | to transition and just make that point that the Old Testament promised that the Holy Spirit would
00:42:41.120 | come. The Old Testament promised that the Holy Spirit would be placed in the hearts of God's
00:42:46.800 | people. The Old Testament promised that the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon God's people in
00:42:55.280 | this liquidy, watery metaphor of the fullness of blessing. We fast forward to the New Testament
00:43:03.040 | in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to this earth, His life, His going to the cross, and we
00:43:14.480 | fast forward to the evening before Christ's death as Jesus shares His heart with His disciples in
00:43:22.320 | the upper room. And in the context of all of these Old Testament promises and the expectation that
00:43:30.000 | the Holy Spirit would be poured out, Jesus says on the eve of His death in John 14 verse 16,
00:43:38.640 | "I will ask the Father and He will give you another helper." Now that's good news for anyone
00:43:46.480 | who needs help, by the way, which is me every day and I trust is you as well. Jesus's promise
00:43:54.240 | is, "I will give you another helper to be with you." For how long? Jesus says, "Forever,
00:44:04.880 | even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows
00:44:12.720 | Him, you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be." Note this, so sound familiar,
00:44:19.520 | "He will be with you and will be in you." Now remember, that's New Covenant language.
00:44:27.440 | The Spirit will come to live in you. He will transform your life from the inside out.
00:44:35.600 | Now that's exciting because basically the Old Testament has been saying,
00:44:39.760 | "The Holy Spirit is coming, the Holy Spirit is coming, the Holy Spirit is coming, He's going
00:44:44.160 | to be poured out." And on the eve of Christ's death, Jesus says to His disciples, "The Holy
00:44:51.520 | Spirit is going to be given to you." And He repeats this language in John 14 verse 26,
00:45:00.720 | "But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all
00:45:08.080 | things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you,
00:45:14.560 | my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled,
00:45:22.240 | neither let them be afraid." And John 15 verse 26 says, "But when the helper comes,
00:45:30.560 | whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father,
00:45:35.680 | He will bear witness about me." So you have the Old Testament promising that the Holy Spirit
00:45:43.040 | would be poured out. You have Jesus telling His disciples that the Holy Spirit would be given
00:45:48.400 | to them. We know that Jesus dies on the cross on Good Friday. He rises from the grave on
00:45:54.960 | Resurrection Sunday. He meets with His disciples in Acts chapter 1. And we move to the next page
00:46:02.880 | of your handout and we see Roman numeral number 3, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. All of that
00:46:11.680 | background and backdrop is the setting for this amazing passage in Acts chapter 1 verse 4,
00:46:20.000 | where the resurrected Christ meets with His disciples and listen to the language.
00:46:27.040 | "While staying with them," verse 4, "He ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem,
00:46:32.880 | but to wait for the promise of the Father, which He said, 'You heard from Me, for John baptized
00:46:40.000 | with water, but you will be baptized," literally immersed, "with the Holy Spirit not many days
00:46:52.480 | from now." Remember the liquidy, watery metaphor used in the Old Testament to describe the ministry
00:47:01.040 | of the Holy Spirit, where the Old Testament said that the Holy Spirit would be poured out
00:47:06.800 | upon God's people. Jesus uses another liquidy, watery metaphor referring not to water baptism,
00:47:14.400 | but to Spirit baptism. And He says to His disciples, "You will be baptized with the
00:47:22.240 | Holy Spirit," here it is, "not many days from now." How long have we waited through Old Testament
00:47:31.520 | history for the Holy Spirit to be poured out upon God's people? We waited for generations.
00:47:38.800 | Hundreds of years have gone by as we waited for the fulfillment of this promise that the Holy
00:47:45.680 | Spirit would be given to God's people. And Jesus tells His disciples in Acts chapter 1,
00:47:51.600 | "This is going to happen in a matter of days." I mean, just the anticipation that must have
00:47:59.600 | taken place in the disciples' hearts as they waited for this event to take place. And then
00:48:06.640 | we move to Acts chapter 2, "But when the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one
00:48:14.640 | place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the
00:48:21.680 | entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues of fire appeared to them and rested on
00:48:27.760 | each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues
00:48:33.440 | as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every
00:48:40.160 | nation under heaven. And at the sound the multitude came together and they were bewildered because
00:48:45.840 | each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished,
00:48:51.760 | saying, 'Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us
00:48:59.680 | in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea
00:49:09.040 | and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya belonging
00:49:16.000 | to Cyrene and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians. We hear them
00:49:23.920 | telling in their own tongues the mighty works of God.' And all were amazed and perplexed, saying
00:49:31.120 | to one another, 'What does this mean?' But others mocking said, 'They are filled with new wine.'
00:49:37.920 | And the question would be this, is this the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise
00:49:44.640 | that the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon God's people?
00:49:50.880 | And the answer is found in verse 16. But this is what is offered through the prophet Joel.
00:49:58.240 | And in the last days it shall be God declares that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh
00:50:05.120 | and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy even on your my male servants and female servants
00:50:10.160 | in those days. I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy. So the filling of the spirit and
00:50:18.480 | the baptism of the spirit and the pouring out of the spirit is all that is language that is referring
00:50:25.520 | to this great event, the day of Pentecost, where the spirit was poured out upon the early church
00:50:34.560 | and the church was born. It was launched as a new spiritual organism that was birthed by the power
00:50:44.720 | of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. And the tongues, the known languages that the people
00:50:51.280 | were speaking were an emblem of the mission of the church, that the church would take the gospel of
00:50:59.200 | the Lord Jesus Christ to every tribe and every language and every nation. No longer would the
00:51:05.360 | messages of God be spoken only in Hebrew, but the gospel of Christ would be spoken in languages
00:51:13.840 | that would extend to the entire Gentile world. This is what we call the grand opening
00:51:21.520 | of the church era. It is a massive transition that's taking place in Acts chapter 2.
00:51:30.960 | The day of Pentecost represents the inauguration of the church age. The day of Pentecost, Acts
00:51:38.320 | chapter 2, represents the inauguration of new covenant blessings. What we are seeing here is
00:51:44.720 | the pouring out or what Jesus referred to as the baptism, the immersion of the people of God into
00:51:53.760 | the Holy Spirit and the spirit coming to live inside the people of God. We see major transitions
00:52:00.880 | being made in Acts chapter 2 from old covenant provisions to new covenant provisions. The
00:52:07.920 | transition from the nation of Israel being the focal point of God's plan to the unique organism
00:52:13.920 | of the church which incorporates Jew and Gentile being the focal point of God's plan to exalt
00:52:20.800 | himself among the nations. We see a transition from the focus on the Jews to a focus being upon
00:52:28.720 | the Gentile world. We see a massive transition being made of the word of God being spoken only
00:52:38.080 | in Hebrew to speaking the word of God in the languages of all the nations. This is the grand
00:52:45.360 | opening of the new covenant era which is the era of the spirit of God living in his people.
00:52:57.200 | Larry Pettigrew writes this, the Old Testament Pentecost celebrated the actual use of the
00:53:04.400 | completed grain harvest. The Israelites officially began to cook and eat of the grain that they had
00:53:11.440 | been harvesting for more than a month and a half. They were now officially and personally
00:53:16.400 | benefiting from the provisions. Similarly, the New Testament Pentecost celebrated the actual
00:53:24.400 | functioning of all of the benefits that Christ had prepared during the past month and a half.
00:53:29.120 | The very son of God at the cross had objectively made the atonement. The old covenant had come to
00:53:36.000 | an end when the veil was ripped in two from the top to the bottom. With Pentecost, all of these
00:53:41.920 | great provisions became operational and personally beneficial for those who were believers in Christ.
00:53:49.840 | The day of Pentecost was as it were the divine starting gun of a new era. The new covenant was
00:53:59.840 | officially functional. Bang and they are off to the races. And we see for the first time in
00:54:10.560 | redemptive history, this new organism called the body of Christ, combining Jew and Gentile in one
00:54:20.640 | body. First Corinthians 12 verse 12, for just as the body is one and has many members and all
00:54:26.480 | the members of the body, though many are one body. So it is with Christ for in one spirit,
00:54:32.160 | we were all baptized into one body, Jew or Greek, slave or free, and all were made to drink of one
00:54:41.520 | spirit. And that leads us to Roman numeral number four. And you're going to like this point.
00:54:48.960 | You're going to need to use this in your ministry as I need to use this in my ministry. The spirit
00:54:57.520 | as our helper, the spirit as our helper. When you get into counseling ministry, you're going to
00:55:06.480 | realize that you need a lot of help. And so do I. You're going to need a lot of help to work
00:55:12.640 | through the issues. You're going to need a lot of help to discern what the counselor is dealing
00:55:18.480 | with. You're going to need a lot of help discerning what scriptures to use, how many sessions to
00:55:24.720 | schedule. You're going to need a lot of help to continue to love your counselee when your
00:55:29.920 | counselee tries your patience or misses meetings or doesn't do their homework.
00:55:34.640 | You're going to need a lot of help just as you need a lot of help in every ministry
00:55:40.160 | in the church. And here is our confidence. Jesus says in John 14 verse 16, I will ask
00:55:48.960 | the father and he will give you another helper. The word helper comes from the Greek term
00:55:57.280 | parakletos. That word is derived from two words alongside and called. Literally, it means called
00:56:05.680 | alongside to help. And the word another, alos, means another of the same kind as opposed to heteros,
00:56:14.480 | meaning another of a different kind. Jay Packer puts it this way. Parakletos in Greek means
00:56:23.360 | comforter, counselor, helper, advocate, strengthener, supporter. Jesus, the original
00:56:31.920 | paraklete, continues his ministry to mankind through the work of the second paraklete.
00:56:38.000 | The Holy Spirit is said to hear, speak, witness, convince, glorify Christ, lead, guide, teach,
00:56:45.520 | command, forbid, desire, give speech, give help, and intercede for Christians with inarticulate
00:56:53.040 | groans, himself crying to God in their prayers. He is another paraklete continuing Jesus's own
00:57:00.880 | ministry. And only a person, one like Jesus, could do that. The Son is parakletos, Sinclair Ferguson
00:57:10.480 | writes. The Spirit is alos parakletos. Both function as parakletes and do so successively
00:57:20.160 | in the earthly realm, the Spirit being another of the same kind as the Son. Thus, to have the Spirit
00:57:28.240 | is to have Christ, to have Christ is to have the Spirit.
00:57:33.600 | Do you need direction? The Holy Spirit will lead you. Do you need encouragement? The Holy Spirit
00:57:45.680 | will give you hope. Are you struggling with sin? Walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out
00:57:52.800 | the desire of the strength. Are you weary and do you need strength for the journey? The Holy Spirit
00:58:00.960 | has come to empower you for life and ministry. The Holy Spirit will take a narcissist and turn
00:58:11.120 | him into a loving person. The Holy Spirit will take a depressed person and give him joy in life
00:58:20.480 | and in ministry. The Spirit will take an anxious person and give that person the peace that
00:58:25.520 | surpasses all understanding. The Spirit will take an angry person and give that person patience.
00:58:32.320 | The Spirit will take a sarcastic person, a hurtful person, a mean person, a person with
00:58:41.680 | bad manners and will make that person into a man or a woman who is marked by gentleness, kindness,
00:58:51.600 | faithfulness, and self-control. Whatever you need, the Holy Spirit has come to be our helper
00:59:01.040 | and Jesus says he will be with you forever. So life in the church is life in the Spirit.
00:59:12.400 | We're to be filled with the Spirit. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 18, we're to be led by the
00:59:20.400 | Spirit. Galatians chapter 5 verse 18, we're to be filled with the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5
00:59:26.400 | verse 22, we are to live by the Spirit and walk by the Spirit. Galatians chapter 5 verse 25.
00:59:34.960 | And can I add one point here that one of the ministries of the Holy Spirit is to be our teacher.
00:59:47.440 | He is the Spirit of truth who Jesus said will bring to your remembrance all that I have said
00:59:56.160 | to you. The Holy Spirit teaches us the Word of God. 1 Corinthians 2 verse 12, we have received
01:00:06.480 | not the Spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God that we might understand the things
01:00:12.160 | freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by
01:00:18.640 | the Spirit interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. We have the inspiration of the
01:00:28.320 | Holy Spirit which is a completed act which results in the written revelation of God found in the 66
01:00:35.200 | books of the Bible, the scriptures. And then we have the illumination of the Holy Spirit which
01:00:41.280 | is the Spirit's ongoing work where the Spirit takes the written revelation of God and He changes
01:00:48.720 | hearts and lives through the Word of God for God's glory. You can read of the distinguishing
01:00:56.560 | of that in Greg Heisser's work. But I'll just note this, that when I pray for the Holy Spirit to
01:01:05.360 | teach me, I am not praying for additional revelation. I am not praying for the Holy
01:01:12.400 | Spirit to inspire new texts. I'm not praying for an additional Word of God. What I'm praying for
01:01:19.440 | when I ask the Holy Spirit to teach me is that God would use His all-sufficient Word to change
01:01:26.000 | my life. That the Holy Spirit would help me understand what His written Word says.
01:01:33.200 | And then in light of what the Bible teaches, that the Holy Spirit would convict me of where I need
01:01:39.600 | to change and to do a renewing work in my life through His Word to make me more like Christ.
01:01:47.440 | As Bob Stein has written, "Illumination is the process whereby the Holy Spirit so impresses,
01:01:54.320 | convinces, and convicts the believer as to the truthfulness and significance of the author's
01:02:01.920 | intended meaning in the text, that a change in action, attitude, or belief occurs, resulting in
01:02:08.960 | a more transformed spirit-filled life." We don't need additional written revelation. What we do
01:02:17.200 | need is for the Spirit to take what the Spirit has inspired already, the written revelation of
01:02:24.240 | God in the Scriptures, and to use that written revelation to convict us of sin, to help us to
01:02:30.320 | see where we need to change, where we need to repent, and to change our hearts through that Word,
01:02:36.240 | not apart from the Scriptures, but through the Scriptures, to change God's Word,
01:02:42.480 | to change, I'm sorry, our hearts through His Word for God's glory.
01:02:48.720 | And so this is the distinction of inspiration and illumination. All that to say that whenever I
01:02:58.160 | stand in a public to preach or whenever I teach God's Word, I have God's inspired written Word,
01:03:04.080 | the 66 books of the Bible, which is sufficient. And I also pray that the Holy Spirit would use
01:03:12.640 | that Word in that moment to change the hearts of those who hear God's Word so that they would be
01:03:21.360 | renewed, transformed, that they would be changed, and that they would live for God's glory. So we
01:03:28.080 | have this twin focus in counseling ministry. We rely upon the sufficient Word of God. We don't
01:03:36.640 | need any additional revelation. But we do pray for our counselees that their hearts would be
01:03:44.960 | changed through God's Word. Father, would you do a work in my counselee's life through the ministry
01:03:52.160 | of your Spirit? Would you use your Word in my counselee's life so that this hard-hearted husband
01:03:57.200 | would see the hardness of heart and repent and be broken through your Word and come to see his need
01:04:06.560 | of repentance so he would love his wife? Father, would you do that through your Word, not apart
01:04:15.280 | from it, but using your Word? Would you convict this counselee of his need for change so that
01:04:24.400 | we would see life change to the glory of God? So let me boil this down. Practically,
01:04:33.520 | to be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with the knowledge of the scriptures that the Spirit
01:04:41.040 | has inspired. Practically speaking, to be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with the Spirit's
01:04:47.920 | thoughts, the Spirit's influence, the Spirit's perspectives on life, the Spirit's priorities,
01:04:53.600 | the Spirit's desires. And he fills us with that influence practically as we learn and we study
01:05:01.600 | and we meditate on the written Word of God that he has inspired. Someone used the illustration. I
01:05:08.400 | think it's a helpful one that to be taught by the Spirit is like sitting down with a math textbook
01:05:17.200 | and have the professor who wrote the textbook teach you what is in the book.
01:05:24.800 | The professor is going to teach you what is in the book because he wrote the book.
01:05:29.600 | And yet he has come to teach you what is in the book he has written. And in a similar way,
01:05:39.680 | the Spirit teaches us what he has inspired in the text of scripture. That is why biblical
01:05:50.400 | counseling, we say this, is Spirit-filled counseling. You don't have to choose. Am I
01:05:57.920 | going to be a biblical counselor or a Spirit-filled counselor? You can and you should be both.
01:06:03.040 | You should be filled with the scripture and be filled with the Spirit. And in the end,
01:06:10.640 | that's why we have confidence in this ministry. It's not because we're impressive. It's not
01:06:18.800 | because we're that smart. It's not because we have talents or we have eloquence or we know what to
01:06:25.680 | say at all the right times. It's not because we have all of this amazing ability to analyze all
01:06:32.640 | the facts and information. We have confidence simply because we have the Holy Spirit and the
01:06:41.760 | world does not. We live with this humble yet joyful anticipation that our biblical counseling
01:06:50.560 | ministry is going to be fruitful, that the Spirit is going to use you and the Spirit is going to use
01:06:56.480 | me to change people's lives. We are going to see the Spirit work because we're simply submitting
01:07:07.600 | to him, to his purpose, his passion, his desires for people. And so I trust you will have a
01:07:17.040 | wonderful time writing this essay. I trust that this overview was helpful in your thinking.
01:07:22.240 | Definitely do your own reading on this. Use this as an opportunity to refresh your own
01:07:28.080 | understanding of the ministry of the Holy Spirit and renew your personal dependence on the Spirit's
01:07:33.920 | role in ministry. And I trust you'll have a wonderful week of study and apply pen to paper
01:07:42.000 | and articulate your own convictions of how you would communicate this to a counselee and that
01:07:48.800 | this will be a life-changing study for you as it has been for me. Let me close us in prayer
01:07:55.840 | and devote the fruit of this time to the Lord. Father, we do thank you so much that you have
01:08:04.080 | given us your Holy Spirit. We thank you that your Spirit fills us with his influence, his fruit.
01:08:12.800 | We thank you that the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and so on is the result of
01:08:23.920 | your Spirit working in our lives. We want to see more of that fruit. We want to see more hearts
01:08:31.920 | and lives changed for the glory of Christ. And we want to submit to the Spirit's purpose in this day
01:08:39.920 | and age to bring people to the knowledge of Jesus Christ and to help people to see the glory of
01:08:48.880 | your Son. And so, Father, we pray that we might live by the Spirit. We pray that our ministry
01:08:59.200 | would be a demonstration of the Spirit's power, not a demonstration of human eloquence or wisdom.
01:09:05.520 | And we pray that our knowledge of the Spirit's work in this day would lead us to embrace ever
01:09:14.560 | more the sufficiency of your Word, that we may embrace the truth that your Spirit always works
01:09:20.720 | through the Scriptures, not apart from the Scriptures. The Spirit's business in this day
01:09:27.280 | is not to lead us to extra-biblical words of so-called revelation, but to bring our hearts
01:09:36.240 | and our lives in submission to the written revelation of God in the 66 books of the Bible.
01:09:43.680 | So help us, Father, to process these things. Help my brothers and sisters to write an excellent essay
01:09:50.240 | on this topic that would be used in years, Lord willing, to come to bless others. And we just
01:09:57.520 | commit this time to you and thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you all for joining
01:10:04.480 | us tonight. As I mentioned in my email, we have the larger goal of completing all 24 theology
01:10:11.120 | exams by December. And so we are not going to meet for class next week. I'm going to be traveling
01:10:18.640 | next Sunday, and so we won't be able to meet next week. But we will regather the following Sunday
01:10:24.400 | on November 15th, and we'll do theology exam number 22. We'll wrap up the exams in the month
01:10:30.560 | of December, and we'll take a winter break. And those of you who are continuing on to
01:10:35.760 | the counseling essays, we will reconvene in January and go through the counseling essays
01:10:41.760 | together. But thanks so much for joining us tonight. May the Lord bless you. Have a wonderful
01:10:46.640 | week and thank you again for your faith.