do welcome you tonight to our 21st meeting of Intermediate Biblical Counseling. It's a joy to have this time together and to study God's Word, and it's a joy to meet together in this online format. I know that there are many who are joining us from all over California and even outside of California.

I want to just welcome you, and thanks for continuing in your studies. I trust that these sessions have been a blessing to you, and trust that the Lord is continuing to bless your time in His Word. I just wanted to give a personal thanks to all of you for your encouragement and for your prayers this last week.

It was a joy to pass my doctoral oral defense, and it was a little bit nerve-wracking there. I didn't sleep much the night before, but God was faithful, and I do want to thank you for your prayers. That was very kind of many of you to pray for me, and I do believe that many have prayed me across the finish line here, and so just thank you for all of your words of encouragement and your words of support.

All of that has been a tremendous blessing to me. As you may have known, my faculty advisor in my doctoral studies was Dr. Stuart Scott, who is also the biblical counseling professor at the Master's University and the Master's Seminary, and he's adjunct at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Dr.

Scott said a statement during the defense that I've heard him say often in many different settings, and he often says this, that we're just passing on to others what has been passed on to us, and he reminded of that truth to me as we completed that defense, just that we're passing on to others what's been passed on to us, that many invested in Dr.

Scott, and he has been faithful to pass that on to others, and we're now called to pass that on to those whom we minister to, and I was just reminded that that really is the heartbeat and the focus of why we exist as an ACBC training center, why we have this class, Intermediate Biblical Counseling.

We are seeking to pass on to others what has been passed on to us, and many have invested in my life and in my wife's life, and this class exists to pass what we have received on to you, and we hope and we pray that you will take what you have learned, and you will pass that on to others, and that we will see the ministry of the Word of God multiply in this way, and so we do trust that that will be the fruit of our study and our time together.

So thank you again for joining us tonight. Tonight we are looking at theology exam number 21, and we are looking at the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life, the role of the Holy Spirit in your life and in my life, and I was just thinking what a joy to be able to study this topic and to devote an hour to this great subject of the role of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit's ministry in each of our lives, the Holy Spirit's ministry in the church, and our dependence upon the Holy Spirit in our counseling ministry.

What a joy it is to be able to devote an hour to this subject. I do pray that the hour we spend tonight will lead us to a fresh dependence this week, a fresh reliance upon, and a fresh passion for the ministry of the Holy Spirit in each of our lives, and I do pray that our study tonight will lead us to a fresh expectation and anticipation of the Holy Spirit's work as we are faithful to His Word, and as we simply submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit's leadership and desire to be used as members of Christ's body to bless and to encourage other believers, and so I'm looking forward to our time tonight.

Let me pray for us, and let's devote our time to the Lord in prayer. Father, thank you for this class. Thank you for each of my brothers and sisters in Christ who are joining us on this webinar in this online format that we may study your Word, that we may express once again our need for the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us, our need for the Holy Spirit to use your Word to change our hearts and our lives for your glory.

We do rejoice in this topic. We thank you that you have given to us not only your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be our Savior and to be our perfect substitute, but you have given to us your Holy Spirit to be our helper, to be the one who comes alongside of us in our daily lives, and indeed, not only alongside of us, but you have given to us your Spirit to live in us.

We thank you that all of fruitful ministry is accomplished by the power and through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and so we pray that you would teach us of how we need to rely upon the Holy Spirit in each of our lives, how we are to rely upon Him for our counseling ministry, and help us to study your Scriptures well that we may come to an accurate understanding of these truths and that we may live them out in our daily lives.

And so we place ourselves once again in dependence upon your Spirit to take your Word and to work in our lives, and we pray all this in Christ's precious name, amen. Amen. Well, we are looking at, as I mentioned, theology exam number 21, the role of the Holy Spirit, and I'll go ahead and read the question for us.

The question is this, "Explain the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life, describing the importance of this role in the counseling process." And so just generally, the question is asking you to explain the role of the Holy Spirit in all the Christian life, which shouldn't be difficult because really all of the Christian life is to be lived in dependence on the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and we'll talk about some of those features tonight, and then specifically to apply the doctrine of the Holy Spirit to the counseling process.

How are we as biblical counselors to be dependent on the ministry of the Spirit in counseling? And just a brief note here that every time I counsel, I try to remind myself of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. I try to remind myself to trust in the Holy Spirit, and that gives me hope in the counseling process.

It is not my job to change people's lives. It's not my job to fix all of their problems. It's not my job to be able to address every issue. It is my job to place myself in dependence on the Holy Spirit, to make myself available for what He wants to do through me in the lives of others, and to trust that the Holy Spirit will use His Word to change lives for the glory of Christ.

And so as you look at the second part of that essay question, that really is a question that should be easy to answer. How important is the Holy Spirit in the counseling process? And I would just say that it is vitally important for counselors to be filled with the Spirit, to be led by the Spirit, to walk by the Spirit, and to be dependent on the Holy Spirit in the counseling ministry.

So if you look at your handout on page one, I've noted a number of helpful resources that will be helpful in your study. I do encourage you to read Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, Paul Enns' The Moody Handbook of Theology, and then Heath Lambert's A Theology of Biblical Counseling. I encourage you to read those portions in those good works, and that will be helpful to you, and just to refresh your understanding of the person of the Holy Spirit and how He works in believers' lives.

And then a couple of additional resources, you have chapter six of How to Counsel Biblically, edited by John MacArthur. That's a work that we assigned in the year one biblical counseling curriculum, and specifically chapter six, The Work of the Spirit and Biblical Counseling, is a very helpful read if you want to refresh your understanding of how vitally important the Holy Spirit is in counseling ministry.

And then I sent to you as a PDF chapter three of Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling, written by Justin Holcomb and Mike Wilkerson, The Ministry of the Holy Spirit. That too is a very helpful chapter in relating the doctrine of the Holy Spirit specifically to counseling ministry. So I do encourage you that PDF is available as a sample online.

That one chapter is free. You will want to get the entire book. The entire book is incredibly helpful, but that one chapter is available as a PDF sample, so I wanted to put that in your hands. I'd encourage you to get Jay Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual. As you know, Adams was in many ways the founder of the biblical counseling movement as we know it.

He's considered to be the one who led the movement in the first generation in opposition to the church's reliance upon secular psychology, and he has a chapter in The Christian Counselor's Manual called The Holy Spirit is the Principal Person. This actually is a doctrine that Adams was very passionate about and emphasized greatly in his defense of biblical counseling, in his defense of the idea that the church is able to counsel.

Adams emphasized the fact that we as the body of Christ, we who are in the church, are the only ones in this entire world who have the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We have the person of the Holy Spirit living in us. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.

The church is filled with the power and the influence of the Holy Spirit, and so Adams' question was this. If we really want people's lives to change, what on earth are we doing as the church sending our people to secular psychologists who do not have the Holy Spirit? How would we expect our people, members of the body of Christ, to become more like Christ if we send them to unbelievers who do not have the Holy Spirit?

And so Adams greatly emphasized the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the first generation of the biblical counseling movement, and so you will want to read firsthand a lot of what he wrote about the Holy Spirit, and chapter two of the Christian Counselor's Manual is a good read for that purpose.

I'd also want to just note that Greg Heisler's book, Spirit-Led Preaching, the Holy Spirit's Role in Sermon Preparation and Delivery, that is a book that changed my life, and I would just note that for your reference. It's relating the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, specifically to sermon preparation and not so much to counseling, but you will find that the principles in that book apply to every ministry of the church, not just preaching.

Before I read Heisler's work, I really was a preacher and a teacher who was dependent upon the mechanics of teaching. I wanted to get my outlines right. I wanted to get my content right. I wanted to get my illustrations right and my applications right. I was really dependent upon a lot of the routine of sermon preparation, and none of that has changed.

I'm still as devoted to trying to get those elements of preaching and teaching right, but what Heisler helped me to see is that apart from a reliance upon the Holy Spirit throughout the process of sermon preparation and delivery, the preacher's ministry comes without power. You can get the mechanics right, but if the Holy Spirit does not bless and use what you have done, then your sermons will not come with power, because it is the Holy Spirit's ministry that changes people's lives.

Now, please don't get me wrong. A dependence upon the Holy Spirit, I believe, leads to more diligence and more study, not less. We are not advocating this idea that you just become dependent upon the Holy Spirit, and then you don't study or you don't strive for excellence. That's not what Heisler is teaching.

That's not what I believe as well, but there is this idea that we must pursue excellence and study and be diligently devoted to the text as we are reliant upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and Heisler's work helped me to see that. That's a book that changed my life, and so I just want to commend that reading to you, and you'll find many of those principles apply to counseling ministry as well.

Now, let me move to the next page and get into your notes, and just I'll begin with this statement, which should be an obvious statement to all, and that is this. "Effective biblical counseling is impossible without the Holy Spirit." Now, you will know that that statement is not that effective biblical counseling is difficult without the Holy Spirit.

I want to emphasize the idea that it is impossible. We could say this of every ministry of the church, that every ministry of the church, it is impossible to achieve its true objectives apart from the ministry of the Holy Spirit. In fact, we could say this about every aspect of the Christian life.

We could do a study which would demonstrate throughout the New Testament that we worship as we are dependent upon the Holy Spirit. We serve as we are gifted by the Holy Spirit. We pray and we sing as we are filled with the Holy Spirit. We relate to one another in love and in graciousness and kindness and in mercy because we are filled with the sweet fruit of the Holy Spirit.

We develop discipline and self-control and learn how to set priorities in life and manage our schedules as we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to bear the fruit of self-control, and as we are mastered by the influence of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Scriptures would demonstrate to us that we grow in holiness only as we are filled with the Spirit, led by the Spirit, walked by the Spirit, and bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and as we are taught by the Holy Spirit.

I would ask you this question. Is there any aspect of the Christian life that can be lived apart from the Holy Spirit? I mean, you could name any aspect of the Christian life, and you will find that the Scriptures tie that aspect of life to the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

So, when I say that effective biblical counseling is impossible without the Holy Spirit, I hope I'm not making a controversial statement. All of the Christian life is impossible apart from the Holy Spirit working in us and through us. We are completely dependent upon the Holy Spirit for every aspect of the Christian life.

That realization, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, ought to fill us with a fresh sense of humility and dependence. We ought to acknowledge our need for the Holy Spirit to work in our life and pray to the Father that the Spirit would work in our lives to glorify Christ and to lead us to become more like God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

I just want to add this. The realization that all of the Christian life is lived by the power of the Holy Spirit ought to fill us with a fresh sense of excitement and anticipation, and dare I say, even expectation of what the Holy Spirit will do in our lives for the glory of God.

We ought to wake up every morning and ask the question, "What is the Holy Spirit going to do in my life today to make me more like Christ? How is the Holy Spirit going to use me as one of the members of the body of Christ to bless someone else in the church and even in the community as we proclaim the gospel to a dying world?

How is the Holy Spirit going to work today?" Because the Holy Spirit is active in this day and in this season of life. He is working all across our nation to glorify the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He's using us as His vessels, as His instruments to simply achieve that end of glorifying the Son, Jesus Christ.

You and I can't manufacture this work. We can't make people change. We can't make people bear fruit. We can't change people's hearts. We can't do this work in people's lives where they start to live for something different other than themselves. All we can do and all we're called to do is to be faithful servants, vessels who are submitted to the ministry of the Spirit and then approach ministry with a fresh sense of anticipation and excitement and expectation that the Holy Spirit is going to use His word in people's lives to change their hearts for God's glory.

This ought to fill us with fresh encouragements for ministry. Do you know how much pressure it takes off me to realize that ministry doesn't depend on me? It's not dependent upon my eloquence or my ability to say things perfectly. It's not dependent upon my charisma or my ability to do certain things in an excellent way.

Yes, I want to glorify God and do the best I can with my abilities, but ultimately how freeing it is to know that it's not up to me. It is by the power and the ministry of the Holy Spirit that's people's lives and hearts change. I tell you that gives you a sense of freedom when you enter into a counseling session.

It just kind of takes the pressure off where you realize that that's not my job to change this person's life. It's my job to be faithful and to allow the Spirit to use me for His glory. Zechariah 4, verse 6, "Then he said to me, 'This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit,' says the Lord of hosts." Ezekiel 36, verse 27, the great language of the new covenant, "And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules." 1 Corinthians 6, verse 19 says, "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?

You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God with your body." It's not just that the Holy Spirit has come upon us. It is indeed the reality that the Holy Spirit lives in us. Our bodies are literally temples of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit lives in us, and He empowers us to faithful ministry.

It was said of C. H. Spurgeon that the true explanation of Spurgeon's ministry, then, is to be found in the person and power of the Holy Spirit. He himself was deeply conscious of this. It was not men's admiration he wanted, but he was jealous that they should stand in awe of God.

"God has come unto us not to exalt us, but to exalt himself," so writes Iain Murray. Spurgeon, it is said, would ascend to the pulpit, repeating over and over to himself, "Trust in the Holy Spirit. Trust in the Holy Spirit." And applying that concept to counseling ministry, Justin Holcomb and Mike Wilkerson said this, "Rather than asking about the role of the Holy Spirit in counseling, we should be asking about the counselor's role in the Holy Spirit's counseling." Biblical counseling is not merely a dialogue between the counselor and the counselee.

Rather, it is a trilogue in which the counselor participates in the Spirit's work already underway with the counselee. The Spirit is actively engaged in counseling, working directly on the counselor and the counselee, and through each to help the other. Well, that'll give you some fresh encouragement to do counseling ministry.

And this is the diagram. I'll place this on the screen. This is the diagram that's found in their book when they talk about biblical counseling as a trilogue. You have the Holy Spirit who is working in the life of the counselor. You have the Holy Spirit who is working in the life of the counselee.

And then you have the Holy Spirit working through the conversation as the counselor and the counselee interact with each other. That's a very helpful conceptual diagram that gives us great encouragement to counsel. As you submit to the Holy Spirit's ministry in your life, you can experience this dynamic. And I have had my share of counseling sessions that have gone awry.

And I've also had my share of counseling sessions where someone will come to me later down, perhaps months later after the counseling session and say, "Those meetings changed my life." And I have to just confess, that wasn't me. I can't do that. I can't make a person's life change.

But the fact that it was the Holy Spirit's delight to use a member, a servant of the body of Christ as a means to minister His word. And in the end, you just marvel at the power of the Holy Spirit, that the Spirit works through this counselor-counselee relationship to change both the counselee and the counselor.

It is this dynamic relationship, and that ought to give you fresh encouragement to counsel. Back to your handout, Heath Lambert writes this, "The Holy Spirit is vital to a biblical approach to counseling. In fact, if biblical counselors were to offer any qualifications to their theology of the sufficiency of Scripture, it would have to do with the doctrine of the Spirit." In other words, Lambert is saying, what we don't mean by the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture is that we don't need the Holy Spirit.

If your understanding of the doctrine of Scripture sufficiency leads you to a place where you are not reliant upon the Holy Spirit, then you have not understood the doctrine of sufficiency. Lambert continues that biblical counselors do not believe that the Scriptures are sufficient without the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

The Bible does not work automatically and on its own as a sacred words wash over people. The word of God is only effective when the Spirit of God renders it effective in the lives of individuals. What he's saying there is it is not only that we minister the word and we minister the Scriptures.

It is that we minister the Scriptures as we are empowered by the Holy Spirit and people learn the Scriptures as the Spirit teaches them what is in the word of God. The Spirit of God uses the word of God in the life of the child of God to change his life and her life to the glory of God.

As I mentioned, J. Adams made a huge point of this in the first generation of the biblical counseling movement. He emphasized this point that counseling is the work of the Holy Spirit. Effective counseling cannot be done apart from him. He is called the paraclete, the counselor who in Christ's place came to be another counselor of the same sort that Christ had been to his disciples.

Because unsaved counselors do not know the Holy Spirit, they ignore his counseling activity and fail to make avail themselves of his direction and power. All of the personality traits that might be held forth to counselees as fundamental goals for growth. Here it is. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

God declares to be the fruit that is the result of the work of the Spirit. Now look at that list. I said this in the year one basic training course and I'll repeat it again. For emphasis, I don't know of a single counseling issue that is being dealt with in the world today that would not be greatly helped if not completely transformed if the counselee simply bore the fruit of the Spirit.

There isn't a single marital issue that I can think of that would not be transformed if husband and wife simply started to bear the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control. I can't think of a single personal issue from anger to anxiety to depression to conflict to an eating disorder or a cutting issue.

I can't think of a single counseling issue that is not addressed by the fruit of the Spirit and that would not be transformed if the counselee simply bore the fruit of the Spirit. This is the power of the Spirit's ministry. So Adam says not only is it futile to attempt to generate these qualities apart from him, the Holy Spirit, as non-Christians and even some Christian counselors try to do, but such an approach, and here's the bluntness of Adams.

You have to love his approach. He was very blunt when he got to some of these issues. Such an approach is at bottom rebellion against God-grounded humanistic assumptions of man's autonomy. Bypassing the Spirit amounts to the denial of human depravity and the affirmation of man's innate goodness. The need for grace and the atoning work of Christ are both undercut and the counselee is left instead with the husk of a legalistic works righteousness which will lead ultimately to despair since it divests itself of the life and power of the Spirit.

That's Paul's statement, right? In Galatians 3 verse 3, Paul said to the Galatians, "Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" So here's the encouraging thing at the bottom of your page on page 2. God has not been stingy with the Holy Spirit in our lives.

God has not just given us a little bit of the Holy Spirit or a taste of the Holy Spirit. God has given to us the ministry of the Holy Spirit in fullest measure and the Spirit is not against us. The Spirit is for us. 1 Corinthians 2 verse 12, "Now we have received not the Spirit of the world but the capital S, Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God." How good is God?

How gracious is He? How generous is He to give us the ministry of the Spirit in fullest measure, to pour out His Spirit upon us, to literally baptize us in the person and in the ministry of the Holy Spirit, to seal us with the Holy Spirit of God as Ephesians 1 talks about so that we are permanently indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

Oh, we can grieve the Spirit. We can not be filled with His influence, but we cannot lose the Holy Spirit. We have been sealed with the Spirit and we have been given the Holy Spirit in fullest measure. This is what we pray for. This is what I was praying for each of you in this class and this is what I was praying for for our biblical counseling training.

Lord, grant us biblical counselors who are filled with the Spirit of God, who have the fruit of the Spirit growing in their lives, who have the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, so evidently growing in their lives, who are gifted by the Spirit and who are able to minister the Word by the power of the Spirit.

Grant that our counseling ministry would be filled with Spirit-filled counselors. Lord, grant us this, and that was my prayer for each of you as you work through this essay, that God would impress upon you your need to be dependent on the Holy Spirit for your life and ministry. So, as I move to page three of your notes, I want to give, as in the short time we have remaining, give you an overview of the teaching of Scripture as it relates to the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life.

I'm going to move through some of this fairly rapidly, but I hope it'll provide a good framework for your understanding of the Holy Spirit and also a good foundation for you to write this essay. So, let's begin with the promise of the Holy Spirit, Roman numeral number two on page three.

This is mostly in the Old Testament. We see the promise of the Holy Spirit as you work through the Old Testament. The Old Testament prophets anticipated a time when the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon God's people. In the Old Testament, we had what we now know as the Old Covenant.

It was called back then the Mosaic Covenant or the Covenant of Law. This is the covenant that Israel broke time and time again through Old Testament history. There comes a point in Jeremiah chapter 31 and Ezekiel 36 that God says He is going to institute a new covenant. The Old Covenant is a covenant that Israel broke, but God is going to establish a new covenant.

He says in Ezekiel 11 verse 19, "And I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh." So, this was the characteristic of the New Covenant. The Old Covenant focused on the external law.

The New Covenant will focus on a transformed heart, a heart of flesh that is softened to the things of God. And we find that central to the provision of the New Covenant will be the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We read Ezekiel 36 verse 26, "And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules." In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit would come upon certain individuals for certain tasks in ministry, but as we see in David's life, the Holy Spirit could be taken away.

David prays in Psalm 51, "Take not thy spirit from me." But we see under the provisions of the New Covenant that there would come a time when the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon God's people. And God would not only place the Spirit's ministry upon certain individuals for specific tasks of ministry, but he would place the Holy Spirit within the hearts of God's people.

And this is just beautiful language that describes the New Covenant ministry that was promised and foretold in the Old Testament. As Bruce Ware writes, "What then is the novelty of the future covenant? The principal novelty is, I believe, that the covenant is not written on stone but on their hearts.

The location of the law in Israel was identified most prominently with tablets of stone or with a book of the law, not with tablets of human hearts." All of that would change with the establishment of the New Covenant. Robert Soce says this, "The New Covenant therefore looks to the time when the law of God would be a part of the mind and will of the people so that they obey God, not because they are supposed to, but because they want to." Now, if you've taken year one with me and you've been through our basic training course for biblical counseling, you ought to love this language because we emphasized in our training that biblical counselors focus on the heart.

What we are after is heart change. What we pray for is that our counselees will not only behave differently, we pray that their hearts will be changed so that they would think differently, that they would desire differently. I don't just want a husband in the counseling session to say, "Fine, I'll do what you want.

I'll love my wife even though I don't want to." I want the Word of God to work in that husband's life and the Spirit of God to work through the Word so that the husband says, "I want nothing more than to love my wife. I want nothing more than the glory of God.

Help me do that. Help me find ways to do that, but I want nothing more than to honor God with my marriage." We long for that. We love that because that is the ministry of the Spirit to change hearts under the provision of the new covenant. As Carl Hotch writes, the new covenant comes with batteries included.

The Spirit internalizes the new covenant so that the people of God are motivated to do God's will. By contrast, the old covenant stood over the people of Israel like a judge demanding obedience but providing no enablement. By the way, that is why if I'm assured that a counselee is a believer in Christ, I can say to that counselee, "You can change.

You can change because you have the ministry of the Holy Spirit working in you for God's glory." So the Old Testament promised that a new covenant would be provided. Letter B, the Old Testament promised that the Spirit would be poured out. The Old Testament promised that the Spirit would be poured out.

That's beautiful language, the pouring out of the Spirit. It's what my theology professor Dr. Larry Pettigrew called a liquidy, watery metaphor that emphasizes the fullness of the Spirit's provision and person. Isaiah 32 verse 15, "Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field and the fruitful field is deemed a forest, then justice will dwell in the wilderness and righteousness abide in the fruitful field and the effect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness, quietness, and trust forever." I mean, these are just beautiful passages.

Isaiah 44 verse 3, "For I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground. I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring and my blessing on your descendants." Joel 2 verse 28, "And it shall come to pass afterwards that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days, I will pour out my Spirit." So in our study, we could spend a lot more time on this, but I want to transition and just make that point that the Old Testament promised that the Holy Spirit would come.

The Old Testament promised that the Holy Spirit would be placed in the hearts of God's people. The Old Testament promised that the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon God's people in this liquidy, watery metaphor of the fullness of blessing. We fast forward to the New Testament in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to this earth, His life, His going to the cross, and we fast forward to the evening before Christ's death as Jesus shares His heart with His disciples in the upper room.

And in the context of all of these Old Testament promises and the expectation that the Holy Spirit would be poured out, Jesus says on the eve of His death in John 14 verse 16, "I will ask the Father and He will give you another helper." Now that's good news for anyone who needs help, by the way, which is me every day and I trust is you as well.

Jesus's promise is, "I will give you another helper to be with you." For how long? Jesus says, "Forever, even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him, you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be." Note this, so sound familiar, "He will be with you and will be in you." Now remember, that's New Covenant language.

The Spirit will come to live in you. He will transform your life from the inside out. Now that's exciting because basically the Old Testament has been saying, "The Holy Spirit is coming, the Holy Spirit is coming, the Holy Spirit is coming, He's going to be poured out." And on the eve of Christ's death, Jesus says to His disciples, "The Holy Spirit is going to be given to you." And He repeats this language in John 14 verse 26, "But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." And John 15 verse 26 says, "But when the helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness about me." So you have the Old Testament promising that the Holy Spirit would be poured out.

You have Jesus telling His disciples that the Holy Spirit would be given to them. We know that Jesus dies on the cross on Good Friday. He rises from the grave on Resurrection Sunday. He meets with His disciples in Acts chapter 1. And we move to the next page of your handout and we see Roman numeral number 3, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

All of that background and backdrop is the setting for this amazing passage in Acts chapter 1 verse 4, where the resurrected Christ meets with His disciples and listen to the language. "While staying with them," verse 4, "He ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which He said, 'You heard from Me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized," literally immersed, "with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." Remember the liquidy, watery metaphor used in the Old Testament to describe the ministry of the Holy Spirit, where the Old Testament said that the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon God's people.

Jesus uses another liquidy, watery metaphor referring not to water baptism, but to Spirit baptism. And He says to His disciples, "You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit," here it is, "not many days from now." How long have we waited through Old Testament history for the Holy Spirit to be poured out upon God's people?

We waited for generations. Hundreds of years have gone by as we waited for the fulfillment of this promise that the Holy Spirit would be given to God's people. And Jesus tells His disciples in Acts chapter 1, "This is going to happen in a matter of days." I mean, just the anticipation that must have taken place in the disciples' hearts as they waited for this event to take place.

And then we move to Acts chapter 2, "But when the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at the sound the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.

And they were amazed and astonished, saying, 'Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians.

We hear them telling in their own tongues the mighty works of God.' And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, 'What does this mean?' But others mocking said, 'They are filled with new wine.' And the question would be this, is this the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise that the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon God's people?

And the answer is found in verse 16. But this is what is offered through the prophet Joel. And in the last days it shall be God declares that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy even on your my male servants and female servants in those days.

I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy. So the filling of the spirit and the baptism of the spirit and the pouring out of the spirit is all that is language that is referring to this great event, the day of Pentecost, where the spirit was poured out upon the early church and the church was born.

It was launched as a new spiritual organism that was birthed by the power of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. And the tongues, the known languages that the people were speaking were an emblem of the mission of the church, that the church would take the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to every tribe and every language and every nation.

No longer would the messages of God be spoken only in Hebrew, but the gospel of Christ would be spoken in languages that would extend to the entire Gentile world. This is what we call the grand opening of the church era. It is a massive transition that's taking place in Acts chapter 2.

The day of Pentecost represents the inauguration of the church age. The day of Pentecost, Acts chapter 2, represents the inauguration of new covenant blessings. What we are seeing here is the pouring out or what Jesus referred to as the baptism, the immersion of the people of God into the Holy Spirit and the spirit coming to live inside the people of God.

We see major transitions being made in Acts chapter 2 from old covenant provisions to new covenant provisions. The transition from the nation of Israel being the focal point of God's plan to the unique organism of the church which incorporates Jew and Gentile being the focal point of God's plan to exalt himself among the nations.

We see a transition from the focus on the Jews to a focus being upon the Gentile world. We see a massive transition being made of the word of God being spoken only in Hebrew to speaking the word of God in the languages of all the nations. This is the grand opening of the new covenant era which is the era of the spirit of God living in his people.

Larry Pettigrew writes this, the Old Testament Pentecost celebrated the actual use of the completed grain harvest. The Israelites officially began to cook and eat of the grain that they had been harvesting for more than a month and a half. They were now officially and personally benefiting from the provisions.

Similarly, the New Testament Pentecost celebrated the actual functioning of all of the benefits that Christ had prepared during the past month and a half. The very son of God at the cross had objectively made the atonement. The old covenant had come to an end when the veil was ripped in two from the top to the bottom.

With Pentecost, all of these great provisions became operational and personally beneficial for those who were believers in Christ. The day of Pentecost was as it were the divine starting gun of a new era. The new covenant was officially functional. Bang and they are off to the races. And we see for the first time in redemptive history, this new organism called the body of Christ, combining Jew and Gentile in one body.

First Corinthians 12 verse 12, for just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many are one body. So it is with Christ for in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body, Jew or Greek, slave or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit.

And that leads us to Roman numeral number four. And you're going to like this point. You're going to need to use this in your ministry as I need to use this in my ministry. The spirit as our helper, the spirit as our helper. When you get into counseling ministry, you're going to realize that you need a lot of help.

And so do I. You're going to need a lot of help to work through the issues. You're going to need a lot of help to discern what the counselor is dealing with. You're going to need a lot of help discerning what scriptures to use, how many sessions to schedule.

You're going to need a lot of help to continue to love your counselee when your counselee tries your patience or misses meetings or doesn't do their homework. You're going to need a lot of help just as you need a lot of help in every ministry in the church. And here is our confidence.

Jesus says in John 14 verse 16, I will ask the father and he will give you another helper. The word helper comes from the Greek term parakletos. That word is derived from two words alongside and called. Literally, it means called alongside to help. And the word another, alos, means another of the same kind as opposed to heteros, meaning another of a different kind.

Jay Packer puts it this way. Parakletos in Greek means comforter, counselor, helper, advocate, strengthener, supporter. Jesus, the original paraklete, continues his ministry to mankind through the work of the second paraklete. The Holy Spirit is said to hear, speak, witness, convince, glorify Christ, lead, guide, teach, command, forbid, desire, give speech, give help, and intercede for Christians with inarticulate groans, himself crying to God in their prayers.

He is another paraklete continuing Jesus's own ministry. And only a person, one like Jesus, could do that. The Son is parakletos, Sinclair Ferguson writes. The Spirit is alos parakletos. Both function as parakletes and do so successively in the earthly realm, the Spirit being another of the same kind as the Son.

Thus, to have the Spirit is to have Christ, to have Christ is to have the Spirit. Do you need direction? The Holy Spirit will lead you. Do you need encouragement? The Holy Spirit will give you hope. Are you struggling with sin? Walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the strength.

Are you weary and do you need strength for the journey? The Holy Spirit has come to empower you for life and ministry. The Holy Spirit will take a narcissist and turn him into a loving person. The Holy Spirit will take a depressed person and give him joy in life and in ministry.

The Spirit will take an anxious person and give that person the peace that surpasses all understanding. The Spirit will take an angry person and give that person patience. The Spirit will take a sarcastic person, a hurtful person, a mean person, a person with bad manners and will make that person into a man or a woman who is marked by gentleness, kindness, faithfulness, and self-control.

Whatever you need, the Holy Spirit has come to be our helper and Jesus says he will be with you forever. So life in the church is life in the Spirit. We're to be filled with the Spirit. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 18, we're to be led by the Spirit. Galatians chapter 5 verse 18, we're to be filled with the fruit of the Spirit.

Galatians 5 verse 22, we are to live by the Spirit and walk by the Spirit. Galatians chapter 5 verse 25. And can I add one point here that one of the ministries of the Holy Spirit is to be our teacher. He is the Spirit of truth who Jesus said will bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

The Holy Spirit teaches us the Word of God. 1 Corinthians 2 verse 12, we have received not the Spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

We have the inspiration of the Holy Spirit which is a completed act which results in the written revelation of God found in the 66 books of the Bible, the scriptures. And then we have the illumination of the Holy Spirit which is the Spirit's ongoing work where the Spirit takes the written revelation of God and He changes hearts and lives through the Word of God for God's glory.

You can read of the distinguishing of that in Greg Heisser's work. But I'll just note this, that when I pray for the Holy Spirit to teach me, I am not praying for additional revelation. I am not praying for the Holy Spirit to inspire new texts. I'm not praying for an additional Word of God.

What I'm praying for when I ask the Holy Spirit to teach me is that God would use His all-sufficient Word to change my life. That the Holy Spirit would help me understand what His written Word says. And then in light of what the Bible teaches, that the Holy Spirit would convict me of where I need to change and to do a renewing work in my life through His Word to make me more like Christ.

As Bob Stein has written, "Illumination is the process whereby the Holy Spirit so impresses, convinces, and convicts the believer as to the truthfulness and significance of the author's intended meaning in the text, that a change in action, attitude, or belief occurs, resulting in a more transformed spirit-filled life." We don't need additional written revelation.

What we do need is for the Spirit to take what the Spirit has inspired already, the written revelation of God in the Scriptures, and to use that written revelation to convict us of sin, to help us to see where we need to change, where we need to repent, and to change our hearts through that Word, not apart from the Scriptures, but through the Scriptures, to change God's Word, to change, I'm sorry, our hearts through His Word for God's glory.

And so this is the distinction of inspiration and illumination. All that to say that whenever I stand in a public to preach or whenever I teach God's Word, I have God's inspired written Word, the 66 books of the Bible, which is sufficient. And I also pray that the Holy Spirit would use that Word in that moment to change the hearts of those who hear God's Word so that they would be renewed, transformed, that they would be changed, and that they would live for God's glory.

So we have this twin focus in counseling ministry. We rely upon the sufficient Word of God. We don't need any additional revelation. But we do pray for our counselees that their hearts would be changed through God's Word. Father, would you do a work in my counselee's life through the ministry of your Spirit?

Would you use your Word in my counselee's life so that this hard-hearted husband would see the hardness of heart and repent and be broken through your Word and come to see his need of repentance so he would love his wife? Father, would you do that through your Word, not apart from it, but using your Word?

Would you convict this counselee of his need for change so that we would see life change to the glory of God? So let me boil this down. Practically, to be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with the knowledge of the scriptures that the Spirit has inspired. Practically speaking, to be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with the Spirit's thoughts, the Spirit's influence, the Spirit's perspectives on life, the Spirit's priorities, the Spirit's desires.

And he fills us with that influence practically as we learn and we study and we meditate on the written Word of God that he has inspired. Someone used the illustration. I think it's a helpful one that to be taught by the Spirit is like sitting down with a math textbook and have the professor who wrote the textbook teach you what is in the book.

The professor is going to teach you what is in the book because he wrote the book. And yet he has come to teach you what is in the book he has written. And in a similar way, the Spirit teaches us what he has inspired in the text of scripture.

That is why biblical counseling, we say this, is Spirit-filled counseling. You don't have to choose. Am I going to be a biblical counselor or a Spirit-filled counselor? You can and you should be both. You should be filled with the scripture and be filled with the Spirit. And in the end, that's why we have confidence in this ministry.

It's not because we're impressive. It's not because we're that smart. It's not because we have talents or we have eloquence or we know what to say at all the right times. It's not because we have all of this amazing ability to analyze all the facts and information. We have confidence simply because we have the Holy Spirit and the world does not.

We live with this humble yet joyful anticipation that our biblical counseling ministry is going to be fruitful, that the Spirit is going to use you and the Spirit is going to use me to change people's lives. We are going to see the Spirit work because we're simply submitting to him, to his purpose, his passion, his desires for people.

And so I trust you will have a wonderful time writing this essay. I trust that this overview was helpful in your thinking. Definitely do your own reading on this. Use this as an opportunity to refresh your own understanding of the ministry of the Holy Spirit and renew your personal dependence on the Spirit's role in ministry.

And I trust you'll have a wonderful week of study and apply pen to paper and articulate your own convictions of how you would communicate this to a counselee and that this will be a life-changing study for you as it has been for me. Let me close us in prayer and devote the fruit of this time to the Lord.

Father, we do thank you so much that you have given us your Holy Spirit. We thank you that your Spirit fills us with his influence, his fruit. We thank you that the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and so on is the result of your Spirit working in our lives.

We want to see more of that fruit. We want to see more hearts and lives changed for the glory of Christ. And we want to submit to the Spirit's purpose in this day and age to bring people to the knowledge of Jesus Christ and to help people to see the glory of your Son.

And so, Father, we pray that we might live by the Spirit. We pray that our ministry would be a demonstration of the Spirit's power, not a demonstration of human eloquence or wisdom. And we pray that our knowledge of the Spirit's work in this day would lead us to embrace ever more the sufficiency of your Word, that we may embrace the truth that your Spirit always works through the Scriptures, not apart from the Scriptures.

The Spirit's business in this day is not to lead us to extra-biblical words of so-called revelation, but to bring our hearts and our lives in submission to the written revelation of God in the 66 books of the Bible. So help us, Father, to process these things. Help my brothers and sisters to write an excellent essay on this topic that would be used in years, Lord willing, to come to bless others.

And we just commit this time to you and thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you all for joining us tonight. As I mentioned in my email, we have the larger goal of completing all 24 theology exams by December. And so we are not going to meet for class next week.

I'm going to be traveling next Sunday, and so we won't be able to meet next week. But we will regather the following Sunday on November 15th, and we'll do theology exam number 22. We'll wrap up the exams in the month of December, and we'll take a winter break. And those of you who are continuing on to the counseling essays, we will reconvene in January and go through the counseling essays together.

But thanks so much for joining us tonight. May the Lord bless you. Have a wonderful week and thank you again for your faith.