of Intermediate Biblical Counseling. It's a great joy to meet together with you on this online class. And we trust that you're doing well in the Lord and that you're rejoicing in the goodness of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We are here on a Valentine's Day and my wife is here with me and we're broadcasting live and just a joy to meet with you all.

We hope that you've been enriched and blessed by the study of God's word. And tonight we're gonna be looking at a very important topic and that is a biblical theology of emotions. This is one of the harder exam questions in the counseling exams of ACBC training. It is one of the questions that does not have a corresponding lecture in the year one training.

And it is also a topic that really requires some thought and reflection both from what the scriptures teach and also from our ministry to people every day in the church. And I do pray that our study tonight will help us to think through a much needed subject in the biblical counseling training and then just a subject that's necessary for each of us to think through in our own lives.

What is the place of emotions in the Christian's spiritual life? It's a subject that hasn't received the treatment that it ought to or the focus that it ought to in the church and I hope tonight's session will be a small pebble in a giant ocean that will perhaps move us toward a step further in our understanding of this important topic.

So tonight we're looking at a biblical theology of emotions and I'm so glad that you've joined us for this time. Just a brief word before I open in prayer. I was reflecting on this importance of this subject, biblical theology of emotions. An important topic for the simple reason that we all have emotions.

I trust you will agree with that. Some of us may be more prone to expressing intense emotions than others. Some of us are more reserved in our emotional expressions but all of us have emotions, emotions of joy, emotions of grief, emotions of affection, even emotions of relief, of gladness, of disillusionment, disappointment.

Consider that anger, hatred, bitterness, resentment, fear, anxiety, and worry can all to some degree be classified under the category of emotions, which means that a number of counseling issues do relate to the emotional life of our counselees. You and I know that people make emotional decisions. That's why they say never go to the grocery store when you're hungry.

You will make an emotional decision, not a rational decision. And we also know that there are some counseling meetings, many counseling meetings that do get very emotional. And you wanna be equipped to know how to handle those expressions of emotion in counseling ministry. And then just not even how it relates to counseling ministry but just processing the everyday events of life.

I believe that the Christian life is a life that is filled with emotions. Paul described it as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing in 2 Corinthians 6, verse 10. We rejoice with those who rejoice and we weep with those who weep. And sometimes you feel like you're on an emotional rollercoaster in the Christian life.

I know I feel that way as a pastor. I was sharing just this past Wednesday at our church staff meeting, that I feel something of the emotional rollercoaster of pastoral ministry. On one hand, you're rejoicing with a couple over the birth of their baby, or you're rejoicing with a couple at a wedding or a birthday, and on the other hand, you are weeping at a funeral or in a hospital.

You're just rejoicing and you're weeping. And sometimes those emotional highs and emotional lows, if you will, come within 24 hours of each other. And it's just the Christian life that if you're rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep, then there is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster in church ministry.

And my former professor at the Master Seminary, who's also a pastor here in Riverside, Milton Vincent, used to say to us, "Embrace the emotional rollercoaster of being a pastor." That is the stuff of life. That's what it means to be most fully alive is to be experiencing these emotions alongside those whom you love in the church.

And that is indeed so much of life is just experiencing emotions. So we need a category for that. We need to understand what the Bible says about emotions. We need to understand something of the complexity of the emotional life of the Christian, sorrowful yet always rejoicing. Paul said, which means that the emotional life of the Christian is not a single note.

It's not staccato. If it was a piano piece, it would not just be one chord being played over and over. But the Christian's emotional life is a little bit more like a symphony where there are various melodies and themes being played interwoven and all moving toward a beautiful melody in the end as the Lord orchestrates all of these things in our lives.

So this indeed is just so much of life. And I hope that this teaching will help us handle that in a biblical manner. So let's pray together. Let us devote our time to the Lord and ask God to bless our time. Father, thank you so much for our time around your word and for each of the brothers and sisters in Christ who have joined us in this online class.

We thank you for Christ and his shed blood and his glorious resurrection from the grave. And we thank you for the Spirit's work in our lives to make us more like your son. We thank you that Jesus experienced genuine human emotions in his earthly incarnation. He was the perfect man, and yet he experienced emotions.

He wept at the grave site of Lazarus. He was a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief, and yet he also obeyed you, the Father, for the joy that was set before him. And we just pray that we might learn to handle this topic in a wise manner. Give us wisdom, Lord.

Help us to not be overly simplistic in our handling of this topic. Make us wise counselors, we pray, that we might be able to come alongside others and give help and hope to those in need. So we pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen. - Okay, we are looking at counseling exam number three tonight, and the question is this.

Provide a biblical theology of emotions. What role should a counselor allow emotions to play in counseling? How can one tell the difference between sinful emotions and righteous emotions? And how would you use scripture to help a counselee change improper emotions? So that is a bit of a handful of a question there.

As you can see, you could break that question down into four parts. What is a biblical theology of emotions? Which, just explaining that part of the exam will take a large portion of your essay. What role should a counselor allow emotions to play in counseling? And so how would you handle emotions in a counseling session talking through the difference between sinful emotions and righteous emotions?

We'll talk a little bit about that in our session tonight. And then how would you use scripture to help a counselee change improper emotions? That's really a four-part question. You can go about it in a number of different ways, but I would say that the first part, providing a biblical theology of emotions should take at least a half to two-thirds of your essay, and just walking through some of the points that we'll look at tonight.

And then the rest of the essay can move toward some application points that are highlighted by the next three parts of the question. So just trying to break down this question. There's a lot there. It's really a four-part question, but the first part of the question providing a biblical theology of emotion should occupy a large portion of your time and attention.

As I mentioned, this is one of the harder questions in the year two training because we have not had a lecture on this in year one, but it is a subject that is very important. So if you look at page one of your handout, I have some recommended resources for you to look at there.

We have, first of all, Sam Williams, an excellent article toward a theology of emotions, which was printed in the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, and that's available online for free. I've emailed that to you in a Dropbox handout. You can star that resource. That really is the one resource that if you learn and if you master, you really shouldn't need much more than that article in writing this essay.

Dr. Williams is a biblical counseling professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he has written a very good essay on that topic. I wanna commend that to you. He does spend a lot of time in that article trying to make the distinctions between feelings, affections, and emotions. Just don't get bogged down in that discussion.

I think that's a necessary discussion, but not one that is really pertinent or at the heart of the essay that you're writing. So don't get lost in the discussion of trying to distinguish feelings, affections, and emotions. You can take that under the broad category of emotions and look to the rest of the article for some help on this topic.

Just an excellent work. I wanna commend that to you. I've given you Jeff Forey's chapter in the book "Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling" as a reference. That's chapter 27 in that book. The chapter is entitled "A Biblical Understanding and Treatment of Emotions." If you need one chapter that does an overview of this subject, I would recommend Jeff Forey's chapter in "Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling." And then you have really an excellent work I would highly recommend if you want further study on this topic.

Dr. Brian Borgman is a pastor in Nevada. I believe he pastors near Las Vegas, and I have listened to his material for years. He is an excellent and faithful, diligent student of scripture, and he has spoken at a few biblical counseling conferences. You'll find some of his materials up at the ibcd.org website.

And just everything he does is very well done. So I commend his teaching ministry to you. And he has a book out that's entitled "Feelings and Faith, Cultivating Godly Emotions in the Christian Life." I would encourage you to make the study of emotions a lifelong study, and that's one book that you will want to read and seek to learn more from, "Feelings and Faith, Cultivating Godly Emotions." By the way, Dr.

Borgman does have, I think, a few lectures on the subject of emotions. If you want to listen to it on audio, he has a few lectures at the ibcd.org website. You can look that up under resources and do a search on his name and find that there. Wayne Grudem has a couple of good sections in "Systematic Theology" that relates to the subject of emotions, especially the two pages on the subject of God's impassibility.

You will want to have a basic understanding of what the doctrine of, or the teaching of impassibility holds, and then why Grudem does not affirm the teaching on God's impassibility. I do not affirm that teaching as well. The doctrine of impassibility basically teaches that God is not subject to passions or emotions, that emotions you see in scriptures are not genuine emotions, but they are anthropomorphisms.

They are descriptions of God in a human analogy, but they are not describing genuine emotions. And Grudem talks about in those two pages of how he does not affirm God's, the teaching that God is God's impassibility. And so you just want to be aware of that discussion. I think it relates to the subject of emotions, as we'll see a little bit more tonight.

Those are two pages that you'll want to read and just have a basic working knowledge of. My dear wife, Mina, wrote a very good essay on the subject of emotions. It's entitled "A Biblical Understanding of Emotions." This is from her training on the Master's of Biblical Counseling program at the Master's University.

And that is an unpublished document, but I have put that in your hands in the Dropbox link. A very good summary of the subject of emotions with some good applications for counselors. So please do use that resource. We've made that available to you. And then some articles, B.B. Warfield's "The Emotional Life of Our Lord" is helpful in thinking through the subject of emotions in relation to the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

We see in the life of Christ in the gospel records that Jesus wept, Jesus felt compassion, Jesus felt righteous anger, Jesus' sweat drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. So if Jesus was and is the perfect man and he expressed and experienced genuine emotion, then we have to conclude that emotions in and of themselves are not sinful.

Jesus was not like a Vulcan in the Star Trek TV show. He was not just pure logic. He experienced genuine emotions, but those emotions were appropriate to the context in which he was in. Think about it, Jesus Christ, the perfect man, had a full emotional life that was perfectly holy and righteous.

And B.B. Warfield talks through that in his article, "The Emotional Life of Our Lord," and that is available for free on the World Wide Web. David Powelson has a couple of good articles on this topic. Anything by David Powelson is worth reading and thinking through. And in fact, in one of his articles, he pleads for more people to write on this subject.

He says, "We just need more publications. "We need more people to think about what the Bible says "about emotions and then apply that wisely "and skillfully to the Christian life." And he has done a great job in setting us up for this study. And then a last subject or last article that I've placed in the Dropbox is Bruce Ware's article from back in 1986, where he contends from scripture that God is a personal being with genuine emotions.

That article is a little academic, but it's well worth your time if you wanna be read and be challenged a little bit on this subject. He holds to the view that the biblical descriptions of God rejoicing, God being grieved, God having compassion, that these are not mere anthropomorphisms. They're not just human analogies.

They are describing real emotions that God is experiencing. And you can look through his article for some further discussion on that subject, but it's well worth your time. And if you want more of an academic defense of the truth that God is a person with genuine emotions, you might want to work through that journal article.

So just a number of good resources. You don't need to read them all. I just wanna give you a sense of the breadth of this subject and whet your appetite for further study. If you want one resource, please read Sam Williams' work on "Toward a Theology of Emotion," and then the rest can be supplementary reading.

But again, a lifetime of learning awaits us on this subject, and I hope that this will be a good introduction to the topic. With that said, let me move to page two of your class notes. And again, let me prime the pump in emphasizing the importance of this topic.

Sam Williams writes this, "Whether we are conscious of it or not, we have theories and operating principles about emotion. It should be no surprise that when scripture does not inform our thinking, especially about a matter such as emotion, which is so much a part of the nature of persons, something else will.

Unfortunately, contemporary evangelicals have paid little attention to the development of a theology or biblical anthropology of the emotions, affections, and feelings. As a result, when the emotions are addressed, personal opinion, denominational or cultural prejudices, and pop psychology are the dominant voices. Even worse, these voices are rarely questioned or justified with biblical warrant.

We seem to function as if scripture is silent on these matters." I think this is true and a helpful observation. I can't tell you how many times as a pastor that a Christian has talked to me in the church and expressed sorrow or grief or pain or disappointment, and then appear to feel guilty over the emotions that they were experiencing.

As if to say, "I'm a Christian, and I believe the word of God, and so I shouldn't be experiencing these emotions. I should be able to get over this. I should be able to move past this. I shouldn't be feeling these emotions." And it's my privilege as a pastor to reassure this beloved Christian that what you are feeling is normal.

We are emotional beings. You shouldn't feel guilty over feeling genuine emotions. If Jesus felt sorrow, then so should we at certain points. In fact, it would be sinful not to feel sorrow or to feel grief or pain in certain situations. I've also counseled in situations where the counseling issue is an absence of emotion.

Just a dear believer in Christ saying, "Pastor, I haven't felt emotion about Jesus or about worship or about the Bible or my spiritual life. I haven't felt emotion in months or even years. I'm an emotional blank. I know I should be feeling something when I read the Bible or when I pray or when I join in Sunday morning worship service and sing these songs, but I feel nothing.

Can you help me think through this topic?" And that is a more common struggle than you might think. It's a real struggle for people in the church. And so we just need to wisely think through this topic. And I think the lack, as Williams calls it, the lack of a development of a theology of the emotions is not helpful for us in ministering to real people.

I've also observed that Christians want to move straight to the emotion of joy. It's almost as if we're uncomfortable with sorrow or we're uncomfortable with righteous anger or even the emotion of jealousy, the emotion of compassion, mercy, feeling the pain of others. We are uncomfortable with these other aspects of the emotional life of the Christian.

And we want to shortcut that process and move straight to joy. And I have even been in situations where I've thought that it's appropriate for us to feel a little more complexity of emotions and just hit the simple note of, you just need to have pure joy all the time really doesn't capture the full teaching of what scripture says on this topic.

David Powelson, as I mentioned, has called for further reflection on the study. He says, "There is no fundamental disconnect "between the emotional life of our Lord "and the emotional lives of every believer "and unbeliever in the Lord "before whom every knee must someday bow." He's saying there that if God is a person with genuine emotions, if Jesus Christ, the perfect man had perfect emotions, then so we must understand and embrace the fact that we are emotional beings.

He continues that every careless word is weighed. Religious affections are a subset of affections in general and all affections are religious. All human creatures worship, love, trust, fear, believe, take refuge, value, hope, and seek in either the right way or the wrong way. All human creatures get angry, joyful, sorrowful, guilty, jealous, fearful, loving, anxious, driven, confident, despondent, amorous, or hopeful in either the right way or the wrong way.

Fire and smoke cannot be separated. The study of wetness and the study of water cannot be kept apart. Causes cannot be dismembered from effects. Human life is about God and Christ and dare we say the converse, God and Christ is about human life. So you get the idea. When you read Palestine, you get challenged to think through the fullness of what the Bible says on a certain subject.

He has a way of poking us and prodding us into thinking that maybe you haven't thought through this subject in its full complexity and that all is a very hopeful and helpful prodding. What he's saying here is that we must think theologically about our emotions. We must understand the incarnation and the emotional life of Christ and then tie that understanding into our own experience of emotion.

And then Brian Borgman says this, "It is only when we gain a biblical perspective "on this significant part of our humanity "that we can begin to grow "and put the mind and the emotions "and the will in the right positions. "As we learn to understand "and handle our emotions biblically, "we begin to mature in new ways.

"My pastoral experience has taught me "that a biblical understanding of the emotions "and the application of these truths "can become a virtual greenhouse "for spiritual growth and maturity." I love that statement. And I'm going to get emotional speaking on this subject of emotions because I think that is why this topic is so important and so crucial for biblical counselors to understand this topic.

When you handle the subject of emotions biblically, wisely, pastorally, carefully, and then relate to your counselees with wisdom and with grace, what you do is you provide for them what Borgman calls a spiritual greenhouse where they can actually begin to grow in ways that they had not experienced previously in their Christian life.

I think one work that has helped me so much to think through the subject of emotions was the landmark work by John Piper, "Desiring God," which is in itself a reflection on the work of Jonathan Edwards, "The Religious Affections," just talking about the place of affection or emotion in the Christian life.

And I remember as a new Christian hearing John Piper preach on the subject of the religious affections for the very first time, and I had never heard someone emphasize the importance of affection and emotion and desiring the Lord and eating of God's word in a way where your full heart and affections and emotions are engaged in that study.

I had never seen that subject emphasized before. And I do remember growing in ways that I had not previously when I began to understand what the Bible said on this topic, that the joy and grief and compassion and mercy and even jealousy, as Paul talks about his jealousy for the church, that they would be presented to Christ in purity and in fidelity, that all of that understanding of the emotional life of the Christian did begin to pay dividends in my spiritual life, and I pray that that would continue.

And I think that's what Borgman's teaching here, that when you handle the subject wisely and biblically, you open up new avenues for a counselee and even your own life for you to grow in Christ. And I think that's why this topic is so important. By the way, if you meet Brian Borgman, he's not what you call a touchy-feely guy.

You might think that, oh, reading that, he's one of these guys who's always just like really emotional all the time and touchy-feely. And you find, this guy's a straight shooter. He is one of the most faithful biblical expositors and teachers that I have listened to, and he just isn't the personality type that you might think, but he's just being straight with the word of God and saying, if we wanna be faithful with the word of God, we have to understand what the Bible says about emotion.

Moving on here, dear friends, have you noticed that the Bible is not hesitant to address our emotional lives? Christ claims authority over our emotions, and the Bible has no problems with calling us to have godly emotions in the Lord. Psalm 66, verse one. "Shout for joy to God, all the earth.

"Sing the glory of his name. "Give to him glorious praise. "Say to God, how awesome are your deeds. "So great is your power "that your enemies come cringing to you. "All the earth worships you and sings praises to you. "They sing praises to your name." This is a call not only to engage in worship, but to experience the emotions that are appropriate to worship, which is the joyful celebration of the greatness of God.

We are to joyfully sing the praises of his name. We'll talk about this a little bit, but part of the distortion of sin in our lives is that we rejoice in things we ought to be sorrowful over. We are sorrowful things that we ought to rejoice in. And so our emotional lives are kind of twisted where we're finding joy in things we ought to grieve over.

And as scripture says in our society, we glory in our shame. And another way that you see that our emotional lives are affected by sin is that we don't feel the intensity of emotions that are appropriate to the subject at hand. We have large emotions about things we should have small emotion over, and we have very small emotion over things that we ought to experience lots of emotion over.

We get so excited about the Super Bowl, or the NBA finals, or our team winning a certain championship, or the Olympics. And it's fine to rejoice in those things, but they are limited achievements. The problem is not that we find joy in these types of things, it's that we have so much emotion over things that are of limited value, and we have such small emotion over things that have ultimate value.

And I think the Psalms are calling for the exact reverse. Shout for joy to God, all the earth. Sing the glory of his name. Have you ever been there where sometimes I'm in a Sunday morning worship service, and I'm praying, Lord, help me to experience the appropriate emotions that would respond to the truth that we're talking about, or to engage in the singing of the church.

I ought to feel some emotions. And I do get concerned in my own spiritual life, if I can go weeks and Sunday after Sunday, and come to worship service and not feel any emotion, then I start to get concerned over the state of my soul. I don't think that we are emotional experiences or the end all be all in the Christian life.

I'm not advocating from some point of view that says you need to whip yourself into an emotional frenzy in order to have a genuine worship experience. We know that that's not true. But if I can feel zero emotion, week after week after week, after the truth of God is being proclaimed in my life, and the glory of God and the glory of Christ is being taught and proclaimed and being prayed over, and I can feel nothing for weeks.

And I get very concerned about what's going on with my soul. That there is a place for emotion in life and worship. And you see that in Psalm 66, verse one. Psalm 100, verse one, "Make a joyful noise, the Lord all the earth, "serve the Lord with gladness, "come into his presence with singing, "know that the Lord, he is God.

"It is he who made us and we are his. "We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. "Enter his gates with thanksgiving "and his courts with praise, give thanks to him. "Bless his name for the Lord is good. "His steadfast love endures forever "and his faithfulness to all generations." It's hard to read that passage without responding with emotion, to know that the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever, to know that you are loved eternally and that God's loving kindness will never leave you.

And so we're called not only to sing with joy, we're called to serve with joy. And then you have in the scriptures, the emotion of sorrow being demonstrated by godly men like the prophet Jeremiah, who ministered in the days before Judah's captivity. Jerusalem was about to be conquered by the Babylonian empire and the people will be taken captive.

The temple will be destroyed. Jeremiah sees the impending captivity of his people. And he says in Jeremiah four, verse 19, "My anguish, my anguish, I writhe in pain "or the walls of my heart. "My heart is beating wildly. "I cannot keep silent for I hear the sound of the trumpet, "the alarm of war." Friends, these are emotions that are appropriate to the circumstances.

Would you agree that it is wrong to laugh out loud at the saddest part of a funeral service? Would you agree that that would be a wrong emotion, that that would be even sinful to express that type of emotion in the context in which you are in? Would you agree at the same time that it would be wrong to weep with sorrow and put ashes over your head at someone's wedding?

It is not that joy is always right or sorrow is always wrong. It is that our emotions are meant to respond to the circumstances we find ourselves in. And Jeremiah would have been wrong to look at the impending doom of his people, the exile of his people into Babylon and to feel no emotion, to feel indifference, to not weep at the events which were about to take place would have been wrong for Jeremiah.

So he talks, he has an appropriate emotion in the context of what he was dealing with and he feels anguish. When a counselee is weeping in front of me because of the burden of his sin or because of the consequences of his sin, because of the devastation of what has happened that due to his sin, he has lost a number of things that is precious to him that is not the right time for me to crack a joke.

That is not the right time for me to make light of the situation. We need emotions that are appropriate to the circumstances. And even Paul felt this sorrow in his emotional life where he said in Romans 9 verse one, I'm speaking the truth in Christ, I'm not lying. My conscience bears to be witnessed in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.

He lamented over the unbelief of the people of Israel. I feel this burden and I think I'm justified biblically to feel this burden of so many beloved church members who have unsaved family members or maybe even unsaved children and even just week after week, they come and they ask, can you pray for my loved one?

That my loved one would be saved and know Christ. And I would be wrong as a pastor not to feel that burden, not to feel indifference or to not respond with some type of emotion to the burdens that people are carrying in the church. And so this was Paul.

I have great sorrow, unceasing anguish in my heart. This is the same Paul who said to the Philippian church, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. There was a complexity to even Paul's emotional life where he could say both things at the same time that we should exalt in the hope of the glory of God.

At the same time, we feel this great burden that loved ones we know are saved. So the Bible has no problems addressing our emotions. If you look at page three of your handout, let me walk through a biblical theology of emotions. And these would just be some points you will want to highlight.

As you talk through a biblical theology of emotions. So how do we summarize just the breadth of what scripture says on this subject? And let's talk through some theological foundations for understanding our emotions. We begin with a simple observation in letter A that God is a personal being with genuine emotions.

God is a personal being with emotions. A number of passages clearly demonstrate this. Genesis six, verse five. The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart.

You will note here that grief is an appropriate response to the sinfulness of this world. The grief of God described in this passage is absolutely and perfectly holy. And so we see that grief over people's sin is an appropriate response and that God grieved over the sinfulness of man.

Exodus 20, verse five, part of the 10 commandments. You shall not bow down to them or serve them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. You say, well, isn't jealousy bad?

Isn't jealousy wrong? Well, it depends on the context, doesn't it? Is it wrong for a husband to be jealous for his wife's affections? We would say it's not wrong for a husband to be jealous that his wife love him and him alone. If you were to go into a marriage counseling situation, and let's say in this counseling situation, the wife is being unfaithful, she is in adultery, and you're talking in this counseling session and you find that the husband, he doesn't care, he has no emotions, he feels no jealousy, he's indifferent to her unfaithfulness, you would say there is something wrong with this husband's response.

He ought to be feeling some kind of emotion because he ought to be jealous for his wife's affections. That is an appropriate emotion to be feeling due to the exclusivity of the marriage relationship. So jealousy can be appropriate. And here the Lord says, I am a jealous God, that God does not tolerate his people dividing their affections between the true worship of the Lord and the worship of idols.

And we see that throughout both the Old Testament and New Testament. I love Isaiah 49 verse 15. The Lord says, can a woman forget her nursing child that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. What mother does not feel this way towards her children?

When they hurt, she hurts. When they are in pain, she is in pain. We have seen this type of motherhood demonstrated in so many different ways. And the Lord says, this is what my love is like for my people. Can a woman forget her nursing child? So the Lord has moved with compassion for those who are his.

Isaiah 62 verse five, for as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you. And as a bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. Just think about that. Every time you go to a wedding, you see the groom's face light up with excitement as his bride walks down the aisle.

So the Lord says, that is the description of my joy over my people. Just amazing description of the emotions of the Lord, Zephaniah three verse 17. The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love.

He will exalt over you with loud singing. The Lord is challenging me in his word, and I believe he would challenge all of us as well, because I think my default understanding of my relationship with the Lord is sort of that, because of Jesus, he kind of barely tolerates me.

He won't cast me out, but when I come to him, he says, okay, you can have a relationship with me, but a sort of like a displeased father who allows his son into the home, but does not have the warm embrace that's being described in these texts. And the Lord has been challenging me that that is not how he relates to his people, that he is filled with compassion and mercy, and he rejoices over his people.

And that's the Old Testament description of the emotions of the Lord. You get to the gospel records, you see the full emotional life of Christ. We don't have time to fully develop this, but perfect humanity, perfect deity joined in one person, the Lord Jesus Christ. And you see the emotions of Christ in his earthly incarnation, that he was grieved at the hardness of the heart of the people in Mark 3, verse 5.

He had compassion upon the crowd in Mark 6, verse 34. We see the emotions of the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 4, verse 30. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. So the issue is that some have said that these portrayals of the emotions of God are merely anthropomorphisms.

The term anthropomorphic simply means language which describes God in human terms. So for example, in the Old Testament, the scriptures describe the Lord having hands, eyes, ears, and mouth, and that is before the incarnation of Christ. So those descriptions cannot refer to God's physical body. God is spirit, John 4, verse 24 says.

And so the Lord does not literally have hands, eyes, ears, and a mouth, but that language describes God in human terms. They are anthropomorphisms. They describe God in human terms so that we might better understand him. And some have said that these descriptions of the emotions of God are merely anthropomorphisms, that God doesn't really have emotions, but this is just language that helps us understand God.

And again, Bruce Ware's article in the Journal of Evangelical Theology Society, Theological Society, does an academic treatment of the fact that these texts really should be taken at face value when they describe genuine emotions. Brian Borgman has said this, that the unambiguous biblical portrayal of God is that he has absolute capacity to feel and has perfectly holy emotions.

In the history of systematic theology, the mind and will of God have often been the focus, but the Bible speaks of God's heart, his emotions and feelings. Some circles deny that God actually has emotions. This is called the doctrine of divine impassibility. However, the sheer weight of biblical evidence demands that we see God as a being who has real emotions and feels intensely.

So Borgman as well does not affirm the teaching of impassibility, neither does Grudem and neither do I. God has real emotions, perfectly holy. When the Lord feels jealousy, it is holy emotion. When the Lord feels joy, it is holy joy. As I mentioned, because of our sin, we rejoice in things we have no business rejoicing over.

We celebrate the things that we ought to grieve in We find trivial things to be fascinating and we find ultimate and glorious things to be quite boring. That is because of the effect of sin on our emotions and these things ought not to be so, but God always has perfectly holy emotions.

Just one quote there by Greg Nichols. He has an article that is posted on the blog there, but he is quoted by Borgman in the work "Feelings and Faith". And he says that God's emotivity, which is just a noun meaning the capacity of having emotions. God's emotivity is his supreme capacity to act responsibly and cessationally to feel pure and principled affections of love and hate, joy and grief, pleasure and anger and peace in accord with his supreme spiritual and simple being and impeccable virtue.

And there's some other statements there that I will commend to you. Let me move to page number four for the sake of time here, letter B, as we have covered that God is a personal being with emotions, we also see here that man is made in the image of God.

Four key passages there, Genesis 1, 27, also Genesis 5 and Genesis 9 and James chapter 3. But those passages teach us that man is made in the likeness of God. So if God is a personal being with genuine emotions, we are made in the image and likeness of God, therefore we are emotional beings as well.

And there is nothing intrinsically wrong with our emotions. So we make the note there that stoicism is not the highest ideal for a Christian. Stoicism is the idea that the highest good is seen in the endurance of pain and hardship without a display of emotions. We want to just make the biblical statement here that for the Christian stoicism is not the highest ideal.

John MacArthur talks about this, I believe in one of his blog posts, but he talks about the idea that stoicism teaches that you wanna come to the point of total indifference. You just basically wanna say, I don't care about anything. You just go through your life saying, I don't care about this, I don't care about that, you're just unmoved with emotion.

And we believe that stoicism is not the ideal. Man and his capacity for emotions was declared to be very good in Genesis chapter one. And the richness of biblical language testifies to the central place emotions have in a person's spiritual life. Just a note here on skipping the Lamentations passage for a moment at the bottom of your handout there.

It's almost a shame to do that, but I'm gonna be pressed for time here. Skipping to 2 Corinthians 11 verse two on your handout, and just noting Paul's emotions for the people he ministered to. Don't be afraid of this. As a counselor, you will have genuine emotions for the people you counsel.

And don't be afraid of that. 2 Corinthians 11 verse two. I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. Don't be afraid of the words to feel. Those are biblical words as you see in this text.

Don't be afraid to feel that in your heart, how you want this person you're walking with to overcome their sin. You want them to be holy. You want them to love Christ. Don't be afraid to express that to the people you minister to. And when believers went astray, Paul felt that in his heart.

You hear him say in the book of Galatians, so foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you. You even hear him say in that epistle that I'm perplexed about you. That he felt emotions that were appropriate to the situation that the people going astray from fidelity to Christ was met with genuine emotion from the apostle Paul.

And as I mentioned, I feel some of that and I have to as a pastor. Just joy whenever you hear somebody grow that this person grew or this person came to Christ and then perplexity, pain over hearing of someone go astray or maybe a marriage that is, needs reconciliation or a child who is rebellious.

I think that's just New Testament ministry. Let me move to page five of your handout. Letter C, and this is again under the category of a biblical theology of emotions. We note that the image of God was distorted at the fall. So the bottom line is this. I'll get right to the chase here.

The fall of man into sin in Genesis chapter three does not remove our capacity to feel emotion. We're still emotional beings. It does not erase the image of God, which is stamped on our souls. What the fall of man into sin did is not remove the image of God in us, but the fall distorted that image.

We still have emotion, but our emotional life is twisted. Our emotions are misplaced. Our emotions do not rightly correspond to the context that we are in due to our sin. We get really excited about a piece of chicken at a restaurant. Oh, this chicken is so good. It's so glorious.

And we are emotionally disengaged when it comes to the glories of God in Christ as found in the scriptures. That is the distortion of the image of God in us. We still have emotions, but those emotions register in all the wrong ways. As Jeff Forey has written immediately upon eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve experienced the fallout of disobedience, embarrassment, shame, vulnerability, fear, even a form of irritation.

God's design remains, but it is experienced in a twisted and painful way, which is conveyed by the new emotional experiences Adam and Eve had after their sin. Before the fall, emotions would have functioned in ways that supported God honoring living. Since the fall, they have functioned in ways that reflect sinner's desire to be independent of God.

The Puritan Thomas Boston put it even more plainly. He said the natural man's affections are wretchedly misplaced. He is a spiritual monster. His heart is where his feet should be fixed on the earth. His heels are lifted up against heaven, which his heart should be set on. His face is towards hell, his back towards heaven, and therefore God calls him to turn.

And here it is. Friends, this is the description of America today. Boston says he loves what he should hate and hates what he should love. Joys in what he ought to mourn for and mourns for what he should rejoice in. Glories in his shame and is ashamed of his glory, abhors what he should desire and desires what he should abhor.

That is most of cable TV today, I'm afraid to say. And that's many commercials at the very least. You know what they say, buy this car, use the shampoo, go to this restaurant, and you will experience ultimate joy and satisfaction. When the truth is that only Christ will give that type of joy and satisfaction.

We love what we should hate. We hate what we should love. We find ultimate joy over things of limited value, or we seek that ultimate joy, and we find ourselves to be disappointed. Borgman says, like a Picasso painting, all our parts are distorted out of place, backwards and usually dark.

The biblical portrait of us and our fallen state is unflattering. The proper relationship of the emotions, the will into the mind is twisted. It is out of order and out of proportion. We resemble a circuit board that at one time functioned properly and reliably with all the components perfectly integrated.

But since the fall, instead of our charges following the right paths, they deviate because of sin and cause serious malfunctions. The sad reality is that we are serious train wrecks. Our emotions can be downright toxic. I think of several times when I've done marital counseling. The wife is there in tears, weeping over the hurt and over the pain that's been experienced in the marriage.

The husband is there emotionally unmoved, callous for the pain of his wife. And I just wanna see, don't you see your wife? Don't you see her in tears here? I'm not saying who's right, I'm not saying who's wrong, but can't you just start by acknowledging her pain? But you see friends, sin blinds the mind.

Sin distorts the emotions. It is sin that causes that husband to be so wrapped up in his own thoughts, in his own world, that he cannot register the proper emotions that are appropriate to his wife being in so much pain. That husband ought to feel something and he feels nothing.

And so that is the effect of sin upon our emotions, that the image of God was distorted at the fall. We're still emotional beings, but we do not feel as we ought to feel. So what is the hope for fallen individuals? Well, letter D is that in Christ, we are as Forrey writes, redeemed emotional beings who can pursue and cultivate godly emotions.

Praise the Lord for that. We are saved through the blood of Christ and in Christ, through his life, death and resurrection, the image of God is being restored in us. We are progressively being conformed to the likeness of Christ. And as we become more like Christ, our emotional lives are transformed.

We begin to experience godly emotion. Emotions can be classified as righteous or unrighteous in scripture. Joy is commanded as a righteous emotion in Philippians 4, verse four, but joy is unrighteous when you rejoice in evil, 1 Corinthians 13, verse six. Sorrow is righteous when we grieve over sin, James 4, verse nine.

However, sorrow is not righteous when we grieve as those who have no hope, 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 13. Believers are commanded to have compassion toward one another, Colossians 3, verse 12. We are called to move with feeling toward others in the body of Christ. And to close one's heart to another believer is unrighteous and outside the will of God.

So we are redeemed emotional beings who can pursue and cultivate godly emotions, joy, sorrow, jealousy, fear, hope, compassion, grief, and pain, all of these emotions are restored in us and they register rightly and appropriately as we are made to be more like Christ. So let me end on the last page here with some practical applications for counseling.

And I'm just gonna take five minutes and walk through this. This is just fresh for my own thinking. I just reflected on this topic and just want to continue to learn and grow and become a better Christian, become a better counselor, but just some practical ways that we can apply this teaching in our lives and ministry.

I would encourage you, first of all, to become emotionally wise. Ask God for wisdom. Develop a robust understanding of the biblical teaching on emotions and then ask God for wisdom and applying that to your ministry with people. Sometimes you really have to be discerning and just understanding what is this counseling going through and what are the emotions that this person is experiencing.

Just being sensitive to that is helpful in counseling ministry. Number two, grow in your ability to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. I understand that's easier for some than for others. I understand that some of us are just more wired to be compassionate and to experience emotions with others and others of us are just more emotionally reserved, but ultimately I would just plead with all of us that learning to enter into the emotional life of other people is a matter of being more like Christ.

It is not whether you have a certain personality or you have another personality. Being compassionate is becoming more like Christ. Being merciful is being like Christ. And so let Christ-likeness be the standard and wherever you are in terms of how God has made you, ask God to help you to become more like Christ.

I've prayed this in my own life as a counselor. Lord, I should be feeling sorrow and I'm not, help me. Give me emotions that are appropriate to this person's pain or I ought to be feeling joy and I'm not. Help me, give me emotions that are appropriate to this situation.

Number three, as Milton Vincent has said, embrace the emotional rollercoaster. It is the stuff of life. You are most alive, you're most fully alive when you are engaged in the joys and the sorrows of others. And so don't be afraid of this. It's New Testament ministry. Number four, take special care in developing a biblical understanding of grieving and sorrow.

I just wanna plead with this in the church. Don't be in a hurry to move people past their sorrow. Seasons of sorrow can be long and it is true. There's a balance to this. We are not to grieve as those who have no hope, but there is an appropriate emotion of sorrow.

And so learn the language of lament as taught and modeled in the Psalms. I think of Proverbs 25, verse 20, which says whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day and like vinegar on soda. Counseling comes to you and pours out his or her heart and just going through a very difficult and distressing time and the only thing you give them is rejoicing the Lord always.

And again, I say rejoice. And if you don't do that, then you're on disobedience to the word of God and so you need to repent. Well, that's a very simplistic approach to that person's emotions. I believe we have more to say to capture the full teaching of the Bible on this subject.

Number five, study the heart. Emotions are tied to the intellect, will and desire. As biblical counselors, we wanna become versed in how the Bible describes the dynamics of the heart. Ultimately, emotions are tied to a life of worship. And so become wise in seeing how emotions are tied to the issues of the heart.

And then lastly, rejoice that when we are glorified, we will experience perfect emotions which are in line with the will of God. I'm so glad, dear friends, that what happens in our glorification when we go to heaven and we see Christ and we worship the lamb forever and ever is that God does not take us and he makes us into perfect Stoics who with Vulcan-like logic think with perfect rationality but feel nothing in heaven.

I'm just so glad that that's not what the Bible says about heaven, but that we will have the image of God fully restored in us as we are perfectly made to be like Christ. And therefore we will experience perfect emotions that are holy and righteous and that respond with perfect clarity and the right intensity to those things which are most glorious and most perfect.

This is the glorious hope that we have as believers. And so I just commend this study to you. I pray that this teaching will just be the beginning of a lifetime of learning on this subject. I pray that you and I will become wise in this area. Both understanding how to handle our own emotions and then learning to minister to others who are experiencing the emotions of life.

And we pray that God will give you a wonderful and rich ministry as you apply these teachings to your relationships in the body of Christ. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. It's been a joy to walk through this subject with you. Please do avail yourself of those resources.

Sam Williams' work. Do take a look at the work that my wife, my dear wife wrote on the subject of emotions. I think she has done a good job of summarizing much of this teaching in a clear way. And may God bless the study of your word this week.

I do have, I wanna make an announcement about just the class scheduling. My wife and I will be on vacation for a week. We're just gonna enjoy some time together. And so fortunately for us, and then maybe unfortunately for this class, our vacation's gonna start on Sunday and then end on Sunday.

So I will be unavailable to teach this class for the next two Sundays. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take the next two Sundays off from a meeting together in this class. And we are gonna resume class on the first Sunday of March. So that's March 7th.

That'll give you two weeks to get caught up. If you're a little bit behind or writing the essays, we hope to get you caught up by March 7th on essay number three. And we'll give you some time to reflect and study, especially on the subject of emotions. And then we will resume class on March 7th, same time at five o'clock p.m.

And we do look forward to that time. So thank you so much for joining us tonight. Let me close this in a word of prayer. Father, thank you for the study. Bless it to our lives and help us to learn and to grow wise in light of the truths we've looked at tonight.

Bless all my brothers and sisters here and gather us back together on March 7th as we continue to study your word. And we pray all this in Jesus name, amen.