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Sermons

March 1/2, 2014

Biblical Counseling

Jason Meyer | Hebrews 3:12-15

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said,

    “Today, if you hear his voice,

    do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”—Hebrews 3:12–15

Introduction

What Biblical Counseling Is and Isn’t

What is biblical counseling at Bethlehem? Here is what it is not. “The only people who understand the Bible are pastors. Believers should set up an appointment for counseling with one of the pastors. The pastors (the only ones who really know the Bible) will use the Bible in their counseling. Consider yourself biblically counseled.”

Here is also what it is not. Our belief in biblical counseling is not a commentary on our lack of confidence in the benefit of professional counseling or medical intervention. We do not shame anyone receiving help in those areas. Did I mention that this is what biblical counseling is not?

If that is what biblical counseling is not, then what is it? Before I say what it is, let me orient you to see where biblical counseling fits at Bethlehem. Bethlehem Baptist Church is committed to equipping believers to do the work of ministry (Ephesians 4:11–12) rather than just assuming the elders and pastoral staff will do it for them. Biblical counseling is part of that biblical quest to equip the saints for the work of ministry. The work of the ministry includes the ministry of the word.

The ministry of the word takes on three different forms: public, personal, and interpersonal. Public ministry of the word happens when someone heralds the word to a crowd of people and the Holy Spirit personalizes the message of the gospel to individuals within the crowd. Personal ministry of the word is when individuals read the Bible and apply it to their own lives. Interpersonal ministry of the word happens when we speak the word to each other in a more personalized way—person to person. It could be over the phone by email or face-to-face.

Biblical counseling belongs to that third category. It is an interpersonal ministry (person to person) of the word in which believers counsel others by applying biblical truths to specific life issues. Biblical counseling is an expression of our conviction that God often brings profound healing and help to the body of Christ through fellow believers speaking the truth in love to one another (Ephesians 4:15).

We believe that this type of interpersonal ministry of the word already happens on the phone and over email and in small groups and so on and so forth. Believers are already equipped to do this ministry by the Holy Spirit through the word of God.

I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.—Romans 15:14

We believe that all God’s people are counselors, filled with knowledge and able to instruct one another. We believe that God has spoken with great breadth and depth in the Scriptures and that all of Scripture is relevant to life because all of life is lived before the face of God. He has given us everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).

The aim of biblical counseling takes us back to up-reach. The aim of our counseling is not for the person we are counseling to have some subjective sense vaguely defined as somehow “feeling better.” We have higher targets! We want them to “rejoice in the Lord” (Philippians 3:1). Christian hedonism is the aim of our counseling. Christian hedonism says that you don’t have to choose between your happiness and God’s glory. That is good news because we always pursue our joy. The good news of the gospel is that you find your everlasting joy in Christ. Pursue the joy that surpasses all other joys in Christ because Christ surpasses all other treasures. Pursue the surpassing joy that comes from the surpassing value of knowing Christ. You don’t have to choose between your good and his glory. They come together in Christ. Christ shines best when we savor him most. The Christian hedonist counselor prays that by the power of the Spirit through the word the person I am speaking to will trust and treasure, see and savor, believe and boast in Christ more at the end than they did at the beginning. We want white-hot worship in their hearts. We want the interpersonal conversation to end with the fire burning brighter and hotter than when it began.

We use Christian hedonism as a target and not as a club. We have to aim at something, but we don’t turn the target into a club that we use to knock weak people over the head with. Some Christian hedonist you are (the Christian hedonist high bar). Here I want to go back to the analogy of a fire. Up-reach is where God starts the fire. In-reach is where God stokes the fire. Some people come into the church and they have been out in the cold. They feel like their flame has been reduced to a flicker. The fire feels almost snuffed out. The fire needs to get stoked again. Hebrews 3 heralds a warning against a hardened heart and a promise if they heed the warning. We see four things in this text: a danger, a duty, a design, and a dynamic.

The Danger of Unbelief: The Slow Fade of Falling Away (v. 12)

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.

a. First, notice that the author is speaking to professing Christians. He addresses them as “brothers.”
b. Second, notice his diagnosis of the problem: unbelief. This condition is terminal if left untreated. An unbelieving heart is an utterly evil heart.
c. Third, the danger of unbelief is defined as “falling away.” Unbelief leads away from Christ to a falling away. I don’t think the fall is a decisive fall like stepping away from Christ and immediately falling off a cliff of everlasting disaster. The fall is a more like a downward slide. This usually does not happen overnight. It is a slow fade. We tend to slide a little at a time. The heart does not go from hot to cold overnight. It grows cold and dim little by little. The soil erodes slowly as the waves constantly come rolling in.
d. Fourth, we fall away from not just a profession of faith, but from a Person—“from the living God.” This is not about religion, but a relationship with the living God.

Slipping should scare us. We don’t want to know how far we can slip and still be safe. We should take the opposite approach and ask how close we can get to God. The good news is that he has given us all we need for life and godliness through his very great and precious promises. But what if we just are having a hard time getting into the word? What if your personal, private reading of the word just isn’t keeping the fire going? Interpersonal ministry of the word is a gift from God at this point.

The Duty of Declaration: Exhort One Another (v. 13a)

But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today.”

a. Who is involved? One another. Biblical counseling has sometimes been called one-another counseling. All Christians are ministers! It is not “pastors preach to your sheep.” All Christians are called to the ministry of the word for the sake of all Christians.
b. What do we do with the word? The answer is not “encourage one another” as if that meant that our problem was a lack of self-esteem. We exhort one another. This is what the word is designed to do.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.—2 Timothy 3:16

c. What is the content of the exhorting? Many people want to say, the law. We should lay down the law. Show people that they fall short. Show them that they have not lived up to a standard. I agree with that assessment. The law is very effective in crushing proud, self-righteous people, but it is not much help in healing crushed people. Too often we try to show them the law to show them what they need to do better. I do not use the law to motivate people who are already wounded and weary.

How would that help? I once saw a cartoon that has a picture of a ladder and a man that has fallen off the ladder and lying wounded flat on his back. A man is standing above him. The man says, “I thought I told you not to fall.” That offers zero help for getting up!

That is not my approach because it is not the approach of the author of Hebrews. He says way more than “don’t fall!” His message is “Fix your eyes on Jesus because he is better.” Wait a minute. Isn’t that the war cry of Christian hedonism again? See and savor his surpassing worth and his sufficient work? Am I smuggling that into the text?

It is here—it is so here. Let me point out two clues. The first clue is in verse 14. Sharing in Christ means holding on to our confidence in Christ. Christ is the content of the exhortation and the aim of the exhortation is for the hearer to have confidence in Christ. Keep the confidence column singular—Christ alone. That message is everywhere, not just Philippians 3!

The second clue is almost every verse in the entire book. What is the message of Hebrews? Christ is better. He surpasses everything—seek him (isn’t this Christian hedonism?) We do not give people little moralisms that amount to messages about doing better and trying harder. But wait, doesn’t Hebrews give warnings? Yes. Hebrews gives people warnings, but warnings about leaving Christ for lesser things. The warnings of the law aren’t something to feast on; they are more like smelling salts that wake us up so we won’t miss the real feast of grace found in Christ!

d. When? We need to see Christ every day until the final day. We will see much more of the importance of “today” in verse 14 when he quotes Psalm 95.

The Design of Declaration: War Against Being Duped by Sin’s Deceit (v. 13b)

... that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

The warning is against the hardness that comes when you are caught in the snare of sin. The reason you get caught in the snare of sin is because sin is deceitful. How does sin deceive us? Sin deceives by promising pleasure. Hebrews talks about the “passing pleasures of sin.” Sin can promise pleasure and it feels like pleasure—for a moment. It is like salt water. It seems refreshing, but it actually kills you and dehydrates you more. Sin’s passing and death-inducing pleasures cannot compare to the life-giving joys found in Jesus.

Compare that pleasure to the pleasure found in Christ. Psalm 16:11 says that there is “fullness of joy in his presence and pleasures forevermore at his right hand.” These pleasures are superior in every way: both from the vertical angle (full) and from the horizontal angle (forever). This is exactly how Moses fought sin:

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.—Hebrews 11:24–26

That is the fight of faith. Look to the greater reward God gives:

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.—Hebrews 11:6

Sin deceives by promising pleasure. But when it comes time to deliver on the promise, you discover the deceit: the pleasure was partial and passing. Sin always overpromises and under-delivers. The fight of faith looks at the partial and passing pleasures of sin in the light of the full and forever pleasures of Christ.

Sin gives what I call the “monkey trap.” You catch monkeys by having a shiny object inside of a jar. The opening is just wide enough to get the hand through, but not wide enough to pull it out again with a clenched fist when holding onto the “treasure.” When the people come to capture the monkey, he could escape—the only catch is that he would have to let go, but he is not willing.

That is what sin does. You are caught when the heart lays hold of something that it regards as a treasure and then won’t let go. Christ and sin cannot both be your treasures. Christ died for my sin. That means I can’t treasure the very thing that killed the Christ I treasure. That leads to my next point.

The Dynamic of Saving Faith: Show Your Share in Christ Today (vv. 14–15)

For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

This verse answers so many questions with the first word “for” (v. 14). What does a hardened heart look like? A hardened heart has lost its original confidence in Christ. A hardened heart is alive to other things and hardened to Christ. It is a heart that looks less and less to Christ because other things have increasingly caught its attention. You are putting confidence in those things because you think they will satisfy you. They can’t. Now don’t think only of people who leave the church for other things. Think also of those who stay in church. Your heart may be far from God, but still look alive to other people if you use external behavior as criteria. It may be the person who is here every time the church doors open.

This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.—Matthew 15:8

Jesus was saying that to the Pharisees. No one in this church would have an external standard as rigorous as the Pharisees. But they did not love Jesus. They had zero confidence in him. Their confidence was not in his work, but in their own work.

No matter what the sin is, you need to let go. Let go of your self-righteousness or your unrighteousness. What is the opposite of a hardened heart? We are right back to the sermon on Philippians 3. What do we put in the confidence column? The opposite of a hardened heart is a heart that has a singular hope in Christ and a singular confidence in Christ. A hardened heart is a crowded heart. So many things clamor for its attention that it is numb to Christ. Saving faith is a singular faith—singular confidence in Christ to save you today. Not just faith that was yesterday or faith that will be tomorrow. Faith that is true today.

Not Confidence in Yesterday: A Word to Professing Believers

Let me speak to professing believers for a moment. What does this mean for you that our share in Christ must be shown today? It means you do not draw confidence from a decision you made in the past. We don’t look back to “a day” in which we “received” Christ by signing a card or raising a hand or going forward or praying a prayer or whatever. We look at today. Am I treasuring Christ today? Are his promises greater than what sin promises today?

Not Confidence in Tomorrow: A Word to Non-Believers and Seekers

Let me speak to unbelievers for a moment. Your share in Christ must be shown today. What does that mean for you? You don’t look at tomorrow and say, “That is when I will share in Christ. I just want to pursue other things for a little while longer.” Do you hear his voice today? Do you have conviction today that you have put your confidence in other things to satisfy you? Here is the problem with putting confidence in tomorrow. It is arrogant to think you will be able to repent later. Paul writes:

Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.—2 Corinthians 6:1–2

God will always receive you if you repent. Those who come to him, he will never cast out. But what if you no longer want to come? What if you no longer want to repent? Saying yes to sin and no to Christ sears your soul. It burns the heart so that it loses some of its spiritual sensitivity. When you take the first step away from Christ toward sin, it is like burning your tongue and you lose some taste. So you have to have more and more and more. Before you know it, you are numb. You can’t taste and you can’t feel. Before you know it, you are the monkey caught with your hand in the jar and you know you need to let go, but you just can’t bring yourself to do it. You need to let go of sin in order to lay hold of the nail-scarred hand of Christ.

Don’t trust your timing about tomorrow. Today if you hear him, don’t harden your heart. Today if you hear him, come to him. Today is the day of salvation. Tomorrow you may find that you can’t change your heart and make it want to come anymore.

A Word to Strugglers and Sufferers—the Weak and Wounded

Think about the quotation from Psalm 95. What was the rebellion that the text spoke about? “Do not harden your hearts as [in the rebellion] at Meribah” (v. 8). The Israelites came to the Promised Land. They sent spies into the Promised Land. What God said was true. It was a land overflowing with milk and honey. But they also saw problems. Big problems: Giants and walled cities. They believed that God gave them more than they could handle. In the end, they blamed God for their problems. Joshua and Caleb spoke the word to them. Some of those who scouted out the land said that they felt like grasshoppers compared to the giants. Joshua and Caleb pointed them to how much greater God was. The giants were like grasshoppers to God—just a drop in the bucket. They said God was so great that it would be as easy as eating bread.

We have big problems in our lives too. They tempt us to put all of our focus on how great our problems are so that we take our eyes off of how much greater Christ is. Most of our problems are real, not imaginary, just like the giants and the walled cities were real. We are not one-dimensional people, which often means that we have multi-dimensional problems. We take the whole person seriously. Let me read you a paragraph from our biblical counseling document.

We are physically-embodied and socially-embedded and spiritually-influenced. There is complexity and mystery when it comes to the interface between body and soul, and there are physiological factors and organic issues that affect a person’s life and that treatment of those factors may require medical diagnosis in some circumstances. We also recognize that people are socially embedded by God’s design and that a variety of historical, social, cultural, and family factors may impact moral response. Appreciating the complexity and mystery of the interface between persons and their social environment, we seek to remain sensitive to social factors, as the context within which God calls a person to the obedience of faith.

We further recognize that people are spiritually influenced, under God’s wise control, by the spiritual realm and that demonic factors may impact moral response (Ephesians 6:10–20). Appreciating the complexity and mystery of the interface between a person and the spiritual world, we seek to remain sensitive to those spiritual influences and address them accordingly.

These things are real and they matter. They influence moral behavior, but they do not determine it. We don’t say, “my body made me do it,” or “my background made me do it,” or “the devil made me do it.” We don’t write ourselves out of the story and shift all the blame to something else or blame God like the Israelites did in their unbelief. We don’t have to shift the blame because Christ is willing to bear all of our blame. What we need is not a better me or a better you. We need to see that Christ is better. Christ is enough. Christ is sufficient. Christ alone saves to the uttermost.

Why do we take people with a flickering flame and bring them to Christ? We must stoke the fire by taking them to the fire-sustainer. Christ! Counselors come to a person whose fire is faintly burning. They bring a bundle of Christ-exalting logs of the word to carefully place on the fire through application. Blow on it and fan the flame with compassion, care, and sensitive questions until the fire starts to glow a little. They pray that the Holy Spirit will cause the fire to burn brighter through the word. Faith comes from hearing the word about Christ. The word about Christ will not be a crushing word. Put Christ before them because he specializes in this sort of work. Consider these words:

... a bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not quench,
        until he brings justice to victory;
        and in his name the Gentiles will hope.—Matthew 12:20–21 (quoting Isaiah 42:3)

Christ doesn’t break people who are already broken. He heals them. He does not stamp out fires that are slowly dying down. He stokes the fire and sustains you.

Communion

Look to Christ

Do you remember the story of the Israelites in the wilderness? They were bitten by fiery snakes, but God provided something for them to see so that they would be healed. They made a fiery serpent, put it on a pole, and everyone who looked at it would live (Numbers 21:8–9).

Jesus said that he had to be lifted up on the cross in the same way so that whoever would look to him in faith would live, and this time, have eternal life (John 3:14–15). Everyone here has the same problem. We have been bitten. The poison of sin threatens to kill us. Communion lifts the flag of Christ’s death high and says, There is one healer, one standard, one hope. “Behold Christ our hope, Christ our life, Christ our joy.” This is a meal for those who are hoping in him today—not yesterday, not tomorrow—but today because he is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore (Hebrews 13:8).

Closing Song: “Your Great Name”

Discussion Questions 

  • What is biblical counseling? How is it different than other types of counseling available today?
  • Do you feel equipped to exhort fellow Christians? What gets in the way (lack of training/knowledge, lack of boldness, lack of love, lack of relationships, etc.)?
  • Are there issues in your life that make you feel stuck? Do these things feel like burdens that small groups can bear together (like helping change a flat tire)? Or do some feel too big or time-consuming for a small group setting (car repair from a crash or mechanic repair from a car breakdown)? Would you be willing to let the small group hold you accountable to take next steps in getting help?