Biblical Anthropology Conclusion
Bradley W. Maston · Mar 30, 2008
Biblical Anthropology, No. 13
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926057261029

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

This is our wrap-up slash pre-intro, because we're going to have another intro next week, to Biblical Counseling. Then it could just as well be mine. Let's see. Does anybody else have a cell phone that's not off? I always figure that silent All right. Mine's off. How's yours? OK. Good enough. Hopefully that'll fix it right up. All right. So anyway, we have just finished up a unit on biblical anthropology, which was the study of what? Man. Yeah.

So it's been, at least for me, an incredibly interesting study, and very interesting in terms of the different terms that we use to describe what's in a person, and finding out what those actually mean, and looking at those biblically, and drawing the lines of the distinction. So it's been a real fun course for me. And then we're moving into, of course, biblical counseling. So as we do our pre-intro, as we're looking back and looking forward, I wanted to look at some of our assumptions. that we're going to have as we deal with biblical counseling. So, the first assumption is that Bible is God's message to man.

So, if God wanted to communicate unclearly with us, could he have done that? If he wanted to confuse us, could he have done that, being God? Yeah, he could confuse us. If he wanted to communicate clearly, can he do that? Yeah. Yeah, very clearly, right? The Bible says that He wants to communicate clearly to us in His message, which is the Bible. That that's His purpose.

And I think it's just a bad argument on a lot of our parts, or maybe a lot of the church or Christendom today, claiming that God wants us to be confused. or that the Bible's not clear, or not as clear as it could be, or that the Lord wants us to kind of just be muddling around and trying to figure it out, when really what we talk about here is that the Bible's very clear.

That the Bible is not just some big confusing book that no one can say yes or no about, but it's actually God's Word to us, telling us about ourselves, about our relationship to Him, our perspective regarding trials, and our relationships with each other. So, as we move forward, that's the basis, and that's an important basis, that we'll be dealing with and going on. We'll be starting with that because, when we talk about biblical counseling, and you're offering counsel to someone based on what's in the Bible, if both parties aren't sure that what the Bible says is God's clear message to man, then it would be very easy to discount it and say, that's a nice suggestion. But I find that if the Bible is the Word of God, I would kind of put it in a more weightier category than suggestions. So that's our first assumption. Our second assumption is that the Bible is relevant. So what do we mean by the Bible is relevant? It has meaning. Exactly.

A lot of times we get this kind of weird, lofty idea that the Bible was written in this little moral vacuum, where none of the authors encountered anything bad, like it was written by monks and nuns who were cloistered away from all the really rough stuff of life. But the reality is that the biblical authors were exposed to all sorts of horrible things that we're even seeing today. I mean, Paul, especially in the New Testament times we know, and in the Old Testament as well, issues like physical abuse, sexual abuse, addiction, slavery, false religions, these were all issues just like they are now, back then. So when Paul was writing to the Romans, to the Corinthians, He wasn't just writing them kind of this ethereal, this will all go over your heads and your life can just continue to be your life, thing.

But it's all very practical. It's all very relevant to their situation. So we often think that Paul didn't give advice for all the tough situations that come up now. But the reality is, is looking forward, we're going to see he did. He does. The Lord spoke to those situations as well. So that's our That's our assumption. I was going to say presupposition. That's our assumption going in there.

Next is that the Bible has the answers. And I'll just read, the biblical authors did not write in ignorance of these difficulties, but claimed that the word of God was still the sole care tool for addressing these trials, difficulties, and tribulations. Further, the word of God provides guidance for the believer from the small details on into eternity.

We've got Hebrews 4.12 and 2 Timothy 3.16-17. The Bible is the tool that God wants to use. And the final one as we move in, just to give you a preview, because we'll probably study this a couple times, is that biblical counseling is for everybody in the body of Christ. And that's incredibly important.

You might not fancy yourself as a biblical counselor, or as a counselor, or something to that effect. that might not be what you feel like your gift is, or something like this, but the reality of the matter is, is that God has designed every believer to be a biblical counselor to another believer. And as we look at the words that we see, encourage, exhort, and all the other biblical words that we see that relate to what we call today counseling, we're gonna find that those words are to everybody, not just to those. Furthermore, the other side of it in our culture, we've decided that if you go to a counselor, if you need to go to a counselor, it's because you're really messed up, right? So I feel like on the scale of one to 100, I'm like at about 78% messed up, so I better go see a counselor, or I'm 28% messed up, so I don't need to see a counselor, and that's how we've designed it. But actually, the reality is is that Biblically speaking, Biblical counseling is for everybody, no matter how messed up you think you are. In fact, the less messed up you think you are, the more you probably need some Biblical counsel, right?

Precisely. How much of us the Lord has worked on. It's just fantastic. The reason why this is so fantastic is exactly what Vani's saying, and that's that we all have a need for the Bible. And part of the function of the body of Christ, part of the function of us as we relate to one another, is to say, wow, I see you're struggling with this. Have you looked at this passage? The word says this. Have you relied on that? Have you reckoned on that? Have you counted that as true? That's part of our function.

And there is certainly a place, a very important place, to weep with those who weep and feel sorrow with those who feel sorrow. Buck up! Feel better! It's okay! Stop feeling those feelings!" That would be silly. And yet, at the same time, we do need to have the boldness and confidence to say, you know, I see that this is a really difficult situation for you, but this is what the Word says about that.

And you can count on that, and that's good news. We need to do so with tact and grace, based on the situation. The reality is that the Bible, this book, has great news for every situation. Great news for all of our difficult situations that need counsel, and for all of our really wonderful situations that also need counsel.

Don't you think that a lot of people fail to go to this type of counsel because they don't see it? I think that's certainly the case. We may go to portray, because that doesn't show weakness. But if we have to go to Christ, that shows weakness. Only because of maybe the lack of understanding, or just the total lack of belief. Yeah. And that's what people are most afraid to admit, often times, isn't it?

I've come across people that shun biblical counseling because they shun the involvement of other people in what is happening in their lives. The reality is God is very intent that we be involved in each other's lives. We are designed as a body to have needs for one another. And shunning the involvement of other believers is simply a short-sightedness. We most definitely are intended to be involved in one another's lives. Amen.

Yeah, if your hand jumped off your body and said, alright, that's it, I just don't need... You'd be disturbed. I'd be disturbed. I woke up one morning, my hand was sitting on the pillow trying to walk away, like that Addams Family thing. It would disturb me. And that's not the way that we were intended to be made. I don't know if anyone's familiar with a fellow named Larry Crabb.

He's kind of on the forefront of what is today called Christian counseling, most of which I wouldn't recommend. The things that are called Christian counseling today, because they're not usually biblically based. They're oftentimes secularly based. We'll get into that as we study more in the coming weeks.

But Larry Crabb shocked the Christian counseling community by saying, he wrote an entire book saying essentially, if the church was doing what the church was designed to do, I would be out of business. We would be out of business as Christian counselors. He saw it, and once again, I wouldn't say most of the stuff surrounding that community is terribly biblically based, but even just from the biblical studies that he did, he said, you know, if we were doing as a church what we should be doing as a church, all these Christian counselors would be out of business. Because the Bible is very clear, you have everything you need to counsel someone. in most any situation, except for there are obviously situations of chemical or physiological difficulties that obviously counseling just won't cover. There's cases where we do need medicinal care, if you might call it that. Something external. But that's not spiritual, emotional. That's physiological, if you follow my meaning. So, you can't prescribe drugs. You can't. I'm sorry. I can't either.

Don't feel bad. But, outside of those situations, you have everything you need to be in a counseling situation. Does anyone ever get buffaloed and someone starts telling you about a real problem in their life and it's serious? It's something that, you know, makes you uncomfortable just to hear it and you don't know whether to laugh or cry. And so the first thing that I usually think of is, I don't have a degree in this, I better shuffle them off to someone who's more qualified to talk about this really serious issue.

And that's not the Lord's plan for us. Like if we just we just bottle it up like a bunch of little Christian Mount Vesuvius is we're gonna That's amazing. I wasn't aware of that movement. I could see that as being devastating. Well, it would be devastating, because it's against what the Word says about how we should be involved with one another.

So, as a believer here today, you have the Holy Spirit. As a believer here today, you have access to the Word of God, and you have access to study. And a church that's teaching you, hopefully, well, not hopefully here, but as we talk into the radio, hopefully your church is teaching you. to study the Word of God. That's all the equipment you need to biblically counsel someone, to give someone counsel. And you've got it. So we don't need to balk on those things. We don't need to say, well, I really don't have much to say, and then just try to get out of there as fast as you can.

What I'd like to do is, if you look at your handout here, we've got each of the units that we've studied or sessions, study sessions that we've had. The ones that were split up over two sessions, I didn't bother to talk about twice, but as fascinating as that would be.

Essentially what I'd like to do, or what I'd plan to do, was we'll talk a little bit about what we studied very briefly. In fact, some of them I just cut and pasted them right out of your introduction, which is at the very beginning of your folder. Then just spend a little time, each of us saying, how is this going to be important? that the study of Biblical anthropology is a good and a fairly natural precursor to Biblical counseling. But one, you could study Biblical counseling without it, and two, you wouldn't only study Biblical anthropology just to get to counseling.

So there's a pretty natural connection there, but at the same time I'd love for us to sew it all together and find out what we studied this session or in this class as we head into the next one. The first week we studied made in God's image. In this one we used the early chapters of Genesis for our chief text and we were able to see clearly these bullet points.

It says that God had a specific design and intent for mankind. God made mankind in his image and likeness, male and female. God directly gave Adam life in a separate action from the animals. God made male and female separately, and each was made in a different way. God had a specific intent for the relationship between the man and the woman.

So, why would those bullets, why would knowing that very clearly, and having a clear understanding of that, contribute to our ability to do biblical counseling, or be involved in biblical counseling? And so when you look at how we are to function, the fact that God intended for us to function as separate from the animals, as individual male and female in our individual roles and our interactions with each other, we are only going to, we're going to function best when we function within that intent, and understanding that intent helps us understand how we are to function.

There it is. That's it. I mean, knowing where we're going, knowing what we were made for, is going to be vital in our understanding of what we should be doing, what we should be about now. How do we fit into God's purpose? What was God's intent? Just kind of use an analogy. We don't use a cement mixer for mixing things in the kitchen. We don't use a blender for mixing cement. There is a specific intent in mind, and God had something in mind, and once that becomes clear to us, we're no longer wondering, well, am I just a cosmic accident? Or what does God have in mind here? Getting clarity on these things is a wonderful set of truths to have set before us.

All of a sudden, what may have been confusing before comes into focus. Well, too, the world bombards us with just the opposite. Completely. And everything you pick up and read, everything you see on TV or whatever, is just totally the opposite. And that tends to work they're going to start questioning, well, maybe God made it that way. That's not right.

I think of that home improvement show, This Old House, where there's a section on that where one of the guys will bring in a tool, and like the other guys said, they have to try and guess what that tool is for. It's usually for a very specific purpose. The world is kind of left, they see tools God has given us, and without having God's perspective, they're left to try and guess, well, what is this for? How is this supposed to function? And they don't have God's explanation of it. But when we get God's explanation, 90% of the time, they're incorrect. The other 10% are just lucky.

I was just going to say, another thing too is, aren't we sometimes, to kind of paraphrase something out of the Bible, We're almost afraid, and this is a reverse of what's been done, to cast the moat out of the other person's eye before we have taken care of the lumber in ours. And I think that we have a fear of providing that type of assistance, you might say. Yeah, I think definitely that's something that we need to be wary of.

And I think as we look at what Biblical counseling actually is, we'll see time and time again that the attitude, the spirit of it, is a spirit of humility, and a spirit of love, and a spirit of wanting to restore someone to a place of walking with the Lord. Versus, as Christ was talking about, not condemning people when you're guilty of the same thing is the issue, the idea of judgment and condemnation and all these sorts of things that are essentially just me being able to say, hey, I'm better than you. You phrased exactly what I was thinking, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's such a valuable point because there's so many people who, I think in our flesh, we're all vulnerable to the possibility of Yeah, have you ever been in a Bible study or something and done gossip prayer requests?

We're all vulnerable to the possibility of it. Well, definitely pray for Sally, because she's done that. Godly gossip. Yeah, godly gossip. And it's so great, because we're amassed in this holy little shroud of prayer requests, but really what we're doing is just spreading news that's none of our business.

So I think in biblical counseling we have the exact same propensity if we let our Let our sin nature in there. Turn it into an ability to kind of look down our nose at others. And really the funny thing is that in the situations where I offer Biblical counseling to those near to me, I usually wind up pressing with, you know, I'm really messed up still. But I can see this as maybe helping your situation a little bit. Or I haven't got this down either, but this is what I'm working towards. I mean, there's a humility to it. demanded by scripture, for sure. That's absolutely it. That if we got the spirit of it down, the rest will follow very naturally.

Also, as we talk about being made in God's image, something that I thought is really important today is the whole biblical masculinity and biblical femininity. This is something that's totally lost in our culture today. as we discussed at length in this class, and as well we serendipitously were covering in the main service. But the fact of the matter is that most popular Christianity today, and I see it as I work with kids, is moving towards androgyny, moving towards general confusion. And there's very clear biblical teaching against this.

And if we don't know this, we're not going to wind up in the right place. And what we need to realize is that they're doing it because they're saying, well, what difference does it make? Who's to say that I can't act like this, or girls act like this, or boys dress like this? Who's to say? And we do have an authority on this. The Lord says. And especially as we move into counseling, the specific intent of God for the relationship between the man and the woman.

Chester McAuley gave a course on marriage and child-rearing, I think, and he asked, you know, before we start, some of you aren't married, some of you are, you know, he said, You've had all your kids. You're done having kids. There's some of this that's not going to apply directly to you.

Is it still important for you to be here?" He said, absolutely, because you are going to have someone in your life who's a young mother or young father. You're going to have someone in your life who needs marriage counseling. As much as our culture and our society puts the value on experience, although you've experienced it, so your advice must be good.

That's not the model we use. That's not what we're after. So, in other words, even if you hadn't ever been married, you could still give the best advice on marriage that anybody could give, because if you were drawing it from the Word. And that's, once again, as we've talked about, part of our function as believers in the same body, is to continue to build each other up in that way.

So, moving forward. All right, so the fall, separation, everything goes with it. As we studied Genesis 3.17 and Genesis chapter 3, what did we learn about death? What is death? Separation.

There's a traditional belief, I don't know that it takes its root in Calvinism. where it actually takes its root, but it's definitely had a broad influence that the death described in scripture is a spiritually dead, out on a slab, cold, unable to respond, dead dead. That essentially, until God quickens us, like kind of jump starts us, we can't make a choice for Christ. And that's a Reformed idea, but It does not have the death as separation view, which is actually presented in scripture.

So as we looked at Genesis 3.17, God said, on that day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Well, he ate, and he didn't. His heart didn't stop right there, right? But he was separated from God, just as death is separation of the immaterial part of you from the material part of you, just as we would even still today say, so-and-so is dead to me, and mean there's a permanent separation there. That's the use of death in Scripture as being one of separation.

So, why is this so important? This whole fall of separation and everything went with it. Why is it so important as we deal with that separation? as we work on counseling. Would there be any application for us there? That's going to be the primary focus, believer to believer, for sure.

How about understanding the fall, not just the separation piece? If you denied the fall, could you give good biblical counsel to people? Why not? Jesus dying on the cross was just a nice gesture. So is it important for us to understand the fall and understand what happened at the fall? Yeah, most certainly.

I mean, as we look at the world around us, you can only assume, if you don't understand the fall, You can only assume that God designed a flawed world, right? Making God the creator of evil, the starter of evil. The other conflicted message that people get from some quarters is the only problem you have is that you think you have problems, you know? And it ends up making dealing with the world just a big mind game, you know? denying realities and positive thinking and things of that sort. So this is an exceedingly important message that is real and realistic about acknowledging that there are problems and gives a valid and true explanation of why there are problems in the world as opposed to trying to deny it, or trying to say, well, it's just normal, you know? It's just the way it is. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's fantastic.

So, the Fall is going to be something that we don't acknowledge right up. And the fact that even though we're believers, even though we're redeemed, even though we're saved, that we still are dealing with the effects of the Fall, right? We still have our sin nature, as we looked at, living within us, which we wouldn't if it weren't for the Fall. We're still dealing with this fallen world, which we wouldn't if it weren't for the fall.

So I think we pretty much hammered that out. How is a person saved and what is salvation? We went on at some pretty good length. I think if we were to put it all in a nutshell, we'd say that you're saved by faith. in Christ and what He's done, the belief in Him, that He was crucified, buried, resurrected and ascended into the right hand of the Father. That was done on our behalf. That we can trust in that. That's what saved us. No works. No, that just gets us in the door. No, you're kind of saved by grace at first and then you have to work for 50 years to see if maybe you've completed your justification. None of that.

So I imagine we can all stack hands on that. How is a person saved? That short summary of how is a person saved and what is salvation. We also spent a great deal of time on, or at least a fair amount of time, on eternal security in that session. And I know Vern is working up some good resources on eternal security that may sometime soon be up on the website and it's a worthwhile read.

It's really great stuff. But why would that be important in biblical counseling? This is probably the easy one. Anyone have any ideas as to why that would be so, so, so important? State that again. Why is it so important to understand, as we're counseling others, how is a person saved, what is salvation? Why is it so important to understand eternal security in giving counsel to others? I mean, your whole focus on counseling, are you safe or not? Yeah.

You wouldn't know whether they were, if they were losing. Maybe to help them understand it's not what they do, it's whether they're struggling with getting better or not, as far as their salvation is. I was going to say, without that, the rest is for naught. There's no meaning without that, that understanding.

We have to have that understanding. And I think that that's the beauty of the teaching that we receive here. We have right now three classes going and you can be in any one of those three, based upon what you feel that maybe your own needs might be at that time, or your lack of understanding. Because through that lack of understanding, we're not able to help others that might, through the Lord's guidance, but with this, we're able to It's important to counter false teaching on these things.

Very good. Precisely. I was just going to say, 1 Corinthians was written to a church that was just full of problems. And definitely Paul counseled them a great deal. But before he even got on to any of their issues, In chapter 1, just after getting through saying, Hi, my name's Paul, in verses 7 through 9, and I'll kind of break in the middle of the passage there, eagerly awaiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Will he confirm us? Yes. Is he faithful? Yes. As a foundation for counseling, that issue is settled. Which is so key, right? Because say that the person you're counseling doesn't have that understanding, or more appropriately, say that the counselor doesn't have that understanding.

If you saw in Scripture, if God's Word honestly said that we don't have security of salvation, would it be good Scriptural counsel to say, just rest in the salvation Christ as one being? It would be horrible advice, right? If it were true. However, on the other side, equally so, it's horrible advice to tell someone to earn their salvation.

And yet that's what a lot of biblical counselors are doing based on their theology. And it comes down to the reality that these things that we call our doctrine, our theology, are very, very important. There's kind of an anti-doctrinal movement in the church today, especially the younger church. We don't want to get involved in any of that doctrinal stuff because that just makes people fight and talk and think and stuff and we don't want that. But the reality remains is that our giving good counsel or poor counsel is based on our knowledge of the scripture. It's based on our knowledge of these doctrines.

And the fact that we are completely certain that you have eternal security affects how, one, we should live, and two, what kind of advice and counsel we should give, right? If you get that step wrong, this salvation step, if you don't understand that, just like you said, it's all for naught.

We've already started heading in so far in the wrong direction that I don't think we could give good advice. The number of Christian theologians who were convinced that they were earning their salvation, working for their salvation, had nervous breakdowns, drove themselves absolutely nuts, is not a small number.

Because that's not how we're designed to live. That's not how we're designed to think. You can't work hard enough. Or you could always work a little harder. But what will drive you crazy is the fact that you just can't work hard enough. So there it is.

Does anyone have any other comments on how a person is saved and what is salvation? We're not quite behind, but we're not quite on schedule. Alright, cool. What makes up a human being, saved or unsaved? We talked about body, flesh, mind, intellect, emotions, will, heart, soul, spirit, and spiritual. I believe Jeremy coined the term the Malloy map is in your materials which gives you a pretty good visual summary of what all those words mean, what they relate to, and how that works.

So we've looked at how those aspects of a person differ in character between an unbeliever and a believer. For biblical counseling, we'll be using our understanding of these aspects of a believer, the depth to which God's word touches the heart of a believer, to provide genuine and precious spiritual care for the souls of our fellow believers. So, as we go forward, Let's reiterate, how is that so important in biblical counseling, that understanding? The understanding of the difference between what's soulish and what's spiritual. If we don't understand what God's Word is saying clearly, the tendency is for people to look to soulish things to accomplish what can only be done spiritually, or what God has already accomplished spiritually. We'll be looking for the wrong place for a solution, and the wrong person. Precisely. There we are.

I mean, if you go to the bookstore and open up the self-help section, or the library, and I have, it's just amazing how many things that they'll either call spiritual, or some of them they'll call psilical, or however they want to call it, but essentially they're just, they make you feel better. They're something to salve your soul. Or if you just do this, if you just practice this every morning and afternoon, or whatever it is, then it'll make your soul feel better. And not understanding that, we may just go, hey yeah, that's a great idea, go for it. If it makes you feel better, that's fine.

But as believers, we understand that the Word is the only book, the only tool that cuts down to the connection between soul and spirit. It's the only thing. None of those other books, tactics, methods, tricks, hypnosis, can penetrate through the soul and get to the spirit. Only the Bible. So as we counsel people, as we're pointing people in the right direction, once again we can't suggest soulical solutions for spiritual problems.

If that makes sense. So it becomes important there too. Does anyone have anything else to add there? I found that study interesting just because figuring out where mind, intellect, emotions, will, heart, all fit in. I was always trying to kind of picture all the little pieces fitting together as well as we talked a little about just the difference between body, soul, and spirit. I just found that incredibly helpful to know where my mind is in that, where my heart is in that, how that goes.

Alright, how many different kinds of people are there? We, I believe, we talked very clearly that there's a million different ways that you could cut up humanity. What color are your eyes? All the other ways. Do you have anger problems? We could separate humanity up by who has anger problems. But, biblically speaking, what were the major divisions that we saw in humanity?

Believers and unbelievers. Believers and unbelievers was the big one, right? Saved and unsaved. So we had believers and unbelievers, and then we also looked at, and oddly enough as we looked at it, and it was so clear, I've actually encountered some people, like teachers on the internet and people who have been against this, but there's no other way to interpret the passage in 1 Corinthians. How do they divide up believers? How does the Bible in 1 Corinthians? Yeah, carnal and spiritual.

What's the difference? Actually, let's take a step back. What's the difference between the saved and unsaved, the believers and unbelievers? What's the point of distinction there? Christ. Whether they put their trust in Christ or not. Okay, so now we're into the believers. What's the difference between the carnal believer and the spiritual believer? The carnal believer is controlled by the flesh, by the sin nature, and the spiritual is Christ living in his life.

Spirit control. There it is. So the carnal believer is abiding in the flesh, or walking in his flesh, or the sin nature, however you want to put it. I believe those are all synonymous. And the spiritual believer is abiding in Christ, walking in the spirit.

We don't think of it this way, but is it possible for a believer to be unconverted? You mean like he was saved and then he... Yeah, I think so. A believer, I heard a term that a believer is the unconverted believer. He believes, but he's unconverted. That's interesting. Don't the two go together?

Conversion just means to turn around, right? So, I believe that my understanding of the essence of conversion, of the turning around, is not turning from the carnal to the spiritual, but turning from not believing and trusting in Christ to turning to believing and trusting in Christ. So I think that there are some people, and we have biblical examples of this, who don't need to be converted because they don't have an opinion, like a wrong opinion of Jesus, that they need to turn around on.

Silverman, the Jewish on KHOW talk, he was asked what a Christian is, and he defined a Christian just exactly what a Christian is. He knows what a Christian is, but he doesn't believe it. He has an understanding. He understands what a Christian is. He understands it, but he himself doesn't believe it. So, under this term, he would be an unconverted believer. The only thing with that is that believing does mean trust and faith and dependence. So it would seem to me he's lacking that. And so if it's not truly believing, it is possible to understand and reject it.

And Nancy and I, as a matter of fact, if I bring this up and she were here, she would know who I'm talking about. We know a lady who has actually been an elder, an elderess, at a Presbyterian church. And she, we've talked with her, she knows exactly what she must believe in order to be saved. But she says that she will intentionally stand outside the door. So she almost believes in something.

She thoroughly understands, but she will not believe so as to be saved. And it is possible for someone to have a clear idea of what the gospel is, a clear understanding of what salvation is, and yet be able to stand outside the door and say, I'm not going to enter in. I will not trust in those things for my own life and be saved. Which is phenomenal, but I think it's possible. It's unlikely. The devils believe and they trouble us. They don't believe in us.

It's the head knowledge and heart knowledge of understanding Christ in life versus knowing about Christ. Jesus just gives me signals. That's fantastic. Jim? I think also when we talk about the will of the unbeliever, the only thing he can choose outside of And I think the Bible's clear that that is a choice.

It's not just, people may, I don't know if they do, people may accuse us of easy believism. You know, somebody just has to say, oh yeah, Jesus is Christ, and hey, you're saved. But it's obviously a choice to put your faith in it. You know, we use the term believe, and especially today, you know, the term believe has very ambiguous he may get old at it. Once he makes that choice to, I'm going to put my trust in God, then he is immediately identified with Christ and separated from that old nature. And so he knows, like we're saying, but there are obviously people that know, but they choose not to believe.

And I think the will and the choice that they chapter 19, probably 22 or 23, they're pretty clear about man is without excuses. He knows God. And that's a defiance. I will not forgive, period. I was just going to say that Art brought up Craig Silverman. I know Craig. when he was city attorney.

And I get the general impression that other than law matters, he has no real strong faith in anything. So he may be Jewish by my heritage, but I almost have a feeling that he's no more a practicing Jew than am I. I think we got our brain moving in the right direction, which is a good thing. So, as you look forward on the handout, it wouldn't be a bad exercise. Like I say, there's not a whole lot, there's actually no new information on there, to my knowledge.

So, it might be a decent exercise if you have some time this week to flip through the last few sections here and just kind of think over and mull over why it's important for us to understand that as we go into biblical counseling and why that's so important for us. That being said, Vern has a few words to share with us about papers and where they go, I think. Thanks for the foundation here for our next section. We've got a transition and I just want to help us keep our sliders and paperwork in order.

What you'll find up here is not only today's handout, but a page index. So you have in your binder, we gave you initially a schedule and preliminary table of contents. What this has is the page numbers in it and a listing of the 11 appendix items. So you have that. And essentially then this serves as a book on biblical anthropology. You've got an index with the page numbers and a listing of the 11 appendix items.

Following that, you've got page numbers one through, I think it's 41 or something of that sort, in the whole stack, and then a yellow sheet, and then after that, the 11 appendix items in order. If you're missing any of that, what I suggest is take your binder, so we know what you're missing, okay? Take your binder, and you can see Sue or Nancy, and either one would be glad to help you fill in whatever you might be missing. Because what we'd like you to have is a whole set with this, today's index and table of contents sheet at the front. You're 1 through 41 of the main set of material and the 11 items of the appendix, okay?

What we will do, since next Sunday we're starting in biblical counseling, we'll give you a divider that will go between these and we'll kind of start over in the biblical counseling. That will have its own Hopefully I have this complete and see to Nancy if we need to complete that. And then we'll start over next week and have a similar kind of arrangement. Index in the front with the book of course and material. But we're going to go six months instead of just three months. So there's going to be quite a bit more material to follow. Questions? Confusions?

Heavenly Father, we praise You and thank You for the opportunity to come together and look at Your Word. Lord, thank You for the study that we're closing on everything that You've told us about who and what we are. We praise You that You've made it clear. not left us to our own wonderings and figurines and confusion, Lord, but you have spoken truth into this world and spoken truth into our understanding and our misunderstanding. Lord, we thank you that we have your word and that we can count on it to be true. Lord, also we pray that in all things you would be Yet conforming us to the image of your son as we behold him through his word, make us more adequate tools in your hand to spur one another on towards beholding your son. In Jesus' name, amen.