Dennis Tuuri

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. We’re going to read the entire address of Paul to the Ephesian elders, but I want to particularly focus on verse 31 in the sermon today. This will be the third and final talk on Paul’s address to the Ephesian elders, and we’ll focus upon the warning of Paul in this text and the application of it to our lives. And if you listen carefully you will find out the relevance of this text to what we’ve just sang—the music and phrasing that we just sang in Psalm 2.

Okay. Acts 20, verses 18 and following.

And when they—that is, the Ephesian elders—were come to him, he said unto them, “Ye know from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been with you at all seasons, serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears and temptations which befell me by the lying ways of the Jews, and how I kept nothing back that was profitable unto you, but have showed you and have taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance towards God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there, save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But none of these things move me, neither I count my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.

Now, behold, I know that ye are all among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, that all of you shall see my face no more. Wherefore I take you to record this day that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them. Therefore, watch and remember that by the space of three years, I cease not to warn everyone night and day with tears. And now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.

I have coveted no man’s silver or gold or apparel. Yet, ye yourselves know that these hands have ministered unto my necessities and to them that were with me. I have showed you all things, how that so laboring you ought to support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said it is more blessed to give than to receive. And when he had thus spoken, he kneeled down and prayed with them all.

And they all wept sore and fell on Paul’s neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake—that they should see his face no more. And they accompanied him unto the ship.

We thank God for his word. Nicer than Jesus. That’s the words that Dennis Peacock has used to describe what Christians think they should be like in this day and age. Nicer than Jesus. Praise God that Paul wasn’t nice.

Praise God that a man named Farel wasn’t nicer than Jesus as well. Back I believe in 1536 or somewhere in that period of time, John Calvin was traveling in the area of Geneva and Mr. Farel met with him and pleaded with him to come to Geneva to work on the Reformation that was budding there. It’s my understanding of the chronology that it was several months before this that Geneva actually had taken a vote and in council determined to follow the Protestant Reformation—the truths of the scriptures in how they lived as well as how they worshiped.

And we have a flyer. There are some typographical errors in it still. I just did it yesterday. Please be gracious in your reading of that flyer. But we do have a flyer in the foyer outside about the Genevan conference that we’re holding. Geneva was important for the development of political liberty as well as the correct understanding of the scriptures as they relate to worship and our personal lives as well. Farel wasn’t nicer than Jesus.

Farel told Calvin that God would curse his work if he didn’t come to Geneva. He uttered strong implications based on the scriptures to John Calvin. We would say in the words of Jay Adams that Farel approached Calvin nouthetically. We’ll talk about that today. And my hope and prayer is that we will once more strengthen ourselves that we do not fall into the sin and heresy of those who believe we should be nicer than Jesus.

When was the last time you approached—warning, admonishing someone about a personal fault in their life? Think in your mind of someone outside your family, let’s say, somebody within the body of Christ—maybe an elder, maybe a deacon, maybe a fellow parishioner—that you see difficulties in their lives. When was the last time you approached him? Are you trying to be nicer than Jesus? Or are you more afraid of men than you are of God?

If you come up short in the answer to your question relative to how much you’ve engaged in warning other believers about sins that are troubling them, then those may be some of the reasons I want us to look today specifically in the context of Paul’s farewell address to the Ephesian elders—his deathbed speech, so to speak. He said, “I’m going; I might die. I don’t know. I’m going to Jerusalem.” He’s following the footsteps of the Savior.

We are involved in what a great portion of the Christian church sees as a Lenten period in approach to Resurrection Sunday—a contemplation of the passion of the Lord Jesus Christ and his entrance into Jerusalem and his suffering on the cross for the sins of the elect. It is a proper time to be considering Paul walking as a disciple in the master’s footsteps, perhaps to certain difficulties in Jerusalem and maybe to his death—certainly his symbolic death.

And we will see Paul go to Jerusalem and go through the same court system that his master, the Lord Jesus, did. This is a passion of the Apostle Paul as he presents a final gospel witness to Jerusalem before the destruction of that city by God for their spurning the second offer of the gospel in the book of Acts. So Paul is involved in a passion trek toward Jerusalem. And as he goes, he has a last supper with the Ephesian elders.

And as I said, Matthew Henry and other commentators think it may be the twelve that were saved at Ephesus and received the Holy Spirit with demonstrable evidences. A new Israel has been created on the basis of the preaching of the gospel. The old Israel has been judged and is about to be destroyed. And God has established a new body of Christ in Israel—a new Israel. And Paul meets for his last supper, so to speak.

And right at the very heart of this is his commending them to God. Of course, that’s the focal point of what he does. And he ends with a final postscript relative to covetousness. But the conclusion is verse 32: “I commend you to God and the word of his grace.”

And what is the last thing he says before he commends them to God? He tells them in verse 31: “Here it is, folks.” He says, “Now here it is. Here comes the point. You must apply and apply diligently. And what is it? Therefore—on the basis of everything I’ve said—watch, watch, be watchful. What did the Lord Jesus Christ tell his disciples over and over? Watch. Be attentive to what is going on around you. Do not sleep. This world will want you to sleep. And if you fall asleep in the context of your Christian life, thieves will enter in and destroy.

Our Savior told us that over and over. If your porters don’t keep watching the vineyard and the house that the Lord Jesus has assigned to them, then thieves break in and destroy. And then also the Lord Jesus breaks in and he comes in a day when we know not with judgment. We know this day. We know the day of the Lord is the day he comes to meet with us in judgment. But we know that the day of the Lord is not restricted to this one day out of seven.

You may have a day of the Lord awaiting you this very week when the Lord Jesus comes with incredible circumstances and difficulties in your life. And I pray to God that you will do what these men were supposed to do—to watch in your lives that he not find you asleep, therefore drifted away in the spirit of the age.

Watch and remember now that by the space of three years, three years, we’re coming to a resurrection for Paul. And by the space of three years, I ceased not to warn everyone night and day with tears. And now I commend you. So what did he tell him to do? To watch and then follow his example of warning each other.

Everyone. I ceased not to warn everyone at all times, night and day, with tears. And the tears are important. We’ll talk about that in the context here. What do we see about warning in the scriptures? This word that is translated warning in verse 31.

We see the context of Paul’s address to the Ephesians in the context of the rest of the scriptures. We see a lot of indications here about what warning is, the component elements of it, and its relevance to us today. We see first of all its centrality in instruction to the overseers. As I said, Paul is giving his farewell sermon here to overseers. He calls them presbyters, but he also calls them bishops, which just means overseers.

That is application because you all are overseers as well. You have your own life to oversee. And if you’re married and have children, you’ve got children over which you are overseers, and if you have responsibilities at work you have overseeing responsibilities there. But Paul in his oversight capacity said that this was central to what he did. Now, he’d already told them that his manner was important. He had a service to the Lord in his mannerism. He had a humility of mind and he had a perseverance through trials—that even if he cried, if things were that difficult, he would persevere in doing what was right, just as the Savior persevered in the garden of Gethsemane, sweating, as it were, drops of blood. He told them of his mannerisms.

He’s told them specific elements of his ministry. He told them that he preached to them. He showed them. He proclaimed them. He told them he taught them. He comes along with intellectual knowledge to them. And he told them he testified to them. He attested to the Lord Jesus Christ judicially. And the attestation of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is an attestation of his judgment in the present day situation.

And part of our job, one to the other, is a testing toward the sure results of obedience and disobedience—placing in front of people blessings and cursings. So if you keep, take left turns here away from the word of God, there is an endpoint here—there’s judgment. But if you take right turns and there’s blessings from God, and I can attest to that because that’s the outplaying of the resurrection of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

He told them all about that. He said he’s preached the gospel to them, of course—the gospel of grace. He testified to them and he exhorted them then about two things, right? Repentance—not just legal repentance, in Matthew in Lester’s dictionary, 1820 dictionary terms, not just repentance because of the effects, but repentance toward God because of our offense of him—and faith, not just hoping and praying that things will work out, but a sure grounded faith to the Lord Jesus Christ. And faith to the Lord Jesus Christ in his word is necessary to guide us all and our children into repentance that is evangelical—that is, that is focused to God first.

So he’s told him all that. He’s told him he’s preached the kingdom here. And at the conclusion of his message, he says the summation of his ministry was that he warned everyone day and night with tears. And he commends these Ephesian elders that they might do this very thing. It is central to his instruction to the overseers, telling them to warn everyone as he did.

Second, we see its relevance to kingdom growth. The Apostle Paul has said he’s gone among them preaching the gospel of the kingdom. How does the kingdom grow? Well, you know, people want to say that we think the kingdom grows through political action or something, and we don’t believe that. The kingdom grows through the preaching of the gospel. We want to state that very forthrightly over and over: that’s the way the kingdom grows. But it grows by more than that.

Repentance toward God is the initial saving repentance God grants us. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is entrance into the kingdom. But the kingdom is a way of life, and the manifestation of the kingdom on earth—in this church, for instance, in your home, in your business, in this community—comes about as a result of people growing in sanctification. The kingdom becomes manifest as we mature in the kingdom.

The kingdom is a king and a people and a law and a place. It’s what it is. That’s what a kingdom is. You got a king. You got people who live under the orders of the king. The king has a word that they must follow, and they have a place where all that occurs. And our place is the earth. The king is the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re the members of the kingdom, and he has a law. And the kingdom becomes more and more manifest as we conform ourselves to that law.

And the scriptures say the way we conform ourselves to that law is not in isolation from each other. It’s in communion. It’s in community. It’s in binding together. It’s in covenantal love and faithfulness to each other. And the context of that is supposed to involve a great deal, according to Paul, of warning.

Warning. So warning has a great relevance to the kingdom of God. Warning is critical here.

Third, warning and its intended pervasiveness in the life of the Christian. And here we begin to turn to some more texts. I already talked about the Apostle Paul, the Ephesian elders, the kingdom that he was preaching, etc. But look at these texts now that indicate to us the importance of warning in the life of the Christian.

First, Colossians 3:18. Turn in your Bibles to Colossians 3:18. Actually. Okay. Well, let’s see. Let’s start with Colossians 1:28. Sorry, I dropped my notes up here in case you didn’t catch that just when I first came up. They’re a little bit out of order. We’ll be okay, though.

Colossians 1:28. And I’m going to read this in a translation that’s been kind of used and transliterated by Jay Adams. And let me just get that part of the outline out of the way before we go to some of these scriptures. You’ll notice on the outline under Roman numeral II, D, it’s translation of the scriptures. The word that’s translated warning here is translated in various ways in different scriptures: admonish, warn, teach, put sense into—it’s more of a literal sort of translation—to put, call mind, call the mind to counsel is another way that it’s used. And that’s some of the ways it’s translated.

But Jay Adams has noted that all these terms really fall short of the full meaning of the particular Greek word here, noutheo. If you could translate them this way, you got to translate it some way, I suppose. But what Jay Adams likes to do, because the word has so much content to it that these English words don’t have—you’ll notice the next point of the outline, point E, is his transliteration. Big word. All it means is you take the Greek word nous and instead of translating it totally into a different English word, you bring it over into English as that word itself.

Baptism is another sort of word like that. You know, it was baptizo in the Greek, became baptism. It’s just transliterated. And that’s one of the difficulties because, you know, the Baptist claim, well, it should always been translated immerse. And of course, that’s foolish because it couldn’t possibly be that way in the scriptures. But it’s the other idea of transliteration. So it just means that Jay Adams says, well, this word has a lot of content to it, and if all we do is translate it as warn or counsel or admonish, we’re not going to get that content. So let’s transliterate it and let’s then think holistically about that term as it’s used in the scriptures.

That’s what we’re going to try to do today and show you the content of this word that’s translated warning and the message of Paul to the Ephesian elders. So we’re going to transliterate it. We’re going to let Mr. Adams’ particular transliteration and translation of these verses be our guides. We’ll read them primarily. And let me just say here as well that much of the content of this outline is simply an outlining of a chapter in a book by Jay Adams called Competent to Counsel that was written quite a long time ago.

So what I’m going to try to do here is just stop here in this passage and say this seemed to be real important to Paul, real important to us, and let’s then do kind of a biblical study of what this term means if it’s so important on Paul’s deathbed, so to speak. He wanted to pass on their importance in doing this. Let’s take it and apply it to our lives.

Okay. So you’re in Colossians 1:28. Right. Colossians 1:28. This is Mr. Adams’ translation. “We proclaim him, confronting every man nouthetically, and teaching every man with all wisdom in order that we may present every man complete in Christ.”

Like you, see a couple of things here in passing points we’ve already made. He’s proclaiming the Lord Jesus Christ, the king—proclamation of the king, which means talking about his kingdom here. And what’s central to the proclamation? We can proclaim him, confronting every man nouthetically. Again, the relevance of this principle, this truth, this action to the kingdom of God. And who does he confront nouthetically? Every man. See, not restricted just a few people. Every man.

We confront every man in Christ. By the way, in your outline there, I have the phrase pastor pastorum in the Reformation that we’ve been talking about. And that, by the way, is the relevance of the Geneva psalm. We sang Psalm 2. Remember I said you’d see the relevance? Well, it was Farel’s warning to Calvin that brought him there. And as the Reformation proceeded, they produced a complete psalter. And the Psalm 2 version we sang and the other psalm we sang this morning came from the Genevan Psalter produced in Geneva after this great event we’re commemorating here at Reformation Covenant Church in May occurred.

So this is great, you know, it’s all wrapped together in a piece here. We’re moving through up to Resurrection Sunday with the Lenten walk of the Apostle Paul, our meditation on his last supper, so to speak, with the Ephesian elders, by way of application, our Savior’s last supper with the apostles. We’re moving through Resurrection Sunday, marching into May with the effects of the resurrection being played out historically in Geneva.

Remembering all that, bringing it together. And at the context of all this, I want us to think today about warning.

So pastor pastorum was a phrase that began to be used by the Reformers. You know, one of the great truths of the Reformation that was reawakened in the church of God was the priesthood of all believers. Priesthood of all believers. And pastor pastorum was referred to ministers. They were referred to as pastors over pastors—shepherds over shepherds—because every man, particularly householders, of course, are shepherds. And so I’m a shepherd. Elder Mayar is a shepherd, but we’re pastors, we’re shepherds over you guys that are shepherds to your flocks. And you can apply it in a more metaphorical sense to your own life if you pastor yourself as a sheep of Christ as well.

And so pastor pastorum—all this warning that goes on must have relevance not simply to the ministers, but it is the responsibility of all believers. That is spelled out a little more distinctly in Colossians 3:16, which you now turn to, please.

Colossians 3:16. And now remember, Colossians is not some pastoral epistle. He’s not writing to the pastors here. He’s writing to the church here in Colossians 3:16. And what does he tell them? He tells them this: “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you. So you got the word of Christ richly dwelling in you with all wisdom, teaching and confronting one another.”

The Apostle Paul writes to the Colossians and he tells them that you in the pew, each member of the congregation, is to let the word of Christ dwell in you richly and with all wisdom you’re to teach and confront one another. Do this thing that Paul did, warning the Ephesian elders, encouraging them to warn those in their care.

Romans 15:14 says the same thing. Turn to Romans 15:14. There are about eleven verses in the New Testament where this word is used. You’re going to get pretty well all of them in the context of the sermon.

Romans 15:14. “Concerning you, my brethren, see, he’s talking to all the church here. I myself also am convinced that you are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able also to confront one another nouthetically, to warn, to admonish—whatever you’re going to use, we’re transliterating it here. J. Adams.”

So Colossians 3:16 and Romans 15:14 says that the pervasiveness of warning is not simply in the life of the ministers. It is to be a pervasive reality in the life of all believers. So certainly Paul here applies it to himself and to the Ephesian elders. But doing much more than that, he says that this is to be pervasive with all believers.

Now let’s talk a little bit. And since it’s important, since I’m supposed to do it, Elder Mayhem is supposed to do it, you’re supposed to do it to one another. And we’ll see in a few texts a little later on that you’re also supposed to do it as parents, to your children. You know, where it says “raising up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” The word admonition is counseling, if you want to transliterate it—nouthetically confronting your children in the nurture as part—is what admonition is there in the context of the instructions.

And what is it then? Let’s look at its component elements.

First of all, nouthetic confrontation assumes a problem. It assumes a problem. It assumes a difficulty in the life of the one being approached.

Now there was a man named Hermann Cramer who wrote a biblio-theological lexicon of New Testament Greek, and he did an analysis of the Greek word. Another analysis is found in a book called the Theological Dictionary of New Testament Words or the New Testament, rather. And I’m going to give you a little bit of this. And the point is they use these Greek words. Well, how are these words used in the culture of the day so we can understand how to understand this word as Paul used it?

And Cramer wrote that nouthetic, or nous, always implies a problem and presupposes an obstacle that must be overcome. Something is wrong in the life of the one who is confronted. And now quoting directly from this man, “Some degree of opposition has been encountered, and one wishes to subdue it or to remove it, not by punishment but rather by influencing the person.”

The mind, actually nous, is a combined terminology. The first word actually refers to the mind. And so, unlike teaching—didasco—teaching in the scriptures is simply a transference of intellectual knowledge to a person. Now in the scriptures knowledge always brings responsibility, but instruction when you instruct your kids in Bible or math, whatever it is, it doesn’t assume a problem. Didasco, teaching, instruction—it simply assumes a person has an absence of knowledge that we’re trying to fill up.

Unlike that, however, the particular word that’s used here that we’re supposed to do with each other all the time—it assumes a problem, a difficulty, an obstacle that’s getting in the way of the person. So this obstacle must be overcome. And to that end, then the purpose, as Mr. Adams writes, the purpose of nouthetic confrontation is to affect personality and behavioral change. It assumes a problem. It wants to change the problem. Okay?

And that’s what the word means.

Secondly, nouthetic confrontation, this kind of particular kind of dialogue, is verbally delivered. It is dialogue. It’s not chastisement. It’s not spanking. It’s not punishment. It is verbal involvement. So the first component is there’s a problem. The second component is there’s a verbal use on the part of the person that’s dealing with the other person to try to take care of the problem.

It is training, not by act or by punishment or by chastisement, which is what other Greek words can be used to train our children—paideia in the New Testament. The basis—remember that term pedagogic—that’s in your outline. I’ve explained that—comes from paideia. Originally that has the idea of instruction, but in the Bible instruction of children is always loaded with the additional freight of chastisement and discipline as well. And so God chastises us. But that’s not what this is when we talk about this particular thing going on here. It is verbal instruction. It is a verbal means to call people to mind of some area of sin in their life, bring the scriptures to bear on that sin.

And so the verbalness of it is very important. Trench, another authority in English of the Greek words, says that it always has the sense—this term does, what we’re talking about here, warning. It always has the sense of “admonishing with blame.” And finally, Trench says the idea of rebuke is affirmed by the derivation from the words that are used to make up this word. These words indicate that “whatever is needed to cause the admonition to be taken home, to be laid to heart, is involved in the word.”

So to the concept of confront must be added the dimension of person-to-person verbal confrontation. We’ve talked about dialogue and reflection in this church. But this isn’t neutral dialogue. This is dialogue with someone else—whether it’s your child, your elder, your deacon, fellow parishioner—that you see a problem with. It’s dialogue to meet a particular problem. So it has this confrontation context to it. That’s why in Acts chapter 20, it’s translated to warn because it has this freight of “there’s an obstacle to overcome” and verbal confrontation is the means to do it.

And so when you’re thinking of this and applying it, this is what you got to do. You got to engage verbally with words. And I have a little thing on your outline there: why versus what. We’ll see later an example of the scriptures where a man seemed to engage with his children using the term why quite a bit. And there’s indications that probably is not a very good way to do things. In other words, when you come alongside either your child or someone else who’s sinning, if your speech is primarily in the context of doing this filled with whys—”Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that?”—it really isn’t to the mark.

You want to bring people to what they’re doing, not so much why they’re doing it. If it’s sin, it’s to be repented of. And you know, if you’ve sinned, think of the last sin you’ve committed that you can. God brings to your mind. You know why you did it. There are always lots of good reasons as to why you sinned. And you know, I’ve had a little bit of experience in working with people with problems and trying to do a little bit of counseling with them. And what you’ll have if you get into this why situation, you’ll spend a long time with a person, essentially—maybe not trying to, but justifying their actions—because you get them thinking about why they ended up doing the sin, and they start going back to the temptation or the difficulties and they can start to blame that again.

What you want to ask him is: What have you done? Does it conform to scripture? And what must you need to do to change? Not the whys so much but the what. You know, this—if you have children and worked with them very much—you know that why is not usually the word you want to use. Now you do want to occasionally, you know, get to the root of something. You may have to ask questions involving why. But what I’m saying here is that as we consider that this is verbal intercourse correcting a problem, bringing somebody with a correction to mind in this dialogue, that why should not be the essential content of the speech, but rather what—point them to actions because God is concerned about our actions.

Okay.

And the third element of this is quite important because if all you have is what we have so far, you missed the point. You’re going to go away and next time you see somebody in the church sin, you’re going to say, “Why, you terrible person? I know what you’re doing now. You better change right now. Boy, I’m real mad at you.” But this third element of nouthetic counseling, admonishing, warning—whatever you want to call it—is that this is involved in by those deeply, covenantally, lovingly involved with the people.

What did the Apostle Paul say? “I cease not to warn everyone day and night with tears.” Tears. See, why was he crying? Well, you know, the particular culture, the Hebrew culture of that time, people were very demonstrative with their emotions. It’s a little different than we are today. You don’t see men cry very much, I think, you did. And I’m not saying here that everybody should be crying when you talk to your children or your fellow brother or sister in the Lord.

But what it does lie very clearly is that Paul was emotionally involved with the people he was talking and confronting and warning. He cared about them, right? He was covenantally bound together with them in a local church. You know, Paul was a good churchman. He was in Antioch, indications are for maybe as much as fourteen years as a member of a church before he took off on his missionary journeys. And here at Ephesus, he’s there three years. He’s covenantally linked to the context of that congregation.

And we talk about covenant in this church a lot. We think of it in legal terminology, which is very important. But it’s more than legal terminology. It is, in its best sense, a bond between people—a bond, emotional bond. That’s why it’s hard for people to leave here because we’ve been effective in covenanting together and in bonding together. And that isn’t a bad thing. People think those are cults today. “Cults—the only ones who get close to each other anymore. Church people just occupy the same pew next to each other. There’s no covenantal bonding in the church.” So if you’ve got covenantal bonding going on, you must be some kind of cult or something. You know, it’s the way people think today. Shows how screwed up the church is today.

The church is about covenantal commitment. It’s about deep personal commitment one to the other. It’s about loving each other. And when we talk about your responsibilities and mine to do nouthetically work with one another, to confront each other verbally over a particular obstacle in one’s life, it must be with a sense of covenantal loving involvement.

And this—I got a lot of scriptures here. You can look them up later perhaps. But remember that Paul did this with tears. And that should be your attitude when you talk to your children. You know, the end result of disciplining our children is not to make a better life for us. It’s not to make it easier for us. We don’t—you know, if every time you talk to your children about a particular problem in their life, it’s because it gets in the way of your personal comfort or personal peace and affluence or what you want to accomplish in life, you, we’re way off the mark.

And of course, a lot of us do that. I do that all the time. Sin. Got to turn away from that because God wants us to do things for his glory. And he says that he is glorified when you love the person you’re dealing with. And we’ll see in a couple minutes here, the very motivation is to present, as we read earlier in the scriptures, present men complete in Christ, but to bring about love in their life.

See, so the reason we work with each other shouldn’t be because you get ticked off by some somebody does and it hurts you. That’s not the idea here. Shouldn’t be personal offense. Shouldn’t be personal irritation. Shouldn’t be because you’re inconvenienced. It should be because you’re covenantally committed to that person to help them come to maturity in the Lord Jesus Christ and to help them demonstrate love. That’s what it’s all about.

1 Corinthians 4:14. “I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons, I warn you. You nouthetically confront you as my beloved sons. See, why do you confront your children? Is it to shame them? Well, it shouldn’t be. Jesus says it should be. Paul says, Jesus says through him, it should be as beloved sons is the way we warn one another or nouthetically approach each other.”

2 Thessalonians 3:15. “Don’t count him as an enemy, but admonish him, confront him as a brother, not as an enemy. See, don’t treat each other like pagans who treat each other with that love, covenantal commitment and bond. And that should be the third component element of this warning.”

You know, this is really a contradiction to what you’ll find in most Christian counseling centers today, because most of them have taken up a good deal of this—I almost called him a dog. You know, I was reading Calvin’s commentary on Acts and he talks about that Spanish dog, Servetus. Servetus was a heretic who denied, who said that all men have divinity and that’s one reason why Christ has divinity. And Servetus was eventually executed at Geneva. Calvin referred to him as “that Spanish dog.”

And I almost called Freud a dog. I suppose that, you know, that is misinterpreted today. But the scriptures do use such language about people that reject God and then go on to great hurt in people’s lives. And Freud is the basis of modern psychiatry and counseling, of course. And Freud, his whole thing was the exact opposite of what we’re talking here. He said that ideally the analyst, “as nearly as it is possible must be a blank to the patient.” Freud said he should be a faceless mirror—essentially silent as a human being. You got to be blank to the person you’re trying to help overcome problems.

And I thought about that. I thought, you know, well, why Freud thought that was, was that God was a blank to him. He had no relationship with God. He wasn’t elect. He didn’t—he was a moral rebel against God. And he didn’t see God’s face of love shining as God dealt with him. The heavens were brass to him. He had a faceless mirror over his head. And so that’s the way counseling has developed in this country. And Christian counselors are the same. But Paul says, “Hey, if you’re going to work with somebody, if you’re going to try to help them overcome a problem, and you’re going to bring verbal instruction to their life, whether it’s your child or a friend or brother in the church, a sister in the church, get involved. Cry with them if need be. See, be moved with compassion for the people you’re ministering in the context of—very important concept here.”

The thought of nouthetic—and I’m quoting from Jay Adams. No, this is Cramer, actually, again, talking about the original terminology of the word. “Its functional idea is the well-intentioned seriousness with which one would influence the mind and disposition of another by advice, admonition, warning, putting right according to circumstances.” And Adams goes on to say, “The thought of punishment, even in the idea of disciplinary punishment, is not contemplated in the concept of nouthetic confrontation.”

Now Adams says that there are other elements—I mentioned paideia there—there are other things in terms of our children, each other where our children, that is, the chastisement is a part of it. We’re not saying that it shouldn’t be, but we are saying that the essential element of nouthetically confronting each other and our children to make them perfect in Christ, the most that should be going on is not the idea of punishment. It is this verbal confrontation nouthetically, going to them with their well-being in mind and bringing verbal instruction, warning, admonishment to them.

Now we can quote a lot of other scriptures. Ephesians 6:4: “You fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and nouthetic confrontation—admonition of the Lord.”

2 Corinthians 11:29 shows Paul’s empathy with the congregation. “Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is offended? And I burn not. See, he was so identified with the congregation, and we should be so identified with our children, with each other, that we see that we’re weak when the other person is weak. We have that much involvement with each other.”

John wrote in his third epistle, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” You know, he wasn’t talking about his physical children. He was talking about the congregation of people that he had or the different groups of people he’d worked with. They should be as dear to us as children, and our should be our great joy is what we’re aiming for—to get them to walk in conformity to the truth.

1 Thessalonians 2:7. “We were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls because you were dear unto us. And that’s what Paul is saying with that covetous thing: it’s more blessed to give than to receive. And my warnings were in the context, he says, of my laying down my life, my rights as an apostle, everything else so that you might be bettered through this nouthetic confrontation.”

Galatians 4:19. “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.” That’s the way Paul addressed those that he worked with.

And so nouthetic confrontation implies a difficulty, a problem, a sin in the life of the person we’re working with. It has, as its second component, verbal instruction—verbal confrontation, words based upon scripture—about that difficulty. And all this happens in the context of a deep, loving, committed, covenantal, bonded relationship, whether it’s in the family or in the church.

Okay? And then finally, or not finally, but secondly next point is that the goal of all this is love.

1 Timothy 1:5. “The end of our commandment is charity—love—out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of a faith unfeigned love. And this means that—he’s not talking here I don’t think in that passage—that’s his motivation. His motivation is love for the brethren and love for Jesus Christ. But what he’s saying is the end of our instruction is love in you. So that the end result of nouthetically working with someone is to make them more loving.”

What is love? Love is the fulfilling of the commandment. Love is doing what’s right and being loving to show faithfulness to each other in the context of a bonded relationship—the context of a covenant. And that happens when sin gets in the way of that. Sin in the person we’re dealing with is an obstacle to their love. And so the end result of nouthetic counsel is making men perfect in Christ, maturing them, and causing them to grow in love.

Adams said that “God’s authoritative instruction through the ministry of his word, spoken publicly from the pulpit or privately, house to house as Paul said, is the Holy Spirit’s means of producing love in the believer. Love is the goal of all this. This is what’s supposed to happen if we’re doing this correctly.”

Again, to quote Adams, “Love will bloom as counselors focus their attention upon purification of the heart, the clearing of the conscience, and the building of genuine trust in our sin. He points out, we want to run and hide from God. We want to absent ourselves from each other. Demonstrations of love coming from each other. And so sin gets in the way of love. It results in blameshifting and excuses and an attempting to run and hide from God. Instead, this nouthetic confrontation stresses to people the need to turn toward Christ and therefore to move toward a life marked by love, the blossoming of love as these things that get in the way of love are removed from the life through the confrontation.”

One of the requirements of nouthetic counselors, then—well, okay, Dennis, you told us how important this is, the ministry of Paul, how important it is in the context of the church. You told us how important it is for the growth of the kingdom. You’ve told us a little bit about what it means—obstacles, verbal instruction in the context of a loving body relationship—for the purpose that the other person might exhibit a life of love marked by more of an obedience to scripture and a covenantal faithfulness to each other. All that’s true. So what’s required now? I’m going to just go out and do this. Well, the scriptures do say a couple of things are required.

Romans 15:14 says that I’ve read this earlier, but listen to this. “I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren. He says he’s going to say, you’re able to nouthetically confront one another. But why is that true? Because he says, you are full of goodness and filled with all knowledge.”

And that really is a reiteration of what we’ve said in terms of the goal of the nouthetic confrontation. You want to be filled with goodness. Your attitude toward the person you’re working with should be one of goodness. And you must be filled with all knowledge and understanding of the scriptures to be able to bring along the instruction that they need to hear. If you’re going to confront the problem, help them to come to repentance for sin, and show them the right path, you’ve got to be filled with knowledge. That’s knowledge of the word of God. So it means you have to understand the scriptures. Got to be filled with knowledge. You got to be filled with goodness.

Goodness relating to the people you work in the context of. And then finally, you must also have wisdom—wisdom. The scriptures tell us in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.” Remember, we read this earlier too. “Teaching and nouthetically confronting one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”

So we have goodness, we have knowledge, and we have wisdom—is the requirements. And Proverbs 1:1-7 gives us a picture of what wisdom is contained. What is contained in wisdom? Jay Adams has a nice summary definition of wisdom: “Wisdom is the skillful use of divine truth for God’s glory.”

The skillful use of divine truth for God’s glory. Wisdom. We pray that we would have that wisdom toward each other. That we would know God’s word. We would want to accomplish in a confrontive dialogue with each other for God’s glory and for the well-being of the ones that we work in the context of. And that is a picture of wisdom.

Now the scriptures say that the things of the word of God are written for our admonition. You remember we read that in 1 Corinthians 10:11. “All these things happened to them for examples and they were written for our admonition—our nouthetic confrontation. Same word here.” And so let me bring you an example from scripture in terms of an illustration of how this was not done in the life of a man in the Old Testament and the end result of disaster for himself and also for the kingdom.

Turn to 1 Samuel 2:22. You want to follow along, you don’t have to. If you want to, you can. This is the story of Eli and his sons. You know, it’s an interesting thing. I, you know, we’re hoping to have Doug Kelly in May as one of our speakers. Years ago, I heard a tape by Mr. Kelly on “God Does a New Thing in the Nation,” and it was on Samuel’s calling. You know, it was a very unusual thing that happened there because Eli, of course, was a priest and the priests were of the physical descendants from Levi. That was the Levitical order, the ironic priesthood. It was an inherited thing.

And so when Samuel goes to live, adopted as it were by Eli, we have a very unusual thing going on there. God does a new thing in Israel. And you know, you remember the story of Levi. If you’ve been around, I’ve talked about this and you’ve heard me talk about it. You read it in your scriptures. Levi and one of his other brothers did a terrible thing. They used God’s sign of the covenant—circumcision—to wage war against a group of men.

And in one of the deathbed scenes from the scriptures, the description of Levi and his son is that these guys are terrible guys and consumed with anger. They don’t do things right. They’re going to be cursed by God as a result. They’re not going to have any land in the promised land. And that came to be. Levi, though, was turned that curse into a blessing. The Levitical order did. And you remember Levi then became the special priests to God—servants.