I want you to try to imagine with me that we go back in time now some 10 or 12 years, and imagine trying to understand the following conversation. Here you are, it's 1991, let us say, and I tell you that I just got an email from an old friend that I've contacted while surfing the net, and that if you'd like to, I will gladly transfer all of this information to your PDA. I think you would look upon me as though I had lost my mind. Now, most of you are able to understand what I just said, but that is because, through the process of time, we have become accustomed to hearing about email and surfing the internet and PDAs and gigahertz and megabytes and hard drives and all of the rest, so that such language is actually normal for us now. Let me give you another illustration. Let's imagine now that we go back some 15 or 20 years and I come to you and I'm looking a little bit despondent. And I tell you that the reason for my despondency is because I realized that I come from a dysfunctional family. and that from that experience I had developed codependent tendencies, and in spite of seeking to gain psychological closure, I had found that many were acting as my enablers, playing off my Type A personality. If I had said that to you 20 years ago, again, you would have looked at me as though I had come from another planet. But most all of us, if not all of us, are able to follow something of the line of reasoning that I have just said, Because we have heard these expressions and some of us have used these expressions to try to understand who and what we are in this day and age. As I am asserting, this language that I have just used is commonplace and not merely commonplace in the world, but commonplace in the church of Jesus Christ. It has become a part of our everyday language and many, if not most, in our nation regard such things as being clinical scientific truth. But we have seen that we as God's people need to be challenged in our thinking, not merely being pressed into the mold of the age in which we live, but that we are to step back and to evaluate such things in the light of the Word of God. And it has been my desire over the last several weeks to challenge us as a people in regard to the embrace of the modern church of psychology. And in order to do that, we've taken up again this brief study under the general title, The Bible and Psychology. In our first lesson some weeks ago, I sought to demonstrate from the Word of God that God has told us in His Word that He has given to us two glorious and effectual means to meet the deepest emotional and spiritual needs of his people and those means are the Word of God and the Church of God and our studies together last Lord's Day. We began by looking together at Paul's charge. to the Colossian church, and that charge was that they would hold fast to the truths that they had in Jesus. He was fearful for them that through sophistry they would begin to be led away from the truths which had established them and had built them up in their holy faith. He was concerned that the church would begin to follow the traditions of men, those things that came from the base elements of the world, or as he puts it in another place, cunningly devised fables of men. Now, this morning, I want us to consider together what is called the integration of psychology and Christianity, that which is often referred to as its own separate branch, that is, Christian psychology. Now, it might interest you to know that there really is no such thing as Christian psychology. There is Christianity, and there is no such thing as Christian plumbing. Christians are plumbers, but there's not Christian plumbing, right? You know, you can say I am a Christian plumber, but again, that doesn't mean there's Christian plumbing. There are Christians who are psychologists. There are Christians who are psychiatrists. That does not make psychiatry or psychology Christian as though it is this own separate branch. And again, to use this term very generously, of the sciences, that's psychology. And over there is Christian psychology, as though, again, it is a completely separate movement. Now, before we get into this, what I want to do, and really what I want to spend the bulk of our time doing this morning, is laying an exegetical foundation. And that exegetical foundation is going to be found in Psalm 1. And I do want to state that it is my desire over these weeks that we spend together looking at this subject to be exegetical in all of our studies. And I hope you've already realized that, that that's what we've been doing. We've been opening up the word of God and then applying the word of God rather than my spending this time just quoting all of these various sources and drawing conclusions from a general biblical consensus. I want us to see these things rooted in exegesis. Now, the Psalter begins here in Psalm one with this wonderful description of the one who is blessed by God. And you find it beginning with these words. Blessed is the man. And if you study that out in the book of Psalms, you'll find that there are eight occurrences of this particular phrase in the book of Psalms. You find, for instance, that the blessed man is described as that one to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity. The blessed man is that one who has tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and they have put their trust in him. The blessed man is that one that the Lord has chosen and allowed to approach Him. The blessed man is that one who finds his strength in God. Psalm 94 tells us that the blessed man is the man that God instructs. And then we read as well in Psalm 112, blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who delights greatly in His commandments. Now, each of those texts is really relevant to our study this morning, and we could take this time and very profitably open up those occurrences of the blessedness of man because, and I say it's relevant because, It could be argued that the whole point of psychology, whether we call it secular psychology, or again to use the phrase that is commonly used, Christian psychology, it can be argued that all of that is an attempt by men to bring about blessedness in other men. It is the hope that through this means men will achieve blessedness happiness, joy, settledness, peace and satisfaction. People, generally speaking, go into therapy because they are not happy, because they are confused, because they are unsettled. That is to say, they do not view themselves as blessed. It is the opposite of that sense of being blessed. And, as you can note in these passages, that true blessedness is a state that is brought into being by the grace of God in the soul of men. The Bible tells us how men and women and young people can achieve blessedness, and it is not found by the recovery of lost memories which have been repressed. It is not found by this violent therapy that is called rebirthing. It's not found in primal screams, but rather it is found in its essence in having peace with God to the cross of the Lord Jesus, having our sins forgiven and living in the strength of the living God. Now, having said that, we recognize that even men and women in that condition who know God do have struggles, do have deep problems, and do have things that we can find in the Word of God are in a state of brokenness, brokenheartedness. They can be in despair. All of those things are talked about even in reference to the child of God. But now, more to the point of our study this morning, I want us to consider together, at least at the beginning of this passage, the description of blessedness that is found here. Now, the psalmist begins by declaring that this certain one that he is about to describe is blessed. That is, again, they are victorious, they are to be congratulated, they are happy in the truest sense of that word. And in describing the one who is blessed, the Spirit of God describes him in two ways. He is described negatively and he is described positively. That is to say, The blessed man is seen in reference to what he does not do, as well as in reference to what he does do. Now, the first thing that is used to describe him is what he does not do. And what he does not do is that he does not allow certain people to influence his thinking or his actions. He does not allow certain influences into his life. He refuses them. He turns away from them. And in so doing, he is on the pathway of blessedness. Now, these influences that come upon him are described in three ways. And in many ways, the Spirit is telling us the same thing, simply from three different ways. It's not that we're going to have these rigid categories that over there is a sinner, and over there is a different category of the ungodly, while over there is a different category of somebody who is a scoffer. It is simply three different ways to describe the same individuals, and then this progress here of walking, standing, and sitting all speak together of influence, but there are some shades of differences which we will Now, consider. First of all, he states here that he is not going to allow his thinking to be shaped by these godless men. Now, we use the terminology often of worldview. What is your worldview? Do you have a secular worldview, or do you have a biblical worldview? Or again, to use the language of today, is there an overall principle by which you examine things? That you look at data? Are there glasses that you look through? Is there a grid that you process? information through, and is that grid, the grid that comes about by the revelation of a sovereign God, the recognition that we live in a world that is created by God, a world in which God is active, God is sovereign, God is king, God has spoken, God has given revelation. Do we live in a world like that, or do we live in a world that is governed by chance, a world that has come about through the mystery of chance happenings, so that life began to slowly evolve into what we see today, and everything is random and there's no use going about trying to understand it. If you have that mindset, You're going to interpret data one way. If you have the biblical mindset, you're going to interpret data in a completely different way. You're going to look at history. You're going to look at the sciences. You're going to look at humanity in a very different way, depending upon your worldview, our understanding of life, again, who we are, where we came from, where we're going, what is our purpose in life, what is the nature of the family, marriage, sexuality, the rearing of children, and a host of other areas can be shaped or will be shaped by one of these two primary views. Our view of these things can be shaped by men, who do not bow to special revelation. It can be shaped by men who refuse to acknowledge that God has spoken, who refuse to acknowledge that the Bible is the Word of God. And let me ask you a question. And let's just take these matters that I mentioned here, which are somewhat at random. But as you try to consider who we are, where we came from, where we're going, our purpose in life, the nature of the family, marriage, sexuality, and the rearing of children. Now, if you view that from an evolutionary viewpoint. Man A views it from an evolutionary viewpoint. Man B views it from a biblical viewpoint. How much do you think those two are going to have in common? How compatible are those worldviews? How much overlap? do you expect there is going to be? How much common ground do you think that there is going to be between the man or woman who looks at sexuality from the word of God and those who view it primarily as a result of so-called anthropological studies or genetic studies? How much overlap or common ground Or is there going to be? Will those without divine revelation simply discover God's truth? Because, as we all say, all truth is God's truth. Will they simply discover God's truth apart from revelation, just as they have discovered some of God's truths about the depths of the ocean or about chemical compounds and mathematical formulae? Is there a correlation between the study and discovery of these other elements of natural revelation and these that I have touched upon? Well, I think we already know that the answer in regard to overlap is that there will not be any. And why? And simply because it is impossible to understand man apart from special revelation. You can't do it. It's like trying to understand fish without water. It should take water out of it, take the ocean out of it. And let's try to think about all the things we can. You take it out of its element, you remove it from its context, and you are crippling yourself at the outset. I'm going to get to the text here. I tried to listen for a few minutes this past week to Michael Medved. If you don't know who Michael Medved is, Michael Medved is a conservative Jewish commentator on the radio, and he had the topic of his conversation, the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision allowing for homosexual marriage in the state of Massachusetts. And he had on there Somebody that was in support of homosexual marriage. And Michael Medved was trying to argue that it ought not to be. And poor Michael was losing miserably. Listen to what he had as his argument. This was his argument as to why there should not be homosexual marriage. Because there is no possibility of them having children. That was his argument. If that were the case, some of you aren't married. You don't have a legitimate marriage because God has not enabled you to have children. What a stupid argument. And he was boxing himself into that condition because he refused to start with, in the beginning, God made them male and female. And if you're going to try to just argue as the world argues, and if we can't start with Revelation, if we can't start with that there is a God, and that God has made us, and that God has spoken, and that that God tells us what marriage is, brethren, God help us. Because our Constitution is not going to protect us. The religious right is not going to protect us. And conservatives are not going to protect us if all of them are going to rely upon the reasoning of men and not on the revelation of God. When we try to argue, apart from revelation, we stand on the same slippery slope as the secularist, as the immoral, as the leftist, the communist, whatever else you want to go with. For Freud or Rogers or Jung or Spock to attempt to understand the human mind without acknowledging that man is a creature made in the image of God and that in the fall he is depraved in the totality of his humanity makes them doomed to failure at the outset. Their findings are based upon their presuppositions. The presupposition is that I am dealing here with a highly evolved animal who is the result of their genetics, chemicals, and environment living out their lives in a naturalistic closed universe. That's all of their observation is based upon that bias. And, brethren, that is not going to square with what the Bible says is man's problem and what the Bible says is man's solution. Now, here the psalmist describes these men coming from this secular mindset in three ways. He describes him, first of all, as ungodly. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. They are ungodly. This is the common Hebrew word for wicked. It describes somebody who is hostile to God, somebody who is opposed to God. They are those described in Psalm 10 and verse 4 as having God in none of their thoughts. Now, that doesn't mean necessarily that every time somebody mentions God that they are just furious that they can't stand Him. It's just that God is irrelevant to the discourse. And see, this is part of what we're taught all the time. God is irrelevant to science. You simple-minded people, you'll say, you have your little faith, which you can study there in your church buildings, but over here is science, and there are two separate things, and let's not try to put them together. You have your area of expertise, snicker snicker, and we have ours. Science and religion don't mix. Don't try to understand them together. See, God is irrelevant. When we're talking about psychology, God is irrelevant. We're talking about a highly evolved animal. We're talking about somebody who came about through time plus chance, and they're at this particular stage of their evolution, and that's how we need to understand it. God is outside of the realm of daily living. And the Word of God says, you want to know who a blessed man is? The blessed man is the man who doesn't allow people like that to influence their thinking. He doesn't walk in their counsel. He does not follow their advice. He doesn't look at somebody like that who says God is absolutely irrelevant to our understanding of man and says, well, you know, I bet you have a lot of things to teach me about man. I bet you have a lot to teach me about the source of my problems. And the Word of God says, no, blessed is the man who does not allow his heart and his mind and his affection to be shaped and molded by such men. Now, let me ask you. Are those who are the fathers of modern psychology hostile to God? All right. Am I being prejudiced in that? No. That is how they will describe themselves. They are unbelievers. They don't believe that there is a God. They don't believe that God has spoken. Now, the second description is that they are sinners. Well, of course, we say, right, we're all sinners. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Amen. Right. We're all sinners. Does that mean we don't listen to anybody? Well, no. The Bible uses the word sinner in a different way on numerous occasions, and that is that it is a way to describe those who are outside of a saving relation with God, that there are those who are sinners in contrast to those who are called the righteous. Now, we're often trained today to not view ourselves that way because it's viewed as being proud. Or whatever, right? And Christians, well, no, we're all sinners and we're not the righteous. Well, the Bible calls us, we are the righteous. If we're the children of God, let's think biblically, let's not be too politically correct and to assert what we are, what God says we are. The people of God are God's righteous people. Those who are outside of the righteousness of Christ are called sinners. That's what the Bible says. You see this, for instance, in 1 Peter 4, 18, where he talks about the judgment of God and he says this, if the righteous one is scarcely saved, where will the ungodly and the sinner appear? He's talking about the difference in judgment at the end of the age between the righteous and the sinner. Now, what is the response of the blessed man to one who is unconverted? And somebody who is unconverted, again, is without the light of the Gospel in their heart and in their mind. They are in that condition that the Bible describes as having their foolish heart darkened. They are, the Bible tells us, in their unconverted state at enmity with God. They are not subject to the law of God, and indeed they cannot be. And what is the response of the blessed man to such? Well, it says he doesn't stand in their way. And I think the way we can describe that in perhaps modern terminology is we are not settled into their position. We do not take our stand where they take their stand. We don't come to the place, and here they are, and they've arrived at it, apart from God, at enmity with God, hostile toward God, and they arrive at their position regarding the family, regarding man, regarding sexuality, regarding the rearing of children. And we don't say, well, you know what? They've come to such a good position, I'm going to stand with them. No, the blessed man doesn't do that. Then finally, these ones are described as being scornful, or mockers, or scoffers. That is, they are those who make light of holy things. They mock the ancient boundaries, the old standards of right and wrong. They make light of the idea that there is something that is sacred. Now, does that describe our society? That is late-night comedy. If you want to know what word describes, you know, the Jay Leno's and the David Letterman's of our day and a host of others, I'm just picking on them because they're the best known. They're scoffers. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is off limits. They'll make fun of anything and everything. What does the godly man, the blessed man do? He refuses to sit with them in their seat. Now, that doesn't mean that, you know, they don't go on nightline and sit down or, you know, If a godly man was ever to be invited on one of these programs, it's not, well, Psalm 1 says, I can't sit in their seat. That's not what it's talking about there. But rather, it is the idea to sit in somebody's seat is to be identified with them. Jesus said, when the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat, hear them. When they identify themselves with Moses and speak according to Moses, hear them. To sit in the seat of the scoffer is to be identified with them. It is to speak as they speak, to take upon their mindset. And here the blessed man says that I refuse to be counted one of them. Now, brethren, I trust that I am not stretching things at all to say that this passage of Scripture is very applicable to the Christian's attitude toward modern psychology. Modern psychology And we're talking here primarily arising with Sigmund Freud onward, arises again from an evolutionary mindset in which God and his word is irrelevant, in which the old boundaries of right and wrong, what is righteous, what is sinful, what is holy, what is profane, those things are being mocked. It is created by folks who are at war with God. And many of them will tell you that. They'll tell you, by definition, most of us are psychotic, according to modern psychology. Our belief in God is a psychosis. We are insane. We're not normal. We believe in fairy tales. We are the adult claiming that Santa's coming. We pray and sing to an unseen being. We're insane. Now, brethren, we're not yet at the place, you know, that our brethren in other places are in mental institutions even today for their belief in God. Do you know that? Around the world that Christians are being treated with anti-psychotic drugs. And now that's in communist lands primarily. But where did it come from? It came from the same rotten pool that secular psychology comes from and that has been so accepted into our own society. And again, Brett, these things are so common. They are so ingrained into the fabric of our being. We are a psychologized culture and we have been made to bow at the science god and been told that these things are so and that to even challenge them is heresy. I mean, I realize I'm coming across to many people and even to many Christians today as saying, guys, you know, I've studied it and I do believe the earth is really flat. I'm trying to bring us back into the dark ages. But brethren, is God's word eternal or not? And is the blessed man the same today as he was three thousand years ago? Are these men, again, who claim to know what men are, who claim to know what you ought to be. And by the way, you ought to be completely tolerant in regard to sexuality, right? You ought to be completely open-minded. That's what they tell you. You ought to view your children as your intellectual equals or superiors. You are not to have a real leadership In the home, you are not to have men leading in the home, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's today's orthodoxy. And we run contrary to that. That's what you ought to be and something's wrong with you. And in fact, we are now in the day and age where if you don't hold that in certain places, you are being sent for reprogramming. I'm sorry, sensitivity training courses. That is reprogramming to have you walk lockstep with this society. They tell you what's wrong with you. Well, you believe all this right and wrong, you believe there's a judgment, you believe people that don't believe in your Jesus are going to hell. That's something wrong with it. You know, most Christians don't believe that anymore. At least most professing Christians don't believe that anymore, either. What's wrong with man, how he's to be fixed, these men. claim and are held and adulated by our society as being the experts on the mind and the emotional state. And these men who are the experts are those who are sadly described in Psalm 1. Now, brethren, I'm not talking here about Christians who have imbibed some of their teaching. I am not saying that Psalm 1 is talking about James Dobson, for instance, that James Dobson, I don't I don't believe I don't know Dr. Dobson. I don't believe Dr. Dobson is ungodly. I don't believe he's the one described here as a sinner. And I certainly don't believe Dr. Dobson is scornful. Everything I know about Dr. Dobson is that he is a that he loves the Lord, he loves God's people, he wants to do them good, but. Men like Dr. Dobson have allowed themselves to be influenced and to walk in the council and to stand in the path and to sit in the seat with folks that they ought not to sit with. When I talk about the ungodly and the sinner and the scornful here, I am talking about the fathers of the movement, fathers and mothers of the movement, where you have atheists, immoral men, perverse men, making much of their so-called discoveries. And again, we ask the question, brethren, should the minds of Christians in regard to anthropology be shaped by people like Margaret Mead? Should our view of sexuality be influenced by Masters and Johnson and Kinsey? Should our views of parenting be informed and filled out so that all the missing spots in the Bible are filled out by somebody like Spock? And kids, I'm not talking about the guy in Star Trek. And maybe some of you older folks need to know that, too. You're probably thinking, what's he got against Spock? Should we run to such men as our authorities? Ought they to be trusted as those who have made their assertions simply based upon observation and science without prejudice? That's a myth. That's a lie. These men and women published their findings and impacted millions based upon very prejudiced research. They wanted to support certain things. They wanted to find an excuse for their lesbianism, for their homosexuality, for their adultery. They wanted to find excuses and they found ample reason to do so. And their findings, as we have seen, obviously are not founded or grounded in the Word of God. They scoff at the idea that there is a God who has created men and that God has given to them an eternal soul. But brethren, based upon Psalm 1, what ought to be our attitude and our disposition to its encroachment into the church? Well, sadly, the response of the Christian church and seminaries and Bible colleges of our land, almost without exception, has been to walk in their counsel, to stand in their path and to sit in their seats. almost without exception. And if it's in the Bible colleges and if it's in the seminaries, it's going to be in the pulpits. It's going to impact the counseling that is given to God's people. But again, brethren, is this truly wise and good and wholesome? Was this is this wisdom on their part? Is it the blending of two good things? And if, after all, you have the Bible, which gives its inerrant and infallible information here on the one side, but you look at it and you come to believe that there are all these gaps, what's wrong with filling the gaps with the understandings of other men. Is that not the blending of two good things? And they will say that if we find something that is objectionable to revealed truth, something that is really anti-Bible, we will throw that out, but as we'll use the example, let's eat the fish and throw away the bones. Or some of them have said, let us plunder Egypt of its treasures and take them with us into the house of God? Is it, again, the blending of two good things? Is Christian psychology the wonderful marriage of chocolate and peanut butter, two great tastes that taste great together? Well, many assert that it is so. And again, this view is known as integration. The president of one Bible college writes, we live in a season when life is increasingly complex And the fragility of precious souls is demonstrated by growing brokenness and complicated conflicts. We dare not waste their sorrows on the battlefield of careless counsel that violates biblical parameters, that is, that which is sinful and secular psychology. Or, he says, we must not waste their sorrows with simplistic, unqualified solutions that plunge them ultimately into deeper despair. He says, let's be careful. Let's walk the balance. You know, let's not be so simplistic that we just use the Word of God and that untrained people use the Word of God to fix the needs of men today. Well, let's not go overboard and just have secular psychology either. He says, let us be integrationists. Again, don't give me counsel that blatantly contradicts the Word of God, that excuses sin, but also let's not trust the non-professionals, or we all now prefer the term paraprofessionals, who give simplistic answers to the complexities of modern living. Now, I think we ought to say that our counsel of one another ought not to be simplistic solutions. That is simply to say, biblical counseling, truly biblically meeting the needs of somebody, is not just screaming out a Bible verse. It is bearing, it is bringing to bear upon the soul of another the truths of God's Word in due season, properly expounded in a right spirit. And we're going to see, I'm going to get into it more in a few weeks. We've already touched on it briefly in the past, that if we're going to be the kind of church that we ought to be ministering to one another in love, it's going to cost us something. It is going to cost us as a church to be what the church of Jesus Christ is to be for all of its members. If we're to be what God calls us to be, it's going to demand things of us. as saints, but we'll get to that in a few weeks, but now back to the issue at hand. This morning, again, the question comes, in light of what secular psychology is, where it comes from, its background and its worldview, is there a solid meeting point between secular psychology and the Christian faith? And the common position of Bible-believing men and women who advocate integration is that, yes, then they say that we can integrate it because psychology falls under the category of general revelation, and that when and where there is not a blatant contradiction between what secular psychology asserts and what the Bible asserts, we are then free to embrace it and to implement it. But one of the things we are finding, though, is that when we begin down this road of saying that we are going to integrate, psychology, secular psychology, is what gains dominance. And you'll find that the solutions that are given or the counsel that is given in seeking to help a troubled man, woman or young person is Not beginning with the Word of God, but beginning with, again, the so-called science of psychology. And not all by any means, but certainly many, and perhaps even, we have to say, most of those who call themselves Christian psychologists will have to confess that they counsel more along the lines of secular insight rather than from the riches of God's Word. Gary Collins, who at least was and I'm not sure I didn't check this. He may still be professor of counseling psychology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, which is one of the most highly regarded conservative institutions of theological learning in the world, says this about the Bible. It isn't a book on how to tune up our automobiles or on physics, chemistry or psychology. What psychology? The study of the soul of man. The Bible is not a book about the soul of man. Hmm. Yeah, automobiles, I'll grant you, buddy. I'm with you there. But the soul of man, the Bible is as irrelevant to psychology as it is to a Toyota. Hmm. Anyway. He says it does contain statements that relate to geology, anthropology and psychology that must be integrated into those disciplines. But the Bible's primary purpose is to tell us how to be right with God, not what to do when someone has a nervous breakdown. Again, reasonably good, godly man trying to do what's good and right, but listen to what he thinks about the scriptures. Very good. about getting to heaven. But, yeah, it does touch on psychology. And where it does and when it does, we ought to throw that in there. Again, Gary Collins writes, many, perhaps most of the problems people bring to modern counselors are never discussed in the Bible. Yeah. Wow. I mean, what are people coming just like, you know, like, you know, computer phobia? Jet training? Astrophysics? You know what they're coming? They're coming because they're broken hearted. They're depressed. Their marriages are messed up. Their finances have brought them into a tizzy. They have problems in the rearing of their children. And the Bible doesn't touch on those. He says, surely there are there are times, many times when a sensitive, psychologically trained, committed Christian counselor can help people through psychological techniques and with psychological insights that God has allowed us to discover, but that he has not chosen to reveal in the Bible. The word of God never claims to have all the answers to life's problems. But you know what I want to add, but you do. See, modern psychology does claim to have the answers. The Bible never makes that claim. Some of you will have heard of Larry Crabb, Dr. Larry Crabb. Biographical note here, I studied psychology with his brother Bill, his late brother Bill. Bill was killed in a plane crash some years ago. But he writes, Larry Crabb writes, when I received my Ph.D. in clinical psychology, let me say, Larry Crabb is somebody that is on the process of being very disturbed by a lot of these things. He says, when I received my PhD in clinical psychology, I assumed that I knew how to counsel people with problems. As I re-studied what I had learned in graduate school, it became clearly and frighteningly apparent that most of what I was believing and doing as a professional psychologist was built upon the swaying foundation of humanism, a fervent belief in the self-sufficiency of man. But as a Christian committed to a biblical view of man, I could not make the psychological thinking in which I had been trained dovetail with basic biblical beliefs. The truths of Christianity seem to have little bearing on the activities in my counseling office and were at many points flatly contradicted by my professionally orthodox behavior. You see, he had been taught. And again, here he is. And he's trying to do good. He's trying to do right. He's a Christian. He wants to help people. And he realized in his office, he's saying all of these things. He's saying one thing in his office and believing another thing on his knees with his Bible. And he's in there telling the guy, you know, pick yourself up. You can do it. You know, man has, you know, he's doing all this stuff. And then realizing later, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. I'm preaching humanism in my psychology office. And he said, as he says here, that I could not make the psychological thinking that I had been trained dovetail with basic biblical beliefs. And that what we've been saying, how can you? Let me give you a little illustration. And maybe, Charlie, you know, you particularly trained this, you can give me the answer. If we both started. on a journey, and you're in Phoenix, Arizona, and I start in Louisville, and we drive the same kind of car at the same speed and both travel due north 500 miles. Will we both end up in the same place? All right. And Charlie's a trained scientist, so we can trust him. But we traveled 500 miles due north in the same vehicle at the same speed. Now, we will both get where we're going at the same time. But we'll be thousands of miles apart. All right. This is just heavy brain stuff, right? Why? Why? After all, doing the same thing so much of the time. Why are we so far apart? Because he started in Phoenix and I started in Louisville. Because we started 2,000 miles apart. Can I understand man and what is wrong with man? Apart from understanding that he is a creature made in the image of God with a never dying soul. Two people studying the same one. One believes he is the great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson of a chimp. And the other believes he's a man made in the image of God. Are we going to arrive at the same place studying data on this one? Can I understand what's wrong with my friend apart from understanding sin and the fall and total depravity? Can I understand guilt without factoring in the law of God and the work of the conscience? Can I offer a man hope apart from the cross of Christ? The deliverance from the weight of his sin apart from the cross? Brethren, the fact of the matter is That if modern psychologists want to have any true hope of helping man and understanding man, they need to come to us, not us to them. The study of man and his soul is not primarily a matter of general revelation. Now, do we understand certain things about men as a result of general revelation? Of course we do. Do we understand something about their digestive system and enzymes through general revelation? Sure we do. Do we have an understanding about certain functions of certain parts of the brain? And if certain parts of the brain are damaged through trauma or through surgery or somebody being lobotomized, does that have an effect upon them? Yes, it does. Does the degeneration of cells in my father-in-law with the onset of Alzheimer's have an effect upon his emotional and his mental process? Yes, it does. And we can understand that. But again, to seek to understand what he is and to understand his life apart from the mind of the One who created him is folly. And to embrace as authoritative What men who hate God and scoff at the word of God, what they have to say about men is not innocent. It may be naive. It may be sincere. It may be that there is. And again, I trust these men are trying to do much good. The Christian integrationist. I'm not talking about sincerity. But it is a violation of the word of God, nonetheless, and these brothers need to be called. to repentance and to confidence in what God has revealed, not what man has found. Now, I had promised last week that we would leave some time for questions, and we do have time. And let me ask now, today or over the last several days, Paul. My question is about the point you were on about a half hour ago, when you were talking about how science, so-called science, review our Yes. And I was listening to a talk show on radio a couple of weeks ago. It was one of the call-in talk shows. And they had a person on there who had written a book about doubt. And so they were having these people call in and testimony after testimony of people who claimed that they were once believers and then describing their process of becoming atheists. Right. On the show, they continue referring to where we are as blind faith. Which we believe that I believe that in order for a person to have a saving knowledge comes as a result of revelation. But I object to the use of the term blind faith in that I feel that our faith and what we believe can be rationally and logically explained. Absolutely. Yeah, what Paul's talking about, for those of you listening on tape or in other words, Paul's asking a question here about the accusation that that we hold the blind faith. And of course, I want to say, you know, turn it on them, first of all, and yours isn't. I was reading something this morning of Spurgeon's in which he was just talking about was the beginning of of a popular embrace of Darwinism in Spurgeon's day. And he was talking about the incredible faith that is needed to believe the things that they were asserting. And what men are willing to, again, because we live, as I've been saying, in the day of the deification of science. That if a doctor so-and-so says it, that's it. I mean, a scientist said it. Again, he wouldn't be prejudiced. He wouldn't ever have any bad data. And that's been part of the problem throughout humanity. certain experts that they're going to lift up and that they do place implicit faith in. When a psychiatrist or psychologist gives their expert testimony at a trial. Yep, that one is like that. He is fit, he's unfit, he's insane, he's not insane. This one needs to be institutionalized and away they'll go, blind faith and confidence in somebody's PhD. But you're right, you know, is it foolishness and folly? Is it contrary to all observable facts and data and living in a real world to believe that there is a creator God and to believe in God's revelation? No, it's not. But do we have to be ashamed to say that we must ultimately approach the word of God by faith? No. I don't think we need to be ashamed of that at all. I think that other people need to be as open and as honest that they are acting on, lack of a better word, faith as well. They embrace this form or that form by faith. A few years ago, you know, folks, everybody was embracing, you know, the Big Bang as the explanation of the creation of the universe. And they'll tell you down to the day, you know, it was Wednesday at four o'clock on, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and yet a few weeks later, after it was pretty much announced, this is it. We've got it. Other people came out and said, no, we're all wrong. Got to start all over again. We do have faith in the word of God. We have faith born of the work of the spirit of God. And it's not an embarrassing faith. Folks who hold to the Book of Mormonism and trying to You know, find out who these people are and these various, you know, lands are. I mean, you might as well be reading the Chronicles of Narnia and then trying to, you know, get an airplane and find these places. That's blind faith. That is, that goes against everything and anything that we know. The Word of God, all the Word of God does for a sensitive child, it is constantly affirmed by experience. Mr. Castle. I think one good example of blind faith, if we insist on using that expression, is found in Louis Leakey and his digging around over in East Africa in the Great Rift Valley. a bunch of bones and put them together and called it a prehistoric woman by the name of Lucy. And yet he got these bones miles and miles from one bone over here to another miles away. And he puts these together and calls it Lucy. I spell her L-O-O-S-E-Y. For those of you who couldn't hear our brother there, he was... describing the blind faith of certain folks in so-called archaeological digs, such as the finding of Lucy some years ago, but he spelled it L-O-O-S-Y, A-Y. We have Pastor Bob. Right. Right. And she started out, our foundation has got to be revealed truth. Right. And again, we are as Christians, we are afraid in public discourse to stand on the word of God because we're embarrassed by it. And Michael Medved for all of his alleged belief, I guess, in Genesis as a Jew was ashamed. To make it the foundation of his argument, you know, his wife's a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I can't remember which, you know, but he's trying to argue on this, this very faulty foundation. It was just, it's just so frustrating listening to it. You know, I couldn't listen to it anymore. It's just what, what's the point when you're going to try to argue that way? We've got to go back. And again, right. Pastor Bob was just bringing out, we hole up these icons, even as conservatives of men that, are building on foundations of sand. Charlie. that clearly is opposed to the word of God. The one who says, well, yes, the word of God has to be part of our thinking. And we get confused by that. The difference I would draw is, which you said in a number of different ways, has been that person is going to say the Bible is necessary for me to help you, but it's not sufficient. Or as we would say, the Bible is sufficient for us to solve your problems, all we need. All right, Charlie's just hitting on the issue again. The integrationists will say the Bible is necessary, but insufficient. And we are trying to hold our ground on the sufficiency of the word of God. Jim, and then we're going to need to close. I was listening to some of that dialogue on another station about the argument of Michael Batchett, and basically I understand, you know, he's way off of that, but he was staying within the realm of what their constitution defined as marriage. And what he was trying to use was just the constitutional data which defined marriage as two people who could produce issues. So they felt that if they stayed within that realm and made that argument, they could show that the constitution already Yeah, but but even there. Yeah, right. And the man and the man and the man rightly said the man rightly argued, you know, well, what about a 70 year old, 75 year old getting married? You know, there's no issue there. And again, we've got to go back. Yeah, well, yes, you have you have one example of that or two examples of that. But we got to go back to saying and unashamedly saying. It is because we live in a world that is created by God and God has spoken and God, as I started off the wedding yesterday and I will start off, God willing, every marriage I ever do. Marriage is an institution of God. And if we let loose on that and try to argue from any other vantage point, we're going to fail. And we've got to get back to the truths of God's word and be unashamed in this day and age to say we believe what God has said. We should believe the book of Genesis. We believe that God created man and woman and God gave them in marriage and God created him. God made his soul. God cursed him in the garden. And God has redeemed men through the blood of Jesus. And if we let loose on any of those things, it all becomes a house of cards. Stand fast in our faith. We will have no cause to face God with shame at the end of the age because we held fast to his word. And let's pray. Father, we thank you for the confidence that we can have in your word and the understanding that we can have as your word tells us we have understanding more than all of our our instructors, because you have given us light from your word and our father, we keep your commandments and father, we pray that you will help us in this hour to adore you and to love you as the God who creates, as the God who saves, and, Father, as the God who preserves. And, Lord, we pray that you will do good to the souls of your saints this day. Father, may the body minister to itself in love. May we lift up the brokenhearted. May we uphold those whose knees are feeble. May we help the faint and give them hope in our God. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Yeah.