ILLUS: A famous Christian writer told of doing a lectureship at Ohio State University. As he was being driven to the lecture, he passed the new Wexner Art Center and the driver said, “This is a new art building for the university. It is a fascinating building designed in the post-modernist view of reality.” Post-Modernist view of reality - what does that mean? Well, apparently the building had no pattern. There were staircases that didn’t go anywhere. And there were pillars that didn’t support anything. And the architect was praised (by somebody) for designing a building to reflect how he saw life. He saw life as going nowhere and as being mindless and senseless.
The Christian writer turned to his driver and asked, “Did they do the same thing with the foundation?” and the driver laughed and said “Oh no. You can’t do that with a foundation.” Then the writer commented “You can get away with the infrastructure of a building being mindless and senseless. But once you started tampering with the foundations of a building, you begin experiencing serious side-effects. (Ravi Zacharias)
I’ve talked with contractors who’ve refurbished old homes and they tell me that they don’t care what the rest of the house looks like - as long as the roof and the foundation are sound, they’ll invest their time and money in it. But otherwise, they won’t touch it.
That’s what our passage this morning is talking about: If you want to GROW HIGHER in your faith, you’ve gotta have a good foundation. If your foundation is NOT sound, then the rest of your faith will crumble
Paul was writing to his young co-worker Timothy and told Timothy NOT to neglect his foundation. “… Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ALL SCRIPTURE is breathed out by God.”
Now what Paul’s saying is this: The Sacred writings (the Scripture) is your foundation. And you know you can trust that foundation… because it belongs to God. The Bible is God’s book - it is “God Breathed!” What does that mean? It means that there is no other book that’s equal to the Bible that you have in your hands. God has breathed into the Bible and gave it a life of its own.
ILLUS: Do you remember when God created Adam? What did God do to Adam before Adam became a living being? “The LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Genesis 2:7
When God BREATHED into Adam… he became a living creature. And God breathed the Bible and it became a living Book! It is alive with power! And when we read it, it touches and shapes us, and gives us life.
Hebrews 4:12 “… the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
And in Isaiah 55:10-11 we read “… as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
THE BIBLE IS A LIVING BOOK
ILLUS: J.B. Phillips translated the New Testament into the English language. Someone wrote: Phillip’s “translation unlocked the radical world-changing texts of the New Testament”. And Someone else said his translation was a “classic of Christian literature, (and) it is a beautiful and true rendering of the New Testament. People still speak with respect of his translation.
But Phillips wrote: “Although I did my utmost to preserve an emotional detachment, I found again and again that the material under my hands was strangely alive: it spoke to my condition in the most uncanny way.”
God’s written Word is a powerful force. And frankly, all we need to do is speak its words, and when we do speak the words of Scripture people become convicted and are faced with the need to change.
ILLUS: Even Satan (himself) couldn’t deal with its power. Do you remember the story of Jesus fasting in the Wilderness (40 days/nights). The devil found Jesus and tried to tempt Him. And do you remember the words Jesus spoke that stopped Satan in his tracks? Every time Jesus was tempted He said “It Is Written…”; “It Is Written”; “it is written.”
Jesus didn’t say to Satan: “I TELL YOU”. He said “IT IS WRITTEN.” If that statement protected Jesus (the Son of God), you know it can do the same for you. It’s hard to comprehend the forcefulness of god’s words. YOU may not understand the power of words in the book you hold, and I may not fully understand its power, but… it’s there!!! And we can trust it.
Now Paul takes this one step further: he basically implies that we need to know what the Bible says in order to know what is right and wrong, because the Bible is the foundation of your morality. “All scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
ILLUS: There was a man who told of visiting his grandmother’s home as a boy. She would buy a jigsaw puzzle… and then throw away the box, and he would try to put the puzzle together - but he had no idea whether the puzzle was of a barn, or an antique car. Without the picture on the box he had no idea how the puzzle fit together.
The Bible is the picture on the box that helps us see how the picture should fit together. The Bible sets the tone of what is moral - and what is not moral. And we should never read Scripture and ask whether or not we AGREE with it.
ILLUS: A preacher once confronted one of the members of church’s praise team, and he told them that until they had read the Bible all the way through, they shouldn’t be up front leading singing. So that praise leader took it to heart and began reading the Bible for themselves. and the more they read… the angrier they got, because much of what they read (particularly in the Old Testament) didn’t sound like the God they wanted to worship. But the more that person read, the more they realized – they had wanted God to be like them. They wanted a God they could agree with. It had never occurred to them that God was calling them to be like Him. A God who could change their thinking and their lives.
Now, the Bible repeatedly tells us we have a choice. We can choose to listen to the wisdom of men, or we can choose to listen to HIM.
Psalm 1:1-2 tells us to be careful who we listen to “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
And Jesus said that we should be careful to listen to HIM. “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it." Matthew 7:26-27
YOU HAVE A CHOICE OF WHO YOU LISTEN TO! But even people who are smarter than you and I have made the mistake of listening to someone other than God… and thus not listening to God.
ILLUS: Harvard University has recently suffered a great deal of problems. There’s been campus unrest, and charges of plagiarism that have led the University’s president to resign. And you have to wonder what led to the troubles Harvard now has. It’s as if this once great college has lost their bearings and doesn’t seem to know what kind of decisions they should make.
Well, part of the reason Harvard is in its present mess, is because they’d gotten used to listening to someone other than God. You see, Harvard was once a divinity school, established to train preachers for the pulpit. When Harvard was founded, its motto was Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae – “Truth (God’s truth) for Christ and the Church.” Its original crest showed three books - and one of them was face down to symbolize the limitation of human knowledge. But over the years, that 3rd book has been turned FACE UP to represent the unlimited capacity of the human mind. And the motto has been changed to one word “Veritas” (“Truth.”) Not God’s truth… but man’s truth. That’s part of the reason Harvard is in trouble. Once they abandoned God’s Word as their foundation morality is based on man’s opinions– rather than facts.
And that’s why our culture is in such a mess. God’s truth has been so ignored that we’ve gotten to the point where educated people can’t tell you what a woman is; Can’t accept the fact that men can’t get pregnant; Can’t understand why men (pretending to be women) can’t compete in women’s sports. IT’S INSANITY!
Without God’s moral compass (the Bible) mankind… is lost.
ILLUS: Now, by contrast, there was a study done a few years back that found that people who study/meditate on scripture 4 or more times a week are stronger in their faith than those who don’t. They called it the rule of four: They found that people who read/study the Bible 4 or more times a week were: 228% more likely to share their faith with others; Over 400% more likely to memorize scripture; 59% less likely to view pornography; 30% less likely to struggle with loneliness (https://www.backtothebible.org/research)
In other words, the Bible shapes the morality and strength of believers. All you have to do is read it JUST 4 TIMES A WEEK.
Lastly, we need to build our lives on the foundation of Scripture to assure ourselves of our salvation. Paul tells Timothy: “… Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
The sacred writings (the Bible) are the foundation of our salvation. Scripture makes us WISE for salvation through our faith in Christ Jesus. So (Timothy) was to continue in what he’d learned and had firmly believed. Otherwise, he would NOT be wise for salvation in Jesus. If he lost the foundation of his faith (that he found in Scripture) - if he abandoned the Bible as the foundation of his faith - he wouldn’t know anything about Jesus because everything he (& you and I) know about Jesus was right here (in the Bible).
Timothy KNOW your Bible… because if you don’t know your Bible, you could lose out on knowing Jesus. And that would be a great tragedy!!!
CLOSE: By contrast… the message found in Scripture can lead people to salvation.
Almost everyone has heard the story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. The Bounty was a British ship which set sail for the South Seas in 1787. The crew had been sent to the Pacific to plant fruit trees on some of the islands so other ships could use them later. After 6 months on one of these islands the sailors mutinied. They liked the climate, and the native girls and the ease of island life, and so they set Captain Bligh adrift at sea and set about living the island life. Unfortunately for them Bligh made it home and an expedition was launched, and 14 of the mutineers were captured and tried. However, 9 mutineers, along with 6 native men 12 Tahitian women settled on Pitcairn Island in 1790.
Eventually one of the sailors soon began distilling alcohol, and the little colony went downhill from there. Disease and murder took the lives of all the sailors & the native men who came with them. EXCEPT one of the sailors survived - his name was Alexander Smith. He became bored and searched thru the belongings of the dead men of the ship, and in an old chest from the Bounty, he found… a Bible. He began to read it and then to teach it to the others. The result was that his own life and the lives of all those in the colony were changed. 20 years later a British ship found the colony and were amazed that the little community of survivors were happy and industrious. They found there was no jail, no whisky, no crime, and no laziness. All they saw were people who had built their lives on the foundation of God’s word!
INVITATION
