Good morning! Please open your Bibles to 2 Timothy chapter 3. We begin a new series this morning on the things we believe. The foundational truths that hold us together as a church and as followers of Jesus. Over the next few weeks we are going to talk about the Bible, prayer, fellowship, serving, and mission. Like the video we just watched says, if you chip away at any of these, our church is in danger of crumbling. Now, I want to give a little caution about this series. There is absolutely nothing that I’m going to say in the next several weeks that you are going to disagree with. Of course you believe the Bible is God’s Word. Of course you believe in prayer. Of course you think fellowship and serving are vital for the life of the church. There’s nothing controversial or even new about any of this stuff.
The caution is this: What we believe is proven by what we do, not by what we say. [someone says he loves music]
During this series, I want all of us to examine ourselves, and ask the hard question, does the way I live my life demonstrate that I believe the Bible is my final authority? Do I act as though I believe in the power of prayer?
So this morning, I want to begin by talking about the most important of these bedrock beliefs: We believe in the authority of God’s Word.
The story is told of an admiral at the helm of his flagship one night. On the horizon, he sees a blinking light. He checks his bearings, looks through his binoculars, and sees that his ship and whatever this light is are on a collision course.
So he orders his crew to send a signal across the water: “Change your course two degrees south.” A few minutes later, the reply comes back: “You change your course two degrees north.”
The admiral, angered that his authority was being challenged, sends another signal: “I am an admiral. Change your course two degrees south.”
The reply came back, “I am a Petty Officer. Change your course two degrees north.”
Well, by now the admiral is furious, and he orders the radioman to transmit: “I am a battleship. Change course two degrees south.” The reply came back. I am a lighthouse. Change your course two degrees north.”
Now hopefully at this point, the admiral realizes you don’t argue with a lighthouse. The lighthouse is a fixed point. It marks the boundary between land and sea. It warns of danger. It helps a ship at sea to find its way, to navigate from point to point.
And a lighthouse is able to do all these things not in spite of the fact that it’s been around for hundreds of years, but because of it. Because no matter what else may change about the technological advances of battleships or the lines on a map, the coastline is still the coastline, and rocks and reefs and sandbars still cause shipwrecks.
But what if the admiral said, “I don’t need you, lighthouse. You are old. You are outdated. You’ve been stuck in the same old place for centuries. The world has changed, and I’ll decide where the boundary lines are. I’ll determine my own compass.
That man is heading for a shipwreck. His medals, his rank, his accomplishments don’t matter.
For our lives, the Bible is is our lighthouse. It does not change to fit a changing society. It does not change to fit our ways. We don’t ask the Bible to adapt to where we want to steer our boat. Instead, we align our lives with the Bible. That was Paul’s message to Timothy, and it is his message to us too. If you are physically able, please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word as we read 2 Timothy 3:14-4:4
2 Timothy 3:14–4:4 ESV
14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15 and 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. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
May God bless the reading of his word. Let’s pray.
Right off the bat Paul is urging Timothy to live differently than those around him. Verses 1-5 describe the kinds of people that are part of Timothy’s culture— lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
Aren’t you so glad we don’t live in Timothy’s day! Those people sound awful! Can you imagine being around selfish, greedy, proud, arrogant, abusive, disrepectful, conceited people all the time? Oh wait…
Paul says, Timothy, you’re different. You’ve watched the way I live my life (verses 10-11). You were raised and taught by godly women. Paul says in 2 Timothy 1:5 that he remembers Timothy’s grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. I think that’s what he’s talking about in 3:15 when he says, “From childhood you’ve been acquainted with the sacred writings.” And so Paul has two challenges for Timothy. The first is
Continue in the Word (vs. 14-16)
Paul says, Timothy, continue in what you’ve learned and believed. That word “continue” is often used in reference to living or dwelling in a house. In other words, make yourself at home in God’s Word.
There are three aspects what it means to continue in the Scriptures:
Continue in the Christ-centered Scriptures (3:15)
Paul reminds Timothy in verse 15 that from childhood, he had been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
The sacred writings are the Old Testament. Now, no one argues that the New Testament is centered on Christ, but Timothy didn’t have the New Testament. What he was acquainted with from childhood was the Old Testament. So according to Paul, the Old Testament is able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Jesus. As Baptists, we believe that “All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.”
Throughout the New Testament, the apostles and evangelists used the Old Testament to point to Jesus.
Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts 2
Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7 recounted the whole history of Israel, from Abraham to the exile.
Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
I’m camping out on this because in recent years we have heard prominent Christian speakers talk about “unhitching” from the Old Testament, and minimizing the stories that are a stumbling block for someone coming to faith. The logic is that our faith is based on the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Christ, and not on whether the walls of Jericho really fell down.
But Jesus himself, in the Sermon on the Mount, said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets…
AW Tozer: Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian
2. Continue in the God-Breathed Scriptures (3:16a)
This verse is is our primary text for the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. Theologians talk about this as the verbal plenary inspiration of the Bible.
• Verbal, because it’s the very words of Scripture, not just its themes or overarching ideas that were inspired by God.
• Plenary because its complete and full. All parts of the Bible are equally inspired by God, not just certain sections or types of content.
• Inspiration: This refers to the process by which God guided the human authors of the Bible so that what they wrote was His message, without error in the original manuscripts. Human authors breathed in what God breathed out. God used their intelligence, cultural backgrounds, life-experiences, and literary style to communicate His perfect revelation of Himself to humanity.
The Bible itself claims to be the inspired Word of God. “The phrases ‘The Lord said’, The Lord spoke’, the word of the Lord came’, are used nearly 4000 times in the Old Testament.
Notice in 2 Timothy that Paul affirms the plenary, or total inspiration of Scripture. He doesn’t say some Scripture is God-breathed, or for the most part, Scripture is authoritative. He says all. we cannot simply pick and choose which parts of the Bible we like, which commands we wish to obey, and which doctrines we will believe.
The Apostle Peter affirmed the process of inspiration when he said that “no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” (2 Peter 1:21)
Now, all of this might make you ask the question, If Paul was referring to the Old Testament, how do we know the New Testament is inspired?
Well, in Paul’s first letter to Timothy, he referred to a statement made by Jesus as “Scripture.” (see 1 Timothy 5:18)
1 Timothy 5:18 ESV
18 For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”
The first quote comes from Deuteronomy, but the second comes from Jesus’ words in Luke 10:7.
And go back to Peter. In 2 Peter 3:15-16, Peter says that Paul’s letters are like “other Scriptures”
2 Peter 3:15–16 ESV
15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.
3. Continue in the sufficient Scriptures (3:16b-17)
The sufficiency of scripture means that the Bible contains all the knowledge necessary for salvation, faith, and godly living. It means that the Scriptures are complete and provide everything required for a person to know God and live in obedience to Him, without needing additional revelations, traditions, or human philosophies.
It doesn’t mean that it tells us all there is to know about God, but that it tells us everything we need to know to be “complete, equipped for every good work.”
Paul says it is profitable for teaching doctrinal truth.
It’s profitable for rebuking us for ungodly behavior. (That’s what reproof is— a holy spirit kick in the seat of the pants!)
It’s profitable for correction. Go back to the story about the battleship and the lighthouse. When you’ve strayed off course, the Bible can get you back on track. And it’s profitable for training in righteousness. That’s another way to describe discipleship. (Old school baptists— Training Union)
I know I’ve shared this with you before, but it is worth repeating: there are attributes to Scripture, just as there are attributes of God. We remember God’s attributes by referring to them as the “omnis”— omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, omnibenevolence. You can remember the attributes of Scripture with the acronym SCAN:
• Sufficient
• Clear
• Authoritative
• Necessary
Paul’s first challenge to Timothy was to continue in the Word. So let’s continue in the word into chapter four, and we’ll see Paul’s second challenge:
Preach the Word (4:2)
Look at 2 Timothy 4:1-2
1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.
Now, you might be tempted to tune out at this point, because of that word “preach.” Maybe you are thinking, Well, I’m not a preacher, so this doesn’t apply to me. And if you’re a woman, this may go a step further, saying, “Well, doesn’t the Southern Baptist Convention say I can’t be a preacher?”
But before you zip up your Bibles and start gathering your things, I want you to turn around and look at what is printed on the back wall. Or if you are at the front or the sides, look at what it says above the doors.
Mark 16:15 (ESV)
15 And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.
Do we agree that the Great Commission is for everybody? At the end of every service here, what do we say? “Glynwood, you are sent.” Not “Glynwood men, you are sent.” Not “Glynwood men who are going to seminary to become pastors, you are sent.”
Do you know who the first person was to proclaim the news that Jesus had been raised from the dead? It was Mary Magdalene.
So while its true that in the immediate context Paul was talking to a pastor, I don’t believe his words here are exclusively for pastors.
If we are to bring glory to God, if we are to obey Christ’s command to “go and preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15)” we must rightly hold to the authority of Scripture.
· Preach the Word faithfully(4:1-2a)
· Preach the Word consistently(4:2b)
· Preach the Word practically(4:2c)
· Preach the Word patiently(4:2d)
· Preach the Word theologically(4:2-4)
