30 January 2011
I. Introduction
-- turn in Bibles to 2 Timothy 3:14-17
14. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it,
15. and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
16. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
17. so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
-- if you’ve turned on the TV lately, you’ve probably noticed how there are lots of shows about Alaska out there right now -- I was pointing this out to Kim the other night as we were flipping through the channels -- it used to just be the Deadliest Catch -- but now you’ve got Sarah Palin’s Alaska, Ice Road Truckers, Gold Rush, Alaska State Troopers, Flying Wild -- just show after show after show
-- and one thing that’s common about all of these shows is the isolation -- at some point, all of the people who are up there living and working in Alaska are going to find themselves isolated from the world and from their boss -- the only way they can get instructions and help when things go wrong is to either rely on their radios or on the instruction manuals for their job
-- most of us are used to having our boss right there with us, at least part of the day, to tell us what to do and to give us instructions -- but just imagine what it would be like to be up there in Alaska -- isolated from everyone and without your boss right there to help
-- let’s say that you were hired to open up an office in the interior of Alaska -- before you leave your boss gives you a radio and a policy and procedure manual and tells you that you will receive further instructions when you get there
-- when you set up the office, you hear your boss’s voice over the radio saying, “The only way I will be able to communicate with you is through this radio -- I won’t talk to you every day, so you’ll have to keep your ears open and listen for me when I call
-- but, be careful, because our competitors also have access to this channel -- and they are going to try to imitate my voice with false messages and instructions because they want you to fail in your job
-- “because of this, you have to be real careful to make sure you are hearing from me and not the enemy -- when you hear a message, always check it against the manual that I gave you -- since I’m the one who wrote the manual, I’m not going to ask you to do anything that goes against it -- also, if I am not talking on the radio, don’t focus in on the background noise, pretending that you’re hearing my voice -- If I am not speaking, let the manual be your guide
-- well, it’s not long before you hear your boss’s voice on the radio again -- he says, “Take all of the money from the cash drawer and give it to the next person that walks in, no questions asked” -- that seems a little curious, so you look in the manual and you see that this is specifically forbidden -- besides, you know your boss well enough to know that he wouldn’t tell you to do something like that -- you quickly realize that this voice is an imposter, and because you trusted in the manual, you don’t do something wrong that your boss wouldn’t like [illustration adapted from Sandy Gregory’s story of The Remote Employee -- http://www.acts17-11.com/hearing.html]
-- we are continuing in our series on hearing the voice of God -- as I said last week, God usually speaks to us in four ways -- the Bible -- prayer -- the church -- and circumstances -- Christian tradition and experience over the last 2000 years have shown that these are the ways that God normally chooses to communicate to us now although they are not equal in importance
-- this morning, we are looking at hearing God’s voice through the most important way that we have -- reading God’s Word -- the Bible
II. Scripture Lesson (2 Timothy 3:14-17)
-- the story that I gave in my illustration is a pretty good picture of where we are as Christians today -- the Bible tells us that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, where He sits at the right hand of God the Father -- because of that, we can’t see or touch or hear Jesus like the disciples could when He walked with them on earth
-- we are separated from God right now in a physical sense -- but, even though we are physically isolated from God, He made sure that we could stay in touch -- through His Spirit and through His instruction manual -- the Bible
-- the Bible is God’s primary source of communication with us as Christians today -- and as Paul tells Timothy here in this passage, it is of utmost importance in our spiritual lives
-- let’s look at this passage in a little more detail and see what we can learn from Paul’s instructions to Timothy here in his second letter to Timothy -- just to remind you of who Paul and Timothy were -- Paul, of course, was an apostle -- a leader of the early church who wrote a good portion of the New Testament
-- on the road to Damascus, Paul had an experience with the risen Christ -- and Jesus changed his life forever -- Paul went from being a Pharisee who persecuted Christians to being a mighty evangelist who carried the word of God to the far-flung reaches of the Roman Empire
-- during his travels, he came to know Timothy -- a much younger man -- who Paul took under his wing and mentored and raised up to be a leader in the church -- Timothy took over as pastor of the church at Ephesus when Paul left and we see him mentioned in many of Paul’s books
-- so, let’s look here at what Paul tells Timothy about the Bible and let’s see what we learn together
-- vs. 14 --
14. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it,
-- Paul instructs Timothy to continue in what he had learned and had become convinced of -- and that’s a very important point
-- a lot of Christians start well -- they hear the word of God and they get convicted of their sins and they ask Jesus to be their Lord and Savior and then they really start to grow in Christ -- they’re constantly reading the Bible and going to church and praying and ministering to people they know
-- but, before you know it -- they start to slow down -- they start to slip back into their old ways -- and they find themselves not reading the Bible as much as they used to -- or they’re not praying like before -- and then they start missing church and just aren’t walking with God like they used to -- I think most of us who have been Christians for some time can relate to this
-- so, Paul tells Timothy here -- “continue in what you have learned” -- in other words, “keep going -- press on -- Don’t hold back -- but keep on growing in Christ through what you have learned and become convinced" of
-- this is more than just reading through the Bible quickly and trying to get through a certain number of verses or a certain number of chapters -- Timothy had learned and become convinced of the truth of God because he had absorbed it -- he had made it a part of himself -- he meditated on it -- he weighed whether it was true or not and in the end he became "convinced" of it -- he believed in what he had read because he heard God’s voice through the Bible
-- this tells us that we are supposed to do more than just casually read God's word -- we are to take it in and examine it -- God's word is to be our standard and our manual which we use to know what to do and to judge whether things are right or wrong
-- let's say somebody shows up at your door and starts telling you about God -- how do you know if what they are saying is true or not? -- how do you know if what they are saying is right? -- there’s a lot of religious people and a lot of religious groups in our area that sound pretty good and that make sense when you talk to them -- so, how do you know if they are truly Christians or not? -- you know by testing what they say against the standard of God's word -- if what they say they believe in does not agree with God’s word, then they are not Christians -- no matter what they call themselves and no matter how holy they look on the outside
-- it’s not to say they’re bad people -- but if what they are teaching does not agree with the basic foundational beliefs of God that we see in the Bible, then they’re not Christians -- they’re another religion
-- God gave us His Bible so we would know Him and His truth and not be led astray by false teachings -- the Bible is God’s written word to us -- His instructions -- that are meant to help us see and understand His plan for our lives and to help us continue on in what we have learned and become convinced of
-- look back at verse 15
15. and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
-- Paul points out to Timothy here that the Scriptures are able to "make you wise for salvation through faith"
-- now what means is that God speaks to our hearts through the Bible -- He speaks to the hearts of Christians and to the hearts of unbelievers -- God uses the Bible to convict people of their sins and to bring them to the saving knowledge of His Son, Christ Jesus
-- probably all of us know that if you go to a hotel room that you usually find a Gideon’s Bible in a drawer there in the room -- sometimes we wonder if that does any good or if the Gideon’s are just wasting their time
-- a couple of years ago, we had a man from the Gideon’s come to our church and he told us his story -- he had with him a Gideon’s Bible that he had taken from a motel -- he said that when he was younger, he was in a bad place -- things were not going well in his life -- he was addicted to drugs and alcohol and he just found himself in that motel room thinking about how bad his life was and wondering if things could ever get any better -- he had hitten rock-bottom -- and when people do that, they sometimes turn to God because they don’t know what else to do
-- so, he took the Bible out of the drawer and started to read it -- he said he had read it before and gotten nothing out of it -- but this time, I guess he was ready to listen -- and God spoke to him as he read through the book of John
-- he heard the good news of salvation -- he read what Jesus did for him -- how Jesus died on the cross for his sins so that he might live forever in heaven -- and all of a sudden it clicked -- he understood and he prayed to receive Jesus as His Lord and Savior -- all because he picked up a Bible and God spoke to him through its pages
-- not only does God’s word make it possible for the Christian to continue in what they have learned and become convinced of -- but God’s word makes the unbeliever wise for salvation through faith -- it is the way God speaks to those who are lost and needing a Savior
-- verse 16
16. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
17. so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
-- as it says in Hebrews 4:12 God’s word is living and active -- even though God gave the words in this book to men over 2000 years ago, it is “God-breathed” -- inspired by the Holy Spirit and infused with His life -- God still speaks to us today through its pages
-- He uses the Bible to help us grow more like Jesus -- He uses it to turn us into the people He wants us to be -- and He uses it to equip us to go forth and to do great things in His name
-- Paul points out four uses of the Bible in the life of the Christian: teaching -- rebuking -- correcting -- and training in righteousness
1. Teaching -- that means learning more about God and in His purposes here on earth -- not only for us but also for us to pass on to others -- as I’ve said often in Bible study, it does no good to just study the Bible unless you do something with it -- you’ve got to apply it to your life and then you’ve got to teach it to someone else
-- if you read the Bible and listen for God’s voice and His instructions, He will teach you what you should do and how you should live
2. Rebuking -- to rebuke means that you reprimand someone who is doing something wrong -- you show someone the error of their ways -- rebuking is for the person who is knowingly caught up in sin and won't do anything about it -- when you read God’s word, He will speak to you through its pages and He will convict you of your sin and will warn you to repent and to turn around and follow Him
3. Correcting -- to correct someone means you show them the right direction if they start out wrong -- correcting is for those people who are making an error but haven't gone full-blown into sin yet -- when you are learning to walk with Christ, it’s easy to get off course -- it’s easy to take a wrong step here or there because you just don’t know
-- I was watching True Grit with John Wayne yesterday and in the movie John Wayne heads out across this prairie for the town of McAlister -- there’s no road -- no trail -- nothing but a sea of grass as far as the eye can see -- and it occurred to me how hard it would have been to live in those days -- if you headed out and were just off by one degree in your course, you could miss where you were going by hundreds of miles
-- that’s why God uses the Bible to correct our path before we get off-course -- it’s kind of like our compass in life -- if we start to drift off course, God steers us back onto the right path through His Word
4. Training in righteousness -- this has two aspects
-- first, it is the training of children in the way they should go -- directing them in what God's commands are -- back in verse 15 Paul reminds Timothy that he had known the Scriptures from infancy -- in other words, from the time Timothy was a small boy, his parents and his grandparents were training him in Godly ways -- they were teaching him the truth of God through the Scriptures so that he might grow up to be a Godly man
-- the second aspect is training in righteousness is the continued training in God and His commands so that we will become more and more righteous and we will continue in our spiritual journey, becoming thoroughly equipped for every good work
-- I have been a Christian for a long time -- and I have read this Bible through several times -- not always cover to cover but various books and passages on a regular basis -- and even though I have read this time and time again, I am always finding new things -- I am always seeing things that I have never seen before or understanding things that I didn’t understand before -- that’s because God is constantly speaking to us through His word and as we read it, He will use it to train us in righteousness and to give us what we need in that moment
-- you will never reach the point where the Bible is stale and you’ve learned all you can learn -- God will always show you new truths through His word as you stay in it on a regular basis
III. Closing
-- Scripture is valuable to us -- it should be regarded as a gift from God because it is a means of grace -- a way that God has chosen to make Himself known to us -- it is living -- it is ever new and ever fresh -- it is just as relevant to our lives today as the morning newspaper -- and it is the very word of God
-- it says in verse 16 that all scripture is God-breathed and inspired by the Holy Spirit -- and this means ALL scripture -- the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, can be used by God to speak to our hearts and to change our lives if -- if -- we will read it and listen for God’s voice and apply it to our lives
-- the Bible is God’s primary way of speaking to us today -- and we need to be in His word and listening for His voice on a regular basis -- if you do nothing else as a Christian, then you need to be reading God’s word daily
-- let me close by leaving you with this quote from an anonymous author:
-- "This book is the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners and the happiness of believers -- its doctrines are holy, its precepts are binding; its histories are true and its decisions are immutable
-- read it to be wise -- believe it to be safe -- practice it to be holy
-- it contains light to direct you -- food to support you and comfort to cheer you
-- it is the traveler's map -- the pilgrim's staff -- the pilot's compass -- the soldier's sword and the Christian's Character
-- here paradise is restored, heaven opened, and the gates of hell disclosed -- Christ is its grand subject, our good its design -- and the glory of God its end
-- it should fill the memory, rule the heart, and guide the feet -- read it slowly, frequently , and prayerfully
-- it is a mine of wealth -- a paradise of glory -- and a river of pleasure -- follow its precepts and it will lead you to Calvary -- to the empty tomb, to a resurrected life in Christ -- yes, to glory itself, for eternity"
-- let us pray
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