2 Timothy 3:10
Our reading from God’s word today
is from second Timothy chapter three, verses 10 through chapter
four, verse five. Now, before we read God’s word,
and as you’re finding your way to 2 Timothy 3, let me remind
you, we are today starting a little series on the solas, the five
sola statements, or alone statements of the Reformation. And so we
begin with sola scriptura, or scripture alone. And there’s
no better place, I think, in the whole of scripture to go
than 2 Timothy 3. One of the things you’ll see
as we read chapter 3, 10 through 4, verse five or whatever it
is. Yes. Verse five. Uh, you’ll see
that Paul sandwiches, uh, uh, a wonderful little exposition
of the benefit, the blessing, the, the source and the goodness
of the scripture. He sandwiches it between, um,
Paul’s knowledge of the scriptures from his childhood. And then
his use of the scriptures as a Christian minister of the gospel. And so what a wonderful passage
this is to encourage us to love the word, to respect the word,
to revere the word and to use it in our lives. So let us hear
from God’s word as we read together. Second Timothy chapter three,
beginning verse 10. Paul says in verse 10, speaking to Timothy,
you, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim
in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my
persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at
Iconium, and at Lystra. Which persecutions I endured,
yet from them all the Lord has rescued me. Indeed, all who desire
to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. while evil people and imposters
will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly
believed, knowing from whom you have learned it, 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. All scripture is breathed out
by God, and it is profitable for teaching, for proof, for
correction, and for training and righteousness, that the man
of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. 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 in his kingdom,
preach the word. Be ready in season and out of
season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience
and teaching. For the time is coming when people
will not endure sound teaching, but will have itching ears, and
they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,
and will turn away from listening to the truth. They will wander
off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded,
endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your
ministry. Let us pray together. Our God
and Heavenly Father, we thank you this day that by your grace
and your mercy, you have written down the truth that you want
us to know. And we know that your word can
only be understood by the help of the Holy Spirit. And so we
ask now that you would shine your light into our minds and
hearts. Show us our sin, show us our
Savior and show us the way to live that is pleasing in your
sight and it brings glory to your name and good to our neighbor. And we ask for your help and
mercy in this in Jesus name. Amen. What would you write to
one of your loved ones if you were on your deathbed? Maybe
you would write a letter. Maybe you would put something
in your last will and testament. Maybe you would call people to
your bedside and in the strength that you have left, you would
speak to them about the things that you believed were most important
in life. Well, that’s exactly what the
Apostle Paul is doing here with young Timothy. Young Timothy
is a young fellow who’s a minister of the gospel. He pastors the
church that Paul began in Ephesus, a church that would later be
pastored by John the Apostle. John the Apostle, when he’s out
on the Isle of Patmos, when he receives the vision and the revelation
that’s in the final book of the Bible, the Revelation, is that
next pastor at the church at Ephesus. But young Timothy, Paul’s
protege, his companion in the gospel ministry, his companion
in the faith, is now a minister. And the apostle Paul is writing
his last words or his dying words to young Timothy. Remember, Paul
ends up in prison in Rome. It’s the place where he wrote.
of the letter to the Philippians we just studied in our last sermon
series. But Paul is now facing death. It’s soon. Second Timothy will
be the last letter that he ever pens. It’ll be the last letter
that he writes. And so he turns from speaking
doctrinally and practically and pastorally to the church and
speaks to Timothy directly. Now, if you read 1st and 2nd
Timothy, you’ll find the apostle Paul giving him wonderful, good
pastoral advice. And there’s two main things we
find in 2nd Timothy that Paul is saying to Timothy. Number
one is you need to endure hardship as a servant of Christ. If you
are called to serve Christ as a Christian by faith in Jesus
in the midst of a world that hates Jesus and hates all things
of the Christian faith, it will be hard. Add to that, your labors
as a Christian minister. And so Paul tells Timothy, endure
hardship. Or we might say it in our modern
language, take it like a man. It’s gonna be hard. Do it, get
over it. Take it like a man, endure hardship. There’s a second thing he’s gonna
emphasize, and that’s gonna be the subject of our sermon today
on Sola Scriptura. He’s gonna tell Timothy over
and over in all kinds of ways, do not let the gospel become
impure. Do not let the gospel become
watered down. Do not stray from the gospel. Stick to the word of God. You know, some of you may get
around town and people may ask you where you go to church and
you tell them and they may ask you, what’s so great about your
church? And you could say a lot of wonderful things. We’re friendly.
We like each other on and on. We have good food, good fellowship,
you know, all kinds of wonderful things. But the one thing I would
say, there are two things, but one thing I would really say
is we love the Bible. You know, sometimes this day
and age, when you tell somebody you’re a Presbyterian because
of the direction of the mainline church, you have to say, we’re
those Presbyterians who still believe the Bible to be the word
of God. We believe it to be true, to
be accurate, to be God’s word to us that tells us who he is
and who we are, how we’re to live and worship and serve and
grow. And so the apostle Paul is telling Timothy in this little
letter, do not let the word of God come apart, fall apart or
become irrelevant. And so these are the last words.
These are the last words of the apostle Paul. So what can we
learn? What can we learn from this passage?
Well, I want us to zero in on the center of the passage. I
want us to look at verses 15 through 17. Now in verse 15,
we find the first point of our lesson today. We read in verse
15, it says, 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. And so the first thing we want
to understand is about the Bible’s usefulness. The Bible is able
to make you wise for salvation. I have a friend who was an atheist.
This man who is an atheist believed in all the ways of science, all
the man centered views of this world and how it came to be.
And he was challenged by a fellow Christian to read the Bible.
And so this man, while hiking in the Himalayan mountains one
night, took the copy of God’s word. Now you can imagine if
you’re hiking in the Himalayan mountains with only a backpack,
you take only what is necessary. And for some reason, by God’s
grace, through the work of the spirit calling this man to himself,
he packed that copy of God’s word. And so one night in a tent
in the Himalayan mountains, he read the book of Genesis and
he came to faith in Jesus Christ. And that is exactly what the
apostle Paul is telling Timothy, that the word of God can do. It is able to make you wise unto
salvation in Christ Jesus through faith. And we need to remember
that, that the Bible, the word of God is powerful. Hebrews says,
it is like a two edged sword. It cuts this way and it cuts
that way. And it gets deep in us and it
can get to our joints and it marrows and it can divide our
hearts and it can expose us. And it can expose Christ. You
see, the word of God, the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments
are able, they are able, they have the power to impart to us
wisdom and the knowledge that is necessary for salvation. We
have this wonderful saying in our theology about the Bible,
and it is this two statements, really. The scripture is sufficient. The scripture is sufficient to
show us our need of a savior and to show us who is that savior
and then how we can lay hold of him by faith in Jesus. So the scriptures are able to
make us wise for salvation. They are sufficient. But there’s
another saying that we have, the scriptures are also clear.
There’s a fancy word for that. I won’t give it to you, but it
simply means that the scriptures clearly to any person of any
mental and whatever capacity, if they hear the word of God
and the spirit is at work, The scriptures are clear to make
the way of salvation known. And so the Bible can make us
wise for salvation. Now, what does the Apostle Paul
mean by the sacred writings? Now, remember that when young
Timothy was coming along, the New Testament was still being
written. The New Testament letters were being circulated. They were
being read in the churches and the Old Testament writings would
have been in the synagogues. And so the sacred writings primarily
meant the old covenant. And so we understand that Timothy,
maybe like some of you, came to faith in Jesus through the
word of God in the Old Testament. We understand that Jesus is all
over the Old Testament. Jesus is all throughout the old
covenant writings. And Paul is saying to Timothy,
remember the power, remember the message, remember the capability
of the word of God to do its work. So it reminds us, it challenges
us as the people of God. We need to love the Bible, the
whole Bible. We need to love the scriptures of the Old and
the New Testaments. We need to love the Old Testament
stories, the New Testament gospel lessons, the New Testament epistles
and teachings to the church. We need to love the prophets
and the law and the Psalms and the poetry and the wisdom literature
for as the apostle Paul says, it is able to make you wise. unto salvation. And the gospel
is in every page of the holy scriptures. What a wonderful
blessing that is. What a wonderful grace that is
to have the word of God in the Old and New Testaments in our
language, bound in a wonderful cover that we can carry with
us. We even possess it on our smartphones and on our computers
and tablets. We have the word of God in plenty.
And Paul says it is able to make you wise unto salvation. Well, there’s a second thing
we should learn from this passage of scripture. And that is simply
this. It is found in verse 16. The
Bible is inspired by God. It is able to make us wise unto
salvation. Where does it come from? It is
inspired by God. Look at verse 16, the first portion. All scripture is breathed out
by God. Where do we get the Bible from?
We get it from God. It is not the invention of men.
It is not the invention of scholars. Peter says in one of his epistles,
he says, the scriptures do not come from man, it has not come
from the will of man, but comes from God himself, who by his
Holy Spirit moved holy men of old to put their pen to parchment
and to write down the wonderful word of God that we have and
hold in our hands today. Now the Bible is inspired by
God. What does that mean? It literally
means it is, it is breathed out by God. It is from his inspiration. It is exhaled out of his very
breath. Now that sounds a little strange. On the one hand, he breathes
out the Bible, but it also sounds strangely familiar. Do you remember
that God, the Holy Spirit in the book of Genesis, when there
was nothing but chaos, The spirit of God hovered over the face
of the deep when there was nothing. It was formless and void. The Holy Spirit hovered over
the face of the deep and then God spoke and he took what was
formless and gave it form. He took what was void and he
filled that emptiness with the good things we see all around
us in our creation. And so we have seen over and
over in the pages of scripture that when God breathes, when
God broods, when God is at work in something like creation or
the scripture, it comes out in a wonderful way. And so what
do we learn about the Bible when we say the Bible is inspired
by God? Well, one thing is it is from
God. And the second thing is it is
true. The Bible is from God and it
is true. And so when we read history,
it is history. When we read prophetic predictions, they come true.
When we read promises, we can bank on them. When we see science
and facts and doctrines and truths and the way of salvation, we
can understand it to be the very word of God. Now, does the Bible
tell us everything about everything? No. Are we able to learn true
things apart from the Bible? Yes, we can. We can study the
world and everything in it. And we can come to conclusions
that are true. But we understand from the Bible who made everything,
why everything was made. And we understand the true source
of joy and salvation and history. And that is King Jesus. The Bible is the self-revelation
of God. He wanted us to know who he is,
what he’s like, who we are and what we are like, and how we
can bridge that gap between a holy God and a sinful creature through
Jesus Christ. The Bible is able to make us
wise into salvation, but the Bible is also the inspired word
of God. Now I wonder how much we value
our Bibles. I wonder how much we value the
Holy Scriptures. I think of two different occasions
where I have heard someone give an account of being without the
Word of God, having a little piece of it in their mind or
even a little piece of it physically and how much they treasured it.
The first account came about 25 years ago, we were required
in college to go to chapel. We had a little chapel card.
We had to stand at the door in line and we had to get that card
punched. And if you didn’t get 21 chapel punches, you got demerits
or something. I can’t remember right, but I
was a good little boy. I always went to chapel. And so one time I was
really blessed. There was a lady from Bulgaria
who had survived the Holocaust. And she talks about, she spoke
about being in hiding and literally running for her life. But somehow
she had obtained a piece of a page of the scripture and it was precious
to her. And you can imagine for many
months of hiding, many months of terrible pain and suffering
and persecution, that little piece of God’s word was her treasure. And yet we have copies that sit
on our shelves or we leave them behind at church. We have copies
on our telephones and our tablets, and we don’t see it as precious
as others do. Another story, a friend from
the country of Eritrea, one of the top 10 most persecuted countries
in the world. Men and women of the Christian
faith put in shipping containers, makeshift prisons, in darkness,
in squalor, together, no air, no sight. A guard who was sympathetic,
who would have lost his life if it had been known by his government
what he had done, slipped a piece of the Bible into that trailer.
And do you know that there’s 40 or 50 people inside that shipping
container? Couldn’t wait to get a little
piece of light to come through a crack so they could see their
little piece of the scripture. Friends, God has inspired his
word. He has breathed it out. Holy
men of old have put it on paper. It has been preserved through
the ages. And we have these wonderful copies of it. Do we see it as
the precious and valuable and inspired and true word of almighty
God? Oh, we’re living in a day. that
attacks the Word of God. We’re living in a time where
the Word of God is cast aside. We’re living in a time where,
much like in the Garden of Eden, when the serpent of old came
to Adam and Eve and said, did God really say? And the Word of God, the inspired
Word of God, the truth of God has been under attack since then. And it is to this day. And we
need to be people of the book. We need to be people of the scriptures.
We need to know the inspired Word of God, live the inspired
Word of God and hold it dearly in our hearts and our minds.
There’s a third thing we learn from this passage. And that is
that the Word of God is profitable. Look, if you will, at the end
of verse 16, he says, 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 competent
or equipped for every good work. How is the word of God profitable? How is the word of God able to
help us. It’s able to make us wise to
salvation. It’s the inspired word of God. But how is it profitable? Well, Paul here gives us four
different ways. It’s good to teach us. It’s good
to rebuke us. It’s good to correct us. And
it’s good to train us in righteousness in such a way that we have everything
we need to live a godly and faithful life. What does it mean, first
of all, that the Bible is profitable? It means it’s valuable. It means
it can pay a dividend or give us a benefit. King David, when
he wrote Psalm 119, we just sang a little portion of it, some
of the middle verses, but King David in Psalm 119 says, the
word of God restores my soul. He says, the word of God makes
the simple wise. He says, the word of God is precious
because it teaches me what is complete righteousness or holiness
before our great God. So how is it profitable? How
is it valuable to us? According to Paul’s letter to
Timothy? Well, first of all, it can teach us the Bible is
divine instruction. It is God’s word to us, and it
can teach us doctrine. It can teach us precepts. It
can, it can teach us. the things we need to know about
who God is and who we are and about the way of salvation in
Christ Jesus. I think I’ve told you all this before, but it’s
a story that very well illustrates this truth. When I was in seminary,
it was, it was mostly guys. headed into ministry. There was
a young lady from Korea. A lot of Korean Presbyterians
would send their children to study at the seminary I attended.
They had a high view of the word of God. They had a high view
of that seminary. And so they sent them. Well, one day we were sitting
in class. It was a class on Genesis through Joshua. I can’t remember
what the subject was, but this young gal was sitting on the
front row and she was in tears and not just sniffling, not just
a few drips, but shaking and crying and, and really weeping.
And so finally, maybe out of 50 guys in the room, somebody
had the nerve to go and say, what’s, what’s wrong? And she
said this, she said, everybody needs to know what we are hearing
and learning in this room today. She saw that the word of God
was profitable and that the teaching and the doctrine and the, the,
the truth of the scripture. was valuable. We’ve seen in the
Sunday school classes, we’ve studied Martin Luther, how his
knowledge, his growth and grace, as he read the Bible, it literally
lighted up his life. And so I must ask you this, has
it lit you up? Has the word of God lighted a
fire in your soul, in your mind that cannot be quenched, that
cannot be put out? For it is profitable in the way
that it teaches you. It’s also profitable for reproof. We don’t like reproof. Reproof
is what took place in our childhood when our parents stuck their
little finger in our face and said, now little Johnny, little Susie,
you’re doing wrong. I want you to do right. And the
Bible does that for us. It refutes the error in our lives. It rebukes our sin. It shows us our offense in order
that we might repent and turn from that offensive way before
the holy God. We don’t like red ink on our
test papers. We don’t like for people to get
in our faces or to get in our business and say, what is it
that you have done? What is it that you are doing?
But it’s there for our teaching. It’s there for our reproof. It’s
also there for our correction. What does that mean? What does
that look like? Some of you tidy up your houses weekly or periodically
or daily. And say you have a child or an
animal that is in the house and they are a holy terror and they
go through the house and they knock things over. But later
you go through and correct it. You put it back up. You put things
back in place. You tidy it. That is what the
word of God can do for us. It can tidy up the mess. that sin has made in our life.
It can pick things up that are fallen over and it can put them
back in place so that our life is well-ordered according to
the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. All scripture is breathed
out by God is profitable for teaching and for reproof and
for correction, but it’s also profitable that the man of God
may be trained or thoroughly equipped or fully furnished or
outfitted so that you can live the Christian life. If you were
to enlist in the army, You would go through training, but you
would also be given the equipment for your task. And that is what
the apostle Paul probably has in mind as he writes this letter
from his Roman imprisonment. He is surrounded by soldiers
who are fully equipped to do the work for Caesar. And he’s
saying the word of God in mind and heart can fully furnish,
fully equip every man and woman and child of almighty God. to
give them what they need in order to serve the king of kings. And
so we have this word of God. We have this wonderful scripture. And our calling is to love it
and to treasure it, to live it, to read it, to believe it, and
let the spirit do his work. And so is Christians in the reformed
faith. as Christians who are downstream
from the heritage of the Reformation. I want you to understand and
leave today with this. We live by scripture alone. We do not live by the wisdom
of the world. We do not live by the wisdom
of the education system. We do not live and serve God
by the ways of this world. We live simply by the word of
God. Paul says in another place, he says, we should take every
thought captive to make it obedient to Jesus Christ. Everything we
do should be filtered through the scripture. And we should
say what is true, what is godly, what is profitable, what is helpful,
what helps me love God and serve neighbor and bring glory to the
great King in Jesus Christ. And we’re grateful that we have
the word of God to show us the way of salvation in Christ Jesus.
Pray with me if you will. Our Lord and God, we thank you
for preachers and how wonderful they are to possess, to hold,
to read, to understand and to delight in. And we pray that
we would go from this place this day and be like King David, who
treasured the word of God above all things. We pray that we would
be like Jesus, who was steadfast and faithful
to the holy will of God. Lord, help us to be people of
the book, people of the scriptures, people of your word, so that
we can live well and bring glory to your name. We ask for your
help and grace in this in Jesus name. Amen.