Please notice what the Word of God will do. It'll restore your soul. It'll make you wise. It'll rejoice your heart. It'll enlighten your eyes.
It'll endure forever. That means it'll be relevant in every age and it'll produce comprehensive righteousness. The end of verse 9. That's the sufficiency of the Word of God. That's what it'll do in your life.
Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Is the Bible still relevant? Parts of it were written 2,000 years ago, and those are some of the newest portions. Most of the Bible is older than that.
So, does that mean it has nothing to say about the issues you face in 2026? Consider that today as we continue John's study titled The Transforming Power of Scripture. But before the lesson, something we like to mention from time to time. There are some obvious similarities between the work of grace to you and the ministry of a local church. Both prioritize the Word of God.
Both spread the life-changing truth of the gospel and strengthen believers spiritually. But there are also important differences that need to be acknowledged. Here's what John said about that in studio some time ago. I have to say There are obvious similarities between the work of grace to you and the ministry of some local churches. because they both prioritize the Word of God.
It's sad to say. that there are many churches that don't. There are many um formal sort of sacramental churches where all is kind of um mystery and and form and uh symbolism and ceremony. And then there are lots of churches that would purport to be evangelical churches where. The Word of God is not seriously dealt with, not seriously proclaimed, seriously preached, and.
seriously applied. But Having said that, of course. What we do at Grace to You in proclaiming the Word of God is what all faithful churches do. And we're not here to be a church. In fact, we're here to support faithful local churches.
We're here to strengthen their people. By being a supplement. We're no different than a bookstore where you can go and buy books or a tape library or a ministry such as ours where you download sermons. We're here to help the local church by strengthening its leadership and its people. When you help grace to you, you help the church.
Yes, friend, and we are grateful for your partnership in that work. And if you'd like to help us take God's word to his people around the world, visit gty.org and see the various ways you can support Grace to You. I'll give you more information on how to do that after the lesson. But now, stay tuned as John MacArthur continues his look at the transforming power of Scripture.
Now, here in this text before us, we have one of the great defenses of scriptural authority. The statement in verse 16, all scripture is God-breathed. is a tremendously profound statement. It is not the word of man. It is the word of God.
It was breathed out by God. But then we're looking at this second statement. All scripture is useful. useful, profitable. To produce these five things.
According to verse 15, it can make you wise unto salvation. And according to verse 16, it is profitable or useful for doctrine, reproof, correction, and training. And is the only thing needed and the only thing able to make the man of God perfect. Equipped for every good work.
Now, beloved, that's another statement like Psalm 19 on the sufficiency of Scripture. What this says to us is the scripture is comprehensively sufficient to produce men of God for every good work. That knows no limitation. It has no weakness. Nothing is left out.
Nothing can be added to it. Such an attempt, by the way, according to Revelation 22, winds up. With a warning, if you add anything to this.
so shall be added to you the plagues that are written in it. The Bible is not to be tampered with, it is not to be distorted, it is not to be corrupted, it is not to be manhandled for your own purposes, and it is not to be added to.
Now let me say it as simply as I can. When it comes to spiritual life, when it comes to a person's relationship to God, the Bible is all that is necessary for proper instruction. to make the man of God complete. and capable of every good work. It is not the Bible plus anything.
And that is why we are so committed to the systematic ongoing teaching of God's Word. because of what it does.
Now we've entitled these five things, the work of the word. What does the word do? First of all, remember in verse 15, it is able to make you wise unto salvation. The word has the power to save. Secondly, in coming into verse 16, He says it is useful for doctrine or for teaching.
And I pointed out to you that here he has in mind not the process of teaching, but the content. It is profitable to give you the necessary body of divine truth to live a godly life. The third work of the word in verse 16 is mentioned reproof. Reproof. The word literally means to rebuke.
To confront someone with a view toward convicting them of misbehavior. The first rebuking work of the word is toward the sin in the life of a person, of a believer. It'll work on you that way. Not only does the word reprove sin, but it reproves error. It reproves error.
So the Word of God then has the positive content ministry of imparting to us truth, the negative content ministry in the sense that it exposes sin and exposes error.
Now let's go from Content to conduct in the last two. Paul says to Timothy, it is also profitable not only for salvation, not only for teaching, doctrine, not only for reproof, but for correction, verse 16, correction.
Now we're going to move from content to conduct. The scripture not only exposes sin, As to its reality, not only exposes error, but it has the ability to correct both. It has a corrective Capability. The word here, eponorthosis, means literally, it's only used here, nowhere else in the scripture, so it's hard to compare its use.
So taking it at its face value, exactly what the word means, it literally means to straighten up upon. To lift you up and straighten you up. What happens? The Word of God comes along, it cuts you to ribbons, it slays you, it exposes false belief, false teaching, and then the Word of God also picks you up and straightens you up and sets you back on your feet. It has the ability to straighten up your conduct, to thoroughly restore to an upright position, is what the word means.
It doesn't just split you up and let you lie there. It puts you back together again. It imparts truth, exposes error. That basically has to do with content. But it also has the power to change your behavior, to correct the sin, to correct the wrong belief.
And then it says in the end to train you in righteousness. Both those last two have to do with conduct. Conduct. That's a wonderful work of the word, beloved. You know that's true.
You go to the Word of God, what happens? You go to the Word of God. And you read it and you feel conviction. I know I do. I rarely ever read the scripture without feeling conviction in my heart.
It always seems to pierce somehow into my heart. But then, as I read, it also gives me instruction to build me back up again. If I read in the Word of God about pride and I feel convicted about pride, I also read in the Scripture the way that I can humble myself before God and how the Spirit of God will work with my will to bring humility into my life. And as I continue to study the Word of God, where I was torn apart, I start to be built back together again. David said, Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not what?
Sin. It's the word that begins to build and strengthen and strengthen. In fact, I can honestly say to you that Through the years of spiritual growth, some of the areas of greatest weakness in my early life where the Word of God pierced most deeply and reproved me most greatly are the strongest areas now because those areas of grave weakness which the Word of God revealed to me have been the areas where I've spent the most effort trying to build strength in the power of the Spirit of God. And I believe with all my heart that there's every reason for a Christian to hope that areas of great weakness become areas of great strength. We apply ourselves to those areas.
The word of God is the tool of building. That's why we ought to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly, Colossians 3:16, because it begins to build us up. Paul writing says, We are to take in the word of God, Acts 20:32, which is able to build you up. It puts the pieces back together. You don't just come and have the Word of God fracture you and run away.
You stay, and the Word will rebuild you. It has that capability. In John 15, our Lord was teaching on the vine and the branches, and he made. A point that I think Connects to this thought. He said, I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-dresser.
Every branch in me that doesn't bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it, that it may bear more fruit. Verse 3: You are already clean, that is, pruned, because of the word which I have spoken to you. You're a branch. in your life. come a lot of these little sucker branches that sap Your energy, they don't produce anything at all, they just drain the energy from the fruitful part.
And the Lord comes along with a knife, like any good vine dresser, and whacks off those sucker branches out of your life. That's the pruning of the word. The word lays you bare, and then the word has a way of straightening you back up again. It'll show you your sin, and it'll show you the path of obedience. It'll show you what's wrong, and it'll teach you how to do what's right.
That's the tremendous truth of God's promise. That's the restoring ministry of God's word. And don't we rejoice in that? He that is taken into fault, you that are spiritual, do what? Restore him in love.
The word has the ability to do that. The word, as I imbibe it, Privately, or the word as it comes to me from a brother who comes alongside to help in that restoration process. And we all experience the rebuilding of the Word of God. Everything we need is here. The doctrine, the foundation, all the principles of life, the reproof, the rebuking that comes to us against our sin and against false teaching, and then the scripture has the ability to correct and to put us back together and build us thoroughly, restoring us to an upright position, which is what that word means.
What a tremendous, tremendous promise that is. We don't need to despair. We don't need to say, well, I'm gone. I'm done. That's the end of me.
The Word of God can rebuild and restore, and God is committed to that ministry by His Spirit. As you stay in the word, the first thing it does, it gives you truth. Then it begins to expose your sin. Then, as you're crushed under your sin, it begins to rebuild you. And it rebuilds you stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger.
as you go along. In fact, I think it's Job, is it chapter 17? Where We read about that, yes. Nevertheless, the righteous shall hold to his way, and he who has clean hands shall grow stronger and stronger. What a wonderful thought.
He who has clean hands gets stronger and stronger. As your sin is exposed and confessed, and you're rebuilt, you get stronger and stronger in the process. And that's all the work of the Word. That's the work of the Word.
So from a content standpoint, the word provides teaching. and reproof of that which is false. From a conduct standpoint, it provides correction. It starts to rebuild you after you've been reproven. And then finally, The word works in training in righteousness.
training in righteousness. What a marvelous thought. Training in righteousness. This is the positive side of correction. It corrects you.
That's Dealing with your sin, it trains you, that's beginning to input righteousness.
So in those four, there's a little bit of a flip-flop. The word deposits the truth that trains you in righteousness, the first and fourth. The word reproves you the second and then begins to rebuild you in the correcting process. That's the third term.
So, in those four terms, you have the work of the word, its content, and its work on your conduct.
Now what does training in righteousness mean?
Well, it's a vital concept and a simple one to understand. Training is the word paideon. From which the Greek word paidia, which is child, to which that word is also connected. It means to train a child. That's exactly what it means.
It's having to do with educating children. The word is able to bring you up. That's what it means: to nurture you, to raise you. To grow you. To bring you up to maturity.
This is the positive side. It's not only correcting you, but it's bringing you up, it's building you up. Dealing with your faults is half of it. Instructing you in what is right is the other half.
So the word takes its reproving power and uses that to correct you, and the word takes its doctrinal content and uses that to train you. And the process is complete.
Now the word Paideon is used a number of times in the New Testament and always has to do with the idea of training up somebody, building up someone, growing a child. It does imply sometimes chastening. In fact, most of its uses Are in Hebrews chapter 12, verses 5 to 11. Let's look at those for a moment and include the idea of some chastening. Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 5.
Have you forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline, the The training process of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him.
So, reprove is a part of that training. For those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines, He trains, and He scourges. There again, scourging is a part of the training.
So, correction is implied in the training, but the term training emphasizes the positive side. Verse 7: It is for training that you endure. God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father doesn't train? And if you're without training, of which all have become partakers, then you're legitimate children and not sons.
Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to train us. We respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they, that is our earthly fathers, trained us for a short time as seemed best to them. He trains us for our good, that we may share his holiness.
That's it. Training unto holiness. Training in righteousness, same idea. And all training, verse 11 for the moment, seems not to be joyful but sorrowful. Yet, to those who are being trained or have been trained by it, it yields the peaceable fruit, there it is, of righteousness.
So the writer of Hebrews is saying, God puts every one of his children through a training process. Paul here says the training process is basically the work of the word. It is the word that does the training. It is the word that builds you up. The word that trains you.
properly. And that's why Paul in Acts 20:32 said, I commend you to the word which is able to build you up. to build you up. That's why Paul said in 1 Timothy 4, 6 that Timothy was to be being nourished up in the words of the faith and good doctrine. It's the word that builds you up.
It's your food. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. It's our food. We feed it. We eat on it.
Notice 1 Peter, a very familiar passage. Really, it puts it in very clear terms. He says in verses 23 to 25 of 1 Peter 1 that we have been begotten again through the living and abiding word of God. We're saved through the word. There's no question about that.
Then in verse 2, he says, Verse 2 of chapter 2, like newborn babes long for the pure milk of the word. that by it you may grow.
So, our growth, our training, our maturing is based on the word. Like a baby grows because it eats, you grow because you eat. Like a baby needs milk, you need the word.
Now this verse is very simple. What it's saying is: in the way that babies long for milk, you should long for the word. And you know, that is the strongest. In fact, that's the single desire a baby has. They want milk, they scream for milk, that's basically it.
They live for that. As I've said before, babies have two things. In mind, they want milk, and they want you to deal with the consequences of the milk, and that's about it. They live to drink the milk. And that's exactly what he's saying.
In the same way that a baby is so singularly focused on the need for milk, should you be singularly focused on the need for the word so that you, like that baby, may what? May grow. It's the source of growth. And I'll tell you something, that's not mystical. I can say it's as simple as this, folks.
The time you spend every day, that time you spend every single day of your life reading God's Word is making you a stronger believer. You may not perceive it, you may not even recognize it, but it's food and it's nourishment and it's finding a place in your mind and it's nourishing your spirit. Go with me for just a moment to Psalm 19. Please notice what the word of God will do. He calls it by six different titles, Psalm 19, starting in verse 7 and then going to verse 8 and 9.
He calls it the law of the Lord, the testimony of the Lord, the precepts of the Lord, the commandment of the Lord, the fear of the Lord, referring to worship, the judgments of the Lord. Six titles for Scripture. You can look at Scripture as God's law, as His testimony of Himself, as precepts for living, as commandments to be obeyed, as instruction on worship, or as verdicts from the divine bench, but it's all His word. And what is its character? It is perfect, it is sure, it is right, it is pure, it is clean, it is true.
And what will it do for you? It'll restore your soul. It'll make you wise. It'll rejoice your heart. It'll enlighten your eyes.
It'll endure forever. That means it'll be relevant in every age and it'll produce comprehensive righteousness. The end of verse 9. That's the sufficiency of the Word of God. That's what it'll do in your life.
as you feed on it. And the word then trains us in righteousness, in holiness. What does that mean? Right things, right behavior, right conduct, right thinking, right action, right words. It's the food that makes us grow.
In James 1:21, you remember this familiar verse, therefore putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness sounds a lot like. 1 Peter 2.1. In humility, receive the word. Receive the word. Basic.
Basic. Well, let's go back to 2 Timothy and just kind of wrap our thoughts up. The power and the effect of the word is tremendous. The word is able to make you wise unto salvation. The word is able to give you doctrine, that is, to give you all the principles necessary for living a godly life and serving God to the maximum.
The word is able to reprove, that is, to cut deeply into your life and reveal your sin, and also to reveal false teaching, to protect you from it. The word then is able to pick up the pieces that it has torn apart, in a sense, and rebuild your life and also train you to Christ's likeness and holiness and righteousness. That's the power of the word. And how successful is it? Look at verse 17.
So successful that the man of God in whom the word works may be perfect. Complete. Adequate. Equipped for every, not most, but every good work.
So, beloved, when I say the scripture is comprehensively sufficient, that's exactly what I mean. It's exactly what I mean. What else can you be but perfect, and what else can you do but every good work? There's nothing left out. When someone comes along and tells you that the Bible is not adequate, The Bible is insufficient.
The Bible doesn't tell us all we need to know. We need some further revelations, some further writings of some spiritual gurus, or we need the insights of the world, or sociology, or psychology, or philosophy in order to complete our Christian pilgrimage. Don't you believe it? It's all here in the book. And, beloved, more than anything else, if we are to be spiritually noble, we must search the scriptures daily, for therein lies our food, and therein lies the tool with which God refines us to the place of maximum usefulness.
The truth is, we should be like Mary. In Luke 10, 39, it says, Who sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. If there's anything that you need to commit your heart to, it would be that no day would pass that you didn't spend time feeding your souls in the word of the living God. That you might be all that he wants you to be.
Some of you need the word for salvation. You've not yet come to know Christ. Read that New Testament until it becomes clear to you what it means to be saved.
Some of you need doctrine. You don't have the principles. You don't know how to live the Christian life to its fullest. You haven't learned the Word of God, so you know what true doctrine is. And some of you need to have the piercing sword of the word reprove your sin.
And then to begin to do its work of correcting that sin and instructing you so that you become mature in Christ. able to be all that he wants you to be. Beloved, let me just say in closing that This again rehearses in my own mind and reaffirms why we study this book because there's really nothing else for us to do that can come anywhere close to this. We live in a day, I know, we live in a day of overindulgence. We live in a day when you, for example, have literally been blasted and bombarded with so much information.
It's the day of information, not intimacy. People want to know stuff. They don't really care about relationships. And I think that might even be true somewhat in the spiritual dimension. We have accumulated a tremendous amount of knowledge.
And maybe in so many of us, that accumulation of information has substituted for intimacy with God. I do know this. that many, many Christians aren't hungry. And I have the feeling that what we've been doing is feeding on junk food. We've nourished ourselves on the corn husks of the world, and we're not hungry for the meal that God sets for us in His book.
That's tragic.
Someone said to me, What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about the apathy and indifference in the church? What can we do about it? And I said we can wait till it goes away, I guess. Hope for a better day.
Because it's obvious that people have so much information in their computers, so much junk, so much spiritual garbage coming in from the world around them, they have fed themselves on junk food that they've lost their appetite for the Word of God. And now when you say you're going to teach the word of God, people sort of yawn and ho-hum. Wasn't always that way and it won't always be that way. Because the Lord, somehow, in some way, by his grace, if Jesus tarries, I believe will restore the appetite of God's people for God's truth. But nonetheless, we continue to do what's right.
I mean, there are lots of ways to get a crowd. The primary one is not to teach the Bible. Let's pray together. Yeah. Thank you, Father.
for clear truth. Thank you for your expression of love to us in the treasure of your book. May we say with David, Oh, how I love thy law. May it be our delight. May we meditate on it day and night.
So that Our way may be prosperous and we may have good success. Father, make us a aware that we need every day. to feed. on the living word. to nourish the soul.
Help us to stay away from the junk and not feed ourselves. on that which is no food at all. but takes away our appetite for what is. Keep our minds pure and devoted to you and your truth. For Christ's sake.
In You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. John's current study is titled The Transforming Power of Scripture.
Well, friend, going back to something I mentioned before the lesson, thanks for remembering that messages like today's are heard every day on radio stations like this one because of the partnership of listeners like you. Giving to your local church comes first, but we are grateful for anything you can do beyond that to help us connect people with verse-by-verse teaching that changes lives. To express your support, contact us today. You can mail your tax-deductible gift to Grace2U. Post Office Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412.
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Now for the entire Grace to U staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Join us again tomorrow when John MacArthur continues his series on the transforming power of Scripture. With another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time on grace to you.
