Completed and Equipped by His Word

If you would open your Bibles to the second letter of Timothy chapter 3.

Eric Schwem corrected me because I didn't provide the text or the title. So tonight we will be using the text from 2 Timothy 3 verses 16 and 17 and tonight's title is completed and equipped by His Word. Hear the Word of God. For teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Let's pray. We have taken our sin that we can trust in the One who has done the work, we know whom we have believed, and He is able. Father, those are truths that you drive home from Your Word and tonight as we look at Your Word, I just pray that the Holy Spirit teaches us the truth that we can rest in Your Word and Your Word alone for all that we need. Lord God, may You be honored by what's said here tonight, but may Your Word be effective to our hearts in building us in Christ. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. The text for tonight most likely is a pretty well-known portion of Scripture for many of you here, at least verse 16. A lot of people don't carry on through verse 17, but we are in a section where Paul is writing to Timothy, his student in the ministry, and he is continuing to teach him. When I spoke on Father's Day, we spoke on 2 Timothy 2 where Paul instructed Timothy to remember Jesus Christ.

Tonight we move over, and that is a further instruction of that same teaching in a sense that we find in 16 and 17. Paul is teaching Timothy where he is to be founded because right prior to the text that we read up in verses 1 through 5 and then right after in chapter 4 verses 3 through 5, there are warnings given to Timothy of what society is going to be like and what even the church may be like when he's in it. And 16 and 17 are instruction on truth that is going to hold Timothy fast in his ministry. Now, it is an instruction to Timothy as one coming under teaching to become a pastor or an evangelist, but it is also given to us tonight because we take the word of God out to those around us in our families, our friends, our communities, so this is a word for us also. As we look at it, I'm going to use those two bookend warnings to push us to where Paul is leading Timothy with what he's teaching in 16 and 17. So if you have your Bibles open still at 2 Timothy, I want you to look up starting at the beginning of chapter 3. And Paul tells Timothy this warning, but understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty, for people will be 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, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power. Avoid such people. So we see in this first warning, it is a warning to what the society or the culture or man outside of Christ, outside of the church looks like.

And as you walk through that progression, I would argue that we see that very much today, don't we? I at work sometimes go on to the business social media called LinkedIn because I get notices that I have to clear out. I don't go on a regular basis. But the other day I went in to clear out some notices and there was a posting by someone that has a connection with me. And it was a sign that they posted from inside a parking garage and it said this, don't feel guilty for doing what is best for you. I read that sign and I thought to myself, how counter to scripture that statement is, but how much that statement, even as a believer, appeals to me. When I sit and realize how sin still crouches at me and how easily it is for me to become enveloped in myself and when a culture is putting forth a message that says, don't feel guilty for doing what is best for you.

I mean, to sit and realize Wendy and I are going to celebrate our 33rd wedding anniversary this week, but in that first 10 years, it was some of the hardest times in both of our lives. Because, and I can't speak for her side and I've done this in Sunday school, that basically tended to be my motto. Though I was a believer, though we were going to church together, I did not look at my wife the way the Bible called me to look at my wife. And I looked selfishly at what she could provide for me, what the relationship could be for me. And even now, 33 years later, not going to God in prayer, not being founded in scripture, it can easily switch in my mind, in my own mind.

Don't feel guilty for doing what's best for you, Jay. And the Bible is so different in what it is teaching us. It is so different in what the Holy Spirit is driving us to. And so when we see Timothy, Paul warning Timothy about the culture, we have to realize how much the culture pushes in on us.

And at times, does that enter into the church? Well, the second warning sort of ties that in because in the second warning, if you turn over to chapter four, Paul is going to tell Timothy after verses 16 and 17 that he charges them to preach the word. And that is, excuse me, starting in verse three of chapter four, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching. I take that warning to be you are going to be pastoring or preaching a church, and there is going to come a time, Timothy, when the people aren't going to like the message of the gospel, the message of Christ, the message of God, they don't want to endure the truth. Instead, they're going to want a teaching that is itching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

As for you, always be sober minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist and fulfill your ministry. And between these two warnings, Paul telling Timothy, this is culture and society and man outside of Christ and the sin and how it envelops its ugliness in that realm. But also within the church, Timothy, there are going to be ones that don't want to hear the true teaching of scripture.

And they're going to long for a teacher who will speak to them a gospel of their own idol, their own God, so that they can feel right and justified in themselves. But within that context that sandwiched in there is our text for tonight, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Paul is giving Timothy the place that he is anchored and that place that he is anchored is in the word of God. Alistair Begg talking about sin in general, but within the church shared this.

He said, there is an old joke that went around. It goes, in the beginning, God made man in his own image. And since the fall, man has been seeking to return the compliment.

There's a lot of truth in that old joke that we are trying to fashion God into what we want God to be. But I will take you back to what we started with tonight. In that time of hymns, we sang, we love to tell the story. And then we went and we sang, I know whom I've believed, and he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day. And then we sang the great verse from It Is Well With My Soul. My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin not in part, but the whole is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.

Oh, my soul. Why can we sing that with confidence tonight? Why can we sing the gospel with confidence? And it is because of what Paul is telling us is the truth that all scripture is breathed out by God. Tonight, what I'd like us to do is meditate on two simple points. Paul teaches a lot of things in these verses. He teaches that there is only one truth that can bring man life, that that truth is the word of God. He's teaching that we must rely upon it to complete and equip us. But what I would like us to focus on are two simple things, because they get lost in our culture. They get lost in some of our churches, especially our mainline churches.

And they are these simple points. All of God's word is God's word. And number two, all of God's word is required to complete and equip us. To look at the first point very simply, verse 16 says it this way, and I love the ESV. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness. That all scripture is breathed out. If you look at the King James version, you will see, or New King James, one of the two, I think it's King James, that all scripture is inspired by God, and there becomes a theological debate on what that term inspired means.

Does it mean that God put into men's mind that they should write good things about God in a book and present it? But when you look at the Greek, and being a respiratory therapist, it brings great joy to look at the word used, because it is theopneusta. It is exhaled out. I was telling Wendy, we had the privilege of worshiping with North Cross, and so everyone asked me what I do for a living. I said, I'm a respiratory therapist, and I said, one of the things, when I chose respiratory therapy, my very first textbook, when I opened it up, I believe it was by Dr. Egan, it was the verse that said, and God breathed into the nostril the breath of life into man, and there was a text underneath it that said, the first recorded respiratory therapist.

It's a chuckle, but there's a truth there. There is something about the breathing out of God that is important. When we look at this, the very first thing that all scripture is breathed out by God, it is not merely that a human was inspired to do something great, to write something good, and then pen it and give it to the church, and hopefully some truth will be in it. Actually, it is God's dictation. He is breathing out the words that the prophets and the scribes and the holy men of old record.

He does it in an organic way. He does not rob the author of their writing style, of their language ability, of the way they relate, but he gives them the very word to speak or to put down for the church or his people to have. Now, the claim will come, you Christians, you say this, but doesn't a lot of religions say this?

If you spoke to a Muslim, they would tell you that the Quran was divinely inspired by an angel appearing to Muhammad and revealing these truths about Allah or God. The Mormon Church will declare that they have a third writing, a third revelation of Jesus Christ, and that it was divinely inspired. Now, why do you Christians, the ones that follow this God of the Bible, why do you believe the Bible is truly his word? In my classes, we had a class on the doctrine of the word, and there are a great many physical evidences that many people turn to. There is just in sheer number of New Testament manuscripts left from the early church, well over 10,300. We have manuscripts dating prior to Christ for the Old Testament.

They are in conjunction, they are in harmony and continuity with one another. The work being over 1,500 years in the continuity that is found throughout all of scripture, the harmony of the 35 plus authors over that 1,500 years. Great physical human evidences, but I would argue that there is one evidence that truly trumps all the other and makes it the truth, and we can fully rest in it. That evidence simply, if you want to turn there, but John chapter 1 verses 1 and 2, John, the writer of the gospel, says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God, and then in verse 14, he makes it clear that who he is talking about this word is Jesus Christ.

And then we go to Paul's writing to Rome in chapter 1 and verse 4, and he says, and was declared to be the son of God in power, according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, people will come back and say, well, that's a straw man argument. That's a circular reasoned argument. You're using the same textbook to prove its authentic truth, that it's from God. But ladies and gentlemen, it is not circular, it is not straw man when in history there is a man, Jesus Christ, when in that history of our life or our story, that man is put to death by the Romans, and now we have an empty tomb.

And so C.S. Lewis sets before us a truth that we have to wrestle with, just like Pilate asked, what will I do? What must I do with Jesus?

What shall I do with Jesus? There is a truth that is there. We know historically he exists. We know historically he lived, and he died by the death that was declared in this scripture. So the question is, is the resurrection true? And if the resurrection is true, it is the authentication of everything that is stated in scripture because Jesus is that very word of scripture. And if you go through all the viable evidence of the witnesses, the tomb, the movement, all of it, it is clear that Christ has risen from the dead to the point that in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul makes the greatest defense of resurrection that there is.

So we do not stand in a circular argument, a straw man argument. We stand in the truth that the Lord and King of the universe himself has been authenticated by the power of God through the resurrection. So that first statement, all scripture is God-breathed. We can rest in that truth. Timothy can stand in that truth as the world around him rebels, as even his church may flee. The one thing that is true that is certain that we can stand on, whether we're at La Trobe at the abortion clinic or in church on Sunday or at our desk on Monday, is the truth of the story that we love to tell.

What does that mean for us? Paul is teaching us very simply that from Genesis 1-1 to Revelation 22-21, from in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth to the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you, amen. Everything in that text is the spoken word of God to us. When Eugene, after reading the text, says this is the word of the Lord, that is a heavy statement, folks.

That is a truly heavy statement. When we read this text, it is this text that the Holy Spirit takes and applies to a man's heart and changes him and brings life from death. It is the word of God that we have that can make a difference in a world that is running towards sin and hell. This text is the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Paul does not shy from making that clear in the verses above in verse 15. He tells Timothy, And how from childhood you have been acquainted with these sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for his salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. What writings are Paul referring to? What writings would have been available to Timothy, to his mother and his grandmother in his younger years? It would be the Old Testament, the New Testament.

The latest writing given to this book is between 64 and 68. The first writings of the New Testament are around 50 to 52, where they're recorded and used in the churches from our understanding. So the text that Paul says brought the wisdom of salvation in Christ Jesus is the Old Testament.

There's many in our churches today, even the evangelical churches, who want us to believe that the Old Testament is of no value, that it's a relic, that it's an old covenant that's obsolete that we don't need to turn to. But we see Paul, we see Jesus on the road to Emmaus. He guides those disciples to what? Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. And he reveals himself to them from the Old Testament.

So it is the whole text, the whole canon that is breathed out by God and is profitable. So knowing that it is all scripture is breathed out, we now want to then turn to what is required or that it is God's word that is required to complete and equip us. Verse 17 tells us that Timothy tells us and he tells or Paul tells us and Timothy that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work by what? By this scripture that is breathed out by God. Paul shares that God's word is needed for us in order to teach us. God reveals that it is his full counsel.

When we sing, we love to tell the story. It is telling that full story that God, the creator, made man good and right and without sinning and placed him in a garden, he created it all. Man rebelled and fell and in Genesis 3, right after that declaration, God gives us the first inkling of the gospel when he tells man through the curses that woman, I will put enmity between your seed and her seed.

You shall strike his heel, but he will crush your head. We see this creation fall redemption being the whole of the text of scripture and it is the whole of what we need in order to be equipped and completed to do the work that God is calling us to do. 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verses 1 through 11 take us through some of the things that the forefathers of the faith in the Old Testament went through in their sin and it says, nevertheless with most of them, God was not pleased for they were overthrown in the wilderness. In verse 5, in verse 6, he goes on to tell the Corinthians, now these things took place as an example for us that we might not desire evil as they did. He goes on to list some other things that they did and at the end, verse 11, now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction. God providing his word to teach us and to teach us in ways that we do not desire sin, the thing that crouches and pulls at us that makes us want to think, yeah, I probably should put myself above everything else. No, no, God of the scripture makes that clear. That is not what we are called to as followers of Jesus Christ.

The catechism, the shorter catechism put it this way concerning what the scripture is to be used for. Everyone knows question number 1, right? What is the chief end of man? Who here knows question number 2? Raise your hand.

Okay, go down real quick. Question number 2, I have it printed so I'm going to seem like a genius. What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify him and enjoy him? So really a follow up to question number 1 and the answer says the word of God, which is contained in the scriptures of the old New Testament is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him. Question number 3 follows and it says what do the scriptures principally teach? The scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man.

I would love for them to put one more question there and who provides this teaching? And the proof would be our text tonight. It is not man trying to grasp and figure out who God is, understanding that the God that created everything has condescended and has given us the truth of who he is, of who we are, of what he has accomplished, of what is required of us but what is also done by Christ Jesus on our behalf.

He's revealed it all. Everything that we need to be in communion with the God of the universe, with the holy right and just God that is described in Isaiah 6, God has given to us in his word. The other thing that Paul tells us in this is that it is good for reproof. And as a man that's read reproof just as rebuke, I was looking at William Barclay's commentaries on these verses and he stated this and it just struck me. This term means much more than rebuke. Reproof in this text means convincing a person of the error of their ways and pointing them on the right path.

And I sat back and thought, is that really? Is that what reproof is and how do I see that scripturally? And it dawned on me, go to Acts chapter 2. And I read Peter's sermon and it is a sermon of reproof where he says, you took the Lord of glory and crucified him by the allowing or ordination of God.

But it is you who rejected your Messiah and crucified him. And as Peter preached that message in Acts 2.37, what happened? In that reproof, when reproof is used, listen to what God does with reproof. Now when they heard this, they were cut to their heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? When we sit and start to see what those terms mean, how God teaches, how he reproves with his word, he goes on from there.

He also corrects. What are we correcting, especially now in our society and in our churches? And what's amazing to us, if I were to throw out the first part of chapter 3 and the first part of chapter 4 as society and church, we would say it's clearly evident to us all these things are taking place.

But what's amazing is to realize Paul wrote this to Timothy because he knew it was going to take place then too. Sin hasn't changed, folks. Sin might have changed in our areas. We may see it more clearly and distinctly. But Paul is teaching Timothy back 2,000 years ago, listen, I've been an apostle since Christ changed me. This is what you're going to encounter. This is what sinful man is, and this is even inside the church what sin clinging to man can cause in men to want and desire.

It is not different. We may seem, because it's in our 70 or 80 years of occurring and it may ebb and flow during our time, but it is the exact same issue. And so what is the correcting that we must stand up to? Well, Paul answers it all throughout his letters.

It is to false teachers. It is to false beliefs coming in, false theologies, false sciences, even in the culture. Paul is addressing all those things, and I used for the proof of this 2 Corinthians 10 verse 5. Paul tells the Corinthians there that we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. You know, back in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, the church was hit with scientific evidence of an old earth and an undeniable event of evolution, and there were churches in Maine, Catholicism struggled.

How do we deal with this? And so they allowed the teaching of divine evolution to be put forth. It's hard for us to grasp at times, but in those trials when science supposedly is bringing truth before you empirically, how do we respond? Well, we respond over the Scripture tells us how God worked. The Scripture tells us that this is what God performed. We will stand in what Scripture teaches, not in what we find 50, 60, 70 years later, our still unproven hypothesis of something that they take based off of assumptions.

We don't live on a book of assumptions. If Jesus Christ is raised from the dead, this is the truth of God, and it upholds year after year, decade after decade, century after century, and now 2,000 years later, two millennia, is still the same truth that we can put forth and stand on. Finally, this one is somewhat strange in how I'm going to approach it, but all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for training in righteousness. As we sit and look at that, I wanted to make sure that I didn't stand up here this evening and tell you that you can make yourself writer, make yourself merit anything from God by being in this Scripture that is declared. So I went to Isaiah 61, verse 10, and I want you to hear these words.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exalt in my God, for he has clothed me with garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness.

As a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and a bride adorns herself with her jewels. God is very clear in the Scripture that he has breathed out that our righteousness rests solely on the work of Jesus Christ. Yes, you and I are going to be challenged by this that we should find ourselves in Scripture, but when we find ourselves in Scripture, we should be finding ourselves more and more in Christ Jesus, who is the one that clothes us with his righteousness so that when we stand before a holy, just, and right God, like Paul, I want nothing that I can boast in except Christ. That is our righteousness.

Throughout the whole of Scripture, God is making clear that we, as men, fail to meet the holy right expectations of God, and that he will provide one, starting in Genesis 3.15, who will come and do what you and I can't do, and that's live under the law perfectly, and then give himself over, take on all of our sin, and in that action, clothe us in the righteousness of himself so that we stand right and justified before God. Timothy finishes out this section, or Paul, I'm sorry, finishes out teaching that though there is going to be great sin going on around us, and even in the church, some will want to hear a message that tickles their ears, that Timothy, you must stay steadfast to the full counsel of God as revealed by him. Church, we must stay steadfast to the full counsel of God that he has revealed to us, and Spurgeon summed it up this way. He said, the word of God will be to you a bulwark and a high tower, a castle of defense against the foe. Oh, see to it that the word of God is in you, in your very soul, permeating your thoughts and so operating on your outward life that all may know you to be a true Bible Christian for they perceive it in your words and deeds.

So Jay, what's the point of what you're talking about here? What are we to do with this text as we walk out? First, I would tell you that we are to rest firmly on God's word.

If you read Psalm 19, seven through nine, it will take you through why you should. It says the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. It says that God's, excuse me, I'm gonna read it.

I was gonna try to go, but I'm gonna read it. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. The psalmist writes about how God's word is a lamp into his feet and a light into his path, that he loves the word of God and his statutes and his commands.

Are we that same kind of people? I did a quick search as I was preparing this on Google, and I searched, how often do Christians read their Bible? The best out of polls that came back through Pew and other groups, 35% say they read it at least once a week. I would challenge you tonight as we hear this text that you find yourself in his word daily, that you find yourself growing in your knowledge and the grace of Jesus Christ daily by the word that he has revealed to us and given to us to speak to us.

What else? We need to be sharing this word. That is what Paul is preparing Timothy for. It's what he's preparing us for. We are to share it with our family, friends, and enemies.

And I did say enemies. Those that we don't like, those that we don't want to hear. We need to be professing Christ.

They are heading to hell without this word, without the scripture. As we sit and think, how do we share it? The one thing that I will tell you, there shouldn't be a word that comes out of my mouth that causes any great movement in you. It is the Holy Spirit using the actual text of scripture.

When you have conversations, reference the texts. Reference John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Reference that you're dead in your trespasses and sin and at the right time, God in his richness of mercy and love towards you brought life to your soul. Tell them the scripture because that is what Paul says. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. We are called to be men and women of scripture. We can stand strong in that scripture because God has spoken it. It is truth. And it is truth for those in society who are chasing sin and those in the church who are chasing a gospel that they so desire. I pray to God tonight that we would be imitators of Christ as we are called in 1 Corinthians 11 and honor and glorify God our king by standing on his truth.

Let's pray. Father, your word is a lamp unto our feet and a light to our path. And Lord, we praise you tonight that we can rest on the truth that you have declared this scripture, that you have given us your word, that the promises are your promises and that we can stand firm in those. Even in the worst of times, Paul rejoiced that he was in prison and going before Caesar and he rejoiced because he was going to be able to share the word of truth with Caesar. Lord God, let us so understand your word and be lost in your word that that is our joy, not what happens to us or could happen to us or might happen to us, but our joy is in sharing Christ and what he has accomplished. Father, we thank you and we praise you and it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.