Complete and Equipped

All Scripture is inspired by God. So, what is inspired is not supposed dreams or visions or feelings or even tradition. What is inspired is not mystical experiences.

The only thing that is inspired in the world is the Scripture, what has actually been written down by the prophets and by the apostles. In every age and generation, God's people must stand firm with our feet planted in and grounded on the Word of God. Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and thank you for joining us today for Renewing Your Mind. Earlier this year, thousands of Christians from around the world gathered in Orlando, Florida for Ligonier Ministries' 2023 National Conference. Our theme this year was, Stand Firm. And as you hear some of those messages this week, we begin today with Ligonier teaching fellow, Stephen Lawson, who encourages us to stand upon the Bible, for it is the inerrant, infallible, sufficient, and perfect Word of God.

Here's Dr. Lawson. I want you to take your Bible and turn with me to the book of 2 Timothy, 2 Timothy chapter 3. And I want to begin by just reading the text that the Ligonier staff have asked me to bring to you tonight.

The title of this message is, Complete and Equipped. And it is a message on the sufficiency of Scripture. And as we stand firm, we must stand firm on the authority of the Word of God. 2 Timothy chapter 3, verses 16 and 17 is a text with which no doubt everyone in this building is familiar with.

But let us hear it again. This is the Word of God. Beginning in verse 16, all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. In these two verses, the Apostle Paul lays great stress upon the supreme importance of the Word of God.

And there are two truths specifically that he brings to our attention. And number one, it is the fact that the Bible is the divinely inspired Word of God. It is the only book in the entire world that can be said to be breathed out of the mouth of God. And the second truth here is the sufficiency of Scripture, that the Bible contains everything that you need to believe in order to be saved and in order for you to be sanctified. And any other Christian book that you read should only be to reinforce what the Bible says and what the Bible teaches because the Bible is sufficient within itself to do the work in your life that needs to take place. Nothing else needs to be added to this book. If there was anything else you needed to know about how to be saved and how to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, God would have put it into the Bible.

There are certain topics I wish that I knew more about and certain difficult issues. At times I think if we only had one more chapter on this, or if there was only just one more book in the Bible that would cover this, then that would be so helpful. But I have to remind myself that God has revealed to me and to you everything that you need to know. You don't need to know anything else in order to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and you do not need to know anything else on how to become more like your Savior, Jesus Christ. Now we need commentaries to help us understand what certain verses are teaching, and we need systematic theology books to help us connect various doctrines in the Bible, and we need church history books that help us see how great men in the past have navigated their way through certain passages, and we need language tools, Greek and Hebrew, as the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek. We need these other books to help us understand this book, but they're all secondary, and there's only one primary text that you have for your life, and that is the Bible.

This book is so sufficient. It's everything you need to know about who God is, and how to please God, and how to worship God, and how to walk with God, and how to glorify God. You have the complete package right here in these 66 books in the Bible. Deuteronomy 29, 29 says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us. And what has been revealed to us is in this book, and the secret things belong to God. So tonight I want us to walk through this passage and remind ourselves of the treasure that you hold in your hand. Now, these two verses really break out into two headings. I want you to note with me first the divine inspiration of Scripture. That's at the beginning of verse 16. Then we're going to note the dynamic sufficiency of Scripture, and that's the second half of verse 16 and verse 17. I don't know that I've ever preached a two-point message, but this is a two-pointer. So, let's begin where verse 16 begins.

I want to… I want to dig down into this passage with you tonight. And the first thing that I want you to see is the divine inspiration of Scripture. This verse begins, all Scripture is inspired by God. Let's just look at this one word at a time. The word Scripture literally means the writings.

It's a Greek word grafe that comes into the English language as graphics, that which has been written. And we know that further. Look at verse 15. It talks about the sacred writings. So, what is inspired is not supposed dreams or visions or feelings or even tradition. What is inspired is not mystical experiences. The only thing that is inspired in the world is the Scripture, what has actually been written down by the prophets and by the apostles. So, not just Scripture, but all Scripture. That means the entirety of the Old Testament is inspired by God. That the New Testament, as each book was written and added to the canon of Scripture, recognized in the canon of Scripture, has been inspired by God. So, every book of the Bible inspired by God.

Every chapter, every verse, every word, every letter, every jot, every tittle is inspired by God. A jot is the smallest Hebrew letter. It's like an eyelash. It's like a little apostrophe. And a stroke is what separates one letter from another letter that is just a tiny little stroke, almost like the seraph at the bottom of a font.

It's what separates, for example, in our English letters, a lowercase l from a lowercase t. It's just that little stroke. And what Paul is telling us here is that all Scripture, from Genesis 1, 1 to the end of the book of Revelation in chapter 22, it is all breathed out of the mouth of God. As you look at this text in verse 16, is inspired by God is actually just one word in the original Greek when Paul wrote this, theonustos, and it's a compound word, God, theos, and then the word for breathed or breathed out. That all Scripture is breathed out of the mouth of God. Jesus quoted Matthew 4, verse 4, when He said, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Most correctly, it's not the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture, it's the doctrine of the expiration of Scripture, that God has breathed it out of His own mouth. And if you have an ESV, I preach out of a New American Standard, the ESV has it breathed out by God.

And that's exactly what this means. The authors were not inspired. The text that they recorded is what was inspired. The biblical authors were carried along by the Holy Spirit to record what they have, but they were not inspired. It is the product or the content of what they wrote is what has been breathed out of the mouth of God. Now something that's important for us to talk about right now is the dual authorship of Scripture, that every book in the Bible and every passage of Scripture has two authors. There is a primary author, and there is a secondary author.

The primary author is capital A, the Holy Spirit of God. The secondary author is the human author, and there were over forty men who were used by God to record the books that we have in our Bible. And so there is this dual authorship, but the Holy Spirit is the primary author of Scripture as He worked through human authors to record what we have in the entirety of the Bible. Now we also need to understand that as the Word of God was written, for the most part it was not by a mechanical dictation, where God would speak audibly to the author and they would write down what they hear the voice of God saying. That's not how the Bible was written. There are a few cases where the prophets wrote down what thus says the Lord. But for the most part, the Holy Spirit worked through men who used their own unique vocabulary, their own manners of expression, their own style of writing, their own genre of literature, their own unique temperaments and personalities, their own historical research, their own eyewitness observations, their own interviewing of other eyewitnesses, and their own knowledge of Scripture to record what we have, such that Moses wrote entirely different from David, and David wrote entirely different from Isaiah, and Mark is totally different from Luke, and Luke is completely different from John.

And when we read these books in the Bible, we see the uniqueness of each human author as they have their own way of stating what they wrote, yet the Holy Spirit was over it all and in it all and through it all, and the Spirit of God superintended each of the human authors. Now there are two key words while we're talking about inspiration, verbal inspiration and plenary inspiration. Verbal inspiration means that every single word of the Bible has been breathed out of the mouth of God and recorded by a human author. Why that is important is it's not just the general thoughts.

It's not just the big idea. It's not just certain concepts that are inspired, but each individual word in the Bible has proceeded from the mouth of God. Therefore, when we come to the Bible, we study individual words, words that can be analyzed, words that can be defined, words that can be compared and parsed and nuanced and exegeted and interpreted. We study the Bible not for just general ideas, but we study each specific word. We dig down into the text of Scripture. And then second is plenary inspiration, and the word plenary means the whole.

Like this is a plenary session right now at the Ligonier National Conference where everyone comes together for this plenary session. And plenary inspiration simply means that the entirety of Scripture, all Scripture, is breathed out of the mouth of God. Every narrative, every miracle that is recorded, every extraordinary event, every proverb, every prophecy, every epistle, every narrative, every discourse, every parable, every allegory, it has all come out of the mouth of God. And so this includes six-day creationism and a literal historical Adam and Eve and original sin and a worldwide flood and the collapse of the walls of Jericho and Jonah who was swallowed by a whale and Daniel who was preserved in the lion's den and the angel of the Lord that slew 185,000 Assyrians. It has all come from the mouth of God, and to reject any part of the Scripture is to reject God Himself because it is the Word of God.

Glad to know you're still out there. Okay. Now, I want to draw two implications from this, so stay with me. Because the Bible is breathed out by God, there are two specific implications, and number one is the inerrancy of Scripture. The inerrancy of Scripture because God is holy and without sin and is flawlessly perfect, what has been breathed out of His mouth is the same.

It is holy and flawlessly perfect and without any error. Numbers 23, 19, God is not a man that He should lie. Titus 1, verse 2, God cannot lie. Hebrews 6, verse 18, it is impossible for God to lie. John 17, 17, your Word is truth. Therefore, because God cannot lie and all Scripture has been breathed out of the mouth of God, therefore everything that is recorded in the Bible is inerrant and without error. Psalm 119, verse 151 says, all your commandments are truth. And Psalm 119, verse 160, the sum of your Word. When you add it all up, the sum of your Word is truth. In Proverbs 30, verse 5 says, every Word of God is tested. And the idea is for a metal to be put into the furnace and for it to be heated up, to be tested.

And the impurities would rise to the surface, and they would skim off the top the impurities and leave behind a pure metal. And what the writer of Proverbs is saying is that the Word of God is as though it has been put into the hottest furnace and demonstrate it has been tested to show there are no impurities in the Word of God. So, number one implication from this truth is the inerrancy of Scripture because God is holy, therefore His Word is holy. Second implication is the authority of Scripture because God is sovereign and God possesses supreme authority over the entirety of His creation. Therefore, His words come to you and me as sovereign, that have the authority to command our lives, that has the authority to bind our conscience and to direct our steps.

Because the Word of God proceeds out of the mouth of God, therefore our sovereign God speaks with supreme authority. And so, before we move on, I just want to make an application here for your life. I want to connect this to you. And what this demands of us, number one, is for you to get into the Word of God. This demands that you and I read it, that we study it, that we learn it. Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, visit other books, but live in the Bible. Go on journeys and visit other books, but make your home in the Word of God. And I think it can be a danger for us here today to become more preoccupied and more interested in other books, when we lose sight of the only book that is inspired by God and the only book that will make us complete and equipped.

We use other books only to help us understand this book. So you need to get into the Word of God. You need to be like Spurgeon said of John Bunyan, why the man is a walking Bible.

Prick him anywhere and he bleeds bivline. You need to be a walking Bible. And even your very manners of expression, your vocabulary, your ways of communication drip with biblical language and biblical metaphors and analogies that you become a walking Bible. So you need to get into the Word of God.

And I ask you, are you in the Word of God? Read through the Bible in a year. Take one book in the Bible and say you're going to read through it multiple times.

Photographic, make a photographic copy of a book in the Bible. Take a pen, read through it, mark it up, underline, draw circles, put arrows and asterisks, whatever it takes to help make you become engaged with the Word of God. Memorize it. Meditate upon it. Get into the Word of God.

And second, get the Word of God into you. That its practical relevance would be clearly seen that it would, it would renew your mind, that it would ignite your heart and your passion for God, that it be like a moral compass for your life that is always pointing you in the right direction. So that's where this text begins, the divine inspiration of Scripture. All Scripture is breathed out by God. It is inspired by God. Now, this leads us second to the second and final heading, which is the dynamic sufficiency of Scripture. Only a book that is God-breathed can do what the rest of these two verses say. Only a supernatural book can produce this kind of supernatural results. This cannot be said of any other book in the world, only the Bible, only the Scripture.

So look at it. It says all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable. This book is more profitable than any book you will ever pick up in your entire life. Now, this Greek word for profitable means that it's useful, it's productive, it's beneficial, it is highly productive. It is enormously beneficial. It is extremely useful in your life.

Every minute that you invest in the Word of God, it will yield exponential results in your life if you come with a heart that is humble and with a mind that is teachable and with the desire to put this into action what you are reading. And so he now gives us four words that I want to draw to your attention, profitable for four things. For teaching, that indicates what is right. For reproof, that indicates what is wrong. For correction, that indicates how to make it right. And training in righteousness is how to live right. So each of these four words, what is right, what is wrong, how to make what is wrong right, and then how to live it and put it into practice training in righteousness.

So let's look at each of these four words. The first is, it is sufficient for teaching, profitable for teaching. Now, when he says teaching here, he's not referring to the act of teaching.

He's referring to the content of teaching. He's referring to divine revelation, real revelation, sound doctrine that we find in the Word of God. And it comes conveyed to us in many different expressions. In the book of Acts, it's the apostles' teaching. In Jude, it is the faith which was once and for all delivered to the saints. In 2 Timothy, it's the truth. In Acts, it is the whole purpose of God or the full counsel of God.

In Romans, it is that form of teaching to which you were committed. This book must be your primary textbook for your life. This book brings you the unadulterated, unvarnished truth about who God is, what God is like, how I can know God, who am I, what am I, why am I here, where did I come from, what is wrong with the world, what is the solution, how am I to live, how may I know peace and happiness, what is marriage, what is the family, what is death, what lies on the other side of death, how do I go to heaven, what is the final judgment?

Those are the key questions that every person here tonight must have the right answer. And there's only one book that you're going to find the answers to this that are infallible and inspired and inerrant, and it is found in the Word of God. You will not get the answers for these questions from a math book.

You will not get them from an accounting book. You will not get them in a science book or even in a philosophy book or a political science book or some other religions book. The answers to these fundamental questions in life, who is God, who am I, what is wrong with me, what is wrong with the world, what is the only solution, what must I do to have the remedy in my life, where do I go after I die? The answers alone are found in the Word of God. They are in the Bible alone.

And so, all Scripture is profitable for teaching. Second, for reproof. And the word reproof means, what is wrong with my life?

What is wrong with the world? A right diagnosis is half the cure, it's been said. And if you don't know how to make the right diagnosis of what's wrong with your life or with the world, you'll never come up with the right solution. The word reproof means to expose what is wrong. It means to bring conviction of sin, and this is absolutely necessary for both salvation and sanctification. No one will ever be genuinely saved until they know what's wrong with them. There's only one kind of person that Christ died for, and that's a sinner.

And there is only one way to enter into the kingdom of God, and that is to confess that you have sinned and that you have fallen short of the glory of God. The Bible is not intended to massage egos, or to tickle ears, or to sugar coat the diagnosis. The Bible confronts us head on, and no one will ever be saved until they know that they have sinned against holy God in heaven. No one will ever be saved just because they're lonely. No one will ever be saved just because they have a bad job or a bad marriage. No one will ever be saved because they are missing out on something in life. The only person who will ever be saved is the person who has had the reproof of Scripture brought to their conscience and to their heart, and they recognize that I am the chief of sinners. That's the ministry of the Word of God.

And the same is true in sanctification. We cannot grow as believers until we know what needs to be pruned out of our lives that is holding us back from spiritual growth and development. Listen to Hebrews 4, verses 12 and 13, for the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, both joints and marrow, and is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

For there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are opened and laid bare before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. That's the ministry of the Word of God. The Holy Spirit has come into the world to convict men of sin and righteousness and judgment, but the Holy Spirit only does that in concert with the ministry of the Word of God.

The Spirit of God and the written Word of God work together in perfect partnership, and there is no conviction of sin, and there is no conviction of judgment, and there is no conviction of sin and righteousness and judgment apart from the Word of God being brought to a person's life and piercing their soul. Remember after Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, and he quoted Joel chapter 2, verses 28 to 32. He then went to Psalm 16, verses 8 through 11. He then goes to Psalm 134. He then comes back to Psalm 16, and then he comes and finishes with Psalm 110, verse 1. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.

What was the response of that? Scripture after Scripture after Scripture after Scripture. With the very people who had called for the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ just weeks earlier, they interrupt the sermon, and they come rushing forward to Peter, and they say, what must we do? And it records that they were pierced to the heart, katanuso.

It's like a butcher knife being thrust into the chest cavity or slitting the throat of a sacrificial animal. There is only one instrument that is so supernaturally powerful that it brings reproof to the unconverted heart and brings it under conviction of sin, and that is the Word of God. Paul said in Romans 7, verse 7, I would not have known sin except by the law. So, yes, it's the Word of God that brings reproof.

It is absolutely necessary for any conversion. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ. Romans 10, verse 17. And it is necessary for our sanctification, for our growth in grace. And John 15, 2 says that the Word of God is like a pruning knife. What does a pruning knife do?

It cuts off that which is barren and is not producing fruit. And the Word of God is pruning us back and cutting back so that there can be greater growth. Only the Word of God can do this, my friend. Your Christian life will not grow one inch beyond your intake of the Word of God.

You may not live up to as much of the Bible as you know, but your Christian life cannot advance one milli-step beyond what you know of the Word of God. So it is profitable for teaching. It is profitable for reproof. Third, it is profitable for correction. And the word correction here is used really in a positive way. And this Greek word means to restore something that is broken, like setting a broken bone so that it can mend and heal.

It means to put something back into place after it has fallen over, like an object being fallen off of a table, to pick it up and put it back into its place. That is the idea here with the word correction. If reproof deals with what is wrong in our lives, correction deals with how to make it right, how to put it back in the right order, how to take steps back to God. And it's needed in salvation or conversion. It is really the call of the gospel. It is the call for repentance. It is the call for confession of faith. And it is absolutely necessary in our Christian lives as well as it continually is calling us back when we have left our first love. The steps are given how to come back to full love for God. It shows us the path back when we are lukewarm and how to be on fire for God. That is the correction that we need, and it is found in this book.

It's all right here. And then finally, for training in righteousness. The idea is that we're to be always in training. We never outgrow being in training in the Christian life in righteousness. And the word training here carries the idea of being built up and edified and to be disciplined and discipled in the word righteousness here. It refers to a practical righteousness, personal holiness. 1 Peter 2, verse 2, like newborn babes long for the pure milk of the word that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. The Word of God is like spiritual growth food that produces a catalytic spiritual maturity in our lives. John 17, 17, sanctify them in the truth.

Your Word is truth. And listen to Psalm 119, verse 9, and then verse 11. How shall a young man keep his way pure? How shall a young woman keep her way pure? How shall an old man keep his way pure?

How shall an old woman keep her way pure? By keeping it according to Your Word, verse 11, Your Word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against You. It is the power of the Word of God integrated into our lives that restrains us from sin and stimulates our positive growth. In Acts 20, verse 32, Paul said to the elders in Ephesus, I commend you to the Word of God's grace, which is able to build you up. Every one of us here tonight need to be built up in our faith. We can't stand firm if we're not being built up in our faith. And there is one book that builds us up that puts a backbone into our spiritual life, that pours concrete into our soul that we would stand strong. And it is getting into the Word of God and for the Word of God to get into us. Now look at verse 17.

We'll wrap this up. So that the man of God, the man of God is a technical term for the man who is called by God to preach the Word. He's mentioned in chapter 4, verse 2, preach the Word. But by extension it applies to all believers who are here tonight. So that the man of God may be adequate.

The ESV says competent. And the idea is that we are made complete, that there are no gaps in our spiritual life, that there are no real deficiencies, that the Word of God addresses every area of our life and we are being trained in righteousness and we're being built up in our faith. And because of the sufficiency of Scripture, there is nothing missing.

This word adequate or competent is a Greek word that means proficient, to be fitted for the task adequately, to be able to meet all the demands that God places on that person. It's the Word of God that does this. It's not the newspaper.

It's not surfing the Internet. It's not reading this or that or this or that. It's the Word of God that does this. And other books that help us understand the Word of God are a great help to us as well.

But they're only pointing us back to the only book that can do this, which is the Bible. And then he says, equipped. That means to be thoroughly furnished with everything that you need to live the Christian life.

It says, for every good work. This is astonishing. Do we take this at face value?

Yes, we do. The Bible doesn't just equip us for some good works, many good works, most good works, for every good work. Everything that God calls you to do in living your Christian life, the Bible makes you complete, equipped, inadequate.

This is an extraordinary thing. So you and I have no need for any special revelation from God outside the Bible. We do not need dreams or visions. We do not need some supposed audible voice from heaven. We do not need mystical experiences. We do not need speaking in tongues. We do not need special private words of prophecy. We do not need private words of knowledge. God has already told us everything that we need to know. And it is in one book, it is in the Bible, God has given us a well-stocked library of 66 books that have been brought together to form one book, and nothing is missing that you need to know how to have a saving relationship with God and how to become more like your Savior, Jesus Christ.

It is all in this one book. When I used to study under Dr. Sproul, I would travel through southeast Arkansas, through the rice fields to get down to Mississippi, and I would go through these little towns. And there was one town that was so small that they really just had one general store.

That was the whole town. And they had two signs out front. And one sign said, if you can't stop, wave. The other sign said, if we don't have it, you don't need it. Well, I want to tell you that's true about the Bible.

If it's not in the Bible, you don't need it, because everything that you need of truth to be equipped, to be made complete in your Christian life, God has already put in this book. Sir Walter Scott was a great poet, Scottish historian, playwright, novelist. He came to the end of his life in the 19th century. He had an extraordinary library of 9,000 books.

He's laying on his deathbed. His son-in-law comes to him, and Sir Walter Scott says to his son-in-law, bring me the book. The son-in-law says, sir, you have 9,000 volumes. Which book? And Scott replied, there's only one book for a dying man, and that is the Bible. I want to say to you tonight, there is only one book for a living man, and only one book for a living woman, and that is the Bible. Get into the Word of God. Have the Word of God into you. Saturate yourself with the Bible.

Be a walking Christian. Put it into practice in your life. Follow its directions, and it will elevate your worship. It will deepen your fellowship. It will mature you in holiness. It will prepare you for every ministry that God will ever call you to serve Him.

It is the complete package. It is the all-sufficient, divinely inspired Word of the living God. May tonight, even as you go back to your room, may you pick up that Bible and read your Bible and soak your soul in the truth of the Word of God. Every one of us here tonight desperately need more of the Bible into us.

God bless you. Get into the Word. That was Stephen Lawson, a Ligonier teaching fellow, speaking at this year's national conference. To aid you as you follow Dr. Lawson's admonition to be in the Word of God, today we're offering you R.C. Sproul's book, Everyone's a Theologian. This book expands on the topic you heard today, what we believe about the Bible, but it also covers what we believe about God, creation, man, Christ, the Holy Spirit, salvation, and more. And so for your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, we will send you R.C. Sproul's book, Everyone's a Theologian.

In addition to the physical book, you'll also receive the e-book edition in your learning library. So give your gift today at renewingyourmind.org or by calling us at 800-435-4343. If we are to stand firm in our day, we must be clear about who God is, and that includes being unwavering, that God is Trinitarian, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To encourage us to do just that is Michael Reeves, tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. I'm Michael Reeves. I'll see you next time.