Why Bother with the Bible? (Part 4 of 6)

Some people see themselves as too smart Maybe that describes you or someone you know. The Bible has a clear warning as well as a message of hope for atheists and agnostics. We'll look at that message today on Truth for Life Weekend. Alistair Begg is teaching from 2 Timothy chapter 3. We're looking at verses 14 through 17. What is the Bible for? What is the Bible for?

Here we have essentially two answers that Paul chooses to give to Timothy at this point. Why should anybody bother with the Bible? Well, first of all, they're at the end of verse 15, because it is through the holy Scriptures, the hiaragrammata, the holy writings, that a man or a woman is made wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. And secondly, in verse 17, because it is by means of these same holy Scriptures that the man or woman of God can be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Taking it down a couple of notches, it shows us how to be saved, and it shows us how to live when we have been saved. Incidentally, that's what gives me and my colleagues complete freedom in teaching the Bible in the way that we do, verse by verse and chapter by chapter and book by book. Some are almost paralyzed in their approach to teaching the Bible, because they recognize that there is a great diversity of people listening. Some of them have no idea about the Bible at all. Some are unchurched and unlearned and disinterested, whereas others have been around for a while.

What are we to do? And they have conferences and sit together and discuss, you know, telling people when they should come and how they should listen, and then come in the evening if you want to learn the Bible properly, come in the morning if you want just to hear about Jesus, and so on. I applaud their endeavor to be very, very purposeful. But I fear no such tyranny and feel no such need.

Why? Because of what I learn here. That Paul says to Timothy, if you just teach the Bible, two things will happen. People will be saved, and the people who are saved will learn what it means to be saved. And you really don't need to bother much beyond that, provided you are faithfully, Timothy, speaking into a paganized culture and into a church that represents a diversity of perspectives. So we let the Scriptures speak to save and to equip. Now, by deduction, then each of you should be sitting here now saying to yourself—that is, if you're compass-mendous at all, if you're even listening—then by deduction it is very clear. If what this character is saying is accurate, then I, as an individual this morning, in listening to the Bible being taught, either need to learn what it means to be saved—and therefore I'm asking the question, Have I been saved?—or I find myself asking the question, Am I learning what it means to live as a saved person?

Those are the only two options. The Scriptures are given to us to make men and women wise for salvation and to equip them, then, with everything that goes along with what it means to be saved. Well, then, listen carefully, won't you? What Paul is doing in this little section is simply reminding Timothy of the impact that the Word of God has had upon his life and upon his family. He's had a wonderful heritage, hasn't he? A godly grandmother and a godly mom. The two of them had a wonderful impact on Timothy's young life, the way that many of you are having today.

I applaud all godly grannies, and I applaud all godly moms. I know by personal testimony those from whom I learned the Scriptures and have become convinced of these things. And that was Timothy's experience. The place of his mind in thinking. The key of the mind inserted in the lock of Scripture, opening the doorway to salvation. The Bible is a Bible under which we come.

Jim Packer, years ago, wrote a wonderful little book—I pulled it off my shelves again this week—Under God's Word. But he makes the point the Bible is not primarily a book for the speculative thinker, the scientific investigator, or the literary critic. But it is rather for the individual who, having learned from the world around him and from his own heart something of God and of his own need, now seeks to know God and to find salvation.

Now, why would that be the case? Well, because the Scriptures have been given to make us wise for salvation. You'll notice it's not the Bible that saves us. It's the Bible that makes us wise so that we might be saved. Read the Acts of the Apostles. We considered a little of this last Sunday evening, and you discover that when the apostles begin to proclaim the good news on the Jerusalem streets and beyond, what they're essentially doing is simply taking the Old Testament Scriptures and saying, This is him!

That this Messiah who was to come has actually come in the person of Jesus. And in the great declarative statement of Peter following Pentecost and following the healing at the gate beautifully, he says, Salvation is found in no one else, for there's no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. The Scripture has been given to educate us, to educate us, to tell us what we won't get anywhere else.

Let me quote the Confession for the last time this morning. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God as to leave men inexcusable, yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of his will which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord in various ways and at different times, quoting Hebrews 1, to reveal himself and to declare that his will unto his church and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating of the truth and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan of the world to commit the same holy unto writing which makes the Holy Scripture to be most necessary. These former ways of God revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.

Now, if that's a bit of an earful, they then work it out in more bite-sized chunks. But actually, it occurred to me that Psalm 19 says this very thing, doesn't it? Where does it begin? The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech or language where this voice is not heard.

What is that speech and language? It is the speech and language that is known in every language of every nation of humanity under God's Son, where they stand out unto the night sky and look up into the vastness of the heavens, where they bow down before Mount Iger and say, Look at the immensity of this, where they consider the continental divide and say, How could this possibly be? And all of this speaks to them in a way that is confirmed by their conscience. For there is no place on the face of the earth in which men and women have not been born with an innate awareness of right and wrong. So says the Confession, confirming the Scripture, God has made himself known in the morality of man by means of conscience and in the grandeur of his handiwork. Every time I hear a newborn baby cry and touch a leaf or see the sky, then I know why I believe, right?

Whoever that was. Well, believe what? You can believe in the existence of God, but you can't believe enough to be saved, because there isn't enough there to be saved. That's why Psalm 19 then goes forward—I think about verse 7 or into 8—and he then says that the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart, that the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimonies of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple. So that what does not happen by way of natural religion happens as a result of the Bible taking hold of the mind of a man or a woman, of a boy or a girl.

Now, if you think about this, I think it will make perfect sense to you. I was reading The New York Times and was excited to see the word Cleveland appear in The New York Times. I'm familiar with The Plain Dealer stealing from The New York Times some of their articles, but I don't often see the word Cleveland in The New York Times. And it was referring to the fact that in Cleveland in these past days, Case Western University has hosted this almost global conference on cosmology. And therefore, we ought to be proud that this was the location that was chosen for this event, and from around the world came some of the brightest physicists and mathematical minds dealing with the issues of cosmology. I began to read the article. It was clear to me that I didn't understand much of what was going on, except I think that the debate was largely between two groups, both of whom agreed that the universe was expanding, but one group believed that it is expanding at a slowing rate, and another group believed that it is expanding at an increasing rate.

And it had something to do with five million or a billion years ago, I don't recall. And it was fascinating, and I said, my, my, I wish I could even understand a tenth of this material. But I was also studying my Bible I was thinking about today. And I said, you know, all of this wisdom cannot address the issue of making a man or a woman wise unto salvation. You need the Bible for that.

And incidentally, those of you who regard yourselves as intellectual sophisticates too smart to believe this stuff. You cannot, by any other means, be brought to faith in Jesus except through this stuff. You can know enough about God to be rendered without excuse. That's why Paul begins Romans 1 as he does. He says, And so all men are without excuse.

Why are they without excuse? Because they know enough about God to know that exists. Therefore, when they say he doesn't exist, when they exercise their willful unbelief, they're going against what is actually made plain to them.

They have made a great exchange. But it is by the Scriptures that a man or woman is made wise for salvation. Turn to 1 Corinthians just for a moment to familiar words. Isn't this the great argument of Paul to the thinkers in Corinth? All these people coming and saying, You know, Paul's a bit of a dimwit. He's here with some strange story about Jesus of Nazareth. And so Paul, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and in verse 18, he writes to them, and he says, Well, let's just acknowledge that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.

Just pause there for a moment. If you are perishing—and that's the word the Bible uses, not the word that I used. In other words, if you are on your way to an eternity without God, when you listen to me or anyone else teach the Bible concerning the nature of salvation, you think it's daft. You think it's foolish. You may think it's trite, and perhaps beneath your level of intellectual awareness. I mention this simply to let you know that God is not taken by surprise by the reaction of man, and neither is the letter to Corinth.

To us who are being saved, the message of the cross is actually the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate. In fact, he says, Why don't you come up and stand up here beside me, wise man? Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

How do you mean, Paul? Well, what I mean is, since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom didn't know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those—notice—who believe. Who believe.

No one is saved without believing. So really, there is a fundamental question that is before us. If the Bible makes us wise, tells us stuff that we can't learn anywhere else at all, are we prepared to listen to what the Bible is saying? What is it saying to us?

Well, this is how the wisdom goes. The good, the bad, the new, the perfect. God made the world, and he made it in perfection. Man turns his back on God, sin enters into the world, and the world as we know it today and man as we know him today is not as God made him in all of his pristine beauty and reality, but is man messed up by his rebellion. Into that sorry condition, God comes, because he is a wonderfully loving God, and he comes to introduce man to the remedy for his predicament, providing in his own son a savior and a guide and a friend.

And when men and women believe in that son, then not only is their life now transformed, but they look forward to a day when that which has become new within them will become perfected in heaven. Or what the Bible says is, first of all, did you know you're lost? I was lost only briefly this past week in Detroit, just for a short time, but long enough to know I was wrong. And apparently, in a very way that is untypical of a man, I pull in almost immediately when I'm lost. There's some caricature of men that will drive all the way to Chicago before they admit that they're on the wrong road.

I am not one of them. I am perfectly and quickly prepared to say, Help me out. And I pulled in, and a man who spoke like, I saw him for z's, crossed him for z's, lost him for wo ho. He should have been lost, but I was lost, but he knew enough to tell me I was going in the absolute wrong direction.

And so I turned around and went the other way. And as a result of listening to someone who knew what I did not know, the lost boy was found and was set on the right track. The Bible says that you and I are lost willfully, helplessly, and naturally, and that Jesus has come to find us, that salvation is the gift of God to us, and that God has given it to us in Jesus, because we cannot save ourselves. The Bible is able to make us wise for salvation. I can never think of this without thinking of someone of whom I heard to my encouragement just a couple of months ago.

I've told you of this man before, but I want to tell you about him again, because many of you weren't listening the first time, and others of you weren't here. He was quite prepared to tolerate the fact that his wife and his daughters—three of them—should go along to church. He thought it was somewhat beneath him, and without seeking to disparage his wife in any way, he was quite happy for her to attend. When I visited their home in the course of my responsibilities in Scotland, it was an interesting encounter, and when I suggested that I might pray, he said something to the effect of, Go ahead and pray if you want.

It won't affect me. He worked at the National Engineering Laboratory. He had a PhD in physics, and he was bright—far brighter than me—but of course, I'm used to that. I went home, got a copy of Basic Christianity—it was around 9.30 in the evening—got a copy of Basic Christianity and drove back to his house and put it through his letterbox with a note that said, Maybe you could read this and we could talk about it. He read it.

We began to talk. He came intermittently to church. He sat on the balcony. He never looked at me.

He always looked across the balcony. And a journey began in his life. And one morning, preaching through the twenty-third psalm, having come to the phrase, He leads us in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake—a sermon that, frankly, I haven't a clue what I said.

I'm not sure even then. I was very aware of what I was saying. I can't imagine what that phrase means even now. But anyway, I tried my best. He leads us in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. It was one of those events where he said, Well, okay, we did that phrase. Let's move along. And God saved him.

What? From the twenty-third psalm? He leads us in the paths of righteousness? This isn't Romans 10 and 9, is it? You know, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. You can get saved from that verse, you see, but you're not supposed to get saved from Psalm 23. You know, he leads us in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. How could that ever happen?

Why? Because the Bible makes people wise for salvation. And the missing link for him was simply he could not understand how it would ever be possible to live a righteous life. And that was the final piece in the jigsaw forum, and in that morning it dropped into line, and this great archetypal protagonist bows his knee to the lordship of Christ.

And he was made wise for salvation. Well, our time is gone. We'll come back to it. But let me just give you a thought as you go. What do you think happens to a culture, to a church, to a family, to a life that neglects the Scriptures?

What do you think has happened to the history of the United States of America in neglect of the Scriptures? You're listening to Truth for Life Weekend. Alistair Begg is continuing a series titled Why Bother With The Bible. We'll hear more next weekend.

Keep listening. Alistair will be back in just a minute to close today's program with prayer. If you've been benefiting from the Why Bother With The Bible series, you can own the entire collection of messages on a USB drive. In fact, it comes with five other series and a printed booklet all about the Gospel. Go to our website truthforlife.org and search for the Where Do I Start USB. This USB contains a collection of six series preached by Alistair on the basics of Christianity. Along with Why Bother With The Bible, there's a series on Who Is Jesus?, Seven Questions God Asks, What Is The Church?, and more. The USB comes bundled with a small booklet titled The Story, which offers a straightforward explanation of God's plan for salvation. This bundle is an excellent resource for sharing your faith with a friend. You'll find it in our at-cost store truthforlife.org slash store.

And while you're on our website, check out our current book offer. This is the last weekend we're featuring a classic book titled Divine Providence. It's written by Puritan author and pastor Stephen Charnick, who clearly and thoughtfully draws from scripture to address difficult questions like if God is sovereign, why do wicked people prosper and good people suffer? And does God truly orchestrate the intricate details of our daily lives?

If so, why don't things go our way? For more information about the book Divine Providence, visit our website truthforlife.org slash donate. Now here's Alistair with a closing prayer. Father, thank you for giving us the Bible, not as a compendium of theological ideas, certainly not as a source book to allow us to argue with one another about superficial and tangential issues, but rather giving us a book that would allow us to insert the key of our minds into the lock of scripture and would open the door to discover why we exist and how you have pursued us in Jesus and what it might mean to be found and forgiven and made new.

Some of us are here this morning, and we have never, ever believed. Help us, Lord, we pray. Speak into our lives. Show us in this book ourselves and our Savior. May the Bible shine into the darkness of our hearts.

And if perhaps someone is saying, Well, I would love to believe, I don't know what I'm supposed to say, then say something like this just in your heart. Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I'm weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed. But through you I'm more loved and accepted than I ever dared hope. I thank you for paying my debt and bearing my punishment and offering me forgiveness. And I turn from my sin and receive you as my Savior. So then, Lord Jesus, speak into our lives this day, helping us to bother with the Bible, because it makes us wise for salvation and also equips us so that we might live properly on account of your grace to us. May the hours of this day and our walking into the week be touched by your grace and your mercy and your peace. That comes from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forevermore. Amen.

I'm Bob Lapine. Salvation happens in an instant, but spiritual maturity always takes time and effort. Next weekend, we'll learn how to tap into the power of Scripture. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.