God-Breathed: The Sufficient Word for Trying Times

The last time I was here, I was preaching out of Second Timothy, and I'm going to be here several times over the next few months. Pastor Brian and the session have been lined up for next week and then a time in September. three times in November when Pastor Brian was gone. So I thought about, I would just continue that sermon and remind you that you have to have a historical lesson, of course, from a church historian, that when Calvin was relieved of his pulpit in Geneva, he spent three years in exile in Strasbourg. When he came back, he picked up exactly where he was preaching before he left. So I'm just doing that. I'm picking up where I was before. And right now, we are in 2 Timothy chapter 3, and we're reading verse 10 through verse 17. This is the Word of God. Let's pay attention to it.

You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me in Antioch and Iconium and at Lystra, which persecutions I endured, and from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it. And now from childhood, you've been acquainted with the Holy, with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for proof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray. Precious Father, we come today as people who have just heard your word. inerrant, perfect word. And it's a passage that speaks about that word. Give us attended ears, hearts, and minds to listen, and a desire to live according to what you teach us today. Guide my words, and that indeed I will be proclaiming your truth today. From Christ's name we pray, amen.

Sermon

The doctrine of scripture, Just what we mean when we say that the Bible is the word of God has been at the forefront of discussion at various times in the history of the church. Many of us are familiar with the time of the Reformation, where there the issue was the sufficiency of scripture. The reformers argued the Bible was sufficient to be our final authority. On the other hand, the church that they came out of, the medieval Roman Catholic church, said, no, church tradition, papal authority, all these other things are equal authorities with the Bible.

Now, interestingly enough, the reformers did not say that tradition was bad. They were willing to learn from tradition. But the difference was this. In the time of the Reformation, the reformers said, the scripture is the trump card. The scripture trumps. Everything else. You can bring me your tradition, but if it contradicts scripture, so be it for tradition. Now, you think, okay, everything is settled. Not necessarily. About 100 years ago, all of a sudden, the doctrine of scripture was in the forefront again.

Only that time, it was the issue of the inspiration of the scriptures, which is spoken of in our passage in front of us. What was, or given by God by inspiration of the Holy Spirit? Or was it simply a record of human religious experience and thus inspiring in the sense that great poetry is inspiring? That a novel, you might be inspired by a novel to do something.

Now people can talk, oh, that was really inspiring to people. There were people who argued about 100, 150 years ago, the Bible's inspiring. It sounds the same, doesn't it? But it's quite different. In other words, does the Bible inspire me to do great things, just like a poem might inspire me to do great things? Was the Bible just a record of human religious experience? And this confused a lot of people, because there were pastors in churches who say, oh, I treat the Bible very seriously. But they treated it as a classic text that could inspire you not a book that was inspired itself and therefore authoritative for God. You catch? That's a huge difference. Was the Bible, the issue was, is it true? Does it speak truth that's authoritative for us? Now, in recent years, there's been another issue. And that's what the issue, if you want, here's one of these big 25 cent seminary words, but it's an important word, hermeneutics. In seminary, we had a course on hermeneutics. And our professor used to joke about hermeneutics, who?

But it's simply a word that means the study of how you interpret a text. Because there were people who would say, well, yeah, it's fine to have a book that's inspired by God. But after all, you have to interpret it, don't you? And we always interpret things from our own prejudices, don't we?

And they talked about the hermeneutical circle. The Bible, according to your prejudice, it confirms your prejudice, and you go around in a big circle. And you say, lo and behold, the Bible teaches what I always thought it did, which is exactly right. You see that, how that's a circle? And there are people that say you can't escape that circle.

That's certainly a problem we have to do, because scriptures do need to be interpreted. I had a seminary professor that talked about this. He wrote a book about this, and it was actually quite good. He said, rather than seeing it as a circle, we should see it as a spiral.

Yes, we do start with our own prejudices, and sometimes we read them in the Bible. But if we keep comparing scripture with scripture, talking to other believers, eventually we'll correct those. And it will spiral, he says, spiral down and spiral down, getting closer and closer to what every text means. Do we always get them right?

No. How do we know that? Just talk to your spouse about the text sometimes. And your spouse will say, I think it means this. And you'll say, really? I think it means this. I've heard some preachers say this. And you finally decide it's not a big point. We'll disagree. You don't always agree 100%. But if you read the scripture carefully, do you find you always disagree 100% of the time? No, you don't. Because you keep spiraling down closer and closer to the truth.

In other words, The issue here of interpretation can be overcome with careful study of the scripture. You know, Mark Twain, the old wag who would like to say very pithy things, said it probably as good as anybody. And he said this, he says, it wasn't those things that he didn't understand in the Bible at the bottom, it was all those things he did understand. Those were the things that mattered, because he knew good and well he wasn't living according to those things.

And that's the point here. The scripture is clear. And that's what we want to talk about. Our own confession of faith talks about the scripture is sufficiently clear. Not all things are clear, it says, but they're sufficiently clear for us to grasp the meaning, the main meaning of the text. This continues to be challenged, of course. And the sufficiency of scripture can be challenged. There are lots of people who will rush to the social sciences or the experts to handle something.

It's amazing sometimes how the industry of the church people, instead of looking at biblical principles, how you do things, they'll rush to managerial principles. For example, my own doctoral thesis years ago at the University of Iowa, I worked with, about a hundred years ago, there was a movement among Presbyterians that actually affected everybody. It was called the managerial revolution, and there were people who talked about how efficiency was the big thing. You've ever seen like Cheaper by the Dozen, the guy who has the stopwatch, you know, the guy who's always timing everybody in his family, they made a couple of movies about that. And this hit, and there was this guy called Albert Francis McGarrett, and he was based out of Chicago, he was a Presbyterian minister, and he billed himself as a church efficiency expert.

And he went to all the seminaries, including the fully Orthodox ones, like Princeton Seminary, and taught them how to be efficient. He even taught them how to have efficient prayer meetings. Have you ever thought about that? How to have an efficient prayer meeting?

He was the efficiency expert. I got some of his cards in the library. They got a lot of waffles, because his stuff was so passe by the time I was writing my thesis. But I opened it up, and his business card fell out of one of them. And sure enough, there it said, Albert Francis McGarrett, church efficiency expert. efficiency expert.

And everybody was using him, because he was telling you how to lead the church efficiently. It was all based on just the managerial, the pop managerial principles of the day. That's what he was doing. Very little scripture in anything he did, but basically what we today call pop psychology.

So that question is still there. The question of interpretation, of course, doesn't go away. You ever tried to explain a text sometime to somebody? And they look at it, and they say, hmm, yeah, I see what you're saying. And then they pull out the final trunk card. Well, you know, that's just your interpretation. And people say that to you.

And it's a way to weasel out of the clear meaning of scripture. So we face this issue of scripture today. How can the Bible be fully human as well as fully the word of God? Well, this demands a very specific way, of course, of understanding God's providential control of the world. And those who somehow have the idea that God's very distant, he doesn't really control the world, have difficulty with this. Because the doctrine of scripture that's taught in this passage that scripture is breathed out by God so that it can be 100% the word of God and still 100% word of man, depends on an idea of how God controls meticulous, the term is meticulous providence. He meticulously controls the world in such a way that yes, this book is a divine book, but it's also a human book written in human words. No passage probably speaks about this more clearly than this passage we're looking at today. And there are three truths about the God-breathed Bible that we need to hear today.

First of all, it's a key resource during tough times. It's interesting how Paul segues into this because He had been talking about in the first half of chapter three, the headline at the top of the paragraph in my Bible says, Godlessness in the last days. By last days, he didn't mean, you know, the people with all the charts who say, oh, it's the last days, you know, and they mean Jesus is coming back 30 seconds from now or something like that. The last days was a code word for the whole New Testament era. He says it's gonna be some tough times. And he's warning Timothy, whom he's writing to, that these tough times are coming. So what does he say to Timothy in that?

He says, you followed my teaching. He says, keep doing it. He says, you followed my example. Now keep doing that. In fact, in verse 12, he says, those who follow the Lord will face tough times. Expect to get persecution. You see what he said here. He said very clearly those who indeed desire the love of God, the life of Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Now does that mean it's going to, you're going to end up in prison like the Apostle Paul? He wrote this, you know, when he was in prison.

Are you and I going to end up in prison? Not likely. in the current environment we have, it's not likely. I mean, who knows? Who knows what the political environment could be like sometime in the lifetime of some of us, but not likely that we will end up in prison.

However, did you notice that he tells Timothy, don't be surprised if you have difficulties. It's simply the response of the unbeliever is simply the natural response of the so-called natural man who doesn't understand the things of God. Yet, amazingly, what Paul does here in talking about these tough times, he says, basically, just go on. Continue on. Nothing new. Nothing different. Continue on what you're doing. And he says, remember, you have the scriptures. Continue on. Remember, you have the scriptures.

Now, that may surprise us, because we might have expected that he would have said a variety of things. Maybe he could have said, maybe you should pray harder, knowing that tough times are coming. He said, maybe you should have more worship times, because tough times are coming. More time with fellow believers for encouragement. And you know, every one of those would have been a true statement.

But Paul doesn't do that. He's talking about tough times. He's talking about persecutions. Godly people will be persecuted. What does he say? Continue on. Don't forget, you have the scriptures. He focuses on the source of his knowledge of God, the word of God. Because he says that those are what are able to make you completely competent or adequate for every good work. Now, does that mean you can dispense with prayer, dispense with fellowship, dispense with worship? No, by no means. Matter of fact, when you get to the end of the book, which we're going to get to because I'm going to finish this book up, you're going to find Paul circles back and talks about some of those things.

He talks about the fact that he's lonely. He talks about the fact that, oh, we greet so-and-so, greet so-and-so, and oh, yeah, Timothy, come, and bring, I miss you, Timothy, and bring these things that I need. And he says, by the way, bring my coat, because I'm freezing to death here. It's wintertime that's coming.

So Paul is not overlooking some of these things, but he's saying the foundation has to be, we have the sure word of God. As God's authoritative voice, His speech to us, this provides the norm for all that we do. We need the scriptures to inform everything we do. Now this means far more than a superficial awareness of just a few verses. Rather, we need an awareness of the whole of the Bible, from beginning to end. The whole gamut of God's speaking is crucial for what we do, and no more crucial, Paul is saying, than when the times get tough. Matter of fact, it's in those tough times when you need to understand the Scriptures. It will mean comfort, but above all, it provides the perspective to understand tough times.

Now, there's that joke about, it's almost certainly apocryphal, but it tells the story about the simple man who's reading the Bible, and somebody asks him, and he's asking what he's reading, and he says, I'm reading the book of Revelation, and he says, do you understand it?

And then some of these people who asked him were much far more sophisticated in the answers. Of course, Jesus wins. Jesus wins. He understands it. understood that when we're going through tough times, the final victory is ours. And it's from the scriptures that we understand that. But it also helps us to understand the situation around us. We say we believe in total depravity, that people are sinners and depraved. And then, frankly, we're shocked sometimes when some co-worker stabs us in the back.

You're shocked. You might say, oh, that person? Shocked about him. But did you believe in total depravity? Or let's say someone that you knew in the church does something that's really bad. Every church occasionally will have something like this. Churches will have people who, you know, the most common one is somebody who falls into an extramarital affair. But it can be other things. I know churches where someone was found involved in child pornography, or a banker who was embezzling. That was my own church campus.

A banker who was a leader in the church was involved in embezzling funds and ended up going to federal prison and were shot sometimes. And the question comes back to us, did he believe what the Bible said? That there are people who profess the faith, but they're not genuine believers? Did we really believe it?

In other words, knowing the scriptures gives us that framework, gives us that understanding that when the world around us seems to be falling apart, we can understand it. The Bible teaches none is righteous, no not one. None seek after God, all have gone astray. That's us. That's the depravity in our own heart. And it was said of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great British reform preacher.

He started to say English, but he was a Welshman, and he would not have liked it if I called him an Englishman. But he preached in London for years, one of the great reform preachers of the 20th century. So apparently, some woman came up to him after he was preaching and was gushing over how godly man he was. And he got a little tired of it, frankly. And he looked at her finally. He was quoted. Somebody heard him say this. He looked at her, and he said, woman, please stop. He said, if you knew what was in my heart, you'd spit in my face. But he's older. If you knew what was really in my heart, you'd spit in my face.

Do we really believe the scriptures? Because Paul is saying, they provide the framework and the understanding that when times get tough, we understand the times. Because we understand what human beings are really like. No superficial, easy, let's just get along together.

How many times did you hear that? They interview newscasters and politicians, and they come back, can't just everybody all get along? And we're saying, do you really believe what the scripture's saying? If you did, you would realize that some people know, some people just don't want to get along. They're selfish, grasping, looking out for number one. But the second truth we want to look at in this passage about the scriptures is that it's an essential tenet of the faith. Having said that, there are people that I expect to see in heaven someday who do not have an adequate doctrine of scripture.

Why? Why do I say that? Because we are not, we are there because we have trusted in Jesus Christ, not because we've had every bit of our doctrine perfect. If all of our doctrines had to be perfect, there wouldn't be any of us there. because I'm convinced every one of us has a little tweak here and there that when we're in glory someday, we're gonna say, oh, I guess I was dead wrong about that. And there are people I expect to see in heaven who had a bad doctrine of scripture in one way or another. However, it's crucial for us to have a good doctrine of scripture because if we follow up here, mess up here, it affects so much. Now granted, you look at the so-called ecumenical creeds, Apostle's Creed, the Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed, all the great creeds of the early church.

None of them have a specific doctrine of scripture in them. That's true. But from the beginning of the church, people of this church has used the Bible in such a way that to demonstrate without an adequate doctrine of scripture, we're likely to wander around in the thought. Why in the world by the 16th century was the church so messed up? Because it had an inadequate doctrine of scripture and tradition and all sorts of other things were allowed to cloud the clear meaning of scripture. This text comes as close to anything in the Bible about a definitive word when it uses the phrase, all scripture is breathed out by God.

Now, the traditional term was inspiration. The scripture is inspired. But it's interesting that some theologians in the last 100 years or so are saying, we probably would be good if we replaced that with another term. The late Donald McLeod, the preacher to Scotland, great theologian of the late 20th century, said we could replace it with expiration instead of inspiration.

Because when you expire, you breathe out. It says here, all scripture is breathed out by God. Breathed out by God. This book, then, is the breathed out speech of God. It says all scripture. Now, clearly Paul was talking at that time, and in that setting, about the Old Testament.

But it has implications as well, because in 1 Timothy 5.15, he quotes the words of Jesus, spoken in Luke 10.17 as scripture.

2 Peter 3.15.16 refers to the letters of Paul as scriptures. Paul cites these as words taught, his words as taught by the Holy Spirit.

He says they are sacred and able to make us wise for salvation. There are no other writings that have this particular quality. It's a peculiar quality of scripture. Yes, human writings can be helpful, but as long as they are helping us to understand and apply the scripture. Now, it's not divorce. acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. In other words, it's not saying that the scriptures somehow become of a higher authority than Christ, because the two are so intertwined. Because the scriptures, Jesus says, testify to him. They all have their goal in focusing That is the goal of what the scriptures are.

Tell us about salvation in Jesus Christ. In other words, this is why I don't particularly like red-letter editions of the Bible. I know some people like those. What's a red-letter edition? They put the words of Christ in red, as if somehow those are more valuable words.

Are the words of Christ valuable? You better believe it. They are incredibly valuable. But no more so than the words of Paul here. Because all of these words in this book are breathed out by God. It also doesn't mean that the Bible only speaks in so-called theological truths, and therefore can be false on matters of science and history. Now we have to be careful here. Because the Bible speaks in what we call phenomenological terms. What I mean by that is this.

We say the sun sets. Is anybody going to call you a liar because you say the sun sets? The Bible speaks about that. Does the sun literally set? We know, we taught that in science class, that the Earth revolves around the sun, and the Earth is turning, and all those kinds of things. But it's a term that we use. The sun is setting. The Bible uses round numbers sometimes. Let me give you an example.

If I were to say 1,000 people were there for that basketball game, and somebody came up to me and said, liar, I counted them. There were 998. You're a liar. You told me there were 1,000 people at that basketball game. Well, how would we respond? Huh? What are you talking about? I was giving you a round number.

The Bible speaks in round numbers sometimes. And so we have to make sure we understand that. The Bible speaks in summaries sometimes. And that's how sometimes why when you look at the parallel, you get a gospel parallel. I have one of those at home that has all the four gospels in a parallel. And you can see that sometimes Mark will give a summary. Sometimes Luke will give a summary. Sometimes Matthew will give a summary. Sometimes one of the other ones will give more details.

Is one true and one false? No, because they're doing different things. What we above all must insist is that the Bible is completely trustworthy in all that it teaches, all that it affirms. This is what we mean when we say inerrant. The term gets misunderstood sometimes. One of my professors in seminary even said it was a clumsy term. But he said, it's probably the best term of God. But it's a clumsy term.

What does it mean that it's inerrant? Because it's a negative inerrant. It means we can trust it. This book is a book we can trust. It's breathed out by God. And we don't believe it's completely trustworthy because we can solve all the issues that have been raised, although all the time, they're solving more of them. All sorts of things which 150 years ago, people thought, oh, that's a problem.

Did you know that Pontius Pilate was, for years, people said, they laughed at the Bible speaking about Pontius Pilate because they said, I never heard of such a guy, Pontius Pilate, in the Bible. Well, then they found inscriptions with the word named Pontius Pilate as proper interpreter. Well, people laughed. Pontius Pilate?

We never heard of such a guy. He kind of went on to become for some an admirato. And those kind of people don't always make it in history books. But we found descriptions with his name. It's trustworthy speech. It's not dictation, though, because it is breathed out by God in such a way that it's human speech as well as divine speech. Did you know that the Bible even accurately quotes error? You say, what are you talking about? Here's a good example. The book of Job. Some of Job's counselors, what does God say about their counselor? Wrong. Push the wrong button. But does the Bible accurately quote what they say? Yes, it does. Get your mind around that sometimes.

God's providence is working with the inspiration of the scriptures. Those false comforters are being quoted accurately because the words they're saying are the words God intended for them to say in his providence. And they are accurately recorded for us in scripture. We believe the Bible is accurate because it testifies to its accuracy because it's the word of a completely trustworthy God.

As I said, it's not dictation. It can be 100% human and 100% divine because of the word of God's providence. God can guarantee that the text, by the way, it's the text that's inspired, not the people. God doesn't inspire the writers. He inspires the words in the text. my distinction, but it's technically what we're saying here. While retaining the individual personality, style, and vocabulary of the human author.

If you ever read the New Testament in Greek, and first-year seminary students are forced with that, when you try to compare Luke's Greek to John's Greek, immediately you say, ooh, let's go back to John's Greek, it's a lot easier. Luke's Greek, John was a humble fisherman, Luke was a physician, educated man. He spoke with a more sophisticated Greek in Luke and in Acts, let alone in Hebrews. Hebrews' Greek is very sophisticated compared to the others, compared to Paul.

They all had their distinct style. Paul was the one with the long, run-on sentences. And they always show you this in Greek class. If you've ever sentenced diagrams where you hang clauses on top of clauses on clauses, If you took adhesions 1, 1 through 14, you have to start on the blackboard on that side and finish on the blackboard on the other side, because Paul dangles clauses. He keeps dangling clauses after clause after clause after clause. John's style is totally, so Paul has this writing, you know, logical thing. John's is kind of circular. Because I always think of it like a bird, that vulture that's circling around, circling around, circling around.

Which is why they give, because John's Greek is easier in first year seminary students. And they tell you, we're going to translate these. In beginning Greek, we're going to translate these. And then what they said to us, make some sermon outlines. Every one of my sermon outlines came out with the same points. Because that's what John kept doing. It kept going around, and around, and around, and around, over the same different angles at the same thing. But the points all sounded the same.

It's the same thing as how an action can be predestined by God, and yet an action that is your action, and you are responsible for that. It's no accident that those who deny that notion, that an action can be predestined by God, yet I am fully responsible for that action, have trouble with this idea that the Bible is 100% mine and 100% God's. All this means that we should not give up an inch on the complete trustworthiness of the Bible, nor must we fall into a view of the Bible that forgets it's also a human book, to be studied according to grammar and logic, to be studied with historical background.

For a long time, by the way, they used to think that the Greek in the New Testament, they knew it wasn't classical Greek, and they weren't quite sure what it was. And some people even called it Holy Spirit Greek, because they couldn't find it elsewhere, until about 1900, something like that.

I don't have the exact date in my notes here. But they uncovered a whole huge cache in Egypt of business documents written in the exact same Greek. And all of a sudden, it dawned on them in international commerce. That's the Greek the New Testament was written in.

It wasn't a special Holy Spirit Greek. It was ordinary commercial Greek, slightly simplified because many of the people who spoke it did not speak classical Greek. They were looking for a slightly simplified version. That's why if you study classical Greek first, I didn't do that. I studied Koine Greek first. But when you study, people who study classical Greek first look at that and they say, oh, this is easy. No, this is grammatically simplified. because that's what it was, ordinary Greek.

But it means that we take it seriously as the word of God. There's a real interesting difference between the way we approach our scriptures and the way, for example, let's say Muslims approach their Koran. Did you know that when a Muslim gets a Koran, he puts a special shelf up high, and he wraps his Quran with a beautiful cover and places it very high. Apparently, Muslims are astounded at what Americans, Christians, Western Christians in general, do with our Bibles.

You come from church, what do you do? You toss it on the back seat. It falls out of your briefcase. You pick it up and dust it off a little bit and think it's fine. You know, the cover's getting a little bent and beaten, and you say, oh, insides are still great. I mean, why do you? Because they've got it on a shelf. Because theirs is a dictated view of this. There's no concursus.

In their mind, Muhammad had this dictated by an angel. It's the word of God, but it's also the word of men. This doesn't shut out the interpretive process. It makes it all the more important that we understand what the scripture is saying. Because it is God-breathed. We must take all the care to make sure we listen to it and interpret it carefully. We work with the context of the Bible. That's the most important tool.

Why do false cults make mincemeat out of the scripture sometimes? because they take texts out of context. If you do that, St. Luther talked about the Bible could have a wax nose. He was a beaver for the authority of the Bible, but he also saw some false cults who were taking it. He called it a wax nose. I can't remember if you read it. It's all over the place. Make it mean anything you want it to mean. It means that we need to understand the historical flow of the Bible.

It all points to Christ, but it doesn't necessarily point to Christ by direct statements or even by types. You know, some people are finding types, something in the Old Testament that stands for something. And I heard one man say one time, you know, he said, I finally, after listening to some guy wax eloquent about typology, he says, I finally came to the conclusion that the tent pegs at the tabernacle were primarily there to hold the tent up, not because they secretly pointed to some secret truth about Christ. The tent pegs were there to make sure the tent didn't fall out. They weren't there to show me some interesting typology about Jesus Christ. We need to make sure we understand that. Yes, you can find interesting types, but we can get speculative in a wild and crazy way. What the Bible does, though, is show us fundamentally about a God who says, this is how you should live. And we look at that, and we say, that's not how I live, which shows us why we need a Savior.

And apart from the relationship to God through that Savior Jesus Christ that the scripture points to, we will not understand what the scripture is all about. The scripture is not primarily a rule book. The scripture is not primarily a book where you open it up at random and find a comforting verse when you're sad or lonely.

You can do that sometimes, and the Psalms will do that. And if you have many of the Psalms, learned by heart, these metrical versions of them, and you know them. But the primary goal of all of these is to point us to our need for a Savior, and that Jesus Christ is the Savior. Because the Bible, God has given us the Bible through human means, we must be aware as much as possible what it would have meant to the human authors.

When I was young, in college, and then as a young pastor, there was a popular book on eschatology. I'll just tell you what it was. It was Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet, or some of you from my generation remember that. And it was a big bestseller. My first church was in Decatur, Illinois, in a public library. At least when I looked at eight copies, those are the ones on the shelf. I had no idea how many of them were out on the shelf in a city of 100,000 people.

But you know what Mr. Lindsey said about their, he was given their speculative readings of the Bible. He said that, you know, those images of the locusts flying around in there that one morning, and he said those stood for black helicopters, black secret op helicopters.

You know, did you ever think about that? Imagine John writing to the seven churches in Revelation, and then the seven churches getting this immediately that they would have thought, aha! What would that have meant to the original listeners? Would they have thought about black helicopters? I don't think so.

And yet there were millions of people who were sure that the Book of Revelation spoke about black helicopters, because Mr. Lindsay found black helicopters and did some crazy interpretation to prove that these were black helicopters, secret ops helicopters. In other words, what did it mean to the original listeners?

Not just what does it mean maybe to somebody in the early 21st century, But you always have to start with the original meaning and then move to what it means for us today. We need to make sure we apply it accurately. It means we look at grammar, syntax, we compare translations. Now, we can all have our favorite translations, no doubt about that. I hope you do have a favorite translation. But if you only ever read one translation, remember translators also can have biases. In fact, they just kind of have biases. You know, you got apps now. You can get 35 of them. You ever seen those? Go to your phone, buy the app, 35 different translations. I like the ESV. I think you guys have the New King James here, both very good modern translations. There are a few others, good ones in the American Standard. the 1984 NIV, the modern translation.

A couple of my favorites, though, are ones, interestingly enough, coming from a reformed minister, Southern Baptist Convention and the Christian Standard Bible. And some of our friends in the Wisconsin Synod Lutherans have put together the Evangelical Heritage Personnel. A Wisconsin Synod Lutheran friend of mine gave me a wonderful translation. We're going to probably use those in our Reformed churches, the idea of a Lutheran or a Baptist translation, probably.

Most of our sessions will say, well, no, no, no, no. I don't think that's probably a good idea. But you can use it. And you can use it, and you can compare and contrast. And sometimes you can get a nuance out of the text. You have to remember, of course, that all Christians everywhere are going to claim to be biblical. But just claiming to be biblical doesn't certify that they used sound and interpreted methods that they followed. Because sometimes people can claim to be applying the text and aren't doing it right. I learned my lesson with this as a young pastor, a year or two into my pastoring.

Because it was actually an elder's wife, still very good friends with us. She wanted the ladies' Bible study to use a particular book by a well-known woman author, very popular in evangelical circles. It was about the life of Aaron. Remember the picture, the little green book, and it says, picture of Aaron. It says, Moses said, here am I, send Aaron. And he was pleading it at his brother.

But the author of this book came to the burning bush passage. And she said, how she interpreted the burning bush was like this. Bush is consumed with burning and not consumed, so you can be a burning bush for Jesus. And I had to tell one of my elders, if we use this book, this teaches the most horrible interpretive methods to our women in the church.

And he said, well, it's got good application, doesn't it? I said, no, it's got horrible application, because nothing in the text says about you can be a burning bush That's what the text is all about, not that you can burn up. So simply because somebody says, oh, I got a good application out of this passage, doesn't mean it's accurate.

The reformers rejected what the medieval scholars said in their fourfold interpretation of the Bible. And one of those was that the Bible was full of allegories. So they found allegories everywhere. The reformers said, no. You start with the literal sense, and you don't overlay it with all kinds of allegories. Now, when the question comes, then people say, well, of course, I take the Bible literally.

The question, of course, what do we mean by that? That doesn't rule out figures of speeches, metaphors, apocalyptic symbols. Those locusts that I mentioned earlier in the book of Revelation mean something. They mean God is bringing serious judgment I don't think they mean black sticker without helicopters, but they mean something. And our goal is to try to figure out what they mean. Virtually everybody understands this in theory, because we know when it says the mountains will clap their hands, all of a sudden the mountains are not going to develop little arms going like this everywhere. We understand that. That's a bigger speech. But we don't understand sometimes that there are other figures of speech.

There was a wonderful book written, I don't know, about 15, 20 years ago now, by a professor who came from out of a tradition that was what I would call hyper-literalistic. He was an Old Testament professor, and he was doing some research, and he discovered that, you know those passages in the Old Testament where it talks about the birds will feast on the flesh, and there would be rivers of blood up to the bridles of the horses. Remember, you've read some of those texts, remember? He said he discovered all kinds of other texts from the ancient Near East. And you know what?

They would talk about a battle that we had a documentation about between two countries. And it said the battle was such a decisive victory that the blood ran as high as the horse's bridles. And he said he discovered there were 1,000 casualties in that battle.

But it was a figure of speech to say, you got wonked up big time. That was a figure of speech. And he says, people will lax eloquence about how there's going to be a final battle, and there's going to be so much blood that literally the bridle, up to the horse's bridle, he says, no, it's a figure of speech that those people are going to get really walked. Because it was a figure of speech.

That's what we need to understand. So the fact that it's the word of God, but it's a human word at the same time, using figures of speech, needs to be interpreted carefully is crucial. But our last point is that it's crucial for godly living. That's Paul's emphasis, really, about the possibleness of the Bible. He says it's useful for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. He mentions doctrine first. That's foundational. Shouldn't surprise us. Timothy has been dealing with some strong Pharisees.

All of our doctrines need to be anchored in the Bible. It's amazing how many people, their doctrines are not anchored in the scriptures. You ask them about a certain doctrine, I just kind of feel that that's what makes sense to me. You ask them, where is it anchored in the Bible? Oh, God of ego, because it seems right to me. It's not really anchored in the scripture.

But the next three phrases are all practical, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. The Apostle Paul never divorced the two, doctrine and practical application. Doctrine always leads to application, and application always needs to be based on doctrine. The practical implication of the scriptures is both positive and negative. The old saw is that scripture afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.

So what I preach, as the Brian preaches, there are some of you who need to be afflicted. And if a few of you don't go away afflicted today, I haven't done my job. But there are some of you who need to be comforted. So if some of you don't go away comforted, I haven't done my job.

Because that's what we're supposed to do. We learn about who God is, and who we are, and how we relate to God, both in doctrine and in practice. We take scripture seriously, first of all, when we get, of course, an adequate intake of its content. We need to ask ourselves just how seriously we take our Bible content.

If you have not instituted family worship, where you read the scriptures sometime during the day, I would urge you right now to make that a practice. I grew up in a tradition, my home where we had that, any reformed tradition had that for a certain time of day. Johnny and I have found in our retirement that the morning is the best time for us, because in the rest of the day, sometimes we're coming and going, but in the morning, we have a time, you know, so I have a prayer time, we read a portion of the scriptures. Do you read large portions of the scriptures as well as meditate on smaller portions?

Have you followed? I know Pastor Brian puts out those Read the Bible through programs. Those are helpful. If you've never done it, you need to do it because you're going to find there are passages in there that will surprise you. I'm just reading through.

Second Chronicles the other day, and I came across something, I said to Jenny, she was sitting across from me, I said, I don't remember ever reading this before. How many times haven't I read the Bible? I don't remember ever reading that. We all won't have those experiences.

We should memorize portions of the Bible. Growing up that, in our household, to go to the summer camp, our church gave I think it was a $10 discount or something like that for every kid that memorized. Usually, they had you memorize a small epistle. And you would go to your Sunday school teacher every week and recite it. I remember that's why I have some passages memorized in King James, because it was all in the King James Bible back then. But I remember my mom looking at me, mom and dad looking at me, and he said, if the church is going to give you $10, it's good for you anyway.

All you kids are going to memorize these Philippians this year. And so we did it. And it was good discipline for us, but it also helped us to understand the word abandoned. You know, various ways you can do it. You can memorize old books. Navigators has a nifty little car. It's John Piper's from his Desiring God ministry, the retired Calvinist St. Baptist pastor from Minneapolis. He calls them fighter verses, you know, all the verses. And you get a little packet. It's got a little case. You can put them in if you didn't review them. My father-in-law used to have them. He always had them at the dashboard of his car. So when he would stop at the stop lights, there it was, right, next to this phenomenon, the verse he was working on. Various ways you can do this.

If your personal intake is minimal and your corporate intake is restricted to one sermon every Sunday, how seriously are you taking the fact that the scripture is breathed out by God? One of the great preachers of the 20th century was John Stott, preached at All Souls Church in London for many, many years.

Came as a visiting professor when I was in seminary, and he was talking to us about preaching, and I'm looking at the time up there thinking about this, and he said, remember, he says, if you preach sermonette, you're gonna produce Christianettes. So, I don't produce Christianettes. So, that's, as I'm looking at the clock, I'm reminded of that. So, I don't think Pastor Brian does either. But if you're not getting an intake from the word of God, how in the world are you going to grow?

The corporate is important. That's why we have Bible studies, because you bounce those things off each other. And you say, you know, I did my study, and I think this means that. And someone says, yeah, but have you thought about this? You know, you're right. That's part of that spiral, where we're spiraling down closer to the truth. But the personal is important, too.

Do you read the scriptures by yourself? Ask yourself, where do you turn to when you need advice on godly living? Do you find yourself turning to those who are expounding the scripture, or do you turn to pop psychology? In my first church, I made the mistake one time. There was a very popular Christian psychologist who had an opinion on something. And innocently, I mentioned something in a sermon I was adhering to with my pastor. I was met by half a dozen women at the end of the sermon.

How dare you? They were pretty nice. But they may say, you were saying, oh, Dr. So-and-so said this. And I said, well, I just disagree with him. And I was like, well, kind of like, you don't disagree with Dr. So-and-so. He's told us what is right. He's operating as a psychologist there. I thought he was wrong in his interpretation of the word.

Love God, you wrestle with his word. How much do you really wrestle with the scriptures? Mostly go there to have your prejudices confirmed, or do you want to be challenged? I don't care what it is. What issue? Do you go there to find your prejudices confirmed, or are you willing to be challenged?

How many times have you tried to explain the reform doctrine of the bondage of the will, and somebody responds with an easy, oh, I believe in free will. So your teaching couldn't possibly be true. And you have to then give a nuanced answer and say, yes, but. Yes, human beings make free decisions, but they are captive to a sinful will. Those decisions are free, but they're captive to a sinful personality. and help them to rethink some of their teachings.

To love God is to love his words, and to love him with our minds is we seek to understand and apply his word. The very first sin really was challenging the veracity of the word God. Because what did the devil come to even, Adam and Eve, and say? Did God say? Did God say? It's really inconceivable that we can call Christ Lord and then not take his word seriously. If God isn't a God of authority, he's not God at all.

If he doesn't reveal knowledge about himself, we wouldn't be able to ultimately know anything that's true. But he has revealed himself. He's breathed out his word, and it That revelation of necessity must be authoritative even when it impinges on what we naturally might want to believe.

The Bible, to summarize, is breathed out by a perfectly trustworthy God. It speaks to and points us to Christ and makes us wise unto salvation. It's crucial for tough times as it was for Paul and Timothy. It's essential to believe what it claims about itself, and it's necessary for Godly living.

The question for each of us today is do we cherish this perfect revelation that God has given us and make it a priority so that your very blood becomes like Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher of the 19th century, said, biblion. That's the question for you today. Do you have blood that is biblion, where the scriptures are there, undergirding and challenging and directing everything you do?

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. Thank you for what you teach us. Thank you that it speaks to us about what the word is. Inspired, inerrant, trustworthy, and all that it teaches. Help us to live by that word today, Lord, and in the weeks and months ahead, and in the rest of the lives that you give each one of us, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.