2 Timothy 3:16-17
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16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), 2 Ti 3:16–17.
Transcript
Will you please turn in your
Bibles with me to 2 Timothy chapter 3. 2 Timothy chapter 3. The sermon
is going to come from verses 16 and 17, but I think it's important
that we read the context in which this passage is found. So we're
going to read the whole chapter together. So 2 Timothy chapter
3. If you're using the New King
James pew Bibles provided for you, you're going to find that
on page 1057. 2 Timothy chapter 3, beginning
at verse 1. Brothers and sisters, this is
God's perfect Word. But know this, that in the last
days perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves,
lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents,
unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without
self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong,
haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. having a
form of godliness but denying its power, and from such people
turn away. For of this sort are those who
creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded
down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never
able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Janus and
Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth,
men of corrupt minds, depraved concerning the faith, disapproved
concerning the faith. But they will progress no further,
for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was. But you have carefully followed
my doctrine. manner of life, purpose, faith,
long suffering, love, perseverance, persecutions, afflictions, which
happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions
I endured. And out of them all, the Lord
delivered me. Yes, and all who desire to live
godly lives in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But evil
men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being
deceived. But you must continue in the
things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing
from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have
known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for
salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." And then
our sermon text. All Scripture is given by inspiration
of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction,
for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete,
thoroughly equipped for every good work. Let's pray. Lord, Your Word never fails,
it never returns void. And so, Father, we pray that
this morning your Holy Spirit might attend to your Word. Lord,
we pray that as we think through your Word, that you would use
it like a surgeon's scalpel upon our souls. Where there are calluses,
we pray that they would be cut off. Where there is cancer, we
pray that it would be cut out. Where there is disbelief, we
pray that it would be replaced with faith. Where there is fear,
We pray that it would be replaced by trust and peace and hope. Help us, Lord, we pray in Jesus'
name. Amen. The reason why I wanted to read
the entire context of this to you rather than just picking
up at verse 16 and 17 and giving you a scripture sermon, which
is what I'm going to give you today, the same thing I do either
the last Sunday or the first Sunday of every single year,
is I wanted you to see specifically the context in which Paul is
writing these words. Did you notice how happy of a
context this is in verses 1-9? I mean, if you look at verses
1-9, Paul is not saying, hey Timothy, I just wanted to let
you know everything is going great in Ephesus, everybody's
listening, everybody's paying attention, this is wonderful.
No, he warns Timothy, in these last days, You're going to have
people around you and we read through that list and we sit
there and most of us are like, man, he could have been writing
that today. It was the last days during Timothy's
life and it's the last days now. We're living in those last days,
these perilous times that are going to come. And there's these
people who are popping up all around. They popped up in the
1st century, in the 2nd century, in the 3rd century, and now in
the 21st century. And this text is just as applicable to your
life and to your faith as it was desperately needed for Paul
to write down to Timothy, this young pastor in Ephesus. So as
we come to this passage, I need you to know that this is not
just written as theological academic jargon. If you can hold to the
inspiration and the infallibility of God's Word, or the inerrancy
of God's Word, then that's what this is talking about. Well,
yes it is. God's Word is perfect, and we're going to get into that.
But you need to see that this has practical implications and
applications for your life today. And my desire coming out of this,
I just want to be honest with you, my desire to come out of
this, is that in these last days you might not find yourself caught
off guard, but that you might be ready for the things that
are going to come at you. So with that, 2 Timothy chapter 3, beginning
at verse 16, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.
The word here is God breathed out, or God spirited out. Right? All the writings of the Lord
are breathed out by God. Etheonevtos. Every syllable,
every paragraph, is not mythology, is not made up story, but it
is given to us by God Himself. It is not a book of second opinions,
and third, I want to feel like this, but it is God's Word, handed
down to us through the centuries. I need to tell you, how did God
give this to us? It's not like the Lord gave us
a Bible, and the clouds parted, and the light came through the
clouds in the sky in the Bible. Send it down from the clouds.
That's not how we got the Bible. But the Lord inspired holy men
who carried along by the Spirit wrote down what God intended
without erasing their personality. This is why sometimes you read
Paul and he's dense and hard like run-on sentences and lots
of lists. Because that was Paul. And then
you read John and you read a verse and five verses later you seem
like you read another iteration of that verse and five verses
later it's again, you know, Love the Lord, love the Lord, love
the Lord, and he does this again and again, because that was John's
style. You pick up Hosea's style, you
pick up Isaiah's style, because these were real people who really
wrote these books, but they were carried along by God. There are
people who will come to tell you, it's almost like, you know,
The Matrix or something, where it's like, you know, they got
their heads plugged and they just start typing or writing
God's Word. That's not how it happened. They're
not just typewriters, they're not just computers writing down,
but they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. But even though
these were written by men, they are true histories. This is one
of these things that always amaze me, right? When I talk to non-believing
people or I'll read non-believing, one of the best evidences of
these ever that the Lord's providence is funny sometimes, right? One
person said, the Bible is just made up and here's an example
of this, right? The King David, there's no archaeological
evidence that has any writing for King David anywhere. That's
not post after the exile. And then a week later, what did
they find? a signet for King David in Bethlehem, where they
said they didn't think Bethlehem actually existed. It's not myth. Right, even when people come
to you with archaeological stuff and they'll say, well, see, this
totally disproves the Bible. I sit there and go, alright,
give it a couple weeks or months or years. It'll turn up. Because this wasn't history written
after the fact. It's inspired by God. It was
written by real people. And they truly were. carried
along, as it says here, Theo neftos. The words are God breathed. Now, I can't convince you of
that. I can tell you it, but the only person who can convince
you that these words in the Bible are actually God's own words
is, guess whose job that is? God Himself. It's the Holy Spirit
who will convince you whether or not the words of the Scriptures
are true or not. I can't Bible-thump you with that. I can't pound
the pulpit hard enough to get you to believe that. It has got
to be you who owns it for yourself. Do you believe that all Scripture
is given by inspiration of God or not? It's an article of faith. This is why it's the third vow
of covenant communicant membership in our church. Do you believe
the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the Word
of God, the only infallible rule for faith and life? There's a
reason before we allow people to take communion, even if they're
just visiting. We ask them that question. What's the foundation
of your faith? Is it the God of the Scriptures?
Do you believe it's breathed out by Him? Oh, that's great. Okay, wonderful. You know what
God's Word is. But right, we're Americans, we're
pragmatists. What good is it for me? I'm glad
you asked that's what Paul's going to go on in the next part
of this right and is profitable Right the Lord's Word is profitable,
and there's a list here of different things that God's Word is Profitable
for the first one is God's Word is profitable for teaching the
word here in the New King James is doctrine We often don't know
what doctrine is the word here is just didaskalon. It's just
teaching and The Lord's Word is where we get our teaching
from. It's our source material, it's our curriculum, it's our
body of evidence. This is what we go to for teaching. And this is very, very, very
different than the way that we find our culture moving more
and more today, where relativism and personal feelings dictate
and rule the day. My truth is my truth, you do
you, all do me, and we say, hold on, no, the Lord has spoken.
And because we're people of faith, because we believe in God, we
listen to His Word. We listen to Him, rather than
what we want. We ask God to transform us, not
just to fill our brains, but to change our hearts. Why? Because we actually believe in
who He is. And so we listen to Him. But it's more than just teaching.
But God's Word is also good for reproof. It's profitable for
reproof. This lexical definition here
would be an expression of strong disapproval, reproof, rebuke,
reproach. I gotta tell ya, I don't like
that. I don't like when my wife reproves
me. I don't like when my mother-in-law tries to tell me I'm doing stuff
wrong. I don't like when my kids say, Daddy, you're not doing
that right. But when they're right, they're right. One of the hard things about
being a Christian is we have to stop and we have to ask ourselves,
who's got the right answers? Who's the one who knows life
and death? Who's the one who holds eternity
in their hands? Who's the one who created the
mountains and the sky and the seas and holds all things together
and tells us, this is what will be good for you. It takes humility. a Holy Spirit-wrought
humility that we listen. We say, I don't have the answers. I'm not perfect. This is why
one of the hardest things that people will level against Christians
is legalism and hypocrisy. Because what they're really saying
is, you prideful, arrogant fools. We ought to be the first ones
to say, I don't have any opinion of my own. All I got to say is,
I know the Lord, what He says is true, and that's as far as
I'm willing to go. And it reproves me too. The issue is I need someone
outside of me to speak truth into my life. And you need somebody outside
of you who speaks truth into your life. And the Lord does
that by His Word. Some of my best friends are the
most offensive people I know. I've told you before about my
pastor, Micah Ramsey, when I was really struggling with something
one day. I wasn't planning on giving this illustration, but
I was sitting in prayer meeting, and I was complaining about all
this stuff that's going on in my life, and all this busyness,
and after the prayer meeting, he said, hey, let me talk to
you. Okay, so we go into the sanctuary. I sit down in the
first pew, and he sits down on the steps of the stage there,
and he looks at me in the eyes, and he says, Brian, why are you
being such an idiot? Go home and spend some time with
Olivia. And I needed that, right? I was a young husband and I got
so busy and, oh, I need to study this stuff and I need to be involved
in this ministry and I need to do all this. And he was pointing
out, no, you don't. You need to go home and love
your wife like Christ loves the church. We need people who will
bring us back and speak from the outside and tell us what
the scriptures say and drive home the truth. Again though,
in an age when people are so worried about getting their feelings
hurt, and let's be honest, we don't like getting our feelings
hurt either. It is hard to be reproved. This is one of the
biggest graces God gives us. It is profitable for reproof.
It is also profitable for correction. And that's the next part of verse
16. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable
for correction. You can... translate correction
also as improvement. Again, every single one of us
can use improvement. I gotta tell you, you aren't
perfect. If you think you're perfect, go ask your children
if you're perfect. If you think you're perfect, go ask your parents
if you're perfect. If you think you're perfect,
go ask your spouse if you're perfect, or your co-workers if
you're perfect. None of us are perfect. It's
only Jesus Christ who's perfect. Each and every one of us need
the Lord's Word to give us spiritual improvement in our knowledge
of God and our love of God. To improve in our love, to improve
in our joy, to improve in our peace, to improve in our patience.
We can all improve in our kindness. We can all improve in our goodness.
We can improve, oh man, we can improve in this, in our age,
our gentleness. We can improve in our self-control
and in our faithfulness. And the Lord, through His Word,
reminds us of this regularly. Because it's breathed out by
Him and it's profitable for improvement. We're not finished yet. We're not finished loving our
spouses perfectly. We can be improved in that. We're
not finished loving sacrificially. We have a lot more love to show.
We're not perfect and finished in loving our children and handling
our money and raising our children, relating to our parents. We're
not perfect in how we relate to our bosses or how we relate
to our co-workers. We're not perfect or we're not
finished in our use of time and controlling our eating. We have
so much the Lord has yet to teach us. So much joy and so much being
conformed to the image of Christ yet to come. Don't be satisfied
with the level of sanctification you are at now, but desire more
improvement, that the Holy Spirit would continue to work in your
life, to lead you in your faith and in your living, that you
would look more and more over time like Jesus Christ. God's Word is profitable for
that. It is a blessing that God has given us a tool that He uses
by the power of His Spirit. for correction, for improvement,
but it's also profitable for instruction in righteousness. God's book, God's Bible isn't
a dead book, but it teaches us. This is a different idea of teaching
here. We had teaching or doctrine in the earlier part of 16, but
now it says instruction. This idea of instruction is directly
related to being like how you would instruct children. And God has shown us a standard
of righteousness, but we failed. God has told us that we need
to be renewed. We're not walking according to
the old man and the old ways. We're not to live our lives by
sensual desires in the flesh, but we're to live by the power
of the Holy Spirit. And in His Word, He takes us
to the gymnasium of holiness. I gotta tell you something, there's
a secret here. I don't like the gym. Don't tell the coach that. I don't like the gym. I don't
like going to the gym. There's often days when we do
have to go to the gym and I'll sit there and I'll look at the
weights and I'll literally kick the barbell, just in procrastination,
asking myself, why in the world am I here? I'm not good at this. And the most frustrating thing
to me is, right, I want to be strong now. And I don't like
the fact that I've been going for three years and I'm not that
much stronger. We want to lift the big boy and
the big girl weights right now. We want all the immediate gains
and none of the plateaus. We want all the good days, all
the personal records with holiness, but not all of the bad days that
teach us how to be patient and kind and loving and gentle. We
don't want those hard work days. But the reality is just like
we go to the gym and we have to see incremental increases,
So it's the same way in our holiness. I remember, when you read fitness articles
about stuff, they'll talk about when somebody hasn't gone to
the weight room in a long time or ever, and they'll go start
lifting weights, and they'll start getting immediate gains.
I mean, if you graph it, it's like... And they get really excited,
like, man, I got some really big immediate gains right away,
and then all of a sudden they hit a plateau. And a lot of people
get really discouraged and they quit. This happens in Christian
lives. Especially in new converts. They'll see immediate gains in
their holiness right away. But then they'll hit a plateau.
And they'll wonder, is something wrong? No. No, it's the way it works.
Because from here on out, you're going to have to fight for incremental
progress. You're going to have to train
in this instruction in righteousness. And if we want to be trained,
we have to show up regularly. But see, this again takes a lot
of humility, because I told you this is related to this idea
of teaching children. I got to tell you what... I'm not going to show you my
transcripts from seminary, but I'll let you know that two of
my worst grades were Greek and Hebrew. It's just hard. And one of the hardest things
about Greek and Hebrew is you have to realize you don't know
nothing. You have to sit there and you
have to learn like a three-year-old. A teacher tells you, you don't
say it like that. No, you can't say it that way.
No, that's wrong. No, here, learn this song. And
you have a whole group of grown men sitting in a class, learning
how to sing their Alif-Bets. Literally, the Hebrew professor
in the front going, Alif-Bet-Fet, and you, the whole class, Alif-Bet-Fet,
Gimel-Dalet, hey, Gimel, and you're singing like five-year-olds.
And it's hard, because you don't even know what half this stuff
is, but you have to memorize it. You don't know why you're
memorizing it. You don't know how it's going
to get you to your goal. It's the same way with God's Word.
And if you're going to grow in your instruction of righteousness,
you have to show up for the class. You have to read the material.
This is why we give you reading plans on the back table. There's
a whole bunch of reading plans. That is nothing but consider
it a Bible reading curriculum. It's just a tool. It's nothing
more than that. It's a help. I do not want you
to walk out of here picking up a Bible reading plan and walking
away with a sense of legalism. Like, somehow if I don't read
10 chapters a day, I am not a godly Christian. That's not what we're
trying to do. We're trying to provide you with help. An external
structure to take you to the spiritual gym. But what's the
goal? If God's Word is profitable for
all these things, if God's Word is breathed out, Why do it though? That's what verse 17 answers.
That the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every
good work. I'm not going to hide it from
you that the elders of this church want to see you strong. We don't want to see you anemic.
We want to see you thoroughly equipped, ready for every good
work. We want to see you growing into
men and women of God. But with that being said, I need
to warn you about a number of things. We want you to be strong
men and women of God, but you need to be cautious of your own
heart here. So caution number one is of legalism. There will be some of you who
will pick up your Bible and you'll think to yourself, if only I
can read the Bible, then finally God will accept you. God has
never saved anybody because they read the entire Bible. He saved
them if he loved Jesus Christ and believed in their heart that
he was Lord. And confessed that with their mouths and believed
that he was raised from the dead. You don't read As much as the
next person, and so you think, well, maybe I'm not as righteous
as they are. Again, that's pharisaical legalism. We're not adding on
something to your shoulders. You might even think, if I don't
read my Bible in an entire year, then I'm not a Christian. I don't
think that's right. I actually brought my Bible with
me and I wasn't able to read my Bible as much as I was hoping
this year. I didn't take this Bible with me when I was overseas.
And so, as of today, I'm on October 19th. So, there you go. Right? It's not the point. That's a good goal to shoot for.
But sometimes life is messy. Sometimes you only get to read
a paragraph. Sometimes you only get to read
a small section. And sometimes you can read eight
chapters because you have a glorious Sunday afternoon. Praise God
for it. Beware of the trap of legalism.
Secondly, beware of the methodology. We're so tempted with this in
our causal nature of thinking of things, right? If I read the
Bible, or if I do A, then B will happen. If I read the Bible,
then B, magically I'm going to become godly. No, that's not
true. There's a famous guy, you can
look him up on YouTube, where you can ask him to recite to
you any chapter of the Bible. He has every single chapter of
the Bible memorized. And if you ask him to recite
any chapter from memory, he'll give it to you. And he's an atheist. Just reading the Bible isn't
going to magically make you a Christian. It's not going to magically make
you godly. We need the work of the Holy
Spirit as we read the Scriptures. It is objectively God's Word,
but we also need the work of the Holy Spirit, for without
the Holy Spirit and without faith, the reading of the Bible profits
you nothing. Thirdly, a third caution, if
you just read your Bible, your life is going to be great. Yeah,
no. No, you're not going to get that
in 1 Kings or in Revelation or in the Gospel of John, maybe
in 3 Hezekiah somewhere, but you're not going to get it in
a book of our Bible. No, as you read the Bible, you might find
out that your life becomes harder because you're convicted of sin.
You might find out that ungodliness is pointed out, and you don't
want to deal with it, but you have to. I don't want to promise
you that if you read your Bible, all of a sudden your finances
are going to go well. Your 401k might tank this year. If you just read your Bible,
your children may still rebel. If you do family worship with
your Bible, your children may still reject Jesus Christ. If you read your Bible, Your
health may still fail you this year. And if you read your Bible, death
and tragedy may still come knocking on your door. The difference
is, if you are a Christian, you have God's word that instructs
you on how you respond to those hard providences in your life.
To still live your life filled with joy and direction and a
life filled towards God's glory. Fourth caution is that if we just read, it's going
to be useless. Well, Jesus talks about this
in Luke chapter 6, verses 46 through 49. Jesus himself talks
about just reading God's Word, but not actually doing anything
with it. Matthew, Mark, Luke, Luke chapter 6. Luke chapter
6 verse 46, here's the words from our own Lord and Savior. But why do you call me Lord,
Lord, and not do the things which I say? Whoever comes to me and
hears my saying and does them, I will show you whom he is like. He is like a man building a house
who has dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when
the flood arose, a stream vehemently beat against it and could not
shake it, for it was founded on the rock. But he who heard
and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth
without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently
and immediately fell, and the ruin of that house was great."
If you do nothing with God's Word, if you just read it up,
store it up as intellectual information, but don't do anything with it,
it is unprofitable to you. It is unprofitable to you. Verse 17 in 2 Timothy 3 tells
us, "...it is profitable that we may be completely equipped
for every good work." Make no doubt about it, God will demand
things from you in your life if you read His Word. The question
is, how will you respond to it? Fifth caution is though, not
to pit word against works. Many of us will think that way,
especially in the Reformed tradition, right? We want to think about,
well, God saved us by faith alone, through grace alone, and that's
true. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8 and 9, right? By grace you
have been saved through faith, and not of your own works. It
was a gift of God. Right? So we can't brag, we can't boast
about it. But then what does verse 10 say? that we might be
equipped to do every... No, that's 2 Timothy 3, 17. That
we might walk in the good deeds which He has called us to do.
Our salvation by grace is so we can do the good works. You
don't want a doctor who's not trained. Why? Well, I don't want
a doctor who didn't go to school. That sounds kind of scary to
me. But I also don't want a doctor who doesn't pick up his phone
or show up for call hours. The training and the work both
matter. Right? You don't want an electrician
who doesn't have any training. Why don't you want an electrician
who doesn't have it? By the way, this is why you never want me
to do any electrical work in your house, right? You don't
want an electrician without any training. Why? Because they're
likely to burn down your house. But how frustrating is it when
you call an electrician and they don't show up for the job? Don't pit the good works against
the instruction. So you can say the same thing
for a firefighter, right? Do you want a firefighter who
doesn't know what he's doing? No, you want a well-trained firefighter.
This is why our tax dollars go to training them. But how useless
is a firefighter who sleeps in his bed rather than getting in
the truck and going and responding to the fire? Don't pit word against
works. Your faith is to be informed
and your faith is to be lived out. This is exactly what Paul
was getting at in verse 5 of chapter 3. That there are going
to be those who are going to come and they're going to have
a form of godliness, but denying its power. We're to flee from
people like that. Run away from them, get away
from them. They're mansions without plumbing. They're skeletons without
organs. They're whitewashed tombs. All
knowledge and no love stay away from them. Now I'm gonna guess
that there's a number of objections here as I'm going to encourage
you to read your Bibles this year. By the way, that's my whole
goal, right? I want you to read your Bible this year. All right,
but some of you are gonna tell me, hey, I just don't have time
for this, Pastor Brian. I mean, come on, aren't you almost
done with your sermon? Yeah, I'm almost done, don't worry.
But you also have time too. You do have time in your schedule.
You have time while you eat your breakfast? You have time before
you go to bed? You have time? Each of you have a mini-computer
in your pocket. I can't tell you how many guys
I have to say, you know what you do when you go to the bathroom
when you're in there for a long time and it drives your wife
nuts? Memorize some Bible when you're in there instead. Right? Like, you have time. You
have to make the time. You have to prioritize it. If
it is a priority to you, if you really want to know what God
says, prioritize it. Some of you are going to object,
though, and you're going to say, look, I've tried this and I have failed.
I tried a reading plan, I got through Genesis, I got through
Exodus, I got to Leviticus, and man, that reading plan died faster
than the people who were objecting to Moses. You didn't fail. You read through Genesis, Exodus,
and part of Leviticus. Good. Try something else. You don't think that the Lord
was profitable in your reading of those passages? That's fine. Keep going. Find something else.
Keep going. What's your goal? Is your goal
just to finish a Bible reading plan or is your goal to grow
in your knowledge of God? I would say you accomplished
part of that goal. I think you could have done more. We could
always do more. This isn't about legalism. Don't
get down on yourself for that. Pick yourself up and keep going.
Some of you are going to say, but I'm just not good at reading.
I just don't like reading. I'm not good at it. I'm slow
at it. Wonderful tool for you, YouVersion, or I think it's just
called the Bible app now. On almost every translation,
there's a little button at the bottom. It's a play button. You
just hit play and it will read to you. You can either read with
it or you can play it in the background. There's somebody
in the congregation that what they used to do is sit in their
workplace and they would just play the Bible and listen to
it multiple times a year just to hear the Bible play in the
background. Read God's Word. Actually, for the majority of
human history, of church history, that's how most people, because
most of the world was illiterate, most of the world heard God's
Word. Listen to it. You can even get Morgan Freeman
or something like that reading the entire Bible to you. You
can get cool people's voices. There's no reason you can't listen
to God's Word. It's even free. Objection number four, though.
You just get lost. It's such a big story. You don't
know where things are going. You don't know what the entire
point of the Bible is. If you've never read any book of the Bible,
or the Bible is just so strange to you, I would encourage you
to do the things that I've told new Christians quite regularly,
go pick up a story Bible and just read it cover to cover.
Just to get the overarching themes and the main highlights. If you've
never read through the Bible, this would have saved me so many
stupid moments in front of my pastor. When I said, did you
know that David became a king? Did you know that Paul also wrote
these letters? And he would just sit there and
I could see Pastor Snap's face like, oh, Brian. Like, didn't
you ever read your Bible? Didn't you ever read, like, a
story Bible? How do you not know these things, right? Read a story
Bible. It's fine. Start there. I would
recommend Catherine Voss's story Bible to you. Fifthly, you might
object, well I just don't understand, right? Some translations are
just so dense, so difficult, and if this is your first time
reading the Bible, I would encourage you, you might have a really,
really, really hard time with the King James Version. You might
have a really hard time with a wooden translation, like the
New American Standard Bible. You might have to start, if you
want to read through the Bible as a large chunk, you might have
to start with a more paraphrased translation. I don't want to
encourage you to study there, But if you're just trying to
read and get a feeling for the Bible, go ahead. Go ahead, read a more periphrastic
translation. Just be careful. Remember, it's
not word for word, and so there are things that it's going to
be off. A sixth objection may be, well, I'm just not disciplined
enough. Well, let me encourage you, you can buddy up with someone.
Pick someone else in the church and say, hey, I want to do a
Bible reading plan. You want to do one? For some of you, though,
I know that's difficult, and we have tried to create a resource
for you, where if you're just like, I can't do this by myself,
and this is just too hard, talk to me, I'll put you in the coffee
and devotions text messaging list, and we can do devotions
together every weekday morning. I don't know what we're doing
in 2024 yet, so hopefully some of you can come talk to me later.
But you can do that, every weekday morning, the kids and I, lots
of times the kids join me for it, and we can work through some
Bible together. Objection number seven, though,
some of you will say, well, I just keep losing my little Bible reading
pamphlet paper. I set it down and I walk away.
I don't know what to do. You know, this is actually one of
these fun things. I'm really lazy and I don't like those papers.
One, you can just read it on your phone, or, like this is
the Bible I got this year. It's a one-year chronological
Bible. All I need to do is remember
what the date is, or where I'm supposed to be, and That's just
what my reading is for the day. I did this one this year, that
was fun. But for years and years and years, I did this one. It's
just one year through the Bible. And just, you open up to the
date, and that's where it was. And if I got too far behind on
yours, guess what? Don't sweat it. Just go to the
date you're supposed to be on. And keep on reading. If you do
this regularly enough, you're gonna read that other passage.
Don't sweat it. Get a reader's Bible if you need
to. So I'm going to give you some helpful tips and tricks
here, and we're going to wrap this up because I'm a few minutes
late. Number one, be honest with yourself. If you're going to
get a Bible reading plan, be honest. Don't get the Professor
Grant Horner's plan if you don't think that you can actually sit
down for enough time to read that plan. It's like ten chapters
a day. It's a great plan, but if you can't do it, be honest
with yourself about it. Be honest about the amount of
time you have. Some of you have very, very busy lives. You need
to look at those plans and decide, how much time do I actually have
to invest in this plan? Be honest with yourself about
that. Maybe you just need to read a portion of the Bible, or just the New
Testament, or just the Old Testament. I don't know what you need to
do, but be honest about your time. Tip number three. Don't
set yourself up for failure. This goes hand in hand with these
other ones, but don't pick a plan that's so large, or that's going
to take so much time, or that if you just know you're like
me... I envy people who can read fast. I can't though. And so
I cannot accomplish these Bible plans that are like, read the
Bible in three months. I wouldn't talk to my children
or Olivia at all. Because it would take me all
day long to read that. Other of you, you can read quickly.
Great. Set yourself up for success, not for failure. If you get knocked
down, tip number four, if you get knocked down, brush yourself
off and get up again. This isn't about legalism. We
want to progress in holiness and our knowledge and love of
God. Tip number five, bundle it in. This is habit bundling. Bundle it in with something you
already do. If you already wake up in the morning and you have
a cup of coffee, Drink your cup of coffee and read your Bible
with it. If you're already in a habit that you sit down at
night and every night you sit down and you watch a little TV,
when the 7 o'clock news goes off, turn it off and pick up
your Bible. Maybe pick up your Bible beforehand, maybe that
would help. But anyway, the point is, bundle it together with something
you already do. And with that also, set up a
space for it. Put your Bible next to something
that you know where it's going to be every day. You got a chair
you like to sit in? Put your Bible next to that chair.
You've got a place where you sit every day, put your Bible
there. When I have a planner, I have a hard time with this,
even with my planner. And I remember my counselor telling
me, Brian, why don't you put your planner underneath your
coffee cup? So every morning when you go
and you get your coffee cup, your planner is right there,
so you actually know what you're supposed to do that day. And
I was like, this guy's a genius. I'm just passing on his wisdom. Point number seven of tips and
tricks. This is a helpful one. This is a recommended resource
for this month. It's going to go out in the email
probably tomorrow. It's a little book by Steve Demme on family
worship. I'm going to have it on the back table with the Bible
reading plans. Do devotions with your family. One of the most
helpful things you can do is just sit down at dinner or at
breakfast, whatever meals you happen to have with your family,
and read the Bible. There's a whole bunch of tips
and tricks he has for how to do that, and the snafus, and
what could happen, what could go wrong, and what the delights
of it are. I highly recommend that book,
but this is a huge blessing. There's nothing in the Bible
that says you must sit by yourself for 30 minutes every day and
read your Bible to yourself. No, for, again, the vast majority
of history, the family had one Bible. If any, since the printing
press. And the dad would sit down, typically,
and read the Bible with his kids. out loud. It's our mealtimes. It's a great time to sit down
and do devotions with your family so you're growing together as
a family. Lead your family in this. My whole point in all of
this right now, now I'm five minutes over, we're going to
be done right now. We want you to grow. The elders want to see
you grow in grace. We want to see you know God like
you've never known God. We want to see you love God like
you've never loved God. We want you to be ready for the
attacks that are going to come. We want you to know that the
charlatans are going to try to trick you. We want you to know
that ungodliness is real, but you don't fight in it by yourself,
but you have the Holy Spirit. We want you to be reminded of
the Gospel. We want you to know the covenants. We want you to
know God. So you might glorify Him and
enjoy Him forever. We want that to start now in
your life. And so we pray that you will get into your Bibles
this year. And that you'll enjoy it. And that you'll enjoy the
Lord who's breathed out that word for you. Let's pray. Father, this has been a long-winded
type sermon. We pray that it might be profitable. God, we pray that we would be
people of the Book, that we might know You, that we might love
You, that we might enjoy You, that we might glorify You, and
indeed that we might tell others about You. We thank You for Your
Word, what a gift it is from Your hand. In Jesus' name we
pray.