Bible Study-God's multitool

Intro

Imagine being out in the wilderness, on your own. No communications, no electricity, no supermarkets or restaurants or hotels.

As night comes darkness falls. Deep darkness. It gets cold. You’re hungry. How do you make a fire? How do you cut up any food you might find? How do you survive?

Enter the multi-tool. The Leatherman SIGNAL is actually designed for camping, so it has a fire starter, a knife, a saw, and even a blade sharpener. Multitools are very useful, here’s mine (it’s not a SIGNAL).

Bringing such a tool with you can mean the difference between life and death. Not to be overdramatic!

Now imagine you are in the wilderness of modern culture. Sure, there is much that is good in Australian society, but think about it getting dark. Not physically dark—spiritually dark. You’re in a place where people are thinking only of themselves. Perhaps a toxic workplace—they’re increasingly common.

How do you respond to the abuse dished out to you? How do you relate to people who are inherently untrustworthy? How do you stand up for what’s right when no-one wants that?

Of perhaps you’re struggling with the suburban rat-race. How do you decide how much to spend on your house? How do you decide what car to buy? Do you need a boat or a caravan? Should your kids be going to a private school? How do you make friends with neighbours who are so busy just maintaining their lifestyle?

Enter the multi-tool for all of life.

Today I’m going to talk briefly about how we can use the Bible in the wilderness of the world. It turns out that it’s much better than a multitool (they are always a compromise, never as good a knife as a knife, never as good a hammer as a hammer).

Bible

The Bible is even useful for explaining its own usefulness. How meta is that?

Let’s look at what the Apostle Paul tells his mentee Timothy in his second letter to him. We’re reading the whole chapter, and, just a warning, this chapter starts out very bleakly. It’s worth noticing that Paul’s critique here is directed at attitudes, not individuals. Indeed, if we pay attention, we’ll see that the people Paul specifically calls out are people in the church!

Let’s read.

2 Timothy 3 NLT

1 You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. 2 For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. 3 They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. 4 They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. 5 They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that! 6 They are the kind who work their way into people’s homes and win the confidence of vulnerable women who are burdened with the guilt of sin and controlled by various desires. 7 (Such women are forever following new teachings, but they are never able to understand the truth.) 8 These teachers oppose the truth just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses. They have depraved minds and a counterfeit faith. 9 But they won’t get away with this for long. Someday everyone will recognize what fools they are, just as with Jannes and Jambres. 10 But you, Timothy, certainly know what I teach, and how I live, and what my purpose in life is. You know my faith, my patience, my love, and my endurance. 11 You know how much persecution and suffering I have endured. You know all about how I was persecuted in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra—but the Lord rescued me from all of it. 12 Yes, and everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. 13 But evil people and impostors will flourish. They will deceive others and will themselves be deceived. 14 But you must remain faithful to the things you have been taught. You know they are true, for you know you can trust those who taught you. 15 You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. 17 God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.

The last days

Just like Timothy, we find ourselves in the last days. And boy does Paul’s description sound familiar. We all struggle with the concerns Paul raises, and the direction of our society makes this struggle more intense almost everyday.

People love only themselves and their money. Tick.

They are boastful and proud. Tick.

They scoff at God. Tick

They are disobedient to their parents. Tick

They are ungrateful. Tick

Good grief, how prescient could the Bible be?

Moody, Dwight L., 1837–1899: “The Bible is the only news book in the world. The newspaper tells what has taken place, but this book tells us what will take place.”

Anonymous

Let’s keep going.

They will consider nothing sacred. Tick

They will be unloving and unforgiving.

This is an interesting one, considering how obsessed modern culture (including the church) is with love. The problem is, we have redefined love to such an extent that we’re no longer talking about love. Most of the time we’re just talking about either selfish lusts or a mild feeling of affection. You can see this by how unforgiving we are, cancelling people at the drop of a hat. And not just cancelling online, either, but in personal relationships, too! We are so “loving” that we just can’t stand it when someone does something to disappoint or disgust us! So, yes, another big tick.

They will slander others. Tick (isn’t that the purpose of social media? Just kidding. It’s only one of many features.)

They will have no self-control. Oh dear, this is getting depressing. Tick

They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

This getting me down. Let’s just wrap it up with this last bit: They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly.

This is, perhaps, the defining feature of our culture over the last decade or so. The way that it has become religious in its convictions. Superstition—believing something because others do, rather than because of the evidence—has become the standard way of understanding things. We saw this demonstrated to very ugly effect during COVID-19. It is equally ugly in the so-called inclusivism that is actually more about exclusion than anything else. But we see it every day in every area. Prejudice and bigotry thrive on superstition, and so we get reverse racism and bigotry against people of faith. It is ironic that all the failures of religion are now part and parcel of secular Australian culture.

What do we do about it?

So, that’s the diagnosis. Both for Timothy and for us. Self-centredness has become an accepted way of life, both in the culture and in the church. It’s ugly and its destructive, but it pretends to be holy and good.

What do we do about it. What’s the prescription?

Paul presents two proposals, and they are both important.

1. Endure

The first point is endurance. Paul reflects on his own suffering. He reminds Timothy that wicked people are inevitable, and they will suffer the consequences of their own wickedness. But we can endure.

That’s true for us, too. I know the Western Church understands this intellectually, but I’m not sure we understand it emotionally. Suffering is our lot as Christians. In fact, you know how project managers have a list of measurable things by which to measure the success of their project? Well the Church should have persecution on our list of measures of success. If we’re not being persecuted, we’re probably not being the church.

That doesn’t mean we need to seek out persecution. That just means we need to press into being the church, recognising persecution as a natural and appropriate part of that. It will still hurt, and we will still mourn and lament the sin and suffering of this world. But we won’t lose faith!

Persecution and suffering should never be a cause for losing faith, but rather a confirmation of faith in action!

2. Immerse yourself in Scripture

The second second proposal is what the sermon is about. You’ve had to suffer through suffering to get here, but we’ve got here.

The second way to respond to a fallen world (and probably the more important way, certainly the more difficult and rich way) is to immerse yourself in Scripture.

Let’s work through how Paul approaches that. There are so many practical tips I could give you, but that’s what we’ve been doing in our Tuesday Night Bible Studies since the start of Renew, and that’s the best forum to really practice this. I’ll have a couple of practical tips at the end, though.

For now, let’s listen to Paul.

2 Timothy 3:14–15 NLT

14 But you must remain faithful to the things you have been taught. You know they are true, for you know you can trust those who taught you. 15 You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus.

Notice how Paul leans into Timothy’s upbringing. Christianity is barely decades old, and yet Paul is already able to point to Timothy’s orthodox upbringing in the faith. Christianity is an inherently conservative faith. Not politically, but religiously.

The Bible is objective

Why? Because we look to an objective reality that doesn’t change. The Bible doesn’t get updated. It’s not like Wikipedia or the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which can completely recategorise a condition from edition to edition, as if mental health were different from decade to decade). The Bible is a reflection of an unchanging God whose promises stand for eternity, just as Wikipedia and the DSM are a reflection of a culture that melts like icecream in a Townsville summer day.

Bible Study is communal

Additionally, it’s important to notice how Bible study is a communal activity. Paul calls Timothy’s attention to his teachers—people that Timothy could trust. We, too, need to study the Bible with people we can trust. God’s word is such a vast thing, not only in the number of words it contains, but in its depth and sophistication. Only a truly arrogant person would think they could mine those depths by themselves.

That’s why Bible Studies are one of the two core activities of Renew, along with these Sunday Gatherings.

The Bible gives wisdom, not empty knowledge

And finally, the Bible teaches wisdom about our salvation, rather than puffing us up with ever-changing knowledge. The word “wisdom” here doesn’t just mean knowledge, it means a sophisticated degree of ability or skill. So the Bible teaches us great skill in pursuing our calling to be disciples, saved by grace through faith.

This wisdom is what we use in the world. When someone abuses you at work, you don’t have time to whip out the Bible and do a quick study on interpersonal relationships. But if you have the book of Daniel, or Job, or Samuel or the Gospels built into your mind—into your understanding of the world—then you’ll know how to respond.

Paul spells this out in his famous final sentences of the chapter:

2 Timothy 3:16–17 NLT

16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. 17 God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.

Too often we use these verses as a weapon to defend our reliance on the Bible. But what these verses really attack is our own pride, our own selfishness, our own independence. God’s word makes us realise what is wrong in our lives, says Paul.

In our lives, not in other people’s lives!

It teaches us to do what is right. It doesn’t teach the world to do what is right, but rather it teaches God’s people.

God uses the Bible to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. God doesn’t use it to brow-beat those who rebel against him, and neither should we.

Some tips

I don’t have much time for practical tips, so I’ll simply point you to a great resource that Renew is already paying for: Logos Bible Software.

https://support.logos.com/hc/en-us/sections/360001734831-New-to-Logos-Start-Here

Logos has just been updated to version 10, and the big improvements are improved speed and much more user-friendly searching. But because Logos is Bible software, it is complex. After all, the Bible is complex. So start with these tutorials.

If you’re new to your faith, just reading the Bible will be sufficient. But once you’ve read the Bible several times, you hit a limit of what you can get out of that method of study, and you need to start using better tools. That’s when something like Logos becomes important.

Final thoughts

Let’s close now with some final thoughts.

I was doing my chronological read-through a couple of days ago and came across Psalm 116. It starts in a wondrous way:

Psalm 116:1–2 NLT

1 I love the Lord because he hears my voice and my prayer for mercy. 2 Because he bends down to listen, I will pray as long as I have breath!

Isn’t it amazing that the God who made everything, who is in complete control of everything, who knows everything, even the future, is a God who listens to us! He doesn’t need to. He already knows all our thoughts, but he humbly listens when we speak.

Our hearts yearn to be listened to. And God shows us the greatest honour and respect and listens to us. But he doesn’t just listen to us, he speaks to us.

Have you ever read the Bible and come across words that speak directly into some struggle you are right in the middle of? I have. God listens to us and answers us through his Word. His word is living and active, not dead and passive like a text-book or a novel.

And God’s word comes directly from the wisest, most loving person. We can trust it implicitly.

Each morning, as we start out on another day. Whatever that day holds, lets make sure that we prepare with time in God’s word. There is no better use of our time.

Let’s pray.

Dear Father, thank you for your word. Thank you that it has been written down so that all your people through the ages might share it. Thank you for those who have preserved it, for those who have translated it into our heart tongue, and for those who have studied it and prepared so many useful tools to help us understand your word better.

Let our hearts be good soil for your word, that it might grow and be fruitful in our lives.

In Jesus name, Amen.