The Word of God
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Back to the essentials. I was reading a book the other day that mentioned the idea of first rank doctrines, essentials of the faith and what are the “hills we need to die on”. We have been going through the idea that we need to stand firm on our faith because people will sneak in that will try to lead us. We have been going through why this is important and now we will learn what some of these essentials are. What should we be willing to die for?
Have you ever asked questions like these:
How do we pursue the realization of Christ’s prayer for the unity of the church while at the same time not disobeying the commands of God to obey all he commands.
Are their some partnerships that are appropriate among Christians of different denominations or networks.
What do we do when there are people that come in the church that teach things against what are essentials of the faith.
Let me give you a couple scenarios I found when reading through a book on the subject:
A group of churches in your community is putting on a joint service of worship and outreach. You have significant theological differences with some of the other churches participating, and you wonder whether you can take part in good conscience. How do you decide what to do? And how do we approach the situation with Graciousness and humility without compromising your convictions.
You love listening to a particular Bible preacher on YouTube. His sermons are both convicting and uplifting. But one day you learn that he speaks at conferences that have a prosperity gospel emphasis, and you start to notice his teachings are leaning more and more towards progressive Christianity and prosperity and can be interpreted in this way. How should your perceptions of His teaching be altered (if at all) by his broader ministry associations? How clearly must his preaching veer into progressive Christianity before you stop listening?
The things we are going to be looking into are essentials to the gospel. Secondary issues we will not really touch on right now, maybe just to mention some. What are issues that we need to stand on without wavering. Why is it that we sometime refuse to work with churches and churches who hold fast to the essentials we read in the word of God do the same?
To do all this well, we need to continually direct our deepest level of emotional loyalty to Jesus himself. He is the one who died for us. He is the one to whom we will ultimately answer, and it his business that we are about in the first place. It all goes back to Jesus and what He taught and How he lived and How that is going to affect our lives and the way we do ministry. It all comes back to the gospel that Jesus taught.
The Word of God
The Word of God
What we are going to work through is our statement of faith, the one we proposed to change to. Not everything on it is essential to the gospel but it contains what are essentials. I was reading in an article about the essentials of the gospel and the essentials of Salvation. What it takes to be saved is a part of a whole of what is essential to the faith. For example, one can become saved without really having an understanding or even a knowledge of the HS. But upon coming to faith if the person learns of the HS and refuses to believe that He exists as a person of the trinity, that is different.
The first one we have on the list is the word of God. I wanted to start with this one anyways because that is where we go to find what God wants to say to us. What is the first passage of scripture that comes to your mind to describe the importance of the word of God and why it is essential to the gospel?
Well the passage we will be working through is 2 Tim 3:10-17. This is something that I firmly believe is essential to the faith. A reminder, the things we are going to go through are but a broad stroke of what they actually mean. to go through it in depth would take a while.
10-14 - Struggles
10-14 - Struggles
I want to start out with the word of God as the person Jesus Christ. Today we will focus on the word of God we have here in the bible. But a note, albeit a very important one, Jesus was also called the word of God. We read this in Rev 19:13 as well as John 1:1
13 He wore a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God.
This means that Jesus as a person as well as in what He said and How He lived had the role of communicating with us the Character of God and expressing the will of God for us.
onto 2 Timothy. The main idea of the passage we can read in 2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
but as usual context is key so we go back a little bit to figure out what is going on here. 2 Tim 3:10-11
10 But you have followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, and endurance, 11 along with the persecutions and sufferings that came to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured—and yet the Lord rescued me from them all.
We strive to live a Godly life we are told, following the teaching that the Lord has handed down to us. but what comes along with the living a life for the Lord is sufferings. This is something that we went through in 1 Peter. As we strive to live our lives based on the word of God, we may suffer for it, and that is okay
12 In fact, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. 13 Evil people and impostors will become worse, deceiving and being deceived.
Isn't it odd. Here we see all people that are striving to follow the Lord will likely at some time be persecuted. Just because you have faith does not make you exempt from sufferings and persecution. What it means though is the strength to endure will come from the Lord. We will have people that will come in and try to deceive us and lead us away from the one true gospel. It is just a reminder that as we live for the Glory of God that we may suffer for our faith.
This is where we get to the main point today, in light of the suffering we may face, in light of the false teachers that are going to come in the first essential of the gospel that we need to stand on is the word of God.
14-17 The word of God
14-17 The word of God
we have the very word of God, It is essential that you believe that this is the word of God the we have. Complete. There is no new revelation from God but everything needs to line up with what we have here.
15 and you know that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
First we learn that the sacred scriptures that we have, which they had back then, though it was not complete, we need to continue to grow in. It is through the scriptures that we learn what salvation is where we find the wisdom of God to grow in Him and find Him and live our lives for Him. If it is the very word of God then we must strive to seek it’s wisdom in all that we do.
Based on the tide of alternative gospels out there that teach different then the bible, that line up more with the world then God, that look more like a social justice SOP manual, we are to continue in what we have learned, what the Bible teaches. It may not be popular but we do it for the Glory of God. We must stand our ground on the word of God and resist the temptation to move to deception.
It must be a way of life for us. I struggle with this as much as anyone. Making studying the scriptures apart from my sermon prep can be hard sometimes. but it is so essential to our faith it must become a way of life for us like it was back then. It is the power to lead people to salvation which is obtained through faith in Jesus and we must treat it as such. The scriptures that we have that are grounded in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This has the power to save through faith in Christ. The false teachers can not claim that.
This is the power of the scriptures we follow through faith in Christ, the power to lead to salvation, the power to change lives because it has been given to us by God.
16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
All scripture is Inspired by God.
All passages of scripture it starts with. The entirety of the Bible we have. The Greek here says Go breathed. All scripture is literally God breathed. The idea being that the scriptures where expelled from the very lungs of God. The scripture is powerful because it was given to us by God. The word inspired comes from two Greek words which mean God and to blow/breathe on.
so the scriptures we have here, verse by verse flowed from God through His Spirit to the men that wrote it. I find it interesting that God breathed and life came int Adam as He was created in the image of God. Jesus breathed on the disciples in the book of John and they received the HS. I want to go back to Gen 2:7
7 Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
God Breathed the breathe of life into man. And God also breathed the scriptures into man and they wrote down what God directly inspired them to write. The word of God is alive and active. God Gave us His word and it can still be active in your life today if you let it. If the word of God is breathed out By God then we can not ignore it. It teaches us about How we are to live and that is what is next.
Profitable for ...
Whatever the Bible says about itself about God, life, death, history, and every other subject is true and needs to be true in our lives as well. It is profitable for doctrine or teaching. What is right and true the scripture teaches us and we need to abide by it. So in other words it is good for teaching what is right and good. It is also profitable for teaching us what is wrong, that is what reproof or rebuking from. right and wrong doctrine and teaching we learn about in the Bible.
The Scriptures we are told teach us right and wrong doctrine, the also train us in how to live and act rightly before God in this world. Righteousness. Correcting us when we are wrong and teaching us to do what is right. I always find it amazing how even thousands of years later the Bible can get right to the heart and affect our lives, convicting us of what we have done wrong and encouraging us when we have done right.
The scriptures equip us.
Lastly we are told that the scriptures equip us for service. 2 Tim 3:17
17 so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
any person can become a man or woman of God. Paul had called Timothy a man of God. But we can be encouraged in knowing that we can all become men and women of God. We do this by studying the word of God, obeying the word of God and letting it change the way that we live our lives. All men we see in the Bible that where called men and women of God lived by the word of God.
as we live for the word of God and allow it to change our lives we become complete. Not perfect, the word here means complete and equipped for service. Imagine it like getting your little kids ready to go outside in the winter. You spend an hour getting all their clothes on, ski pants, jacket, toque mitts and the works so they don't freeze anything. Then they come in in 5 minutes complaining they are cold. The word of God equips us, completes us to be ready to do the will of God and they work of God. Gives us all we need to do what God has called us to do.
yes the word of God is good for teaching right and wrong doctrine. but the ultimate purpose of the word of God is equipping the people of God who read it.
So What
So What
What do we learn from this? In the essentials of the faith we need to remember that the word of God we have is essential to our faith. This is where we start. Jesus is the word of God and all the scripture has been fulfilled in Him. We must stand on the word of God as it is and realize it is complete, there is no knew divine revelation from God to add to the scriptures but all we here in the world must line up wiuth the word of God. It is the first essential of the gospel we learn about. We do this because as it says here in this passage
Life is not going to get any easier
Life is not going to get any easier
Times are not going to get better as much as we would like them too. It is sadly only going to get worse. It is not just the pessimist in me talking either. Though times may be tough we can rest assured that we have the word of God here to encourage us and to teach us.
The word of God is breathed out by God
The word of God is breathed out by God
Isn't it amazing to know that the word of God that we have here is breathed out by God. God gave it to men who through His spirit wrote it down for us. We have the complete word of God and we can trust it because God gave it to us. It is alive and active. It even now, thousands of years later reaches into our very souls and teaches us what it means to live lives for the glory of God.
It equips us for service
It equips us for service
It is essential because it teaches us right from wrong and equips us to serve God in the world around us. Though the world is not getting better we can become better people for the glory of God even in the bad times. Not better according to worldly standards but better followers of Jesus. Seperate yourselves from what is false and devote yourselves to the truths that you read here. so God may equip u to do His will in the world around us.