A Shift to Truth (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

Sermon

Key Passage

2 Timothy 3:16–17 NIV

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Series Introduction

Today we are beginning a series that will last for 6 weeks called “A Shift to Discipleship”.

Some of you might be thinking, “I thought we were a church that only read through the Bible verse-by-verse.

I want to give you some insight to that.

It takes some preparation to do an in-depth verse by verse study of a book of the Bible.

I need a few weeks to outline the passage, read through the book and do a proper job of preparation before we start preaching it.

So between our expository journeys through the Bible, I need to take these short topical breaks to prepare for the text.

So, this will be a little different than we have preached over the summer, but it will hopefully be beneficial to us all.

We have chosen the topic, “A Shift to Discipleship” for two specific reasons.

First, this series gives us the opportunity to share with you the foundations and core values of our church.

The things we will discuss are the core elements of discipleship that we emphasize

We live in a world that discipleship is defined in a thousand different ways.

This brings us alignment and clarity of what Jesus asks us to do as we make disciples.

Whether we are in a men’s discipleship group, a women’s discipleship group, a Life group, a youth small group, every discipling environment of our church will define these things the same way and live them out in alignment with one another.

If there is someone in the youth group that grows past the youth group into a men’s group, we want that kid not to have to start his journey over. We want him to continue, because we are unified and aligned in what we do.

In order to have proper alignment, we need to communicate our values, definitions and practices so we all understand and buy in to what God is doing here at Real Life.

Second, this is a timely message.

Since the death of Charlie Kirk, there has been an excitement to become a part of a church.

This excitement and the importance of our faith as people, but also as a community and nation is a very good thing.

But, you know that the emotion and motivation will eventually wear off.

This is similar to the 9-11 effect.

The church has a role of not simply celebrating because attendance is higher for a few weeks, then lamenting how people are so inconsistent when they start going back into the rhythms of their normal life.

The church has a role of seeing the need for Jesus and fanning that flame and connecting it to something.

You are here. You have a part to play. You are a piece to the puzzle of what God wants to do in this world.

You were created for a purpose and that purpose can only be found in Jesus Christ

It is through discipleship that you learn who you are in Jesus Christ and begin living and impacting the world, not for yourself or for a local church. But you begin impacting the world for the Gospel, for Jesus Christ and for things that are eternal.

It is our hope here at Real Life that by communicating these things that each person here understands what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and what is necessary for a disciple to change the world.

There will be shifts that we must make in our lives

Last week, we spoke about a shift of lordship.

We must drop our nets and follow Jesus.

Today we are talking about a Shift to Truth

I want to highlight a story in all of our sermons that give a living example from among this church what each of these concepts look like in real life.

Testimony

Preachy Time

I want to begin with the journey that Jesus shared with His disciples.

Matthew 28:18–20 NIV

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

This is known as the Great Commission.

This was the command that Jesus gave to His disciples before He ascended into Heaven.

Our topic today is very, very simple. However, so often we miss it.

The phrase I want to highlight today is this:

Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.

Jesus is giving us a snapshot of what it means to be a disciple and what it means to make disciples

What we believe about discipleship and how we live it out will be drawn from how Jesus made disciples.

The first building block that we hold to as a disciple is that a disciple can only be built on a Biblical Foundation.

Now this takes a little bit of extension from our text on the screen, so let me help you understand how this is seen in our text.

EVERY DISCIPLE-MAKER MUST TEACH OTHERS TO OBEY JESUS’ COMMANDS

EVERY DISCIPLE MUST LEARN TO OBEY JESUS’ COMMANDS

How do we know Jesus’ commands?

A couple of us in this room are not old enough to have walked with Jesus and stand up here and tell us as eyewitnesses of what Jesus said.

But we do have eyewitness accounts of what Jesus did and what He said.

2 Peter 1:16 NIV

For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

Peter says, “We” speaking of Himself and the other disciples of Jesus.

He goes on four verses later to share that these writings about Jesus were not simply witness statements, but these writings about Jesus have authority from God.

2 Peter 1:20–21 NIV

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

There is a ton to comprehend here, but there is no question that Peter is saying that what we have as the Scriptures have a special authority from God.

It was written by human authors, but it also involved the Holy Spirit to guide and direct its message.

So when we look at Peter’s writings and the writings of the guys who followed Jesus, we can see who He is and what He said.

We have these writings in our Bibles today.

So let me complete the loop here.

If we are to be a disciple of Jesus and we want to learn to obey everything He commanded us, there is an authoritative, God-Inspired message about Jesus’ life and teachings that we need to use as a baseline for our discipleship.

This authoritative, God-inspired message is known as the Bible.

We will talk about this more as we get into today’s text.

The Apostle Paul wrote this about the Scriptures:

2 Timothy 3:16–17 NIV

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

There are three parts to this verse and all of them are important to the disciple of Jesus.

THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE

THE USEFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE

THE EQUIPPING OF SCRIPTURE

Our passage starts out with these words:

2 Timothy 3:16 NIV

All Scripture is God-breathed...

We can get into the weeds about, some different elements to this.

Just to cut to the chase about what we are talking about here, when this says, “Scripture” I am interpreting that to mean the 66 books of the Bible.

If you have questions about that step of reasoning, I encourage you to talk to me after service and we will set a time to walk you through step by step how we got to this place.

But if we want to change the world, we need to be disciples of the World Changer, Jesus Christ.

As we said last week, you must follow Him.

A sign of following Him is your baptism.

Second, you must have a Biblical foundation to know and align your life with everything Jesus taught.

It is a necessary foundation of the disciple of Jesus.

So when we look at the Scriptures, we see that they have authority.

The word “authority” is not a popular word in our current, modern day culture.

I believe when we hear the word “authority” some of us believe that means “authoritarian”

If this is the case, we view the Bible as a harsh book of rules that beat us down into submission.

We must understand what the Bible is in order to understand the heart of God in giving it to us.

As this passage says as well as the passage from 2 Peter a few moments ago, the Bible is inspired by God.

This means that the Holy Spirit supernaturally empowered human authors, who were writing in their own style, to perfectly articulate the message that God wanted to speak.

We need to know that this process is miraculous

Imperfect people are highly unlikely to write something perfectly in this way. In fact, it would be impossible.

But the fact that God supernaturally oversaw this happening means it is from the pen of man, but also from the heart of God.

Since the message is from God, it has authority.

Since the message is from God, it is inerrant and infallible.

This means that the Bible is God’s perfect revelation of Himself, His purpose and His heart for us to know.

All that we know about God is revealed through His word.

He wants us to know Him and know about Him. The Bible is the ultimate revelation of God for us today.

I saw all of that to drive us to a very simple point.

The Bible is God’s word given to us.

The second way we know the heart and nature of God is that He revealed it in Jesus Christ

But how do we know about who Jesus is? By looking at the Bible.

So when we look at the Bible, we conclude that it comes from an all-knowing, ever-present, eternal, and loving God.

We are not any of those things.

So when the Bible speaks, we as disciples of Jesus must surrender our truth to its truth as the authority of our lives.

TRUTH

THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE

THE USEFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE

THE EQUIPPING OF SCRIPTURE

2 Timothy 3:16 NIV

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,

If Scripture is from God and carries authority, what is the purpose of that authority?

Teaching— Literally teach or instruct.

Rebuking— This is an interesting word. The only place it is used in the Bible is in this verse.

Elegmos— rebuke, reproach, conviction

Bring to your attention disapproval of something

It is literally the Holy Spirit using the Bible, that the Holy Spirit helped write, to bring to your attention sinful things so you can be holy

Correcting— Again, this is another word that is only used in this place of the Bible.

epa-north-osis— set right, correct, improve, amend,

When these two unique words are put together, they form a powerful picture of what the Bible is to do in our lives.

It brings to our attention places of our lives that are out of God’s path, then it corrects them and puts them on the right path.

Training— I love this word

Paideia— It is literally “Rearing a child”

It is the discipline and training you need to bring a child to adulthood.

It is the same word that is used in Ephesians 6:4

Ephesians 6:4 NIV

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

This is the journey of a disciple.

A Biblical Foundation means that we have a standard of truth in our lives

This standard of truth has authority.

It teaches, rebukes, corrects, and trains in righteousness.

This is what Jesus means when we follow Him as His disciple.

As we look at the Word of God, it matures us into righteousness, like Jesus.

This is useful for the disciple, knowing that we will be corrected along the path.

But this correction is not an authoritarian correction. It is a Father correcting His children in love for their good and their maturity as the grow.

In the same way, disciple-makers, we are not authoritarians with the Scriptures. We must know that we stand on the authority of the Word of God, not on the authority of our own opinions or educations.

Our job is to bring others to the Word of God and allow the Word of God to do its work.

THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE

THE USEFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE

THE EQUIPPING OF SCRIPTURE

2 Timothy 3:16–17 NIV

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

If the Bible has authority, what does it have the authority to do?

teach, rebuke, correct, and train in righteousness.

Why would the disciple of Jesus need to be taught, rebuked, corrected and trained in righteousness?

So that the servant of God

Our identity… we’ll get to that in a minute

may be thoroughly equipped

What equips us to make a difference in the world?

Is it by taking lots of classes and learning all sorts of information? No.

Is it by making speeches or becoming a skilled speaker of the Gospel? No.

What equips you is being Christlike.

God doesn’t need your external skills. He needs your heart.

He wants a heart that is humble, obedient and surrendered to Him.

Only when we are humble, obedient, and surrendered to Him and being changed and transformed by God working through His word will we then see the outward action we desire.

for every good work

Here is the point of the good work. It points people to God.

Matthew 5:14–16 NIV

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

This passage that we may have heard before says the same thing.

You are the light of the world. Where does that light come from?

It comes from God working, training, teaching and correcting us in righteousness.

God’s work within us is seen by others.

What radiates from us as we become Christ-like? It isn’t that we naturally begin to glow.

It is our fruit of the Spirit, our love, joy and peace

It is our actions with others.

They may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in Heaven.

Conclusion

If you want to change the world, it doesn’t start with bigger ideas, louder voices, or stronger opinions—it starts with a shift to the truth. The truth of God’s Word is the only foundation strong enough to transform your life and equip you for every good work.

Paul told Timothy that all Scripture is God-breathed. It has authority because it comes from God. It has usefulness because it teaches, rebukes, corrects, and trains us in righteousness. And it has purpose because it equips us to shine the light of Christ in a dark world.

So if you want to change the world, you must first let God’s Word change you. A disciple is not shaped by culture, by emotions, or by personal preferences, but by the truth of Scripture. When you make that shift—when you surrender your truth for God’s truth—you are stepping onto solid ground. And from that ground, God will send you out to live, to love, and to serve in a way that points people to Jesus.

If you want to change the world, you must begin with a shift to the truth. And when you do, God will not only equip you—He will use you.

Gospel Presentation

Communion Directed Prayer

Eldership Introduction

Introduction to eldership

We have a very exciting, but also a very important step to take as a church and it has to do with our eldership.

We are an elder led church.

There are a lot of different models of churches out there.

Some churches vote for their direction and leadership

Some churches have denominations in a headquarters somewhere appoint their leadership

Some churches hold that they need no leadership.

We are an elder led church and I want to explain that.

The model of an elder led church comes from the Bible

The Bible gives us a description of the role of elder and the quality that person needs to be.

We will read that in a moment.

Eldership is a plurality of Biblically qualified men who lead the church together.

The problem if one person is in charge is that they may stray off course and the whole church goes off course

In an eldership, if one person goes off course, there are a room full of guys there to smack him on the head and get him pointed back in the right direction

Elders are not voted on.

We don’t vote as a church. Voting by nature divides the church.

And, we don’t want the most popular person in these roles. We want the right people in these roles.

The Bible never modeled a democratic leadership.

The Bible says, “Take your Godly, mature men and make them elders”

That is what we want to do.

Ben Necochea came to us a few years ago.

During that time we have seen him grow from a church attender, to a volunteer, and into a leader

We invited him into our eldership process close to a year ago and he accepted

During that time, he has attended elder meetings

Received training

He has been reviewed by our elder team

His wife has been reviewed by our elder team

And now we feel we would like to present him to you as a prospective elder.

Here is the standard of elder:

1 Timothy 3:1–7 NIV

Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.

From what we have seen, Ben meets the requirements of an elder.

However, part of our process is to present him to the congregation to ask if anyone has a Biblical reason why he should not be an elder.

If you do, I ask that you fill out an information card with your name and phone number and a brief summary of your concern.

We will contact you and follow up on the concerns.

If there are no Biblical concerns, then in a couple of weeks we will bring him back up and place our hands on him, pray and install him as an elder of Real Life Selkirk.

Close in Prayer