God Speaks: All Scripture Corrects - 2 Timothy 3:10-17

Lego assumptions

It’s hard to believe but about 20 years ago, these little things almost became the stuff of history. In the early 2000s, LEGO nearly collapsed under the weight of its own good intentions. Lego had all these cool attractions, they were opening more stores, and they were producing some of the most complex toys ever. But all that fun expansion had a cost… too much cost. And they almost went bankrupt. The turning point was realizing the answer had been sitting in front of them all along: the brick. They had assumed that their public wanted roller coasters. What the LEGO customer wanted was a toy… a building toy. Once they stopped with the false assumptions… with all the expansion and focused all their time, energy and money on the brick itself… the company was saved, and since then they’ve made billions. It was always about the LEGO brick.

False assumptions plague our life every day. Because we get distracted. We operate on all sorts of false assumptions. We get overwhelmed by life—by pressure, by fear, by relationships, by bills, by expectations, by our own desires—and we start making decisions that feel “obvious,” “reasonable,” “necessary,” even “faithful.” And these decisions can include sin. Sin itself is never just a bad action. Sin is a lie we believed. Sin is an assumption we treated like truth: Jesus needs my help. I know better than God. God won’t provide, so I’m going to have to obsess and take and run over people. My life is better if I’m in control.. controlling things and people. I can’t be loved unless I perform. I can’t be a the Christian I think I should be unless I win.

What’s worse is many times we even know we need a pivot. We know something is off. We can feel the collapse beginning. But instead of turning toward what actually restores, we double down on the very thinking that got us into trouble in the first place. We tell ourselves: “The problem isn’t that I’m trusting the wrong thing—the problem is that I’m not doing the wrong thing well enough.” So the false assumptions snowball. The anxiety grows. The self-justification intensifies.

Correcting = Restoring

That’s why our current series “God Speaks” matters. We’re in the middle of our 30-day challenge to read our Bibles.. God Speaks… with help from Alison and Zach Zehnder and the great people at Lutheran Bible translators. The key verses for our challenge are found in 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

Paul says:

2 Timothy 3:16–17 All Scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness.

We’ve already covered the first two in that list… teaching, and rebuking. Today we’re talking about correcting. When we hear the word correcting, most of us picture a red pen. A scolding. A posture of disappointment. We picture being put in our place. We picture being fixed—we hear the word correcting and we almost automatically translate it as behavior modification. Like Jesus is primarily interested in making you a little more holy and a little less sinful. That sounds so biblical.

But that’s not how Scripture speaks about the human problem. The human problem is not mainly that we’re slightly off course. It’s that we’re down. We’re fallen. We’re not upright. And we can’t get up. Does that sound familiar? “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up.” That famous commercial tells us our sin problem. This matters because God’s do’s and don’ts can’t get us back on our feet. God’s commands can’t restore. The law can only tell the truth about the fall. But the Law cannot straighten you up.

Correcting, though, is better understood as restoring. Because there’s more to what is being straightened up. The Gospel is at work. Whenever we’re talking about the Bible’s “correcting” or “restoring”, we have to be clear that it’s not the dos and don’ts that will get us there. It must be the Gospel’s work. The Gospel brings us back into an upright position. Scriptures are profitable for restoring because they are able to restore the sinner by relocating the sinner—outside himself—into Christ’s promise. Not into his progress. Not into his plans. Not into his performance. Into Christ’s verdict.

Peter and his assumptions

To see how this works in real time and space, there’s a story in the biographies of Jesus that we often miss.. found in St. Matthew’s Gospel, it’s the radical story of Peter and the temple tax. The story is strange to us in all sorts of ways. In a story that seems at first to be about money—about a little temple tax—Jesus challenges Peter’s assumptions in a way that flips all of life on its head. Jesus takes Peter’s “obvious” answer, and with one sentence He restores him—He stands him upright again in the Gospel.

Matthew tells the story this way:

Matthew 17:24 When they came to Capernaum, those who collected the temple tax approached Peter and said, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”

The temple people here aren’t asking an innocent question. Like a lot of the questions coming from the religious establishment, this question is meant to trap. This is all about making sure that people are aware that they are the ones who determine who is in and who is out. This is about belonging. It’s about who is “in” and who gets to say who is “in”. It’s about the religious machinery of legitimacy. And the machinery runs on assumptions:

God’s house runs on what we give it.

You prove you belong by what you contribute.

And Peter answers in a way that shows how easy it is for disciples to inhale the air of that world. “Does your teacher not pay the tax?” Peter gives them a one-word answer:

Matthew 17:25 “Yes,” Peter said.

Just like that. No pause. No “I’m not sure.” No, “here, let me text Jesus and find out.” He answers with what he thinks should be the right answer. “Yes, of course. That’s what good Christians do.” There’s debate about whether Peter was outright lying. We’re not told whether Jesus had paid the tax in the past. Knowing the way Peter operates both in the Gospel of Matthew and other places, most likely Peter is giving them an answer that he is sure Jesus would agree with. Peter is operating with the same false assumptions as the temple people.

But it’s quite fascinating that the very next detail shows us where the conversation is going:

Matthew 17:25 When Peter went into the house, Jesus spoke to him first.

Peter didn’t even get the chance to bring it up. Jesus gets ahead of him. Which is already a small picture of how Christ deals with the sinner: before you can defend yourself, before you can frame it, before you can present your case, Christ speaks first.

And Jesus asks a question—not because He needs information, but because He is about to restore Peter’s posture.

Matthew 17:25 “What do you think, Simon? From whom do earthly kings collect tariffs or taxes? From their sons or from strangers?”

There it is. Jesus is challenging Peter’s assumptions, and in the process, challenging the assumptions of the guys collecting the temple tax. “What do you think, Simon?” We’re so used to reading right through the story, we miss this, but the correction has already begun with the first words out of Jesus’ mouth. Matthew says “Peter “went into the house and the next thing you know Jesus is using his given name, his old name, “Simon.” Peter’s “yes” to the collectors is the reflex of the old system, the old framework… the old way of doing things. This isn’t Peter making one of the great confessions of the faith, this is Simon being addressed in his old instincts and assumptions.

The Sons are Free

In spite of all of that… in spite of Peter’s assumptions… and in spite of Peter’s wrong headed thinking about being able to save himself… Jesus is going to give Peter an answer that will turn his world upside down.

Jesus: What do you think Simon? Do kings tax their own children or strangers?

Peter: Strangers.

Peter gives the no-brainer answer. Strangers, of course. But then Jesus says this:

Jesus: Then the sons are free.

That’s a mic drop right there. I wish I could have been in the room when Jesus drops that line.. because if it’s me standing there hearing Jesus’ answer, I’m just giving him a blank stare. Speechless. Are you kidding me? The answer is both stunning and devastating all at the same time. Stunning.. because the answer for the people asking the question about the temple tax should have been a no-brainer.. it’s right there in front of Peter… and has been. No temple tax is needed because Jesus is here. He’s the fulfillment of all of this… the tax, the atonement, the temple.. Jesus is bringing an end to it all.

But then that’s what’s devastating. There’s nothing left for Peter or anyone paying that tax to do. The sons are FREE. You’re free, Peter. Free from the tyranny of the law. Free from the obligations, free from trying to save yourself. “Then the sons are free” is Jesus looking straight at a broken, anxious, system-shaped disciple and saying, “You don’t pay your way into my Father’s house. You don’t maintain your place here by getting it right. You belong because I am the Son, and I have come to bring you in.”

And that’s the point. Sons are free not because they finally get obedience right, not free because they obey the rules, not free because they pay enough or perform enough—but free because the Son is in His Father’s house by right, and He brings His people with Him. That’s the unconditional love Peter needs. Sin doesn’t get the last word.

And this grace is unstoppable because there’s no waiting for Peter to clean up his bad assumptions first. There’s no waiting for Peter to be sincerely sorry. There’s no waiting for Peter to clean up his act. Jesus corrects and restores Peter by simply giving him a Gospel Promise: The sons are free.

The Gospel of the Fish Breath Coin

And if that isn’t enough, Jesus isn’t about to be done saving Peter. This restoration isn’t abstract. It is very, very real. Jesus is going to give Peter restoration he can feel, touch, and even smell.

Matthew 17:27 So we won’t offend them, go to the sea, cast in a fishhook, and take the first fish that you catch. When you open its mouth you’ll find a coin. Take it and give it to them for me and you.

You can never accuse Jesus of not having a sense of humor. “So we won’t offend them.” They’re already offended. It’s why they asked the question in the first place. He pays “not to give offense,” not because the temple has a legitimate claim on Him, but because He refuses to let this become the center. They don’t get to have center stage with The Temple himself.

But at the end of the day.. Jesus isn’t going to pay the tax from his bank account and neither is Peter. A fish is going to pay the tax. Creation itself is going to pay the tax. Go get the coin out of the fish’s mouth… there’s our payment.

It’s FREE money, Peter. FREE. Jesus is underscoring the Gospel here. The sons are free. The whole transaction is stripped of merit. The coin given to the religious machine isn’t earned because the whole point is that sonship isn’t earned. Jesus is undermining Peter and the temple system all at once. The fish coin is doubling down on Jesus’ statement, “the sons are free.” The temple tax is “pay to belong”.. and with the Fish Breath Coin Jesus is saying “no it’s not”.. you can’t buy your way into sonship. It’s a gift.

But the sons are free because The Son is free. Even when He “pays,” He pays as the One who owes nothing, as the Son who is exempt, as the Lord who will not grant the system ultimacy. When Jesus pays, it will be with His life… and he’ll be paying off what the temple tax symbolized… atonement for sin. In paying with his life… the sons who should be obligated go free instead.

The miracle of the fish coin is your freedom this morning. This is why God-breathed Scripture is so profitable: it doesn’t just inform you, it restores you— as the Bible tells you the story of the fish coin, it is restoring you, delivering freedom to you because Jesus’ words to Peter are Jesus’ words FOR YOU this morning: “Then the sons are free.” The sons are free because the Son has gifted them freedom. His freedom has become your freedom. There is no buying your way into Jesus’ good graces. There’s no buying your way into Jesus being happy with you this week. That fish coin is telling you that you are a son or daughter of the king because the Son made it so. We don’t pay to belong. The Son pays what He doesn’t owe, so that sinners who owe everything can become sons who are free.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

This Table is all about the coin we didn’t mint. Jesus pays what we owe, in a way we could never predict, using provision we could never produce. You and I have a debt we cannot pay—sin, death, shame, the wreckage we’ve made, the brokenness we’ve inherited. And Christ doesn’t just help us pay it—He pays it.. he pays the whole thing. The bread says: His body FOR YOU. The cup says: His blood FOR YOU. The debt is covered. The cost is paid. Because the Table isn’t for people who have enough. The Table is for people who don’t have anything. It’s for people who need Jesus.