WHat Does the Bible Say? | Scripture

Intro

Hey Y’all is everybody good? At last spring break is finally upon us. Spring Break is next week. Anyone doing anything cool? More Importantly, tomorrow should be a national holiday. We Should get tomorrow off and then when it coincides with Easter and Good Friday, we just get the rest of the week off. Any one know what I’m talking about? It’s opening day! The Braves start playing, in front of fans, the world seems to be coming back to a true since of normalcy. I’m so excited. I know probably not all of you like baseball, but that is okay for you to be wrong, we are all family here and we won’t hold that against you too much.

Anyway, Question for you? How do you know somebody? Like how do you someone, not know of someone, but know someone. Like beyond just seeing them post on Insta. How do you know someone. How many of y’all have friends or follower that you don’t really know on social media? Especially y’all girls, i know when I used to actually post things on instagram, i’d get like 20 like and be like yeah, look at that! Then when I started dating LL we would post the same picture or something, and hers would have like 1000 plus likes in like a couple hours. The only time I ever even got close to that was when I posted our engagement. I got like 400 something likes on that. That was my peak, and I had to go on facebook to get that. Because I was friends with a bunch of people but of those people that I actually wanted to hang out with or run in to at the store or something was pretty small. Like a handful of people.

So what makes someone a friend in real life, how do you know someone? What is the difference between a best friend and a facebook friend or just another person that follows you?

You have a deeper understanding of that person, you have correspondence with that person. You know what makes this person tick. You know them also because they know you. They allow you to know them. I know for me, if you want to get to know me, and I don’t want you to know me, I can make it extremely difficult for you to get to know me.

So that is where I want our heads to kinda be at tonight. How do we know someone, how do we know who God is?

So last week we stared this series on What does the bible say, and this will lead us in to looking at hot topics of our day, how does the bible inform how we see everything. How does the bible inform our world view?

So if the bible is going to inform our world view and inform how we think and believe about everything we need to understand how we should view the bible. So tonight we are going to look at what the bible says about scripture, about the bible. How should we view the bible? What even is the bible? Does the bible still hold relevance with us today? Is it just another old book? What does the bible say about the bible?

So tonight we aren’t going to be flipping all over the place tonight, I’m gonna try to stick to one passage tonight and build from there our view on how we should view scripture and what the bible says about scripture. We may flip to another passage but we won’t dig in to it.

So we are gonna be in 2 timothy tonight and we are going to study two verses in 2 Timothy but we are going to look at some of the verses surrounding the passage so that we can get some context. This will give us insight as to what was going on when Paul was writing this letter to Timothy.

So 2 Timothy, Chapter 3 mainly verses 16 and 17. So if you have a bible go ahead and flip over there to it, if you need a bible, throw a hand up, this will really help you understand what is going on here in the text, especially since we are talking about what exactly the bible is.

context

So While you’re flipping over to it, let me give you some context. 2 Timothy is really similar to the book of Titus, it is a letter by Paul, who wrote this letter to a guy named Timothy, who was serving at the church in Ephesus. Timothy like Titus was a disciple of Paul, probably brought to faith in Christ through Paul’s ministry.

Now Paul was in a different situation than he was when he wrote to Titus. This was Paul’s second letter to Timothy. Paul was in a roman prison. Christianity had been made officially illegal by the Roman Empire by this time. So Paul was in prison still trying to minister, writing letters, encouraging the churches all while he is in prison waiting to die. And I believe Paul is executed not long after this letter is written.

Now Timothy was a younger guy, probably not that much older than some of y’all in here tonight. He was serving and ministering in the church and this is Paul’s letter to Timothy telling him how to best minister to those in the Church in Ephesus.

Now in this passage Paul is talking about what is going to be going on in the last days, in these days. How the world is going to react to Christianity, what is going to happen in and out of the church. Chapter three starts out describing what the world is going to do. Basically people are going to start believing what ever they want. They are going to follow their emotions and follow their feelings. People will say they love God but are not going to follow God. This sounds familiar doesn’t it? We’ve seen this, we know people who are this, some of us have or currently are living this. So that is the backdrop of what is going on in this passage. This brings us to the two verses we are really going to look at tonight.

main Idea

So the main Idea for tonight as we talk about what the bible is, the main thing I want you to remember is, the bible is how we truly know God. I’m going to expand on that in a little bit, but if you do not remember anything else form tonight, remember that the Bible is how we truly know God. So with that 2 Timothy 3:16-17

Before we read this, let me pray for our time in the text tonight. Pray with me.

Pray

What is the Bible?

Okay Cool, so let’s jump in to the text and we are going to look at this passage more in depth and use it as a spring board to talk about a few things.

So read this with me

English Standard Version Chapter 3

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Okay, there is a ton in just these tow verse here from Paul in 2 Timothy. But let’s back up and just answer the question, what even is the Bible? Where does the Bible come from? How do we have it? Who wrote it? Those sort of things.

So what is the bible? The bible on one hand is book. But more than just a book, it is a collection of books and letters. It ranges in age of the books, you have Job as the oldest book written. Job was written about 4000 years ago. around the time Abraham was doing stuff. So from 4000 years ago to 2000 years ago. The bible was written over the span of two thousand years. It has many different human authors that contributed to the bible.

But is it more than that? Is it just a book? No, it is more than just a book. That seems to be one of the major criticisms of the bible and Christianity, which is, “Well, the bible was written by a bunch of different dudes, how can that be true?” And yeah, it was written by a bunch of different dude, but it ultimately has one author.

Look back at the first part of verse 16, “all scripture is breathed out by God.” Paul is saying, all of scripture is is truly form God. and the fun thing about this word “breathed” is the same word for spirit.

Have y’all ever seen some one get absolutely crushed on the football field? I know some of y’all football players have seen it, or been crushed or done the crushing, austin barnes...... But y’all know what I’m talking about. Or have you ever been hit so hard you got the breath knocked out of you? You see those hits or have been hit like that and somebody might say, “That knocked his soul out!” Your breath is gone when you get hit.

This is what Paul is describing here, not God getting his breath knocked out, but that his spirit is intertwined within these pages. This is more than just a book, this is the real and actual word of God.

So Paul is saying here in 2 Timothy, all scripture is has God’s spirit within it, it is inspired by God Himself.

So this come with some implications.

Inerrancy of Scripture

The first implication is that scripture is Inerrant. Go ahead and write down the words Inerrancy of Scripture. Remember this phrase for next week. But what do we mean by the inerrancy of Scripture? What mean is, the bible does not contain errors. As Christians and specifically baptists, we hold tight to this truth. Scripture is without error. We define this as “Truth with out mixture of error.” SO next week when I as you what does Inerrancy of Scripture mean? I’m looking for “That all scripture is the Truth of God without mixture of error.”

This is super important for Christians to understand and stand by this truth. Remember our main idea, that the bible is how we truly know God. if this is not actually the word of God, then why would we build our lives upon on it?

how many of you tried to build a sand castle? but you wanted it to have like a moat and an irrigation system in it, so you build it so the tide comes in close to it and you kinda run a trench that brings water around your sandcastle, but after a while you can’t actually keep the castle up because the water is eating away at the foundations. What is going to eventually happen to that sand castle? it’s gonna come down in like an hour. This is why you don’t see too many home built directly on the beach, there are some kinda right up against the beach, and if someone does build a house directly on the sand of the beach they had better have some serious foundation or that house is going to come down just like the sand castle.

That is why the Inerrancy of Scripture is so important to us as Christians, if you lose that doctrine, then you are building your faith on sand, and are giving in to the oldest trick in the enemies book, which is to ask, “Did God really say this?” If we don’t hold to the inerrancy of scripture we have no reason to believe the bible at all. There might be some good stories in there, Esther might be a real page turner but that’s all the bible is if we lose sight for what the bible truly is, the actual word of God.

Look at the rest of verse 16

English Standard Version Chapter 3

profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness

The bible is where we meet God.

This is the second implication about the the bible being God breathed. This is the way God has chosen to specifically reveal Himself to us. What I mean by that is God has revealed Himself to us through the bible, through the different worldly authors, showing us who He truly is and how we can come to a right relationship with Him. Stick with me, because i’m about to kinda go a step deeper here, and I want you to understand this. There are two ways God has revealed Himself to us, the first we call general revelation. Generally, when you look around you see that the world around you is wild, that the world around you exists. You can tell when something is right and you can tell when something is wrong. You can tell that all of this couldn’t just be here by accident, someone had to bring this in to existence. This is the General revelation of God across all places and all times in history.

The second way God reveals Himself to us, is through His word, through the bible, we would call this special revelation. This is a specific way God has chosen to reveal himself to us, to make himself known to us, so that we can have a right relationship with him.

Put it kind of like this, how many of you have ever been to Disney World? Imagine you just stumbled upon Disney World. You know you just find it driving through Florida and you have no concept of Disney as a brand, or Disney as a theme park, you have never seen a Disney movie, You have never heard of Walt Disney you nothing about him, you have no clue, nothing. You’d be walking down main street just kinda dumbfounded, but you would know something would have had to put all this stuff here, you’d be kinda freakin’ out a little. There is giant mouse walking toward you, you keep hearing about Neverland, Darth Vader is there. You know you’re confused.

Then let’s say you ask someone hey, what in the world is going on? Where even am I? And they’re like, oh year there are a ton of movies and shows that go with this and they give you a Disney + login and you watch all the movies and the next time you go to Disney world, you’re not confused. you understand why Disney World is the way it is.

That is kind of what we are getting at here with general and special revelation. We know God is there, we can see His handy work, but the Bible gives us access to know Him deeper, to know him on a personal level. The Bible lets is truly know us.

The Bible is About God

Let’s keep going. There is a lot going on here and I want to finish up this passage. Read with me verse 17

English Standard Version Chapter 3

that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

This passage gives us one more implication about the bible that we tend to over look but is so important for us to understand and hold on to. Like we have said God is the ultimate author of the bible. This is how He reveals Himself to us. So one of the ways in which we misread the bible is to read it as if it is about us. This is very important, the Bible is not about us. If you’re writing things down write this down. The Bible is about God. The Bible is about God. We love to do this when we read the bible, we love to put ourselves in the story and for us to be the main character but that is not how we read the bible. This isn’t about us, it’s about God, it’s about who he is and why He wants us to follow him. Is the Church in there, yes, is it about the Church, no. The Bible is about God. The whole of Scripture points to God, and points to our need of God. God is the only thing worthy of all glory and worship.

This week is Easter, this week is the week the church remembers the Christ dying on the cross in our place and being resurrected on the third day. I want us to think about this, especially this week, if God is who he says He is, and the Bible is the word of God. I want us to really think about the implications of this week. If the bible is about God and only about God, what does that mean for us when we read this crucifixion account, what does it mean when we read the resurrection account? If we read this thinking that we are the main character in the bible, then we are going to read this and almost gloss over the true meaning of easter. We are going to see Christ on the cross and raised from the dead and think “oh good! i’m not gonna go to hell!” But if we read this and see God in his proper place, then we wont see easter as just a way out of hell, but as a way in to right relationship with Christ, with the God of the universe. We will see Easter for what it is, God defeating sin and death. It is Christ’s victory over the powers of darkness. It is a way to live life fully in the worship of God almighty. being saved from God’s wrath in Hell is just a by product of knowing Christ. Salvation is Christ coming down off of His throne and wanting you to have a relationship with Him that will change you in to who God intends for you to be. To take your sin away in the sight of an almighty God. Easter is about Christ’s victory over sin and death and taking the wrath of God that you deserved upon Himself on the cross. That is what why the Bible is not about us, the bible would be so very different if it were about us.

Point to Christ

So why does this matter? Why are we talking about this tonight? Why does it matter that we know that the bible is the very word of God. Because the Bible is giving each of us a choice. This scripture is call everyone of us in the room to examine our lives and see if we are really living by the word of God, if we are living as if we truly believe the Word of God is the actual word of God. This text is calling us acceptance or repentance.

If you are a believer, this text is calling you to examine your life and see where are you living like this is the word of God and where aren’t you. Where have you asked the question eve was asked in the garden, “Did God really say that?” This is calling us as believers to see where we may not be living as if God is who God says He is. Where ever that it, God is calling you to repentance and to come back and see him as he is. I know we have all been guilty of this in our lives. But we can rest in the truth that God will forgive us. See God for who He is.

If you are a non believer, this text is calling you to acceptance, calling you to examine yourself and to see God for who he is, the whole of scripture is God revealing Himself so that way may know Him, and be in right relationship with Him. The whole of scripture is calling you to see Christ in the throne because He took the cross for you. He took the wrath upon you, not to save you from just Hell, but to bring you in to the family of God. To bring you in to a personal relationship with Himself.

Tonight and this week, contemplate how you will see God, will you see God for who He is, will you see the Bible as his inspired word? The whole of scripture wants you to know God deeper and draw closer to Him.

Pray with me.