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If this were a creative writing class, and I were to ask you
to write the most ludicrous news headline you could imagine, what would you
write? If I were to let my imagination run completely wild and come up with the
strangest possible notion, it would pale in comparison to this actual headline which I read a few weeks
ago: “Lesbian bishop in Sweden
calls for church to remove crosses and install Muslim prayer space.”[1]
This headline encapsulates the changing religious landscape of our day and time
better than anything else I have read recently. Though it represents what we
might call “the lunatic fringe” of political correctness, we could provide
ample evidence from our own daily news of seismic shifts in cultural ideologies
affecting us all for better and for worse. To hear some people talk, these
developments seem to have come as a shocking surprise. But in reality, they
should not be surprising at all. We have had it on good authority that
difficult days were coming.
In the first verse of 2 Timothy, chapter 3, Paul tells his
young protégé that difficult times are coming. He tells Timothy in the first
five verses of this chapter that men are going to become lovers of self and
lovers of money; that they will be boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to
parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips,
without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited,
lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Yet in spite of all this, he says
that somehow they are going to hold on “to a form of godliness.” We find
ourselves living today in a world that can be characterized by all of these
ills and evils, and yet never before in our lifetimes have people claimed to be
more religious and more spiritual. Walk into any bookstore and browse the
“Bestsellers,” and you will find numerous titles that deal with spirituality,
many of which are written by those with nominal affiliation to Christianity.
Our culture is holding on to a form of godliness, a kind of spirituality that
is in fact spiritually and morally bankrupt. Our culture has ceased trying to be good, and begun looking for ways to feel good about being bad. Paul said it like this: people are “holding on to a form
of godliness, although they have denied its power.”
Today people are trying to build their lives and their
society on some semblance of pseudo-godliness, pseudo-religiousity, and pseudo-spirituality
which is completely void of power. But what is this power that has been denied
so widely? The power to build a life, the power to build a church, the power to
build a society is the power of God’s Word. We are living in the midst of a
famine like the one spoken of by the prophet Amos, through whom God said,
“Behold the days are coming when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine
for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the Lord.”
What is most tragic about the famine of our day is that it is entirely self-inflicted.
God has not become silent. His Word is more readily available to people today
than ever before. But more and more people are choosing to build their lives
apart from it, thereby denying the power of His Word.
The Bible is the Word of God. Paul tells us in 3:16 here that
“all Scripture is inspired by God.” That phrase “inspired by God” translates
one Greek word – theopneustas. The
NIV captures it with precision here: “All Scripture is God-breathed.” This book
is not like any other book. This book is the written revelation of God that He
has given us to be our infallible authority and guide for all of life. And by
and large it is ignored by many. The terrible irony is that it is not just the
people “out there” who are ignoring it. This sacred treasure is being ignored
by many inside the church today – in both the pew and the pulpit. And so what
is true of the culture at large is also true of many churches today – they hold
to a form of godliness, but by neglecting the Bible, they deny the power.
What is needed today in our culture is an awareness of the
power of God’s Word. But the culture is never going to understand that until
the church returns to that awareness. We live in difficult days, yes. But the
days in which Timothy was living were difficult as well. And in the midst of
those days, the apostle Paul declared with great force and authority that the
only help and the only hope for that culture was the power of the God’s Word.
And the same is true for us today. Why is that? Why, in the midst of our times,
is the Bible our only source of help and hope? Three points jump off the page
of this passage to inform us.
I. The Bible has the power to save our souls. (3:15&)
We first meet Timothy in Acts 16, where he is described as
the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer in Jesus. In the first chapter of
2 Timothy, Paul refers to Timothy’s mother and his grandmother by name. His
mother is Eunice and his grandmother is Lois. And Paul says that the faith
Timothy has in Christ was first found in Lois and Eunice. We do not know when
these ladies came to faith in Jesus, but it is not hard to imagine that they
had been well taught in the Hebrew Scriptures, and when they heard the Gospel
message proclaimed, they recognized it as biblical truth. They could see that
Jesus was the fulfillment of all the promises and prophecies of the Old
Testament and accepted Christ as Lord and Savior of their lives. Now, from
early in his childhood, these two precious ladies had taught Timothy the things
of God from the pages of Scripture, and upon coming to faith in Christ, they
shared that message with him as well. The sacred writings had given him wisdom
into God’s purposes and plans, and when he heard the message of Jesus Christ,
he responded by turning to Christ in faith and was gloriously saved.
The Bible is very clear that there is only one way for a
person to be saved, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I
am the way, the truth, and the life; NO ONE comes to the Father but through
Me.” But one does not arrive at a personal decision to receive Christ by his or
her own human reasoning. In fact, often the wisdom of this world stands in the
way of one coming to faith in Christ. Humans have never had more access to
information and education than they do today. A couple of college courses, a
few good books, and a few hours on the internet can provide someone today with
an education that our ancestors never imagined possible. But all the wisdom
accumulated is really foolishness if it does not point us to Christ. In 1
Corinthians, Paul says that the world did not come to know God through its
wisdom, but rather, God determined to destroy the wisdom of the wise and rather
save humanity through a message that the world around us by and large thinks is
foolish. The message is Christ and Him crucified, and it is, according to Paul,
foolish and offensive to those who hear it. But this is the message of the
Bible. When Paul summarized the Gospel in 1 Corinthians 15, he said that it
consists of the facts that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day
according to the Scriptures. Notice the repetition there: According to the Scriptures!!! The power to make men right with God
was not found in Plato’s Academy or in Alexandria ’s
Library. It is not found by accumulating academic degrees or traveling the
world. One could read every book ever printed and not find this power, this
wisdom, in any of them except one. This power to save was and is only found in
the Bible. Only therein do we find the wisdom that leads to salvation through
faith in Christ Jesus.
God spoke through the prophet Isaiah saying, “My word … will
not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without
succeeding in the matter for which I sent it out.” When the truth of the Bible
goes forth, the Spirit of God works powerfully through the Word of God to turn
lost sinners into saved saints. Satan is fully aware of this truth, and it
seems in recent days he has been hard at work to lure Christians and churches
into a snare of trusting other things to save the souls of human beings. As we witness
the exponential growth of sister churches, Satan capitalizes on our sense of
envy and tries to convince us that we will see great numbers of people come
into our church if only we change our music style, employ a more savvy
marketing strategy, or offer the latest programs. We may draw a crowd with
those things, but unless the Spirit works through the Word to move upon the
hearts of these individuals, that crowd will remain lost in their sins,
eternally hopeless apart from Christ. Recent surveys and statistics have shown
that many inside the church today live no different from those who never darken
the doors of a church. John Piper commented on these statistics by saying that
they do not indicate “that born-again people are permeated with
worldiness," but rather "that the church is permeated by people who
are not born again."[2] This
should come as no surprise to us when, one-by-one, churches have abandoned the
soul saving power of the Word of God and resorted to unbiblical means of
marketing and salesmanship with a view only toward growing their crowds, their
buildings, their budgets and their staffs. If we have a view toward seeing
souls saved as people come to know Christ as Lord and Savior, then we will
cling to the powerful Word of God and trust God to work through it to
accomplish His purposes.
Most of you know that before I became a Christian, I was an
atheist. You may also know that my Masters Degree concentration was in
Christian Apologetics. So, often I am asked, “What did the trick for you? What
argument did someone share with you to win you over? What can I say to my lost
friend to get them to believe?” And most are dumbfounded by the simplicity of
my answer. Two words: “The Bible.” I came to faith in Christ as I simply read
the Bible. I didn’t make a decision to start believing in God or trusting in
Christ. Rather, faith began to arise within me. I discovered myself believing
what I was reading. Suddenly God and the Lord Jesus Christ became living beings
in my awareness. Faith “happened” within me as I read the pages of God’s Word.
I don’t know of any other way for a person to be saved than
to confront them with the Word of God about Christ and let the Holy Spirit do
His work of regeneration in their hearts. Do you have a lost friend, loved one,
neighbor, coworker that you have been trying to reach? How many times have you
lovingly shared with them the Word of God? Have you given them a Bible? Have
you challenged them to spend time reading the Bible or offered to study it with
them? True saving faith, Paul says in Romans 10:17, comes by hearing; and
hearing by the Word of Christ. We read in 1 Peter 1:23, “You have been born
again, not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and
enduring word of God.” Or as Paul tells Timothy here, “the sacred writings …
are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is
in Christ Jesus.”
II. The Bible has the power to sanctify our lives. (3:16-17)
Graduation services are joyous occasions that mark the
completion of some level of a person’s educational journey. At the end of the
ceremony, often students will hurl their caps into the air in celebration of
the fact that it is OVER! However, I have always found it interesting that
graduation ceremonies are called “Commencements.” To commence is not to end
something, but to begin something. The end of one’s educational pursuits marks
the beginning point of the rest of his or her life when they must put into
practice the things they have learned. We are mistaken if we think graduation
is the end; it is actually a new beginning. We often make a similar mistake
when it comes to thinking of our Christian lives. When a person finally comes
to faith in Christ, often we lead them to believe that they have reached the
end of the road. Many people in many churches have been saved, but never taken
one step toward spiritual maturity. They think they have come to an end,
failing to recognize that they have embarked on the beginning of a brand-new
life. 2 Peter 3:18 commands us to “Grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus
Christ.” The Great Commission, as you well know, is not a call to simply make
converts, but rather to “make disciples.” Therefore, the church of Jesus Christ
A disciple is a “learner,” a person who begins to actively
follow Christ in the way he or she lives and thinks and speaks. The theological
term for this is “sanctification.” At its root, it carries the idea of being
set apart. Sanctification is a work that the Holy Spirit begins to perform in
our lives at the moment we come to faith in Christ. He graciously and gradually
shapes us into Christ-likeness, so that as we live for Him and serve Him others
see Christ in us. And how does this take place in our lives? It happens as we
immerse ourselves in the Word of God. Jesus prayed in John 17 that the Father
would sanctify the followers of Jesus in the truth, and He said, “Thy Word is
truth.” The Bible is the truth which sanctifies us. Paul says here not only
that the Scriptures are able to make a person wise unto salvation, but they are
also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in
righteousness.
As we use the Bible in our lives and in our church, we are
using God’s chosen means of teaching.
The Bible teaches us the right way to think, the right way to believe, the
right way to worship and live. As we are taught by the Scriptures, a foundation
is laid in our lives to build upon for Christ. Paul also says that the Bible is
God’s chosen means of reproof. All of
us will fall short and sin as we go through life, and we need to be shown where
we are in error. The Bible does this for us. As we read it, it reproves us,
showing us our sin. When we read it, it is like looking in a mirror. We see
ourselves as God sees us, and we see those areas where we need to change. Next,
Paul says that the Bible is profitable for correction.
It isn’t enough just to know where we are wrong – we need to discover how to
make those wrongs right. We need correcting. As we study God’s Word, we find
the way to do just that. And then Paul says that the Bible is God’s chosen
means of training in righteousness.
It does not merely show us our errors and how to correct them, but it trains us
to live in such a way as to avoid those errors in our lives as we live for
Christ. As we study it, we are trained in righteousness, equipped to live in
the way God intends for us to.
Over the last three weeks, I drove 2,251 miles in a rental
car around California and Arizona and hiked a hundred miles or more in
some amazing places. On our visit to Yosemite ,
we set out on a thirteen mile hike that turned into a twenty mile hike. How did
that happen? Well, we began in the visitors center looking at a map of the
trail. The map taught us the way to
go. But along the way, some portions of the trail were washed out by flooding,
and directional signs were nowhere to be found. We found ourselves in one place
where a volunteer was manning an information station, and asked where we were
and how to get where we wanted to be. The volunteer reproved us – he showed us where we had gotten off the trail and
where we were in relation to the trail. By using a GPS map on my phone, I was
able to plot a course back to the trail to resume our hike, so I was corrected – set back on the right path.
And once we did that, we were able to spot the major landmarks to look for on
the trail in order to prevent wandering off again. Those landmarks trained us in right hiking, and helped us
to avoid errors in the future. Friends, this is what the Bible does for us as
we discipline ourselves in the regular study of it. Just as the Holy Spirit
works through the Word to bring us to salvation, so He continues to work
through the Word to make us more like Jesus. The Bible teaches us, reproves us,
corrects us, and trains us in righteousness.
The end result of this is that we are “adequate, equipped
for every good work.” You see, along the way as you grow in Christ, someone is
going to come along and say, “Hey, we need someone to teach 3rd
Grade Sunday School,” or “We need someone to assist us with snacks in Vacation
Bible School,” or they may say, “We’re going to take a mission trip to South
Asia and we’d really like you to go along.” They might say, “You know we’d like
you to serve on a committee.” Someone may come along and say, “Tomorrow night,
I’m going to go visit my lost friend to share Christ with him. Will you go
along with me?” For most of us, when we hear those words, all we can think
about is how inadequate and ill-equipped we are to do those things. You might
think, “I’m not a theologian. I don’t know anything about church administration.
I am a picky eater, I can’t go to South Asia .
I don’t know what to say to a lost person.” So on and so on, we make excuses
for ourselves and try to find a way out. We live in defeat and feel useless and
spiritually inferior. But if we would devote ourselves to the understanding of
God’s Word, the Bible, Paul says here that we will not be inadequate, but
adequate; not ill-equipped, but equipped; and not just for some small menial
tasks, but for every good work.
The church is an amazing thing, you know. God has pieced us
together according to His sovereign purposes. And He knows what this church has
and what this church needs. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul likens the church to a
human body. Just as in our bodies, every part has a role to play for the healthy
working of the body, so it is in the church. You have a part to play in the
service of God. You are growing in discipleship as the Holy Spirit works
through the Word of God to perform His work of sanctification in you, and He is
equipping you, making you adequate to do your part. And when every member does
his or her part in the church, it is a beautiful, God-glorifying thing. And the
power to make it all happen is found here in this book – God’s Word, the Bible.
III. The Bible has the power to transform our culture
(4:1-5)
Remember the condition of the culture that Paul warns
Timothy about in verses 2-5 of Chapter 3. People will be lovers of self, lovers
of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful,
unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control,
brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure
rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness although they have
denied its power. Although Paul says that this will come about “in the last
days,” he makes it clear that these days had already begun. It is obvious that
he does not have in mind some unknowable time period hundreds or thousands of
years in the future, for he tells Timothy in 3:5, “avoid such men as these.”
These conditions were already around at that time. And in order for people to
cling to this empty form of religion and spirituality, he says in 4:3 that they
will “not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they
will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and
will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” If this
is not an appropriate description of our own culture, I don’t know what is. The
most popular so-called Christian preachers on television and in some of America ’s
largest churches today are those who do not address the important subjects of
sin and salvation, but rather focus on happiness, purpose, success, health,
wealth, and prosperity. This sounds so nice, doesn’t it? But it is not sound
doctrine. It is the tickling of people’s ears, telling them what they want to
hear. It is mythology, not theology.
So, we see from these descriptions given here in this text,
that for all the change that’s taken place in the world in the last 2,000
years, some things haven’t changed all that much. The human depravity that
affects our culture is the same that affected that of Paul and Timothy’s day.
Yet in the midst of these conditions, what advice does Paul give this young pastor?
Does he tell him that the solution is electing proper leaders to government
positions? Hold a public demonstration? Get a petition going? Withdraw from
society altogether and cluster up in holy huddles to avoid being contaminated
by the world? No, rather, Paul gives Timothy one charge. In 4:1-2, he says, “I
solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge
the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: PREACH THE WORD!” Timothy was admonished
by his mentor to confront the ills of his society by boldly proclaiming the
inspired and authoritative Word of God.
He tells him in 4:5 to do the work of an evangelist. This
doesn’t mean that Paul expects Timothy to get a TV program, or to use a lot of
hairspray and ask people for money. NO! This word evangelist has as its root the word evangel, the Greek word for “Gospel.” It is as if Paul is saying,
“Brother Timothy, I know the world around you is going to hell in a bucket, but
the only hope for changing it is for you to proclaim the message of salvation
to everyone you know.” And as Paul has already said, that message of salvation
is found where? In the Bible. So he tells him Preach the Word!
Are you concerned about the problems of the culture around
you? Immorality, addictions, a breakdown of the family, increasing vulgarity
and perversion, the disappearance of any sense of right and wrong, truth and
falsehood, the seemingly growing tolerance of evil as good, and the increasing
categorization of good as evil – do these things concern you as Christian
people? I hope so. They concern God, they should concern us too! So what are we
going to do about it? You know, if you walk into a dark room, you can do three
things. You can say, “Well, so what? It’s dark. Big deal, I’ll just learn to
adapt to the darkness.” Or you can complain about it: “Why is this room so
dark? I hate darkness. I wish it weren’t so dark.” Or you can do something
else: you can turn on a light. And so in our culture, we can just adapt and go
with the flow. Or we can gripe and complain about it. Or we can do something
about it. But what? Paul told Timothy what to do, and that advice is just as
fitting for us today – Preach the Word. Be an evangelist. The ills of our
society are not the core issue; they are symptoms of a disease. And that
disease is lostness. People act the way they act because they are what they
are. So what can we do? Present God’s word to people and share the Gospel of
Christ with them. The culture will only change as individuals are changed, and
individuals are only changed by the Gospel.
Do you believe that the faithful proclamation of God’s word
by the people of God can change this city, this county, this state and nation?
Consider this: In the early part of the 1500s, the city of Geneva ,
Switzerland
was a wicked place, widely known for rioting, gambling, indecency, drunkenness,
adultery, and so on. It was said that every third house in Geneva was a tavern. There was a prominent
“red-light district,” and people were known to run drunk and naked through the
streets shouting blasphemies against God. No matter how the city council of Geneva tried to curb this
activity, it continued and worsened over time. In 1536, a man named John Calvin
came to Geneva
as the pastor of the reformed church there. And John Calvin began to preach the
Bible straight forward; verse-by-verse, chapter-by-chapter, every single day of
the week. After a very short while, this began to get on people’s nerves.
Eventually, the city council banished him from the city. Over the next three
years, the conditions in Geneva
got increasingly worse, until the city leaders decided to beg John Calvin to
return to his ministry there. In 1541, Calvin came back to his church in Geneva and began preaching
again day-by-day, picking up in his preaching at the point he left off three
and a half years earlier. And gradually, change began to occur in that city. As
people sat under the faithful teaching of God’s word, lives were changed, and
as a result the city was changed. There were sweeping moral reforms,
regulations were adopted for safety and sanitation, the economic infrastructure
was overhauled so radically that Calvin is sometimes called the father of
capitalism. That once wicked city was transformed as the Bible was proclaimed every
day, and as a result, hundreds of missionaries were sent out from Geneva to the rest of the
world, impacting many other cities and nations as well including those earliest
settlers of our own nation.
These are difficult days in which we live. The culture is in
need of transformation. And the power to transform it is found in the Word of
God. Souls are lost and in need of salvation. And the power to save them is
found in the Word of God. Christians are living defeated lives of spiritual
immaturity. And the power for their sanctification is found in the Word of God.
So today, if you find yourself in one of those categories I would point you to
the Bible as God’s solution for your needs. Perhaps you find yourself today
lost in sin, being swallowed up by the sinking sand of this godless society.
The Bible tells us the wonderful message that Christ died for your sins and
rose from the dead so that you could be forgiven and made righteous before God
and receive eternal life. I pray that as you have heard this Word today, God’s
Spirit may have begun to deal with your heart about your need to be saved.
Perhaps you are a Christian, but you know that you have not made much progress
in discipleship. You have not spent time in the Word to allow the Holy Spirit to
cultivate a Christlike character in your life. Would you allow God’s word to
have its full effect in your life by recognizing it as the solid rock on which
God wants you to build your life? And then as a church, we need to consider,
what would you have this church built upon? Will you have it built upon a style
of music, or a slate of programs, or the personality of some leader, or will
you rather have the church built on the solid rock of God’s powerful word?
Every member of the church must be united in that commitment and must hold one
another accountable in keeping the church anchored to the rock of the Bible.
And as the church is anchored on the Word of God, and every believer is built
up by it, and we begin to proclaim it far and wide, lives will be changed,
families will be changed, communities will be changed, societies will be
changed, and nations will be changed. This is the power of the Word of God.
