2 Timothy 3:16-17 • The Breath of God
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
I want to take you to the Word of God this morning and consider what we hope is our focus as we move forward. Would you look in your Bibles at 2 Timothy? Second Timothy chapter 3 verses 16 and 17.
Second Timothy 3, 16 and 17. Just to get you ready for what I want to address, I want to tell you about a project that is advancing in our culture right now. Some of you know the columnist Kevin Kelly and he wrote about it recently. It's called the Universal Library. And the attempt is to digitize every known human book from the dawn of human history. That goes all the way back to the Sumerian clay tablets, all the way to modern screenplays and so forth, television scripts. Supposedly well over 32 million books that they are trying to digitize. And the goal is to get them onto 50 petabyte disk. Now petabyte disk, that is one million gigabytes. That clarifies it, doesn't it? No.
I just, I just, but what I recognize of course is that what everybody's really trying to ultimately do is trying to get the whole world's history library on your iPhone or Google Glasses. Now there's some of you who so much like books that you're hoping you never see the day that this happens. Others of you are saying, "Why is it taking so long? I've got a history paper due next week." You know, and as you think about all of those books, I want you to think and consider with me why in the world would one stand out?
I mean, why do you gather here and expect me in a ministry that you have been so wonderful to call Cathy me to do? Why do you expect us to concentrate on just one book out of the 32 million plus in human history?
Second Timothy 3, 16 and 17 is answering why this book is so special. It says this, "All scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." Let's pray to the Lord as we begin our study of His Word. Let's pray together.
Father, we would bow before Your Word not only because it has the authority that we recognize over our lives, but because it represents to us Your heart and Your care revealed in Jesus Christ to us. So help us now as we would study what You have said about the nature of Your Word, not to believe it is just print on a page, nor even dry history for our information.
Let this living proof and enduring legacy of Your heart care for us that we being moved by Your love, we'd love You with our lives. This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
One and April evening that many of you in this room will remember, Los Angeles was burning.
Do you remember? It was the evening of the first Rodney King verdict.
Rodney King, having been arrested for doing a crime, resisted and was beaten by police trying to get his submission. But it was caught in one of those very first amateur videos that was then broadcast around the world. And such rage came that when the policemen who were on trial for the beating were exonerated,
Los Angeles exploded.
South central LA, and we think of this in terms of the Boston tragedy that has just occurred where three people were killed and a couple of hundred wounded.
That night in Los Angeles, 53 were killed and over 2,000 wounded. It was a bleak day in the nation's history.
But what sticks out for many of us who are pastors and Christians was one particular man who was also caught on amateur video. What had happened was this. As the mobs began to form, one man was actually trying to escape in a workman's truck through south central LA. The mob stopped the truck, then dragged the man from his truck and began to beat him mercilessly on the ground. And as the mob with murderous intent was closing in and beating him, there was an elderly, African American pastor named Benny Newton who will forever honor the office of pastor who simply did this. He waded into the mob and began to take the blows on his own back and legs and say to those who were attacking, "You must stop this. You must stop this. This man has done nothing wrong."
And the only thing that that pastor took with him to defend himself from the anger and the blows of the mob was his Bible.
Now the mob turned away in disgust and the man was saved. We don't exactly know why the mob turned away. Was it because it was an older man trying to stop them and they felt like they couldn't hit him? Was it because they were superstitious about a pastor carrying the gospel? I don't know.
It's really the mind of the pastor that I went to examine.
Why was he willing to bank everything, his life, to put eternity and himself separated by only a book and to say, "It's this that I will bank all my life and all future eternity on this is what I hope in." Why would he say such a thing?
In part, surely, because what he knows about what the Word of God says about itself in this portion of Scripture.
All Scripture is God-breathed. The ESV translation that you have in your pews there says, "All Scripture is breathed out." And what the gospel is communicating to us is the Scriptures that are given to us by God are meant to reveal the voice of God.
Think what you know about it. If you speak, you feel air coming out. And that word that many of us memorized in the King James Version long ago, "All Scriptures inspired by God" is thea nustass, "God breathed," as though God is speaking in His Word, His very breath coming out. And that means this Bible that we have is meant to be first life-giving.
You may remember where these words originate in the Bible, that God breathes something to bring life.
The pope was just elected recently, remember, in the Sistine Chapel, and took the attention of the world again to the ceiling and to the wonderful Michelangelo painting, where you may remember that life is depicted as being given by God touching the finger of Adam.
But you may remember that the Bible actually describes that scene somewhat differently.
In Genesis 2 and verse 7, it says, "God breathed into the nostrils of Adam, and He became a living being, that it was the very breath of God that gave life." And now that language is picked up here, as we are being told, that when God gave the Scriptures, He is actually breathing the Word as a life-giving force to His people. But of course, it's not just an empty force. It's all Scripture is God. It's got content to it. They are words that are being spoken and recorded, and this is being depicted in the Bible as God's very word. Now, you and I recognize, and of course, many modern folks will object, well, you know, God didn't actually write it down. These were just human people that wrote down the words of Scripture. And he says, "Well, that's certainly true."
But the Bible makes a claim about those human people who record the words of Scripture in God's behalf.
Remember, we are actually told that holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Without apology, those of us who are believers say we believe that God did something special, that while human instruments were used, nonetheless, God superintended the work of their hands so that they were actually writing as His ministers to the people of their time and all time, they were actually recording God's truth for us, which means that this was not just life-giving Scripture, it was truth-giving Scripture, truth from God Himself, so that ultimately when the apostles would declare what we have before us, they would say, "This isn't just human words, that because something supernatural was done that we accept by faith, that this word is not just the word of humans." Paul actually said that when he wrote to those at Thessalonica, and he commended them saying, "You did not receive the words that I wrote to you as the word of man, but as it is in truth, the word of God."
Now that's an amazing thought, that what you and I actually have is not just words on a page, not just information on a page, but by the superintendence of the Holy Spirit and the supernatural work in the lives of individuals that God called to this purpose, that we actually have God's word recorded for His people for all time.
Centuries ago, St. Augustine simply said it this way, "Where the Bible speaks, God speaks."
Others wrote it, yes, but by the work of the Holy Spirit, something wondrous happened. Centuries after Augustine, the Reformers, tried to capture the essence of what he had declared by saying, "What would it actually mean that the Holy Spirit had given the breath of God to the mind and the hearts of those who were recording God's word so that God was still speaking to His people?" Martin Luther, trying to express what that meant, simply said it this way, "When the church declares the truth of Scripture, the church becomes God's mouth house."
Isn't that interesting? Now think about this, you all did this when you were kids, right? Here's the church and here's the steeple, open the doors and what's this?
You see all the people.
But what Luther was declaring was this, here's the church, here's the steeple, open the word
and God speaks to His people.
It is yet God speaking. The Swiss Reformers who recorded the second Helvetic confession simply said it this way, "The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God." Now, by that you must know that's a very bold thing to say. After all, all you're hearing is my voice.
And already you know me well enough to know, you know, weakness and sin and frailty and mistakes, always present in me. And yet the Reformers were saying this, "To the extent that we have declared what the Word of God itself declares, to that extent God is yet present and speaking to His people."
It's not just old stuff to know.
By saying what is true, according to the words supernaturally given by His apostles and prophets, God is yet ministering to His people as though God were present speaking even through human voice now, but to hearts that are being opened by the Holy Spirit to receive what He is saying.
Calvin, you know, said it the most strongly of any of the Reformers. He simply said this, "God has so chosen to anoint the lips and the tongues of His ministers that when they speak the truth of God, the voice of Jesus yet resounds in the church."
Think of that. God has so chosen to anoint the lips and the tongues of His ministers that when they speak, the voice of Jesus is what comes out. Now, I must tell you, I don't entirely understand what that means, but something happens to you at times when there has been coldness or darkness or hardness in your heart and you have lost faith or comfort in what the Scriptures say, and then somehow the Holy Spirit softens and opens your heart to the Word of God, and you hear it. You hear it not as the words of a man. You hear it not as just the tradition of a church, that somehow by His Holy Spirit God takes this word and ministers Christ Jesus to your heart, and that is the intention of the Holy Spirit from the beginning, that when we are faithful to the Word of God, we as a church actually have Christ Jesus here to minister to His people in your hearts by His Word. Now, that can just be a history lesson, I will tell you. And I can tell you about Augustine and Calvin and Luther and lots of their quotes, but it won't mean anything to you until you begin to feel it in its contemporary essence. What would it mean to you if you actually believed that God was able to be present speaking to His people?
Through His Word.
One of my very good friends was at a stage of his ministry, a youth pastor, and he wanted so much to communicate to the young people to whom he was ministering the idea that God's Word is inspired. It's God's breath yet giving his voice to his people in this day, and here's what he devised. Now, you're going to think this is silly a bit, but just hang with me. Here's what he did. He went to one of the families of one of the kids in the church, and he said, "Can I, you know, kind of borrow the great room for a night?" And he put chairs on the circle of the great room and put verses in each of the chairs
and then put a chair in the center of the circle.
He invited the youth group in, had them sit in the chairs in the circle, and then said, "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to ask one of you to sit in the center chair, and we're going to put a blindfold on you. And then we're going to ask you to share one of the struggles or problems or difficulties that you're dealing with, and because you are blindfolded, when one of the people cites or reads a verse that deals with your problem, you will only hear that voice and not sing. It will be as though God himself is speaking to you."
Now, my friend, the youth pastor, thought this was a really good idea.
The kids thought it was really dumb.
And you know, nobody wanted to participate. Nobody wanted to play along. It was going miserably. I mean, not only did nobody want to sit in the chair, but when he forced somebody to sit in the chair, you know, the worst problem they would come up with was how to get an A on Mrs. Bailey's math test. And believe it or not, there wasn't a good verse for that, you know. And then a new girl to the group volunteered to sit in the chair.
They blindfolded her.
And the first thing she said was, "I am so miserable.
I do not know if I can stand my life anymore."
The kids got embarrassed. They looked at their shoelaces. Somebody looked at the verse that was in his hand.
And to this young woman who just said, "I am so miserable. I cannot stand my life anymore." She read the words, "But I am faithful. I will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation provide a way of escape so that you can stand up under it."
She said, "Nobody loves me."
And somebody else read, "But I have loved you with an everlasting love. And with loving kindness I have called you."
And she got mad. She said, "You do not understand. My parents kicked me out last night and they said, "Never come back."
And then somebody else read, "But I will never leave you, nor will I forsake you."
They took the blindfold off of her and she was crying.
She had a question still.
You know what it was?
Why doesn't God really talk to me that way?
What did the youth pastor say?
He did.
He just talked to you that way. The Bible is God's Word to you. What God was doing was giving you His Word in that moment in your hurt, in your pain, in your crisis. That was God speaking to you. You know, we're just silly at times. We say, you know, if only God were to write His will in the clouds or if only He were to speak on the thunder. But if He were to write in the clouds, it would blow away. If He were to speak in the thunder, it would fade away. And so God says and said, "Would you mind if I just wrote it down?"
And then you could have it with you. Where do you go? Or you could be like Juliet. You could commit these words to your heart so that when you're under strain or when the tragedy comes that you did not anticipate it all, "I am there with you speaking to your heart. This is me for you. This is my Word to you, giving you life, giving you truth. This is God with you." And ultimately, it's that understanding that what God is revealing is not just His voice, but ultimately is hand of care that helps us. After all, here in 2 Timothy, verse 16, it continues, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable." That is, it's useful for these things, for teaching, for reproof, for correction. Now, again, those of you like me raised on the King James, that word "teaching" was doctrine, right? It's given to us for doctrine. And in lots of circles, doctrine becomes a dirty word. But if you just took it as, "Here is God teaching His people the path of life. Here is God saying, "Here's who I am, and here's the path that's safe and good for you." You'd say, "Well, that's a wondrous thing that God is not just giving us His voice. He's giving us a hand of direction, and He's saying, "Here's what will be good for you because I love you." And so the path of what the apostle said is, "All that is needed for life and godliness, that God has revealed by His divine power is being laid out for us."
Now, if we start to get off the path, you recognize that it says here there is not just teaching, but in the Bible there is reproof.
Now, that can be a hard word unless you actually understand what's being said. If you're getting off the path that is life to you, then God, for your very sake, is going to say, "Get back on the path." I mean, think of it. You don't say when you're traveling down the highway and you start going up a ramp and you see the sign that says, "Don't go this way." You don't say, "Well, what a cruel, hard-hearted person that they would do that." You say, "Thank goodness somebody cared enough to put a sign there to say, "That's not the way to go."
And so God gives not just the training and the teaching, He gives reproof in His Word.
And finally, He gives correction so that if you've gotten off the path, you know how to get back on it again, this path of life that God gives for the safety and the care of His people.
And we don't object to that when we know what happens, right? In our family, we have a car that has a GPS that we put in the directions where we should go. And what happens when we get off the path? The person in the dashboard that we have named Esmeralda. You know, Esmeralda speaks to us. What does she say? She says, "When it is safe, make a U-turn."
You're off the path. You need to be corrected. And we take that as actually something that's intended for our good. And you recognize that God is saying as He is leading out this path for our lives of all that is needed for life and godliness, that He's actually showing us His care.
Now, the question we all have is, is the care trustworthy? Should I acknowledge and respond to this care that is about this teaching and this reproof and this correction?
And the answer to that is by understanding that God is in the Bible not just revealing His care.
He is revealing His character.
That's why we should trust Him. You know, one of the very key passages in the Bible that's describing the nature of Scripture is Psalm 19. I'm going to ask that you turn there for just a moment, okay? Psalm 19, as the Bible is actually describing for itself what it is.
For those of you who are just looking in the pew Bibles, that's page 456.
Psalm 19.
And there as you look at just verses 7 through 9, I'm going to ask you some questions as we go. Now, tell you again, what's being described here is the different components of Scripture.
But if you did not know it was Scripture being described, here's the question. What would you think was being described? Here's the question. If you didn't know it was Scripture, what would you think was being described just as you look at these descriptive adjectives? You ready? Verse 7 of Psalm 19.
The law of the Lord is what?
Perfect. Reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Now listen, if you just listened to the adjectives alone, what would you think was being described? Perfect.
Sure. Right. Pure. Clean. Enduring forever. True and righteous altogether. What would you think was being described?
God.
You see, that's a description of God. And of course that is the point. That God is saying when I am presenting my word to you in its different dimensions, I'm actually telling you who I am. I am the one who is righteous and pure and true, the one who has shown my heart to you. This revelation of God is not just some imposition of rules. It is God saying, "It's showing my care for you, and as I show you my care, I'm actually showing you my character so that you will trust what this word says as I'm giving you life and the truth that is intended for your good." Now listen, we live in a modern age and we all know the objections to what I was just saying, right? We know that the modern mind does not accept readily the notion that an ancient book could be pure, right, true. Right?
We know that there are people who are readily saying it's just a product of culture and humanity.
Well, we've already said, we by faith say what the Bible says of itself, that it is a supernatural product of the word of God. It's what it claims about itself. As a consequence, there are arguments that just have to be faced. Like people who say, "Well, you know, it's a good book. It's not perfect, but it's a good book."
You say, "Well, that can't possibly be true."
Because if you've already seen, the Bible is claiming to be the word of God, the very breath of God to His people. Now, some of you, you remember back in your college days, you were urged to kind of examine the claims of Christ who claimed to be the Lord God. And you say, "Listen, He can't just be a good man. He had to be one of three things." Remember the three L's? He had to either be a liar or a what? Lunatic or what? Lord, He can't be just a good man. He claimed to be the Son of God. He's either lying about that or He thinks it's true when it's not, in which case He's a lunatic or He actually is what He said. He cannot be just a good man.
And this cannot be just a good book because it claims to be the word of God over and over again at least 3,000 times through the course of Scripture. It claims to be the word of God. It's not a small lie if it's a lie. So if it's a lie, then we should not be calling it a good book.
The alternative is to believe there are men who wrote it thought that it was the word of God, but they were crazy. In which case, I would advise you to go for the exits right now. Why pay attention to it?
The alternative is to say this, if it's not lies, it is not lunacy.
It is the word of God.
And as important as it is to say that, you have to think of what the consequences are of believing that. If it really were the word of God to us, then what God is doing is He's first releasing us from the idolatry of self. Now, what do I mean by that? This.
What do we really do with the Bible? Knowing the church has made terrible mistakes in the past and interpret, we have to just say that. Obviously, the church has made mistakes and interpret, we make mistakes and interpretation. But that's our mistake. It's not God's mistake. If the Bible is rightly interpreted, we say it's true when it's rightly interpreted. We can mess up, God doesn't mess up.
What's the consequence?
If I start to go through the Bible and just take out the portions I don't like or don't think correct or don't match my wisdom, what have I done?
I don't have the word of God anymore. Whose word do I have if I just choose what goes in it?
I just have my word.
I begin to worship my... I don't have any greater wisdom. All I have is my wisdom.
That means all I approach the world with, it's trials, it's difficulties. All I got is me.
And that means I am not just freed from the idolatry of self in which every page now is kind of shaped like a little paper doll looking like me because I formed what it is.
Ultimately what happens if that's all I have is the Bible that I have made, that the day will come that Juliet faced when the trial or the darkness or the difficulty comes and I cry out in the darkness, "God help me. I can't make sense of this. I don't understand this. God help me." And the only voice that comes back is your own because you don't have the word of God anymore. All you have is your own word.
The God who loves us enough to send Jesus for us did not leave us there. He said, "I have given you my word." And of course it's the duty of the church to seek to interpret and to recognize we've had difficulties doing that through the ages. We know that because of our sin and our weakness and our cloudy minds. But what we have is a faith that God has communicated to us because His voice and His hand were meant to help us. And when you know that, you begin to recognize that what the Bible is ultimately doing is not just revealing the voice and the hand of God. What the Bible is attempting to do more than anything else is to reveal the heart of God.
You know, I did not read the last words of verse 16 by intention.
The very last thing the Bible is supposed to do, the scriptures that we are given, is to train in righteousness.
Now that's an important phrase. I actually echoed it earlier when I had you read from Psalm 19. Do you remember when the Bible was being described there? It was described as being altogether what?
Righteous.
And now we are being told that this Bible that we're given is to train us in righteousness. And yet the righteousness, we said, is the character of God. It's God Himself in representation. So if the Bible is training us in righteousness, what God is actually trying to do is bring us close to Himself.
That's an amazing thought. That what the Bible is actually trying to do is to bring us close to God. Imposition of rules, imposition of doctrine. No, no, listen. There's an intention. And the intention is to draw us close to God. His heart is on display here. But there's a difficulty. And the difficulty is what verse 17 says. This Bible is given that the man of God might be, the ESV says, competent, equipped for every good work. Now, the translators are really wrestling. How do they translate that Greek word that is translated, they're competent. The Greek word, I know there are pastors present, so I can use a Greek word, okay. The Greek word is "ardios," which means complete.
The Bible is given to complete us. Now there's a necessary implication. If the Bible is given to complete you, what does that necessarily say about you?
You're incomplete.
The Bible is given to bring us into righteousness with the righteous one. But the difficulty is we're incomplete.
And so what God has said he has done, recognizing the emptiness, the sin, the weakness, the frailty, the holes in us that keep us from being all, not only that God wants us to be, that we want to be, that what God has done is given his word to complete us. Now if you perceive that, that what God has done in his word is shown us his voice and his hand and his heart, and that this word is what is with us to show us his voice and his hand and his heart, what that would mean is if we are faithful to the word of God, then what we actually have with us is God's voice and God's hand and God's heart.
And if you have God's voice, hand and heart, what you really have is God with us.
You know that phrase, don't you? Who in the Bible is God with us?
That's Emmanuel who is Christ the Lord.
It's actually what the Apostle Paul has said here.
The verse before I read to you, verse 15 of chapter 3, simply says this. The Apostle speaking to Timothy says, "From childhood you have been equated with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." Now the sacred writings that Timothy would have had would have only been the Old Testament.
And yet what the Apostle is saying is if you are understanding what God has done through all the scriptures of revealing his voice and his hand and his heart, what you have been prepared for is not to put faith in you, the incomplete one, but to put your faith in the one who completes you. And that is Christ Jesus himself.
After all, what does the Bible call him? He is the Word of God.
In him we gain knowledge of the glory of God. That is what the Bible says, is in the face of Jesus.
When you begin to see it that way, that it's not just pages and print, but a revelation of the voice and the hand and the heart of God that finds its fullest revelation in Christ Jesus himself, then you say this is something wondrous that we do need for the dark moments and the difficult days when the pain closes in and the explanations are gone.
One of my very good friends is a man who as a pastor began just to see the Bible again
as a cultural document, a human product, and not something of any special nature. It damaged him as his marriage came apart, as his life came apart, he left the ministry.
And on one particular day, against better judgment, just decided because he had never been there before, he was going to join a tour of Israel.
He went on the tour, a cheap price.
He did not know the reason was a cheap price as he registered his ministerial credentials, though he wasn't using them anymore. The reason that he got in at a cheap price was because all the people on the tour were ministers.
And so when he showed up with his girlfriend to go on the tour, it was a little awkward.
So he kept a very low profile. And about the whole tour, you know, as the different ministers did different devotionals at different sites in Israel, he did not offer and he did not participate.
The very last day, the tour ended in the Garden Tomb, one of the places that it is reputed Jesus rose from the dead.
And because he had not done his part yet, the minister said to him, "You are the one who's going to administer communion."
He had not exactly declared who the woman was with him.
He began to say the words of communion.
And as he spoke of the body and the blood of the risen Lord and went through the ritual, suddenly the words hit him.
The reality is these words are of my Lord who was here and in my heart is here.
After the communion service, the rest of the minister toured the beautiful Garden Tomb. He did not make the tour.
Instead, he said he went to the bus that was going to take them back to the hotel and he sat on the bus anxious, ready. He said, "I had to get back to the hotel because for the first time in decades, I was thirsty for the Word of God. I wanted Jesus to speak to me again." Do some of you want that? Do some of you want Jesus to speak to you again? It begins with understanding that you're not just looking for some miraculous revelation of some new thing. The miracle has already occurred. God has given to us the wonder of his Word by which his truth has been committed to his people for their use, for their hands, for their hearts, for all generations and all time. This is God's wondrous gift to us to say, "You're hurting. You're incomplete. The darkness may be closing in, but you are not alone. I have given you my voice. I have given you my hand, and here is my heart. In here you find the way to be complete again in the Lord Jesus Christ." May God lead you to his Word to know him yet again. I don't know what you'll remember about this ministry of mine and Kathy's that commences this day. It may be that you remember us or these words or the wonderful words of—I don't know, but you know what I want? I don't want you to remember me.
I want you to remember the B-I-B-L-E.
This Word of God, which is his heart to us, revealed in Christ Jesus for you, for me today. Father, would you so work in us again?
We don't just take for granted what you have given. We sometimes become calloused or even blind to the wondrous thing that you have done in committing to us a word that has your voice, a word that reveals your hand, but most of all a word that reveals your heart in its apex form in Christ Jesus himself. So work in us again, we pray, that those who are hurting and longing to hear that voice again, to feel that touch again, to be whole again by the work that you do in Christ Jesus, lead them even this day, we pray, to your heart in Christ. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.