As I was seeking the Lord on what to speak about today. A certain subject kept coming up over and over again. And I felt as if, well, maybe some other time. Then I felt the nudge. Then, the subject came up again, and I said, “Okay, God. I get the hint.”
And I know we just did a sermon series on 2 Timothy, but believe it or not, we’re going to revisit 2 Timothy yet again today.
So, if you have your Bibles, please turn with me to 2 Timothy 3, and we’ll read verses 14-17. By the way, when we did our deep dive into the books of, or should I say to, Timothy, we read verses 6-9 from this chapter, and we talked about sheep in wolves’ clothing. Today, we’re going to take a look at what scripture has to say about itself.
This is from Chuck Colson:
The Bible has, amazingly—no doubt with supernatural grace—survived its critics. Thirty to sixty million copies are produced annually. The harder tyrants try to eliminate it and skeptics dismiss it, the better read it becomes. Voltaire, for example, who passionately sought to erase the Christian influence during the French Revolution (between 225 and 235 years ago), predicted that within a hundred years no one would read the Bible. When his home was later auctioned off after his death, it was purchased by the French Bible Society. As one pastor said, the Bible outlives its pallbearers.
Scripture: Let’s take a look at what Paul the Apostle says about scripture.
2 Timothy 3:14-17:
14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Most people who are skeptics would say, “You can’t prove the Bible with the Bible.” And that’s true. Just because the Bible says it’s true doesn’t make it true. Just because the Koran says it’s true doesn’t make it true. Just because The Book of Mormon says it’s true doesn’t make it true.
According to statistics, 25 percent of evangelical Christians believe that The Book of Mormon is scripture.
I could see 2 to 5 percent, but not 25 percent!
The apostle John tells his readers to ‘test the spirits.’ This is another way to phrase the Psalm that says, “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Test the spirits would also mean to test the Bible for yourself. Paul dared his readers to go ahead and ask the 500 witnesses that were still alive at the time if they saw the resurrected Jesus with their own eyes.
In Acts, we read that the Berean Jews “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” The Greek synonyms for ‘examined’ could also translate to “scrutinize, investigate, interrogate, determine.”
So, skeptics will still say, “Yeah, but you’re still using scripture.” Okay, well, what about the examinations of theology, history, and thought over the past 2,000 years?
Historically speaking, if Christ had not been raised from the dead, as Paul himself said to the Corinthian church, paraphrasing, it would have ended with Jesus’ death on the cross. The disciples would have run and fled and, at best, would have gone back to their lives as tax collectors and fishermen–if the Sanhedrin didn’t end up arresting them too.
Then, there are geological and other scientific discoveries that align with Genesis. I debated whether or not to use a DVD that I have on that subject for our next Sunday School series, and I may do that sometime in the future. It talks about the vast geological and archaeological discoveries that point to the validity and historicity of the Bible. Even with all of those things, most importantly, the greatest apologetic is the billions of testimonies of people throughout the past 2,000 years.
I could go on and on, but I don’t want to get bogged down in apologetics. The point is, The Bible is not just “The Good Book” or “a religious book which has given its readers inspiration for thousands of years,” it is God’s truth revealed to us and preserved for us for all time.
But today’s sermon is not so much about what the Bible is; but why it is so important for us to not neglect the Bible.
There is a strange dichotomy going on in the world right now. Many people call themselves Christians, yet deny the power that saves them–which is out of the same chapter we’re reading from today, and goes with our last sermon on this chapter. But it needs to be said for a moment, because how can you truly call yourself a Christian, yet deny the Bible?
Here’s what I’m talking about. This is from an article last month on the Pew Research Center’s website.
It says:
After many years of steady decline, the share of Americans who identify as Christians shows signs of leveling off – at least temporarily – at slightly above six-in-ten, according to a massive new Pew Research Center survey of 36,908 U.S. adults.
In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Bible sales increased by more than 20 percent in 2024. Additionally, a New York Times piece published in September reported that Gen Z men (born between 20 and 30 years ago) are more religious than Gen Z women.
Going back to the Pew Research article, it says that, “although women have identified as Christians at higher levels than men in all three landscape surveys, the share of women saying they are Christian has dropped from 82% in the first RLS (2007) to 66% in the most recent one (2023-24).”
In addition, people of every racial and ethnic background that we measure are less likely to say they are Christian now than they were in 2007, as are people in every major region of the U.S.”
So you get this strange ‘back-and-forth.’ Christianity is at a decline, but it’s not. Bible sales are up, but why–and are people reading the Bibles they buy?
I have to admit, reading the Bible is tough, and if there’s any book on the shelf that gets put there and never picked up again, it’s usually the Bible.
Why is that?
Well, even I–a pastor–have to admit that the Bible is a hard book to read. It’s long. It’s boring. It gets a little pointless sometimes, and it gets jumbly–depending on how easy-to-read translation you get.
So, I admit. I understand.
One of the reasons why I think people often start reading the Bible and then put it down is because they often refer to it the same way I just did.
Did you catch that? I did it on purpose to make a point.
I called the Bible ‘a book.’
It’s not a book, technically. It’s an anthology of 66 books written by 40 different authors over a period of 1500 years, with Israel being its setting. We talked about that a while ago now when we talked about how and why our eyes should be focused on the goings-on of Israel and the rise of antisemitism around the world today.
But when talking about reading the Bible. I realize I’m not supposed to say this, but I’m perfectly fine if you skip a few books of the Bible. It’s hard to glean anything in our daily lives from Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
It has its place historically and spiritually, but read what you need to read. When I first started reading the Bible, all I had was the New Testament. And I read it over and over again. If that’s all you read, at least you’re reading–and hopefully gleaning from it.
Remember when I said, “sheep in wolves’ clothing” comes from the same chapter that we’re reading from?
Listen to this, another something that I shared not too long ago. This is from Rhoda Rubavathy.
We’re living in a time when the Bible is more accessible than ever, yet Biblical illiteracy is at an all-time high.
I’ve talked about this before. But listen to what this says,
When believers [not non-believers, but believers] don’t know the word, they become vulnerable to false teaching, cultural compromises, and a faith that lacks depth. It goes on to say that prayer becomes self-centered instead of scripture-fueled–as does our worship. If you listen carefully to some of the modern worship songs sung in churches today, there’s a subtle tendency for the songs to be more about what God can do for me–like a genie–rather than worshipping God because He’s wonderful and worthy.
Similarly, people start seeking the ‘goosebumps’ of worship rather than seeking the word.
Also, church becomes a social club rather than a place for spiritual transformation. Have you seen what happened to the Church of England? It’s encouraging its churches to drop the name ‘church’ and refer to themselves as community centers or gathering places. Now, you might say, well, a name change doesn’t change what they teach, right? Well, they’ve also swapped their Bible studies and Sunday School classes for walks in the country.
So what happens when people get biblically weak? Well, once life gets challenging, many will walk away from the faith because, as we talked about last week, their house was built on sand, not the solid rock of God.
The writer of Hebrews put it best when he said, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
Eugene Peterson said that Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son.
And going back to our scripture verse in 2 Timothy, Paul says that scripture, “is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Enduring Word Commentary says this: When we come to the Bible and let God speak to us, it changes us – it makes us complete and transforms us.
It goes on to say that…
i. One way the Bible transforms us is through our understanding. Romans 12:2 says, “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” When we let the Bible guide our thinking, our minds are renewed and transformed, so we begin to actually think the way God wants us to think.
ii. But there is another level by which the Bible transforms us: by a spiritual work, a spiritual blessing which God works in us as we come to the Bible and let Him speak to us. This is a spiritual work that goes beyond our intellectual understanding.
Going back to Enduring Word, it says, “Because of this spiritual level on which the Word of God operates, we don’t have to understand it all to have it be effectively working in our lives.”
A critic once wrote a letter to a magazine saying, “Over the years, I suppose I’ve gone to church more than 1,000 times, and I can’t remember the specific content of even one sermon over those many years. What good was it to go to church 1,000 times?” The next week, someone wrote back: “Over the past many years, I have eaten more than 1,000 meals prepared by my wife. I cannot remember the specific menu of any of those meals. But they nourished me along the way, and without them, I would be a much different man!” The Bible will do its spiritual work in us, if we will let it.
And again, if we let it. Like I said, the Holy Spirit will do His work in us as we read, but we also have to be willing to allow the Holy Spirit to do His work.
I’ve read this before, but it bears repeating:
A few hundred years ago, the prince of Grenada, an heir to the Spanish crown, was sentenced to life in solitary confinement in Madrid’s ancient prison. The dreadful, dirty, and dreary nature of the place earned it the name, “The Place of the Skull.” Everyone knew that once you were in, you would never come out alive. The prince was given one book to read the entire time: the Bible.
With only one book to read, he read it hundreds and hundreds of times. The book became his constant companion. After 33 years of imprisonment, he died. When they came to clean out his cell, they found some notes he had written using nails to mark the soft stone of the prison walls.
The notations were of this sort: Psalm 118:8 is the middle verse of the Bible; Ezra 7:21 contains all the letters of the alphabet except the letter J; the ninth verse of the eighth chapter of Esther is the longest verse in the Bible; no word or name more than six syllables can be found in the Bible.
This individual spent 33 years of his life studying what some have described as the greatest book of all time. Yet he could only glean trivia. From all we know, he never made any religious or spiritual commitment to Christ. He simply became an expert at Bible trivia.
Let’s not allow that to happen to any of us. Let us be transformed by the Bible. Let us know and understand that it was written for us, through God’s inspiration to man, so that we can know God. We can know salvation. We can know righteousness. We can know that we are sinners and what God’s standard of holiness is. We can know forgiveness, and we can know peace and we can know purpose.
Going back to Romans, Paul says, What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
A few verses down, he concludes this thought by saying, “So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.”
So we, through the Word and power of the Holy Spirit, understand what is good and how we’re not. Let me read to you again what Paul says a few chapters later: for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
I know you’re not supposed to add to the Bible, but I can’t help but add, “How can they learn without reading?” That’s not adding to the Bible, but remember, they didn’t have a whole Biblical canon readily available to them like we have today, which is why these letters were so important. One or two letters, copied and disseminated throughout a church or region, was the only Bible that they had.
But we do have a Bible. We may have more than one Bible. Do we read it? We can obtain one online for free. Just google biblegateway.com, and you can read it in any translation you like at the touch of a button–all for free.
God wants to speak to you. Let Him do His work in you as you read and study the Bible. Pray along as you do. When you come to the blessings of God and His promises over your life, pray into that. Pray for holiness when the Bible convicts you. Pray that the Lord would help you do good works whenever you get to those passages and say, “Lord, I can’t do this on my own.” Draw closer to God through this process, be filled with his peace, be filled with his joy.
There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and we can’t see the future. I think that’s the reason for the increased Bible sales. People are looking for hope and answers to a troubled world. As an unstable world swirls around us, let God’s Word refresh you, strengthen you, and fill you with complete confidence that the One who sits on the throne is Lord over all.
Featured Image by Rachel Strong on Unsplash
