The Inspired Word of God | 2 Timothy 3:16 17 | Noah Graves

Well, good morning and happy Mother's Day.

I think it's just so cool that we're in the book of 2 Timothy right now on Mother's Day, because uh if you look throughout the book, you see that uh the way that Timothy became a follower of Christ is his mother and his grandmother passed the faith to him.

Uh just shows how important of a role that uh mothers play in the spiritual lives of their children.

And we just look across here at MBC, and that's what our mothers are doing.

You know, our children's program on Sunday mornings are packed out.

Uh Wednesdays at Iwana, we have tons of kids there, BBS, so just be encouraged, know that you're serving the Lord.

Um, just thank you to each and every one of our mothers here this morning.

Uh it's just so amazing uh all the things that you do for uh this church.

And so as I said this morning, we are in 2 Timothy.

We are continuing on our sermon series called Passing the Faith to the Next Generation.

And so today we're coming up to 2 Timothy chapter 3, verses 16 to 17.

2 Timothy 3:16–17

And so for me in my life, I remember one of the scariest, most terrifying moments that I've ever been through was my junior year of college.

And so for me, I went to Liberty University down in Lynchburg, Virginia, and I remember it was my junior year, and it was like the day before spring break, and most people had already left and gone back, and there was just a couple, a couple of us that were still there for another day.

And I remember that evening there was nothing really going on, and you know, I figured, why not kill the time and just go out for a little hike?

So I decided to go to a nearby mountain and went out for a hike after dinner.

I had it in my water bottle and put on some headphones, listened to a great worship album.

Uh, I was just having a blast, having a good time, and so there I was out there hiking hiking across this mountain, and then I started to notice that you know the sun was starting to come down, it was getting a little bit darker outside, so I figured, you know, this would be a good time to turn back.

So I started walking back, and and then I was starting to have a little bit of a difficult time finding back to where I came from.

Um and then at that point I noticed my phone battery was getting low, and after a few minutes, my phone died.

But thankfully, I had my Apple Watch.

Um I was using my Apple Watch as a flashlight, looking around.

Uh I saw this like abandoned house somewhere.

And then a few moments later, the Apple Watch died.

And so at that point, it was literally pitch black.

I was out there on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, having no idea where I was.

I remember like the week before I listened to this Francis Chan sermon where he said that he was going for this spiritual experience and he was gonna sleep out in the woods for a whole weekend with nothing, and there were moments where I saw a pile of leaves and I was like, this might be my bed tonight.

And I was absolutely terrified.

And thankfully, eventually I did make it back to my car and still alive today.

But I do remember throughout that journey back to my car, there were multiple times where I'd come up to these signs.

I'd come up to these signs and they would have two arrows pointing in different directions.

And they would say, if you follow this arrow this way, you can go down this trail.

But if you follow the other arrow, you can go down this other trail.

And so for me at the time, I couldn't remember which trail I came from, so I had no idea which one to choose from.

And every time I'd have to make that choice, it was terrifying.

And so this morning, as we look at 2 Timothy chapter 3, a similar choice is going to be placed before us this morning.

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

But for us, it's not going to be a choice between two trails on a mountain.

It's going to be two voices.

Two voices that we can choose to listen to this morning.

And like me on that mountain, one of those voices will lead us back to where we ought to be and back to safety.

Well, the other arrow and the other voice will lead us further into the mountain, further into the darkness and further into being lost.

So here we are, 2 Timothy chapter 3, verses 16 to 17.

2 Timothy 3:16–17

The Apostle Paul writes this All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

So a hypothetical question for you.

If you were the enemy, this may seem strange, but if you were the enemy and you were tasked with trying to get humanity to turn from their relationship from God into the book of Genesis, what would be step one for you?

What would be like the first step in your plan?

What would you do to try and get them to turn from God?

Because in Genesis, God creates humanity, gives them the gift of life, and then he gives them one command, one rule, one thing not to do.

He says, Do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Because if they do, they'll die.

How would you try and get Adam and Eve to turn from that?

Because you would think that would be difficult, right?

I mean, they literally just heard God say that.

Well, let's see what the enemy does in Genesis 3.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?

Did you catch that there?

Did you see what step one of the devil's plan was?

The father of lies?

The murderer?

What is his game plan to try and get Adam and Eve to turn from God?

I think it's those first four words there.

What did God really say?

Did God really did God did God really say?

See, at this moment, the devil brings into the equation this question of, what is it God really said?

Will you really die if you eat from that tree?

Surely you won't die, right?

God's withholding something from you.

Did God really say?

Maybe we can eat from this tree.

See, I think today, thousands of years later, we still hear those four words in our lives.

Did God really say?

Did God really say that marriage is only between one man and one woman?

I mean, it's 2026.

We can't be excluding things.

Did God really say that's the only way for marriage?

Did God really say that he's the only way to salvation?

I mean, there's so many religions, there's so many people that are genuinely seeking eternal life.

Surely it's exclusive for us to say that Jesus is the only way.

Did God really say he's the only way?

Have you heard those four words echo in your life before?

Have you seen a loved one, someone you care about, plagued, deceived by those four words?

What did God really say?

I think a lot of us have.

I think a lot of us have seen the effects of listening to those four words.

Doubting God, doubting his goodness, doubting his love.

And it's led humanity further into that mountain, further into the darkness, further into spiritual lostness.

Here in 2 Timothy, the Apostle Paul is responding to those four words.

Here in 2 Timothy, the Apostle Paul is defending what God has said.

He says, all scripture is breathed out by God.

Paul is tearing down the enemy's attack against God's word.

Paul is defending what God has truly said.

That question of, did God really say?

the Apostle Paul is saying, yes, God really has said something.

God has made his word known.

He has breathed his word into the scriptures.

If you want to hear what God really said, you can open up your Bible and see for yourself the very words of God, the creator of heaven and earth, the one who gave us life has spoken.

He has breathed his word into the Bible.

You can hear what God really said in the scriptures.

But what does that actually mean when Paul says all scripture is breathed out by God?

You know, I think that's kind of a strange thing to say.

You know, I don't think we really hear that a whole lot anymore.

Like you're never off at a at a dinner party talking to a few people and saying, hey, have you guys heard that new album by Harry Stiles?

Man, I mean, just every single lyric he just breathed out into that song.

It was absolutely incredible.

I mean, we never hear that.

No one says it anymore.

Never hear that.

So what is Paul saying here?

You see, other translations like the NLT say all scripture is inspired by God.

So here, what we're dealing with is the doctrine of the inspiration of scripture.

And I was trying to think of the best way to explain this.

And if you've ever talked to me outside of church, you wouldn't be surprised that I was reminded of a movie.

And for me, the movie that I was reminded of is movie Whiplash.

And if you've never seen the movie Whiplash, uh tells this really cool story about this drummer, uh, this kid named Andrew Nayman.

He has this pursuit.

He wants to be the best drummer he can be, he wants to be a professional drummer, and for him, he's in this college and he's trying to do the best that he can.

And for me, prior to that, I never really listened to the drums a whole lot, wasn't really familiar with it.

But then after I saw the movie, I was just crazy about it.

I was listening to the whole album all the time.

I was crazy about the drums.

I was just absolutely amazed.

But there's a difference between the one playing the drums and the drums themselves.

You see, there's a musician and there's an instrument.

In that movie, Andrew Naaman was the musician, and he could have chosen any instrument he wanted, and he chose the drums.

So the inspiration of scripture is very similar.

For God is the musician.

God is the author of Scripture, and he could have chosen any instrument to communicate his word to us.

He could have had golden tablets drop down out of the sky.

He could have put his word in the clouds in the sky, but what he chose to use, the instrument he chose to use, was just humans.

People like you and me.

He breathed his word into them, and they wrote the very words of God in the scriptures.

And so that is what the inspiration of scripture is.

It is God's word to humanity that he breathed into the authors.

And so the Bible is the very word from God.

But as we see here in 2 Timothy, God has a purpose for this word.

He didn't just give us his word to just read it and just carry on with our lives.

He has a purpose.

He has a desire.

There's something he's trying to do with his word.

Let's continue.

All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

So I remember for me growing up, I accepted Christ at a very young age.

And, you know, I went to youth group growing up.

I went to church on Sunday mornings and prayed and did everything.

But for me, my faith was always a private faith.

It was something I held closely to my heart, but it was never something I made public, something that I told other people about.

And I just distinctly remember my three best friends growing up.

You know, we went to charter days together, we went to the Washington, D.C.

trip together, we played football together, we did everything together.

I knew them, we were close friends, and I knew, I knew that they weren't Christians.

I knew they didn't know Jesus.

And I never told them about him.

I never told them about my faith in Christ.

I never told them about the gospel.

You see, that was how I lived my life for the first 20 years of my life.

And I just distinctly remember my junior year of college.

I remember coming back that year and I was carrying all these trials that all just piled up at the same time in my life.

I just remember I went to my bookshelf and I picked up my little Zondervan backpack Bible that was like 15 years old, and I opened it up and I just started reading it.

Throughout that entire year, I started reading it, book after book in the Bible, just read it straight through.

No one forced me to do it, no one made me do it.

I just started reading.

It was over that year I saw the Lord change my heart.

He changed the direction of my life.

The boy that walked into college that junior year was not the same one that left at the end of the year.

Now I just remember there was this one verse in Philippians where Paul writes, For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Prior to that year, I never lived like that.

But God used his word to change my life, to change my heart.

So that now today, the greatest desire of my heart is to tell lost people about the gospel.

And providentially, over the next year, God opened three doors for me to go back to those three friends of mine and to tell them about Jesus.

God used his word and changed my life.

I can't take credit for it.

I can't stand before you today and say I did this or I did that.

I can only stand before you today and say that God did this.

God used his word to teach me, to reprove me, and to correct me for my own good and for his glory.

And so my question for you this morning is would you like to see that in your life?

Is there an area in your life that you see doesn't line up with how it ought to be?

Is there an area in your life that you know needs to be fixed?

Let me encourage you this morning, stop trying to self-will a better life, better behavior, better obedience, better following of Jesus.

Stop trying to do it yourself.

God has given you a divinely inspired word that has a purpose.

And that purpose is to lead you to be more and more like Christ.

As the Apostle Paul says, this word is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

God wants to shape and change your life, and he wants to do that through his word.

All scriptures breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training and righteousness.

See, at the same time, I think many of us in here may be quite intimidated by the Apostle Paul here.

I think many of us might hear his words and become filled with fear of what will this entail?

What will those words of teaching, reproof, and correction do in my life?

See, in that same movie Whiplash, that I mentioned before, throughout the whole movie, you see the relationship between Andrew Naaman, the drummer, and his band teacher Terence Fletcher.

Andrew Naaman wanted to be the best drummer he could be.

And yet Terence Fletcher decided the way to do that was to push him.

To push him harder and harder.

To the point where every little mistake, every little mishap, every little miscue that Andrew did, he would hurl these harsh and terrible words towards him.

He put this weight, this pressure, this burden on him.

And it led to this one scene where Andrew just struggling.

He's trying to play the right beat, he's trying to do it the right way, and he keeps messing it up, he keeps doing the same mistake over and over and over again.

And then this Terence Fletcher just can't take it anymore.

He just hurls this chair straight at his head, and just everyone in the room just feels the weight of what just happened to Andrew.

And the truth is, God's word can be used that way too.

Where it's all about our performance.

It's all about what we do.

Every little misstep, every little mess up, you just get a spiritual chair hurled at your head.

And you just receive this pressure, this weight.

Like it's all about how you perform in your spiritual life.

When Jesus walked here 2,000 years ago, there was one group of people he consistently had a problem with.

There was one group of people that he always had a word for.

And it was these people called the Pharisees, the spiritual teachers of the day.

And this is what Jesus had to say about them.

They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.

See, the Pharisees went out and they tied up these heavy spiritual burdens and placed them on people's shoulders, burdens that they knew they couldn't carry, burdens that they knew they couldn't handle on their own, and it left them stranded, feeling like they had this weight, this pressure on them, that spiritually they couldn't live the way that they ought to live.

It was all about their performance.

They just placed these rules and these restrictions and these burdens on people.

And maybe you're here this morning, and that sounds quite familiar to you.

Maybe for you you've had some kind of spiritual Pharisee place some kind of burden or weight or pressure on you, and it's left you feeling that way.

When you hear about those heavy burdens that are hard to wear, you feel like you have one on you this morning.

Maybe you just always feel like you're not doing enough.

You're not reading your Bible enough, you're not praying enough, you're not obeying enough, you're not loving God enough, you're not doing enough, you're not being enough.

See, Jesus had a special set of words to say to people who felt that way.

In Matthew 11, where Jesus says, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I, I will give you rest.

If you are here this morning and you have a burden on your shoulders that some Pharisee placed on you, Jesus has a word, an invitation for you.

He says, Come to me.

He says, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened.

Jesus knows you can't carry those burdens on your own.

Jesus saw it 2,000 years ago when the Pharisees were doing it, and he still sees it today, and he has an invitation of come to me.

Stop trying to carry those burdens on your own.

You are not strong enough.

There is a reason Jesus stepped down here, and it was to free us from those burdens.

He came so that we can bring those burdens somewhere here.

He wants us to bring them to the cross.

He wants us to bring those burdens to the cross so that he could take the full weight of those.

And then when we believe on him, he frees us from those burdens so we can follow him, listen to his word, and allow that word to shape us and to change us.

Come to me.

That's what Jesus says.

Come to me.

Say, yes, I will come to you, Jesus.

Because he wants you to.

And he will never place burdens you can't handle on your shoulders.

But I'd like us to come back to that verse we started with in verse 16, where Paul says, all scripture is breathed out by God.

I think the question that a lot of us are possibly asking here is, how do we know that's true?

How do we know that the Bible really is inspired by God?

How do we know that the Bible really is the Word of God?

Because we're not the only ones that claim this.

There are numerous other religions that claim they have the inspired word.

They claim that they have the very words of God Himself.

So how do we know that this is it?

How do we know that we actually have the true word of God?

See, there's something different about the Bible from any other text.

There's something different about the scriptures that no other acclaimed word of God has.

And that's that all of Scripture is pointing somewhere.

All of Scripture is pointing in a direction.

And it all starts in Genesis, where after Adam and Eve fell, a prediction is made.

That someone one day would come to slay the serpent, to slay the enemy.

But even after Adam and Eve, generations came and generations went, and that serpent slayer never came.

Then you come to Noah and the Ark.

And God instructs him to build.

This ark that will save them from the floods on the earth.

But that ark wasn't sufficient to save people from the eternal punishment of sin.

Humanity would need a greater ark, a spiritual ark that would save people from the floods of God's eternal punishment for sin.

But generations came and generations went and no ark came.

Then we come and we see Abraham up on a mountain, told to sacrifice his son, moments from sacrificing his son, and God stops him.

And in comes a lamb that he provides.

A ram for Abraham to sacrifice in place of his son.

See, on that mountain, that ram was sufficient for Abraham and Isaac.

But it wasn't sufficient for all of humanity's sins.

We would need a greater ram.

We would need the lamb, the perfect, spotless lamb of God, but generations came and generations went, and no lamb came.

Then you see Moses and the Israelites in the book of Numbers, and they're out in this wilderness, and they're being bit and killed by these serpents.

And God instructs Moses to lift up this bronze serpent, and anyone who would fix their eyes on that serpent would be saved and wouldn't die.

But that bronze serpent wasn't sufficient to save people from eternal death.

Something else would need to be lifted up.

Someone else would need to be lifted up so that all of humanity could look upon him and be saved from their sins.

But even after Moses, years went by.

And that person never came.

Then after all the events of the Old Testament, 400 years passed by.

Silence.

No scripture.

No more God-breathed text.

And it seems like maybe this wasn't God's word.

Maybe this scripture wasn't truly breathed out by God.

All those prophecies, all those things that it seemed to be pointing towards.

But then on an ordinary night, in a seemingly insignificant town called Bethlehem, a baby boy was born.

But this was no ordinary baby boy.

This boy was God in the flesh.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God.

Here he is.

In the flesh.

Jesus Christ was born.

In came the Son of God, the Messiah.

This was the one who came to slay the enemy.

This was the eternal ark that humanity needed.

This was the Lamb of God.

This is the one that would ultimately be lifted up on a cross so that whoever would look upon Jesus on the cross and believe would be saved, would be freed from the eternal punishment of their sins.

This is what all of Scripture testifies to.

This is what all of the Bible points towards.

The God-breathed text of Scripture is all pointing towards this Messiah, this Jesus church.

This is how we know that the Bible truly is the Word of God.

It's because of Jesus, the Messiah, the one who fulfilled all of the prophecies of Scripture.

He is the living, breathing Son of God, God in the flesh.

This is how we know Christianity is true.

This is how we know we are not like any other false religion.

This is how we know the Bible is the only word of God.

This is how we know the answer to the devil's question of did God really say?

We know that we could say, yes, God really has spoken.

And it's in the scriptures, the scriptures that are confirmed by Jesus Christ Himself, the Messiah, the Savior of the world, the one who came in the flesh as God, our Savior, our Lamb of God.

Church, this Bible is the word of God.

So as we close this morning, I'd like to invite the worship team up for one last song.

And before we close, I'd like to read the final verse that Paul writes to us this morning.

And this is what he writes.

After telling us everything about Scripture, he says this that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

You might be here this morning and you look inside that spiritual mirror and you just feel like you're not enough.

Feel like you don't have enough within you, you're not strong enough, wise enough, know enough, and you feel like God just can't use you for good and mighty things.

But the truth is, if you look through this entire scripture, this entire scripture that was breathed out by God, you would see character after character after character in the Bible.

Failed.

Every single one was not enough.

Abraham, how many times did he not trust God?

David, what does he did?

What is it that he did with Bathsheba?

Peter?

How many times did he deny Jesus?

Not once, not twice.

Three times.

Paul, how does Paul describe himself?

Wretched man that I am?

See, Jesus didn't come to use those who think that they're perfect and they have it all together, but he came to use those who know that they're not enough.

He came to use those who see their brokenness, see their insufficiencies, and need God to make them complete, and need God to equip them for every good work.

And so this morning, church, let me encourage you to lift your eyes up off of yourself and fix your eyes on Jesus, the incarnate word of God, the one who came to make you complete, and the one who came to equip you for every good work.

Would you pray with me?

Father in heaven, we come before you this morning and Lord, we thank you for your word.

Lord, we thank you for how your word points us somewhere and it points us back to you.

God, we confess and we admit that we're not enough on our own.

We fall short in so many ways.

But Lord, we thank you for sending your Son to come in, to die for us, to make us complete, and to equip us for all that you have for us.

So, Lord, this morning I pray that all of us here may fix our eyes on the cross and fix our eyes on Jesus and see the great love that you have for us.

Lord, we thank you.

Lord, we love you.

We pray this all in the name of Jesus.

Amen.