Summer 2025 | Thoroughly Equipped - 2 Timothy 3:16-17 | August 3

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2 Timothy chapter 3. You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

will be very difficult times for people will love only themselves and their money.

They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents and ungrateful.

They will consider nothing sacred.

They will be unloving and unforgiving.

They will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good.

They will betray their friends, be reckless and puffed up with pride and love

pleasure rather than God.

They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly.

Stay away from people like that.

But you, you must remain faithful to the things you have been taught.

You know they are true for you know you can trust those who taught you.

You have been taught the holy scriptures from childhood and they have given

you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus.

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true to make

us realize what is wrong in our lives.

It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.

God uses it to prepare and equip his people to every good work.

Let's pray. God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your spirit,

which empowers us to obey it.

We pray that you would work in our hearts to show us what you desire,

to show us your will, to show us what is good.

Help us to step out in faith, trusting and believing and knowing that you are faithful.

Even when we are faithful, faithless, you are faithful. Even when there is doubt

and the world disbelieves, Lord, you are faithful and you are there to supply

everything we need as we work out of your strength,

which empowers us to step into the godliness that you have designed for us.

So pray, Lord, that you would meet us here this morning, that you would speak

and that we would be found hearing,

that you would change us to desire more and more of your will,

more and more to be more and more like you, and that you would empower us through

your word and through your spirit to act in obedience and faith. Amen.

So who is your favorite superhero?

Seriously, think about it for a second. Maybe it's Spider-Man or Wonder Woman.

Maybe it's Black Panther or Captain America.

We probably all have one or at least had one growing up back in the day.

Who is your favorite superhero? Batman. Why?

Because he didn't have any special powers. He just had his technology, right?

Who else? Gambit. Yeah, I used to love Gambit as well. Gambit was one of the X-Men. He threw cards.

Mighty Mouse. Who's your favorite superhero?

I want to tell you about one that you probably might have heard of this morning.

A superhero named Booster Gold. He is in the DC comic world.

He's not exactly an icon.

His story goes that he was a failed football star who racked up a sizable gambling debt.

And so one day he had this beautiful idea.

He decided to break into a museum in the future. He's in the future.

Steal all this technology, all this stuff. He stole a time machine.

He stole a robot that would eventually become his sidekick.

So he stole all of these things, stole all of these things.

And his plan was that he was going to travel back into our time and become a

celebrity superhero, amassing fame and fortune for himself.

But the thing is, he didn't actually know how to use any of the equipment that he took with him.

He had all of this stuff, but he didn't know how to use it. He didn't know what it was for.

And so along the way, he experienced all of these failures and embarrassments.

And through a lot of humbling, he begins to learn how being a superhero,

being a hero at all, is not about what you can get out of it.

It's not about elevating yourself. It's about helping and serving others.

So eventually, Booster Gold becomes one of the most strategically important

heroes in the DC world, even though we've never heard of him.

He would save the timeline as it goes over and over again, even though he is

this lesser known character.

Here's the point. He was thoroughly equipped from the beginning.

He had all of the stuff that he needed.

He just didn't know how to use it and he didn't know what it was for.

It was only after he, through his failures and humblings, where his purpose

was reoriented, that his equipping actually made sense.

We just heard in 2 Timothy 3 that all scripture is inspired by God and is useful

to teach us what is true, to make us realize what is wrong in our lives.

It corrects us when we're wrong and it teaches us to do what is right.

God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.

Now, I know many of us growing up probably didn't memorize that version of it.

We probably memorized the NIV or something like that.

The other versions say it this way. They say, all scripture is God-breathed

and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness,

so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

And what I want you to know this morning is that you might be more equipped

than you realize. In fact, you probably are.

You have the word of God. You have the scriptures, the Bible.

You know the truth. We have each other. We can gather together and sing and

hear these words of God together, these teachings.

Perhaps we've even felt the call of God on our lives for something bigger,

something greater, these good works.

What you need to know today is that you have all that you need.

I just want to say that you have all that you need.

God has thoroughly equipped you. That's what the word of God is for.

It's not to sit on a shelf and collect dust.

Equally so, and perhaps even more importantly, it's not to puff us up with knowledge.

The Bible has a lot to say about amassing knowledge and so heaping on destruction on our heads.

We are accountable to the knowledge that we have.

But scripture is not for that. It is to move us, to change us,

to equip us to do good in Jesus' name.

God's word thoroughly equips us for every good work. It equips us for action.

Last week, we talked about from James chapter 1, how we are to be doers of the

James 1 · chapter mention

word and not hearers only.

That we are to act out of faithfulness and obedience and let the word of God

work in our hearts in such a way that it is demonstrated in our actions.

We are to be doers of the word. And here's the progression we talked about.

How we read the word.

We hear God speak through it.

And we are astonished by what we find there.

We are amazed and in awe and wonder of the beauty and truth of who God is.

And then from that place, we act in obedience.

Another place where it says something similar as in Colossians chapter one,

verses nine to 10. It says, so we have not stopped praying for you since we heard about you.

We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will, to give you spiritual

wisdom and understanding.

Then the way you will live will always honor and please the Lord,

and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit.

All the while you will grow as you learn to know God better and better.

There it is again, and this is the progression we just talked about,

and we saw this progression as well in the book of Joshua, how we meditate on

the word of God, we internalize it, we live from it, we let it shape our hearts,

we are amazed by God, and we move in obedience, and the result is the blessing,

the fruit of the spirit that God pours into our lives,

all as we seek him, as we become doers of the word, that the word of God moves us toward action.

And it moves us towards the desire to act faithfully more and more.

One reason as we move into this that I think about why don't we desire to actually do it?

How do we desire? What do we need to take that leap?

Why don't we act on it more often? And as anticlimactic and obvious as an answer

is, it's something that we need to be reminded of and that you have everything you need.

You already have it all. We just need to remember that.

Because we think sometimes, right? We think that we need something more,

that we are still missing something, that we need the right strategy.

I'm someone who always comes up in my head with a plan for how things are gonna

look and God always shuts it down because he wants to humble me more than he

wants to give me success in my strategy.

But we think, oh, if I have the right strategy, if I have better training,

and training is important, and training will prepare you for tomorrow's good work.

Or if I had a theology degree, and seminary and theology degrees are good,

and they can help you and prepare you.

Or if I had a well-memorized script for evangelism, maybe then I'll be ready.

If I had all the answers to all the questions memorized.

But Paul tells us something different. He tells us that you already have all

that you need. We are thoroughly equipped for every, and I repeat, every good work.

So maybe the leap forward for us is just simple obedience, as anticlimactic as it is.

God has already breathed out His Word. You have access to it.

You are being shaped by it. You are ready for action.

You don't need to have it all together. You just need to be willing.

Because every time you obey, no matter how small, it grows you.

It changes you. It makes you more like Him, more courageous, more fruitful.

You already have all that you need to step out in obedience.

The word that Paul uses here is exartizo or exartipinas, which means,

it's just the Greek word that means to be completely outfitted.

You can picture it as a ship that's getting ready for a long journey.

It's not halfway built. It's not missing any parts. It has a full crew.

It's fully stocked with food and provisions.

It's not still waiting for some crucial piece before it sets sail, it's ready.

And this is the word, this is what the word of God does for us.

It thoroughly equips us, fully supplied, nothing lacking, ready for whatever comes our way.

Let me give you this picture. You remember the Titanic, right?

Some of you were probably there. No, I'm just kidding.

Most of the time, what we're presented with this story is that it sunk because

it hit an iceberg, that that is the critical feature.

And sure, that is certainly part of the case, but as some of us maybe have heard,

and maybe even done some research on or something for school back in the day,

it's not the whole story.

It was not a very well-built ship,

the compartments that were struck below deck, they were watertight horizontally.

And so as the people exited the damaged compartments, they sealed them off behind

them, but the walls weren't finished all the way up.

And so the water filled the watertight compartment until it got to the top,

and then it just simply poured over into the next compartment,

flooding the whole ship and sinking it ultimately.

The ship was not properly built for the journey. A ship that was properly built

could have probably lost a few compartments.

It probably could have hit the iceberg and still made it back safely.

It would have been bad, but it wouldn't have been nearly the tragedy,

the catastrophe that it was.

Now let's think about that. When Paul says that we are thoroughly equipped, completely.

We need to embrace this reality that we are built to survive.

We are built and prepared for everything the journey has before us.

Not because of our own strength, but in Christ we are lacking nothing we truly

need for the journey ahead.

How often do we think we're still missing something?

To keep this water theme going, some years ago before kids we went tubing with

some friends in South Carolina.

And if you've ever floated in the river here in Boone or perhaps on a lazy river

or something like that, you know what that's like.

We heard that it was fun to tie the tubes together so that as you drifted,

you could relax and you could talk. It sounded pretty fun.

So we thought we'd give it a try and we did that. And as soon as we put in,

one of our friends flipped over and lost her sunglasses.

And within the first five minutes, we lost two pairs of sunglasses.

People were falling out left and right. Nobody was relaxing. It was chaos.

But imagine, imagine showing up to float the river without a tube,

just you fully clothed, stepping into the water and saying, let's do this.

How far are you going to get?

And this is what it's like when we try to live out the Christian life without the word of God,

when we struggle to fit God's word into our packed schedules,

to give it true attention and true room to properly hear God's words for us,

we're essentially walking out into the river of whatever life is going through at us,

going to throw at us at that moment,

without a tube sitting down in our jeans and just saying, God,

I'm ready. Take me down river.

And we get frustrated, say, come on, God, why are you not moving me?

Why am I not going anywhere? Why is my life still the same?

Why we feel stuck? Why life still feels the same?

Because we've left the equipment, the thing that we need so desperately behind.

And so we're unprepared, but the word of God doesn't leave us unprepared.

If you are daily drinking from that well of living water, if you're making space

for Scripture to soak into you, then you already have what you need.

You have all that you need. The idea here is fully supplied,

nothing lacking, ready to go.

You don't need to be more talented. You don't need a degree.

You don't need to memorize a script or master every answer.

Paul says that the Word equips you for every good work, every good conversation,

every hard obedience, every act of faith, every moment of compassion,

courage, endurance, or sacrifice, you have what you need.

And so instead of asking, what am I still missing?

Maybe we should be responding and asking, what is he inviting me to trust him in?

What has God already placed in my hands?

Can I trust that his word is enough?

Because the point is not to sit on the shore and wait for more,

but the point is to receive, respond, and to get moving.

Are you willing to trust him enough to move forward?

And now that we've seen that we are thoroughly equipped, perhaps the next question

that naturally comes is, equipped for what?

What are we equipped for?

Like our friend Booster Gold, it's not for selfish motives.

He thought his equipping was for his celebrity and for his fame and his fortune.

It was about serving and protecting others, doing good work.

And maybe that's where we start, what we're not equipped for.

That's where we started, after all, in the book of 2 Timothy 3,

or the chapter of chapter 3.

It paints us this grim picture. It says, you should know this,

Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times,

for people will love only themselves and their money.

They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents,

and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred.

They will be unloving and unforgiving. They will slander others and have no self-control.

They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends,

be reckless, be puffed up with pride and love pleasure rather than God.

They will act religious, but they will reject the power that can make them godly.

Stay away from such people.

Paul is writing to Timothy about the church. These are people in the church. This is us.

We will become puffed up. We will pursue pleasure rather than God. We will be unloving.

Unfortunately, this is a reality in our own lives and a reality all around us.

People will love only themselves and their money. They will love pleasure rather than God.

They will have a form of godliness, but deny its power.

And this is what happens when we pursue autonomy, self-glory,

self-sufficiency, but we're not equipped for that.

God is not giving you strength to chase your ego.

He's not giving you the scripture to win arguments, to prove your point and

to solidify your preferences.

You're not equipped for evil. You're not equipped for sin. And you're not equipped

for a life that rejects the power of God. And you're not equipped for that.

God's word equips us for good work. Here's where it gets messy, right?

Because it's often very difficult to separate what we want, even the good of

what we want, from the good that God is leading us to.

The line between what we want and what God wants can get blurry.

God's word equips us for good work, for godly work, and not for other kinds

of work, and especially not for evil work that follows in the desires of our flesh.

Romans 8 says it this way. He says, So then, brothers, Paul writes,

So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh,

to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.

But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,

you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God, are sons of God.

God uses His Word to teach us what fits as His good work, shows us what pleases

Him, what benefits others, what lines up with the Spirit's leading.

And don't expect God to provide wisdom or strength for that which does not align with Him.

Scripture equips us for good work, for every good conversation,

every hard step of obedience, every act of faith,

all courage and sacrifice, every good that God expects us to do,

the scripture equips us to do.

So am I pursuing what God calls good or am I chasing after my own definition

of what good? What good seems good to my eyes.

And every good that God expects us to do, his word equips us to do.

I want to be honest with you because sometimes the hardest part isn't figuring

out what good we're supposed to do or whether we're equipped for it.

If you're anything like me, the difficult thing isn't always discerning the

good from the selfish, although that can easily be something we deceive ourselves in.

For me, it goes back to that beginning.

Feeling like that we're not, feeling like we're not enough. Maybe you know what

I mean, that nagging voice inside that says, who am I to do this?

I'm not ready. I'm not smart enough. I'm not strong enough. I'm not faithful enough.

That feeling of imposter syndrome, the persistent self-doubt,

even in the face of evidence of what the truth is, that you are thoroughly equipped,

that God has already equipped you.

And the surprising part for me that I hadn't fully grasped and perhaps even

haven't fully grasped, but have started to understand more and more over the past weeks.

Because sometimes we read about these characters in the Bible and we can't imagine

the reality and the truth of it.

And so we think that we can't be like them, that they're better than us,

that they didn't struggle with the same things that we struggle with.

So we read in James how Elijah was just a man like us. And we think, no, that's not right.

When we read Paul and we think of him as this bold, imposing character who spread

the gospel to the ends of the earth in boldness and power,

we forget that Paul also fell into this despair over his own inadequacies, over his own weakness.

Paul struggled with this too.

I was reading in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul talks about the thorn in his flesh.

2 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

He says, even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God.

So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh,

a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.

Three times I begged the Lord to take it away. And each time he said,

my grace is all that you need.

My power works best in weakness. So now I am glad to boast about my weakness

so that the power of Christ can work through me.

That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses and in the insults,

hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

We can feel like we are inadequate for what God wants us to do.

Paul didn't feel fully adequate all the time.

And yet God's grace made him strong in the very places where he felt weak.

These feelings of inadequacy, they can be a real hindrance that hold us back,

or they can become something that causes us to come before God to the Lord and

rely more and more on Him.

In fact, this is how Paul begins that letter to Corinthians.

In chapter 1, 2 Corinthians chapter 1, he says, We think you ought to know,

2 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble that we went through in the province of Asia.

We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure,

and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die.

But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely on God who raises the dead.

That Paul had a tendency to rely on his own strength, his own knowledge,

his own experience, his own expertise, just like we do.

That Paul had a tendency towards anxiety and frustration and despair and feelings

of inadequacy, just like we do.

Sometimes knowing the good that we ought to do doesn't necessarily make it obvious.

And also sometimes knowing that we are equipped for it doesn't make it easy.

God equipped Moses. God equipped Moses to lead the Israelites,

even though Moses was not very enthusiastic about that call,

right? He doubted his own ability.

He doubted his ability to speak, his ability to perform, his ability to stand before Pharaoh.

Moses did not want to do it.

God equipped him. God gave Joshua a victory over the Canaanites,

though he despaired over his competency to follow in the footsteps of his mentor.

God gave Esther the courage to walk before a king even though she was afraid.

God did great and mighty things in and through Paul as the gospel spread across

the world even though he felt weak and undeserving.

And the point is that we don't need to wait until we feel fully equipped to

embrace the reality that God has already equipped us and he meets us in our weakness.

If we wait until we feel equipped, we may go nowhere.

But we can still feel unequipped and still move out of the reality that God

has given us everything that we need.

By grace, God enables us to cast off fear as we trust in him.

And this might sound strange, but sometimes these feelings of inadequacy,

and this might sound like a contradiction, but these feelings of inadequacy actually are symptoms.

They come out of a heart that depends on its own goodness.

Depending on your own goodness shows up usually in two ways.

It shows up in the obvious way, the prideful way that distracts you by how much

better you believe that you are than everyone else.

And the other way that it shows up is that it paralyzes you by your own not enoughness.

Both come from the same root problem, thinking that you have earned your own goodness.

When you believe that you're standing before God, depends on how good you are

and how much you've done.

Scripture can do two things. It becomes a weapon that you might use to beat

yourself up with, or it becomes a weapon which you condemn others as you are puffed up in pride.

And the longer you walk this Christian life, the longer you are a Christian,

the easier it is to fall into these traps, into this trap of depending on your own goodness.

Jesus talks about this in Luke chapter 7. He's eating dinner in the home of

Luke 7 · chapter mention

Simon the Pharisee and a woman of ill repute comes in.

A woman whose past is sorted, whose present is sorted, comes in and she washes his feet.

And Simon thinks to himself how if Jesus was really a prophet,

he would know what kind of woman this was and he would rebuke her.

Of course, Jesus knowing his thoughts. He tells a parable about two people who

owe debts, one a large debt and the other small debt.

And he asks, and both are forgiven these debts.

And Jesus asks Simon, as a result, who would love more, the one who was forgiven

much or the one who was forgiven little?

And he makes this declarative statement that he who has been forgiven much loves much more.

Those who understand truly the vastness of God's forgiveness develop a greater

capacity for love, to love God and to love others.

We are not always aware of our own need for God.

We are not always aware of our own need for his forgiveness.

We're not always, we so easily forget how deeply we need a savior.

We live our lives as if we are good enough on our own.

Even if we don't say it out loud, even if we don't intellectually acknowledge

that that's what's going on, we live our lives in our own goodness.

And this blinds us. It blinds us to the brokenness of the world around us.

It blinds us to the hurting of our friends and our co-workers who don't know Jesus.

It blinds us to the sins of the world.

And it makes us indifferent. It makes us judgmental.

We begin standing on the mound of our own so-called goodness and looking down on others.

We judge quickly.

We condemn quickly.

We latch on to our own preferences.

I didn't like this song today. I didn't like this or that.

I don't like that Zach was singing again. He doesn't have a good singing voice.

We complain and we judge and we condemn because we are standing on our own goodness.

But here's the truth. We cannot come to God with our own goodness because we have none.

Isaiah 64.6 says that all of us have become like one who is unclean and all

of our righteous acts are like filthy rags.

God isn't impressed with our performance. In fact, all of the prophets continually

resound how God does not desire their sacrifices.

Speaks to his people, do I want your sacrifice? No, I want your heart. I want your obedience.

All of our best efforts at holiness are filthy compared to God's perfect standard.

We don't come to God with our own goodness, our own attempts at holiness are filthy.

The only thing we can do is come to God with our great need.

It is faith that pleases Him.

Our good works do not prove that we are deserving in the Spirit of God.

Rather, they flow out of a heart that is already filled by the Spirit of God.

Our good works don't earn us anything. They are the result of God's love and

grace and the Spirit which He gives us because He delights in us.

In Galatians chapter four. I was reading it this past week.

And Paul writes, and because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son

into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

Don't miss this, that God gives us his spirit, not because we earned it,

but because he already counts us as his children, that God gives us his spirit

because he reckons us as his children and not because we have proven ourselves worthy enough.

We are all turtles on a fence post.

And what do you need? Nobody know about a turtle on a fence post?

He didn't get there by accident. He didn't get there on his own.

Someone placed him there. It didn't climb there by itself.

It was lifted. It was carried. It was set where it could never get on its own. And that's us.

We are not self-made. We didn't equip ourselves. We didn't save ourselves.

We were rescued. We were raised.

We have been thoroughly equipped, not by our own ability.

Something you are going through right now, this week, today,

maybe even this morning, is equipping you for the good work God has for you tomorrow.

Last week, we read this chapter of James, James chapter 1, but we didn't really

James 1 · chapter mention

talk about these verses very much.

But it says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various

kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

And that steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

And that phrase, lacking in nothing, that's another way of saying fully, thoroughly equipped.

That God isn't wasting your today, even if it feels like he is to you.

Even if all you see is stress or conflict or discouragement,

God's not wasting your day.

He's working through it to strengthen your faith, to deepen your love and to refine your hope.

He is equipping you through it.

Says in chapter 5, that we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering

produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our

hearts through the Holy Spirit.

You have been thoroughly equipped for every good work, every act of faith,

every step of obedience, every moment of love.

He equips us to walk in the Spirit, to love sacrificially, to obey when it's

hard, to forgive when it costs you, to trust when you can't see the ending.

His Word forms you, His Spirit shapes you.

Day after day, God reveals to us through His Word the greatness and the beauty

and the power and the wisdom and the mercy of all the good that we are to do in Christ.

So by the power of the Spirit, we find our joy in Him and the ways of sin,

the ways of disobedience, become distasteful.

All of our good works, all of our righteousness become distasteful and pale

in comparison to the good that God has prepared for us.

That's the work of being thoroughly equipped, that you have been thoroughly

equipped for every good and this is the truth that we must walk in,

regardless of whether we feel it,

shunning our own goodness, and walking in weakness and in truth into the good

work that God has prepared for us.

Music.