Doctrine Comes from God - Myles Holmes | January 18, 2026

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open them with me to 2 Timothy chapter 3, verses 14 to 17.

2 Timothy 3:14–17

You're going to want a copy in front of you this morning, so if you don't have one, our ushers are coming to the front and they're making their way to the back.

You can flag one of them down.

They'd love to put a Bible into your hands, which you can keep as our gift to you.

We are in 2 Timothy this morning, which in those Bibles is page 1099.

We're in a series this morning called Doctrine Matters.

And this morning we find ourselves asking an important but simple question, and that is where does doctrine even come from?

The answer to that question changes everything.

And on the Christian landscape, especially over this past century, there has been this experimentation with this idea that doctrine can come from us, that the way that we interpret scripture is experientially according to our preference, and especially according to the cultural preferences of that time, so that whenever God's word confronts us in a way that is inconvenient, well, doctrine comes from us ultimately, and so the decision is ours.

That's an experiment that has been running itself for almost a century in the church, and the consequences have been devastating.

And what we find when we open up God's word is that the claim it makes for itself is very different.

That doctrine doesn't begin with us, that doctrine comes from God.

That it comes from God specifically through the pages of Scripture.

And I want you to understand that this morning, that truth is life-changing.

If doctrine comes to us from God, if this book is the place that God, the creator of this world, speaks to us, then the way that we treat it on a day-to-day basis, and especially as we gather before it as a church, cannot be casual.

If this truly is a book that God wrote, and if God is the author of this book, then it must come to us with a certain kind of weight.

It must be received by us with a certain type of authority.

We must sit before it humbly, allowing the words in these pages to shape us.

It changes our posture.

Isn't that true?

You know, when you're reading a book about an author that you know, that you've come to know, whose voice you've come to trust, it kind of changes your posture before that book, doesn't it?

And give you an example of how this works, and I don't want to stir up any sort of controversy this morning, but we're gonna begin by talking about Harry Potter.

Okay, and we'll begin there, and then all the controversy will be dealt with, but we'll move on.

Well, you probably know that when J.K.

Rowling first released Harry Potter, it was rejected by twelve publishers.

One of the phenomenons of recent literature is that this book was rejected.

Well, well, nobody knew her.

She wasn't a well-known name, and her words, even with these publishers, obviously carried little weight.

Now, flash forward to the release of the last Harry Potter book, and everything had changed.

It was one of the fastest-selling books in the history of literature.

People were lining up, you'll you'll find this hard to believe, at midnight to get their hands on the copy as soon as they could.

Well, what changed between trying to get the first book published and the mania of what happened when the last book was published?

Well, what changed was people came to know the author.

They came to trust the voice that was behind the book.

Now, that illustration doesn't prove anything to us about scripture, but it does reveal something about us.

That our relationship with God's word ultimately reveals what we believe about the God from whom doctrine comes.

Can I say that again?

Do you agree with me here that our relationship with God's word ultimately is not about habits, ultimately, it's not about whatever else it could be.

Our relationship with God's word ultimately reveals what we believe about the author behind it.

And the question that we ask ourselves this morning is this if doctrine really comes from God, if that is the belief of a biblical worldview, well, do you trust the voice behind the scriptures?

When you open this book, do you recognize it as the God whose word was so powerful that he could create the world simply by his voice bringing something out of nothing?

When you open up this book and you read it, even right now, as so many of you I see, have God's word open, are you sitting with expectation that the author of this book is the one who sent his son to die for a rebellious and sinful people?

You sit with the expectation that we are before the same God who Isaiah saw and he fell flat on his face, who we're told in Revelation angels are constantly worshiping the holiness of this God.

Do you open this book with that same expectation?

Doctrine comes from God.

Many of us have tried to read the Bible simply because we know it's a good thing to do.

And I want you to know that on its own, that will rarely change you.

But when you approach this book, recognizing that doctrine comes from God through the pages of Scripture.

When you begin with a right view of God, something deeper begins to shift in you.

That means that what we're doing this morning as we open up God's word and what we do on a regular basis in our own personal spiritual disciplines and what we do with the church when we gather together and get into God's word, it can never just be another spiritual exercise.

It is always an encounter with the living God.

And so can we just hit the pause button on the sermon right now and say this?

Where are you at right now?

Are you ready to meet with a living God?

I mean, so often we just get stuck in the routine, right?

Well, I gotta get to church, and oh, it snowed, I gotta brush off the car, and here I am, and now I'm here, and what's gonna happen?

Loved one, loved one, loved one.

If what we believe about God's word is true, if doctrine comes from God, are you ready to meet with the living God?

As Timothy pastored the church, the essential thing that Paul needed him to understand, and what we what is the last letter that Paul would ever write was where doctrine comes from and why scripture matters.

Timothy needed to understand that.

You and I need to understand that too.

Let's read what Paul has to say.

Would you stand with me as we read?

2 Timothy chapter 3, verses 14 to 17.

2 Timothy 3:14–17

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it.

And how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

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.

This is the word of the Lord.

You can grab your seat.

Now I want you to understand that everything Paul says here stands on one claim, and that is that scripture comes from God Himself.

This means that the first thing we need to see this morning is this: that God is near.

He speaks through his word.

God is near, he speaks through his word.

Paul is making an astonishing claim about the scriptures.

Not that the scriptures are just about God, but that they come from God.

That this book, Paul says, it carries God's breath, therefore it is his voice, and it comes with his authority.

Now, Christians all throughout the ages have believed this, and it has been called the doctrine of inspiration, that scripture is breathed out by God, divinely inspired by God.

Paul here uses a word that is both vivid for us and intentional.

You read it here in verse 16.

All scripture, he says, is breathed out by God.

You understand the image.

That in order to speak, we need breath.

That to lose your breath, you know, you run on the treadmill, you get your heart right to zone five.

You cannot speak.

You've lost your breath.

And here Paul is saying this: when you open up the pages of scripture, God is speaking through it, that scripture it carries God's breath, it carries God's voice.

When he breathes out, words come out that this book has divine meaning in it because it has divine words in it, therefore, it has divine authority for us, for the church, for the Christian.

Scripture, therefore, doesn't merely contain God's word, it is God's word.

It is spoken through human authors, it is preserved for us by God's Spirit through the ages, so that this text comes with an authority.

Simply put, we can say this: that to hold this book in our hands is to hold the very word of God.

Now that doesn't mean that God wrote the book and sort of used human authors as robots in order to do it.

What we find as we read through the book is that God speaks through real people.

He uses their personality, he uses their vocabulary, he uses the literary writing styles of the day.

So that what we read in this book is exactly what God intended to say.

Peter says it like this in 2 Peter chapter 2, verse 21.

2 Peter 2:21

He says that men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Spirit, which means this loved one.

That whenever you find yourself in front of the Word of God, whether it is being exposited through preaching, whether it is in your own personal Bible reading, whether it is as a brother or a sister in Christ, encourages you through the scripture that God is not distant, that he is near and speaking through his word.

Now I want you to understand that this wasn't just Paul's view, this wasn't just Peter's view, this was the view of Jesus Christ himself.

The most powerful argument for the inspiration of Scripture is the fact that when Jesus looks at the Old Testament and quotes the Old Testament, even though it's written by human authors, he's comfortable to say, God said.

And on Jesus, on the night before Jesus was crucified, he told his disciples that the Holy Spirit would guide them into truth and remind them of all he taught.

And in that moment, he was preparing them to not only teach with his authority, but to write with his authority.

Practically, the application is so practical for us.

When we pick up this book, we can trust it because this is the book that Jesus trusted.

Jesus trusted that the scriptures were the divine communication of his father.

Now, there are many historical and human proofs that we can turn to to talk about the doctrine of inspiration.

We can go to all the manuscripts, we can go to all the archaeology, all the things that have proven the reliability of the scriptures, but I cannot help but to believe that the greatest argument is that Jesus Christ himself treated this book as though it was God's voice.

This is why you'll notice that one of the distinctives of our church is the bold preaching of God's word.

And maybe you're new here and you're noticing this, that there isn't much we do that doesn't have to do with God's word.

That we start our time together by singing God's word.

And then someone comes up and we pray God's word, and then we continue to sing God's word, and then we open up God's word and we exposit God's word and we end our time in God's word, then we go up to the lobby and people minister to each other, speaking the truth of God's word and love to each other.

And hopefully you walk out with this kind of idea of, like, man, they're really obsessed with that ancient book, and it is because we are.

We just believe that we are wasting your time if this morning is like, hey, here's a TED talk from Pastor Miles, here's what Pastor Miles thinks is really cool to talk about.

Because why, loved one, the voice of God is spoken.

Some of you guys are way too happy about the fact that it's not a TED talk every Sunday morning.

I got some interesting things to say, but we are wasting our time if we are not in God's word.

And yet, as you drove here this morning, you likely passed many churches where their confidence in the scriptures have eroded.

And because they have closed the book, they have turned off the spiritual oxygen tank, the only place that the church can find life.

Over time they've slowly suffocated themselves to death.

God's word is no longer allowed to shape, no longer clearly heard.

Their spiritual life has grown thin.

God's not stopped speaking.

God speaks through his word.

What has happened is his people have stopped listening.

And when God's word is ignored, when his voice is shut out, the only thing that can follow is spiritual death.

That's when the sense of awe before the majesty and wonder and holiness of God fades.

And that's when worship sort of grows hollow.

Now it's easy for us to talk about that out there, right?

It's easiest for us to point the finger at other churches and say, well, you know, because they've closed the book, they've lost all spiritual life.

Beloved one, what what happens when you look inside?

What happens when you draw out this principle personally?

Paul presses this question closer to home when you open this book.

Do you come expecting to hear the voice of God?

Or is the testimony of your life that you have just slowly over time closed the book?

And I'm reminded as as I have walked alongside so many people and seen this in my own life, that the reason why we shut out God's voice is rarely because we're like outrightly resistant to it.

It's not because we don't want to hear from God so often, isn't it?

Just because we just feel like we're too busy.

So that the voice of God is not resisted in our hearts, but it certainly is neglected in our hearts.

So that the voice of God is slowly crowded out of our lives.

And the consequences is that our spiritual life slowly erodes.

Love one, God is still here.

God is still speaking.

The question is, are you listening?

Now, one of the important realities about the nature of God's word is that not only is it God breathed, the sense that we get in the text here is that it is God breathing.

Not only was it God breathed at the time it was written, God's word is alive.

I love how one theologian puts it.

He says, it was not only God breathed at the time it is it was written, it is God breathing.

It was divinely inspired, not merely while it was written, God breathing through the writers, but also whilst it is being read.

God breathing through the scriptures.

That is why the author of Hebrews says this in Hebrews 4.

He says, 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.

And then notice how the author of Hebrews immediately shifts.

He says, And no creature is hidden from his sight.

No creature is hidden from his sight.

When the word of God is opened, it is living and active, so that to read it is to be in front of the face of God, so that no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

Do you see what he's saying?

When you open this book, God is addressing you.

It is why the practical experience of so many people Sunday after Sunday is to ask me, like, hey, listen, were you reading my mail?

Because the Holy Spirit is like, man, man, that was a sermon for me at this specific time.

Did you know about all the things that I was reading about this week that like made it so that this sermon was extra convicting?

How could you do this to me, Pastor Miles?

I take the blame completely off myself.

It is the Holy Spirit.

It is the work that he does.

His word is living and active, so that when you pick up and read God's word, it is not just you reading it when it's rightly understood, when it is rightly applied, the word of God reads you.

So then let me ask you again.

When you open this book, do you sense with eager expectation the God who is ready to speak to you through it?

You know, last year I had the privilege of going to see Jerry Seinfeld in an arena.

There's thousands of people.

And he came out earlier than you expect.

You know, you'd expect he's kind of like this big comedian, this big show, that he'd come out at the end.

He came out right at the beginning.

And as soon as he came out, I was I was just shocked that thousands of people just immediately gave all their attention to him.

It was like you could hear a pin drop in that place.

And it's because there was all this anticipation and an expectation in that room.

These people were there for him.

They had, you know, they had laughed so many times with him on the screen.

And it's kind of the surreal experience I'm sure you've had before, where it's like, oh, this person's, he's actually a real person.

He's actually standing right there.

And immediately, thousands of people, their attention was completely on him.

And I remember thinking, it is crazy what I mean, this is just a man at the end of the day, but it is crazy what a celebrity presence can do to an arena full of people.

Now, now, loved one, what kind of attention does God have from you when you open up his word?

The living God is present.

He is near.

He speaks through his word.

Now, if that is true, then what Paul says next is even encouraging because he tells us that the words of God are profitable.

Look down at your Bible with me and notice in verse 16, Paul tells us all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable.

I want you to notice, secondly, that God is good.

He shapes us through his word.

He is Good.

He shapes us through his word.

So that scripture is not only true, it is profitable.

That word there is important.

It's telling us that God's word is useful, that it is beneficial, that is given for our good, that it always accomplishes something in us, that it never speaks without purpose.

In other words, whenever God's word is opened up, the prophet Isaiah says it like this it goes out and it never returns void.

Never.

You and I can't say that, right?

I mean, we've we've had some days where just like we accomplished nothing, right?

You with me?

Or is that just because I'm, I don't know, a pastor?

I'm not sure.

We've had days where we've accomplished nothing, right?

God's word always accomplishes something.

It is living, it is active, and loved one, it is always for your good.

It is always for your flourishing.

Fascinating then that a Christian's posture towards God is rarely one of open defiance.

It is often one of neglect.

We just neglect God's word.

I mean, I trust that even as I say this, that in the room there are so many who are filled with faith who say, Yes, yes, amen.

Of course, God's word is good.

We love the word.

But then practically you look at your week, and it's and the word has been neglected.

And what we say with our mouths, talk is cheap because our actions preach something else entirely different.

It's a principle of life that we will always neglect what we do not believe will truly profit us.

On the contrary, we will naturally make room for whatever we believe will profit us.

This is how all of us live.

If we believe something will help us, if it's profitable to us, we will adjust our schedules, we will reorder our lives, we will give it time and attention and our energy.

I can illustrate this in my own life.

As you come to know me more personally, you will know that I love going to bed early.

I love when there's a party and it ends at like 8 p.m.

Is anyone with me there?

I mean, that that just makes sense to me.

Why don't we just start it earlier and then end it earlier?

And yet, every Tuesday night, I play on a hockey team, and sometimes these hockey games are, they start, they don't end, they start at 11 p.m.

And I go to those hockey games.

I mean, it shocks everyone who really knows me.

I mean, at 9 p.m., I'm asleep, falling asleep on the couch, trying to convince myself this is not a good idea.

And yet I still go.

I'm willing to sacrifice the sleep.

I'm willing to move around my schedule because I love hockey.

I want to step out on the ice.

I mean, I'm sure there's soccer games at 11 p.m.

I don't, I really don't care about them.

I want to play a good sport, you know, not whatever.

Well, what's the principle?

We arrange our lives around what we believe will profit us.

And maybe right now, you know, the Holy Spirit, you know where this is going.

And the Holy Spirit brings conviction about the ways that we have treated the word of God.

And I am not interested in conviction that is without grace, but it is good for us to see where our hearts are, because that's where the mercy of God meets us.

So that it is important to say that a lack of interest in the word of God is never just a habit issue, it is a heart issue.

It is never just a circumstantial issue, it is always an issue of the heart.

You know, it's life-changing for my wife and I.

She once sat in a discipleship group led by a seasoned and godly woman who was walking with a group of young moms, discipling them, pouring into them, reading God's word with them.

One of the times that these women met together, one of them in particular was looking for sympathy, and she shared how busy life had been with the kids and running here and running there, that she just couldn't get into God's word anymore.

She had young kids, she was exhausted, she was overwhelmed.

Now, many in the group responded the way that you and I would.

They reassured her, they kind of normalized her experience.

Hey, listen, you know, you have young kids.

It is hard to get into God's word.

And they were sympathizing with her and giving her comfort.

Now, this woman who was leading the group gently and then firmly just stopped them and said this, no, this is not okay.

Now, this woman, she didn't lack compassion.

She cared too much to let neglect masquerade as faithfulness.

That's what love does.

Love speaks the truth.

And speaking the truth into this woman's life required that she refused to call something harmless that was slowly starving her soul.

So that she had to expose to this woman, no, no, no, you actually need God's word.

Later, as Amber and I have reflected on that moment, the connection became clear.

We understand this physically.

We would never say it's okay to stop eating just because life is busy.

I haven't eaten for six days.

I mean, I'm just so busy at work.

I mean, it never happens.

Why?

Because we know that food nourishes our physical life.

And the same is true spiritually.

And God has used that moment to make something crystal clear for Amber and I that the issue is never circumstance.

The issue is always appetite.

And the question is always, do you have an appetite to hear God's word?

Do you believe that it is necessary?

You know, Jesus, when he's tempted in the wilderness, he says something similar.

Having fasted for 40 days, he says, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

And Jesus is saying to you and I this morning, just as necessary as food is to physical life, so essential is God's word to our soul.

That scripture is it is not an accessory to the spiritual life.

Scripture is the oxygen tank.

It is how God sustains spiritual life, so that God has given his word to profit us, to bring, to inject life into us.

How do we respond to this then?

Love one, can I just pass through you that the first response is repentance?

The first response is to look at the way that we have treated the book that God has written, knowing that doctrine has come from God, we have neglected it.

So that the first step that's required is that we repent of what our hearts believed, that God's word is not truly what we need, that we've been willing to say it with our mouths, but again, talk is cheap and our lives have shown something entirely different.

And is what is needed from us is repentance, a repentance that biblically always cleanses our slate before the Lord and makes room for God's grace to be lavished upon us in Jesus Christ.

But the second thing we need is to understand just exactly how scripture profits us.

To put off through repentance the sin of neglecting God's word and to put on a belief that scripture is given to us for our good.

That is exactly why Paul doesn't stop at saying scripture is profitable.

He shows Timothy how it profits.

Four ways then that we are given, four expressions of God's goodness we see through the pages of Scripture.

First, that we need God's word for teaching.

God's word teaches us.

It teaches us, which tells us something about ourselves, that you and I need direction.

It is why the psalmist loves God's word, because it is a lamp to his feet.

It tells us what is true about God, what is true about ourselves, what is true about the world that we live in.

And in a culture that now more than ever is filled with these competing voices, telling us what to believe about God, telling us what to believe about ourselves, telling us what to believe about the world we live in.

We need a book that teaches us.

This teaching through the word is God's kindness to you, it is his goodness to you.

He is directing a people who live in a dark, confused, disoriented world.

We need God's teaching.

Secondly, Paul says we need God's word for reproof.

Reproof is where God shows us what is wrong.

This is where Scripture doesn't just inform us, it reads us.

So that Martin Luther once said, the Bible is alive.

It speaks to me, it has feet, it runs after me.

And some of you know this feeling, this feeling of just the conviction that comes into our lives when we open up God's word.

That is reproof.

It is reproof from the loving hand of the Father who wounds us, not just to watch us bleed and suffer, but who wounds us because he is the great physician who wants to heal us through his word.

Which leads to the next thing God's word does, it corrects.

The word of God teaches, the word of God reproves, the word of God corrects.

Correction is about restoration.

The scriptures don't just tell us what is wrong, they show us the way back.

They are the fulfillment of the very work that Jesus came to do.

He came to be a redeemer, he came to make things right.

And the way he does that is through the scriptures.

So that word by word we are reshaped and renewed, slowly being transformed into the image of God.

Fourth, we need God's word for training in righteousness.

For training in righteousness.

Training tells us that this will be a process, that the formation that God wants to shape you in, that the godliness that God wants to bring about in your life, will not come from one-time occasions.

It will come from a life of being exposed to his word, where degree by degree we are transformed into the image of God, sometimes not in noticeable ways.

But I mean, I mean, you can just keep coming back to the physical counterpart of this, that you don't go to the gym and just look like Arnold Schwarzenegger the next day, right?

Wouldn't that be nice?

But in the spiritual life, it doesn't work the same way either.

And some of us want that to happen.

I mean, we just want this kind of mass transformation, but we don't want to put in the work daily of getting before God's word and being trained in righteousness and shaped by Him.

Teaching shows us the path, reproof tells us where we've wandered, correction brings us back, and training keeps us walking forward.

All the shaping work that God plans to do in your life, he plans to do through the faithful exposure of his word.

This is why central to every ministry at redemption church is the opening up of his word.

Because we don't just need more programs, we don't need more strategies, we don't need someone in the church to say the right thing to us at the right time.

What we need is the the word of God.

And this is a good time for an amen.

Amen, church, amen.

This is this is what we need.

This is why, by the way, shameless plug for women's ministry, which is happening on February 6th at the church office, right?

At the church office, or they're, you know, regularly the women are getting into God's word.

This is why, again, shameless plug for the women's Bible study, which is starting, I think, also on February 6th, which you can sign up for.

They're going through the books of first, second, and third John, just exposing themselves to God's word.

And that might have been something that you are a part of women last semester.

I mean, God did a magnificent work in the women who attended that book study.

It is something you can be a part of this semester.

And if you want information for that, you can go to connections.

They can get you everything you need.

But loved ones, this is why in this church, this is all we want to do.

We're not interested in the fluff, we just want to get into God's word.

Why?

Because it's where we are taught, it is where we are reproved, it is where we are corrected, it is where we are trained in righteousness.

It is the word of God and it is given for our good.

It is the primary means by which God forms his people.

Do you believe that, loved one?

You believe that?

I mean, I mean, God's like the I'm trying to think of ways to illustrate what God's God's word is.

It literally is the chemotherapy, what chemotherapy is to cancer cells, God's word is to sin.

It searches you out and it destroys the sin that remains hidden in your life.

And it is the only way.

It is God's designed medicine to attack the very thing that is destroying you, sin.

It is given for your good loved ones.

Do not neglect it.

This brings us back to the application that runs through this entire series.

What scripture is shaping you?

What scripture is shaping you?

Do not tell me that you want to grow in godliness and Christ-likeness, and yet not have God's living, active word stored in your heart, shaping you moment to moment.

Doctrine comes from God.

It is for our good.

He is shaping us into his image by it.

Now, the assumption that is beneath this text, the assumption that this whole church is really staked on, and the assumption that you can found your life on is that God's word is enough.

That it is enough for real life, that it is applicable to real life, that it is enough for the deepest suffering, that it is enough for the temptation that we constantly face, that it is enough for the calling that God has placed in our lives.

God's word is sufficient.

This is what Paul then affirms to Timothy.

Not only that God speaks, not only that God is good, but thirdly, I want you to see this: that God is sufficient, that he equips us through his word.

Notice then what the scriptures produce.

Paul says it plainly, look down with me at verse 17, that the man of God may be complete.

That we may be complete.

The scriptures provide you what is necessary to make you fully the person that God created you to be.

This is the claim of Jesus on your life.

That you will never be whole until you meet your Creator through his word.

It is a powerful claim.

It is a life-altering claim.

The word complete here it means whole.

It means to be fitted to something.

It means lacking nothing essential.

Now it's striking here that Paul says the word of God that is breathed out by God is the thing that makes us feel complete.

You know why it's striking?

Because if you and I are honest, none of us really feel complete, do we?

Does anyone feel complete in this room?

I mean, do you feel whole?

Do you feel like everything in your life is right?

Maybe you feel this impossible to define feeling that things just aren't right.

And loved ones, I mean, the scripture comes and says, you know why?

It's because they're not.

It's because they're not.

Because we live in a sinful and fallen and broken world, which awaits a redeemer to come and to restore it to its proper place.

Things are not right.

We are not whole, and we are give being given so simply the answer here.

It is the scriptures that point us to being made whole.

Now, things aren't right, and we know this, our culture knows this.

The question is, how do we address it?

And what happens so often in our lives is we try to address it without the scriptures, we try to address it without Christ.

Culture does this.

I mean, one of the ways that culture does this is through sort of simple, comforting slogans.

You can hashtag it on Instagram, you've heard it before, you know you are enough.

Everything you need is inside of yourself.

Just be true to yourself.

And you know what the reality is of those sayings is that they really do work for a moment, don't they?

I mean, you walk out the door and you tell, I am enough.

You know, and you can make it for a bit in the day, but then all of a sudden, like you fail and you're confronted with this reality of like, okay, you know, I might not be enough, but I'm gonna tell myself I I am enough, and then you're flattened on your back and suffering, and you're like, I don't feel like I'm I'm I'm I just might not be enough for this.

And you keep facing these things that are confronting what you're telling yourself with ultimate reality that you just are not enough, that you actually don't have it within you.

These sayings they work for a moment, but they function like a bandage.

They cover the wound just long enough to get through the day, but they never actually heal.

They never actually make you whole.

Well, we're left with two options then.

Either we cover our sense of incompleteness with these sayings, or there's another way we can try to deal with this incompleteness, and that is we we manufacture completeness.

We try to solve our problem of wholeness by resting the weight of our wholeness on things that simply cannot bear the weight.

I was at the gym recently.

I have a lot of like gym illustrations in the sermon.

I'm not trying to, it's just how it works, okay?

I'm not trying to like, anyways.

I was at the gym recently and someone was quoting, was uh squatting for over 400 pounds.

It was on the squat rack, I saw the bar there, it's like bending.

And I'm always interested in that kind of stuff, so I did what every gym goer does.

I just, you know, conspicuously picked a machine where I could see who was doing this over 400 pound squat.

Now I've seen people do 400-pound squats before, and you know what's fascinating about people who do 400-pound squats?

They look like they can do 400-pound squats.

This baggy, loose-fitting jean trend doesn't work for them because everything's slim fit for them.

But this guy who walked up to this squat rack, he did not look like he could do 400-pound squats.

And so I was then incredibly fascinated because I thought this might be on like a YouTube fail video in the future.

And this guy picked up the bar and he did not do 400-pound squats.

I'm not sure what he was doing.

It was more like a bar hold.

There was hardly any knee bend.

Maybe he thought he was doing squats.

It wasn't it at all.

There's no way that his body could have held the weight of that bar.

And if he's here, I'm just sorry, you know that I'm exposing you in front of everybody.

Here's a video.

No, I don't have a video.

The weight of what he was holding was too much for what was underneath it.

And I'm reminded that it is exactly what we do with our lives.

We take good things, maybe it's work, maybe it's relationships, maybe it's success, maybe it's approval, and we place the full weight of our identity on them.

And when they collapse, we feel like they're like we're being betrayed by them.

Now the problem is not that those things have failed us.

The problem is that you and I put on these good things way too much weight.

They weren't designed to sustain them.

That is why Augustine famous famously said, You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest.

In you.

He is pointing our eyes to the one who was cre who created us and who can bear our weight.

Now, Paul here says that the scriptures make us complete because it shows us where the weight actually belongs.

Scripture makes us complete because it takes our eyes off of ourselves and lifts them to the God who alone is strong enough to carry the weight of our lives.

I want you to understand how practical this is.

This past week, you know, I was feeling incredibly inadequate.

The Lord was, or I don't even know, spiritual warfare.

I mean, it was coming to my mind just time and time again of these conversations that I had had, you know, with people where just my inadequacies were being brought up.

And you know, it's just part of being a pastor that you accept.

You are shepherding the sheep, and when you're in the pen, you get bruised, and it really is part of it, and the Lord always uses it.

But I was just having this sense of just feeling so inadequate.

And in that moment, there's I had options.

You know, I could have hardened myself to everyone who's ever said anything that made me feel inadequate at all, even if they didn't intend it.

I could have hardened myself, you know, they don't know even know what they're talking about.

Or I could have, you know, tried, I'm just gonna like work really hard, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna prove them wrong.

Well, I tried those things before, and I know this, that they they cannot carry the weight that I needed them to carry.

That there's only one place to go, that I needed to go to the scriptures.

And to my mind came a verse that I had committed to memory in Deuteronomy.

The Lord says, What does the Lord require of you?

But to fear the Lord your God and to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and the statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good.

And as I thought about that, what the Lord requires of me, you know what I what I came to realize?

That never once is man mentioned.

Everything the Lord requires of us, of the Lord, three times in that passage, you know, the statutes of the Lord, the fear of the Lord, to serve the Lord your God, three times my attention keep kept coming to the reality that my worth, my adequacy cannot come from man.

It can only come from God.

And what happened in that moment was not that the difficulty of my life was completely resolved, but it was that I had a place to place the weight of what I was experiencing and feeling on that could actually sustain it.

It was the Lord himself.

And loved ones, this is what God's word does.

It doesn't tell us how to complete ourselves, it's not a manual on how to live, it brings us to the only one who ever can complete us.

You know, in verse 15, Paul says something fascinating about these scriptures, about the sacred writings.

Notice what he says.

He says that these sacred writings are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

That is the heart of God's word.

That is what reading God's word does.

It points you to Christ.

Every page, Old Testament and New Testament, is pointing to the Son of God.

Every command is revealing a need you have ultimately for God.

Every promise in the pages of Scripture is preparing you ultimately for eternity with Him.

And what Scripture comes and does is it shows us that we are not sufficient in and of ourselves.

And then it shows us the one who is.

And from the pages of Scripture, the radiant glory of Jesus Christ shines, and we see the true completeness that we have always been longing for.

We see the one who, where we failed, he obeyed.

We see the one who, where we were crushed under the weight of sin, Jesus stood successfully.

We see the one who, when we were restless and inadequate, Jesus finished the race and was faithful, and he did it in our place.

So that by faith, when God looks at us, he does not see our failure, he does not uh expose himself to the reality we know that we are not enough.

He sees the righteousness of his own son.

So that the invitation all through the pages of scripture, and the invitation this morning is simple.

Come to Christ.

Come to Christ, loved one, loved one.

God wants to speak to you this morning.

And do you know what the fullness of his voice wants to say?

It wants to say, Jesus.

It wants to point you to the name of his son, the only name under heaven by which we can be saved.

Would you come to him?

Would you come to Jesus with faith in him?

Every word.

And the pages of scripture are pointing to him.

Doctrine.

Doctrine comes from God.

His word shapes us for our good, and it leads us to the sufficiency that can be found in Christ alone.

In a moment, we're gonna celebrate communion together.

Communion is the gospel that the scriptures point to made visible, symbolized in the bread and the cup for us.

The bread reminds us that Christ's body was given for us.

The cup reminds us that his blood was shed for us.

And we are given this to remind ourselves that sufficiency is not in and of ourselves, that in order to stand sufficient before the Lord, we must receive something from him.

If you didn't receive the bread and the cup on the way in, the ushers are coming down the aisle, you can flag one of them down.

They would love to get one into your hands.

And I want to I want to just put a few warnings before this celebration.

As we eat and drink, we are reminded again that our life, our hope, our completeness are in Jesus Christ alone.

Scriptures tell us that communion is a celebration for believers, that it is for those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ and been given wisdom for salvation through him.

So that if you're not a follower of Christ, we would just ask that you let this cup pass by.

We're so thankful you're here.

We would love to introduce you to Jesus, but we want you to know that the celebration is for those who have placed their faith in him.

Scripture also provides a warning to us about those who are walking in unrepentant sin.

That is not sin itself, it is sin that you are aware of, that you are unwilling to deal with.

Scriptures tell us that to take the Lord's supper in a heart condition like that is to eat and to drink judgment upon ourselves.

This table is for sinners.

The bread and the cup are for sinners who are genuinely repenting.

And so we want to take a moment now to examine our hearts before the Lord, to confess sin.

Maybe he's exposed this morning, and to receive his grace.

Would you just take a moment in the stillness and quietness of your own seat to do that?

Father, we thank you for the truth and the promise we are given in your word that if we confess our sins, that He is faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

That it is the blood of Jesus that cleanses us from all sin.

God, we come to you as people who are not whole, who wage warfare with sin week in and week out, who are constantly reminded of this reality that we are not enough.

And God, we thank you for the cup that we hold in our hands, for the bread that we hold in our hands, which reminds us of another reality, the gospel reality, that from heaven you sent your son to be our sufficiency.

And so we declare together, taking this together, Lord, that we have nothing in and of ourselves.

We have nothing to offer you but the sin that made the cross necessary.

And we ask, Lord, that you would take our sin and cleanse us according to your mercy and your grace, which is proven to us in Jesus Christ on the cross.

God, we thank you.

And we pray this in the name of your Son.

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Let's take the bread together.

In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.

Let's take the cup together.

God, we thank you.

We thank you that communion truly is a celebration.

It is a celebration of grace that floods into our life because of the blood of your son, Jesus Christ.

And God, we now worship you to continue in response and say, Lord, that you are all that we have, that our faith is in you entirely.

God, we love you.

We thank you for your word.

Thank you that you are near.

Thank you that you are good.

And thank you that through Jesus Christ you are sufficient for us.

God, we pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Would you stand with me and respond in song?