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To get our minds set and our hearts set on what it means for Christians to be committed to scripture, I'm going to read a quote for us from John Wesley and I'll read it and then I'll make a couple comments on it. But John Wesley says this about scripture, "I want to know one thing, the way to heaven, how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way; for this very end He came from heaven. He has written it down in a book. Oh, give me that book. At any price, give me the book of God. I have it. Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be a man of one book."

I love this quote. I'm going to add one thing to it. Amen and yes to all of this, but it's not just about how it'll land safe on that happy shore. It's also about how we are called to live while we wait for that day to come. Praise God that He has given us a book to instruct us about the way to heaven and eternity with him. Praise God that that same book tells us what to do while we wait. So with that, I just want us to be thinking and meditating upon what does it mean to be characterized as men or women of one book? That when we call ourselves Christians, we are truly committed to this book, the scriptures, the Bible, God's word, and that is a part of who we are.

So with that, will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word? Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you so much that you have given us this book. You are word, your scriptures, the Bible. We thank you that you speak to us directly, plainly, clearly. We thank you that we have the privilege to be able to read this book whenever we desire. Lord, change our hearts. Encourage our hearts to love you more and specifically by loving your word more, by listening to your word, by submitting to your word, by committing to your word in our lives and trusting what you teach us in it more than ourselves. Lord, we thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Alrighty. Today we will be spending the majority of our time in 2 Timothy chapter 3 verses four 14 through 17. We will be referencing a lot of scripture as we go into here. Really when I was preparing for this, all I wanted to do was open up the Bible on my computer, hit control A, copy paste, there's my sermon notes. We'd be here for a long time and that's culturally unacceptable. So I decided to narrow it down a little bit. But I bring this up to say that if any of the topics that we address today are interesting to you and you think, "Man, I want to know more, I want to learn more about it," there are a ton of scriptures that deal with the topics will address today. So I encourage you to study scripture, to go to scripture and study and see what it has to say about whatever the things are that we're talking about that you would like to know more about.

So I also bring it up to say we're going to go through a lot. So hope you had your coffee, hope you're ready to go and let's dig into God's word. So starting in 2 Timothy chapter 3, verses 14 through 17, it says this, "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed knowing from whom you've 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 Jesus Christ. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."

This is the reading of God's holy, unerring, authoritative and fallible word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. We're going to be spending our time in three points today. First point is that scripture is able to make you wise for salvation. Secondly, that scripture is breathed out by God. And thirdly, that scripture is able to equip you for every good work. So point number one, scripture is able to make you wise for salvation. I just read it, I'm going to read it again. This is verses 14 and 15 where it says, "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you've 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."

So if you'll bear with me for a quick aside, something that really stood out to me in this text that I would like to address is that it says, "Timothy, you have been acquainted with the scriptures from a young age. And it has, you have been made known of Him." So okay, what's going on here? The first chapter of this book tells us that Timothy was taught the scriptures from his grandmother and his mother. If you're like me, the question is, "Well, what about his father?" Scripture tells us in the Book of Acts that his father was not a Christian and we don't have the whole story, but from what we know from beginning to end it, we believe that his father was never saved. By God's grace He may have and we pray that He was, but we have no idea.

I bring this up to say a few things. First, to give a charge to parents and second to give a charge to kids. Parents, don't be afraid to make your kids acquainted with scripture. We live in a day and age where we like to say, "I'll let my kids figure it out for themselves. I'll let them decide. I don't want to bias them in anything." What we're going to talk about in the sermon, how scripture is life and it is life giving. So if you have something that gives life, why would you withhold that from your children? Think about it this way. If you said, "I bought food. I'm going to eat my food and I'll let my kids figure out how they're going to eat. They can ask me what I personally like to eat. They can ask me what I bought to eat and I'll tell them all about what I like to eat and why I eat it, and I'll tell them all that, but I'll let them figure it out for themselves."

Child services would be called on you. That's not loving. It's not helpful to them. If we truly believe that scripture is life giving, we should want to raise our kids in it to know it. And now, kids and teenagers, let your parents teach you the scriptures, trust them. Trust that it is life and they are seeking your wellbeing and your good in it. So allow them to teach you and desire it for yourself. Seek after desire to know scripture yourself.

The last thing I want to address in this little tangent of mine... Sermon's not over yet, sorry. But the last thing I want to address in this tangent is I want to address single mothers and women who are married and they are a Christian and their husband is not. I want to tell you, take encouragement from scripture. God is with you. God loves you and He cares for you and He has given you the ability to equip your child to follow the Lord, that when scripture tells us that fathers are called to lead their family spiritually about when they fail, whether from death, from disease, from abandonment, from not being around to begin with, mothers, you are still loved and cared for and equipped to raise your child and even more so the need for scripture is needed. So I just want to encourage you, mothers, rely on scripture. When life gets hard and it's hard to raise a kid, depend on scripture and depend on the church. But scripture is able to equip you in that as well.

So there's my brief aside. Sorry about that. Point number one, scripture is able to make you wise for salvation. That's the text that we just read. It ends with saying it's able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. So point, first thing we got to figure out in here is the word able. It says that scripture is able to make you wise for salvation. It's not a guarantee, but it is powerful to do it. It doesn't mean that just because you read this book you're going to instantly know what it means to be saved, but it has the power to do it if you submit to it and trust it.

The second thing that I want to point out is that it says it's able to make you wise for salvation. It's not going to save you in and of itself. You can't read this book and say, "Oh, I read this book, I'm good to go. I'm saved now." No, that's not how it works. But it is able to make us wise, to show us to open our eyes to the message of the gospel through faith in Christ Jesus, right? Christ Jesus is the one who saves. I could quote the entirety of scripture and show you how it points to this concept. I'm just going to read one in Acts chapter 4, verse 12, speaking of Jesus, it says this, "And there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."

What's scripture is all about, what it's all pointing to is Christ, and that He alone gives us salvation. Through His life, His death and resurrection on the cross, He has paid the penalty for our sins. And through our faith in him, we can be saved. No other name, no other religion, no other concept or ideology or thoughts or way of life can save us. Nothing but Christ alone. And so scripture is able to make us wise to that because it's what it talks about. That's what this whole book is about. And Jesus knew this.

What I find so interesting about this idea is that Jesus used scripture in this way to make people wise for salvation. Well, what do I mean by that? So the gospel, very clearly, that Jesus Christ is fully God. He came to earth and died on the cross because of our sins that when we rebelled, we transgress, we reject God. We sinned against him and the penalty for that sin is death, eternity apart from God. And Jesus came to die and take that penalty for us so that through faith in him saying, "Jesus, you saved me from my sins. You lived a perfect life, died to pay that penalty and raised to prove that you are God. I trust in you because I need you to save me. I can't do it on my own."

Jesus did that. He was raised from the dead. Fact. And then He comes across two of His disciples walking on a road to a maze and the disciples are sad and they're talking to one another. They're sad because Jesus just died. And Jesus sees them and talks to them and they don't recognize him. And Jesus goes to them, "What are you talking about? Why are you guys sad?" And they're like, "Don't you know anything that's going on in the world today. Aren't you up to date? This guy Jesus that we've all been following? He just died. What are we supposed to do with our lives? We've been following him. He's dead. What do we do?"

Well, as Jesus is talking to them, what does He do? Does He go and say, "Hey guys, it's me. I'm live. You don't have to be sad anymore"? No, He doesn't. We see in Luke chapter 24 what Jesus says to them, in chapter 24, verse 25, "And He said to them, 'Oh, foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory?' And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself."

What Jesus chooses to do is to say, "Let's read the scriptures together. We all agree that this is God's words. Let's read it and I'll show you how all of it points to Jesus Christ." So if you're here today and you're not a Christian, maybe you're here just seeking questions, have thoughts, we're glad you're here. Maybe you're here because you just have this feeling that you're supposed to be here, you want to be here, a friend invited you, we're glad that you're here. Thank you for coming.

I want to challenge you. If you are seeking after God, read this book. Read this book. Ask God to reveal himself to you from this book. It's not going to save you. Reading this book isn't going to save you, but it is able to open our eyes. It is powerful enough to open our eyes to the reality of Christ as our savior and our need for him. So if you're not a Christian, that's my challenge. Read this book, start reading it and see what it says about Christ and salvation.

Point number two, scripture is breathed out by God. This is from verse 16 in our text, the first part of it where it says, "All scripture is breathed out by God." So a couple things we need to clarify here. What is meant by all of scripture? This is one of the times where I love to point out Greek words and like, "This is what they mean." The Greek word for all means all. It's very plain is what it means. It's all of it. It's this whole book, the whole cannon of scripture.

Now, I can stand up here and go through historical arguments, scientific arguments, scholarly arguments and things like that to show you why this is the scripture. This is the whole of it. But I'm not going to do that because I believe God's word is powerful enough on its own. And if you read this book, it'll prove it's scriptureness, it's divinity, it's holiness to you. So I'm not going to defend it in that way, but I will give you just like a little bit of information that that might be helpful.

So first, when we say all scripture, we're talking about the Old and New Testament, so this book, the Bible. And if you have questions about the canonicity, the completeness of the Old Testament, I just want to encourage you that scholars and historians have never really questioned this. This is not really something that's ever been debated. It's been solidified for a very long time. If you want to know more about that, I encourage you to study it, to look it up. You can talk to me afterwards.

But Josephus was a Jewish historian. He was not a Christian, but a Jewish historian at the time of Christ. This is what he says about the Old Testament canon of scriptures. He says, "For although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured neither to add or to remove or to alter a syllable." What he was saying is for as long as we can study history, as long back as he was able to find, no one has dared change or add anything to the cannon of the Old Testament because everyone knew that this was the scriptures. It's the same scriptures that we have as our Old Testament today where most people have questions comes to the New Testament.

I just want to tell you that the books of the New Testament were largely decided by three things. First, the divine qualities, the idea that they were written by God and speak of God truthfully. The reception by the churches, did people at the time when they were written actually believe that they were scripture? And third connection to an apostle, connection to someone who saw the life of Christ.

So I'm just going to point out two places where the New Testament affirms its canonicity. In 1 Timothy chapter 5, verse 18, Paul writing a first letter to Timothy says this, "For the scripture says, 'You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, and the laborer deserves his wages'." This is an idea that is from the Old Testament, but it's not a quote from the Old Testament. The idea is consolidated to this quote by Jesus in the books of Matthew and of Luke. So Paul writing this letter is affirming the gospels as scripture. He's saying we in the church at that time believe that the gospels are divine quality, are of equal value of scripture as the whole of the Old Testament. So the church in the early days accepted the gospels as scripture.

Second one I want to point out is 2 Peter chapter 3 verses 15 and 16, where Peter says, "And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you, according to the wisdom given him as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures."

I'm pointing this one out because for some reason Paul is the one we have the most difficulty with in modern times, and it's not for some reason. It's the reason that it says here, he says hard things which we don't like, and so we twist them. But Peter makes a couple of points here. First, he points out that... Excuse me. Paul is writing from wisdom given to him. It's not his own wisdom, it's not his own thoughts. It's the wisdom of the Holy Spirit that has been given to him that Paul is writing these letters. Then he says, "Just like every other scripture, people are going to twist it." This is a statement confirming the canonicity, the authority, the scripture or nature of Paul's letters saying that, "Yeah, Paul's letters are scriptures. And just like all of the other scriptures, people naturally are going to try and twist them to fit their own desires."

And so people like to say, "I believe in the canon of scripture minus Paul. Just get rid of Paul and I accept the rest of it." Well, if you accept the rest of it, you have to accept that Peter calls those letters of Paul scripture. And so you have to submit to them as scripture as well. I could go on and on forever about this. I'm not going to. If you have more thoughts or questions about the canonicity of scripture, I encourage you to study it and feel free to talk to us and people in your community groups about it.

But, that's what we mean by all scripture. We're talking about this book. Every single part of it is breathed out by God. Well, what do we mean by breathed out by God? It means kind of three things, but first is that it's inspired by God. It originates from God himself. We see this idea in 2 Peter chapter 1 verses 20. Peter says this, "Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." So Peter is telling us, "What is scripture? What are the things written in there?" Yes, men physically wrote them down, penned them, but they were speaking from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was guiding them, was directing their thoughts, their minds, their heart and saying, "This is what God wants you to tell people" and they just wrote it down.

So when we talk about scripture as a breathed out by, we say it's holy, unerring, authoritative, divinely inspired is what we're getting at. We're saying that this is from God. It's not a message that men have to tell other people. It's a message that God has to tell us.

The second thing that it means for scripture to be breathed out by God is that it is alive. In scripture when we see God breathing, it's not just because He's like out of breath huffing and puffing or anything like that. It's He's doing something with it. He's giving life. We see this most clearly in Genesis chapter 2, verse 7 when God creates man, creates Adam. It says, "Then the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground." Dust is not alive, dust is dead. "And breathe into His nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." This word is alive. Do we know that scripture is alive? Well, what do we mean? I'm not saying it's going to jump out of my hand and start attacking or talking or doing. That's not what we're talking about.

Well, Hebrews clarifies for us what does it mean for the word of God to be living. It 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." Scripture is alive. It is living, meaning it's always relevant. It's never going to not apply. Why? Because it's sharper than any two-edged sword. It can pierce through culture. It could pierce through personality. It could pierce through ideologies and thoughts and mentalities and upbringings and get to the heart of all of the issues. It will always be relevant because it speaks upon what actually matters in life.

This is something that people like to debate or throw out there. Not even debate. All the time it's like, "It's an old book. It's not really relevant anymore." My favorite thought on this is from Voltaire. I don't know how many of you are familiar with him, but he's a French theologian and a really smart, brilliant guy, loved the concept of a God existing so long as that God didn't tell him how to do anything or have any impact on his life.

This is what Voltaire says about scripture. In 1776, he says, "100 years from my day," so 1876, "there will not be a Bible on earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity seeker." By 1876, Voltaire promise that a Bible's not going to exist except by the people who like weird old stuff. They'll have a Bible just for curiosity's sake. Well Voltaire, you're wrong. You're very wrong. I didn't mention this in first service, but he died a few years after this and his house was bought by the French Bible printing company and they used it to print even more Bible. So anyway, that's just God's humor in all of this.

But why? Scripture. It seems so outdated. It doesn't speak to the things that culture likes. Cultures move past this. We've progressed. Why would it still exist? Because it's true and it speaks to our hearts. It speaks to us on a level that only God can pierce through everything going on in our lives and speak directly to us. This is what it means for scripture to be alive. The third thing that it means for scripture to be breathed out is that it gives life. It gives life. In Matthew chapter 4, Jesus says, "But He answered them, 'It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God'."

We can do everything we're supposed to physically. We can eat right, we can exercise, drink water, stay hydrated, do everything that we can to prolong our life here on earth, and without God's word, we've never really lived. We can do everything to extend our life on earth, but apart from the salvation that comes from Christ that we are made wise to from the scriptures, the eternal life is one of death. Only through the power and the saving work of Christ can our eternal life breathe life.

I was convicted in the middle of first service. So if you guys know, God's convicted my heart of sinfulness and reminded me how much I love bread. It says, "More man shall not live by bread alone." God reminded me in college before I cared about my health at all because I wasn't married yet, so I didn't affect anybody else. I would just buy a loaf of bread for dinner and just eat it with olive oil, garlic, Parmesan. Anyways, I'm hungry. Bread is so good. There is nothing better to eat than warm, fresh out of the oven, good bread. This is incredible stuff, guys. Praise God for bread.

Amen.

We need to love God's word more than that. Amen. I clarified in first service, as much as I loved bread, we need to love scripture more than that because maybe you don't feel the same. But the idea is that God's word will actually give life. It enables us to live a life of abundance here on earth, but also it leads us to a life of faithfully following the Lord an eternal blessing and reward for following him. And so if we actually believe God's word, the scriptures is breathed out by God, it is alive, it is from God, and it is able to give us life, we should really like this word, like to read it, like to study it, want to know it.

This is what the early church exampled or lived like to show us. In the Book of Acts in chapter 2, a couple weeks ago we had a sermon on committed to a local church. We talked through the end of Acts after the Pentecost what did the local church look like. This text is 100% absolutely about needing to be committed to a local church, but I want to read it to us and I want you to focus on where does it talk about scripture in how the early church lived immediately after the Pentecost.

In Acts chapter 2, starting in verse 42 it says, "And they, Christians, devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul. Many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved."

So yes, this text is about commitment to a local church and what the early church looked like, but it's bracketed by scripture. It starts off that the early church devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. They devoted themselves to the words and teachings of the apostles, what we have written down and recorded as of the New Testament. And then it ends in day by day attending temple together. Well, what happened at temple? Yes, there was community events and things like that, but primarily what happened is that people were reading aloud the words of the scriptures and we're teaching upon the scriptures. And day by day they went to hear it. This is how much the early church was committed to scripture that even though manuscripts and copies weren't widely known and available to people, they were willing to travel and go to hear it every day.

Now, the city of Jerusalem, where they would go was broken into different sections for sort of the higher ups and the lower ups, most of the people in the church were just common men and women. The common men and women lived in the lower part of the city that was a half mile walk upstairs, up a mountain. They had stairs though. So upstairs to get to the temple to be able to hear the word of God preached. Now if you're here and you're like, "I live in Boston. I walk more than a half mile every day, that's no problem," good. Then why is it so hard for us to take two steps to find the Bible in our room, in our home, in our apartments, wherever it may be? Oh, just take the phone out of our pockets and be like, "Oh, there's the Bible app." Why is it so hard for us to read God's word?

If we truly believe it is breath of God, it is life and God's words, we should want to hear it all the time as much as we can. We should not let the Bible app on our phone be the least used app on our phone and we shouldn't let the Bible be the book collecting dust on our shelves. We should want it, we should desire it, we should love it and seek after it.

Point number three is that scripture is able to equip you for every good work. This is verses 16 and 17 in our text. This is where the big thrust of this text comes in and it says, "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."

First thing I want to address here is the phrase man of God. What is meant when Paul writes that the man of God may be complete? Well, the context of this book is that Paul is writing this letter to Timothy who is a pastor and a preacher in the church. And so he is writing to him specifically about how to lead and run a church. That's why we call these books a pastoral epistle, is what we call them. And so the idea is that pastors, preachers, people in ministry, missionaries, whoever is charged by God for the work of God, you need to be rooted in scripture. You need to let scripture work on you first before you are able to preach it to others.

But it's more than that. It's more than that. The phrase man of God is actually an Old Testament phrase for any person that God sent with a message to deliver. If someone, a prophet was given a message, words by God and said, "Go tell this to someone," they were referred to as the man of God. So if you're sitting here and like, "Good. Wooh! This is for pastors and preachers and missionaries. Great," you're not excused either. None of us are. Because if you remember, a few weeks ago we talked about the Great Commission. Matthew chapter 28, verse 18 and 20, it says, "And Jesus came and said to them, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age'."

We've talked about how this is a charge for every Christian. So if you're a Christian here today, you have a message from God, the gospel, that you are called and sent to go and proclaim. And so if you want to be equipped, if you want to be complete to do that work, your life needs to be rooted in scripture, needs to have scripture as its foundation because it is what equips us to do what God has told us and sent us to do. How does it do it? Paul gets into this sort of four phase step of how scripture equips us and it's by teaching, by reproof, correction, and training.

So what does it meant by teaching? Well, teaching is essentially information-based. You can think of it that way, that it's scripture tells us, teaches us what God is like, who He is, what is righteous, what is good, what is sinful, what is bad. It gives us that information and we should know it. We should desire to know it. And then because we are sinful people, that information will reproof us. I don't know the last time you heard the word reproof in day-to-day conversation. I don't think I've ever heard it outside of a church. But the word is essentially convicting. We are convicted by it. It's literally the process of trying someone as guilty. It's like, "You're guilty. We're going to put you to the test to show that you're guilty." I think of the Salem witch trials if they were actually all guilty, and it's just like, "You're guilty. We're going to prove that you're guilty to everybody. Okay, you're guilty." Essentially, it is what it is.

Scripture convicts us in that way. We are sinful. When we read God's word, it shows us, "Oh, God wants me to be like that? I'm not like that. I'm sinful. I've fallen short." And it should convict us. It should change our thoughts and ideas about how we live so that we want to live more like Christ. And so if reading scripture doesn't convict us, there could be a few things going on in our lives.

First thing is maybe you haven't understood the weight of the gospel, right? The weight of the gospel is that our sin, the things that we have done wrong, transgressed God with, is what put Christ on the cross in the first place. It is the reason why Christ God needed to die. That should convict us when we think about the weight of our sins. But we are sinful people, so we aren't always convicted of our sin because we're not perfect. And so maybe we're not convicted of sin when we read scripture because we have what a psychiatrist and therapists call main character syndrome. Main character syndrome is the idea that when you watch a movie or read a book, you just naturally insert yourself in the place of the main character. That's why these things are written most of the time.

We can't do that with scripture. You can't. We're not the main character of scripture. Jesus is. Jesus is the main character. Again, we already talked about how scripture is all about Jesus and His salvation to us. So it does apply to us. It is relevant to us, but it's not primarily about us. And so if we read scripture as a main character, we're like, "Wow, this Jesus guy is pretty good. It makes me feel good about myself. I must be pretty good too. All right, I guess I'm good." We can't do that with scripture. We have to let scripture convict us.

The third reason why we might not be convicted when we read scripture of our sin is we have itching ears. "Itching ears. What does that mean? What's going on there?" This is what Paul tells Timothy to be warned, be careful of, in the next chapter of his letter. In this chapter, he is focusing on Timothy's need for scripture for his edification in and of himself. In the next chapter, he says, "You must then preach it. You need to preach scripture. It is the best thing for preaching.' And then in chapter 4, verse 2, he says this, "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but will have itching ears. They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths."

Christians, we can't have itching ears. We can't say, "Ooh, scripture says that. I don't like that so I'm going to find someone who says something different and I'll listen to them." Or, "Ooh, this part of scripture says what I like and that part doesn't so I'm just going to not think about that part and I'll just focus on this part that I like." We can't have ears that we want to scratch with whatever we feel is right and we want to hear. We need to have ears that humbly come to scripture and say, "Ooh, I don't like that. Why? What's that convicting me of? What's it challenging me of? Why am I so disturbed by this text? It is the word of God, so what do I need to change?"

Scripture is able to inform us about God and about righteousness and about life, but it is going to convict us then when we see our sinfulness and our fallenness. But we don't stay there. We don't stay there. So the next point is correction. Correction, I think, we all think of as a negative word. Like you're correctional facilities, that's bad. It sounds bad. Literally, it's to improve. It's to change. It's a good thing. It has a positive connotation. We can correct. We can change. When we see sin in our lives, we don't have to stay that way. I love this verse. 1 John chapter 1, verse 9 it says, "If we confess our sins, He, Jesus is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

So when we're studying scripture and we learn that we are sinful and we are convicted of sin in our hearts, what do we do? We go to Christ and we confess it to him knowing that he is faithful and just to forgive us. He will forgive us. We don't have to stay in it and don't have to stay in our guilt and shame. Then he also cleanses us. I love that. He cleanses us. So he removes it from us. We aren't that anymore. It's not who we are. We can change. We can grow. We can mature in our lives and in our faith. This process then will mature us. And that's the last thing that Paul talks about is training in righteousness. The word training is the idea of disciplined, but it's also of parenting. It's the same word that is used for parenting, for raising up in maturity.

Scripture is profitable for raising us up in spiritual maturity. Well, how does it do this? Psalm one 19 verse 11, it says, "I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you." Joshua 1:8, "This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it."

So as we are training, as we are preparing to grow in maturity of our faith, to grow in faithful obedience as we've been talking about in the Roman sermon series before this, we need to have God's word stored up in our hearts and not let it depart from our mouths. Why? It does both sides of the coin, that we might not sin against God. It helps us fight sin, and that we may be careful to do according to all that is written. That we can actively do what is right.

Scripture has the power to discipline, to change us, to train us up in maturity and it has the ability to help us fight temptation and sin, right? The thing that prevents us from growing in maturity is when we fall back into sin, when we sin and we sin and we don't recognize, we don't repent, or we just keep falling back into sin. Scripture is there to help us in those moments, to fight off sin in the first place and to encourage us when we have failed. And Jesus knew this. Jesus' primary weapon against temptation was scripture.

In the New Testament, Jesus is tempted by Satan. He is tempted. And the first time Jesus says, "No, for it is written." And then Satan's like, "Okay, I'll tempt to you a different way." And Jesus says, "No, for it is written." And a third time Satan tempts him and Jesus says, "Be gone, Satan! For it is written."

This is where I get to talk about memorization of scripture. I don't really like that word. I'm sorry. If you are great at memorizing scripture, great. Praise God. That's awesome. I prefer the word internalize. We need to internalize scripture. It's good to memorize. Do. I encourage you. Do memorize scripture. Know it. That's great. But if someone's like, "Ph, what does this verse say?" and you're able to repeat it to them, that's awesome. And then if they ask you, "But what does it mean?" and you're like, "Oh, I don't know," that's not very helpful. And if they're like, "Well, how does that apply to your life?", you're like, "Ah, beats me," that's not helpful. That's not what scripture is talking about. We store it up in our hearts. We internalize it. We make it a part of who we are. We let it transform us so that way when temptations come, we can say "No, for is written."

I think when I've heard that section of Jesus' temptation preached on most, it's often just memorize scripture. It's good. Good. Good to know the scripture. But do you have specific scriptures prepared to fight against specific temptations? We are all sinful people. Let's not pretend we're not. We are. We all have different struggles and different temptations. So whatever it is, whatever sin you are struggling with, you are dealing with, study scripture and what does scripture say about that. So that way the next time temptation comes, you're ready.

I think when temptation comes, our primary response is to just ignore it and try and delay it. That never works. To muster up emotional strength within us like, "I'm going to fight against this. I'm just going to be tough and stand here and not moved." Or it's to just, "Oh, well, whatever. That's the worst." But do we do what Jesus did? Actively say scripture. Don't be afraid to say it out loud. You might sound weird for a little bit, but that's okay. But there's power in words. So when temptation comes say, "No, Satan! Be gone, Satan! For it is written." And have scripture ready. Know scripture. Be prepared with scripture to be able to fight against temptation.

This scripture, as we study and as we meditate on it and internalize it, it will encourage us in this process because even still, we'll fall short. We'll fall to temptations, we will sin, but scripture will then still encourage us. And this is Romans chapter 15, verse 4, it says, "For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us so that through the endurance taught in scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope."

One of the ways Satan likes to have power over us in that temptation is that when we fall, when we sin, he wants to lead us to despair, to lead us to guilt, to say, "Ah, I just stuck in it. I've messed up a lot," or, "I'm just here. I can't get out." It's when we need scripture. We need scripture to preach truth to us that there is endurance. We are able to endure. And there is encouragement within God's word to help us to have hope. Even when we fail, even when we fall short, no matter what is going on in our lives or what temptation we face, we can always have hope. When we're lacking that hope, we should go to scripture and study it and seek it and ask God, "Give us hope in these situations."

Really this four stages of teaching, reproof, correction, and training, it perfectly exemplifies what I was taught as the cycle of growth. This cycle of growth was something that I was taught at a teen's conference of how do we do ministry to teenagers. And I was like, "This is silly. Everybody needs to hear this. This should just be everywhere, not just for teenagers." But it's called the cycle of growth because it's how we are called to grow.

The first step of it is unconscious incompetence. You don't know how sinful you are. You don't know how incompetent you are, but scripture teaches us. It teaches us and it reproofs us. It convicts us and says, "You're going to move on to the stage of conscious incompetence. Oh Lord, I'm aware. I'm a sinner. Lord, I am incompetent at following you. I have failed at following you." I should say do think about "What sins am I struggling with and what stage of this process am I in? Where am I at?" and try and help yourself progress through this cycle of growth by dependence on the scripture and reliance on the community and the church and the Holy Spirit and prayer. Absolutely. But scripture is able to help us in this as well.

And so in first service, I used an example that I think is just prevalent in our society, but also we never want to talk about it Lust. Lust is a sin. It is sinful to look at a man or a woman with lustful intentions in your heart. Maybe you don't recognize that that's a sin you are dealing with until you read the scriptures that say it is a sin. Or until maybe someone, a brother or sister in Christ points it out and it's like, "Hey man, hey sister, you have an inappropriate way of looking. You lust after these people." And it's like, "All right. I didn't realize it, but now I am consciously aware of my incompetence in this area." Well, now the next step is to get to conscious competence where it's you are aware that you are not doing it anymore. It's like, "All right, lust is the issue. I'm not going to look at that guy that way. I'm not going to look at that girl that way. I'm not going to look at anybody in any way other than that they are a child of God."

And so when a beautiful human being walks by, you're just like, "Nope, nope, nope. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it." And the more you train yourself, the more that you are consciously competent and faithful in your resisting of the temptation, you move to unconscious competence. It's just natural. A beautiful person walks by, it's like, "Hello, brother or sister in Christ." There's no thoughts of impurity. There's no lust within your heart. It's just natural to do the right thing.

This is the process for all sin and all temptation and that we need to grow to, is that we are faithful. We are faithful in following the Lord to the point that it just becomes second nature. This is what scripture talks about in the big fancy word of sanctification. That's what it is. That we are sanctified. We are becoming more like Christ to the point that we don't have to think about it anymore. It's just part of who we are. It's internalized. It's our nature. We are like Christ.

So I just want to encourage us today, church, that this word, this book, the Bible, the scriptures is powerful. It is able to reveal the truth of the gospel for salvation to anyone who reads it. It is God's word to us to give us life. It will never be relevant, and it can change us. It could work in us to grow us, to sanctify us, make us more like Christ so we can be equipped to do the work that God has called us to do. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you. We praise you for this book. We thank you that you have chosen to speak so clearly to us, to guide us and provide life in it to us. Lord, soften our hearts to your words. Convict us of sin as we read it. Give us a heart and a mind that's willing to be dedicated to love your word more than anything else, to be able to seek after it daily and to let it change us, to sit in the uncomfortable tensions where we feel convicted and say, "Lord, change me. Change us." Lord, help us to love your word and proclaim it boldly and not be ashamed of it. We thank you. We praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen.