hidden page for editing transcript

I greet all of you in the blessed name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In 2 Timothy chapter 3, we have been focusing on this topic: the Christian's defense against apostasy. Remember, the Apostle Paul had warned Timothy about the dangers in the church. In the last days, perilous times shall come, and people will be lovers of their own selves. They will be lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. They will manifest a whole list of ungodly characteristics out of their lives, like being covetous, boastful, proud, blasphemous, unthankful, unholy, high-minded, and so forth. They would have an outward form of godliness but be inwardly empty of the transforming power of the Gospel, which means they would pretend to be spiritual. They will attack those who are weak, and then they would oppose the truth.

Living in such perilous times, what can the believers do? In such times of apostasy, what can the church do to defend herself? We need three very important things to help us. We need godly examples, which we have learned in verse 10. We need godly convictions, as seen in verses 11 to 15. And the third thing, most importantly, we need the Word of God. Today we are to focus on this third thing: God's Word. Our text is taken from 2 Timothy 3:16-17. I believe this is a passage most of us are very familiar with. Some of us may even memorize these two verses by heart. Allow me to read to you: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."

Our first point is: God's Word is inspired. "All scripture is given by the inspiration of God." In the preceding verse 15, Paul said to Timothy that "from a child thou hast been taught the holy scriptures." That holy scripture was a reference to the Old Testament because his grandmother and mother were both Jewish, and they had taught Timothy the Old Testament from young. Surely they would have taught him about the Messiah, about the sacrificial system in the Old Testament, about the Passover lamb, the Tabernacle, and so forth. So when Paul came and preached from the New Testament, he showed how Jesus was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament. Jesus was the only one who could fulfill all the prophecies about the Messiah. He was the Passover Lamb. He was the one whom the sacrificial system was pointing to. He was the Almighty God whom the Tabernacle represented. Timothy believed, and the Bible tells us he was "wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus."

So when we come to verse 16, "all scripture" refers to both the Old and New Testaments. The word "inspiration" means God-breathed. All scripture has been breathed out by God. When you speak, your word is what you breathe out. Your breath, conditioned by your mind, is poured out in your speech. So when we say the Word of God is given by the inspiration of God, we are saying the Bible is what God has breathed out. It is what God has intended for you and I to know, to believe, and also to obey. The doctrine of inspiration is a very important topic. Think about this: everything we know about God, everything we know about sin and salvation, about eternal life, about heaven and hell, is from the Bible. Right? Are these the words of God, or are these the words of men? How can we be sure of anything else if we do not believe that the Bible is the Word of God? What about our lives, our families, our marriages, our church, our salvation, our eternal destination? How can they not be affected if the Bible is not the Word of God?

2 Peter 1:21 says, "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of men, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." In other words, the Holy Spirit was the one who inspired the Bible. Why is it so important that we must understand the Holy Spirit is the one who inspired the Bible? You see, there are some things we can understand about the Bible. We can understand the technical aspects of the grammar, or the history of the Bible, or things pertaining to geography, literature, how the Bible was written, and all that. But we will never really understand the true meaning of the Bible if we do not believe this book is inspired by God. If we assume that it is just a human book, or it is just an ancient book of history, then we are rejecting the inspiration of Scriptures. If we reject the inspiration of Scriptures, you and I will be left on our own. Without the Spirit's help, we will never be able to understand the Bible.

The Holy Spirit is not only the author of the Holy Scriptures; He is also our divine guide and teacher. In order for us to rightly understand and rightly interpret the Bible, we need the help of our divine guide and teacher. We can pack our libraries with Bible commentaries or Bible dictionaries—it's important to have all that, it is necessary. But if we think that is all we need to approach the Bible, then we are terribly mistaken. By way of illustration: whenever you read an email, you cannot see the face of the person, right? You cannot hear the voice. What you can see are only the words. If you do not know the person who writes the email very well, you can read the words and misunderstand what is written, and then you draw meaning out of it which was not intended. But if that same email was sent to another person who knows the one who writes this email very well, he will be able to understand what it means. The words are the same, two people reading the same words, but one gets the message while the other misunderstands the message. What is the difference? One of them knows the writer; the other doesn't.

In the same way, you can have the Bible set before two persons, two of them reading the same words. One of them knows the author and has the author indwelling in him to teach him the meaning, while the other is void of the author and misses the point. Romans 8:9 tells us, "Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." The Holy Spirit not only indwells the believer; the Holy Spirit also teaches the believer spiritual things. 1 Corinthians 2:12 tells us, "Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." Perhaps the classic example would be that of our Lord Jesus, who said, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" (John 10:27). It does not mean that we hear the audible voice of Jesus Christ, but we hear His voice through the inspired Word of God. Only the sheep will hear. The believers will hear. The goats will not hear.

Not only do we need the Holy Spirit to help us to rightly understand and rightly interpret the Bible, but we also need the Holy Spirit to help us to rightly apply God's Word into our lives. We need this inspired Word to affect our hearts, our minds, and transform our lives. Once, there was a Bible seminary professor who went to Israel to study the Holy Land, and he met a man who claimed to have memorized the entire Old Testament in Hebrew. Needless to say, the professor was impressed and asked for an illustration. A few days later, they met up. The man asked, "Where shall we begin?" The professor replied, "Psalm 1." The man proceeded to recite Psalm 1 from memory while the professor followed along in his Hebrew Bible. For two hours, the man continued, word for word, without mistake, as the professor sat in stunned silence. When the demonstration was over, the professor discovered something even more surprising about the man—he was an atheist.

How could it be possible that someone was able to know the Scriptures better than most Christians when he himself did not even believe in God? My friends, it is possible because it is only head knowledge. Without the Holy Spirit, it is only head knowledge and nothing more than that. The Word of God has not affected his faith, his life, and his practice. If we truly believe that the Bible is inspired of God, it must not just be head knowledge. It must have an impact in our lives. It must affect our choices, our decisions, our day-to-day dealings. It is useless—it is tragic—when you or I preach strongly about the inspiration of Scriptures, about the preservation of Scriptures, about the authority of Scriptures, but then, in reality, the Word of God makes no difference in the way we live our lives. That would be most tragic, my friends.

How has God's Word affected you? How has God's Word changed your life? Is the Bible your sole authority in faith, in life, and in practice? Or is it just head knowledge and nothing more than that? The inspired Word of God has no new doctrines and no brand-new truths other than the ones written in this book. So please, do not believe those people who come to you and say, "I received new revelations from God," or, "I have received a vision that there are new truths, new doctrines." When God inspired His Word, He emphatically warned against mishandling His Word. He emphatically warned against adding to it and subtracting from it. Revelation 22:18-19 says this: "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall

add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."

We must never play the fool with God's warning. God's people must never mishandle His Word—never add nor subtract from what was already written and completed in this book. The inspired Word of God also has only one correct meaning. Sometimes in Bible study, we hear people say, "What does this verse mean to you?" And when they get a response, they will say things like, "Well, that is a good answer." Then they ask the second person, "What does this verse mean to you?" And they will say, "Oh, I didn't see that. That is also another good answer." When they ask yet another person, "What does this verse mean to you?" "Well, your answer is different from all the rest, but that is also an excellent answer." My friends, can everything be true? Can two contradictory things be true at the same time? Most certainly not. If A says one thing and B says the opposite, A and B cannot both be true, right? They can both be false, but they cannot both be true at the same time. The Bible has only one correct meaning. It can have many applications, but one intended meaning. The Bible has one meaning intended by the author, and it is your responsibility and my responsibility to study hard, and through the Spirit's help, we may understand the right meaning.

So it is extremely important that we must understand that the Holy Spirit was the one who inspired the Holy Scriptures. The Holy Spirit is our divine guide and teacher. Without His help, we will never be able to understand the Bible. We need the Holy Spirit's help to rightly understand, rightly interpret, and rightly apply God's Word into our lives. The inspired Word of God has no new doctrines and no brand-new truth. No such thing. The inspired Word of God has only one correct meaning, and it is our responsibility to study hard and pray that the Spirit of God will help us to understand spiritual things.

Our second point is: God's Word is profitable. "All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable." The word "profitable" carries the idea of being beneficial, useful, productive, and sufficient. Remember, Paul is speaking to Timothy, a believer. So all scripture is profitable, beneficial to the believer. It is profitable in four ways. Firstly, for doctrine. Here, doctrine or teaching does not mean the method of teaching or how you teach someone, but rather the content, the divine instruction which is given to the believers. As believers, we want to live godly lives. We want to worship and serve our Lord faithfully. But how can we do that? Through the teaching of the Bible. The Bible is able to teach us. The Bible is able to tell us how we ought to worship, how we ought to serve the Lord, how we ought to live our lives, what we ought to do, what we ought not to do. Knowledge plays a very important part in the believer's life.

Do you realize that our spiritual maturity has a lot to do with our Biblical knowledge? Show me a spiritually mature believer; he is surely someone who is not only grounded in the word of God but he is also someone who is able to put that knowledge into application. The more you know God's word and apply His Word in your life, the more you will grow in your spiritual walk.

The same is also true of teachability. Teachability is extremely important in the believer's life. If someone is proud and he thinks he knows everything, nobody can teach him anything. His attitude is, "Tell me something I don't know. Teach me something I do not know." He does not read the Bible; he is not interested in Bible study. That unteachable person will never learn, right? That unteachable person will never grow in his spiritual walk, if he's even a believer in the first place.

The Bible is profitable for reproof. This reproof is to rebuke in order to convict our hearts of wrongdoings, sins, or falsehood. The Bible exposes our sins. The Bible will expose our worldliness and ungodly behaviors. As believers, we all know that we are not perfect. None of us is. There's only one perfect man, and that is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As long as we live in this mortal body, we will be capable of falling into sin. There will be times when we will fall into sin. That is why the Bible is profitable to reprove us.

Have you ever experienced a situation whereby you had committed a sin? Nobody knew about it. You did it in the dark. You thought you had gotten away with it. But when you read a particular Bible passage, or you heard a sermon preached, all of a sudden, you were deeply convicted. You felt so wretched, shameful, guilty, and grieved in your heart. That is what it means to be reproved. That is just how powerful the word of God is—able to reprove. Even though no one knows, God knows, and His word is profitable to rebuke us.

That is why the church must never give up teaching and reproving. That is why, in 2 Timothy 4:2, the next chapter—if you can turn with me—just the next chapter, 2 Timothy 4:2 says, the preachers were given the mandate to "preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine." Notice the first two admonitions were negative: reprove and rebuke. Then followed by the positive admonition: exhort.

In a sense, you must first tear down and then build up. Like in a medical surgery, you first cut and remove the cancerous tumor, and then healing can take place. In a similar fashion, the word of God must cut, must expose our sins, and then the building up of our faith can take place.

But think about this: what happens when we do not respond rightly to rebuke? What happens when the word of God rebukes us and then we reject it? Let's say we have been committing sexual immorality, or we have been stealing from our tithes and offerings. And whenever the preaching has to do with sexual immorality or about tithes and offerings, our hearts are rebuked, but we choose to ignore it. We choose to do nothing about it. What will happen?

Slowly, our hearts will be hardened. Slowly, we will be offended and frustrated with the preaching. We will come to a point where we cannot tolerate the preaching anymore, and then we will leave the worship. Church services will be most unattractive and uncomfortable. Do you realize that the church is the most uncomfortable place for persistent sinners? The church is not a comfortable place for people who want to persist in their sins. If that is a Bible-believing, Bible-teaching, Bible-obeying church, they will never be comfortable because they will be reproved.

The Bible is profitable for correction. The word "correction" refers to the restoration of something to its original condition, like helping someone who has stumbled to stand on his feet. After exposing the sinful condition of the believer, the sinful conduct of the believer, Scripture then picks him up to correction. You see, the purpose of correction is that we may repent from our sins and live godly lives and produce spiritual fruit. But this correction may not even be because of sin. Let me explain: it can be a hobby; it can be an activity which is perfectly good, but God knows that this seemingly healthy activity has now become a spiritual hindrance to our worship, to our services. Therefore, we need to be corrected.

Remember our Lord Jesus says in John 15:1, "I am the true vine, ye are the branches. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away, and every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." Do you notice the branch was already producing fruit, but something is hindering it from producing more fruit? So what did God do? God touched it. He trimmed away those things that may be sinful. He also trimmed away those things that have become a hindrance—those things that take away our time, those things that take away our attention, our resources, and then hinder us from doing the Lord's work. We need to be corrected and then set on the right path again.

I have a friend who loves to fish. It is not bad to fish. There is not only the thrill and excitement, but there is also the catch, where you can eat whatever you catch. But my friend became so preoccupied with fishing that he'd be thinking about it all the time. Sometimes his friends would be sharing with him about their challenges and struggles in life, and then he would be thinking about the tug-of-war he faced with the fishes. He once shared with me that on one occasion during evangelism, all of a sudden, the conversation he was having with the stranger turned to fishing. He was supposed to be sharing about the gospel, and then from the gospel, he just spontaneously talked about fishing.

Fishing is not a bad thing, but it had become a spiritual hindrance to him. So, the word of God corrected him and caused him to put a stop and set him on the right path.

My friends, for some of us, it may not be fishing. We may know nothing about fishing, but it may be the amount of time we spend exercising in the gym, perhaps on the internet, on Facebook, going for holidays, or even our work. If it has become a spiritual hindrance to us, something that hinders our worship, our services, our spiritual walk with God, the word of God will correct us. Then, you and I must humble ourselves, be willing to be corrected, and then be set on the right path again.

So the Bible is profitable for doctrine, and then also for reproof, for correction. The Bible is also profitable for instruction in righteousness. Like bringing up a child, training a child, God will use His word to train us, to instruct us in righteousness. God's word is profitable to teach us, reprove us, correct us when we are wrong, and set us on the right path. Why? Because we are His children. He wants us to be trained. He wants us to be instructed so that we may live our lives in righteousness. So these are the four things that the Bible is profitable to us: teach us, reprove us, correct us, instruct us in righteousness.

Our third and final point is that God's word is able to equip us. Look at verse 17: "That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." There were only two occasions in the New Testament where this phrase "man of God" was used: here in verse 17, and then in 1 Timothy 6:11, where Paul said, "But thou, O man of God, flee these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness." Only two occasions, and both occasions were references to Timothy. Paul was speaking about Timothy. But when you read the Old Testament, this phrase "man of God" appears more than 70 times. Moses was called a man of God. Samuel was called a man of God. Samson was called a man of God. Elijah, Elisha, David—they were all called men of God.

It is a technical term that refers to someone who spoke God's word. In the broad sense, it refers to anyone who belongs to God, anyone who is a child of God. It refers to the person to whom God has given the Bible, that he will be able to live a life perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. The opposite of the man of God is the man of the world. God forbids that we be men of the world. You and I must be men of God. So this "man of God" applies to all of us, believers who belong to God.

The word "perfect" means to be equipped, adequate, or qualified. So, as a Sunday school teacher, you must be equipped with God's word, which is able to teach you, reprove you, correct you, instruct you in righteousness, so that you will be qualified to teach other believers under your care. As a believer, you have to be equipped with God's word so that you will be able to do whatever God has called you to do, and that is good works.

My friends, take a moment and consider this: why do you think God would allow us to continue living on this earth if heaven is a better place? If heaven is such a wonderful place, why doesn't God save us, and the moment He saves us, He takes us to heaven? He wants us to be engaged in good works. We

are not saved by good works; we are saved to do good works. There is a big difference in these two statements. You and I are saved to do good works. You and I have a set number of years on this earth—no more, no less—appointed by God. You and I also have a set number of things God wants us to do, appointed by Him. He wants us to be engaged in all these good works, whether it be worship, serving Him, to be engaged in missions, to support evangelism, discipleship, to help other people walk faithfully, to preach and teach, etc. The word of God is able to equip us to be engaged in all these good works.

So for as long as we live on this earth, no matter how long God has given to us, it is appointed by Him. We want to be engaged in doing all these good works, to completely finish all the good works that God has set before us. That is the meaning of "thoroughly furnished unto all good works." Whatever God has set before us, things that glorify Him, things that He has given us the opportunity to do to serve Him, we will be engaged.

As the saying goes, it is one thing to end our life—one day our life will come to an end—but it is another thing to finish it. At the end of the day, we want to say, like the Apostle Paul, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course." There is a course for us to take. "I have finished it. I have kept the faith" (2 Timothy 4:7). I pray that all of us will be able to say that: I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.

Last but not least, remember the context of this passage is about the dangers in the church. It is about the false teachers and false believers in the church. It is about apostasy—people who have only an outward form of godliness but are inwardly empty of the transforming power of the Gospel, pretending to be spiritual. How do we deal with them?

Well, my friends, our greatest defense is the Bible. The difference between us and the false believers is the Bible. We have the Bible, and the Bible is inspired by God. We believe it with all our hearts. We live our lives according to this inspired word. The Bible is profitable for us. It is able to teach us, reprove us when we go astray, correct us, set us on the right path, and instruct us in righteousness. And the Bible is also able to equip us to live such a life that we will honor and glorify our almighty God.

So, if this is truly the inspired word of God, what must we do? Read it. Hear it. Be eager about it. Study it. Memorize it. Meditate upon it. And most importantly, live it. And then, finish it. One day, when we draw our last breath, we can say, "I have finished my course."

Let us pray. Father in Heaven, we thank Thee for Thy precious word. Indeed, Thy word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. We thank Thee for how Thou hast brought us to these two verses. Indeed, it is so important for us to know and understand the doctrine of inspiration: all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. O Lord, we believe Thy word. We trust every word of God is inspired by Thee. Help us that we may live our lives according to Thy truth. We thank Thee for every opportunity Thou hast given to us, that we can read Thy word, hear Thy word, study it, memorize it, meditate upon it, and through the wonder-working of Thy Spirit, we will be able to live it and glorify Thee. O Lord, we give Thee thanks. In Jesus' name, we pray, Amen.