WWUTT 703 Profitable for Teaching?

All scripture is profitable, Paul says in 2 Timothy 3 .16.

That means it is inherently valuable, but it also benefits us as we apply the teaching when we understand the text.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We're back to our study in 2 Timothy, starting in chapter 3, verse 16, and reading through chapter 4, verse 5.

The Apostle Paul writes, 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.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having 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 midst.

As for you, always be sober -minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

Perhaps you noticed this the last couple of times that we've read this section, but how often does that word teaching come up?

Actually appears four times, either as teaching or we see it as teachers in chapter 4, verse 3.

But this again is that beautiful exhortation that Paul is giving to Timothy to continue as a teacher in the gospel that he has been taught.

In chapter 16, he begins with an understanding of scripture being used for teaching.

All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching.

I love that word profitable in the way that that is applied. It implies that scripture by itself is inherently valuable.

You don't have to do anything with it. It still has great value. In fact, scripture is infinitely valuable.

As Jesus said, heaven and earth will pass away. My words will never pass away.

So there is infinite value to the word of God. And scripture, what we read in the

Bible, scripture meaning sacred writings. So what we read in the Bible is the word of God.

It is breathed out by God and it is profitable for teaching.

So it is inherently valuable, but also as it is applied, you are benefiting from the value of that teaching.

You are profiting from it. So scripture is profitable for teaching.

This also implies that it progresses. The first time that you heard the gospel, you heard something that came from scripture.

The good news that Jesus Christ is God who came to earth, who lived a perfect life for us as our substitute, who died on the cross on our behalf, shedding his blood for our sins, rose again from the grave, showing that he had the power over death itself so that all who believe in him will not perish in the grave, but they will have everlasting life.

They will likewise receive a resurrection like his. Jesus is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, where he is interceding for everyone who follows him.

We have access to God and we are received by our father in heaven because of what

Christ has done for us. We are no longer children of the devil, but by faith in Christ, we have become adopted sons and daughters of God.

And we will be recipients of Christ's eternal kingdom rather than outcasts to the place of destruction, which is where all who did not believe in Jesus will be sent on the day of judgment.

The only way that you know that you can survive that day, that judgment is by faith in Jesus Christ.

So you heard this message of the gospel when you turn from sin and you believed in Jesus and that comes from scripture.

That's where that message came from. And that's a very basic understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I just shared it right there in about two minutes or less. I'm used to doing things in a minute and a half, teaching passages of the

Bible in those what videos. So the where was I, what was I talking about? The profitability of teaching.

So you profited from that teaching, those basic teachings when you first heard the gospel, but you will be progressing in that teaching.

So profitable implies that those teachings are going to progress.

You will come into more and more mature teachings, deeper truths, knowing more about Christ and who

God is and how he works and operates and what he has said. Knowing about his sovereignty, even seeing more about your own depravity and your sinfulness before God, how great his grace is that he has rescued you out of out from under the wrath that you were in before you came to Christ and on and on it goes.

These things that you learn and you understand the Old Testament being types and shadows of the things that Christ would fulfill, the sacrificial system that Christ fulfilled with his death on the cross.

And so you're, you're profiting as you go through this teaching, learning more about Christ, appreciating him more and more.

And this enhances your worship. You worship God all the more as you learn more about him, as you see more of what he has done for you, as you behold this whole big plan of salvation that goes all the way back to the garden of Eden in Genesis chapter three, when man fell from grace had rebelled against God.

And yet even there in Genesis three, 15, the gospel was being proclaimed and the fulfillment of that was in Christ Jesus.

And you read this whole narrative, this whole plan that scripture says God had established from before the foundation of the world he had ordained.

He had elected before any of these things had even taken place. How great our

God is. We learn all these things through the scriptures and you grow in your sanctification in the pursuit of holiness, in your understanding of God and desire to worship him as you read the scriptures and know more about him and, um, and apply those things to your life.

The apostle Paul said to the Colossians in Colossians chapter two, that in Christ is hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, everything we could ever want to know or learn.

We find it in Christ Jesus. All the philosophy of this world will never give you what theology, what right theology will give you in the study of Jesus Christ and his word.

You know, philosophy, if there's anything that philosophy has taught us, it's that man does not have the answer.

Philosophy is, is like a dog chasing his tail. It begins and ends with man. It doesn't ever really take you anywhere.

But you throw theology into that mix, the pursuit of God and the pursuit of holiness, of righteousness, of being made more like Christ.

And suddenly everything in this world that was previously meaningless, that was just a dog chasing his tail, it's going somewhere.

You are focusing on Christ and there is eternal value in that doing all things to the glory of God and seeing how things are profitable for the believer to grow them more and more into the image of Christ.

But you don't know those things simply by experience. You understand what it means to grow into the image of Christ based on what scripture says.

I remember I had a deacon in my church. This was several years ago, but a deacon came to me and took me out to lunch and he took me out to lunch because he was resigning and he said to me,

I need to step away from my position as deacon because my role in the church has become less and less and I'm not even there as much anymore.

And I told him, well, yeah, I meant to talk with you about that. There was some understanding that he was going to be gone a little bit because of a new job that he had taken on, but some of his absence was inexcusable.

And so I said, I did mean to talk to you about that. You're kind of preemptively deciding that you want to resign.

But why haven't you been in church? And he tried to excuse it at first as being because of his job.

But then suddenly, as he became a little bit more confident in the answer that he really wanted to give me, the excuse that he really wanted to provide for why he hadn't been in church, he said that he's been hunting.

He's been out hunting on Sundays. He wasn't coming to church because he was out in the hide. But he said to me, hey, you've got nothing to worry about.

I'm drawing closer to God now than I ever have been. I was a little curious about the statement, so I asked him if he would explain that.

How are you drawing closer to God while you're out hunting? And he said, well, I'm I'm appreciating creation.

I'm appreciating all that God has given me. And I look at this tree or this bush or the animals and the wildlife around me, and I thank

God for those things that he has given to me. And I said to this young man, I said to him, you know, that's that's all well and good.

We absolutely should look at the blessings that God has given to us because he has indeed blessed us with much.

And we give praise and thanks to God for all that he has provided for us, even the breath that is in our lungs.

You do that out of obedience because God has told you to give thanks to him in all things.

You're not growing in your knowledge of God through doing that, though. You are practicing what he has told you to do.

You are expressing appreciation to him because he has given you much. But your knowledge of God is not increasing.

You only grow in your knowledge and understanding of God through what is said in the scriptures.

And then as you apply what the scriptures say, that's when you find appreciation in those things, the world around you that God has blessed you with.

But you only grow in your knowledge and your understanding of him by reading the Bible and pressing him further.

I said, if your concern here is obedience to God, if you are out in the wilderness and giving him praise because you're obeying him when he says to give praise to him in all things, you say you love

God and the expression of our love for God is obedience. Jesus said, if you love me, you will obey my commandment.

So if that's your concern, where then is your concern for obeying the command to be a part of the church, his body?

Because right now, if you're saying you want to be out in the wilderness and you say that this is how you can express your love for God, but you don't want to be with his bride, his church, then how can you say that you really love

Jesus? It would be like saying to me, Gabe, I love you, but I really can't stand your wife. I can't stand

Becky, but I want to be your best friend. Well, that's not going to work. If you don't love my wife,

I'm sure not going to let you be my best friend. But that's exactly what you're doing when you say you don't have to attend church, but you can go hunting by yourself.

Here we are out in the wilderness. It's just me and Jesus. And as long as you're giving thanks to him for all the things around you, then you're doing the work of a good

Christian. But you think that you can go hang out with Jesus and not ever have to be part of his bride, not ever have to interact with the one whom he is preparing for glory.

That's a real problem and actually indicates that you don't love Jesus as much as you say you do, and you may not actually be part of his bride.

That's my concern here. And pressing him even more, I said, it sounds to me like you're making excuses for not wanting to attend church.

And there could be a couple of reasons for that. One could be because you are in some kind of sin right now that you really enjoy and you don't want to stop.

And, you know, if you went to church, you would be exposed and there would be people there who love you and care about you that would confront you and say, what you are doing is in rebellion against God.

And we're asking you to repent of that before something worse happens to you. I said it couldn't maybe it's not that severe.

Maybe you're just bored. You just don't want to attend church anymore, in which case you're still listening to your flesh and something serious still could happen to you down the road because you would prefer to be by yourself than with the church of God, even though we are told in the scriptures that we are being made into a holy nation unto the

Lord. No man worships as an island, as I've told to my congregation over and over again.

And I know this young man had heard me say it as well. It is through the regular teaching of the scriptures that we are able to arm ourselves against the devil's schemes.

If you are not regularly with the fellowship of God and hearing the word of Christ taught to the people of God, you leave yourself exposed to the devil's snares.

And none of us, none of us are are strong enough or capable enough to be able to withstand

Satan's tactics. He is an incredible opponent. We are told in Ephesians chapter six to arm ourselves with the armor of God and the weapon that we have described as the sword of the spirit is the word of God.

This is how we fight off what it is that Satan is trying to do to the people of God. We arm ourselves with God's word.

And if you run into battle without that, well, there's just no chance for you being able to defeat what this enemy is trying to do to you.

This is just some of the things that I shared with this young man at this table conversation, but I was unable to persuade him because as it so happened, he never came back to church again after that.

Turns out he was having an affair and that affair was probably going on at the time that he was having that conversation with me.

That's why he wanted to resign as deacon. He felt guilty. He knew that what he was doing made him a hypocrite and he did not want to be exposed and get caught, nor did he even want to stop what he was doing.

His wife likewise ended up having an affair of her own. The family we lost touch with, even though there were people in the church that they continued to communicate with, they would not talk to me, but I tried to encourage those who were still friends with them to reach out to them, to call them to repentance, that they would come back to the fellowship again, but it just didn't happen.

They both went after other partners and their children suffered greatly as a result of that split.

But it's, it's one of those, it's heartbreaking for me even to think about it now, but one of those things that exemplifies what can happen to a person who doesn't think the teaching of God's word is important and they don't see that it's profitable.

They don't see that they would gain any benefit from it. Isn't it enough that I say that I'm a follower of Jesus, that I say,

I believe in God, that I give God thanks for the things that are around me. No, that isn't enough.

That is not enough. Jesus has commanded that we would be part of his people.

If we are, if we are a follower of Jesus, we've been reconciled to God by the shed blood of Christ on the cross for our sins.

But we've not only been reconciled to God, we've also been reconciled to his people.

If we are not with the people of God, then we are not with God. And how do we come to know

God more? How do we grow as part of his people into the head who is

Christ? As I mentioned that again, we read it in Ephesians chapter four, how we grow in our understanding of God and who he is and our worship and in sanctification and the pursuit of holiness and being made more like Christ.

We grow in these things according to his word. All scripture is breathed out by God and it is profitable for teaching.

And through that teaching, we might be reproved. We would come to understand our guilt before God for our sinful rebellion against him.

That teaching is profitable for correction, telling us to turn around to correct our course before we continue on this path of destruction that will ultimately lead to our end.

This teaching is profitable for training in righteousness that we may continue to grow in the knowledge of him and be like our savior.

When Jesus walked this earth and he lived a life of holiness and he is calling us to do the same,

Matthew chapter five, be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. How do we do that? We know according to the word of God, as you obey what is in his word, you become a follower of God desiring to be like God and you do the things that God expects of you.

You pursue godly qualities and that's called godliness, which we're supposed to grow in Christ likeness.

And this is all according to his word training in righteousness, being righteous as God is righteous that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work equipped, just like we would be equipped with the armor of God.

And our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces in the dark realm.

In the broad sense, being equipped for every good work means being equipped to do every good work that God expects of his children to do.

And again, we know what those good works are based on what we read in scripture. But in the very specific sense,

Paul is seeking to equip Timothy to be a good servant in the teaching of the word of God.

And he is complete and equipped for that task when he knows the word of God.

How many teachers are there out there? You can name some off the top of your head who are not teaching according to the word of God, but they're just teaching off the top of their head.

They're teaching myths and diving into speculations and have strayed far from the sound words that flow from the teaching of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And it's about some of those teachers we will be reading next week as we jump more into chapter four.

But love the scriptures and grow according to these scriptures, that you may be equipped for every good work.

May the Lord find us as faithful and working servants on the day of Christ.

Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a

New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.