WWUTT 701 All Scripture is God Breathed?

Surely you've heard this verse before, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. But have you ever really tried to understand what that means when we understand the text?

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt .com.

Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Thank you, Becky. And welcome back to another week of Bible study. We are still in 2 Timothy, moving into chapter four this week, but our launching point is chapter three, verse 16, where we left off last week.

All Scripture Is Breathed Out by God

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 myths.

As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. Boy, how good that sounds when we look at it like that, going all the way back to chapter three, verse 16.

I think we have a tendency, when it comes to chapter and verse markers, to let the chapters break up the context. So chapter three is one thought, and then when we go into chapter four, we're starting a new thought, but chapter and verses were added later.

That wasn't added by the Bible writers, and so while chapter and verses are great to kind of help break things up a little bit, maybe memorize scripture a little bit better, don't let it also break up the context, because there's a clear consistency and flow to this instruction that Paul gives Timothy.

In verse 16, chapter three, verse 16, once again, all scripture is breathed out by God. And as I said last week, this reference to scripture is primarily to the Old Testament. That canon was already complete by the time that Paul was writing this, but it doesn't exclude the New Testament, or the epistles of the New Testament.

The New Testament canon had not been completed yet, I mean, we're reading one of those letters that would eventually be added to that canon, but even the letters that the apostles were writing to the churches were considered or regarded as much scripture as anything that was written in the Old Testament.

In 2 Peter 3, 16, the apostle Peter said that there are ignorant and unstable men who twist the things that Paul says in his letters as they do the rest of the scriptures. So he's equating what Paul writes to the churches with what we have in the Old Testament scriptures.

They are, it's all scripture, it's all breathed out by God. And this reference to scripture being breathed out by God, this is even loftier language than just understanding that scripture is simply inspired by God.

And certainly it is. When the Bible writers wrote down what they wrote, they were inspired by the Holy Spirit. As Peter also wrote, 2 Peter 1, verse 21, no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

And that's one of those references we'll use to explain the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But it's more than that. Certainly they were inspired by the Holy Spirit, but it's more than that. What they wrote down actually came from God.

And even Peter says that there, where he says no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. What we have written down in the Bible was not just Paul getting goosebumps and getting enthusiastic about the Spirit and writing a letter to Timothy.

Paul wrote down exactly what God meant for him to write. And all of this that we have in the Bible is breathed out by God. It is God speaking to us. That's what we have in the Bible. Do you want to hear God speak to you?

Read the Bible. Do you want to hear him speak to you out loud? Read the Bible out loud. As my brother Justin Peters has said, this is how we hear the voice of God. This is how we know his word by reading the Bible.

And everything that we have in this book is breathed out by God. The Greek word that's used here for breathed out is theonoustos. And it is the only place in ancient Greek writing that the word appears.

It's the only place in the Bible that theonoustos appears, right here in 2 Timothy 3, 16. But there is not any other place in any ancient Greek writing where that word is found. And it's likely that Paul was coining a brand new word called a neologism.

He was taking two words, theo, which meant God, and noustos, which meant breathed, and putting them into a new word, God breathed. To emphasize how authoritative Scripture is, and from whom it comes, it's from God.

Paul, as an apostle of Jesus Christ, was a carrier of the very word of the Son of God. And so what he wrote down in the authority of Christ came from God himself. All Scripture is breathed out, theonoustos, breathed out by God.

And it leads to all kinds of good things that are pleasing to the Lord. And he goes on to explain what those things are. Scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

Now, I'm going to come back to those things, but that's not the end of the sentence. It goes on into verse 17, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. So an understanding of Scripture, growing in an understanding of Scripture, leads to these things, but not just those things, for it equips you for every good work, everything that would be pleasing to the Lord.

How do I please God? Well, we have the answer to that question when we read his word. What does he say is pleasing unto him? We find it when we read the Bible. Now, once again, Paul says that all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

Now, there is a reason for that particular order. Teaching is everything that we can glean from the word of God. And it's not just that we would read it for the sake of reading some kind of piece of literature, that we would learn about the past and maybe want to know something about the future.

But to be taught implies there's going to be an imperative element to this. If you are a learner, you're not just sitting there hearing about facts and storing up knowledge in your brain, but there is going to be an expectation that what you are hearing and what you are learning will change you and you will respond to what you are being told.

Jesus didn't come to talk just for the sake of talking, but what he taught were commandments that you must follow. Remember the great commission before Jesus is about to leave his disciples and he commissions them to go into the world.

He says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Now, therefore, go into all nations, baptizing in the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

Teaching what? To observe all that God has commanded. So when we read that here in 2 Timothy 3, 16, that all scripture is profitable for teaching, it's so that we would learn what God expects of us. He is what he has commanded us to do, and we would likewise do it.

James 1 says, don't just be hearers of the word and deceive yourselves if you just listen to the word of God as though you're listening to literature or you're desiring to expand your knowledge. And so, yeah, the Bible is another thing that I need to learn about.

Well, you are deceived because you think that the Bible is not something that is calling you to respond, but it is. And so you must not just be hearers of the word. You must do what the word of God says.

The word of God is profitable for teaching. It is profitable for reproof. And like I said, there's a reason for the order that these things are given in. What is reproof and what would be the difference between reproof and correction, which is coming up?

Well, reproof is an expression of blame or disapproval. Romans 3 19 and 20 says this. We know that whatever the law says, because remember, when Paul says scripture, he's speaking primarily about the Old Testament, not excluding the New Testament, but mostly the Old Testament because that canon was complete.

So whatever the law says, Romans 3 19, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God for by works of the law. No human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

So when we read the scriptures, we are going and it actually penetrates us. The Holy Spirit opens our hearts to receive what is being said and we're actually convicted by it. Then we are reproved by what we read in scripture, breathed out by God.

God has expressed to us in his word blame and disapproval toward us because of our sinfulness against God. We find out about that in the word. As Paul said in Romans chapter seven, I didn't know what it was like to covet until I read in the law, do not covet.

And then once I read that in the law, I became knowledgeable of my sin. I realized I'm a covetor. I have rebelled against God and his law. He says, don't do this. And I've, I've done that. I have done exactly what God said not to do.

And so I become aware of my sinfulness. The word of God exposes to us our guilt before God that he disapproves of us in our sinful rebellious state so that we would mourn over that sin and desire repentance.

The apostle Paul said with the Corinthians that there is a grief that leads to death, but we need to experience a godly grief that leads to repentance. And that's hopefully what we would experience when we read the word of God, when we read about our sin, when we realize that in the sinful state that we are in, we are to blame for our sin and no one else.

And God disapproves of us because of that position that we are in sinful, rebellious, fallen children, descendant from Adam, children of the devil, not children of God. It is Christ who cleanses us from our sin and adopts us into the family of God by his shed blood on the cross.

We come into that good news, the good news of the gospel and understand it is good news when we have first been made aware of our sin. So that's what reproof is. It's an expression of blame or disapproval.

And we come into understanding that God does not approve of our sinful condition because of what we read in the scriptures. But then look what comes after that. All scripture is breathed out by God, profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction.

So now that we realize we are guilty, we are to blame for our sin. God disapproves of us because of our rebellious state before him. Once we come to understand that, according to what the scripture says, then we're ready to receive correction.

I'm presently on a course, I'm on a road that will lead to my destruction unless I make a course correction. And how do I do that? How am I corrected? How do I turn around? How do I repent and go the other way?

And scripture tells us that as well. We must not sin anymore. We must not follow along after the passions of our flesh. And that's what Paul is coming up to here in just a little bit. So if we are following the scriptures, we will desire righteousness.

But here in a moment, he's going to talk about those who reject sound teaching and having itching ears. They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. When we repent, we're no longer following the passions of our flesh, but we are instead pursuing the righteousness of God.

We're going after those things that are pleasing to God. So correction, there's a course correction. We are reproved. We realize our guilt according to what the scripture, the scripture says. We follow the instruction of scripture to repent, to make a correction, to turn back, to do what God says rather than following the passions of the flesh.

And then it says for training in righteousness. Now training in righteousness means that that there's there's a continuous effort going on there. Whenever you train, you're trying to get better at something or you're preparing yourself for something even greater down the road.

So you think of like right now, the NBA playoffs are going on. Well, we're in the finals, Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers, as it has been for four consecutive NBA finals now. But anyway, so these basketball players, they are the greatest players on planet Earth playing for the NBA championship.

How did they get here? Constant practice and training. And whenever you will, we'll see some of these games where it comes down to like a last second shot, a buzzer beater, and then they win the game.

Oftentimes you'll you'll watch a press conference with the player that made the winning shot. And something that he will say in that press conference is, you know, this is what I dreamt about when I was a kid.

This is this is the shot that you would make with your socks into the laundry basket when I was six or seven years old, you know, and I'd be fading back going three, two, one, and I shot the socks and they go into the basket.

Yeah, we won. So this is what a player has been preparing for. And they'll put themselves through all kinds of situations, different shots that they might have to make during the game to prepare themselves, to train themselves, to compete at the highest level.

And so when we are growing in our knowledge and understanding of the word of God and we're obeying what it says, we are being trained in righteousness. And tomorrow you're going to be better at righteousness than you were yesterday.

As we train in righteousness, we we are conditioning ourselves by the renewing of our minds, according to Romans 12 to to seek God and his kingdom and his righteousness first and foremost, above all things, according to the instruction that Jesus gave in Matthew chapter six.

So scripture helps us do that. We follow the word of God. We read the word of God to be taught, desiring to learn, to be reproved, to realize our guilt before God for our sin and rebelliousness against him for correction, how we might know how to be forgiven our sins that we've committed against God.

And it is by faith in Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross, his resurrection from the grave and for training in righteousness, how then we grow in the knowledge of God and what he has done for us through Jesus Christ and what he is making us into as he is shaping us more and more into the image of the sun.

All of these things we read about in the scriptures breathed out by God. Verse 17, that the man of God, man or woman of God, but a person who has now been made into the image of Christ or is being made into the image of Christ because of this transforming work that has been done through the gospel.

So this person may be complete and equipped for every good work. And there we've read about inerrancy and sufficiency, the inerrancy of scripture and the sufficiency of scripture, knowing that all scripture is breathed out by God.

It's all authoritative. And whatever God says is perfect. He does not err in anything that he says. So therefore all scripture is authoritative. It is binding on every single person. If it's perfect, there is not a single person on planet earth that can get out from under the authority of God's word.

It is binding on everyone. That's the authority, the inerrancy of God's word. And then verse 17, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. It applies to everything, everything that we could do that would be pleasing to God.

We know what those things are according to the scriptures, which means now the scripture is also sufficient for our every need to be to have an inerrant word of God. It must also be sufficient for if it's not perfect, it doesn't apply to everything.

But God's word does indeed apply to everything. It is how we know how we can be men and women of God in a crooked and depraved generation in which we will shine as lights in the world. What a beautiful passage.

And I hope that this has opened this scripture up to you all the more than it has before. You've surely known 2 Timothy 3, 16, even 17. Maybe you learned it in a wano when you were a little kid. But now that we've looked at it in the way that Paul has presented it to his servant, Timothy, may it be all the more open to you and convicting to you and motivating to you that you would be trained in righteousness according to the word of God.

Let's finish with prayer and then we'll get into our exposition of chapter 4 tomorrow. Our Lord God, we thank you for your word. What a privilege this is to be able to open up the word and read it just like this or to open up the podcast and have somebody read the word of God to us so that by it we may be equipped for every good work.

And so Lord, as we come to this, the living, breathing, active word of God sharper than any two edged sword. May we desire to be taught. May we even want to be reproved so that we can be corrected and trained in righteousness to be shaped all the more into the image of Christ in this work of sanctification in ongoing holiness in the life of a believer.

Help our faith be or make our faith progress. Let us not ever be going backwards, but always forwards as we look to Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith. In whose name we pray, Amen.

Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues. You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com.

Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word when we understand the text.