Sunday Sermon: All Scripture is God-Breathed (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

The Homily, Long Sermons, and a Return to 2 Timothy

A quote here from Pope Francis, probably haven't heard me begin a sermon with a quote from the Pope, but it was just this past week that he made this comment, the homily or the sermon as we would call it, must be brief, an image, a thought, and a sentiment.

The homily must not go on for more than eight minutes because after that with time, attention is lost and the people fall asleep and they are right. I laughed at that when I saw that earlier this week, thinking I just preached a sermon on Sunday that was over 50 minutes.

I listened to hour long sermons for fun during the week. We were just at the Building Tomorrow's church conference where every message was an hour and we paid to be there in order to hear those sermons.

And here you heard brother Chris in front of you this morning, encourage you to go to the website and listen to those wonderful messages that are there. We're Baptists. We enjoy long sermons and to hear the word of God preached.

This is in 2 Timothy 3 as we come back to our study of this book. And last week we looked at verses 10 through 15. We included 16 and 17 in there to keep it in context. This morning I'm going to begin in 16 and I'm going to go through chapter 4 verse 2 and you'll see how these passages, these verses go together.

So in honor of the word of the King, would you please stand? We're in 2 Timothy chapter 3, I'm going to begin reading in verse 16. We'll go through chapter 4 verse 2. Hear the word of the Lord. 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.

You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we come into this passage today, as we hear once again that all scripture is breathed out by God, may we understand that the scripture being God's word is authoritative and we are all to be subject to it.

And what it tells us to do, we should do. When God spoke to his children, Israel from Mount Sinai, they heard the voice of God, give the 10 commandments. And though it may not be in thunder and lightning and a mountain with smoke and fire going up like a furnace, yet we hear the very word of God every time we open these scriptures and read them.

And I pray your Holy Spirit would illuminate to us what it is that we read, that we may be conformed to the image of Christ and be driven in our spirits, not only to hear the word, but to do it and obey it.

And it would change our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. It's in his precious name that we pray, amen. My dad taught me the scriptures. He taught me how to use scripture to interpret scripture. He is a man of God that had such a great zeal for the word.

I grew up listening to my dad preach. He was not a pastor, but he was a Christian radio station planter. Every single morning that I went to school, I listened to my dad on the radio every morning without fail.

When I worked in Christian radio myself, I listened to other Bible teachers that we would have on the air. And these men became like mentors to me, but all under the guidance of my father. When I became ordained as a pastor, just shy of 30, I was 29 when I was ordained, but I was ordained on my dad's birthday and he was there at my ordination.

It was a great honor for me to be ordained on that day and to have my dad there and how providential of God to put a Sunday on my dad's birthday that I could be ordained on that day and my dad would be present for that.

My dad grew up in a church going home, but it was very nominal. They went because it was kind of the American thing to do. It wasn't really something that then continued in the home the rest of the week.

It was something that we did on Sunday, but his parents didn't really lead the household according to God's word or the gospel, anything of that nature. And so my dad didn't really grow up knowing the Lord.

He really didn't understand what it meant to believe the gospel or even to be a follower of Jesus. These were just things we did on a Sunday morning in his very religious Lutheran church that he attended, but didn't have any of those things really applied to his life.

It wasn't until he was in his 20s that he got set up on this blind date. Had never met this gal before. He went to go pick her up. He was wearing this denim jacket with a big American flag on the back.

This was on New Year's Eve in Columbia, South Carolina. And there was a big revival that was going on at Williams Bryce Stadium, which was where the Carolina Gamecocks played. So he goes and he picks up this gal and he's got this idea of what he wants to go do.

Well, it turns out this girl is a Christian. My dad is not. And so she suggests to him, hey, there's a big assembly going on at Williams Bryce Stadium. What do you think we go there? And he's like, yeah, sure.

I'm up for anything. So we went there not knowing that it was going to be like a big crusade. And he said, when they got there, the gal that he was with virtually disappeared. He didn't even know what happened to her.

She found a group of friends and went off with them. And he's like, I don't, I don't know what I'm doing here then. So he just kind of found his way into the crowd and he listened to the preacher preach.

And when he got to the end, he was convicted by everything that the preacher said. And the preacher went through the word of God, talked about your sin and your need for a savior, the judgment of God that is coming against all who do unrighteousness.

But only by faith in Jesus Christ can you be saved. And not only will you be saved, but Christ gives your life meaning and purpose, direction. Why are you here? For what reason do you live? You know those answers according to the word of Jesus.

And as my dad was listening to all of that, he was deeply convicted and he recognized his own sin. And he saw Christ for the very first time, not as just some religious philosopher that we hear talked about every single Sunday in the church that I grew up in with my parents.

But he knew Jesus as God, as savior, as one who is judge, but is also merciful and forgive sins and gives life. And so when the preacher gave an invitation for people to come down front, he went down front with everybody else.

And then they proceeded to speak words that my dad didn't even understand. He said, for first time commitments, go this direction. But for those of you who are rededicating your lives, you're going to go in this direction.

And my dad's going, what in the world does any of that mean? And so he went the rededicate your lives way because I'm dedicating my life. So I guess that's the, that's the direction that I go. So we ended up in a room with all of these people who were rededicating their lives to Christ.

But nonetheless, a counselor came to him and talked him through. Here's what this means. And here's what in your life you need to be doing in response to the message that you just heard. And they gave my dad a Bible.

He had a Bible, but this time it meant something to him. And the first thing he did when he went home was he opened it up and he counted every single chapter in the Bible. Now this was before you could use Google to just look that up for you.

And there wasn't any sort of concordance in this Bible that told you exactly how many chapters there were. He went page by page all the way through it and counted every single chapter, over 1100 chapters.

And so then he calculated in his head, how many chapters a day do I have to read in order to get all the way through my Bible? And he figured out three to four chapters a day, every day, and he could get all the way through the Bible in a year.

Well, he ended up reading more than that and ended up getting through it in about half a year. And then ever since then, he has continued to read the Bible every year and has been through it in his life more than 30 times.

At one point as he was reading, he actually began to get discouraged because he remembered the words that the preacher said, but he wasn't finding those same words in his Bible. And he was wondering in himself, did I really hear what I thought I heard?

Or was the preacher giving a completely different speech than the words that I can actually find in the Bible? And he asked the Lord, God, can you show me the words that the preacher said? I want to see the same verses that he said, and I want to be able to see what else is said in those passages.

Lord, can you show that to me? And my dad says in his testimony that the moment he said, amen, he looked down and the first place his eyes fell was a verse that he remembered that preacher saying. And he started reading everything around it, and he would turn a few more pages and he found another one.

And he started reading what that meant and everything around it. He couldn't remember any of the references, whether this guy had quoted John or Romans or whatever else, but he just found the verses. The Spirit illuminated to him the meaning and the understanding of these things, that he may be convicted in heart and know the truth that Jesus Christ is Savior and Lord.

And so my dad, knowing that it was right here in the Bible, that I found the words to save, that he committed his life to teaching those words to others, that we in the hearing of those words likewise will be saved.

Romans 10, 17 says, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. So me being his oldest son, he taught me the Bible and from age five to seven, I read through the entire Bible. And then he took me through the Bible again and he showed me how to use scripture to interpret scripture and we would see certain passages and he would tell me, now you've already read through the Bible, here you're seeing this verse, which you've seen that before.

Where have you seen that before? And I would say, well, I think it was over here. And so he would show me that and showing how all of it is one cohesive story. And though we're reading here over 750 ,000 words that were written by over 40 different men over a period of time of about 1600 years on three different continents in three different languages, yet we have one story that all points to the same thing, illuminating for us our sin and need for a savior and pointing to Christ is that savior.

And this was not anything that any man could have decided, here's the story that I want to tell. That over that period of time and using that many men to tell this story, how do we come up with one cohesive same message?

Because it was God through his Holy Spirit that we're leading men to this place to write down what God wanted them to write the entire time. And so when we open up here, 2 Timothy 3 .16, and we read these words of the apostle Paul, all scripture is breathed out by God.

Then we know that what we read in the pages of scripture is given by God himself. And what we read in the Bible is not merely a book that contains the word of God. This actually is the word of God. And so what we want to consider this morning as we come back to the section that we've been looking at here in 2 Timothy 3, we want to refresh our minds and renew our thinking and an understanding of what it is that we do every time we open God's word.

Every time you hear it preached, every time you read it for yourself, whether you're listening to a podcast or you're reading a Bible study, what are we reading when we open this book? Being reminded once again of the power of the very word of God to save and to sanctify, preparing us for that day that we will be with our God forever in glory.

Now if you'll remember this section, again, that we read last week from 10 to 17, it's in this section that Paul has instructed Timothy to follow my teaching, that was in verses 10 to 13 that we looked at last week, continue in the teaching, verses 14 to 15, and he finishes by saying what is profitable for teaching.

That's the section we're looking at today, verses 16 to 17. But even these verses, just these two verses here, break down in these three ways. First of all, we want to come to understand that all scripture is God-breathed.

That's number one. And then secondly, we want to see how this scripture is useful for training in righteousness. And what does that mean when we say training in righteousness? That's number two. And then thirdly, we want to understand how this word is able to equip the man of God, able to equip you and me for every good work.

So once again, understanding that scripture is God -breathed. Number two, it is useful for training in righteousness. And number three, able to equip us for every good work. And so what do these things mean as we read?

So first of all, looking at this very first part, 2 Timothy 3 .16, all scripture is breathed out by God, or in some of your translations, God -breathed. The Greek word here is theanoustos, literally God -breathed.

This is the only place in the Bible that word appears. And there is not any evidence in any other ancient Greek writings that that word has appeared anywhere else in antiquity until Paul wrote it here to Timothy from prison.

So Paul may very well have come up with a new word here in order to articulate to Timothy what it is that he holds in his hands, what it is that he communicates to God's people every time he opens the scriptures and lets it fly.

It is the word of God. Theanoustos, theo meaning God, and noustos meaning breathed. It is when God speaks and the word that proceeds, it is breathed out by God. All scripture, though it be written down, that word scripture meaning something that is written, but it is breathed out by God and therefore profitable for these things.

So Paul refers not only to the Old Testament scriptures here, but even the new. And I've heard it said that some theologians, when they are musing over this particular statement, all scripture breathed out by God, they would say, well, when Timothy would teach, he's teaching Old Testament.

So really what Paul had in mind here were the Old Testament scriptures because those New Testament scriptures had not yet been completed. But that's simply not true. Paul had in mind here both the old and the new, even though canon wasn't completed yet.

And in fact, Paul considered the very word that he was giving to Timothy here, the word of God. An apostle knew when he wrote that he was writing God's word. The prophets knew when they wrote that they were writing God's word over 4 ,000 times in the Bible.

Do the writers make a suggestion either outright saying it or inferring it that what they are writing is God's word and they are not even the least bit ashamed or giving pause whenever they say such a thing.

It's not like any of these prophets or apostles, when they're writing that are going, you know, I might be onto something here. Maybe this is from God. They knew it was from God. You just consider when Amos delivers his word and Amos says, I'm not a prophet.

I'm not even the son of a prophet. I'm a farmer. And yet this word that has come from me to you is from God. Now, sometimes that word was clearly and plainly articulated. As I gave the illustration in the beginning of God speaking from Mount Sinai to his children, Israel.

When you have angels there in legions and you have the mountain going up in smoke and in flame and the voice of God sounds like trumpet blasts and peals of thunder, the way that it's described there in Exodus 19, before we even get to the 10 commandments in Exodus 20, you know, that's God speaking.

And even the children of Israel knew it because they were terrified by it. And they go to Moses and they go, we're going to die listening to this voice. So why don't we go back to the arrangement where you go up on the mountain and you listen to God and then you come tell us what it is that he said.

That seems a little safer for us. So sometimes they knew for certain that what they heard was God's voice. And it wasn't just him speaking into their minds. He was speaking audibly. The apostle Paul talks about in Acts chapter 26, when he was giving his testimony before King Agrippa, he said that when Jesus spoke to him on the road to Damascus, Paul even says, he spoke to me in the Hebrew language.

So it's not just God speaking into my head and I have these thoughts. And so, oh, that must be God. He clearly and plainly articulated to his prophets and to his apostles what he said. Now, sometimes there were inspirations that would come.

For example, in 2nd Timothy, what we read here, though it is the word of God, it would not have been Jesus or the Holy Spirit standing right there by Paul's side in this dungeon and telling him what it is that he needs to write down.

So it's not dictation. Jesus himself said to his own disciples, I will give my Holy Spirit to you and he will lead you into all truth and bring to your remembrance the things that I have said to you. So there are occasions when it's clearly and articulately said, there are other times in which the writer is led by the spirit, but regardless, whether the prophet or the apostle is writing, they know what they're writing comes from God.

And there's simply no mistake or no mystery in that. And so when God's word says that it's God's word, that's something that we need to pay attention to. For if we're hearing the word that comes from the very creator of the universe, that is a word that is more powerful than any man's.

So Paul is referring not only to Old Testament, but even New Testament scriptures. Even this letter that Paul has written to Timothy, observe how Peter equates Paul's letters to the rest of scripture in 2 Peter 3 .16.

That's a passage we're going to go to here in just a moment. So Paul had called or Peter had called Paul's letter scripture. And so being God breathed does not mean that the Bible was dictated by God as the writers did not necessarily hear a voice from heaven and write down exactly what God said.

Although in some cases they did. In Exodus 34 .27, for example, God has Moses chisel out some more tablets on which God is going to give the 10 commandments. Because if you'll remember, Moses had already thrown those down after the Israelites were caught worshiping a golden calf.

So he broke those. And even that was symbolic of demonstrating to the children of Israel, you have broken God's commands. And so Moses broke them when he threw them down. But he cuts out two more stone tablets and God literally with his own hand wrote down the 10 commandments on those tablets himself.

To Jeremiah in Jeremiah 30 verse 2, he tells Jeremiah, write this down. And so Jeremiah writes down exactly what it was that God told him to say. So sometimes we do have dictation that's given in Scripture and the prophet writes what God told him to write.

But all Scripture was written by divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Now, we still need to be careful with that word inspiration. Sometimes that word will be used in Scripture, depending on the translation.

Or even in our own statement of faith, we have that word inspiration that comes up. But that's really a crude word. I don't think it accurately captures for us exactly what is meant when we understand Scripture being God breathed.

Because I've been a musician, I've written songs before, or I've written fiction or something like that. And you can be inspired. I'm inspired to write a song. But what I write down, even though it might be praise to God, is not actually God breathed.

It wasn't God giving me this lyric in such a way that this is now equal to what is said in Scripture. So inspired is not really the best word. It's kind of the word that we have, so it's the word that we use.

But don't let that be confused with the way that you might be inspired to go and do something because you were motivated or you felt goosebumps. And so now I'm inspired to do this. That wasn't the same way that these men were receiving God's word and therefore passing it on.

Peter says in 2 Peter 1 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 a unique word there too that Peter uses to say carried along.

That doesn't appear elsewhere. Like the Holy Spirit was actually taking these prophets and apostles to the place that God wanted them to go. God has spoken through a very select few men in history. And even fewer women, Deborah and Huldah, for example, are referred to as prophetesses in the Old Testament.

To know that the word they spoke was a word from God, it was often accompanied by something clearly miraculous. The Lord told Israel how they were to test any word that claims to be from God. Even if someone does something miraculous, but the teacher says, let us go after other gods and serve them.

That teacher is a false prophet. According to Deuteronomy 13, 1 through 5. If a teacher makes a claim that does not come to pass, that was another sign that he was a false prophet and the Lord has not spoken to him.

Deuteronomy 18 20 to 22. You will have many preachers even in evangelical churches today that will stand in front of their congregations and they will say, the Lord told me to tell you. No, he didn't.

If somebody ever says to you, the Lord told me what better follow that should be a verse from scripture. It is not God revealing to them some special revelation that you would not be able to find any other way if it wasn't for that preacher being able to tell you these things.

They say those things because they want to be authoritative. They want you to think of them as authoritative. I'm on a one-on-one connection with God here. So if he tells me something, you better listen to it.

And if you disobey it, it's the same as if you were to disobey God. That's an abusive relationship between that pastor and his congregation. It is not a pastor who loves his congregation. As Justin Peters has said, if you want to hear God speak, read the Bible.

If you want to hear him speak to you out loud, read the Bible out loud. But be careful that you don't think in so doing that God's voice sounds like your voice. Let's look at a few passages together as to help us better understand God's communication to us through his prophets and his apostles.

We're here in 2 Timothy. We're going to go to the right in all of these references. So turn with me, first of all, to Hebrews. Let's go to Hebrews 1. Hebrews 1. We're going to be looking at verses 1 and 2 here, right at the very start of this letter or this sermon, however you understand Hebrews to be.

Hebrews 1, beginning in verse 1. Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. God what? He spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has what?

Spoken to us by his son whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom also he created the world. Let's consider that again as we look at that more intently. Long ago, at many times and in many ways, or in some translations, in diverse ways.

So at many times, at many different seasons, at a particular point in time, God chooses to communicate to his people through a prophet. Now, all the way through the Old Testament, we have various occasions in which God speaks to his people.

But there are two main periods of time that we see emphasized there where God communicates to his people. And that is through Moses and through Elijah. Those are the two main times in the Old Testament that God is speaking to his people.

Now, every prophet that we have in the Old Testament, God is speaking through, whether that is Daniel or Hosea or Amos or Obadiah or otherwise. God is speaking directly to those prophets who are then speaking to the people.

But those are the two main times that God is addressing his entire people through prophets. We know from what we've been studying in Sunday school in the book of Genesis that God spoke to Abraham. He's not speaking to a whole group of people.

He was only speaking to Abraham. But he told Abraham, I'm going to tell you to go here and obey. And I'm going to make you into a great nation. You're going to be the father of many nations. Whoever blesses you, I will bless.

Whoever curses you, I will curse. I will protect you and bring you to the place that I have promised you that you are to come and makes other promises with Abraham. Your descendants are going to inherit this land.

And God's address with this man whom God chose, through that man, God brings the Messiah as a descendant of Abraham, through Isaac, through Jacob, through Judah. And on down the line, it is through the line of David that the Messiah comes, just as was prophesied in scripture.

So at many different times, God has made an address to a person or to his people. And he's done this in many ways. Sometimes God specifically speaks himself to the person and they hear the voice of God.

Other times he's communicated through a dream. You think of Joseph and the dreams that Joseph dreamed that God was communicating through, revealing things that would happen in the future. But sometimes that dream didn't come to Joseph.

Sometimes that dream came to a wine cup bearer or a baker or Pharaoh himself. And then Joseph interprets what it was that God showed to this ruler. We see the same sort of thing happen with Daniel and his friends, with Nebuchadnezzar is plagued by these dreams that he doesn't understand.

And these prophets of God articulate for him what it is that God is communicating through this king. There are other times for Daniel that he's been given a vision. So it's not even a word that comes to him exactly, but a vision that he sees.

And sometimes he doesn't even understand that vision until an angel comes and interprets for him the vision that it is that he saw. There are sometimes when something was given to a king that he didn't understand, a prophet articulates for him what it was that the king saw.

So we have all these different periods of time and these different ways that God has spoken. But in every one of these times and ways, it was clearly understood this comes from God. And God made sure that the hearer at some point, even if they didn't really understand what it was that they were hearing or seeing, at some point they come away knowing that this was God who was speaking.

You think of the time that the angel of the Lord came to Samson's parents and told Samson's parents that they were going to be with child. They're like, who is this guy? But then after speaking with him and the miraculous sign that they showed, that the angel of the Lord showed to them, they came away realizing we've just heard the word of God.

And so there's no mystery at any point in this whether or not it is God speaking. And many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. My friends, he doesn't just speak to anybody.

And that is something that we in our humility have got to get through our heads. He does not talk to you like he talked to Abraham. And even when I as a pastor have said something to the effect of God called me into ministry, understand that when I say that, I am not in any way communicating that in the same level or with equalness to the way that God called Abraham.

I did not hear the voice of God. He has not specifically positioned me here as some kind of prophet that you must therefore listen to and obey as though what I'm saying to you here is exactly the word of God.

When I'm quoting to you the scripture, that's the word of God. Everything else is Gabe's commentary, okay? Well, we'll use that phrase or that expression that God called me to do something, but don't you dare equalize that with what God called a prophet to do.

Why is it that God chose only certain men to speak through at certain periods of time? The answer to that question is beyond my understanding. I have no idea. But it's because he's God and his ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than our thoughts.

But praise God that he has chosen to humble himself that we would hear his word through a prophet or an apostle. Every time God has spoken to us, he's always brought himself down to speak to us creatures who are undeserving to hear the word of the God of the universe.

And yet he has done it for us. And praise God for that. Beware lest you become like Korah and his men and say, hey, we are just as deserving of hearing God's word. We are just as authoritative as Moses and Aaron.

And if you think of yourself as, I should be able to hear God's word just like they heard it, then would you be consumed as Korah and his men in the pride that they had? God has chosen specific people in time to speak through.

And he has spoken and his word is the Bible and he's not speaking any further. As wiser men than I have said, if private revelation agrees with scripture, then it's needless. And if it disagrees with scripture, then it's false.

God's word is sufficient and it has given us everything that we need. And Christ continues to speak today, but he speaks to us here through the scriptures that were given to us through the apostles and prophets to whom God gave his word.

We are sinful creatures. We are unworthy to be in the presence of God. We who are made in God's image sinned against God. We've been separated from God ever since Ab and Eve were removed from the garden of Eden.

And so we all don't get to hear God's audible voice. We will one day, but it won't be today. Oh, unless Christ returns today, then it will be today. When you hear the trumpet call, I'm going y 'all. I don't know about you, but then let it be that we heard the voice of God that day.

But God has chosen specific people through whom to speak. It's not to every single person because we've all been separated from God because of our sin. But God has drawn us to himself and has spoken his word.