Perilous Times - [2 Timothy 3]

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As I look out over the congregation of faithful ones tonight who have both figured out what time it is and remembered where the church was so I am you're not supposed to do this too much, but I'll make an exception tonight.
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I'm reminded of an old Preacher looked out over his congregation one
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Sunday and there was only one old farmer out there and He says well brother.
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He said should I still preach? And the old boy said well preacher said when
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I drive the hay wagon out if only one cow comes to be fed I still feed her So he preached away and at after the end of the service.
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He says well brother. What'd you think? And the old farmer says well preacher.
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He said If only one cow comes I still feed her, but I don't give her the whole wagon load and Anyway, we'll we'll see about the whole wagon load here
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Turn with me tonight if you would to 2nd Timothy 2nd
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Timothy chapter 3 Where Paul is going to give some words of advice and warning to Timothy and to the
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Christians that are at Ephesus This is Paul's last letter to Timothy Paul is well aware that he is about to be martyred or about to die and as he has said elsewhere in his writings that he is of mixed emotions for this because He is anxious to be in heaven and in his
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Lord's presence, but also He is concerned at having to leave behind The Saints that he cares about so much.
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So he writes this as a way of warning to Timothy Starting in chapter 3 with verse 1 this know also
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That in the last days perilous times shall come For men shall be lovers of their own selves covetous boastful boasters proud blasphemers disobedient to parents unthankful unholy without natural affection truce breakers false accusers incontinent fierce despisers of those that are good
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Traitors heady high -minded lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God Having a form of godliness, but denying the power of it from such turn away
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So let's have a word of prayer our Heavenly Father we would pray tonight as we open the word that the
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Holy Spirit would minister to us and Open our hearts and minister to us father and be our teacher as we examine what
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Paul has said To Timothy and to the Ephesian Saints and to us we ask this in Jesus name.
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Amen Paul begins his warning to Timothy by warning against a threat to the faith
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But he's also going to talk about the believers resource to meet that threat Now this is a fairly pessimistic text that list we just went through does not bode well
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Because basically what he's having to say is that the world is going from bad to worse and You know what?
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It's not going to get any better It's simply not going to get any better men are not going to bring in the kingdom by their own efforts
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Men are not going to save the planet in Fact men must wait for Christ to return
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Before things will be set right and it is interesting that right now
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Of course, we have new threats arising every day except when you look at them. They're really not new
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The we've made a big deal lately about the whole the whole book thing the
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Code They did the Da Vinci Code. Yes sudden blank there the
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Da Vinci Code and now with the latest thing is we found the tomb of Jesus and and all of that and Sometimes we get very upset about things like that because people do jump on it saying aha see
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And yet if you particularly that Da Vinci Code that whole thing there if you look at that that is nothing except the old
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Gnostic heresies being revisited the Gnosticism was already on the rise when the
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New Testament was being written Keep in mind when you read the New Testament a great deal of it was written to counter error
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That was already arising within 50 or 60 years of Christ's death already
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You had these heresies coming out and these things were under attack and a great deal of of what is in The New Testament is written here to counter error.
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And so what I'm saying here is that nothing is new you know, the enemy is not new and This kind of goes cyclical is that things arise and then they fall away and things arise and then they fall away
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And now the Gnostic heresies are sort of coming back up again The whole idea was you know that of the
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Gnostics was well, you know the Bible's well and good and all of that except that you know, there's really some there's some inner knowledge and Only those that are on the inside have the inner knowledge and you can
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You know, you got to be one of the really the in crowd, you know No, the secret handshakes and all of that to get in on the on the real stuff
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I mean this other stuff over here, that's fine for just the the general masses, you know But but but we know what's on the inside and that whole idea, of course that appeals to what it appeals to our pride doesn't it because we want to know that we're special and we have knowledge that people don't have and That's why alone
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Among the religions of the world, you know, we don't claim to have any special knowledge or any inside knowledge.
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I hear it all is You know, we've got that you've got the same Bible that I have and we have the same
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Bible that the pastors have and if you want another one just go down to any bookstore and you will find an
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Embarrassment of riches you won't be able to choose. There are so many different Translations and versions out there and yet this is the whole thing.
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We just lay everything out There is no inner knowledge But but Paul is addressing this whole idea that that there will be threats that are coming up but but There are new threats
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Threats of a different nature than those that Christians have faced up until this time because Paul speaks about the last days this know also that in the last days perilous times will come and so if you want to look at it this way everything from the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Can be called the last days
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Why because there's nothing left to happen until Jesus comes
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We've had the first advent of Jesus Christ. He has come. He has died. He has risen again and Now we have entered the last days and that may be it's been 2 ,000 years so far
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And it may run another 2 ,000 but it's still the last days because a couple of thousand or even four thousand years in God's economy is a drop in the bucket and So the entire church age is the last days on the biblical timeline
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There's nothing left from the church age except the rapture of the church. Then we hit the tribulation and Jesus returns again
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So we're living in the last days in the end of the last days
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Is going to be marked by three dramatic events First will be the rapture of the church
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First will be the rapture of the church when the church the body of Christ will be caught up to meet him in the air and debate debate rages on among theologians about what that means and what exactly the rapture entails but Suffice it to say that at least as far as we are concerned here the rapture of the church is a the word means to catch away or to snatch away and What's going to happen at some point?
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Is that Jesus will return in the air and All of us who are alive in the church will be caught up to meet him and the dead in Christ will rise too
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And we will all meet him in the air and he will take us into heaven to be with himself now this is a
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This is an event that will happen completely without warning It will happen completely without warning.
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And if you If you to support this if you read the Old Testament the
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New Testament particularly in Revelation You see all sorts of things about the return of Christ It's going to come like a thief in the night something hidden But then it's also going to come there's going to be a return that's going to be preceded by all kinds of signs and wonders and If you start plotting all this on paper, you begin to realize that the only explanation here is that we're talking about two events
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We're not talking about just one event Because there's supposed to be a rapture of the
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Saints to meet Jesus Christ in the air Then there's also a return of Jesus Christ physically to the earth Where he is going to rule on?
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David's throne as the son of David as is prophesied all through the Old Testament and in Revelation as well.
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And so The rapture of the church The great tribulation and Christ returned from earth to reign are the three great events that mark the end
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The end but meanwhile what's going to happen? well first of all
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Paul deals with the fact that men are fallen This is the doctrine of total depravity and he has his description of men's of men's condition that in verses 2 to 5 here
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For men shall be lovers of their own selves. That's certainly true today, isn't it? covetous boasters proud blasphemers
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Disobedient to parents they don't obey unthankful unholy
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Without natural affection truth truce breakers false accusers Incontinent that means with no self -control
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Fierce despisers of those that are good traitors heady high -minded lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God Having a form of godliness, but denying the power of it from such turn away and doesn't that describe modern society?
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We have built a society ourselves We have built a society which we are almost totally inward focused
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We have we participate in all of this Me mine, whatever
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I can get we are so oriented to you know, my rights my needs my wants
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I don't care about you. I Don't even you know, I don't even care about my own children as long as I can be comfortable in my life today
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And yet that describes society that describes our society and Paul's warning about this 2 ,000 years ago that this is where men are going to go as you put
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Man at the center of things and not God at the center of things. This is inevitably where you head
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To a sub to a totally self -absorbed Society and don't we have that?
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Don't we see that all the time it's completely self -focused and It says okay
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Covetous boasters and proud. Well, what is humanism? Aside from self -glorification man is the center of all things
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We placed man at the center Instead of placing God at the center and the
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Israelites had learned on several occasions to their peril what it meant to do that And yet, you know, they still hadn't really gotten it and we
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The rest of society has learned that from time to time as well. And yet it never sinks in It never sinks in and then what they're blasphemers.
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It says There is no fear of God before their eyes Romans Paul says in Romans to sum up the whole thing
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That's that's a summary statement. There's no fear of God before their eyes. We don't fear God We don't fear
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God, why do we not fear God because we don't believe he's there We don't believe he's really objectively there but he is that's the thing he is there and We are made in his image
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Whether we like it or not or whether we want to admit it or not and then he goes on They're unthankful.
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They're unholy. They're without natural affection This is a refusal to acknowledge God and Give him glory when when you thank someone when someone gives you a gift and you thank them for it
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You are acknowledging your dependence upon them for whatever it was that was given.
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I Mean you didn't earn it yourself. You didn't buy it yourself. You didn't go out and buy your own efforts acquire it someone gave you something and And so when you say thank you for this present whatever it is you are acknowledging your dependence upon that person for whatever it is that you have been given and We are supposed to do that to God God tells us that everything we have
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Everything we are Every breath we draw Everything is a gift from his hand and we are to thank him for it.
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We are to be Grateful to him if you will for it because we are to acknowledge our dependence upon him
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We are to acknowledge that that we have no we have no Existence apart from him, you know, we didn't drag ourselves up out of the muck by our own bootstraps
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You know, we we didn't one day, you know Spy something up on the beach and crawl out of the crawl out of the water on our own
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We are here because God made us and we are to acknowledge that and we don't
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Why because we're proudful We're prideful. We're we're like little children and that we are rebelling and yet most
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Americans Unfortunately have become practical atheists now in our country.
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There are actually very few relatively few Overt atheists not too many people stand up and proudly proclaim that they are atheists
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At most generally they say well, I'm agnostic. I don't know, you know You don't see a lot of atheists, but the world the
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United States in the world is full of practical atheists People who live as if there is no
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God Certainly there is no God there might be some vague something out there that you know
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Sort of looks over things and rules over things maybe and perhaps but certainly nothing that that affects me
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Nothing that sets a standard that I should live to There's no one out there that has any claim upon my loyalty that has any claim upon my allegiance
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That has any claim upon my life that I should that I should follow him we don't want to see anything of that sort and so we conduct our lives as if God doesn't exist and Unfortunately all too many people who would claim the name
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Christian live like that and we see things we see things like this whole idea of this whole idea of easy grace, you know cheap grace and Easy believism, you know come to Jesus and as a fire escape
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You know, you don't don't worry. You don't you don't need to to change anything about your life You know, you don't need to follow him.
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You don't need to make him your Lord But you know just sign up sign here, you know on this on this fire insurance policy and then you can escape at the end
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But that's not what the Bible says That's not what the Bible says the
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Bible says if you would follow me take up your cross and Come after me And we don't want to do that.
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We don't want to do that but the Bible defines these people in several places
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As a fool, that's the biblical definition of a fool is one that says in his heart.
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There is no God but consider this
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Consider this here's a few statistics Sixty -seven percent of all
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Americans This is out of a survey that was cited in the day America told the truth what people really believe about everything that matters
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James Patterson and Peter Kim and it was cited in our dying culture by David Wells What about it lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God so what about it
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Sixty per seven percent of Americans do not believe in moral absolutes Seventy percent of Americans do not believe in absolute truth
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Seventy -four percent will steal without compunction only nine percent say they feel shame and this by the way is
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About 10 or 15 years old, so it's probably gotten worse Sixty -seven sixty four percent will lie to gain advantage
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Forty -one percent say they intend to use quote recreational drugs unquote Thirty percent will cheat on their taxes
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Fifty -three percent will commit adultery given the opportunity only thirteen percent of a man of Americans say all ten commandments have moral validity only eleven percent of Americans say lying produces serious shame and Only seventeen percent of Americans define sin as a violation of God's law
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Now if we assume that most people were honest for whatever reason when they gave that that's a pretty grim picture
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But that's what Paul tells us to expect He says in verse 6 for of this sort are they who creep into houses and leave captive silly women laden with sins led away with various lusts and Then he starts in on the rest of society.
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He says ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth Ever learning we're always trying to learn something new
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Paul knew all about that He had been on the at the Areopagus and talked to the people, you know that always wanted to hear something new
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You know just because it was new not that they were gonna believe it or make any action on it, but they wanted to They wanted to hear something and we're like that our institutions of higher learning
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Are full of students more students go to college these days than have ever gone to college before and They probably come out poorer educated than ever before because As we as we've said before, you know
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You if you search for the truth you seek the truth you get promoted and you know
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You're you're you're highly thought of in the academic world, but don't say don't ever claim you found the truth for finding you get zip or fired one of the two and so Paul describes these as men who resist the truth men of corrupt minds reprobate concerning the faith because You know, it's it's not that we are incapable of understanding
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God has made us We are made in his image and he has communicated to us in forms that we can understand as You would expect and yet we resist
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We resist and that's an active will to disbelieve that Paul is referring to here
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But he goes on He continues with the warning having a form of God in this and denying the power of it
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And that is a description of the apostate Church That is a description of too many evangelical churches.
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I am sorry to say The apostate Church maintains the forms
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Maintains the forms but refuses to acknowledge the power They maintain the form but they reactively reject any of the supernatural nature of the church
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This is a supernatural organization that we are part of man didn't dream this up God dreamed this up man had nothing to do with it consider this if If in those days, let's say some consultant some business growth consultant came along and had a conversation with Jesus It would have gone something like this
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Now tell me exactly what it is. You're going to do is it? Well, I'm going to convert the world
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Oh, you're gonna convert the world. Okay. Well, how are you gonna go about that? Well, you see I've got these I've got these 11 guys
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See and I've got one more to 12 Paul, but he doesn't know about it yet but I'm gonna have these 12 guys and we're gonna go out and we're gonna preach the gospel and that's how we are going to revolutionize the whole world and The consultants saying that 12 guys, huh?
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You know, you don't have any organization. No structure, you know, no No advertising campaign none of that And so Jesus goes out the church is something that God created it is a supernatural thing it is a supernatural thing where Peter can preach one sermon and 3 ,000 people will join the church that day and The Jerusalem Church is off and running.
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That's quite a church plant You know But it's a supernatural thing the whole
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The whole existence of the church Points to its supernatural nature
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Otherwise, it would have been wiped off the face of the earth centuries ago enough people have tried and Yet it keeps going why because God is behind it and God cannot be stopped.
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God's plan cannot be stopped But we had we see now an active rejection of the supernatural nature of the church we
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Reject the whole idea that the very idea of miracles is rejected The whole idea of the body of Christ is rejected
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The inner workings of the faith are rejected That's one thing you see you also see a denial of the power of the
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Word of God when you think about it, you know We're really kind of basic the way we approach the whole idea of of how should we spread the gospel
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You know, we one of us stands up here and preaches We open the book we look
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Turn here thus saith the Lord and start down the passage, you know, not a lot of illustrations
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No dramas, no dance None of that. We just open the book
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Pretty basic and lots of folks would argue with us that well, you know, you can't how are you going to attract the audience?
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Well show me in the scripture where it's my job to attract the audience Attracting the audience isn't our job.
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That's the Holy Spirit's job. Our job is to proclaim We don't have to persuade
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We don't have to attract the audience We don't have to persuade them of anything. Our job is simply to stand up and preach the gospel and proclaim the gospel and The rest of it is in God's hands, but see that's a supernatural approach to life
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And the apostate church does not want to deal with that. It does not want to deal with that in that way They don't want to what what do we rely upon What do we rely upon to convict of sin?
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the word preached Just that the word preached And away we go
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We also see there's a denial of the authority of the word to govern aspects of men's lives
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Every aspect of our lives is to be governed by what the Word of God says And I would challenge you to think about that.
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Have you ever changed something in your life? Because of what the
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Bible said have you ever started doing something or stopped doing something? Or taken some action or gone in some direction because of what the
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Bible said That is the way our lives are supposed to be run That's the way we're supposed to be looking at things
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Then of course they deny the inspiration of the word Why do we put so much stock and what the
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Bible has to say because we believe that it is God speaking to us
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This is not a collection of myths, this is not a collection of stories that somebody wrote down This is
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God's actual communication to us you know, this is what
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God wants us to know and What God has put down here is what
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Francis Schaeffer calls true truth This is really truth and it's the truth whether we believe it or anybody else believes it it's still the truth because God spoke it and So God inspired that God breathed out
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What he wanted to say, how did Moses know what went on in the Garden of Eden Moses wasn't there?
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but God was there and So when Moses writes down what went on in the
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Garden of Eden, that is an accurate description of what actually happened and all of these things that go on in the scripture, we believe that it is the inspired
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Word of God and Therefore it is imperative and incumbent upon us that we obey
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You know when the orders come if they're if you believe they're real orders you'd best obey and That's what
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God has done. He has written down for us Everything that we need to know Moral absolutes do exist the scriptures tell us what they are
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But that is denied That is denied men deny that moral absolutes exist and if if there are no moral absolutes
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What then shall we use as the foundation by which we operate? What what do we if there are no moral absolutes?
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What do we replace it with? Well in this day and age we replace it with the latest opinion poll
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We replace it with the latest opinion poll You know, whatever 51 % of the population of the
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United States thinks about whatever it is that must be what is morally correct but the trouble is
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People's opinions vary all over the place and I'll tell you something. Here's a newsflash
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Most people are not qualified to have an opinion on Most of the subjects on which they offer one, you know, people will say well
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I'm entitled to my opinion Well being entitled to your opinion and being qualified to hold it are two different things okay, and a great many
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It and we look at this we somehow think we are qualified to hold opinions on matters
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Which really affect us eternally and yet we would not even begin
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To offer an opinion on something like brain surgery We would go see a brain surgeon, wouldn't we?
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Because we're not qualified We're not EMDs and we don't have that specialty and yet somehow we think that on matters of moral of Morals somehow the 51 % rule applies
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And yet God says no the 51 % rule doesn't apply what I think applies
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And he set it down. It's really interesting. It only took him ten commandments to set it down and That covers so much and Yet we deny that absolute we deny that absolute and finally we deny the sine qua non of the faith
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What is the sin? What is the sine qua non of the faith that what do you have to have?
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What must you believe to have the Christian faith? The old
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Puritans put a great deal of thought into this and their conclusion was the substitutionary death of Christ You had to have that if you didn't have that you did not have
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Christianity you had something else Because we can argue about the significance and mode of baptism
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We can argue about the significance and mode of the of the Lord's table Good men argue about the rapture
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Good men argue about last things and discuss last things but We have to agree on what are the essentials and The essentials are these first of all man is fallen man has a serious problem we have offended a holy and righteous
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God and we have no hope within ourselves of appeasing him
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There is nothing we can bring Nothing that we can offer nothing that we can do that will satisfy his righteousness
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Because as he puts it in the scripture if you know sin blood must be shed
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You know the soul that sinneth it shall die so we have a problem we can't do anything about it
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But somebody the only solution is either we have to die or Someone has to die in our place
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Someone who himself does not have any sin to atone for we've got a serious problem here and Only God can address that problem and he has addressed that by sending his son
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Who knew no sin who did not have any personal sin who does not need any atonement
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To be our atonement, he will die in our place and You say well, why don't why wouldn't anybody accept that good question?
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Because we're prideful We're prideful and we're sinners and we're born sinners
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We're born fallen. We do not want to admit that we have a problem
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We don't want to admit that we need help We do not want to admit that we are incapable of Addressing this problem on our own
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But it's interesting isn't it what the Bible has to say about that God even addresses that where he draws out certain individuals
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We call them the elect and what does he do and an act of grace and an act of mercy?
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The Holy Spirit draws you and Regenerates you and gives you a new nature and then you act in accordance to that new nature
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And you say of course Jesus Christ died in my place. Why would I not follow him? And so we do
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So what does Paul give as an instruction? He says from such turn away verse 5 having a form of godliness
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But denying the power of it from such turn away This is the only place in all of his writings where Paul says stay away from somebody
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You know, we are not told to stay away from sinners.
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We have to Communicate with sinners because we're supposed to preach to them, but we are told to stay away from those
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That are become apostate that reject the foundational truths of the faith
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Unity is not to be purchased at the expense of truth Jesus when he was here was the friend of sinners
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He was the one who would go to dinner with the with the tax collectors and This is the ones that didn't just shy away
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From the lower levels of society from the prostitutes from the tax collectors from all the other sinners
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You know that the good guys stayed away from But who did he reject?
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Jesus rejected the Pharisees Saying, you know, well, you guys obviously think that you're righteous so you don't need me
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You know, the the well folks don't need the doctor only the six folks need the doctor So he goes with them
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Jesus and this this is a scary thing to me. This is a scary thing. You remember
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Jesus was teaching in parables and Peter asked him. Why are you teaching in parables and His answer should send a chill up somebody's spine he said
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I'm teaching in parables so they will not Understand that's that's an expression of judgment
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He said the Pharisees have been judged You know the
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Pharisees have been judged that door is shut So I'm going to speak in parables so that they will not understand
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I'm going to exclude them So it's pretty serious situation that Paul talks about so what are we supposed to do he goes on For the script the
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Christians resource the Christians resource. We have been given all that is required
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For us to have a firm footing for our survival the
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Christian Must have a firm place to stand He must have a solid foundation or else he will be tossed aside and tossed around by every wind of doctrine
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Every faddish movement that comes down every crackpot scheme that comes down the road or hits or hits
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Christian television There's a misnomer if there were an oxymoron there was one that comes down the road he's got to have an absolute standard by which to judge things and God in his mercy has given us that absolute standard and We're going to need this more and more and more as we get closer and closer and closer to the end of the end times
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Because what's happening? All of these strange things fly around But you know
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I'll tell you something we have We have the the the openness movement now, and you know all of these things, but you know what if you study those
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They've all been here before They've all been here before the church has survived this before The church has survived the
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Gnostic heresies before and she will continue to survive You can have great faith that Jesus Christ and God God the
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Father will keep their church together We are not after all going to go down But we have to have something that we can rely upon personal experience will not do
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Our personal experience cannot necessarily be trusted our feelings will not do
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Because our feelings blow hot and cold Depending upon all sorts of things know what our personal circumstances are or a kind of our state of health is
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You know I'll just tell you this last week. I've been fighting a cold all week. I Didn't feel very hot
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You know and that affects the way I look at things it really does and you know the same thing when when you are not physically feeling
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Well, it affects your outlook on life doesn't it so your feelings your feelings cannot be used as a reliable standard
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But human philosophy will certainly not do because human philosophy varies all over the ballpark
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You know name me any point of view and I can probably find you one philosopher who espoused that throughout history, you know, he was probably a university professor and You know a professor so -and -so says and then if I want to really intimidate you
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I will say a leading professor said whatever it was You know So that's not going to do
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Only what God has given us the truth unchanged unchanging can serve as a proper anchor for men's souls
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Now what are we supposed to do? First of all, we are to exercise discernment and judgment
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Acts 17 11 talks about the Bereans Where Paul comes to town
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Paul comes to town preaching the truth but what are the Bereans do they say let's check old
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Paul out and they get the scrolls out and they begin to look and See if what this man is saying aligns with what
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God has already put down And remember the only the only scriptures they had were the
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Old Testament and So they look in the Old Testament. Yes, what Paul is preaching aligns with what
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God has already told us in his word and So they're commended for that First Timothy 1 4
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Timothy is told don't heed fables Don't heed old wives tales
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Timothy You heed what has been revealed by the
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Holy Spirit within the Word of God and of course in Timothy's day the the word was being built up.
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The New Testament was being created as it went as It went in those days because and that's why
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God had given certain men which we now call the Apostles with a capital a had given them the authority to write scripture and Paul knew he was writing scripture
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Luke knew he was writing scripture Peter knew he was writing scripture and Peter even knew that what
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Paul wrote was scripture These guys were well aware that they were writing not just you know
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Something on the on the the the the level of dear mom, you know having a great time in Antioch Wish you were here the spirits doing a wonderful work
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Now this was the Word of God that was being written down and they knew it and So we are to be wise we are to be wise as serpents.
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We are to be harmless as doves and Then somebody will always come up. Well, what does it say when it says judge not?
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Jesus said judge not that you be not judged and somebody always trots that out. Well, what was
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Jesus talking about? Look at the context and you will discover that basically what
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Jesus is saying Do not hold other people to a higher standard than you hold yourself
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Jesus was not telling us to abandon discernment We are supposed to exercise discernment we are to be wise
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We are to be wise But right now I will tell you that failure to desert exercise discernment and judgment is probably the major problem in the
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Evangelical Church What we have replaced looking at the scripture in evaluating the scripture with pragmatism
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Does it work? Does it work? Does it produce results and we're all for it if it produces results, of course, we have defined results in a certain way
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You know We define results as warm bodies in the pews Well, if you're going to define results as warm bodies in the pews,
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I'll tell you how to do that There's a number of books and they work The whole seeker friendly thing works if that is your definition of working is to put bodies in the pews
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Why wouldn't it? It's great entertainment. It's very well done. It's professional
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Why wouldn't you come on a big Sunday morning to to be entertained basically and it's free even better You know, but that's not what that's not what we come together on Sunday morning for We come here to worship
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God We come here for what should be something that is upward directed not
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Directed towards us not man directed the the scripture is a defense against relativism
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The primary philosophy of our time is relativism, whatever works the 51 % rule, you know
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Whatever 51 % of all y 'all think is all y 'all is plural. By the way, you know that yeah y 'all a singular
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That's not part of the sermon just threw that in a little bit but all points of view are not equally valid Believe it or not all points of view are not equally valid What is valid is the scripture because scripture is
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God breathed this is the doctrine of inspiration The scripture is inspired in its very words
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God worked through the human authors to set down exactly what he wished to convey and It's not to be added to it's not to be subtracted from is not to be tampered with It is more than mere eyewitness reports 2nd
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Peter 1 19 and 21 Peter is saying there Peter is present personally at perhaps one of the most striking exhibitions of Jesus deity
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For the whole time he was here and that was on the Mount of Transfiguration Peter could say I was there, you know,
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I saw him In his in his glory. I saw him
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But Peter what does he say he says the Word of God is more reliable Than my eyewitness report
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You believe the Word of God before you believe my eyewitness report Now the scripture must also be learned.
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We don't absorb it by osmosis. We are to study to show ourselves approved Study to show thyself approved unto
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God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth It's a long -term process
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It's there's no and there's no shortcut Why do we have the IBS at this church? It's part of this process of studying to show ourselves approved
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But what happens when you do this it produces assurance one of the greatest things that produces assurance and stability as all of these various ideas are flying back and forth, you know if As my old sergeant used to put it.
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You got to know your stuff If you know your stuff then when things come flying by you know how to reject what what is
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Incorrect what is false? It's the believers weapon to combat the apostate
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Titus 1 9 It produces wisdom the entrance of thy word giveth light it giveth understanding unto the simple
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Psalm 119 130 The Bible is superior to man's wisdom in every way man's thought is inevitably thought invariably flawed
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Throughout history Philosophers have been trying to answer the question. What is man and why does he act the way he does?
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Yeah, what is man and why does he act the way he does only God's Word has the right answer as we explored when we were looking at at the lessons on philosophy
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In the past, you know, why do men do noble things and why do men do cruel things?
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The Bible has the answer to both men do noble things because they're made in God's image Men do cruel things because they're fallen
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The Bible has the answer to both questions and we can count on it that God's thought runs counter to man's thought and And that God's thought can only be apprehended by grace
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God's thought can only be apprehended by grace. It is spiritually discerned so to sum up Application of the scripture first of all, there is doctrine which is the training in biblical principles
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This is learning the mind of Christ learning to think the way God thinks Is what we want to do there
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It's good for reproof it points out where we're going wrong It's good for correction.
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It tells us how to get back on the right path. It's good for instruction How to stay on the right path
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Does all those things and what is the result a mature believer equipped for service?
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which is our objective and now in conclusion very briefly from Psalm 19
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The psalmist gives six attributes and six transformations of the scripture
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What does the scripture do? First of all, the scripture is perfect and It converts the soul it changes the soul.
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It is sure it makes wise the simple By learning what is sure wisdom comes out of that it is right
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It is right and that makes the heart glad it rejoices the heart it is pure it
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Enlightens the eyes What does the Bible say it lists off a whole list of things and says what's pure what's good all of a sudden think on?
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those things Think on those things Because as a man thinks in his heart, so is he?
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It's clean it endures forever and it's true it's righteous in its entirety.
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Let's pray Our Heavenly Father we thank you tonight that you have indeed given us your word.
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You have not left us To wander in silence to wander in darkness, but you have in fact illuminated us and you have spoken to us
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You have spoken to us directly within the pages of Scripture father So that we have a sure
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Absolutely correct and right standard that we can guide uses our guide to our lives
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We thank you Lord this for this Lord and we praise you for it and we would pray that you would assist us
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To constantly look to the word for our guidance in Jesus name.