The Nature of the Word - Brandon Scalf

The Nature, Necessity, and Sufficiency of Preached Scripture

All right. Well, grab your Bibles and turn with me to 2 Timothy chapter 3. 2 Timothy chapter 3. And we will be looking at verses 16 and 17 this evening. But as is custom, we are going to read much more than that for the sake of context.

Today's message is entitled, The Nature of the Word. And we are going to look at why the Word is important and why it is necessary that we preach it. And so if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy, infallible, and all-sufficient Word.

Because this series is covering 3, 14 through 4, 8, I want to read that entire section of Scripture. So look with me at verse 14 of chapter 3. This is the Word of God. "...and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped, for every good work.

I solemnly 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, exhort with great patience and teaching, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

But you, Timothy," Paul says, "...be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry, for I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith, and in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.

The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Amen? Amen. Please have a seat. If you are joining us for the first time, or you need a little bit of a refresher, let me remind you that we are in a series that I have entitled Preached the Word.

And what we are attempting to accomplish here is to show forth the nature, necessity, and supreme sufficiency of the preached word in the context of the local church. In other words, what I am attempting to do in many ways is offer an apologetic as to why my philosophy of ministry revolves around this piece of wood and a Bible, it's a topic.

Because there are many places that would say, well, that's just not doing church. Well, my contention is that the Bible says that that's what church is all about. Now, on some level, there is more to it than that, but it should all pivot from the pulpit.

Where the pulpit goes, it has been said, so goes the congregation, so goes the church. If you have a weak pulpit, you have a weak church. If you have a deficient pulpit, you have a deficient church. This is the epicenter on which everything flows.

This is why the Puritans and the Reformers, for example, set the pulpit in the middle of the sanctuary as opposed to the table where the Eucharist used to be placed. They believed that this was ultimate, not penultimate.

It was not to be put off in the periphery, but it was to be front and center of the life of the church. But my, how the mighty have fallen. As we addressed in the previous two sermons, pulpits across America are in desperate need of divine resuscitation.

The authority and power of God's Word are being diminished, diluted, and oftentimes discarded. There are many men standing, not behind pulpits like this generally, but behind three-legged tables and flimsy music stands who are in content offering God's people cotton candy instead of the meat of the Word.

And what is especially sad about that is it's not necessarily just because there are weak sermons that are preached by weak preachers. There are weak sermons preached by weak preachers because their view of Scripture and ultimately their view of God is very weak.

And so actually their preaching problem is a God problem that is quickly followed up by a Scripture problem. That is that they do not hold in reverence properly who God is and what he has said. More than that, they don't see it as sufficient.

So even if they could get on board with the idea that the Word of God is special, that it is needed, so to speak, they are going to say that it is not all that is needed in the life of the church. Not even on par with some of the other things like programs, like community-driven projects, youth groups, young adult groups, single groups, and the list goes on and on and on and on.

But you see, the whole idea of preaching without viewing God as God and the Word of God as supremely sufficient is like standing in a barren wasteland with a canteen full of water connected to your backpack that you refuse to open and drink though you are starving of thirst.

The reality is many churches are not thriving in Christ-likeness because they reject the very thing that they hold in their hands and promote as that thing which ought to govern both their words and the church.

It's nonsensical. It's absurd. It's dangerous. And so as we look today specifically at 2 Timothy 3 .16, we are going to be reminded that a robust view of preaching, right, which is what we're after. We're after a robust definition and understanding of preaching and if we're going to have that, then it requires and demands a high view of God and of His holy scriptures.

Because when a preacher stands behind the pulpit, he is not proclaiming his own opinions, or at least he should not be. His own philosophies, or other people's philosophies, or even the clever ideas that he might have about how to communicate that thing.

But men never did well trying to be clever, which is why you have preachers running around saying things like God broke the law for love, thinking that they were smarter and more clever in their homiletical approach than being accurate to the scriptures.

The truth is we are declaring not just words about God, but the very word of God. And if we fail to see scripture for what it truly is, we lose all power in our preaching, all truth in our teaching, and all life in our living.

And so here the Apostle Paul is going to unfold for us the very nature of scripture itself. And he's going to do so with defined precision, a deity-driven precision. So that leads me to say this, I was just lamenting to Lacey on the way out that I could probably do a 37-week sermon series on these two verses.

But we have tonight. And so I will not be able to exhaust everything that is here, I will not be able to turn over every stone, and there will be much treasure to glean for us over the next 50 years. But we will get to the heart of the matter, at least as it helps us better understand why we must continue as the charge was given to Timothy here in chapter 4, verse 2, preach the word.

So let's turn our attention, rather, to the nature of this word and see what it demands of us if we are to preach the word biblically. And here's something important for you guys who will never preach a sermon in your life.

Let's see how it affects the hearers and the doers of it. Because if this is what preaching accomplishes, then it's good to see that. This is what God has designed preaching to do for your life. If you remember, in context, there are false teachers flooding the city of Ephesus at the time, which is wonderful in that it helps us understand kind of the church that we're studying in the morning when we study the book of Ephesians.

Things seemed pretty rosy and unicorn-flavored in the book of Ephesians, right? He's not addressing any problems. He's just telling us awesome things about the doctrines of grace. He's helping us understand the nature of the church.

And he's doing so in a whimsical and wonderful and affection-lifting way. But as is true in all churches, the honeymoon period oftentimes does not last very long. And so he's warning. He's warning Timothy of the persecution that he's experiencing and its increase in nature.

It's going to keep happening. It's going to infect the world around you. It's going to infect the church. And you are going to be persecuted. And that's your lot. And you're going to have to get used to it.

People are going to be turned, as we will see here later on, away from the scriptures to myths and endless chatter about stupid things that don't matter. They're going to be tricked by those who are deceived and deceiving.

And they currently are. And so if you're Timothy, you're probably thinking, well, what in the world am I to do? And Paul, being the great mentor that he was, looking death in the face, awaiting the knife, senses that he needs to tell Timothy the most important thing he will ever hear.

Right?

Because it's his last words. This is the last words that Paul will ever pin before he's martyred. And as it has been said, not by me, but I will repeat it, last words ought to be lasting words. And these are indeed lasting words.

And what he is saying to Timothy here is there is one thing that's going to sustain you in every single trial that you are in. And it's also going to be the same balm that is going to be life for your people who love Jesus and want to grow in Christ likeness.

And that is what?

We're on week three here, guys.

You should be able to answer it. The word, the word of almighty God, what has been called the sacred writings in verse 15, which we visited last week. But today it's going to be called the scripture. So in essence, what we're about to ask is what does the man of God need to fulfill his ministry?

Is it programs? Is it charisma? Do I have to be the most likable guy for me to be up here? Do I have to have the most Facebook and Twitter followers? Do I have to have the kind of personality that begs all of you to just drink the Kool-Aid?

No.

Is it human wisdom?

No. No.

Paul tells Timothy that the only thing necessary is the word of God. For it is sufficient, which we saw last week in large detail, but specifically here to equip the man of God for every good work. Scripture alone is enough and it lacks nothing.

So every believer and every preacher must cling to its sufficiency in all things. And so as we look at our text, the first thing that I want you to see is the divine source of the word. Why can the word and why is the word the foundation for everything that we do and the ground of every sermon preached?

Because it comes from God.

Because it comes from God. Look with me at verse 16. It says, all scripture is God-breathed. Now let's take these first two words and think about how they serve as a catapult into the rest of what Paul is saying.

What's interesting here is unlike Paul, there is no conjunction here to connect thoughts. There's no connecting particle. It is abrupt in every sense of the word. He begins not by saying, just so you know, also for, right?

He just starts out all scripture. And this is very purposeful. It is very purposeful. It shows us a beautiful emphasis. And that emphasis is all of scripture. In other words, what's happening here is Paul is dropping this sentence, as it were, like an anvil into the flow of the discourse.

It's like a hammer to everything that he has said and a hammer that's going to bear and can wait on and continually hammer out everything that is going to be said up to this point. So he says here, all scripture.

When he says all, I know we're in a Calvinist church, but all here does in fact mean all. It means everything. Not some things, all things, all scripture. Every single letter of scripture, every single sentence of scripture, every single paragraph of holy scripture is included.

Now, of course, when Paul wrote this, there was no New Testament in the same way that we have it here. So his mind would have immediately went to the Old Testament. However, it is made clear in the New Testament, specifically by the Apostle Peter in one of his epistles.

Remember, he tells us that, well, he tells them, actually, and us by extension, that Paul is indeed writing scripture. And though it's complicated, it's not un-understandable. And he says that there are other peoples, and this is a quote here, right?

Who twist his words like they do the rest of scripture, end quote. So Paul knew he was writing scripture, Peter knew he was writing scripture, and everybody who got the letters knew that scripture was being written.

And so all of scripture is everything, from Genesis to Revelation. Every bit of it. So all scripture is God-breathed. Now, if you have a New American Standard, God bless you, it says the word inspired.

If you have an ESV, it says something much like this, God-breathed. Although I don't know if it's hyphenated. And that's enough for me to assert that the LSB is better. It might be hyphenated, though.

But here's the deal.

This word here is actually one word in the Greek. It's the word theonoustos. And it is mind-blowingly profound. It's not merely suggesting here that the authors of scripture were inspired. That is, that they had God-like infusion to them, which we'll get into this more specifically here in a little bit.

But rather, it means that scripture itself is God-breathed. It comes from God's breath. It literally means it coming from the mouth of God. And so when we hold the Bible in our hands, and I want you to hear me on this.

When we hold the Bible in our hands, we are not holding some human speculations about God. Some human book filled with human ideas. We are holding the very breath of God. His divine communication to us.

And when you think about this, just as God breathed life into Adam's nostrils, and he became a living being. So God has breathed life into his word. And it is living, and it is active.

That's insanely profound.

It's insanely profound. Here we see that writers are not so much inspired, but they're writing inspired scripture. Scripture is the thing that's inspired. Now of course we would need to do an entire sermon on the doctrine of inspiration for us to fully wrap our mind around what it means.

For example, in 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 21, where it says,. For no prophecy was ever made by the will of man. That should go much further in Tulsa than it does, but that's another sermon for another time.

But men being moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. They didn't speak for God, though they did. There's more nuance there, but they spoke from God. Now this is what we call verbal inspiration, plenary verbal inspiration.

That's the $10 word. However, might I suggest to you that inspiration might be the wrong word to use when we think about God's breathedness of it. And what I mean by that is when we think about God breathing something, we think about it going away from him or coming into him, right?

Because when you breathe, you're sucking in air. So maybe a better way, and I'm not telling you to change the name of inspiration, by the way, okay? I'm just trying to help you understand it. It's in the Theistomatic theology books, and you are going to learn to love it, okay?

I'm not trying to change a lot of history. But what I am trying to do is help you understand. So maybe thinking about it this way would be more helpful. Instead of the doctrine of inspiration, it might be the doctrine of expiration.

It's going forth from his mouth. And it will not return void because it is living and active. This is what Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12 says. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of the soul and the spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions.

You see here, the word is the thing that does the work in a ministry that is actually working. Yes, you have to have tons of human ideas. You have to have tons of really cool things and light shows and fog machines and cool dance numbers and all these sorts of things.

If you're not promoting the word of God, but if you have the word of God, you have everything that you need. It is where the power resides as the Holy Spirit applies it to the people of God. This is why the Puritan William Gernal says, In the word preached there is a divine power because it comes from God that goes beyond the orator's skill.

Here's what I know. I know that at best all I can do is motivate you to think more about what the scriptures say. That is until you walk out that front door. And then the spirit applying the word of God has to be the one that does the work.

And it's God's word and it will not return to him void. And he will judge with it and he will correct with it and he will heal with it. It is not a lifeless text. It pulsates with the very breath of almighty God.

So let me ask you this, everyone here. How in the world do you approach the Bible if you understand that in a cavalier manner? How do you let it sit on your shelf? How do you not want to sit underneath the preached word every single chance you get if you understand that the very words of God are the voice of God?

You can't. You can't.

And do you look at it reverently? So when you're studying it, are you looking to correct it or be formed by it? If you see what seems to be a contradiction, do you assume the problem is you or the word?

A high view of scripture begins with a high view of God. The same God who created the world. The same God who saved us through the person and work of Jesus Christ the righteous. The same one who sends the spirit to apply salvation and transform us as the same God that breathed out this word.

So we have to take that seriously. If we treat this book as a book, then we demonstrate a low view of its author. And so as we continue on through this verse and as we continue on in the life of our church, let us approach every verse, every chapter with God-injected awe, knowing that it came from God himself.

Now, we're going to spend a little more time in this point with a lot of sub points because there's some things that I need to say. And so it's going to feel a little lopsided, but that's on purpose. Because here's the deal.

If you are going to say that the scriptures are in fact God-breathed, that they are in fact breathed out by God, that they are his words, then what we have to do is understand what that means for our life and for our preaching and for our hearing and for our doing.

The first one is this. If it is God's word, and it is, then that means it has supreme authority over absolutely everything. Because scripture speaks with a divine voice, it comes with it divine decrees, if I could talk this evening.

Because scripture is God-breathed, it carries with it divine authority. When it speaks, God speaks. When it commands, God commands. When it comforts, God comforts. God's word is God's word. Then it's no surprise then that this is why there is in the Bible over 3 ,800 times this declaration, Thus says the Lord.

Not thus says the prophet on behalf of the Lord. It is the Lord speaking in his word. As an aside, this is why red-letter Bibles drive me insane. Now, I know they're beautiful, right?

They look good on the shelf.

They remind us of our grandma, but apparently so do my index Bibles according to Pastor Cory. But, you know, I'm not going to agree with that. Because it doesn't serve my purpose. I'm kidding. Kind of.

I love my indexing. But, there are no words in the Bible that are more special than the others because they are all God-breathed. And there's not a word in any of the scriptures that have been recorded for us that are not Jesus' words in some sense.

In a very large sense. But I need to get back to the text. So what that means is the Bible gets to bind our conscience. It gets to command our obedience. It gets to demand our submission. In other words, it's not a book of suggestions.

Nor, as I have said in the past, nor is it religious musing. It is the authoritative voice of Yahweh of hosts. Now, that's hard for us to understand fully because we live in a world that loves to question and challenge authority.

But when it comes to the Bible, there is no authority higher. We don't get to wrangle with words. We don't get to essentially do anything but have an unwavering commitment and submission to it. He gets to make our decisions, influence our beliefs, and he gets to tell us how to and what to do with our lives.

How to live our lives and what to do with it. It has complete authority. More than that, it carries with it inerrancy and infallibility. Because this word comes from God, the scripture is both inerrant and infallible.

That means that it is free from error in all that it affirms and it is true in everything that it affirms. So there are no errors in the Bible and everything it speaks to, when it speaks to it, you can count it as true.

Right?

Of course, the Bible doesn't tell everyone how to change the oil in their car.

You need justice for that.

However, it tells you something about the attitude that you might want to have while doing it. So it speaks on everything, it's just not exhaustive on everything. But everything that it touches, it's right about.

All the way down to the history of it all. What I find quite interesting is the historicity of the Bible being challenged decade after decade. And what winds up happening, wonderfully and beautifully, is that it continues to be shown to be correct in the secular world being wrong.

God writes awesome stories. There's been many, and I would love to give you as many examples as I could, but just a few of them.

Here's the reality, right?

People said that, you know, I think for a while they were saying that there was no record of Pontius Pilate being in that entire situation or ever even existing. And so secular history was like, yeah, that's just a made-up story.

And they start digging around, and lo and behold, he existed. And there's stories like that all the time. Places in the book of Acts that Luke recorded, that they were like, yeah, that place never existed.

That person was never the leader of that area. And then they uncover some more stuff, and they're like, oh, I guess we were wrong, right? It's gotten so insane that even secular historians have come around and said, you know, Luke is actually a world-class historian.

He is not second-rate. He is not just some dude writing some things down sometimes that are helpful. But he is world-class in his ability to—because even titles changing throughout the years are reflected in the book of Acts.

But I don't have time to get into that.

But it's beautiful.

It's wonderful. What that means is the Bible can never lead us astray. Every single word drips with trustworthiness, and it is completely true. And why is that? Because God himself is trustworthy and true.

And if those are his words, they cannot and will not fail. This is why every single time I preach the word, the first thing that I say is Isaiah 48. If you didn't know, what I say before I preach comes from the Bible.

Now you do. It's also repeated in the New Testament. The language is in different both places.

But Isaiah 48 says,.

Do you trust the reliability of Scripture in every area of your life? Do you know that it is inerrant and that it is infallible? Because when the world tells you to compromise, and it will if it hasn't, you need to cling to something that is not movable or shakable, like the morality that is the sinking sand around everyone else.

Morality is always shifting and changing, and it will never end until Jesus comes back. So we must stand on the inerrant, infallible truth of God's word, knowing that God's word endures forever. But more than that, it's indestructible.

It's indestructible. And here's what I mean by that. No amount of persecution, no amount of suppression or distortion can ever destroy the word of God or its influence in the world. Revelation chapter 19 teaches that the Lord Jesus Christ is conquering this world through the sword of his mouth.

The word of God is unconquerable, in other words. It is uncontrollable, and it cannot and it will not fail, though every scheme has been employed in an attempt to undo its words and its influence. Kings have sought to silence it.

Emperors have tried to ban it. Critics have attacked it. Philosophers have scorned it. And atheists have warned against it. In the end, however, it stands strong. Piercing hearts and transforming lives to this day across the pond where it all began.

That should cause you to stand in awe of this word. There is a story that's used in almost every single preaching book that I have read as I am doing this doctorate at the Master's Seminary. And it goes like this, and it shows the irony and the validity of what I'm saying.

200 years ago, there was a French skeptic by the name of Voltaire. Some of you guys might know this name or even this story. But Voltaire was, once again, a skeptic and was notoriously antagonistic against the Christian religion, specifically as it relates to the belief in an inerrant, infallible, insufficient word.

And he famously or infamously said this,. In a hundred years from my time, there will not be a Bible on earth except one looked at by an antiquarian curiosity seeker. End quote. Well, he's been wrong.

Amen?

But that's not the ironic part. I mean, it's ironic, I suppose. But the ironic part, and it's quite hilarious, because once again, God has the best sense of humor. After Voltaire's death, his former home was used to print and distribute Bibles by the Geneva Bible Society.

Did you catch that? After the man died, the Geneva Bible Society decided to do the most thug thing ever, buy his house and print Bibles out of it.

Man.

I love that.

That's why I put it in here, even though it's in every single preaching book known to man.

It's that good.

Sometimes things bear repeating.

Right?

The Word of God is no match for people who think they're smarter than the Word of God. And even if it looks like people are not caring about it right now, it will endure. Though the culture around us spits on it, it will endure.

Like an anvil that has been worn out by many hammers, Scripture has stood the test of time, and it will always stand the test of time, because it is God's Word, it comes from God, and God is sovereign, and he desires and destines for it to do its work in the world, on the lives and hearts of his people.

The Profitable Work of Scripture in Teaching, Reproof, Correction, and Training

The second thing that I want you to see is the inerrant. Inerrant, not inerrant, don't confuse those two words. Inerrant means without error. Inerrant means it is essentially birthed out of, logically, the truth that came before or is about to follow.

So because it is God's Word, it is profitable. So the inerrant profitability of the Word is point number two. So not only does it come from God, but it is inherently profitable. And we see that as we continue on.

Verse 16, look with me again. All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. The first thing you see here is that it is profitable.

Now, this is like hyperbole in the opposite direction, right? Because it is far more than profitable, but it is profitable. And so what Paul is saying here is it profits the man of God to use it, and it profits the men and women of God to hear it.

And yes, I've left women out of that first part on purpose. They are not to do the preaching. That is the way that God has laid out his church. If you don't like that, don't come up here and argue with me about it.

Don't get angry at me. Don't write me an email. You know, just read your Bible and trust God. That's what you do, okay? That's what you do. But it is profitable for every single one who hears this Word preached.

It is sufficient, as we saw last week, to train children up in the ways that they should go. It was profitable and sufficient to essentially make Timothy wise and everybody else wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.

But here we're seeing that the Bible is sufficient to teach us everything we need to know about God, man, salvation, and eternity. It is profitable for teaching. And, of course, teaching is bound up in doctrine.

That is essentially what doctrine means. Teaching. The whole counsel of God helps us to understand who God is. And God's teaching of everything is what we must give ourselves to. Scripture teaches us.

It doesn't just change us, but it changes us by teaching us. Scripture teaches us the truths of God, his nature, his purposes, his ways. It forms the foundation of our theology and informs every aspect of our faith.

Remember, as we have looked at the book of Ephesians, it is the content of the faith.

So it's profitable for teaching.

We need to understand this as we think about building on the foundation of what it means to preach the Word. Because preaching the Word, if that is the task before us, and hearing the Word as those who sit under preaching, if that is the task, it would all collapse at the first sign of trouble if it was a shaky foundation.

So if we do not have a doctrinal foundation of Scripture and understand its nature, who it comes from and what it does, namely that it's teaching, everything will crumble.

Everything will crumble.

Now, as we continue on to look at reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, there's a couple different ways that commentators have looked at this. Some commentators just plow right on through, and they say something to the effect of, yeah, he's talking about doctrine here.

Profitable for teaching. Also, it's profitable for these things, for reproof. It's also profitable for correction. Other commentators and other linguists have said, no, these are little umbrellas under a big umbrella.

So this is what teaching does, in other words. So if you're going to properly teach, or in his case, properly preach, then you need to be able to have teaching that consists of all these things, which in some ways, they argue, is what makes the teaching preaching.

And if you're asking yourself the question, well, what in the world is the difference between teaching and preaching? Well, according to John MacArthur, nothing. However, Martyn Lloyd-Jones has once said, as only Martyn Lloyd-Jones can, if you have to ask that question, it is very obvious to me that you have never heard preaching.

And I like his answer a lot. And the reason I like his answer a lot is because I think that's true. You can teach without preaching, but you cannot preach without teaching. And preaching requires more than just dissemination of information.

It requires, so you see where I'm landing here, I'm landing with group number two, that to properly teach doctrine, one needs to reprove, correct, and train others in righteousness. So let's look at these.

So if we're going to be profitable preachers and teachers, or profitable hearers, we need to understand that it reproves, that is, the Word of God reproves, corrects, and it trains in righteousness. This word reproof can easily be understood as essentially exposing that which is there.

Sometimes we think about reproof and correction kind of as the same thing in the Western mind, but in the first century mind, in the Greek mind, they were somewhat different. Here what you're thinking about is exposing.

That is, the Word of God convicts you, the sinner, me, the sinner, when it is pressed down upon us, when we are laid bare before it, as Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12 says, it doesn't just lay us bare, it lays our sin bare, and it tells us to repent of that sin.

It acts as kind of like a gag reel of all of your horrible moments in life, and as you're reading it, it mirrors who you are. It shows you who God is, shows you who you are, and how you do not and will not ever measure up, and you do if you want to dwell with Him forever, because you do, He's good, great, awesome, He is transcendent, He is purely garbed in purity, He is everything that fills the longings of your heart.

As Augustine has said, we are not complete until we find our home in Him. So in other words, to reprove is essentially like, if you think about it this way, it's a light in a dark room that exposes everything that's hidden.

The Bible is light, revealing the sinfulness of the human heart, its wickedness, and friends, preaching and teaching, we'll just stick with preaching, because preaching is teaching that does all of these things, preaching must not shy away from declaring the truth of Scripture and convicting.

See, so many people think, well, I don't want to offend people, you can think of preachers that I'm talking about here, you turn on your TV, they fill stadiums in Texas, wink, wink, and they just think, well, people hear enough bad stuff about themselves.