"Scripture Alone"

Father, we thank You for this day. What a blessing it is to be able to gather together for the purpose of reading Your Word, singing the truths of Your Word, praying in agreement with Your Word, and hearing and sharing with one another Your Scriptures.

That we may know You, that we may know Christ, that we may be filled with Your Holy Spirit in true fellowship. I thank You. I pray that You would help us to make the most of this gift, this opportunity today.

I pray that You would lead us this time, this hour, to commit all of our faith and practice to the basis of Scripture alone. And I pray these things for the sake of Christ, with whom You are well pleased.

Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles with me to 2 Timothy, Paul's second letter to his son in the faith. It's my intention these five Sundays of October, this 500th year in memory of when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses of protest against the Roman Catholic Church.

He nailed them on the chapel door of Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. So we're coming up on the 500th anniversary of the moment that historians have chosen to mark the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

There are many important moments, that was one of them. Why is it important to us? It can only be answered from the Scriptures. It can only be shared with us and recognized, I think, by the many blessings that we've experienced since.

So I plan to preach on five different texts that would have to do with the five different, what they call, the solas of the Reformation. I'm not going to say them in Latin, because I will mispronounce them.

Translated, they are Scripture alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. These are things that I believe that we in the Protestant Evangelical Church take for granted and do not appreciate, and so they begin to slip away.

This morning I want to start with Scripture alone. This seems to be the best place to start. The most fundamental issue of the Reformation, I believe, was Scripture alone. There are many passages in the Bible that could be very helpful for us.

I think we're going to go here and be blessed in 2 Timothy 3 verses 14 through chapter 4 and verse 5. But I want you to imagine that 500 years ago, in the heartland of Christendom, Europe, that you live in the heartland of Christendom, where the buckle of the Bible belt used to be.

But it was much different. You've never sung a hymn in your life. They have holy people to do that. You've never prayed to Jesus, and you've never prayed to God the Father, because only saints can get a word in for you.

So you pray to dead people. You've never heard the gospel preached to you. You have never held a Bible in your hands. You have never heard the Scriptures read to you or preached to you in a language that you can understand.

The entirety of your spirituality and your religion is experience-based. And you experience a large, beautifully foreboding building. You experience holy sayings in Latin that are memorized by rote without any meaning behind them.

You experience a little taste of the Mass, but most of that is kept from you as well. You experience looking at statues of saints and gazing at their supposed relics. And these you venerate and you worship.

This is what you experience. But you've never heard a word of Scripture in your life. So, when Tetzel's drama team comes into town, you are enraptured. They do a good job. They have special effects. They are good actors.

And the way in which they portray purgatory, which is simply a hell that you might get out of. The way they portray purgatory moves your soul in guilt-shredded anxiety to do something for your dead mother and your dead grandparents.

Only a little penitent charity will do the trick. Every time a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs is the sales pitch. And so you're willing that you and your family would be left in poverty to give out of your savings to spring your grandparents and your mother from such a hell.

Your pittance is combined with the rest of the collections from the poor. And you are given a scrap of paper that says that your relatives are now in heaven. The pittance that you gave along with the rest of the collections from the poor go to pay off, half of it goes to pay off the debts of a German noble.

And half of it goes to pay for the construction of the largest church building in the world, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. You don't know any different. You're clutching the increasingly grainy piece of paper that says you have something of value.

But you've never heard a word of scripture in your life. So how are you freed? How will you be delivered from this spiritual oppression? Someone starts a protest. And this protest spreads increasingly as an argument between what do the scriptures say versus what do others say.

The protest can be summed up best, I think, in the words of Martin Luther who said, I put scriptures above all the sayings of the fathers, angels, men, and devils. Here I take my stand. And here I take my stand.

And here Protestants have taken their stand for nearly 500 years. When we rely upon the scriptures alone for all of our faith and practice, all that we are to believe, and all the ways in which we are to live.

When we rely upon the scriptures alone for all of our faith and practice, we come to know the gospel of Jesus Christ. That salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

But we live in a culture that loves to sneer at the Bible. The biggest names in American preaching, and I'm doing that by numbers and popularity, are those today who have as little to do with the Bible as they can get away with.

The most lucrative books published by Christian publishing houses, the ones that are selling the best in Christian bookstores, are those that set the Bible aside to emphasize your personal spiritual experiences.

So I think this text is for us. I think 2 Timothy 3, 14, through chapter 4, verse 5, is for us. I think it's very fitting for us. So let's rise, let's all stand together to receive this word from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Beginning in verse 14, You, however, continue in the things that you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom which leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness that the man of God may be adequate, 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. Rebuke, reprove, exhort with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure a sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. You may be seated. All our faith and practice depends on the scripture alone. Let's begin with the priority of scripture.

Our passage certainly puts a priority on the scriptures for our lives as Christians. We belong to a 500-year protest movement. We protest the spiritual oppression of humanity by false religion. We protest any effort to detract from the priority of scripture.

We must not waver from that priority even in difficult times. It doesn't take very long to read Paul's second letter to Timothy from the beginning up to chapter 3, verse 14. It doesn't take us very long to realize that Timothy is called to do ministry in the context of an increasingly wicked world full of deceptions, depravities, false teachers, and persecutions.

All of this is nicely summed up for us in verses 12 and 13 of chapter 3. Great job, Paul. There's a lot of stirring up to love and good works there. Encourage that young man, Timothy, in his early pastoral ministry.

Nothing so quite as encouraging as getting a bucket of cold water dumped on your head. Yet what is Timothy's response to be according to verse 14 and following? What is our response supposed to be? We're not to imitate the wicked witch of the West and melt away from the oppression.

Saying, oh, what a world, what a world.

We tend to do that. The bucket of cold water hits us and we shrink away. But how are we to respond to make scripture our priority? Paul tells Timothy, verse 14,. So all the world is on the move, swirling changes of wickedness and deception, but not you, Timothy.

No, rather you must abide in the truths that you have learned. You must remain steadfast, standing against the wiles of the enemy. Timothy has been nurtured in the faith. He's been instructed by his believing mother and his believing grandmother.

And he's been entrenched in the scriptures. And so now Timothy is charged to preach the word, verse 1 of chapter 4. Why does he need to preach the word? Because the time will come. 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. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. The time will come, Paul says, and the time has come.

The time has come.

This is the time in which we live. And these are difficult times to maintain our protest of scripture alone. Because to the vast majority, scripture, the Bible, seems painfully out of touch with our times.

It seems that quoting the Bible is perennially out of fashion. Saying, well, the Bible says, is one of the worst faux pas that we can commit. There are plenty of teachers and leaders and spiritual gurus out there who will tell folks exactly what they want to hear.

Why are there so many false teachers? Paul says, because there are so many people who want to hear false teaching. Isn't that what he says? The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.

But wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves. The reason why there's so much false teaching in the world today is because there are so many people wanting to believe lies.

There are plenty of deceivers who will affirm and confirm truth haters in a warm cocoon spun in myths. It is precisely in these difficult times that we are to make scripture our priority. In a time of growing deceit, scripture alone will guard our lives with truth.

In a time of burgeoning wickedness, scripture alone will give our children their most essential education and their highest quality of guidance. In a time of increasing persecution, scripture alone will provide us with wisdom and with courage.

We must make scripture our priority in difficult times, especially because we live also in diminishing time. Notice verse 1. Paul wants Timothy to make scripture his priority. Look how he does it. 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.

That's a very solemn thought. Timothy, before the face of God, as if you stand in the very courtroom of Jesus Christ, and in the Greek he says, who is just about to judge the living and the dead. In light of his certain, sudden, and soon return to judge all men as king of kings, by the weight and the urgency of these matters, Paul says to Timothy, I charge you to preach the sacred, God-breathed scriptures.

This is what you're supposed to do, Timothy. In these difficult times and in diminishing time, what are you going to do? Preach the word. Make scripture the priority, in season and out of season. Scripture must be our priority as the time diminishes, as that day approaches.

Scripture alone tells us how to be about the Master's will and be ready for his coming. Scripture has to be the priority. And any school of thought which says, we need a little less of the Bible and a little more of something else, needs to be rejected.

The priority of scripture entirely rests on the authority of scripture, which we think about in verses 15 and 16. We see the authority of scripture. We belong to a 500-year-old protest movement. We protest the spiritual oppression of humanity by false religion.

We protest any effort to detract from the authority of scripture. There are very many today who would say that they are Christians, that they love the Bible, that they follow Christ, and they claim the Bible has no authority whatsoever pertaining to issues like science, sex, government, education, and so on.

And for those who say that they're a part of the church to say that, it's one of the clearest evidence that the spirit of Antichrist is well at work. For those of the church to deny God his authority, that is diabolical.

Hermann Bavink, a hundred years ago, said, when scripture from its own perspective comes into contact with other sciences, this sheds its light on them. It does not cease all at once to be the word of God, but it remains the word of God.

Even when it speaks about the genesis of heaven and earth, it does not present saga or myth or poetic fantasy, but offers in accordance with its own clear intent, history. The history that deserves credence and trust.

Why? Because it's God's word. And so it's a clear word, and it's a good word that speaks clearly. It's God-blessed. In verse 15, we know that Paul has already encouraged Timothy, despite the difficult times, but you continue with what you know to be true.

And so he says in verse 15, and remember that from childhood you have known the sacred writings, which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation, which is by faith in Jesus Christ. Meaning, from the time that Timothy was a young child, his mother and his grandmother taught him the sacred scriptures.

He grew up learning about the law and the prophets and the writings as they were organized in his day. The Torah and the Nevi 'im and the Kethuvim, shortened as the name of their Bible was the Tanakh.

He grew up hearing the Tanakh and studying the Bible, God's holy words. And as he did, he received the wisdom from the Holy Spirit, which led him to salvation by faith in Christ Jesus. Timothy grew up with the Old Testament, and Paul says even that is sufficient by the wisdom of God to lead you to faith, to saving faith in Christ Jesus.

This is a God-blessed word. Notice they are the Bible, the books of the Bible, the writings of Scripture. They're called sacred writings. You can also translate it, the holy scriptures. So these are holy writings.

They are not ordinary. They are not common. Something has set them apart. God has set them apart. He has made them incredibly special. In what way? We're told in the verse, through these scriptures we receive the wisdom which leads us to salvation, which is by faith in Christ Jesus.

God reveals Christ in these scriptures, and that's what makes them holy. That's what makes them blessed, and that's what makes them authoritative. When the judge of all mankind is revealed in a text by God himself, that's what makes this scripture authoritative.

It is not the translation. It is not the typeset. It is not the binding. It isn't the beauty. It is that it reveals Christ. The authority is found in the author of the text and his subject matter. God the Father, through God the Spirit, reveals God the Son incarnate, our master, Jesus Christ.

So these scriptures are God-blessed, and they are God-breathed. God-breathed. Verse 16 says, All Scripture is inspired by God. And so now we have a moment where we must all practice a breathing exercise.

Are you ready? Everyone breathe in and out. The word Paul uses here is the second part of that breathing exercise. Theopneustos, meaning God exhaled. God has exhaled the scriptures. All scripture, every bit of the sacred writings, is breezed out by God, which is why it is authoritative.

Scripture is exhaled by God. Did men write down the words? Yes. Over 40 different authors wrote 66 books over a 1500 year period, over 3 different continents, and 3 different languages, and for all their diversity they wrote in perfect harmony, without error, contradiction, or confusion.

They wrote the very perfect, true, and unfailing words God superintended. 2 Peter 1 .21. No prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. They were born along by the Holy Spirit, and they wrote their words, and they were God's words.

Every bit of scripture was written by humans. Every jot and tittle of scripture is inspired, crafted, and superintended by God. This is a fully human book. This is a divine book. And those two natures remain without conflict or confusion as one scripture, which makes it an incredibly fitting way to tell us about Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, God incarnate.

Do we understand the scope of God's authority through the scriptures in our lives? Because all scripture is God-breathed, all scripture lays claim upon all of those in whom God has breathed the breath of life.

The image of God is to be governed by the Word of God. Wasn't it that way in the beginning? God made Adam and Eve, and then He gave them His Word to govern them. He's made you and I. He has made us in His image.

And we are to be governed by His Word. Such is the authority of scripture that we should say along with Leon Morris, what does not agree with the scripture does not come from God. What does not agree with the scripture does not come from God.

That would clear up a whole lot of chaos in a whole lot of churches. We are told in this day and time that we cannot understand the scriptures on our own. We live in a time of growing tradition and decreasing exposition.

We are told increasingly that this is not a very clear word. There's all sorts of things about the Bible we just do not understand, can't possibly understand unless we have 20 years of education like the people who are telling us these things.

And so if we read the Bible for ourselves, and if we interpret the scriptures by the scriptures, and try to make sure that we understand what the text is actually saying in its most clearest sense, we're going to end up believing all sorts of repugnant, unscientific, intolerant things like God made the world in six days.

God designed the family based on one man for one woman for life. Adam and Eve were the first real specially created humans who sinned and brought death into the world for the very first time. God flooded the entire world.

God confused the human languages at Babel. God parted the Red Sea. God made the sun stand still in the sky.

How about this one?

Just as repugnant, just as unscientific, God the sun took upon human flesh and was born of a virgin. He died on the cross in our place and for our sake. And this is so unscientific it would blow your mind.

He was raised from the dead the third day. Here's something incredibly intolerant. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father except through me. And we are being told increasingly on incremental levels through all various types of media, books and on the internet and the videos and everything.

We're just being told more and more. We just can't understand it. It's unclear. God has given us an unclear word. It can't possibly mean what it says. It just doesn't fit well with the people who live today.

This book is outdated and it's out of the times. I protest. I protest against all those who would call God's word an unclear, unfortunate, unhelpful text. I protest against any who would rise up to replace the Roman Catholic tradition with another Jezebel's, that's not what it actually means, school of thought.

That I have to listen to this group of experts over here to tell me what I ought to believe when I read the Bible and interpret the Bible according to the Bible about Christ. I protest against Peter Innes and Bruce Waltke and Andy Stanley and Rob Bell and Joel Osteen and every other servant of Satan disguised as a servant of righteousness who moves us away from the word and to the world.

Luther said, never mind the scribes. What sayeth the scripture? And he got that from Isaiah to the law and to the testimony. If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn.

And if we protest against those outside who seek to degrade the authority of the scripture, we ought to take the fight to our own souls because in the deepest recesses of our hearts, we cite past wounds, current circumstances, and future anxieties as excuses for shrugging off what God has clearly commanded of us in following Christ.

Roger Ellsworth writes a chapter in a book. The book is called Dear Timothy. It's letters on pastoral ministry. And he's writing and reminding young ministers to preach the word of God. To preach the word of God, you must be ruthless with yourself.

Ruthless with yourself in allowing the scripture to speak. The temptation is that we would be willing to pay lip service to God's authority until we come to a passage where we find something I don't want to hear.

And it's at that point that we often tell ourselves that it cannot possibly mean what it appears to mean. And then we are engaged in making the text say what we think it should say. And that's just as applicable to elders as it is to the congregation.

That we abandon our holy protest of scripture alone and we no longer submit to the authority of scripture when we start excusing ourselves and twisting the text. And we do that to our own impoverishment.

Because God has given us a word. A word that is sufficient for all of our faith and practice. And we need to look at that as our final point. The sufficiency of scripture. We belong to a 500-year-old protest movement.

We protest the spiritual oppression of humanity by false religion. We protest any effort to detract from the priority of scripture, the authority of scripture, or the sufficiency of scripture. Scripture alone is sufficient for the conversion of souls.

Look at verse 15. And that from childhood, you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom which leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. By the revelation of Jesus Christ.

In these holy scriptures,.

We believe in him and are saved. There is no other book, no other medium whereby the gospel is infallibly, inherently, sufficiently revealed. Scripture alone reveals the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.

Scripture alone contains the wisdom that leads to salvation. We are not born of perishable seed, but of imperishable. That is, through the living and enduring word of God, all flesh is like grass in all its glory, like the flower of grass.

The grass withers and the flower falls off. But the word of the Lord endures forever. And it is this word which was preached to us that we will be born again. It is by this word that the Holy Spirit regenerates us and washes us with the water of holy scripture.

By this word, Jesus Christ is revealed to our enlightened eyes and we cling to him by faith united to his saving person and work. So enough of the powerless euphemisms. Scripture is sufficient. Give them scripture.

Jesus does not want you to invite him into your heart. Scripture says he's enthroned as the God-man at the right hand of the Father in heaven. And what does he say to be saved? He says, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel. That's what he says to be saved. Repent and believe in the gospel. So away with all of our powerless manipulations. Scripture is sufficient. Don't give people Pascal's wager.

Don't offer them the indulgence of a signed sinner's prayer. Don't tell them to look at the date in the front of their Bible or recall when they walked an aisle or ask them if they got baptized. Scripture says whoever believes in Christ will not be disappointed.

Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Give them scripture. Give them scripture. Do you want your loved ones and your neighbors to be born again?

Give them the scripture.

Have them read it. Have them read it out loud and ask them, what does that mean?

What does that mean?

That all have fallen short of the glory of God.

What does it mean.

That even while we were enemies Christ died for us?

What does it mean?

Give them the scripture. God has given you a word that is sufficient for the conversion of souls.

Use the scripture.

Scripture alone is sufficient for the correction of sin. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. Verse 2 of chapter 4.

Preach the word, be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience.

And instruction.

Do you see how sufficient and abundantly helpful scripture is? What a wonderful gift God has given us. It's sufficient to tell us the truth, where we're wrong, how to get right, and how to live God's way.

What a sufficient word. It's got everything we need for our faith and our practice. We don't need 40 days of purpose. We don't need our best life now. Scripture is sufficient for all of our faith and practice.

So we use it to reprove and rebuke and exhort and instruct in all of this with great patience. Great patience. Because we can trust that the Spirit will do His work through His word. We have all the confidence in the world.

The temptation, of course, is that we would separate.

Ourselves from the Bible.

We would put distance between ourselves and the Bible in some fashion, in some way. We do this because we want to avoid its authority. We deem it insufficient. We isolate ourselves from the Bible. If we do, we isolate ourselves like a hermit in the desert when we're offered a lush acreage to farm.

We choose.

The wilderness. This is often.

Why some will not submit themselves to the scripture preached and taught and shared in the accountable community of the local church, because they do not wish to be corrected. Proverbs 18 .1 says, he who separates himself seeks his own desire, he quarrels against all sound wisdom.

Scripture is sufficient to correct sin. Boy, do I need that. I need scripture to correct my sin. And if I am distant from scripture, then I am in a world of trouble. It's also sufficient, scripture alone is sufficient for the commission of saints.

For the commission.

Of saints.

All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. And the conclusion in verse 5, but you be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

What is it that we've been called to do? What is this ministry? What are the good works that we are to be made adequate to do? Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.

That's the grand commission. That's the great commission that we're called to do. And guess what? Scripture alone is sufficient for the commission.

Of saints.

Do you want to be adequate? Well equipped?

Ready to go? Everything you need to do. What Christ has called you to do? He's given us a sufficient word. Everything we need. Everything we need. Nothing else is going to keep us focused, keep us going, keep us witnessing, keep us growing, as Christians called to this ministry of.

Reconciliation. This is deep.

Into my soul. Scripture alone. I have on my desk a note pinned to a book easel. This note greets me every time I come into my office. It is my solemn and joyous calling, and it says, Preach Christ from all the Scriptures until He is formed in all of His people.

I've been thinking about that for a long time, and it was just this week I realized it's part of the protest. It's saying Scripture is sufficient. Scripture alone. I encourage you to renew your protest, Protestants.

Renew your protest, Scripture alone. And follow through in that, submitting yourself to the Word, getting into the Word, reading the Word, rejoicing in the truths of God and the Word. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us.

Thank you for such a sufficient word that conveys your authority to us. The authority of Christ himself, and I pray that you would help us to make it our priority in these difficult times, with diminishing time, that we would make this our priority.

May we.

Be a blessing to each other this day,.

And speak.

Some Scripture to one another before we leave this place. And I pray these things for the sake.

Of Christ.

Amen.