The Supreme Sufficiency of the Word - Brandon Scalf

All right, everyone, 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 yet again.

And the title of today's message is The Supreme Sufficiency of the

Word. And so if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy and fallible and supremely sufficient

Word. For the sake of context, we will begin reading in verse 14.

And as is custom, we will end on verse 8 of chapter 4.

So that is chapter 3 verse 14. This is the

Word of God. But you, speaking, of course, of Timothy, continue in the things you learned and became convinced of, knowing from whom you learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

All scripture is God -breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in a 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, 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 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. Go ahead and have a seat and get your eyes back on the text.

Specifically, as I said, verse 16. A lot of preachers, a lot of people, a lot of theologians have a doctrine of scripture that courses through their veins.

Even the uneducated, even the people who ignore the

Bible have an understanding as to what it is or what it isn't.

This kind of falls along the same lines of what R .C. Sproul has said. That is, everyone is, in fact, a theologian.

And how you think about scripture will determine how you live your life.

How you view scripture, as we are coming to see, really governs how we ought to do church.

And it governs what we teach and what we preach.

And since Paul here is writing to his true child in the faith, Timothy, and he has given him or will give him this charge in 4 to preach the word, we must understand painstakingly what the word is and why it matters.

The reason for that, of course, is because if you are going to have a robust theology of preaching, you must have a robust theology of the word of God.

And the reason is quite evident. Paul tells him to preach the word.

He doesn't tell him to preach his own ideas. He doesn't tell him to preach someone else's words.

He doesn't tell him to preach felt needs.

He tells him to preach the word. In other words, he is essentially giving him the recipe and the ingredients for how to fulfill his ministry.

And that word, that sufficient word, that supremely sufficient word is the antidote.

That's the same word, as we have seen in verses past, that saved Timothy. That reared him, as it were, in truth.

It's the same word that is sanctifying him and sanctifying the people in his midst.

And it's the same word that will sustain him as he meets persecution and false teachers and the hardships that come along with, well, building a ministry around the word.

Right? Because there's so many people who have such good ideas about how a church should be ran, what it should be doing, what programs it should be involved in.

And so he's reminding him it is sufficient, supremely sufficient for all things.

And so as we look at today's text, we're not going to look at it in the way that we looked at it last week.

Last week, if you remember, we talked about the nature of the word of God. And of course, sufficiency is wrapped up in that.

But we really looked at where it came from and what it means. For instance, we looked at the reality that, as verse 16 begins, all scripture is

God -breathed. That is, that it is inspired or expired, if you remember me saying that it's literally the breath of God.

It comes from his mouth. And because of that, we need to be reminded that it carries with it certain implications, namely that it's authoritative.

It gets to tell us what to do because it's from God. It is inerrant.

It is without error. And it is infallible. Not only that, but it's indestructible.

It will not ever fail. It is without error in everything that it asserts.

It asserts truly. And so the first thing that I want you to do is look at our text with a different set of lenses.

Instead of looking at it through this lens, the nature of the word, look at it through its sufficiency.

And what we're going to do is we're going to take this passage of scripture, we're going to compare it to Psalm 19 and what the

Old Testament saints, in particular David, thought about the word of God. And so it says here, and this is the first thing that I want you to note, the source of the word.

The source of the word. Now, this is point one from last week where we discussed, as I just mentioned, the profound truth that scripture is not merely a collection of ancient writings, but it is divinely given by God himself.

And if you remember, I said, just as God breathed life into Adam, so too, he breathed his word into the hearts of men through these apostles and prophets, the cornerstone, they were, as Peter said, carried along by the

Holy Spirit. And what that means then, friends, is its significance cannot be overstated as we look at Psalm 19.

And if you would please turn there, we will be there quite a bit. Psalm 19 makes this irrefutably clear.

In many ways, it reiterates this truth, although really because it came first,

Second Timothy is reiterating this truth. In Psalm 19, verse 7, the psalmist says, the law of Yahweh is perfect.

The law of Yahweh is perfect and it restores the soul. The testimony of Yahweh is sure, making wise the simple.

You see here, this word is perfect because it comes from Yahweh. It comes from God himself.

It is sure because it is from God himself. And it will, in fact, make the simple wise because God has ordained it to do that which it is purposed to do.

It will not return to him a void in its perfection. Each command of Scripture, each precept and testimony comes with it, as I have said, divine authority.

Therefore, our approach to Scripture must be one of not just intrigue, but awe, reverence, seeking to understand that it comes from God.

And that means, in fact, that it is supremely sufficient.

Now, let me pause here because I keep saying this word supremely, and I keep using the word sufficient.

As a matter of fact, I've mentioned the sufficiency of the word of God every single time we have met to look at this passage of Scripture.

And here's why that's important, because there are many people, as I tried to state at the end here, that can affirm inspiration to some degree, who would then come to say that it has authority over our lives.

Of course, they might parse out what that looks like, that it is inerrant in some form or fashion, and that it is infallible and maybe even to some degree indestructible.

But if we completely miss the sufficiency of Scripture, we destroy our doctrine of Holy Scripture, and we neuter our

Christian lives. Because it's not just inerrant. It's not just infallible.

It's not just indestructible. It's not just authoritative. And it doesn't just come from God. It comes from God.

And it is all of those things. And it is completely sufficient both for the ministry of the word in the pulpit.

It is sufficient for every ministry here at Heritage. And it is sufficient to save sinners and to sanctify saints.

The word of God is supremely sufficient. And if we eject that, we miss it all.

I don't care what you think about inerrancy. I mean, I care. But if it's divorced from sufficiency, we have a very big problem.

Not because it is so very sufficient.

Ignoring the divine authorship of Scripture leads to spiritual disorder.

And it leads to a schismatic understanding of the doctrine of Scripture.

And it will, if we're not careful, cause us to not think of its sufficiency.

What do I mean by that? I mean that so many people, so many preachers of God's word, who will happily deal out cotton candy instead of the meat of the word, will say, yeah, yeah, yeah, the

Scriptures are good. But also, all of these other things are actually what

God is interested in shaping his people.

Like miracles or programs or cool light shows.

But the reality is, it is sufficient because the source of the word comes from God himself, and it comes with a purpose.

The second thing that I want you to see is the scope of the word. The scope of the word.

As you see here, it says all Scripture, that is every piece of Scripture, the Old Testament and the New Testament, is

God -breathed. It is inspired. And it is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, back at 2

Timothy verse 16, so that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped, for every good work.

If you're using the New American Standard Bible, the word equipped here is translated as complete. And it carries with it this idea of being completed.

Equipped is a better translation, but the idea here is that it is completely and utterly comprehensive in all that it seeks to do, or all that God seeks to do with it.

The word of God, in other words, has an extensive applicability.

It is profitable for essentially everything, for everything that pertains to life and godliness, teaching.

It is sufficient for that in the church and in your home.

Instruction and sound doctrine, in other words. It is sufficient for reproof.

That is, it is sufficient to expose sin, leading to a conviction of sin, which of course leads to the killing of sin.

All right? And then we revisited, or are revisiting now currently, this idea of correction, which is the restoration of a believer who has engaged in sin.

It corrects them in the way, and then training in righteousness. It gives them the positive way in which to walk.

In other words, as the word is taught, it reproves, it corrects, and it trains in righteousness.

That is, it essentially fosters spiritual maturity as it is proclaimed, studied, and believed.

Now, as we look back at Psalm 19, we can see that these facets are indeed highlighted throughout all of Scripture.

This is not just something that Paul is arguing. It is something that the Bible argues for itself.

Psalm 19, verse 8, the very next verse says, the precepts of Yahweh are right.

All right? So that implies that we might do some wrong thinking, and it might need some correcting.

It rejoices the heart. The commandment of Yahweh is pure, and it enlightens the eyes.

You can see that really what's being summed up here is what we've said already. It shows us our sin.

It enlightens our eyes. It exposes it because it is a pure word. It comes from God, who is light.

It rejoices our heart because it is right.

And so if we are to understand the Scriptures as being sufficient, we must engage them, not just for head knowledge, not just for information, but for genuine life application.

What does this mean for me? What does this mean for my life?

Yes, there is a context, and we take the context very seriously here. Paul is speaking to a very real person named

Timothy in a very real situation as he passes the church or churches in Ephesus. And he is being bombarded with false teaching, and he needs encouragement.

So it's not written to us. It's written to Timothy. However, it's written for us.

It's written for us so that we might be saved, that we might be sanctified, that we might be sufficiently equipped for every good work.

Do you look at the Word of God that way? Do you understand that it's sufficient for your life, for your trials, for your problems, for your joys, for your everything?

Because it most certainly is. Children, would you look at me here for just a second?

The Word of God is the thing you must turn to when you are having a bad day, a bad year, when you're having a good day and a good year, when things are hard, when things are easy, when people are mean, when you sin and maybe start acting mean.

When you have questions about how to live life, the answers are found in here.

It tells us the sanctification is the will of God for our lives, for your life.

And we get that through the Holy Spirit working on us through the preached

Word, through the study of the Word of God. So its scope then is comprehensive in nature.

It covers and gets to the very morrow of the bones.

This is the argument of Hebrews chapter 4, verse 12. It lays us bare. It judges the thoughts and intentions of our heart, it says in Hebrews chapter 4, verse 12.

It directs us. This is what the men of old have always believed.

The Puritans, for example, Thomas Goodwin said of the scriptures that God has provided in the scriptures a remedy for every disease of the soul.

And so that brings me to my third point, which is the sustenance of the Word. The sustenance of the

Word. So as we think about the comprehensive nature, the scope of the

Word, we need to understand that it also nourishes us. It nourishes us.

It nourishes the soul. When we think about the sufficiency of scripture, what we're really thinking about is the reality that the

Word of God has the ability to sustain us. When everything is being talked about in terms of the world being scary, when we don't know what tomorrow might bring, when we're anxious, the

Word of God will, in fact, sustain us. I mean, that's what Paul is saying here, is it not? To Timothy, I know all of these things are happening to you and you have to look around and think, this is going to get insane.

This is insane. But Paul says, listen, the Word of God will, in fact, sustain you because it is sufficient.

And that the man of God, if you employ it, will be made complete regardless of what's going on in your midst.

And this word equipped here, as I said, is translated as complete in many other translations.

It really conveys the sense of being outfitted or equipped for a thing or a battle.

It's like a soldier, as it turns out, preparing for battle. Now, believers must arm themselves with the

Word because the Word is the only thing sufficient to sustain them and to nourish them and to be the balm for their myriad of both self -inflicted and other afflicted trials and sores.

Psalm 19 illustrates this perfectly in the very next verse, Psalm 19, verse 10.

And here the psalmist articulates the immeasurable value of God's Word, showing us that really it is sustaining and nourishing in nature when he says this in verse 10.

They, speaking of the Word of God, are more desirable than gold, even more than much fine gold.

So the psalmist here is reiterating himself and saying it's better than gold, but not just any gold, the best gold.

He goes on. It's also sweeter than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.

It's wonderful. It's satiating. It's joy inducing.

Right? Just as we long for physical sustenance, we want money in the bank account, we want food on the shelves, just like we want that.

Our hearts ought to long for the hunger of the Word in the same way and see it doing the very same thing.

Now, of course, don't hear what I'm not saying, right? If you're hungry, studying the

Word of God is not going to fill your belly, but it will show you how to thrive and how to be sustained even in hunger and want.

It will address all issues pertaining to life and godliness.

This is why Jesus says in Matthew 4, 4, right after being tempted by Satan in the desert, wanting food, no doubt, fasting.

And he answers the devil back with this phrase.

It is written. You see, even Jesus had a robust view of the sufficiency of Scripture.

The Son of God always off of his lips said, it is written, you should already know when he was speaking to the

Pharisees. It's already written down. God has already spoken on this. And notice he didn't say to them, and he's not saying to even

Satan now, what you need is some guy to give you some new prophecy. What you need now is for some guy to give you an interpretation of a dream or vision.

No, no, no, he says what? Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word,

Jesus says, that proceeds out of the mouth of God. You see,

Jesus understood what Paul is promoting. As a matter of fact, that's where Paul got it, that in the

Old Testament, right? That this word is sufficient to sustain us, sufficient for sustenance.

It is more important than your bank account. It is more important than the food on your shelf.

If you do not have the word of God as a Christian, you will flounder, you will fail, and you will not be sustained, especially on the day of trouble.

The next thing that I want you to see, and really this is where we were going to spend the bulk of our time this evening, is the supreme sufficiency of the word.

And if you're beginning to think, man, this sounds awfully redundant. That's the point, right?

The word of God is ridiculously, supremely sufficient, and it does all of these things and more.

But the reality is the scriptures, the word of God, are supremely, above all else, sufficient.

One, because it's all -encompassing. Because there is not an area of your life,

Christian, that the word of God does not touch, help, and more than that, it is sustaining in so many ways, in all of the ways that matter.

But more than that, it has an all -encompassing, to use that word again, provision for both salvation and sanctification.

Now, we've seen this already because in verse 14, Paul encourages

Timothy, tells him actually by way of command, to continue in this word that he has believed and been saved by.

All right, verse 15. It has made him wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

So the first thing you need to understand is it is sufficient to save sinners.

Thomas Watson has famously said, the scriptures are the word of God, the very canon that God himself has shot forth for the saving of souls.

The reality is, friends, there has never been a person saved who has not been saved by the preaching of the word of God or the promotion of the word of God.

The word of God is what does the saving through the power of the

Holy Spirit to be sure. Now, this is the point that Paul makes in Romans.

How will they believe if they have not heard? And how will they hear if there has never been a preacher sent?

Now, I know it's fanciful and it is, you know, the good Christian thing to do to believe everybody who says that all of these people in other countries are being saved in dreams and visions.

That would be, that would be a really cool story if it was biblical.

The reality is salvation comes by hearing and hearing what? The word of God.

So, very plainly, very practically, very, in some ways, controversially, if the word of God has not touched the ears of someone who supposedly claims to, or you hear by wind of something to be saved apart from the word of God, they're either deceived or the people promoting that idea are deceived.

The word of God is, in fact, the thing that does through the power of the

Spirit, the saving. John Owen, another

Puritan, says that the word of God is sufficient.

That anything outside of it that people claim saved them, it's a product of hell.

Thomas Watson says scripture is a royal treasury where God has laid up all the jewels of salvation.

And then he continues on. And sanctification. And sanctification.

So, not only is there an all -encompassing provision for salvation, there is an all -encompassing provision made by God's ordination of putting the scriptures into the world by the word of his mouth, by the breath of his mouth for sanctifying saints.

For sanctifying saints. So, it is clear that God is in the business of both saving and sanctifying his people through the word.

And as we will come to see, primarily through the preached word, which is why this series is called

Preach the Word and not Go Home and Read the Word. Not that you shouldn't go home and read the word, but preaching is what

God has in his sovereign, perfect, and beautiful will chosen to save and sanctify his people.

1 Peter 1 .23 makes this even more clear about salvation.

He says, For you have been born, in verse 23 of chapter 1, again.

Now, what does that mean, born again? It means to be regenerated by the power of the

Holy Spirit. It means to have your heart of stone ripped from you and given a divine heart transplant so that you now no longer hate

God, but love God and want to chase after him, read his word, and live in obedience to it.

So, it says, You have been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible.

That is, through the living and enduring word of God.

The word is sufficient to save. And the word, as we look here at verse 16, again, and verse 17 of 2

Timothy, is sufficient for sanctification. It's supremely sufficient for everything.

Right? Because it is 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.

For every good work, every act of obedience.

So, see here, Paul concludes with a very compelling affirmation that Scripture equips us in every way.

Now, friends, that's important. It's important because we live in an age where so many people think themselves wise, but in the end are fools.

And they chase after various philosophies. They chase after various different understandings of what love is.

And we talked about that this morning. So, Paul finds it crucial here, and I find it crucial, once again, to reiterate before moving on, the fact that the sufficiency of God's word transcends all human wisdom.

It stands as judge over everything because it's from God and it is sufficient for everything.

As we look back at Psalm 19, it echoes, really, what's being said here in these two verses of 2

Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17. Continuing back in verse 19, or verse 11, rather, of chapter 19, we see that the psalmist says,

Moreover, by them, of course, speaking of the Scriptures, your slave is warned, and keeping them there is great reward.

Here, firstly, we see that the Scriptures are, much like it's being talked about here, sufficient to warn believers.

It is sufficient to warn believers. So, the word not only provides direction in how to live our life, but also warns and protects us from spiritual peril, right?

You remember when we looked at Romans 8 a few weeks ago, and we saw, what? That there was a passage speaking to Christians that seemed like he was suggesting that we could abandon the faith.

But what I argued then, and it's the same thing that I'll argue now, and it's the same thing that the Scriptures in Psalm 19 are arguing for in this here, is that those act as warnings to draw us ever closer to Christ, and to push us even further away from our sin as we contemplate the realities of what those warnings are teaching us.

More than that, it's sufficient to reward the faithful.

In keeping God's word, it says, in verse 11 here, there is great reward.

Scripture provides the pathway, as it were, to a life of blessing.

Now, when I say that, and when Paul says it, it doesn't mean what you think it means.

And what I mean by that is, a blessing has in our day and time, especially in conjunction with the churches that exist around here, specifically in Tulsa, is that blessing means financial prosperity, health, and all of that sort of stuff, right?

Interestingly enough, those who say that God will not, if you are in fact safe, will not let you not be healthy, all seem to wear glasses.

But that's besides the point. Their hypocrisy is written on their face, literally.

When we're talking about blessing, we're talking about spiritual blessing. We're talking about the blessing that you can receive, whether there's money in your bank account, whether there's health in your bones.

It is the kind of blessing that will sustain you on the day of trouble. Both in this life and the next, the scriptures will continually point us to Jesus Christ the righteous and our reward that we have in Him.

So this reward spoken of here is not one of material wealth, but spiritual riches, peace, joy, eternal life in Christ Jesus, stuff that transcends the temporal, things that are eternal, things that have been purchased for the

Christian according to Ephesians chapter one, right? Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places has been given to His people.

So you must hold fast. You must hold fast to this sufficient word.

For it will not only warn you and protect you from peril, from losing your soul, from bringing you from sinner to saint, but it will also reward you with the richest richness and riches of knowing

Christ Jesus, your Lord. Amen. Amen.

So hold fast to it. And so when I get up and preach, when anyone gets up and preach, but it's my aim to promote to you in my preaching, and that is what he is trying to instill in Timothy here, that the word of God is sufficient.

It's not just enough to say it's insufficient, but as we think about preaching, we must show its sufficiency.

And because it's sufficient, that means it's relevant. We don't have to recreate the wheel. We don't have to make it attractive.

It's attractive because it's sufficient for all things. We don't have to have light shows.

We don't have to have fog machines. We don't have to have motorcycles on the stage. We don't have to have goody bags and donuts for everybody.

We don't have to have a million different programs. What we need is a church that preaches, proclaims the word of God, lives by the word of God, is obedient to the word of God, and is always seeking to reform to the word of God because it is supremely sufficient.

That means as we engage with the truth of it, we must not just be hearers, but doers.

And we must also do what it says and believe it, right?

To simply have an intellectual understanding or to assent to it intellectually, that is that it is sufficient, is really proof with our life, is it not?

If you really believe it's sufficient, then you would seek to conform your life to its truths.

And if you don't, well, there's a huge litmus test there. It reveals to you that you actually do not think that it's all that sufficient, right?

You know, before I planted Heritage Church, I was a church planting resident at another huge church with six campuses that was all about the

CEO model of church planting. And what we do at Heritage in those circles, that would be mocked.

And it would be mocked because, well, certainly, we're not gonna get people in through the door just preaching the word, prioritizing the word, teaching the word to the men and training them how to train their families in the word.

And it would be easy for a church planter, for example, who reads these books, who thinks about these things to go, you know what?

I would like there to be more people in the seats. I would like to have a pay increase. I would like to, you see, keep going down this line here and start thinking, well, other things actually would be sufficient to grow the church.

But that would be a huge mistake. And that would be a huge mistake because it's trying to do church in man's way instead of God's way, trusting in the sufficiency of all of these other things and not trusting in the sufficiency of the word that he has given us, which is supremely sufficient.

And just so you are aware, though we might be mocked by those circles, within a year and a half, our morning gathering now is about at 120, 130.

I don't know if those numbers are 100 % correct now. That might be a little bit of pastor math, but it was that for a while.

And here's the deal. That's a huge deal. That's a huge deal. It's a huge deal because one, that's two times the size of an average church in America.

Secondarily, it's a huge deal because we have done nothing except for had a friend of ours make a few videos, nothing to really advertise except for maybe $100 here or $100 there on a

Facebook ad. But I don't even use a fraction of what we have budgeted to do that.

Why? Because I don't care. I don't. And I'll tell you why

I don't care. Because the word of God is sufficient to do the work of God amongst the people of God.

And if we forget that and we forget its sufficiency, then we really don't need to be coming here and being a church anyway.

The word is sufficient supremely for all things.

So this sufficiency then ought to manifest itself in our actions and our attitudes as we live life.

But in order for us to live out the scriptures that we believe to sufficient, to see as sufficient, we have to see its sufficiency, which means we have to actually know it.

And in order to know it, we must study it. And we must hear what's being said so that we might do it.

So the fifth thing that I want you to see as we close out the evening is the saturation of the word.

The saturation of the word. In order for you to manifest your belief in the sufficiency of scripture as it is preached, you must be saturated in it.

You must soak in it. You must live and breathe it.

Somebody in this congregation, I don't remember who it was, shared a video that I caught on a reel.

I don't know who the pastor was. I have no idea if he was sound. But that's kind of irrelevant to the point

I'm trying to make. He was talking about how, as they have polled a certain amount of people, which

I don't know how he got this data, but it sounded true enough, which is to say that they looked at believers' lives and asked them a series of questions over time.

And what they saw was if you were in the word of God and sat under preaching one day a week, there was almost no change in the way that someone behaved or acted.

And I think that same trend essentially was true all the way up to like four days.

But anything after five days, there started to be a little bit more of a change in people's behavior. Well, once again,

I'm not sure how they did this study. I don't have any peer -reviewed essays that examined it. I don't know how true everything that is.

But I would say that the general thrust of what he's saying is true. If you care about God's word little, you'll care about living it out little.

If you do not care about ingesting and digesting when you go to use it to sustain you, but you haven't done that, it will not, right?

In order to think God's thoughts after him and live the way he has you to live, you must read

God's thoughts. And he wrote them down, interestingly enough, in a book. So practically, let's get to the uses.

Let's be a Puritan for a second. In order to be saturated in the word, you must engage the scriptures daily.

Preaching is what we're after in this series. And we're gonna get into that in greater detail.

But you must be in the word every single day.

And if you're thinking to yourself, well, that's just impossible. I see what you do on Facebook.

You've got time. You've got time to read a chapter of the word of God and meditate on it, right?

You may not be able to read 16 chapters, but a paragraph a day will do more for you than you think it will.

Richard Sibbes, in his book on the riches of Jesus Christ, he begins his treatise by essentially saying, it's not those who eat the most, using the same analogy of eating and digesting and being satiated.

It's not those who eat the most who are the most sustained and healthy.

But those who meditate the most. And his argument is a paragraph of scripture saturating your mind and your heart will do far more good for you than a head full of scripture you can't remember all the way, right?

So engage the scriptures daily. Set a schedule if you have to.

Allocate specific times for you and even for your family. A good way to do this is, of course, family worship.

But if family worship is the first time you're picking up your Bible during the day, man, you are failing your family.

I was talking to actually Pastor Brandon over at Ecclesia, who you guys know, he's came and preached here multiple times.

And he told me, this is just something that came to mind that I thought might be helpful in relation to this point, is in the morning for his own personal devotion, if you wanna use that language, he picks out the passage that he is going to teach on family worship and he studies it.

He gets into the original languages. He looks at commentaries and he feeds and feasts upon that truth and thinks about it all day.

And then he teaches it in family worship so that he can actually have something worthwhile to say when he's sitting there instead of,

I don't know, guys, we just wanna look this up together. No, as men of the house, you are to lead your family in the word, which means you must know the word.

And if that means that you have to get up an hour early or stay up an hour later, so be it.

That's what you do, right? Because the word of God is more important for your family than the food that you are going to work to get put on the table.

And not only that, but diversify your study, combine your personal reading or devotion time with in -depth theological works.

Sometimes you wanna read something quick that's good for the heart. For that, I recommend something like a devotional by the

Puritans, for example. You didn't know that was coming. There is one specifically called

Voices from the Past and it's literally a paragraph and it points you to scripture.

You can read the scripture passage, read the Puritan and then move on with your life. But sometimes get out of systematic theology or seven, a biblical theology and get to work being absorbed in study, getting to the bottom of every little nuance.

Get study guides. We produce them generally before sermon series that we do like we did with Ruth and make sure that you are focusing on contextual understandings of its time and so on and so forth.

And do not spend your time studying hobby horses. Right? Your family is not going to benefit from 37 weeks of who the sons of God are in Genesis or whether or not the ending of Mark is legit.

As in, is it part of the original manuscripts? Like these are things to study. These are things to care about. But maybe you need to move on and study more.

Also engage preaching and teaching with the goal of learning and being transformed.

So reading scripture is good, but sitting under preaching is gooder.

That's the correct theological jargon. All right. And here's what I mean by that.

I don't mean that it's better to hear Pastor Brandon speak than to hear God speak in a scripture.

That's not the argument that I'm making. But the Puritans, they would often say, if you had one hour to sit underneath the preached word by a man who has been entrusted with that message by God, and he's studied it all week and lived in it and breathed it, then it's going to be far more beneficial for your soul than just sitting and reading and not having commentaries or anything and just kind of, why?

Well, one, it's evident. Somebody puts in 30 hours to prepare a sermon or something like that, that's going to be better than your one hour of study time.

So practically, that makes sense. But then also, God has just chosen to work that way through preaching, not because preachers are awesome.

In fact, it's quite the opposite. God tends to use the most least likely people to proclaim his word.

I don't know that I've met a pastor in my life, well, even in seminary or anything.

I mean, there might be a few weirdos out there, but for the most part, every single person who

I've met was like, yeah, didn't see this coming. I can't believe I'm a pastor now or a preacher.

You know, my mom wouldn't even believe this. That's the same of me. It's just because God has chosen to work through weak and feeble men to flex his goodness, graciousness, and power.

So when you've come to the preached word at a gathering, be praying to receive that word before you even get here.

Take notes. A lot of you take notes and that's super encouraging, but some of you don't.

And I'm not saying that everything I say needs to be written down. Sometimes you need to be writing your thoughts about what I'm saying, even if it's,

I don't know if that's right. That's a perfectly fine note, so long as I'm actually not right, and then we have a conversation about it, right?

But you want to remember what the Lord is doing in your heart. You want to remember what that scripture said.

You want to remember why that Greek word was important. You want to remember those sorts of things, and you want to be able to go back to them so that you can bury them even deeper in your heart.

It doesn't have to be a doctoral dissertation. Nobody even ever needs to see it. I might ask to see it every once in a while just to see what you got to help me in my preaching.

I do that to a couple here from time to time, although I can't read the handwriting most times, so it's somewhat, you know, a fool's errand,

I suppose. But here's the deal. Take notes. Prayerfully expect

God to do work on your heart as the word is preached because it is sufficient, supremely so, and take note of the things that he's doing in your heart and what the scriptures are principally teaching.

Oh, it's so helpful. Share your insights with your husband or with your wife and your children.

Share them at fellowship group during the week because, in essence, when you share, you are actually engaging in teaching as well.

And when you teach others what you have learned and what the Lord is doing in your heart through the preached word, it helps solidify your understanding and encourages everyone else to grow alongside you.

Engage in the resources that we have in the back. We literally have books upon books upon books back there.

And if you don't have any money for the ones in the quote -unquote bookstore or bookshelf, take them and read them because it's more important that you get that truth in you than for us to have, you know, the budget replenished.

Now, everybody walk back there and take every single book, but, you know, avail yourselves. We give you those reasons for example.

Not only that, but implement reproof and correction. When the word is preached, since it is sufficient to expose and to correct, to train in righteousness, examine, reflect upon your life and your sin struggles, and regularly assess areas in your life where you may have strayed from the word of God, believing the word of God or living out the word of God and prayerfully ask

God to reveal any sins or attitudes that need correcting. This is why we do at the beginning of our services, which

I've never seen done in a church. I've only read about it in history, which is why I decided I wanna do it. And I could never understand why churches didn't do it.

And I'm not gonna say there aren't churches that do it. I just have never seen one, which we do the confession of sin and assurance of pardon.

We wanna make sure that we're coming to this thing with clean hands and pure hearts cleansed by the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we wanna make sure that we're ever aware of the cross. Always wanna examine ourselves.

We wanna be willing to be corrected by the word of God. And if the word of God is not continually correcting you, you're reading it and listening to it wrong.

And be open to feedback from others as well. Encourage trusted friends or mentors or pastors to speak truth into your life based on this word and this word alone, or by good and necessary consequences, things that come from the very word of God.

Perfectly ask God to reveal any sins or attitudes that need an attitude adjustment.

This will foster accountability and growth in maturity. More than that, commit to righteousness.

In other words, resolve to be obedient to the word. Actively pursue righteousness, right?

If we're being trained, if we go back to 2 Timothy 3, verse 16 and 17, understanding that the man of God may be equipped by this word, having been thoroughly equipped by every good work, then we must understand that it has for us righteousness as the goal.

So identify in your life practical ways to apply the word in your daily decisions and your relationships at your work as it pertains to your personal conduct.

The word is a lamp unto your feet. Use it. Use it.

And be continually trained in righteousness, engaging in the spiritual disciplines, continuing your education, whether that be in Shepherd's Institute or the various Bible studies that we have here, the heritage.

Guys, the word of God is sufficient. It is supremely sufficient.

And God is using it and will use it and has promised to use it to save sinners and to sanctify his saints as they are through the preached word, pointed to the incarnate word,

Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and who applies by his spirit of the very word that he both was revealed in, that pointed to him and wrote for you.

So if we want to preach the word, we want to be a church that preaches the word. If we want to understand what it means to preach the word and why we should preach the word, then it's important to understand that scripture is supremely sufficient.

Amen. All right, pray with me. Father, we thank you. We thank you for your word.

We thank you that you have given it to us to first save us and then to sanctify us as your spirit applies it to our hearts and to our minds and to our hands.

And so we ask as we continue to study your word that you would cause it not to fall on deaf ears, but hungry ears who want to digest it, be saturated in it so that they might see more of your son,

Jesus, and live unto him more faithfully. And we ask these things in Jesus meritorious name. Amen.