The blog is back after more than a month off for Christmas, the mission trip, the Super Bowl (no I have not gotten over it yet) and more.

We are in the midst of Bible Month at First Pres. Why “Bible Month”? Goes back to a decision we made at session (our church council), having reflected on what some mega-churches, particularly Willow Creek, have uncovered in self-evaluation. Seems that Willow, with thousands in attendance, wanted to evaluate their ministry of the past two decades. On numbers alone, you’d have to say they are successful. Lots of people, pastors, buildings, money, projects, influence.

However, when they asked their people if they had made progress in their spiritual lives, the answer was a resounding no. Wow.

Willow Creek is now saying that over two decades that their ministries gave people the following impression: if you showed up to their excellent services and programs, you would grow spiritually. Willow now confesses that they failed to teach people to take responsibility for their own spiritual lives, to become self-feeders. Willow believes that they created a dependency on programs, and never communicated that the programs were intended to supplement private spiritual practice, not to replace it. People faithfully showed up to Willow week after week, year after year, delegating responsibility for their own growth to the mega-church professionals. Thousands of churches followed this model. Millions remained treading spiritual water.

Our response at First Pres is to set aside a month for the promotion of personal Bible study. Is this just another church program, creating more dependency on the church? Maybe; but we hope not. Our aim is to help people make the Sunday-Monday connection, to self-feed from Scripture on the weekdays, to take responsibility for spiritual growth, rooted in personal study of the Word.

Sundays after worship we are listening to the excellent John Stott lecture series The Bible and the Christian Life. This series provides a solid foundation on the nature of scripture and how to approach it. I am roughly coordinating my Sunday sermons to the Stott series:

2/17 2 Tim 3:14-17 Hear the Message

2/24 2 Tim 4:1-5 Teach the Message

3/2 2 Tim 4:6-18 Mobilize the Message

3/9 Women’s Sunday – service led by Presbyterian Women

3/16 Luke 19:28-40 Activate the Message

3/23 Luke 24:1-12 Live the Message

3/30 Guest Preacher,
Rev. Craig Jones of the Theological College of Zimbabwe

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In his second letter to Timothy, Paul wrote this letter from the emperor’s prison in Rome, where he was being held for the last time.  Paul knew the end was near; this colored his message to Timothy. As we read 2 Timothy, we catch Paul’s sense of satisfaction in the sufficiency of Christ, mingled with alarm at the dangers facing the church, and urgency for ensuring the integrity of the preached word and the church.

Second Timothy is the last letter from Paul that we have. One might call it Paul’s last will and testament, handed over to his delegate, Timothy. Timothy was trained, commissioned and sent by Paul. With Paul in chains, Timothy spoke for Paul, and so in Timothy the Word of God was “unchained” …I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God’s word is not chained. (2 Tim 2:9)

When you move from one job to the next, or retire, isn’t it satisfying to hand over your job confident that your successor has every opportunity to succeed? At each of my ministry transitions, I have been blessed to leave with every confidence that the ministry would move forward under new leadership. It’s a good feeling to know that the person who follows you is called and capable, and that the ministry you are passing on is in good shape.

The Paul-Timothy transition happened at an unstable time for the church. In many ways the church had yet to find its feet. Paul’s letters project an unswerving faith in the Lordship of Christ over the church and the world. Surely with Jesus on the throne, everything would work out well for God’s people.

But in 2 Timothy, Paul seems gravely concerned about the future of the church. With Paul in prison, Timothy had become the focus of attacks from Paul’s opponents. Paul paints a picture of the gospel’s opponents and their teaching throughout 2 Timothy:

They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some. 2 Tim 2:18

Comment – The message preached by the opponents is different than the apostolic message; the false teachers taught that believers in Christ did not have a future resurrection to look forward to.

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. 2 Tim 3:1-5

Comment – The self-centered lifestyle of the opponents is different than Christ-centered servant lifestyle lived out by the apostles.

…while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 2 Tim 3:13

Comment – The opponents are named as both evil and false; they are pretending to be good apostles, but they are neither sent from God (apostles) nor are they good.

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 2 Tim 4:3-4

Comment – The apostolic teaching is named as “sound;” (see 1 Tim 1:10) one could substitute the phrase “tested truth.” Opponents of the gospel will not gravitate towards tested truth, but rather towards untested ideas, new teaching to satisfy consumers wanting the latest variety, the trendiest model. Truth, predicts Paul, will matter less to people than novelty, and so people will believe myths which tickle their ears. False ideas will be adopted instead of time-tested truths.

It is against this background of false living and teachings that Paul lays out scripture’s role as the foundation of true knowledge and living in our lives:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:14-17

Continue in The Message Paul was concerned for “Continuity in Content.” He knew that Timothy was a different person than he was, and that in every local congregation the leadership would take on a different look and feel, relative to both the leadership and the context. Change was inevitable. But for Paul there was one thing that could not change, the content of the message about Jesus Christ.

For Paul, who Jesus is and what he did were realities that neither a changing world nor changing leadership could alter. The message proclaiming the person and work of Jesus Christ could not be changed, because to change the message would be to bear false witness, to lie, about God and His work.

Paul urged Timothy to trust the message he had received from trustworthy people, specifically from Timothy’s mother and grandmother as well as from Paul himself. (2 Tim 1:5) Timothy received the gospel from people he knew, who cared about him, not from strangers who were here today, gone tomorrow. Kind of like the contrast between the ministry of a good pastor or elder and that of a TV personality. One is invested in your life, the other just an image on a screen.

Timothy was raised in a godly family and so he learned the scriptures (OT) from an the age of five, according to Jewish practice. His family’s role was crucial, but Timothy came to faith as the Spirit shaped him though Scripture, which made him wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Learning the OT scriptures prepared Timothy’s heart for the message of Christ, and so Timothy believed and was saved through the true message taught by true people.

God-breathed Scripture God’s revelation in Jesus Christ unfolded in time and history, was witnessed by the apostles, and recorded in Scripture. The message about Jesus is the culmination of all in Scripture. Paul says here that all scripture was breathed upon, or inspired, by God. Just as God breathed, creating the first people, so also God breathed, creating the scriptures.

The Bible was written by humans, but ultimately it came from God. In our passage the Bible is called, uniquely in the NT, holy scriptures. The word holy speaks to the divine origin of the scriptures. Men wrote them down, but the words came, through human hearts and minds and hands, from God.

This is a crucial point. Not only are the scriptures words of men pointing to God, they are also words of God. All scripture, meaning every book of the Bible, is the Word, and all books together, the whole Bible, is the Word. We believe that God worked in and through the authors of scripture to produce messages that tell us how God saves, and how we can be a part of God’s salvation. We believe that God worked through the early church to canonize, or set the rule, of what is scripture and what is not. The Bible is a finished work.

The gospel part of Scripture is the “good news message,” that which was preached by the apostles, and so we use the adjective apostolic to describe the content of the gospel message. The apostles uniquely received their authority to speak and to write the New Testament from Jesus himself. One may measure modern teachings about Christ against the gospel preached by the apostles. False teachings about Christ are different from what the apostles taught; true teachings are apostolic, consistent with what the apostles preached and taught, as authorized by Jesus himself.

The Use of Scripture

…useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Good things in life may be used properly, or abused dangerously. Paul wrote here to show how scripture could be used properly, in contrast to the abuse of scripture practiced by false teachers out for their own gain.

The false teachers abused the Bible by interpreting scripture wrongly to prove their false teaching and to justify their false living. Paul encouraged the right use of Scripture for teaching the truth and correcting falsehood, for rebuking selfish living and commending the Christ-centered life.

The overarching purpose of using the Bible properly is so that each person called by God would be well-equipped to do the work of God.

And so to sum it all up:

• Let’s continue living the scripture-based live, as first shared with us by trustworthy messengers.
• Let’s trust the scriptures because they are inspired by God and because they lead us to Christ who saves us.
• Let’s use the scriptures daily, so that we are well-equipped to serve God.

run to Sunday!