All Scripture is Profitable

Good morning. It's a pleasure to honor, to bring God's Word to you. If I were to ask you what two of the most fundamental markers there are of someone who's a Christian, I'm sure we'd bat it around and we'd talk for a while and everyone would have suggestions. But I would imagine at the top of the list, I would argue that at the top of the list should be Reading the Bible and praying. Christians read the Bible and they pray. It's what they do. Now, there are seasons in our lives where these come more easily and where our lives will be more marked by these. But if someone's a Christian, their lives will be marked by both reading the Bible and praying. Scripture reading and praying are not something that's for the super Christian, but it's for all Christians.

All Christians. From birth, you ought to be reading the scriptures to your children. And as soon as your children start speaking and can start saying words, you ought to be teaching them how to pray to God. And as soon as they're able to start reading words, you ought to be teaching them how to read the word of God. It's just something that Christians do. Now, When I talk to people, or maybe I'm part of a small group or after church, often I hear people ask for prayer that God would give them wisdom. And this is a good thing. You should ask God for wisdom. James 1.5 says that if we're lacking wisdom, we ought to ask God for wisdom and faith. However, it seems to me that in asking for wisdom, often what is expected...

is that God is just going to reveal something to you. That suddenly you'll know the answer to the problem that you have. Or maybe you'll hear an audible voice or something. We just want God to hit the download button and the wisdom that we need would just be there. What it never seems to be is that we're asking God for wisdom and that the wisdom we're asking for will be gained. By devouring the word of God. That when we ask God for wisdom, that we'd actually find that wisdom by searching his word for the wisdom that we desire. Now, I don't know if the reason we do this is because we think that it's just easier if God would just give us that wisdom. Or perhaps it seems more spiritual if God would just download solutions to our problems into our heads.

But that's not how God ordinarily works. Rather, God has given us means, and he expects us to use the means that he's given us to accomplish the ends that he desires. So, I have a simple exhortation for you today. Read your Bible. We're going to talk a lot about the reasons and the benefits of reading the Bible. But the sum of it is that if you would like to be thoroughly equipped for every good work, that you must... be students of the Word of God. And that if you are not a student of the Word of God, it makes sense that your life would be filled with problems and you would feel a lack of wisdom and you would feel a lack of control and you would feel all these pressures. But that if you want to be thoroughly equipped for every good work, if you want to do something profitable, then you must be a student of the Word of God.

If you will, please stand. Our passage today is short. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Well, all we're going to do today is march straight through the passage, line at a time. First one is all scripture is inspired by God. The idea here is a word that probably Paul made up, and it's God breathed. All scripture is God breathed, literally God breathed. And actually, that's what the word inspired means.

It just means it's Latin for breathed out. So what we're getting at is the idea that the Bible is God's word. Now, quickly to note, this doesn't mean that every word of the Bible was spoken to the author that God was, that he was just being dictated to, though parts of the scripture are dictations from God. If you read the different sections, what you're going to see is that each book has different styles, different vocabularies. And that comes from the different authors, right? The men that God used to write the scriptures, he used their personalities and the vocabularies that they had, the backgrounds that they had, the educations that they had. And that's why when you read different books, they have different tones and they have different, part of it's the different audiences, right? The book was written over 1,500 years. However, The Holy Spirit was active. He guided the entire process so that every word is inspired by God. 2 Peter tells us that no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And often in Scripture, we hear the Spirit spoken of as breath. And so when it says it's God-breathed, the idea is that the word of God that we have,

was guided and inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was in this process. And so what we know is that the Bible is the Word of God. And it claims to. It's very interesting. If you were to do a search in the Old Testament, throughout the Scripture, it says, Thus says the Lord 419 times. The Word of the Lord is written 259 times. God said, as written 42 times, spoke nine times, and answered 13 times, right? And so that is a claim. It's claiming and saying that the words that we have were given to us by God. Scripture is the word of God, and it claims to be the word of God. And if this is the case, then that has implications for us and for our lives. God spoke.

Let there be light, and there was light. And we can go through all creation's story, and we see that creation was spoken into existence by God. That's his word. Now we have the Bible, the written down words of God, but they are powerful. Our existence, we were spoken into existence, right? And so when you're holding the word of God, you are holding something that is... incredibly powerful. God is perfect. He's holy, which means that you cannot find a fault with what God says. Now, you may not like what God says, but you cannot find fault in what God says. You, as the creation, must be humble and submit to the word of God. To refuse to listen to the word of God is to rebel against God because it's his word.

It's he breathed it out. It's inspired by him. If you do not recognize this, that it is the word of God, and that it has obligations placed upon you by the fact that it is God's word and that he created you, well then, you will neglect it because the importance isn't there. But as soon as it impresses upon your mind that this is the creator's words written and given, for you and for your profit, then you should devour it. You should desire it above all else. Another thing is, another implication of this, is that when you are holding the scriptures, when you have the scriptures, you have the thoughts of God given to you. Now, I think that we often have this idea that maybe somehow we would have an easier time of it if...

we could have Moses here teaching us, or maybe the Apostle Paul, or Jesus himself, right? Like somehow that some of these people in past eras of Christianity had it better than us because, I mean, who wouldn't love to sit under a sermon by the Apostle Paul? But what we're doing by that, when we're wishing that, is we're actually saying something about our opinion of Scripture. In Scripture, we have the very words of God. You are not lacking anything. You are not lesser off than the disciples who walked with Christ because you have the revealed word of God with you today. So you're not lacking. You didn't somehow get the short end of the stick. And the other part of this phrase, right, is that all Scripture, all Scripture, not just the New Testament.

Not just the parts of the Bible that you like that make you feel comfortable. All Scripture is God-free. Every single part. Which means you shouldn't just flip the Bible open and read a verse that day from that section and flip the Bible open to another section. You should read all of God's Word. Because all of it was inspired by God. One part isn't more inspired than the other, right? The words of Jesus may be in red in your Bible, but that doesn't mean that they're more special than the Old Testament parts that are talking about the conquering of Canaan and the genealogies. Those are just as much inspired by God as the words that are in red. So you ought to be reading all of Scripture, Old Testament and New Testament.

It has equal weight and authority in your life. Now, the next part it tells us is that Scripture is profitable. And that's a good thing, right? Because what I don't want you to hear me saying at all is that reading Scripture is just easy and that you're going to understand all of it the first time you read through it. But what you do need to know is that Scripture is profitable. We all... dislike unprofitable work. When I was painting, every once in a while you'd have a customer and they would have you come in and you'd paint the house and then they'd hate the color. And so then they would pay you to repaint the house a different color. And often my guys hated it. And it's like, well, you're getting paid for the job. But it just felt like unprofitable work. Because, you know, you...

You just painted the house and you're going back, right back. And really, I mean, it really wouldn't matter as long as you're getting paid if you spent the rest of your life painting that house because you're getting paid for the work, right? But it just felt unprofitable. And the thing is, we don't like unprofitable work. There's a reason why you find it so hard reading the scripture because you don't think there's any profit in it for you. The promise is that if you will put the work into reading and praying and meditating, it will do you good. You will profit from spending time in the word of God. Now, maybe part of the reason you think it isn't profitable is because you just feel like you're dumb. You feel you're too stupid to get what's going on in the word of God. What I want to encourage you is that you're not alone. Jesus says, but the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you everything that I've said to you.

If you are a Christian, God has given you the Holy Spirit to help you understand the Bible. Psalm 19, the law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple, the stupid, the people who don't have understanding. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening. The eyes. And so if you say, well, you know, it's hard. You have an advocate. You have the Holy Spirit who is there and who can give you understanding as you have a hard time understanding what the Word of God is saying to you. This means that you have what you need to study the Bible. Books, commentaries, systematics, they're helpful, useful. You don't need them.

You should learn to spend time with the word of God. So think about it. You start dating, and you're trying to understand things about women and how they talk and what they mean. You may go to a wiser man and say, help me understand. And that's maybe like a commentary, right? You're reading the word of God, and you want to understand. It's not wrong to go and read what a wise man has said to help you understand the word of God. But if throughout your whole marriage, you don't actually take time to get to know your wife, but your wife says something and you call up your pastor and you say, okay, wife said this, interpret it to me. It's like, who has the relationship with your wife? You need to know your wife, right? You need to know the word of God. And it's not wrong.

to get help in understanding the Word of God. But there's something absurd about never spending time with the Word of God and only spending time with people who spend time with the Word of God in order to understand the Word of God. It's ridiculous. And you think, well, yeah, of course it would be absurd to do that with your relationship with your spouse. Well, how much more absurd when you have the Holy Spirit indwelling in you who is the perfect interpreter of the Word of God. So read the Word of God. Spend time in it. Don't read one section and feel the need to rush off to some book, to some other person. When you have the Holy Spirit, seek wisdom from him. Ask him to open your eyes. Many of us want a word from God, but we don't want the word of God. We all own Bibles, but we aren't wanting the Bible to own us. And so this is what I'm afraid of.

sometimes when I hear prayers for wisdom, is that we just want God to give us some sort of wisdom to download it into our heads. And so we want a word from God. But I'm here telling you that you have the word of God. And you're not lacking. If God somehow audibly spoke to you, it would be no greater and no more powerful than the word of God, which is contained in the Bible, which you own. Because that is the word of God to you. And... The implication of the fact in Revelation when it says that a scripture is closed, that you can't add to it or subtract to it, is that this is the authoritative word of God. And that if you want to start saying, well, I heard this voice, well, it better be in line with what God said because you cannot elevate some voice that you heard to the level of the written word of God which is inspired by God and which we know is inspired by God. So we are not lacking.

We are not any less off than any of the apostles or any of the Christians throughout history. In fact, in point of fact, we actually have more revelation than Moses did. We actually have a clearer revelation than even the disciples in the book of Acts. Because now we have the whole scripture before us. And so you're not less off. You're greater off. You have more. All right. Teaching. Well, specifically now what we're going to do is we're going to say, okay, so all Scripture is God-breathed and it's profitable. How is the Scripture profitable to us? And there's four things that we're given. The first one, well, I'll tell you this too. Scripture is profitable in four ways. For teaching.

The idea of teaching is what is right. Next is reproof. Reproof is what is not right. For correction, how to get right. And training in righteousness, which is how to stay right. So teaching. Teaching is doctrine. What we should believe. You know, you have problems. You have problems in your marriage. You have problems at work. Family conflict. And what do you do? You pray. You call Pastor Dave. Call one of the elders. We've got a problem. Here's the issues. So you go for counseling. Where do you think Pastor Dave gets the teaching that he's going to give you? The counsel that he's going to give you? The Word of God. The tools that the men you sit under use.

It's the word of God. Now, we're not reading it today, but if you go into chapter 4, what Paul commands Timothy to do is to preach, right? And preaching is united to this. And so you come each Sunday to be taught for your prophet. You know this is good. I need to sit under the word of God. So I come to church on Sunday to be taught, to be preached to. But that preaching is only going to be profitable if it's based on and expositing the Word of God. If it's based on our own whims and our own fancies, it would be of no profit. And so the teaching that we receive must come from the Word of God. It must be based on the Word of God, rooted in the Word of God. If it's based on feelings and emotions and, well, I heard this interesting thing and that interesting thing, and the Word of God is not...

the foundation of it, it will not profit you. What should marriage look like? What should your family look like? What should your work look like? What should schooling look like? What is actually normal? You should seek in the scriptures to be taught the answers to these questions. The answers are there. And the other thing is that we need to be patient with those around us who have not been taught. And they need to be taught what the doctrine of scripture is. Because we live in a world where increasingly people don't know who Jesus is. They don't actually know what he's done. And so the truths that are contained in scriptures are things that we should be studying, but then we should be teaching others what is right and what is normal because they don't know. And when you have people who come from a background and from an out, they just don't understand. We need to be patient with them and bring them along and show them what the scriptures teach.

Teach them how to study the Bible and that they need to study the Bible. The second one is reproof. And the idea here is that Scripture is profitable for bringing to light and convincing us of our sin. Scripture points out our errors and helps us to see our sins and to stop them. So a good example of reproof would be Nathan, the prophet, who comes to David and says, gives him this whole parable about a sin, and then he says, You. That's you, David. That's you, King David. Or you have Peter, who's eating with Gentiles. Then the Jews come, and he's like, they're going to judge me. They don't like. So he stops eating with Gentiles, and Paul comes up and says, hypocrite, what are you doing? He confronts him. He rebukes him for it, right? That's what Scripture does for us. We read the Word of God.

And it reveals our sins to us. Jeremiah says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? So our heart is so deceitful and so wicked, you don't even know it. Who does? Well, the next verse is actually a really helpful verse for us. The next verse says, I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind. Even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds. We have the guide. We have the scriptures, right? It's the guide that God uses to judge our hearts. And so if you want your heart to be revealed to you, read his word. And it will reveal the depths of your heart to you. So that's the reproof. And I do want to make a caveat.

That I'm not saying that every time someone confronts you that they need to have a chapter and a verse of Scripture. The Bible would be impossible to read if it laid out a flow chart. If this, then this, and then if that, then this, and sub B, and sub points to B. It would be so massive, we could not even begin to approach understanding it and reading it. You'll never find a verse telling you how much time you can spend on your phone. how much TV it's appropriate to watch, what books you're allowed to read, and how much time. There aren't chapters and verses for those things. The Bible won't tell you how many dollars you have to give before you're not greedy. These things are spiritually appraised. You must be a disciple of the word of God. Learn who God is, what God loves, and what God desires. And then you'll begin to see as he sees. And you'll begin to have an understanding.

of what his desire is and how to please him and bring him joy. The next thing is that the scriptures are profitable for correcting, to be turned out of a harmful way. We get the word orthodontist from the word that's here. Orthodoxy, right? It's to straighten. The idea is that the word of God doesn't just sit there and go, bad, bad, don't do that. Don't do that. It does tell us what's bad, and it does tell us what not to do. But it actually gives us positive instruction as well. How frustrating is it to have someone object to what you're doing but not give you anything positive then to do? Well, the Word of God is not like that. It not only teaches us what to do, but it also instructs us on how we should live. Think of the book of Proverbs.

How often the father warns the son of the sinners and of the destructive ways, but then he teaches him words of wisdom as well. Don't go this path. Don't follow her. Her way is death, right? But then in chapter 31, he's going to teach you about what a godly woman is like and the woman you should pursue. So the Bible teaches us correct doctrine. When we stray from it, it will reprove us. It will open our eyes and show us where we're wrong, how we're sinning, what is wrong with us. But then it also corrects us and says, okay, you were going this bad path. You were going wrong. You were headed to death. This is the way to life. Course correct. And the final thing, the final prophet, is training in righteousness. We're taught how to be righteous and how to grow. Instruction, training.

Think of your children or when you start a new job. You may have some sort of an idea. You start a new job. You're like, you applied for it. You read the job description. But you have to get trained. You have to get onboarded. You have to be taught what is the expectations within this company. How do you use their computer system? And so this is what Scripture does. It actually trains us in righteousness. See, what sin has done is it's clouded our thinking. Our thinking's been broken. It's corrupted. We often are clueless as to how we ought to live righteously. We don't know how to think through our lives. Situations come up and we don't know what to do because sin has corrupted our understanding of what's right and wrong. Should I move for my job or for work? Should I take this job? Should I date this guy?

Should I date this girl? Should I marry them? Should I have more kids? How should I educate my kids? Where should I go to college? Should I watch this TV show? Should I watch this movie? Should I read this book? Should I play this game? We could just multiply questions, right? If you haven't been trained in righteousness, then you're not going to know how to answer these questions. You're not going to know what to do. And we could just ask. Whatever, I don't know, you all have different questions that you're facing, different things in life that you're going through, and you have to know, how should I do? How do I respond in this situation? What is the right thing? How do I live righteously? Well, if you're not a student of the Word of God, you won't know. And again, I'm not saying that if you open up to 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 3, you're going to have an answer explicitly given.

You know, this movie, The Lord of the Rings, is a good movie to watch, and The Matrix is not, or whatever. Like, that's not in the scriptures, right? What I'm saying is that if you study God's word, it will train you in righteousness so that you will know how to think and what to do. And the people that you go to for counsel and that have wise counsel have wise counsel to the extent that they've been trained in righteousness through their study of the Word of God and through the training of those who have trained them in their study of the Word of God. The basis, the foundation of all wisdom is the Word of God. And so the people who you trust and you go to for counsel have that counsel because they have been students of the Word of God. And they have been students of men and women who are students of the Word of God.

And so if you want to know the fount of all this wisdom, go to the word of God. It's there. And as Christians, you have the Holy Spirit who will give you understanding and will help you work through what the word of God says and therefore how it should affect you. The next thing. So all scripture is inspired by God. It is God's words and thoughts. And they're profitable for you. How are they profitable for you? For reproving, or for teaching, for reproving, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God, all Christians, this is a promise for you if you are a man of God. Those who aren't Christians, it's judgment. Though there is even for them a certain worldly profit that comes from obeying the wisdom and the truth that's contained in Scripture. But for you.

If you are a man of God, the word of God is profitable for you. So that the man of God may be what? May be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Do you see how comforting those words are for you? For me? There is nothing, absolutely nothing lacking in scripture. All that you need to know to live a godly life is found in its pages. You never will. and you never can outgrow the Word of God. You cannot read the Word of God too often. You cannot spend too much time studying the Word of God. You can never plumb the depths fully of the Word of God. There's nothing lacking in it. And so if you study it, you will become thoroughly equipped. I think of men in my life who...

It just seemed like he always had the right words. I'd be with him, and a situation would arise, and he would say things, and I was like, how does he know to say that? I'd look at the things that he would write in an email to someone, and I'd be like, how does he write like that? It's because he has spent decades in the Word of God. And so when the situations arise, on the inside, he's freaking out and doesn't know what he's going to say, and he doesn't think. From the appearance of everyone around him, it's like he's got the perfect word for every situation. You say, how can you do that? Because if you're a student of the word of God, you will be thoroughly equipped for every good work. God teaches us. He gives us the things that we need for success. When we study scripture, we will learn everything we need to know for godliness and for living righteously. Think about Pharaoh. He says, make me bricks.

But I ain't going to give you any more straw. That's not God. God wants good works for you. He wants you to live a holy and righteous life. And then he gives you all the tools necessary to do so. What a comforting thing to know that God doesn't demand this of you, like Pharaoh demanded bricks out of the Israelites, but he gives you straw. He gives you everything you need to fulfill the things that he requires of you. It's a beautiful thing. It's a wonderful thing. It's comforting. So, our conclusion is that all Scripture is profitable for teaching, reproving, correcting, and training in righteousness so that you, dear Christian, will be fully equipped and ready for every good work. This means, what does this mean for us? Well, it means that you ought to read the Bible day and night. You should be reading it.

at every opportunity as much as you can. If you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're feeling depressed, read the word of God. It has things in there that are written for you. And I'm not going to tell you how many chapters you have to read a day or how many verses. I'm telling you is read. Read as much as you can, as often as you can. Fill it with your mind so that, you know how songs get stuck in your head, right? You listen to songs, and then they get stuck in your head. Well, what if you read the word of God so often, what got stuck in your head were Bible verses clattering around? Then you might respond differently when you're frustrated with your children or your spouse. You might actually have wisdom from the word of God to help in those situations, right? Because that's the air that you're breathing. It's the water that you're drinking. It's the food that you're eating. As if you spent,

time in God's word. Keep his word in mind. Seek out its meaning. When it's hard to understand, what is your first response? What you should do is every time you go to open the word of God, the first thing you should do is not open the word of God, but is pray that the Holy Spirit would give you understanding for what you're about to read. Then you open the word of God and you begin reading it. And then you read a verse and you're like, what does that mean? Your first response should not be, let me grab the commentary. Your first response should be, pray through the verse, ask God to give you understanding, and then read it a hundred more times, or whatever. Three more times, five more times. Read it. See if you don't gain understanding. Write out the verse. Figure out what this verse is trying to say. How does this verse teach you, reprove you, correct you, train you in righteousness? And then,

As you started doing some of this work, see what some godly men have said on it. See how Calvin has wrestled with it. And what you'll find is maybe Calvin glanced off that verse because actually that wasn't what struck Calvin. And he didn't actually comment much of anything on that verse. Or maybe you'll find he's got five pages or three chapters. He preached 25 sermons on that verse, right? Because he's not omniscient. He didn't comment equally on all parts of Scripture. So begin with the Word of God. Wrestle with the Word of God. What does it have to say to you? Keep it in mind. As you read through the Bible, write down a passage, and then write sub-points. Figure out how this passage is teaching you doctrine, how it's reproving you, how it's correcting you, how it's training you in righteousness, right?

Run that grid through these passages and see how it profits you. Another thought is a concordance. If you don't know what a concordance is, you should. A concordance is like a dictionary. It lists out the words of Scripture and all the passages that that word is found in. So, you're struggling with depression. You're struggling with temptation. Maybe you're really joyful. And you're like, how should a Christian respond? when they're full of joy. Get the concordance, look that word up, and then work your way through every single scripture passage that deals with that. In the end, what I can say with confidence is that if you study the word of God, it will profit you. It will bear fruit in your life. Fruit that you can't even imagine. It is the word of God. It is powerful, and it was written For your good, not just someone else's good, not the good of the sinner, but it was written for your good. So I urge you, you neglect it at your peril. Do not neglect the word of God. Read it, study it, meditate on it. Let's pray.