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Sermons

SCRIPTURE THAT IS "GOD-BREATHED"
EPISTLE SCRIPTURE TEXT: II TIMOTHY 3:14-17
SUNDAY SCHOOL PROMOTION SUNDAY

DAVE RING, PASTOR
LOS ALAMOS 1ST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
SUNDAY MORNING, AUGUST 19, 2007

SCRIPTURE TEXT: 14But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. - II Timothy 3:14-17 (NIV)

MESSAGE: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man - or woman - of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." Today is Promotion Sunday in our Sunday School. Each year, on Promotion Sunday, we present Bibles to our third grade children, encouraging them to read God's Word for themselves. So today, as our sermon message, I invite us all to set an example for our children - by taking a grand tour of the God-breathed and eminently useful book that we call the Bible.
It might seem a bit "fundamentalist" to some, but I'd really like every person present today to take a Bible and keep it in your hands throughout this message. If you brought one with you, fine. If not, there are plenty available in the pews - at worst, a couple of you who are sitting close together might have to share a single Bible.

Open the Bible to its title page, please. I realize there are a variety of versions that you'll be using, but I'm willing to wager that the title page of every Bible is pretty much the same: It says "The Holy Bible." And that's the first thing about the Bible for which I want us to heartily thank God. The Bible is unique among all the writings to be found on earth in that it's "holy." Holy means sacred, and sacred means related to God. The Bible is holy because it's not man's doing, but God's. Men wrote the Bible, yes. But they did so at the inspiration of God. As the Word itself says, "All Scripture is God breathed." From beginning to end, God inspired the Holy Bible.

Now let's move one or two pages farther into the Bible and scan the Bible's "table of contents." Virtually every Bible has one. On that page you should find a list - or rather two lists - of books. For the Bible is actually not a single book, but a collection thereof. And the Bible is divided into two major parts - the Old Testament, written before the coming of Jesus to earth; and the New Testament, written after Jesus came. The Old Testament consists of 39 books, the New Testament of 27 more, for a total of 66 books. The Bible is a mini-library of the inspired Word of God - 66 books, lovingly written from God to us.

Let's now actually encounter the God-breathed Word. Turn to the first real page of your Bible - after the introductory notes and prefaces and whatever else editors and publishers have decided to add to your particular Bible. The first book of the Bible is Genesis, which literally means "beginning." And the first line of the first page of that first book says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

The Bible starts off with action. You don't have to read 30 pages of slow stuff in order to get to the good parts - to the real plot. From the very beginning - in the beginning - God is present. And God is more than simply present - God is both active and creative. He's busily involved in creating the universe.

The Judaeo-Christian God has never been one who watches things happen from the grandstand of heaven. Our God is an active, creative, involved God. He was active in the Creation, he was creative in sending Jesus to redeem humanity, and He's active now - in our world, in our lives, in this very worship service.

Now, lest you begin to worry that we're almost halfway through the sermon time and only on page one of the Bible, let's make a giant leap forward - into the very center of this precious, God-breathed Word. Some of you may already know this; for others it may be new information: If you take the Holy Bible and open it in the center thereof, you should wind up in the Book of Psalms. The Psalms are the middle book of the Bible.

Further, if you count up all the verses of Holy Scripture and divide by two, you'll find the exact middle verse of the Bible which is, of course, in the Psalms. We don't have to actually do it ourselves today; that mathematical exercise has already been undertaken previously by others. The middle verse - the center, the heart of the inspired Word of God is Psalm 119, verse 105. That verse says, in the traditional King James Version, "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path."

I once preached an entire message on this wonderful verse, and I may do so to this congregation someday. I'm not preaching that message today, but I do want to say it's no accident that the middle verse of Scripture itself is a sentence extolling the value of God's Word. The Bible was carefully and lovingly inspired by God. What an interesting way God has chosen to remind us, exactly halfway through the Book, that we're reading really significant truth! The heart of the Bible itself: "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path."

A second intriguing shortcut for navigating one's way through the God-breathed Word of the Bible is how to find the New Testament. The Bible is divided into two major parts - the Old and the New Testaments, but the division is by no means equal. The New Testament is slightly less than a fourth of the total Bible. So an easy way to locate the New Testament, in case you're not a seasoned Bible reader, is to divide the second half of the Bible in half. We're already in the middle of the Bible - in the Psalms. So if you take the remaining half of your Bibles, and attempt to more or less divide up that portion equally, you should wind up somewhere in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew is the first book of the New Testament.

Assuming you've now found Matthew, turn to chapter one and verse one thereof. My version says this: "A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Your version may differ slightly in wording, but every Bible version clearly tells us this: The message ahead is going to be about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the subject of the New Testament. If you want to learn about - if you want to "find" Jesus - He's here. What God wants to reveal to you and to me about His precious Son is to be found in the New Testament.

It's also interesting that Matthew, at the very outset of his writing about Jesus, calls to our attention that Jesus is related to David and to Abraham. Both David and Abraham were great leaders of God's people of old, the Jews. By reminding us of Jesus' relationship to them as the start of his gospel, Matthew lets us know that Jesus is a continuation of God's revelation of Himself to humanity, not a totally "new version" of God. That's important -- because it joins Christian faith in inseparable relationship with Judaism. We're Christians, yes - but we're really Judaeo-Christians.
Every once in a while, I run into folks who say to me, "I'm a New Testament believer. I don't hold with all that stuff in the Old Testament - all that killing and war and such." There are actually a handful of supposedly Christian denominations which reject the Old Testament in its entirety. While I agree that some portions of the Old Testament are hard to understand, I maintain that the entire Bible is all God's Word. If you throw out the Old Testament, you're throwing out some mighty significant things - such as the Ten Commandments. No, all scripture really is God-breathed, and we really are Judaeo-Christians.

Turn with me now to the very heart of the New Testament, John 3:16. This verse is often called "the gospel in miniature." It says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life."

I could spend the entire sermon - indeed, I've actually written and delivered a series of three sermons - on this single verse. The really good news about John 3:16, however, is that it doesn't require a preacher, nor a theologian, to understand. Anyone can hear, receive, and believe in God's love for them, most clearly expressed in sending Jesus to our world, from John 3:16. This unique verse is both simple and profound, all in one beautiful package - a most special gift of love from God to us. All Scripture is God-breathed, and God obviously took a long, loving breath when He gave us John 3:16.

And now let's take a peek at the ending of the Book. The Bible isn't a mystery novel; God isn't hiding anything along the way, so it won't spoil the rest of the story to see how things finish up.
Turn with me, please, to the last page of the Bible and the last two verses thereof. Revelation 22, verses 20 and 21, read thus: "He who testifies to these things says, 'Yes, I am coming soon.' Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen."

At the very end of the God-breathed Word we have at least two wonderful promises - plus a beautiful and appropriate response by those who love God and His Holy Word. Jesus, who is the obvious speaker, promises that He is coming back soon. I believe that - and I trust you believe it, too. In the meantime, the grace of the Lord Jesus - the same love that sent Jesus to us in the first place - is to remain, to "be" with God's people. And the response of those who love Jesus in return is simply this: "Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!"

Come, Lord Jesus! I'm looking forward to the return of our Lord, and I pray virtually every day that it really will be soon. In the meantime, I try to learn all I can from the Holy Bible. I do so because, as Paul said to Timothy, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man (or woman) of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

I want to be a fully-equipped disciple of Christ. I hope you want the same. To become such, continue to study the Word - the God-breathed Word. And thank God for that marvelous, living, active Word! Amen.

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