Well turn not to Matthew but to 2nd Timothy 3 I'm gonna do something that I've never done before I like to say that because it scares people when I said and that is to do a New Year's challenge a New Year's sermon And normally I make fun of New Year's sermons when I get back to my exposition, but this year the Lord kind of put it on my heart to preach just this one sermon on looking ahead to 2020 and reasserting our faith in God, but specifically in the fact of sola Scriptura. That the Scriptures alone are the supreme authority, supreme and only supreme authority of faith in our life. Now this doesn't mean that there aren't other authorities, God-given authorities, right? Children have parents, and church members have elders, and there's other God-ordained authorities. But it means that all other authorities are derived and there is only one authority for the Christian, and for the non-Christian, whether they realize it or not, and that is the Word of God. Sola Scriptura, that the Word of God alone is the supreme authority for the Christian. And so this is something that we could probably articulate and put in a doctrinal statement, but what is the proof that you and I really believe it? We actually live it out, right? Does the reign of God through His Word show up and our calendar and our life's priorities is what is important in the Word of God, also important in our life, because we consider ourselves in submission to the authority of God's Word. So that's really where my focus is going to be, and my challenge, my prayer has been that in whatever way that you need to grow and mature in the authority of the Word of God in your life, that He would Outline that for you in your heart this morning and he will certainly has already given you the strength to do it So I want to start by giving you a little theology lesson There is within belief systems. We've touched on a little bit in Sunday school two principles within belief systems you have a formal principle and a material principle and the formal principle is your source of authority and So what is your source of authority? Why do you so dogmatically say what you say? What's your authority base? And your material principle is the core doctrine upon which your whole belief system rests, right? Without this material principle, without this core doctrine, your whole belief system falls apart. So maybe you're here this morning and your formal principle, your source of authority is your brain. and your assessment of life. So it's how I perceive life to be. I become very convictional about my own opinions, derived from my own brain and my own experience, and that becomes your formal principle, and maybe your material principle, your cardinal doctrine is the pursuit of happiness. I mean, it's in our founding documents. It's the most important thing. If I can't be accomplishing happiness, if I can't be achieving and experiencing happiness, then my whole life is going to fall apart. So you see, even if you consider yourself irreligious, you have a formal principle and a material principle. You have your source of authority, and you have what's sort of core and the underpinning of your entire belief system. Well, for biblical Christianity, the formal principle is Sola Scriptura, so our sole supreme source of authority is the Word of God, and our material principle is Sola Fide justification. Faith alone, in Christ alone, for the glory of God alone, that results in the justification of the believer. Results in our forgiveness, results in God imputing us with the righteousness of Christ. So that's the core doctrine. If we're not saved and justified by faith alone, then everything falls apart. And how do we know that's absolutely true? Because it's derived from our formal principle, which is the Scriptures and no other secondary authority. It's derived from Scripture, and it's our absolute authority. And the primary reason why Martin Luther is so significant in history is not because of his colorful personality or all the other things that we might know about Martin Luther, but it's because God used him to essentially rescue the formal principle from the Roman Catholic Church. God used him to rescue the fact that it is sola scriptura, it is the Scriptures alone that is our absolute foundation of authority. And I think one of the reasons that a lot of people find themselves going back to his life is because Martin Luther is very typical of a spiritually dead, yet very religious person. Very religious. very passionate about his religion, but very, very dead, and God opens his eyes to understand and to see. So, just rehearsing, I know there's always new people that come in and might not be as familiar with his life, so just rehearsing some of the details. Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk. He was a Roman Catholic. He was zealous. In fact, within his monastery, he was loyal to the Catholic Church, loyal to his authority figures, to a fault. His prayers of confession were ten times longer than any of his fellow monks. I mean, he said if heaven could ever be attained by being the perfect monk, then he should have attained it. I mean, he did everything to the T. He drove his confessors crazy because he confessed every sin he could conceive of, even things that they didn't even think were sins. Drove himself to that but in this process he experienced this frustration that everyone should experience the frustration of the impossibility of achieving salvation through works So he was working so hard, but he was sensing that he was falling in and out of grace and not having the confidence of the permanency of his salvation. And so he knew that the answer was in the book of Romans, because it's all about the gospel. He knew chapter one has got to be around there somewhere, you know, about the righteousness of God being in the gospel. And so Luther says he beat importunately upon the text. He just beat relentlessly upon the text until it gave way. And finally it did give way. and He found out the Scriptures are teaching that the goodness and the righteousness that we need for salvation is not achieved by works, but it's achieved on the cross by Christ, and we get that righteousness when we put our faith in Christ, and He imputes us with that righteousness. What a relief. Oh wow, my failed attempts to accomplish salvation, this isn't up to me. This is an imputed righteousness that I receive by faith and faith alone apart from works. And so Luther's eyes were open. And as Luther's eyes were open, as he refers to himself as being altogether born again, like many of us, after we're born again, our eyes are increasingly open. And every day we begin to realize, oh, this is wrong, and this is wrong, the way I'm living is wrong, and this aspect of the world is wrong. And that's how it was for Martin Luther, except not only with himself, but also the Catholic church that he was in. He began to see the moral corruption, the theological corruption, And so he began to meet with personal representatives of the Pope himself, and Luther thought, for sure, if I just show them the corruption, then their eyes will be opened. And not only did he find out that that was not the case, he found out that they were actually a part of the corruption, and every time he appealed on the basis of Scripture, he was shocked to find that they didn't really care to defend their positions on the basis of Scripture. And it's interesting, modern-day Catholics feel more of a of an obligation to defend their beliefs from Scripture, but that is largely because of a Protestant influence. Because if you go back far enough, they didn't really feel, especially these leaders, especially in Luther's day, they didn't really feel compelled to defend on the basis of Scripture, because we have our traditions, we have our secondary authoritative track, and God speaks directly to us, so we don't really need to. But for Luther, he understood that you have to justify anything you teach and anything you believe on the Scriptures. And so, in 1521, Luther was summoned to a diet or a meeting in Worms, Germany. Now, they had invited him in 1520, but Luther turned it down because he said, if I show up, they're going to kill me. In 1521, they invited him again, and he said, all right, I'm going to do it. And all his friends said, you're crazy, because they're going to kill you. But he had in his soul, burning, a desire to defend the Scriptures. And so he goes and he is interrogated hours on end by Johann Eck about his beliefs. And Luther kept saying, look, if you want to make any headway with me, this is my words, And appeal to me on the basis of Scripture. Show me where I've gone wrong on the basis of Scripture. But they wouldn't do it. This is the tradition. How dare you snub your nose at the long traditions of the Catholic Church. But we know that traditions can just be errors grown old, right? We know there's no such thing as a new heresy. They can be as old as orthodoxy. Satan was right there in the garden. So Luther is saying, look, the councils do err, but prove to me, show me from Scripture. And they would not. So finally, the last day of this interrogation, they put all Luther's books on a table, all the books he had written. And they said, will you recant any of these books? And to everybody's shock, Luther said, give me a day to think about it. That doesn't really sound like a bold response. No, I will not. But what Luther is thinking is, I do not want to die over a wrong interpretation of scripture, or I do not want to die for my opinions. So let me think over everything that I've read, because he had read a lot in the four short years since he had nailed his 95 thesis to the door. And so he did. He thought about it and came back. the next day, and he made that powerful statement, unless I am refuted or convicted by testimonies of the Scriptures, or by clear arguments, I am conquered by the Holy Scriptures quoted by me, and my conscience is bound by the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is unsafe and dangerous to do anything against the conscience." And then some people wonder if this last statement is authentic, but it's certainly something that Luther would say. Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me. Amen. So what you have with Martin Luther is a man who was living out sola scriptura. He knew that, as he puts it, my conscience is held captive, it's bound by the Word of God. I, as a Christian, I really don't have a choice in this matter. The moment I became a Christian, I signed my name, as it were, in blood over sola scriptura. and over faith alone in Christ alone, and my conscience is informed and bound by the Word of God, and I'm not a man who's free." And that's what he means when he says, my conscience is held captive by the Word of God. I'm not a free man. My conscience belongs and is in submission to the Word of God, and this is all I can do. In other words, when I stand before God and give an account, He's not going to ask me to give an account of what I did with tradition. He's going to ask me to give an account of what I did with Scripture, with His revelation. This is what I'm going to be held account for. that we, I think it's rightly been said that every generation has to refight the Reformation, right? Just because they want it doesn't mean that you as an individual or your family or this generation has won it. We need to refight it and we need to recapture it again and again. I think every young person coming up under the umbrella of their parents has to step out and has to ask that question, do I really believe that the Bible is the Word of God? Because you can't make a more audacious statement than that, right? And once you start to say that something is from God, you know, that's it. You can't make a higher claim. So, do I believe that the Bible is the Word of God? Do I believe that every command in the Scripture is given to me? Do I believe that I'm obligated to live according to the Scriptures? And we have to make that, you know, we might be zealous and passionate about it, and then we find we're distracted, different circumstances come up in life, and then it's, well, yeah, I know the Bible's the Word of God, but we haven't touched it in two weeks, and it's collecting dust, and we're starting to make decisions based on what seems rational to us rather than what the Word of God actually says, and we have to stop and say, wait a second, I'm a Christian who believes that the Bible is the only supreme authority in my life. I need to get back. to living under the authority of the scripture. We have to refight it. One of the things that I treasure about this church in particular is that we are a church that has been built long before I became a pastor, we have been built on sola scriptura. And 10 plus years ago, when Kim and I first came here, we didn't have by way of programs and things like that, ministries, we didn't have a lot. to offer people. But we had the Word of God preached, right? And I remember, you know, more than once preaching in an evening sermon and their evening service, and there'd be about five people that were there. And that was a little bit disconcerting because the elders said, we got enough money in the bank account for one year to pay you. And then after that, you know, we'll see what happens. And so it's just kind of, okay, we have nothing but the Word of God to offer people, which really means you have everything, right? You have heaven to offer people. And it was just so interesting that as the Word of God continued to be taught by women and women's Bible study and by men and from the pulpit, you know, God began to add to the church and the elders can testify As new members came into the church, almost all of them were saying the same thing. We are here because we want to learn more about the Word of God. We're here because we're starving. We're hungry for the Word of God. And it was just a curious thing to me. In a state where there's literally a church on every corner, people are hungry for the Word of God. And that is a wonderful thing. When you think about it, that's a wonderful thing. If you want to draw people to a church, you want to draw them by the scriptures as they're taught. And that makes for a wonderful church. That makes for a healthy church. Along those lines, I guess, getting reminiscent. I remember in 2009, just seeing God do some really cool things in our little congregation. I wrote this wrote up this file, and I saved it on my computer, and it was just for me, but it was because in this little congregation of 40, 50 people, I was starting to see God do some really cool acts of salvation, just kind of one right after another. And it wasn't anything that would make the history books, and it wasn't anything that would make the local newspapers. There was one couple, you'll know who they are, some of you, whose husband had suffered a terrible elevator accident. Through that, they came into the church, came under the power of the Word of God, were saved, were changed. Right before my eyes, it was an amazing thing as a young pastor for me to witness. There was a couple other people who were in the church, already members, and everybody thought they were saved, and then they actually got saved, and then they were baptized. You can almost see the people watching, like, I thought that guy was already saved. but come, they came under the power of the Word of God, and then various people from the community started to come in, and it was just one after another, the Word of God was going out, convicting people, and they were coming in and joining the church, specifically because they had been conquered by the Word of God, because they loved the Word of God and wanted to grow in the Word of God. And I think there's a lot of churches that start this way, but they lose their way, right? They start amazed and wowed at the authority of the Word of God, and look at what He's doing in our midst, and we're hungry for Him. We're unified by that. But they, at some point in time, lose their way. I remember talking with this pastor, and he was well-known in his community. He had a larger church. And I'm talking to him on the phone. He said, yeah, I'm a Bible guy. Our church is a Bible guy. And we're Bible people. And just kind of making sure that I knew we're a Bible church. And then we began to talk, and he said, Nate, look, we can either be doctrinal about this, or we can be practical about this. Because I guess I was pushing the doctrinal, biblical approach, and to him it wasn't the practical approach. So he said, essentially, we can be doctrinal, or we can be practical. And it was amazing. I saw all I needed to see. If you ever, as a church leader, come to a point where your decision is, do we do the biblical thing, or do we do the practical thing? What does that even mean? Do we do what makes sense to me, or do we do what God tells us to do? And even if it doesn't make sense to me, God told us to do it, because it's in His Word, and so that's what we do. And we make that decision based on faith, and we trust God with the results, even if it doesn't appear very pragmatic or practical to us. And I think that's how churches lose their way. We have the biblical option, we have the practical option, and when you give way to pragmatism, then a church loses their way. And so I praise God. I'm not preaching this because I think we've lost our way, but I am preaching this because it's always possible to lose your way. And so every generation, every year, I think we have to fight this battle afresh. Are we a church built on sola scriptura? And does that show up not just in our doctrinal statement, does it show up in our philosophy of ministry? Does it show up in the way that we live out our Christian life as individuals? That the Word of God reigns supreme in our life. So here's my question for you as you start 2020. Are you freshly committed to the truth of Sola Scriptura? Are you freshly committed to it? And as you look out, are you ready for a calendar that reflects sola scriptura priorities? Are you ready to develop maybe some new convictions that better reflect sola scriptura? Are you ready to uproot and shed things that might seem impossible, that might seem difficult, in order to recapture and reassert the authority of God's Word and following God in your life? Because we're all links in a chain, right, as members. And the weakest link is how strong the chain is. So all of us have to think, where am I as a church member? If every member was like me, would we be a strong sola scriptura church? And that's where I want to focus our attention. So turn to 2 Timothy 3.16. Charles Spurgeon says, every once in a while, a pastor should break from his exposition and preach one of the great passages of Scripture. They're all great, but we know what he means. So I'm going to do this and go to 2 Timothy 3.16. Just to give you a bit of the background, 2 Timothy is written during Paul's second Roman imprisonment. Paul knows he's going to die. He's very aware of that. It's his last Roman imprisonment. So 2 Timothy takes on a very sober and sad tone. He's full of heavenly hope, but it's a sober tone. If you look at some of the books that were written during Paul's first imprisonment, like the book of Philippians, they're much more optimistic. He's much more joyful, he expects to be released, and he is released. After his first imprisonment, he's released, and then there's this huge event in 64 AD called the burning of Rome, a six-day fire that burned ten of Rome's fourteen districts. And people began to suspect that Nero did it, because Nero was a little crazy. And so Nero couldn't afford that bad press, so he said, I need a scapegoat. And nobody likes the Christians, they're a perfect scapegoat, so he begins to persecute the Christians, acting as though they're the ones that started this great fire. And it's during the subsequent persecution after 64 AD that both Peter and Paul die. So they probably died in the throes of that persecution. And so Paul is writing, and he's just aware in the spirit, he is aware that he's not going to get out of this. And we've heard him say in Philippians 1, look, if I stay here, I'm a benefit to you. If I'm in heaven, well, that's far better. So Paul's heart is fine, but nevertheless, we are people of circumstances, right? And these are hard, discouraging circumstances. And so he says things like this in 2 Timothy 4, 6, 4, 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. So he's staring death in the face. He knows he's going to die. And there's a sobriety and heaviness to his tone, but yet it's, hey, I fought the good fight. I gave it all I had. I'm ready to see Christ. That's the place that we need to be at all the time. If God calls me home today, I'm ready to go home. I've fought hard for God, my King. Haven't been perfect, but I have fought for God. So in a real sense, 2 Timothy is Paul's swan song. It's a song that he sings right before he dies. So what is Paul's point going to be to Timothy? If you just do a simple reading, it's very obvious that Paul believes that Timothy is showing signs of spiritual weakening. The battle is getting to Timothy. The battle is starting to affect Timothy. So Timothy needs to be strengthened. So you have these explosive statements, one after another, of exhortation for Timothy to get his act together, to man up, and start to embolden himself as a man of God. Because I'm not always going to be here for you, Timothy. But that's okay, because 2 Timothy 3.16, the Word of God is on your side. All the power is not going to come from you, it's going to come from the Word, but you have to man up, you have to be bold, you have to act like a Christian, and the Word of God has got your back. So, listen to all these exhortations that he says. In 2 Timothy 1.6, kindle afresh the gift that is in you. 1.8, therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me, his prisoner. Verse 13, retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me. Verse 14, guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us the treasure which has been entrusted to you. Chapter 2, verse 1, you therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Verse 3, suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Verse 8, remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel. I love that. Remember Christ. He's why we're doing it. He's why we die. He's why we suffer. He's why we live. Remember Christ. Verse 15, be diligent to present yourselves approved unto God. Chapter 4, verse 1, I solemnly charge you, and then verse 2, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season. So if you read 2 Timothy, this is like a fast-paced blitzkrieg of fiery exhortation to Timothy's heart. And if you're like me, you might hear something like this, and you might say, that doesn't help, Paul. I already feel weak, and now you're telling me all these things I need to do, and I need to man up, and this is overwhelming. And so that's why right in the middle of this, Paul puts 2 Timothy 3.16, or this whole paragraph, which is about the power and the authority and the sufficiency of the Word of God. It will sufficiently equip you, Timothy, to accomplish everything that I'm exhorting you to accomplish. The power is not in you. The power is in the Word of God. So that is at the core of it. It is the sufficiency of Scripture. It is sola scriptura. This is what you live for. This is what you die for, Timothy. So get your act together, be bold, and fight this good fight. So, with that in mind, you look at the previous context, verses 10-15, it reminds Timothy, you were brought up with the Scriptures, you know the Scriptures, Timothy, your mother, your grandmother, they trained you, you didn't have a believing father, that's okay, it was in your mom, it was in your grandmother, you've got the Scripture, and it is the Scripture that matters. So look at verse 16. All Scripture is inspired by God. and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." So he starts out by saying, all Scripture. What is all Scripture? All Scripture is all written, inspired works that God has given to man. It is the 66 inspired books, starting with Genesis, and ends with Revelation, and doesn't include the Apocrypha, and doesn't include the Gnostic Gospels, or the Shepherd of Hermas, or any of those other things. It's the 66 inspired books. And sometimes we think of the Bible as one book, and that's okay, because it is authored by one Holy Spirit, but really the Bible is just a name that we give a collection of 66 authoritative books. Each one of these individual books was written separately, was inspired by God, and because of its inspiration, weightiness, and authority, was then added to the singular book, the Bible. All 66 inspired books. Now, someone might look at this and say, well, he says all Scripture, but at this time, they only have the Old Testament. So he couldn't have been talking about the New Testament. And that is absolutely false. Because just a few years earlier, Paul had written the book of 1 Timothy. And in 1 Timothy, Paul quotes the Gospel of Matthew, and he calls the Gospel of Matthew Scripture. That's in 1 Timothy 5, verse 18. Paul says, for the Scriptures, and Scripture is a technical word. It means what is written. And it's talking about the inspired writings. It's not talking about oral prophecy. It's not talking about dreams and visions. It's talking about what ended up on ink and parchment. For the Scriptures say, You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing. That's a quote from Leviticus 19.13. The Scriptures, the Old Testament, we know what they say. And the laborer is worthy of his wages. That's a quote right out of Matthew 10. So Paul already knew that the New Testament Scriptures were unfolding. He knew that he was one of the authors of the New Testament. And so he sang Scriptures with a full understanding of the completed Old Testament and the unfolding Scriptures of the New Testament. All that ends up being Scripture graciously given by God is inspired by God. All Scriptures. And of course, as a Jew, he would understand if the Old Covenant had its canon, then of course, the New and Better Covenant is going to have a canon. And if the Old Covenant gets its scriptures, well, how much more so is the New Covenant going to get its own scriptures? So he understands that. And so he's talking about the inspiration of everything that God gives as scriptures. Now what does the word inspiration mean? And if you've grown up in church, you might know the answer, but if you're kind of new and you haven't really studied out inspiration, when you look at that word inspiration, you might think, well, it's the opposite of expiration, right? So expires to breathe out, so inspires to breathe in. But how does that explain the scriptures, to imagine God breathing in? Or maybe more commonly, people might think of a musician who's been inspired to write a song, right? I got some inspiration this morning, and I wrote this amazing song. We might think of inspiration of those things, but the Greek word here for inspiration is theopneustos, and it basically means Theo is God, and Neustaus' spirit of breath means God breathed. So the word for inspiration is to be breathed out by God. And that's kind of strange because God doesn't have lungs, right? God doesn't have a body to breathe, but this is metaphoric language to describe the power of God, because whenever the scriptures talk about God breathing out, sort of giving Him Physical characteristics even though he's not physical and he is only spirit whenever the Bible gives this metaphor to God It's talking about raw power coming from God So we see in passages like Psalm 33 6 by the Word of the Lord The heavens were made and by the breath of his mouth all the starry hosts So when God breathes out the galaxies show up Or we read in Genesis that He breathes into man, He breathes into his nostrils the breath of God, and He becomes a living soul. So God breathes, humans come into existence, right? B.B. Warfield says God's breath is the irresistible outflow of His power. So, Paul is just trying to think of a term that tells us that the Scriptures come from God. The Scriptures are inspired by God. Now, sometimes you'll hear people say, well, Paul was inspired to write the book of Romans. And technically, that's not accurate. Because the Bible never speaks of God inspiring people, it only speaks of His words as inspired. And obviously you can go to 2 Peter 1, you can understand that God moved upon men, He moved upon the human authors in a special way to write the Scriptures. But 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 is not about how God inspires the Scriptures. It is just a blunt fact that Scriptures are inspired. It is just a blunt statement. The Scriptures are breathed out from God. They come from His nature. It's meant to sort of hit you between the eyes in its raw power. And why is that important? Because whatever comes from the nature of God reflects the nature of God. If God is pure, then His Scriptures are pure, because He breathed them out. If God is exclusively authoritative, then His Scriptures are exclusively authoritative. If God is without error, then His Scriptures are without error, because He's theopneustos, He's breathed them out. If we can find error in how the authors wrote the Scripture and the information they put down, then the Bible is saying it directly reflects upon the nature of God. Then you've found error with God Himself. So this is just simply meant to be a powerful statement on the nature of Scriptures. Well, since God's Word flows from His character, I mean, you just think about that. Don't get used to it. Just think about that. If God's Word flows from His Scriptures, or the Scriptures flow from God's nature, we would expect the Scriptures to be frighteningly powerful, wouldn't we? Intimidatingly powerful. That's why Hebrews 4.12 compares the Scriptures to a sword that is living and active. If you had a sword collection, you would not want one of your swords to be living and active. Don't walk into that room with that sword, flying around the room, slicing and dicing. That would be dangerous. But that's what the Scripture is. You open the Scripture, and it's already swishing and swirling. It's already slicing and dicing. And so it's either you open it, you read it, it's either bringing conviction, or it's bringing encouragement and comfort, or it's exposing motives, and man, that makes me think about this situation earlier this afternoon, and wow, I guess it was done out of pride. Thank you, Scripture, for showing me that. The Scriptures are always working. Isaiah 6 says the Scriptures can even bring about the effect of increasing the hardness of a person. hardening their heart, deafening them. So it's either working good in the heart of the person, or it's working judgment and damnation in the heart of the person, but the Scriptures are always doing something, right? The sword is always moving. It is always powerful. It's never lying dormant, because the Scriptures are a living book inspired by the Holy Spirit. What do the Scriptures do? Look back at verse 16. All Scriptures are inspired by God, profitable, that is they're charged with power potential for teaching. What's teaching? Teaching is filling the dangerous void of ignorance. There are things that we are ignorant about. Concerning God and the church that we should not be ignorant about that's bad for us spiritually. We need the scriptures to give us divine information All of us to some degree have an incorrect view of God. Nobody has perfect theology So we read the scriptures and we're asking God to correct to dismantle and to take apart inaccurate views of God of the church and sanctification of the gospel or deconstruct those things that's what it means to teach and We desperately need to be taught until the day that we die by Scriptures. He goes on, for reproof. That means rebuke. Ever open up the Bible and slap you across the face? I needed that. Thanks God. For correction. For training in righteousness. Training implies there's a goal that's here. What's the goal? Righteousness. Holiness. Christ conformity. We read and study the Scriptures so we become holy. Turn if you would Oh, I skipped a page. Eventually, turn to Psalm 19. But for now, look at verse 17 of 2 Timothy 3. Verse 17, "...so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." Don't go to Psalm yet, because this is so important. so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." Now those people who reject sola scriptura, they do not believe that scripture is the supreme and only supreme authority in our life, do not like this word adequate here. Because it's the kill shot, right? It's a smoking gun. It's what we're looking for. It speaks of adequacy. And so one of the things that the Roman Catholics will do is they'll look at this word adequate and they'll say, it's not talking about the adequacy of being equipped, this is really talking about the maturing process of the believer. So then the man of God is adequate, or the man of God is maturing. And so they'll connect it to different verses in the New Testament that have to do with maturing and the growing Christian. And most of those verses use the Greek word teleos, which does refer to sort of the imperfect process of maturing. And so they say, look at this, here it just says that the man of God is really just maturing. This isn't a statement on the sufficiency of Scripture. This is a statement on just the maturing process of the man of God, that the Scriptures help him mature. But the problem is that the passages they go to to justify their argument do not use the same Greek word that Paul uses here in 2 Timothy 3.16. The word that he uses here is not teleos, it's artios, and it's only used here in the New Testament. And the reason why Paul uses this word very specifically is because it has a very narrow, specific meaning. He doesn't want to use teleos because he's not talking about the maturing process. He's not talking about so much the Christian, he's talking about the Scriptures. So he uses this word artios, a basic Thayer Greek lexicon definition of artios is to complete, to finish, to furnish perfectly. It's also used in extra-biblical Homeric literature to talk about the right tool for the right job. In other words, to be adequate means to be perfectly equipped for a task. It's not talking about the soldier under the equipment. It's talking about the equipment going on to the soldier. So it's not talking about the maturing process. It's saying that the Christian is perfectly adequate equipped. In other words, the Scriptures perfectly equip the Christian. The Scriptures are the perfect armor. The Scriptures are the sufficient equipment that the Christian needs. So this is not a statement on maturing. And if you wonder, well, are you sure? Well, yeah, because, you know, it would just be nice if Paul would follow up this statement adequate with another statement of what he meant. And it turns out that's exactly what he does. Look at the end of verse 17, equipped for every good work. Does equipped talk about the maturing process? or the perfect equipment that the Christian wears. He's perfectly equipped. If he's perfectly, adequately equipped, what is this complementing? The Christian, or the Word of God that equips him? And that's the very point of this specific context. This specific context is about the inspiration and authority and sufficiency of the Scripture. I might not be a perfect Christian, but I am perfectly equipped because of the Bible. I have everything I need for life and godliness. I have everything I need to go into the year 2020 and say, it doesn't have to look like last year. Because I have the perfect equipment. There's nothing more that I need from God. Because of Sola Scriptura, I have absolutely everything that I need. Now go to Psalm 19. We're winding down here. Psalm 19. Another there's so many passages. They're just extraordinary Expositions on the sufficiency of scripture, but psalm 19 verse 7. I mean just a fascinating chapter I'll just read down here and kind of make some comments and draw out the sufficiency of scripture But psalm 19 verse 7 says the law, you know, you could also translate law doctrine. It's just a dogmatic truth about God, the law of the Lord is perfect. In other words, blameless, spotless, restoring the soul. The law of God is perfectly sufficient to restore the soul, to take the wandering person, the unconverted person, and bring them back to where God wants them to be. The testimony of the Lord. What's a testimony? A testimony is something that bears witness. What do the Scriptures bear witness to? God. The Scriptures are the perfect witness to God. The testimony of the Lord is sure, and sure means perfectly reliable. What do you need to supplement the Scriptures with to make them more reliable? Nothing. And because they're reliable, making wise the simple. So now the simple-minded who don't have any convictions, and they just sort of float from one belief into the next, now the simple-minded can have conviction, because the Word of God is sure, it is certain, and it's time-tested. You can take it to the bank, so you can have convictions that never change. You can have a spiritual spine, because the Word of God is sure. Verse 8, the precepts. Precepts bring out the authority of Scripture. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. We usually don't put authority and joy together, do we? Unless you're talking about the Scriptures. God's saying the Scriptures are the one source of authority. If you come under them, you'll be more joyful. Some other authorities are tyrants. You will not be more joyful. You come under the authoritative precepts of Scripture, You'll be more joyful. You want to have more joy in 2020? Be increasingly submissive to the Word of God. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. In other words, the commandments of the Lord are like LASIK surgery. It's like washing your glasses. It clears up the fog and the confusion. You can see life. Oh, this is how God looks at life, and this is how we're supposed to interpret the world. That's what the Scripture does. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments are decisions of God coming from His wisdom. The judgments of the Lord are true. What is truth? It's the final word, right? The judgments of the Lord that come from His wisdom are the final word. They are true and righteous all together. So, this passage and many other passages are the reasons why Sola Scriptura is the battle cry of the Christian, and should be the battle cry of all Christendom. Absolutely important. I remember in closing, I remember last year when God graciously allowed Kim and I to go over to England, one of the things that I was really looking forward to was going to a cemetery. And years ago, we had walked through Vatican City, we'd seen the opulence and the wealth, Last year been to Westminster Abbey saw some of the most famous names in history buried there some of the most wicked people Buried there, but they're part of the Church of England, so it doesn't matter if they're wicked they belong to the church they get their big fancy burial and then we get our ponchos on because it's raining it's a Foggy London day and we get into this train and we go to what used to be the outskirts of London in this somewhat overrun overgrown dilapidated cemetery and There's no expensive ticket to get in. There's no long line. There's no Royal Guard. You just walk up and this is it and And you walk in, and in this cemetery, there were the tombs of men like John Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim's Progress, who wrote that from his prison cell, right? Thrown in prison for preaching the Word. And John Goodwin, and John Owen, and Isaac Watts, the great hymn writer. You know what all these men had in common? They had a soul of scripture in common. They believe that the Scriptures alone are the supreme authority for the Word of God, and because of that and other conviction that flowed from that reality, they were basically banished outside the city limits, kind of like Jesus was, and buried in almost a pauper's grave compared to what we had seen. And I thought of that, and I said, you know, they are our spiritual forefathers. They're our connection. I'm not so much connected with the Anglican or the Catholic at all, with the Catholic Church, but I'm connected to them because I believe in Sola Scriptura. I believe the Scripture is the supreme authority of my life. And because of that, there was a degree of shame. We're just kind of throwing you away. We're throwing you outside of the city. And you are going to find when you differentiate yourself, not only from the world, but from other expressions of Christendom that don't have Christ and His Scriptures as ultimate authority, that there is going to be a degree of ostracizing. Oh, you're those people. You're the Bible worshipers. We get accused of a lot. But it should be a shame that we happily take to ourselves. I'll take that insult, because that is absolutely right. I do believe that the Scriptures are the only supreme authority in my life. But if I believe that, it's not just saying it with conviction, it's going to come to full flowering in my life before God in my daily life. And so I'm preaching this to you, praying the Spirit of God will apply this to your heart, not so much so that you're more convinced that our doctrinal statement is correct, but that you'll begin to live at a deeper and more profound level the absolute authority of God in our life. We are not autonomous. We belong to Him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for your word that makes everything so clear. Lord, I pray that you would bring us under, increasingly under, submission to your mighty and powerful revelation. Lord, convict us of the small ways and the big ways we are not aligning to your word, and may we surge ahead in Christ conformity this coming year, I pray, God. May we be intentional with the sanctification and change that Your Spirit brings about. In Jesus' name, Amen.