Congregation, it is a privilege to be able to open God's Word freely and without concern of repression and answer of anger from some power over us. We have this great grace of being able to sit comfortably with ease. Let's do that this morning rejoicing as we turn to 2 Timothy chapter 3. It is widely understood and believed that 2 Timothy is the last letter the Holy Spirit enabled the Apostle Paul to write before he was executed for the Christian faith. Probably it is the case that Titus ought to come in its chronology between 1 and 2 Timothy. We don't need to necessarily argue about that, but it is made very clear by the end of 2 Timothy that that Paul considers things to be very serious for him and significant. And then it is true that he is expressing in 1st and 2nd Timothy his great desire and instruction for the church, not only in regards to the ministry Timothy was having in Ephesus and others in other places, but for the church today. Now we're gonna read 2nd Timothy chapter three, beginning at verse one. But we're gonna pay very careful attention to verses 16 and 17, and when we're done, don't close your Bible, because after our prayer, I'm gonna have you go to John 17, just for a moment. But we begin in 2 Timothy chapter three. The Apostle Paul writing, 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. They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth. Men of depraved minds who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone. You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings, what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and imposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 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. Now our text. 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 Thus far dear congregation God's glorious and perfect word as I Asked you a moment ago. Don't put your Bible away just yet as soon as we're done With our prayer for the Spirit's work. I'm going to have us turn to John chapter 17 Just for a particular consideration But let's do that now. Let's ask the Lord's help by the Spirit. Let's seek his face in prayer. I Our Father in heaven, we just heard from your word. One of the uses of the word of God, and it is a significant use, the subject of our sanctification is the word of God, and the one who enables that sanctification is the Holy Spirit, and we make appeal this morning to him, the spirit, for our blessing in that substance, your word. Lord, grow us up. Sanctify your church. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, congregation, then, just for a moment, turn back to John chapter 17. I want us to note something. Here is the high priestly prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ in John chapter 17. He's praying for his disciples, a prayer also for the whole church, and I want you to notice particularly verse 17, John 17, 17, one of those verses which would be a great blessing for us to memorize. Some of us know it already. Where the Lord Jesus in praying to the Father prays, sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. Now, what I want us to consider in this regard as we're taking up 2 Timothy 3 is an interesting question. If the Lord Jesus Christ is praying this prayer for his disciples in the church that will be flowing from the apostolic work, is Jesus Christ aware of the things the apostle Paul mentions here in 2 Timothy 3? Now, of course, you already know that answer. And you know, as I'm asking it, it's sort of a rhetorical tool for me to be asking that sort of a question, because we affirm the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ knows and ordains all things. So even to ask the question is, on the face of it, a bit silly. Did Jesus know what it was the Apostle Paul was going to endure a few years later after he praised this to the Father? Of course he knows. But that's exactly the point, isn't it? It's exactly what Jesus is praying in John 17, 17, isn't it? Sanctify them by the truth in the face of exactly the kinds of things the church is gonna have to face. Now let's move ahead. Historically, over 2,000 years. And now we are the ones under consideration. Does the Lord Jesus Christ know in John 17, 17? I ask the question now, does he know your name? Does he know your life? Does he understand what you have experienced, where you have been, what you have gone through, the things that you have had to wrestle with? When he was praying, sanctify them by the truth. Does that prayer include you and me? I hope you know the answer to that question. Because, beloved, I assert to you, if you do not know the answer to that question in the affirmative, yes, he knows me and all about me, then this sermon will really not be of much help to you. But if you say, yes, he knows me and all about me, then you will understand this theme statement applies to you and you could write your name there. The Lord uses his word to sanctify all those he is saving. And you could put your name there. The Lord uses his word to sanctify me. Would you dare this morning to say that? How then ought to we consider our text under these four heads first, God has breathed out his living word, notice the ellipses at end of point one, dot, dot, dot, and the ones which begin point two, the word which is extremely valuable for sanctification. Look at the third point. Sanctification is his work using his word, and then it's resolved in the fourth point, to make his people very valuable for his, used to make me, us, very valuable for his use. The Lord uses his word to sanctify all those he is saving. Well, then we need to understand what it is the Apostle is saying here by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And that phrase, which I often say to us, here is even more significant, isn't it? It's really our first point. What Paul writes, he writes by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, firstly, God has breathed out his living word. And it is important for us to be very careful here. To be very careful here. Because we need to have a rock solid foundation. So that we might build well. so that we might have a cure, if I can switch the analogy, a living medicine to heal us. So if I can switch the analogy again, so that we might have a corrective rod to train us. All of those things which are needful for us in our Christian walk we need to have, and all of them are built upon the foundation of what is this book we are studying. This word, I'll say it now very, active and positively, this word is authored by God. God wrote the Bible. Now we say, well, he wrote the Bible by men who were moved along, 2 Peter 1, verse 21. He wrote the Bible by men who were moved along by the Holy Spirit to write exactly what he wanted to say, yes and absolutely, but God is the primary author. all of the Old Testament saints would have confidence in the fact that God spoke. God said to Abraham, come out of Ur of the Chaldees and go where I appoint you to go. God said to all of the saints ever after him, you must do as I call you to do. And oh, by the way, even before that, to Noah, build an ark. I don't often mention memes that I see on Facebook. It's a dangerous thing probably to do that, but I've seen one circulating recently where it's a little bit of a sarcasm that people say there were fact checkers in the day of Noah who were calling out Noah's building of an ark for several hundred years as a ridiculous endeavor. And then the floods came and the fact checkers were no more. What has God said? Do we take it as absolute truth? God said it, that settles it. Now we need this confidence, beloved, for all the reasons I just sketched out a minute ago, because all of these things are aspects of our sanctification. I'm gonna define that word more carefully in a moment. I need you to say it quite boldly and bluntly. We need the word of God as the authority in our sanctification. This is a primary matter for Christians. It is something that you this morning have to answer for yourself. Paul says in verse 16, all scripture is God breathed. I ask you now to consider your answer to the question, what does that mean to you? Are you under Do you place yourself under the authority of the breathed out word of God? It's an interesting way, by the way, the apostle puts it here, breathed out, because it makes us think of the fact that right now you need to take a breath. Because I said that, maybe you did. We think of breathing out in terms of air and of lungs, and so we think of this as something the Apostle is saying, well, God, God has a body, God has lungs. Well, no, he doesn't, not in the strict sense of the word. God is spirit, doesn't have a body, doesn't have lungs. But it is put this way in the word of God so that we might understand that the scriptures come from his very being. The Bible issues forth out of God's essence, out of his center. It comes from him. And so what we are saying firstly is that the Bible rests on the authority of who God is. Nothing less than that can be said about the scriptures. But I put that in the form of a question that we each must answer ourselves. Do I place myself under the authority of the word of God as my absolute final command? All things. what God says being true above everything else. And so that is extremely important, secondly, and valuable for our sanctification. Now, there's clear indication given in our text about our need. Look at it in verse 17. We're gonna come back to verse 16, but I want to sketch out for a moment the clear need that is listed here in verse 17, the so that. That's again a construction of the Greek that leads us to consider there's a purpose, there's a resulting situation that needs to come about, and the so that is we being thoroughly equipped for every good work. Now, of course, Paul is speaking here at a level in terms of teachers. He's talking to Timothy. He's writing for the apostolic ministry in the church. But it is, of course, valid for every believer. It's not just Timothy and other ministers and pastors and missionaries who do good works. The apostle said in Ephesians that we were elect, ordained in Christ unto good works. So it's for all of us. And this is, of course, the purpose. the situation that we have works to do, good works, and Scripture is enough. The Bible is sufficient. Calvin said it this way, Scripture is sufficient for perfection. Scripture is sufficient for perfection. The Word of God is that source which God uses to complete us in this life. Now what I just did, though I didn't announce it ahead of time, what I just did was give to us a definition of sanctification. Because it's one of those theological words you've probably heard from pulpits before, you've probably heard it a lot, maybe you've read it, you know it at least in some way. Sanctification is that work of God to complete us in this life. Pause, consider that you will not be 100% completed in this life. You, as you grow and as you mature and as you age, I think more and more, wish that you were going to be complete in this life, and by that I mean without sin. Because as we mature, we come to hate sin more and more and love holiness more and more and want to be done with sin and growing in holiness. That is sanctification, but you will not come to the end of that work in this life. So no matter how many years you have walked with Christ, how many times you've heard from your parents and grandparents before them and have heard sermons, it is not yet over. It's not done, God is still sanctifying you. John 17, 17, by the truth. All scripture, verse 16 of 2 Timothy 3, all scripture is God breathed and is useful for, and then the list we're very familiar with, teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. That is sanctification. because our need, the believer's need, is for perfection. Now we're adding little pieces as we go, and so let me add this other piece. The Bible, preached, taught, read, studied, memorized, and meditated on, is the single most valuable source of our sanctification. God completes us with his word. If we look carefully at our text, we see that's exactly what the Apostle Paul is asserting, he's affirming, that completeness, perfection, comes by the Bible. The Holy Spirit's primary textbook in your training, lifelong training, is the Bible. so that it ought to follow as a logical consequence that we want to know more about the Bible, that we want to know about God's word. But that brings us back to that underlying assumption that we talked about a moment ago, that conviction we addressed a few minutes ago. Do I see myself under the authority of the word of God? Every time you face, and now here we're getting into the details of sanctification, every time you face a temptation to sin, whatever that temptation, about whatever sin, you ought to rehearse in your mind the question I just asked you. Do I see myself under the authority of the word of God? Temptation comes question attacks, that's sanctification. Now we pray that many times the question which attacks the temptation overwhelms the temptation and the temptation dwindles and dies, a terrifying death in our presence and we laugh at the death of such temptations and that ought to be the case. Doesn't always happen, does it? Because sometimes the temptation comes and we forget the question, am I under the authority of the word of God? Or we hear the question in our brains, because I'm repeating it to you this morning several times. We hear the question and we say, no, I'd rather have that which I am being tempted about. That's sin, James chapter one. Read it this afternoon. That's sin. That's the process. But you see, we are gathered in this building this morning, we are here in this room this morning, all of us in the same exact situation as believers. That is to say, we are not yet complete. Positionally, situationally, not yet complete. Every true Christian knows that we are not yet complete, perfected, but they want to be, you want to be, you want to be, And so we come to love the Bible more and more. Let me help us to see that in three ways quickly. These are going to be three texts from Psalm 119. I would encourage you to jot these down and look them up later. Psalm 119 verse 11. I thought about my ways and I turned my feet to your testimonies. I made haste and did not delay to keep your commandments. That was Psalm 119 verse 11. I thought about my ways. I turned my feet to your testimonies. I did not want to sin. I wanted to keep your commandments. Think about this one. Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. That's 119 verse 11, sorry. I hid your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. The other verse I just mentioned is 119, 59, and 60. Psalm 119, 59, and 60. There's so many other ones. Let me just mention one more. Psalm 119 verse 80. Let my heart be blameless regarding your statutes that I may not be ashamed. Psalm 119 verse 80, let my heart be blameless regarding your statutes that I may not be ashamed. And all of these and so many more, the Lord is showing to us that he employs his word by his spirit in us to complete us. In other words, what Jesus was praying in John 17, 17, is what the psalmist had already written so many hundreds of years earlier. And what Paul, by the Spirit, pens years after Jesus. Well, let's take up the next thing then. Thirdly, sanctification is his work using his living word. So notice what we confess and what we believe so far. The word of God comes from God. He is the source, from his mind and from his will. And secondly, he says that his word is profitable for us, making us complete. This word of his authorship is priceless for our sanctification, but then there's something else we need to assert. We need to have confidence about. if we're gonna mature in the faith, and it is this, that God does not just throw his word at us, here take this, and then he turns around and ignores us, that's not his way. You see, what Paul is getting at when he writes here, all scripture is God-breathed and useful for these things, he is saying that God didn't just once breathe it out and it's done, but he says he uses this word continually in us. That is to say, and beloved, I'm trying to give us something very particular here about Reformed believers. Here we understand that God continually is teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness by His Word. The author of the Hebrews in chapter 4 verse 12 says that His Word is, what, living and active like a double-edged sword that it cuts and divides soul and spirit, joint and marrow. He uses His Word constantly in us to correct our thinking, to affect changes in our behaviors, to reprove, that is to rebuke our missteps, so that we will repent and humble ourselves. He uses scripture positively to add truth upon truth, line upon line, so that we might come to a growing and an increasing in righteousness. These are the four things mentioned here in verse 16. He trains our minds. He corrects our missteps. He trains us further in sanctification so that we might add knowledge to knowledge and faith to faith. Let me put it just a moment negatively and bluntly. If you are not growing in your knowledge of the scripture and in faith in Christ, then you are in trouble today. If you are not growing today, you are in trouble today. That's a negative way of putting what we have here in verse 16. The positive way is to say, well, no, actually God is working in me. He is growing me up in these ways. He's teaching my mind. He's rebuking my missteps. He is correcting me moment by moment so that I might add righteousness to righteousness and faith to faith. That should be something we say about ourselves, shouldn't we? Now, beloved, we could stay here a long time this morning because I could outline a variety of applications to this, to all kinds of circumstances the Christian deals with. I don't think we want an hour-long sermon. We can do that. But I would say to us, beloved, that what we need to consider is that this process of sanctification is what God is applying to all the particular situations that we face in our life. When a young person, not yet married, considers who they might marry, here's one example, they should turn to the word of God for, verse 16, training, teaching, rebuking, correcting, in righteousness, so that they might say, well, not that person, because he or she does not affirm the faith. Now that's just one example. You see, the point is that we can take any issue of our lives and apply the same metric to it, because we are asking about all of these situations the same basic question that I asked you earlier. Am I under the authority of the word of God, yea or nay, yes or no? But everything. We're hunting for a movie that we want to watch. And we heard about that movie, that there's a lot of objectionable language and a lot of gratuitous nudity and sexuality of the culture's mindset. Yes or no? Watch it or don't. Now, these are kind of like easy targets on the wall, aren't they? Any pastor could put those up and shoot them down. But then we get home. And then we come to the regular week and routine. And there's that person who cuts us off on the freeway. How do we respond? Somebody stole from us. How do we respond? Somebody manipulated things to get the contract and we didn't. How do we respond? And it goes on and it goes on and it goes on. At every point, the word of God is sanctifying us under the rubric, under the question, do I see myself under the authority of the word of God? What we are dealing with in all of this, beloved, is sanctification, growing in godliness, sanctifying us through his word. Now, I've been saying something this morning that you've been hearing. I need to add something to it so that we hear it properly. Let me say it this way. Is God the primary one working on our sanctification? Yes, absolutely. God is the primary worker in our maturing in the faith. Is there anything then for us to do if God is doing it? Do I have to do anything? Oh, yes. We have to cooperate. We have to participate. We have to be those who say, what God is working in me, He's gonna carry it on to completion, and I'm not gonna resist it. He is equipping us, you see, verse 17, for a grand purpose, which is, fourthly, to make His people very valuable. What we have been dealing with this morning largely are internal changes. You could look at the list in verse 16 and you could probably say about each one of those that they at least begin as internal changes. Sort of like if you come to buy a house and it's dilapidated on the outside and on the inside, you ask the question, which should I rehab first? I've got $30,000. Should I apply that money to the inside first or to the outside first? That's a question you could answer in a variety of ways. But God begins on the inside. And he says, I'm going to make them beautiful internally, in terms of these things of a spiritual nature, so that then what will happen is that they will be ready for good works, glorious for these good things outwardly, equipping us for that good work. That's the reach of it. That's the extent. It does something. The Lord plans to use his good word to sanctify you and me so that we can be engaged in good works. Or to flip that around and put it negatively, where there is little sanctification going on, there can only be tiny little, if at all, good works going on. It just follows. God is entirely logical. So the kind of sanctification that he works, soul, spirit, and body, because we're told in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 3, that the will of God is our sanctification, 1 Thessalonians 4, 3, the will of God is our sanctification. He works, 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, spirit, soul, and body, the whole of us, all of us, to renew us, to be his change agents. The mission committee has prepared for us some interesting videos to watch downstairs. We're going to consider some things that take place in a conversation between one who is being evangelistic and those around who are critiquing and who are throwing all kinds of barbs at the one who is seeking to evangelize. But you know what that he is doing is exactly what we are considering here this morning. Good works. For which first. Prior preparation is needed. All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the result would be equipment. Verse 17. Equipment, especially the sword of the Spirit, well familiar in our hands so that we know when to parry and when to thrust and when to dodge, when to slash and when to strike. Well, everything that we've been talking about this morning, dearly beloved, has been going on this morning. It's been going on this morning. You've been sitting under training, rebuking, teaching, correcting, and you believe these things because you're a Christian. In an open-hearted way, you have been saying at various points this morning, if you are a believer, you have been saying at various points, yes, that's what I need. I'm there. Grow me up. Strengthen me in the word. Teach me by the reading, by the studying, by the memorization, by the meditation upon the word of God. Teach me by sermons and Bible studies that I can be useful to you, oh God. That's what you have been saying if you were a Christian this morning. Now, unbelievers, if they were seated with us this morning, hearing this sermon, they would be tuned out, disregarding, disinterested, off on another planet. but you believe these things because you know the Lord is not done with you yet and you want to grow. You heard Jesus' prayer in the upper room, sanctify, and you put your name there, in the truth by the word And something about our lives and this word links up. We say, that's where I am. That's me. And so, beloved, let me say this. Rejoice. Rejoice that God has been this morning doing exactly what the Apostle Paul here said he would use by his spirit, his word to do, sanctifying you and me in the truth. And oh, by the way, come back tonight because he's not done with us yet. Amen. Our Father in heaven, we thank you so much for the wonder of your Spirit's use of the Bible. We thank you for the ongoing work of progressive sanctification wherein we grow from faith to faith, from glory to glory. Every true believer has said about him or herself this morning, yes, I see myself under the authority of the Word of God, Lord, Teach me, rebuke me, correct me, train me in righteousness. And so, Father, we ask you to do those very things more and more in us that we might be ready to show outwardly the fruit of the Spirit in all of those things of love and joy and peace and the rest of it. We ask, help us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.