The God-Breathed Word | 2 Timothy 3:14-17
Brian Hedges | July 12, 2026
Well, let me invite you to turn in Scripture this morning to 2 Timothy 3, as today we’re beginning a new six-week series called “The Living Word.” For the next six weeks, we’re going to just focus on the word of God, the Scriptures, and different aspects of the Scriptures in our lives, how the word of God intersects with different aspects of our lives.
I think this is important for us to do from time to time, to just focus back on the basics of our faith; and there’s nothing more basic than the Scriptures, the word of God.
A great illustration for this—and I’ve loved it ever since I first heard it or read it—is that great legendary coach Vince Lombardi. In 1961, after the Green Bay Packers had just lost the NFL championship, kind of squandering a fourth-quarter lead, the players were discouraged; and when they gathered for training that summer leading into the next year, Vince Lombardi, who was a fanatic for the fundamentals of football, started in a very basic way with his team. This is reported from some of the team members that were there on the Packers. They said that Lombardi lifted up a football, and he said, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” Then he just went right back to basics in the training, and that had wonderful consequences, as they won several NFL championships over the next several years, as well as the first two Super Bowls.
Today, I want to say to you, “Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, this is a Bible.” Today we’re going back to the fundamentals of our faith, to the most foundational aspects of our faith, and it’s found in the word of God.
One reason I’m doing this series is because the Lord has done something recently in my heart and life in relation to the Scriptures. It is a wonderful thing and it is a very serious thing to be someone stewarded with the task of preaching and teaching the word of God. That’s been a great gift to me. It means I’ve never been able to be out of the Bible for very long, and I’ve been reading the Bible since I was a kid, thanks to my parents.
But in the last couple of months, the Lord has done a renewing work in my heart, leading me back to not just reading the Scripture, but really trying to meditate on the Scripture and apply the Scriptures to my life, such that I’ve found myself falling in love with the Bible in a fresh way. I want that for you, I want that for our church, so my hope and prayer is that maybe for the first time for some of you, and maybe as a renewal for some of you, that we will come back to the Scriptures with a fresh devotion and a fresh love for the word of God, and that we would see just how important it is for us.
Today we’re going to begin in 2 Timothy 3. It’s a very familiar passage of Scripture that many of you will know almost by heart. Most of you will have heard sermons on this in the past, but we’re going to look at it again today, and I believe there is a fresh word for us today from this passage of Scripture. So let’s read it together, 2 Timothy 3:14-17. Paul here is writing to his son in the faith, Timothy. Paul is writing the very last letter of his life; he’s soon to face execution under Emperor Nero, and he’s writing his son in the faith, and he writes these important words.
“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
This is God’s word.
I want us to look at three things together this morning:
1. What the Scriptures Are
2. What the Scriptures Do
3. What the Scriptures Require
1. What the Scriptures Are: The Nature of Scripture
For many of you, this will be a review of things that you already know, but we’re going to just talk for a few minutes about the nature of the Scriptures, the nature of the word of God.
(1) There are several things for us to say just from this passage, and the first is this, that the Scriptures are writings. The Scriptures are writings. It is a collection of writings, in fact. The Bible is not just one book, though it has a unified theme and purpose, but it is a collection of sixty-six books, written over approximately fourteen hundred years on three different continents, written by more than forty authors in three different languages, none of which were English. It’s this collection of writings that we call the Scriptures.
I start here to remind us that these documents are historical documents. These are documents, writings that are grounded in human history, in real human languages, as God spoke through prophets and kings and priests and apostles and physicians and shepherds and fishermen and tax collectors and others. The Bible is fully rooted in history. There is a human element to the word of God, and this is important for us to understand if we are to understand the Scriptures.
This means that when you read Luke, Luke sounds like Luke. He doesn’t sound like Paul, he doesn’t sound like John, he doesn’t sound like Isaiah; he sounds like himself. The writers of Scripture wrote in their own time, in their own place, with their own cultural background, in their own language, with a unique perspective; and it’s only as we begin to understand that that we understand these writings which are the Scriptures. We have to understand that human element.
(2) But the Scriptures are not only writings, they are also what Paul here calls sacred writings, or, if you’re reading in the NIV, holy Scriptures. That means that these writings are different, that they are set apart, that they are unique and distinctive. This is not merely another collection of ancient religious books. The Scriptures are not less than human writings, but they are more than human writings. There’s something unique about these books that together we call the Scriptures—something that sets them apart, that puts them in a category all by themselves.
(3) So that raises a question: What is it that makes the Scriptures unique? And the answer is given in the next verse, verse 16, where Paul says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” The Scriptures are unique, they are the holy Scriptures, because they are breathed out by God. The breath of God is a metaphorical way of describing God’s powerful work through the Spirit. The breath of God and the word of God are often coordinate together in Scripture. You find this in Psalm 33:6: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their hosts.” Even when we speak today, we expire breath as we speak.
So what Paul is saying here is that that same creative breath of God, the same creative word of God that created all things, is also behind the Scriptures, so that we can say that all Scripture is breathed out by God. So this is giving us the divine element in Scripture. The Scriptures have a human element, the Scriptures have a divine element.
Peter, the apostle Peter, puts it like this in 2 Peter 1, when he says, “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” God, the Spirit, working through the human personality of these authors, gave us the Scriptures, such that while these writings are the words of men, they are also the very words of God. And there’s the mystery. This is how God works.
You might think of it along the same analogy of the person and the work of Jesus Christ. We believe that Jesus of Nazareth was a human being, that he was a real man who came in real flesh, in real time and history. He was not less than a man, but he was more than a man. This man, Jesus Christ, was also the very Son of God. He was the word made flesh.
In a similar way, the Scriptures are human writings that are grounded in history, but they are sacred, holy writings because through the Scriptures God has spoken his word so that the Scriptures are the very word of God.
Now Paul, in this passage, is speaking especially about the Old Testament Scriptures, but he claims much the same for his own writings in 1 Corinthians 2:12-13, when he says this: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God.”
“We have received the Spirit of God,” he says, “that we might understand the things freely given us by God, and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit.” Paul is claiming that he is speaking words that are taught by the Spirit, having received the Spirit of God.
This is exactly what Jesus promised would take place. Jesus, in that great upper room discourse, in the Gospel of John, in John 16:13, said, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.”
The greatest, most primary fulfillment of that promise happened when the Spirit was given to the disciples, to the apostles and prophets, the writers of the New Testament Scriptures, and they wrote down this revelation from God. So the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments together make up the Bible, which is the God-breathed word of God.
Now that raises a question, how do we know this is so? And for the really skeptical person, the question is not only how do we know that this is so, but how do we even know that the Bible is historically reliable? In answer to that, I would just say, first of all, that there are really good reasons to believe in the historical reliability of Scripture. That’s not the focus of this sermon, but you need to do your research before you discount the historical reliability of the word of God. I would in particular recommend a book by Peter Williams called Can I Trust the Gospels? Start there if you have doubts; it’s a short little book, and it will be helpful to you to just show the historical reliability of the Scriptures. So there are good reasons to believe in that.
But we believe that God speaks through his word, that these are the very words of God, because of something we experience when we read the Scriptures. When we read the Scriptures, we find that God himself speaks to us through them. This is something that’s experienced in a subjective, experiential way, but it is what has convinced thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people as they have read the Bible, as they have read the word of God, that they are hearing the voice of God speaking to them.
This is the way Calvin put it. He said, “The highest proof of Scripture derives from the fact that God in person speaks in it.” Or, as St. Augustine reportedly said, “When the Scriptures speak, God speaks.” When the Scriptures speak, God speaks. That is why we need the word of God, because the Scriptures are the very word of God.
One of the great historical illustrations of the importance of understanding this is the whole story of Martin Luther. It was fascinating to me a few years ago when I was reading the first volume of Martin Brecht’s biography of Luther to just get a picture of what the world was like, what even the Christian world was like, before the Reformation. Christ was viewed not mainly as a Savior but as a judge. People feared Christ. He was viewed as a judge. People therefore prayed to Mary and to the saints in hopes of finding a more merciful mediator.
The Bible was largely unavailable to the people. The Bible was only in Latin, it wasn’t in the language of the people; even many of the priests did not know the Bible. The little bit of the Bible they did know they just recited, and the people would not understand.
The Bible was neglected in the monasteries. No one understood the Psalter, the book of Psalms. The book of Romans was considered a series of disputes during Paul’s time and useless for the contemporary age. When people were studying and training for the ministry, what they were studying were not the Scriptures. They were studying the scholastic theologians like Aquinas and they were studying the philosopher Aristotle. Almost no one studied the Scriptures.
The significant change that happened was when Luther began to discover the Bible. He claimed he had never even seen a full copy, a complete Bible, until he was twenty years old, and he came across a Bible in the library in Erfurt, and he read the story of Samuel for the first time. And as a monk, Luther became transfixed on the Scriptures, on the word of God. He began to read and to read and to re-read. He was the only monk reading through the Scriptures in this way.
By 1533, he had been reading through the Bible twice a year for many years. And through the rediscovered word of God, the Lord changed Luther, and then the Lord changed the church, and then the Lord changed Europe and the whole history of Western civilization. The Reformation, the Protestant Reformation, did not begin with a political movement, although politics were, of course, involved; it began with a rediscovery of the word of God.
Friends, it is only through this, it is only through the Scriptures that light comes into the darkness. It is only the Scriptures that can renew the hearts of a Christian who has begun to fall away from the Lord. It is only the Scriptures that can recover a church that has begun to drift. And it’s only the Scriptures that can bring true reformation and lasting revival, because it is through the Scriptures that God speaks. When the Bible speaks, God speaks. This is what the Scriptures are.
2. What the Scriptures Do: The Purpose of Scripture
If this is what the Scriptures are, what do the Scriptures do? What is it that God does through his word? That’s point number two, as we think for a few minutes about the purpose of Scripture, and Paul says a lot about the purpose of Scripture in this passage. I want to just summarize it by saying three things that I think we see right here in the text, three things that the Scriptures do.
(1) Number one, the Scriptures save. Notice Paul says that they are “able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” Notice that the Scriptures are the instrument through which God brings the saving message of the gospel to us.
Now, to be sure, the Bible does not save all by itself, and just because somebody reads the Bible or knows a lot of the Bible doesn’t mean that they’re saved. It’s possible, in fact, to have a lot of Bible knowledge, to know a lot about the Scriptures, and to not actually have saving faith in Jesus Christ. In fact, the Lord Jesus himself confronted this. We find it in the Gospel of John, in John 5, when he spoke to those who knew the Old Testament Scriptures, and he says, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, but they testify to me, and you will not come to me that you might have life.”
The Scriptures testify to Christ, and it’s as the Scriptures point to Christ that the Scriptures have this saving function. They are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. The great theme of Scriptures is Christ.
We could say it this way, that the Scriptures are the manger in which we find the Christ child. The Scriptures are the altar on which we find the Christ who is the Lamb of God who was sacrificed for us. The Scriptures are the perfect golden ring in which is set the diamond of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it’s only as we see that diamond, it’s only as we see Christ himself, that we find salvation.
That’s why Spurgeon was so fanatical about making every sermon a sermon about Christ, and he said, “From every text in Scripture there is a road to the metropolis of the Scriptures.” That’s Jesus Christ.
We see Christ in every page of Scripture, and as we do, then we get the full message of Scripture, the message of salvation, and that’s where salvation comes from.
You might think of it like this: the Scripture is like a compass, and just as a compass with its magnetized needle always points towards true north, so a right reading of Scripture will always point us to the true north of our lives, which is the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Scriptures save because the Scriptures point us to Christ. That’s why Paul can say, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1). In Romans 10:17 Paul says, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.” So the Scriptures save; that’s their first function.
(2) What else do the Scriptures do? Number two, the Scriptures sanctify. I think this is the whole thrust of verse 16, as Paul lists off these four ways in which the Scriptures are profitable to us or beneficial to us. We’ll go through this briefly because there’ll be a whole message on the word of God and sanctification, but just notice briefly what Paul says here. He says, “All Scripture is profitable for teaching,” and this is one of the sanctifying aspects of Scripture. The Scriptures teach us, the Scriptures instruct us, the Scriptures give us truth, give us understanding. That’s why Jesus can say, “Father, sanctify them in your truth; your word is truth.” This is why we need doctrine, this is why we need teaching, it’s why we need the truth of the word of God; because the word of God in its truth has this sanctifying effect in our lives.
Calvin compared the word of God to a pair of spectacles, a pair of glasses, that correct our distorted vision, so that as we look through these lenses we see the world and ourselves and God, the plan of redemption—we see it all clearly, but only when we read through the lens of Scriptures.
The Scriptures are not only profitable for teaching, but also for reproof. In other words, the Scriptures also expose what is wrong. They instruct us in the truth, but they also expose what is wrong. I’ve said this often from this pulpit, that the Scriptures, especially in their aspect as the law of God, are like an x-ray or an MRI that can expose and diagnose what is broken and what is wrong in our hearts and lives. It’s why Paul can say, “Through the law comes the knowledge of sin.”
This is one of the functions of Scripture. Before God heals us, he shows us what is wrong. He shows us our need, he shows us our sins, he shows us the things that need to change in our lives. And it’s one reason why we read the Scriptures and find ourselves convicted. We find our hearts wounded as we read the Scriptures and we recognize that there are things in our hearts that are wrong, there are things in our lives that need to change, because God is going to work, reproving us with his word.
But he doesn’t stop there. The Scriptures also correct us, and this is also part of the sanctifying work of Scripture. If reproof diagnoses the problem, the correction is the healing, restorative function of Scripture. In fact, the Greek word that Paul uses here is the word from which we get our words “orthodox,” “orthodoxy,” or “orthopedics,” or “orthodontics.” What does an orthodontist do? He puts a brace on someone’s teeth to straighten their teeth. An orthopedic doctor sets a bone to make it straight. That’s the idea of the word here; it sets that which is crooked straight; it restores us to health.
Psalm 107 says, “God sent out his word and healed [us].” This is the healing function of Scripture.
Listen, if you find yourself broken inside, if you find yourself struggling deeply in your life with brokenness and with sin and with dysfunction, what you need more than anything else is the healing, restorative function of the word of God in your life.
The Scriptures correct us, and then Paul says the Scriptures are profitable for training in righteousness. This is the formative aspect of Scripture, also part of the sanctifying work of the word of God, as we are shaped and formed and trained. It’s like going to a gym and doing a whole body circuit at the gym as you’re training every muscle group in your body. In the same way, the Scriptures train us and form us, working on every part of our life, our heart, our mind, our will, our relationships, our emotions, our relationship with God, and so on. The Scriptures train us in righteousness.
(3) God’s purpose in all of this is to equip us so that we will be able to minister to others. That’s the third purpose of Scripture in verse 17, “that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
It’s not just so that we will be well-informed, it’s not even just so that we will be Orthodox Christians, but that we will be mature, complete, well-equipped servants of Christ. Everything that the Lord does through his word is moving us to this end. He saves us through faith in Christ so that we can be conformed to the image of Christ so that we can then become ambassadors for Christ and share Christ with others. The Scriptures are what equip us to do that.
So the Scriptures have this threefold function: saving, sanctifying, and equipping us for every good work.
3. What the Scriptures Require
So that leads to a final consideration this morning, not just what the Scriptures are and what the Scriptures do, but what the Scriptures require of us.
If God has this practical purpose for giving us his word, what does he want us to do in response? This is really where I want to focus in the last few minutes of this message. It’s the burden of this message, the burden of this text, as Paul gives Timothy a command in verse 14. I want to read verses 14-15 and then, teasing out this command and the implications of what Paul says, I think we see a threefold requirement from the Scriptures for our lives; three ways that you and I should respond. So this last point is all application.
Verses 14-15. “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed.” There’s the command: continue. “Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
So here’s the threefold responsibility to Scripture: we need to learn the Scriptures, we need to trust the Scriptures, and we need to continue in the Scriptures.
(1) First of all, we need to learn the Scriptures. Paul says, “Continue in what you have learned, knowing from whom you learned it.”
Now, the Bible is not an easy book. It’s a book you have to learn. You don’t just automatically get it. It is not the case that as soon as you become a Christian, all of a sudden you know everything the Bible says. You can’t put the Bible under your pillow and expect to just get this by osmosis while you sleep. Knowing the Bible requires learning. It requires a process in which we become acquainted with the Scriptures.
It’s interesting here that the verb that Paul uses—and I’d never seen this until this week as I was looking at the text again—the verb Paul uses here, manthano, is a verb that is closely related to the word for a disciple, mathetes, a disciple. A disciple is a learner. And Paul says, “You have learned the Scriptures.”
I think one of the marks of genuine discipleship is a growing acquaintance with the word of God. It is to learn the Scriptures. You are not a disciple of Jesus, you are not a follower of Jesus, if you are not learning the Scriptures. It’s as simple as that. If you are not taking in the word of God and learning from God’s word, you’re not a follower of Jesus in any meaningful sense of the word.
One of the great tragedies of the church in our day is the false idea that one can be a Christian and not be a disciple. To be a follower of Jesus is to be a learner, a disciple, a learner of Jesus; and to be a learner of Jesus is to be a learner of his word.
Notice here that Paul says not only, “Continue in what you have learned,” but also, “knowing from whom you learned it.” That implies something as well. Learning is not something you just do on your own. Timothy had learned from his mother and from his grandmother. They had trained him in the Scriptures. They had taught him the Scriptures. And you and I need to be taught the Scriptures, and we learn from others.
Brothers and sisters, we are so blessed. Unlike Luther, who had no access to a Bible until he was twenty years old, most of us have got Bibles lining our shelves. I’ve got a whole shelf that’s just full of study Bibles. And there’s more information there, there’s more knowledge there in that one shelf, than some of the poor pastors that I’ve met in Africa will have in their entire lifetime, where they have one tattered old Bible and maybe a book by Benny Hinn or something like that. That’s all they’ve got! And they devour the word of God, because that’s all they’ve got. You and I are rich beyond measure in all the resources we have. We have Bibles and study Bibles and concordances and commentaries and books about the Bible and theology and all the rest—and how we neglect our riches. Let’s learn and learn from those who are further ahead and who know more and can teach us.
Here’s the last thing to say about learning: learning requires effort. Learning requires effort. You did not graduate with a degree without some effort. You don’t learn a sport without effort and without practice and lots and lots of reps. You don’t learn a new instrument or a new language without instruction and effort and practice. Why should we imagine that we can know God’s word without putting in the effort of learning God’s word?
So wherever you are in your Christian life, this is one of the things I’m calling you to this morning, is to be a learner of Jesus, a student of Jesus, an apprentice of Jesus, and a learner of God’s word. And if you know a lot of God’s word, then dig in and learn more, grow more. If you’re just starting for the first time, then just take a simple next step and begin reading through the New Testament. Take one book of the Bible at a time, read a chapter a day, and see what you can learn as you just begin to study the Scriptures for yourself. We must learn the Scriptures.
(2) Number two, we must trust the Scriptures. Paul says, “As for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed.” You have “firmly believed.” Paul’s using here a word that means to be persuaded or convinced of something. It’s the idea of trusting in what God has said.
There comes a point when we’re no longer investigating the Bible to see whether it is true, but instead we are trusting that it’s true and we are building our lives upon it. And this means that we all will reach these crossroads in our lives where we have to ask ourselves the question, “Do I really believe and trust the word of God, and will I act on the basis of what the word says? Even when my feelings disagree, even when the culture is going a different direction, even when the obedience will be costly, if this is what God’s word says, will I do what God’s word says? Will I believe it? Am I persuaded of it? Will I show my confidence in the Scriptures by believing and obeying what it says?”
(3) We are to learn the Scriptures, we are to trust the Scriptures. And my assumption this morning is that almost all of us in this room would say we believe the Scriptures, and many of us are learning the Scriptures. But I think what all of us need is this third thing: to continue in the Scriptures. Paul says, “Continue in what you have learned.” Continue in what you’ve learned.
Here’s Timothy. He’s a young man, and he’s known the sacred writing since he was a child. And Paul is saying, “Don’t move on from this. Don’t move on to something else. Don’t neglect this. Don’t think that you’ve learned it all. Instead, continue in what you’ve learned. Continue in the Scriptures.”
This is that familiar Greek word—we’ve often emphasized this in our teaching here in Scripture—it’s the word meno, which means to abide. It’s actually the word that Jesus uses in John 15 when he says, “I am the vine and you are the branches. Unless the branch abides in the vine, it will not bear fruit.” It’s a word that has a wide field of possible meanings. It can mean to remain, it can mean to stay in a place, to dwell in an abiding place, a home or a dwelling place. It can mean to continue on in something.
It’s often used in connection with the Scriptures, with the word of God. Let me just give you some examples.
In John 8:31, Jesus says, “If you abide in my word—” it’s the same word. “If you abide [or continue] in my word, you are truly my disciples. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” How do we experience freedom in the Christian life? It’s through the truth, and it’s through abiding in the truth of Scripture.
John 15:7: “If you abide in me and my words abide in you,” you’ll bear fruit. So there’s a mutual indwelling, a mutual abiding. We abide in Jesus and the words of Jesus abide in us.
Then let me read you this one, 1 John 2:14. “I write to you, young men…” So young men, listen up. Listen to what John is saying here. “I write to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.” I just wonder how many young men in our church and in our community could John write those words to? “I write to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”
Listen, young men—and really everyone else—if you find yourself addicted to your phone or addicted to gaming or addicted to pornography or constantly scrolling YouTube, you’re wasting your life away, hours and hours a day in social media, and you are neglecting the word of God, is it any wonder that you’re spiritually weak? You want to be different? You want to be changed? You will be changed as you devote yourself to the word of God, as you live in the word of God. I dare you, I challenge you this morning: devote the time that you have spent in the last year in media, devote it to the word of God over the next year. Your life will change. Your life will change. “I write to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.” If we want to overcome the evil one in our lives, it will happen as we continue in the word of God and as it abides in us.
This is Paul’s basic exhortation to Timothy. This is the basic argument of the text this morning. It is the basic call for our church, I believe, today and in this season: that we will continue in the Scriptures, that we will not move on from the Scriptures, we will not drift from the Scriptures. It means that we will not graduate beyond the Scriptures, that we will live here, that we will return here, that we will raise our families here, that we will make our decisions here, that we will fight temptation here, we will find our comfort here, and that we will live and die in and upon the word of God.
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” Continue in the Scriptures.
Let me just close with a final illustration. One of my family’s favorite biographies is called Evidence Not Seen. It’s the story of a missionary named Darlene Deibler Rose. She was a missionary to the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia), prior to World War II. During World War II she was captured by the Japanese and spent four horrible years in a Japanese prison camp, and they were able to take everything away. She spent much of it in solitary confinement. She, of course, lost her freedom, her possessions. She was in prison. She was surviving on a very meager diet.
But the one thing they couldn’t take away from her was the Scripture that she had memorized. They took away the Bible—she didn’t have a Bible—but she had memorized so much Scripture, she had so much of the word of God in her heart, that it sustained her through those dark and difficult years. She went on to spend virtually the rest of her life in missions work, even when she was finally freed.
That’s a picture of what it means to continue in the word, to abide in the word, to let the word abide in you. It’s to be so devoted to the word that you’re not just turning to the Bible when times get tough; it’s that you are building a treasure trove in your own heart and life that will sustain you no matter what comes in your life.
Do you have that kind of relationship with the word of God? This is what Paul is calling Timothy to; it’s what he’s calling us to today—to learn the Scriptures, to trust the Scriptures, and to continue in the Scriptures, because these are no ordinary writings. These are the holy Scriptures, the sacred writings, the God-breathed word which saves us through faith in Christ and sanctifies us, making us like Christ; and equips us for all that God has called us to be and do.
Friends, let’s devote ourselves afresh to the Scriptures, to the word of God. Let’s pray that God would do a work of renewal in our love for Scriptures in these coming weeks. Let’s pray together.
Father, we thank you this morning for your word. We thank you that you are a God who has not remained silent, but you have spoken. You have spoken through apostles and prophets who have given us the Scriptures. You’ve spoken supremely through your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And the question for us this morning is not whether you are speaking, it’s whether we have ears to hear, whether we have hearts to understand, whether we are ready and receptive and open to hearing your voice speaking to us through the word of God.
Lord, my prayer this morning is that you would do a fresh work among us in giving us a deeper love for the Scriptures. Maybe the first thing for us to pray this morning is for forgiveness for our neglect of the word of God. Many of us have gone days or maybe even weeks without cracking open a Bible, without reading. Many of us have settled for a devotional life that is brief and perhaps monotonous to us because we’re not really digging in and meditating and applying the word to our lives, we’re just going through the motions.
Probably all of us, Lord, have taken the richness of the word of God for granted and taken for granted the great blessing we have, with access to the Scriptures and so many resources to help us understand the Scriptures. For all of our neglect, Lord, we pray that you would forgive us.
We ask you, Lord, to birth within us a new hunger for the Scriptures, a new love for the Scriptures, so that as we read we would know that we are encountering the true and the living God—as we read the scriptures, we would hear your voice, the voice of your Spirit speaking to us through those words in ways that change us, convict us, and make us more like Christ. We pray that you would strengthen us through your word and that you would bring deep transformation, renewal, and revival into our hearts and lives as a result.
Lord, we thank you that you’ve given us not only the word, you’ve given us the table. And as we come to the Lord’s table this morning, our prayer is that the table would be a time of repentance and renewal for us. So, Lord, search our hearts in these moments. Show us, Lord, the things that you want to change. Renew our hope in Jesus Christ and all that he has done for us. We’ll give you the praise for that. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
