Sermon Tone Analysis

Friends, our main Scripture reading today is from 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5.

I invite you to turn their in your Bibles and pull the insert out of your bulletin to follow along.

Let’s listen now to the Word of God.

“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.

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.

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage-- with great patience and careful instruction.

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine.

Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.”

“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”

We all know that little factoid from school, right?

But how do we know it?

Why do we believe it?

Probably a teacher taught it to us.

Perhaps we got it out of a textbook.

But why do we trust that what that teacher or textbook said was true?

Maybe Columbus sailed in 1392.

Maybe he didn’t come here at all.

Our lives are built on relationships of trust.

Some things we trust a lot – textbooks and teachers.

Some things we don’t trust, like used car salesmen.

We live our lives based on who and what we trust, and it affects us a lot.

Many folks still don’t believe a man has been on the moon.

They think the broadcasts were done by camera tricks.

They didn’t trust the source.

They didn’t trust the government.

They didn’t trust the broadcasters.

Trust can be fleeting.

We trust what we’ve seen with our own eyes…but what if our eyes lie to us?

Why do we trust what we trust?

Ultimately, we must set foundations, cornerstones, which root and center us.

We must decide where our core beliefs will be found.

Some argue for scientific beliefs, others for various religions, still more for all sorts of wacky belief system.

But no matter who you are, you trust some things to be true.

We often just don’t think about why.

Today, we’re going to discuss the pillar of our faith, the groundwork on which everything we believe is laid, and that’s Scripture.

Last week, I told you that as we started Crossway, we would look at the eight essentials of our new denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

The first one is special.

It is so important that it gets its own category because the other seven essentials are based upon it.

It’s the basis for everything we believe as Christians.

It’s the Bible.

Here’s the first essential tenet of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church:

/All Scripture is self-attesting and being Truth, requires our unreserved submission in all areas of life.

The infallible Word of God, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, is a complete and unified witness to God's redemptive acts culminating in the incarnation of the Living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Bible, uniquely and fully inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the supreme and final authority on all matters on which it speaks.

On this sure foundation we affirm these additional Essentials of our faith./

That’s an impressive statement.

I want to look at it alongside Scripture itself so we can get to the heart of what we believe and this book on which we stand.

The essentials start off strong.

*All Scripture is self-attesting and being Truth, requires our unreserved submission in all areas of life.*

What does it mean that Scripture is self-attesting?

It means that Scripture testifies about itself as to its own validity.

In this morning’s passage, Paul tells Timothy that all Scripture is God-breathed.

That means it comes from God; it was inspired by God; He inspired its earthly authors to write what they wrote.

Scripture is infallible – not because its human writers were perfect, but because God inspired it, it never fails us.

It contains everything He wanted us to know about Himself and His dealings with mankind.

It doesn’t mean, though, that we trust the Bible simply because it says, “I’m Scripture…trust me!” Lots of books claim divine inspiration, yet we don’t believe the Koran of Islam or the Rig Vedas of Hinduism or the writings of the Buddha.

Why do we trust what this book says about itself?

For some of us, it’s a heart issue.

We read it, we’re convicted of our sin and convinced of what Jesus did for us, and that’s all we need.

But many people in other religions feel the same way about their holy books.

What makes Scripture different?

Unlike other religions, what we find in Scripture is a factual account of historical truth.

Nothing else from the ancient world is remotely like it.

And when we understand that the Bible was written over 1500 years, we see that what was written earliest was later fulfilled.

Remember our passage from Luke this morning?

Jesus explains to His disciples how the whole of Scripture testifies to Him.

He starts at the beginning and works His way through the Old Testament.

Jesus proved its truth to the disciples.

That proof is still there, and we can read it for ourselves.

That truth is seen most clearly through Jesus’ life.

The actions He took, the things He did and the things that were done to Him, all fall into place with the predictions and prophecies of the Old Testament.

Hundreds of details, things that Jesus could not have personally affected, fell in line.

Over and over again we learn it is truthful even in incidental and trivial matters.

Archaeology keeps proving it, even though many scholars would love to see it disproven.

It is also our foundation because it is true to life.

As Paul said, it is useful for “teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”

It is effective in working out God’s plan in human hearts.

When we read the Bible, we find out that it speaks to us.

It’s about ancient people, but it’s just as much about us!

It makes sense of the human condition.

We have little problem believing it because its stories, laws, everything in it matches what we find in real life.

We have a hard time accepting it because it is so real, because it calls us to account and teaches that salvation is in God’s hands, not ours.

Yet even our hesitation reinforces its truthfulness.

That leads to the hardest part – *because the Bible is truth, it requires our unreserved submission in all areas of life.

* Nobody likes that thought.

Why should we submit ourselves to rules and laws and concepts taught to us in a dusty old book?

It’s because it’s true.

Truth does not change with the times.

If something holds universally true, time cannot affect it.

If Columbus really did sail in 1492, whether the book telling us that was written yesterday or five hundred years ago, it still holds true.

Most people accept 1492 as the date Columbus sailed because it makes absolutely no difference to how we live our lives now.

We accept many historical facts without question because they have no relevance to us personally.

But the Bible is different.

The Bible is truth.

And the Bible is eternally relevant.

It was relevant two thousand years ago; it is relevant today, and it will always be.

The Word of God stands forever.

Even when we meet God and know Him face to face, the Word of God will still exist because God does not change.