July 26, 2015 Bilingual English Worship:Voice Record
Worship Leader Elder Muneyasu Nasu 司会者 那須宗泰長老
Accompanist Mrs. Kazusa Oba 奏楽者 大場かづさ姉妹
Preacher Rev.Ｓean Radke 説教者 ショーン ラドキ宣教師
Interpreter Mrs .Makiko Clapham 通訳者 クラッパム 真紀子姉妹
Song Leader Elder Ｍuneyasu Nasu さんびリーダー 那須宗泰長老
Worship song : Lord, I lift Your name on high
Prayer
Worship song : Blessed assurance
Worship song : We fall down
Bible Reading ：2 Timothy 3:15-16 第二テモテ 3:15-16
Message： “What is the purpose and origin of the Bible?”
聖書の目的と起源
Worship song: Power of your love
Offering
Prayer
Worship song: Awesome God 大いなる神
Benediction Rev.Ｓean Radke
Sean Radke Message on 2 Timothy 3:14 -17 7/27/15
14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Introduction
Do you ever walk into dark room and leave in a lot of pain? Maybe you are like me and in the habit of bumping into furniture when you are sleepy and can’t see well in the dark of night. Warfield gave the picture of a room that is dark but is richly furnished – it is full of valuable furniture we just can’t see it. When the light comes on, we can see the beautifully crafted furniture for what it really is. So it is with the bible that Jesus read, what we call the Old Testament. The Old Testament is like the fully furnished room with valuable and beautiful furniture in its promises, prophecies, symbols, and pictures. But maybe we struggle to see it. Just like the way I bump into something in the dark, maybe We all need illumination to see what is real. When the finished, completed revelation came of the New Testament, we can see how valuable it really is for salvation, inspiration, sufficiency in life.
As the Bible opens, In Genesis we find the world as it is intended to be. Man and woman are in right relationship with God and they experience life where all things are in order. God provides for them and gives them privileges. When the serpent enters the story, the first thing that it says is, “Did God actually say…?” It questions God’s spoken Word and tries to cast doubt that God’s Word is reliable. It has been said that he tempted the first people by focusing on what God prohibited, not what God provided. It reduced God’s command to a question. He cast doubt on the sincerity of God. The first sin is defined as not taking God at His word, disbelief in God, which is asserting ourselves instead of walking in obedience with God. When the first people at the fruit of the tree, it alienated them from themselves and from each God. They hid and experienced shame, becoming rebels. God did not make us to experience shame but security in what His Word. People struggle with taking God at his Word. That’s why tonight’s scripture matters so much. As we are working our way through some major themes in 2 Timothy, we have to take a look at this major theme, how the Scriptures have the power to both save and sustain the Christian. It is powerful so we should hold steadfast to it as the anchor for our lives. The bible is unique among any book that has ever been written and is more important than any other book. Why? What is its purpose? Where is it from? Tonight my goal is to show the purpose and origin of the bible. Therefore we should listen to it more than we listen to any other voice in life and take it to heart. Why should we care about the bible? 2 Timothy 3:15-16 says that:
The bible is all about salvation.
The bible is all about inspiration.
The bible is all about sufficiency.
What is the first purpose of the Bible?
“The Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” 3:15b
The Holy Scriptures literally means “the sacred writings” and was referring directly to the Old Testament. The OT has many things about it that are difficult for any reader to understand and there is so much I am still learning about it. CS Lewis said that one of the rewards of reading the OT regularly” is that “you keep on discovering more and more what a tissue of quotations from it the New Testament is.”
One example that is relevant for us tonight is 2 Corinthians 2:13-15, which quotes from the OT book of Isaiah. It helps us to see that not only the OT but also the apostles’ teaching about Jesus is revealed truth also. The NT apostles under Jesus spoke inspired Scripture completing the canon or “standard” of the God’s written Word. So let’s see 2 Corinthians 2:13-15.
13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.[c] 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”[d]
But we have the mind of Christ.
Augustine of Hippo said, “In The Old Testament the New is concealed, in the New Testament the Old is revealed.” So the more we read one the more we will understand the other. it will help us understand the message of the NT. The first thing they do is make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. What does that mean? God has a plan for his creation. You are called of a unified story. Jesus’ victory through the events of his life death and resurrection is at the heart of God’s story for his creation. How should Christians view the OT? One place we learn is Romans 1:6-10. There, Paul describes the “gospel of God” as promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures…to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among the nations.” The events of Jesus’ victory and the early Christian witness was prepared in the OT. In Romans 15:4 Paul says that “whatever was written in former days (The OT) was written for our instruction, that through the endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” I think the OT is meant to fill us with hope like when we see a rainbow in the sky. What is in the Bible is what God wanted in the Bible for his people and our instruction – to make us wise for salvation.
Paul and Timothy were facing religious opponent who just wanted to argue about the meaning of words, rejecting the true gospel, and so missing the big picture of the bible. It points us to him in order for us to have faith born in our hearts so that by that faith we may experience salvation.
You can learn about the natural world through science. According to recent news, Japan is planning to send the first unmanned space probe to one of Mars’ moons. It will take samples of the soil. Through empirical investigation scientists will study and learn about that Mars moon rock. But when it comes to salvation, we cannot discover it through our own empirical research. It has to be revealed to us from God. God gives us two books, the book of nature and the book of the bible. The bible gives us the ability to interpret accurately the natural world. “In creation, God shows us his hand. But in redemption, he gives us his heart.”
To what can we compare God’s salvation? The bible gives us a vision of salvation that is different than how many people may think of salvation. I appreciate the following illustration by JI Packer that describes it.
“Imagine a man who has fallen into a river. He cannot swim. The weeds have caught his feet. He is threshing around, but he cannot get free and will not be above the surface for very long. His state is desperate. Three people come along on the bank. One looks at him and says, ‘Oh, he’s all right; if he struggles he’ll get out; they always do. It’s even good for his character that he should have to struggle like this. I’ll leave him.’ The second person looks at the poor struggling man and says, ‘I’d like to help you. I can see what you need. You need some tips about swimming. Let me tell you how to swim.’ He gives him a great of good advice, but he stops there. Then there is the third man who comes along and sees the measure of the trouble. He jumps in, overcomes the man’s struggles, gets him free from the weeds that have caught him, brings him to shore, gives him artificial respiration, and puts him back on his feet. Which of those three men is the truest illustration of what God does to save us?….
God takes the initiative. Christ comes right down to where we are, enters into our trouble, and does all that has to be done. He breaks the bonds of sin that bind us, brings us to land (that is, to God), restores life, and makes us believers, all this by his sovereign grace which saves absolutely and wonderfully from first to last.”
(Taken from “To All Who Will Come,” in Serving the People of God: The Collected Shorter Writings of J. I. Packer, Volume 2 (Paternoster Press), 200-01.)
That is the vision of the bible’s view of salvation by faith in Jesus! The bible has the power to save us because it contains the true gospel, good news. The bible really is what a pastor I served under in seminary would say to the church: The bible is “God’s love letter to people.” Like someone who is in love would send a message, that is how God views his people who he gives salvation through faith in Jesus.
The OT looks forward to Jesus in that it has many promises about Him and promises about God’s commitment to his people. Some promises are more general about a great future day of salvation (Isaiah 25:6-9). Some are very specific like Christ coming as messiah in the line of King David. For example in Micah 5:2, we find that is to be born in Bethelehem, the City of David. That is where Jesus was born (Matthew 2:2).
As followers of Jesus, let’s be grateful for this gift of the God’s written Word to us. Here is what has been a very important application for me of this passage. Every time we read the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, we need to take time in thanksgiving for how that passage reminds us of Christ and our need for His salvation. It prepares us for Him, points us to Him, and fills us with more than enough reason to praise Him! Let’s be careful to base our faith on the truth of the written Word.
What is the origin of the bible?
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 3:15
The bible is all about inspiration
The opponents of Paul and Timothy relied on speculation about God. The OT didn’t matter so much. This verse says that all of the Scripture is breathed out, inspired by God’s breath- referring to God’s Holy Spirit. The Bible was written over thousands of years and in several different cultures. There is one common thread. But they all have authority for our lives. Every book in the bible is God’s word. What does God-breathed mean? It has been said this way, “It originated in God’s mind and was communicated from God’s mouth by God’s breath or Spirit.” The bible doesn’t really make a distinction between who a person is and what a person says. Our words are an extension of our hearts. So it is with God and the Word that He speaks. The Word of God is actually an attribute of God.
It’s literally breathed out by God –in the Greek language that word is used for the first time, appearing at no previous time in the bible or any other book!
What about the human authors/ 2 Peter 1:21 summarizes it this way, For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
Apparently the opponents during that time only valued some Scripture like the genealogies. We may not be like that today, but we also need to need to know this as we come to the Bible. We must put ourselves under the Bible because it alone has authority over our lives.
Why do Christians believe the Bible is God’s Word?
Jesus’ Bible is what we call the OT. He saw it as coming from His Father in Heaven. He believed he was to obey it, and fulfill it. Jesus said, in praying for his followers (including praying for us), “Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth.” (John 17:17)
The bible is all about sufficiency
and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
It has been said that because God’s word is from him, it is true and because it is true, it is useful. The bible is all about salvation and it is all about our sufficiency. It trains us. When it comes to our creed and our conduct, beliefs and our behavior, it is enough that we need. It is all we need to know! God gives us his provision and privileges that we need whatever we face in life. There are not commands outside of the Bible that God’s people must do. We only have to believe what comes directly from the bible or is an implication of it.
Next month I am looking forward to vacation with my family. We will go first to visit my dad who lives in Minnesota. He lives in the home that his father built, the son of German immigrants to the US. It is a simple but strong house that has endured the test of time. When he built it he followed a standard of measurement. He measured in feet and inches (as any American would instead of cm and meters). That was his fixed standard and he measured everything by that. It would be so silly to have an expanding standard and decide as he went along what the standard would be. In 2 Timothy 3 Paul was writing to Timothy in the city of Ephesus and talked a lot about the effects of the changing standard that the false teachers were using. They were not relying on the fixed standard, the absolute truth of God’s Word. It makes truth claims on our lives with which we must grapple. But the true gospel of Jesus gives us what is practical and beneficial to us.
Conclusion:
Are you struggling with doubt? Discouragement? Depression? Anxiety? Worry? Fear? Guilt? Shame? Paul David Tripp said that “no one is more influential in your life than you are, because no one talks to you more than you do”. It is a funny thing to say. But it is true. We tell ourselves things every day often, about ourselves, others, and even God. Let’s let the Scriptures form our self-talk through the power of the Holy Spirit.
To quote from the New City Catechism, How should we read and hear the word of God? With diligence, preparation, and prayer so that we may accept it with faith, store it in our hearts, and practice it in our lives! Let’s go back to God’s word every day. If we do that, we will be worshipping God who graciously gives us His salvation, inspiration, and sufficiency.