when we started this chapter, Paul, he comes out with double barrels, and it's just like he's blasting Timothy. And he starts off in v. 1, there's perilous times, and then he gives all this list of negative things, and then in v. 5 he gives this strong warning, You've got to turn away from this stuff, Timothy. By the time we get to verse 6, it's silly women that are laden with sins. Verse 8, he says you're going to deal with truth resistors and just reprobate folks. And then verse 11, it's just a blast of persecutions and then afflictions more persecutions. And then the next verse, you're going to suffer persecution. And then the next verse in v. 13, it's, man, you're going to have all these evil men and these seducers, and they're just going to keep getting worse and worse, Timothy, and there's just going to be deception everywhere. It's just like, okay, I've had enough, Paul. I mean, it's just a chapter where you get blasted. And part of the blast is God's God wanting us and wanting Timothy to know that, look, the ministry isn't a cakewalk. And if you're ready to quit, Timothy, let me help you make that decision by talking you out of it. And of course, Paul didn't talk Timothy out of it. It just strengthens him. So now what has happened is all of the blasts are over. And now there's a shift in the way that the Holy Spirit's communicating. And we see that shift that we're going to pick up in. And once we get to chapter 4, you'll see how much the tone changes. But in 2 Timothy 3, let's just pick it up where we need to be in verse 15. And notice the change in the tone. And that from a child, Now he's bringing them back to his childhood. He says that from a child, thou hast known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Now we know that his grandmother Lois and then his mother Eunice were both believers. And so we move into this thought of, you know what that is? That's a multi-generational Faithful family is what that is. And that's what we want to strive to. Multi-generational faithfulness in our families. And we see that in Timothy's life. And then he says in that same scripture at the beginning, it says, and that from a child thou hast known. Known what? The scriptures, the holy scriptures. I want our young people to know the scriptures. That's the most important thing. Proverbs 1 talks about to know wisdom is to receive the instruction of wisdom. Proverbs is full of all these wisdom principles. And really, wisdom comes from knowing the Scriptures. Jeremiah said back in his day, they have rejected the Word of the Lord and what wisdom is in them. So when people reject the scriptures, they're rejecting wisdom. Colossians 3 says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom. That's how we get wise. Proverbs 2 talks about how the Lord giveth wisdom and out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. So if you want your children to be wise, if you want to be wise, if I want to be wise, we've got to know The Scriptures. We see that phrase too, which are able to make thee wise. What the Scriptures do, if you wouldn't care to just grab your Bibles, the Scriptures, what they do is just raise your Bible. The Scriptures raise the bar. That's the idea. You think about holding forth the Word of Life. The idea is that We understand that there will always be weak Christians. We talked about that when we went through Romans 14 and 15. But the idea isn't to stay a weak Christian. The idea is to get some more wisdom out of the Scriptures so we can all have our bars raised. And that'll make us wise. The goal isn't to have more sin in our lives. The goal is to get some wisdom out of the Scripture, raise the bar in our life, and get more sin out of our hearts and our minds and our lives. And so what we want to be is a Scripture-saturated fellowship. And we should be here to encourage each other with the Scriptures. That's a bar that needs to be raised. But we also need to be here to convict each other with the Scriptures and to correct each other with the Scriptures. And the bar needs to be raised in all of that so that we would be wiser. And 24 years of being saved, I have seen people, and if you've been saved any length of time, you have seen people leave a good Bible-preaching, believing church And they end up three years or four years or five years later so far down roads that they said they would never be down. Because they've gotten away from the Scriptures. We don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. How can you know that you know the Scriptures? Just a few thoughts. Number one, Jesus said to search them. That means you can't take what I say as Scripture. You have to take what I say and filter it through Scripture. The Bereans, that's what made them a people of nobility. They searched the Scriptures. When Paul dealt with people, how did he reason with them? Out of what? The Scriptures. What does the Scripture say? So I'll leave you this statistic before we move on with the next thought. And the statistic is this. This isn't Scripture, by the way, statistics aren't Scripture, so you just take it as a grain of thought. I don't know how statistically accurate the statistics are. But they say that 70 to 85 percent of young people leave the church between the ages of 18 and 22 years of age. Now that's sobering. That's kind of what Paul was blasting Timothy with. Look, we're in perilous times. Times are really bad. Timothy, what's going to get you through it? The Scriptures. I would guess, my opinion on that stat, 70-85% of young people leaving the church, I would bet if they knew the Scriptures better, if they fell in love with the Scriptures more, if they searched the Scriptures, reasoned out of the Scriptures, my guess would be the opposite. They would actually be diving deeper into wanting to be involved serving in a local church. Wisdom comes from knowing the Scriptures. Also, let's look at something else here in that passage. "...and that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which were able to make thee wise." No, Bible says they are able. It's a present tense thing. So that means in the first century, what Timothy had in his hand was a final authority. And the scriptures are able. In other words, Timothy's mother and his grandmother, and now Paul, his father, spiritual father in the faith, if you will, raised him on a final authority. And it wasn't his mom, his grandma, or Paul. The final authority was the Scriptures. And he was able to hold them in his hand. So that's some milk. We'll get off the milk. We'll get on the meat a little bit, and then we'll get on the milk. But here's some meat. In verse number 15 and verse number 16, Some people try to espouse, some theologians try to espouse that there are two different sets of scripture. There's a set of scripture in verse 15 that is different from the set of scripture in verse number 16. Well, what are these two sets of scripture that they're referring to? Well, some theologians believe that there's a set of There's references to, well, this is inspired scripture, and then this is non-inspired scripture. So you got that thought? Now, I don't believe that's what the text is saying, but I want to settle our minds in the fact that that's not what the text is saying. Verse 16, where it says, all Scripture is given, some will say that that all Scripture, that's the inspired Scripture. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. They will say verse 16 is for the original manuscripts or the original autographs. That's what verse 16 is for. But verse 15, what Timothy had, Those scriptures, they weren't the scriptures of verse 16. In other words, what Timothy had was, they weren't the inspired scriptures. They were just the copies of the copies of the copies. And this is an unnecessary distinction because notice, number one, that verse number 15 says the Holy Scriptures, one, it's definite article V, Number two, it says they are able. That means in Timothy's day, they were just like an hour day. They are. And verse number 16. It's the same notation. All scripture. It is given. It wasn't. It doesn't say was given and it is for it. It doesn't mean it was for. So this unnecessary distinction does not need to be made. Obviously, the original autographs were inspired. Everyone agrees with that theologically. But it isn't just the original autographs. Why? Because that would, by default, limit the Scriptures. How? Because all Scripture and the Holy Scripture in the references in verses 15 and 16 That would mean all would have to include the copies of the copies of the copies of the translation of the translation of the translation. In other words, if all Scripture is not inspired by God, then preservation of Scripture doesn't matter. In other words, there wouldn't be anything worth preserving. Something would be lost. So if God didn't preserve what he had inspired, then we wouldn't have a perfect Bible anywhere. So you have two pillars, inspiration and preservation. And if you take away one of those pillars, we're left with, well, I think the best idea we have is this. But if God inspired His originals and He promised He would preserve what He inspired, then in fact you would have a copy that was preserved and it would go both ways. In other words, you would have a preserved copy that would also be inspired. Not as a second inspiration. It isn't something new in the copy or the translation. It's something that has been preserved from an original. When Jesus asked, did you never read in the Scriptures? Do you think anybody walking around during Jesus' time was holding original manuscripts? They weren't. But they had the Scriptures. When Jesus said, do you not therefore err because you know not the Scriptures? Well, how could they know or how could they know not the Scriptures if they didn't have something that was preserved that they can hold in their hand. Does that make sense? Go to Luke 4. I want to show you something that I think you'll like. Luke 4 in verse 16. The Bible says, And He came to Nazareth, this is Jesus, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. So Jesus has the Scriptures. Isaiah. He has the book of Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book. And he gave it again to the minister, and he sat down. And the eyes of all of them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And then Jesus says this, in verse 21, He says, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears. How in the world could it be the Scriptures if the Scriptures that are inspired only refer to the originals? And there wouldn't be any way that that synagogue in Luke's day had the original copy of Isaiah. Jesus Himself is reading out of a copy of a copy of a copy from one manuscript to another. He's reading a translation of Isaiah and he calls that copy the Scriptures. It had to be a preserved yet inspired copy of the Scriptures. It had to have been. In Acts 8, Philip, he hears the Ethiopian eunuch. He hears him reading out of the book of Isaiah. Well, Philip didn't run over to the chariot and say, hey, you stole the original manuscript from that synagogue, from Jesus. No, he didn't have what Jesus had. He had a copy. There was a copy in the synagogue, and it's the Scriptures. So God can preserve original manuscripts just as well as an original manuscript is inspired, God can do the same with a copy. How else would you and I be able to say, I want you to search the Scriptures daily? Well, how do I know what I'm searching is really the Scripture? I mean, it's just a copy of a copy of a copy. It's got to be just the best that we know. No. With authority, you can tell someone you can have patience and comfort of the Scriptures. Because if you can't hold them in your hand, then the God who inspired the original couldn't preserve what He inspired. You just end up with the general idea. Everybody got that thought? So when you hear about the talk about the inerrant, infallible, original manuscripts, it isn't a principle that's found in the Bible. The principle that's found in the Bible over and over is that the scriptures were available manuscripts that real people held in their hands. They were available to read. You don't find these concepts of, well, a better translation would be, or the original manuscript said, or... There's just... In the heart of every man, myself included, we want to correct something that claims to be authoritative. In the heart of every man and woman, guys especially, We don't like authority. So our heart bends toward, I would feel better if I could correct the book. Because if a theologian or a minister or a pastor starts correcting the Bible over and over again, who ultimately is the authority? Me. You. So the idea of a final authority is what the Scriptures presents. And I tell you what, does anybody here want to be the final authority? Because I sure don't. I sure don't. I sure don't. I'm going to show you something cool in Galatians 3. This is really neat. Galatians 3, look at verse number 7. Galatians 3 verse 7, the Bible says, Know you therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham." Verse 8. And the Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith. Well, wait a minute. Have you ever heard of a book that can foresee anything? Now, isn't that an odd verse? That's a characteristic that's given to a living person. I can understand that concerning God, or Jesus, or a parent, or foreseeing what their child would do, but the Holy Spirit gives that characteristic to the Scriptures. The Scriptures can foresee. That's a real, real, real powerful verse. We don't worship the Bible. But there are people out there that want you to worship them or their intellect. And in order for them to get you to worship them or their intellect or their theological prowess, they have to accuse you of worshiping the Bible. And if someone's heart always wants to correct the Scriptures, you're eventually going to see them as the final authority rather than the Scriptures as the final authority. The Scriptures have a living personality. And they can foresee. And that book sees you. And it foresees you. And it foresees what your heart's up to. And it foresees what I'm up to. This is a living book. Now you try to figure that thing out in your lifetime. Not a one of us will. how powerful this book is. The Scriptures foreseeing. Here's what else is awesome about this verse. It says, "...And the Scriptures foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preaching before the Gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed." Well, the Gospel of Abraham When Abraham was around, there was no scriptures. How do you get that figured out? God spoke directly to Abraham, and when he spoke it, it's considered the scriptures, and there's no original manuscript of that. I'm telling you, this book is so more powerful and spiritual than we can ever imagine. It's a powerful verse. God himself speaks, and it's called scripture. And in Galatians 3, God uses the word scripture concerning Abraham to refer to what God said. How does that help us today? We can know in this book what God said. We don't have to guess. And we have no original autographs. And a thousand years passed before Moses even wrote down the book of Genesis. That's powerful. That's something we can believe and trust. All right, go back to 2 Timothy 3. 2 Timothy 3. 2 Timothy 3, 16. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. It wasn't. Paul don't matter. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, none of those men. God was not reliant on any of those men at all for the scriptures to be given. He used men. Look, it's great that we do all the public ministry we do. We should keep it up. But let's not think for a minute that God kind of needs to use us to get His gospel out. No. God's purposes will come to pass. It's a blessing to be able to be used by God as a vessel for God to get out the gospel of God. Does that make sense? It's the same thing with the Scriptures. We are not relying on any sinful man, scholar, translator. None of that. Our reliance is on God. And we trust Him to provide us with the inerrant Word. Yeah, but it's paper and ink. We know we don't worship paper and ink. Yeah, but an atheist, I mean, an atheist can come by and just take your Bible and just chuck it in the trash. We know that God can't be thrown in the trash. We know this. You can't stop God's word. You can't throw God in a wastebasket. God is a spirit. We must worship him in spirit and In truth. That's why it says, Thy Word is what? Thy Word is truth. Amen. Amen. How do I understand the Bible? I bet you that if I went to work with Eric tomorrow, at the end of the day, I would not understand what in the world he did to fix all the problems that went wrong. I bet you if I went to work with Will tomorrow, at the end of the day, I'd be like, I have no idea how all those people live, but apparently you kind of know some things. I have no idea how my wife keeps the house as clean as she keeps it. It's an amazing thing, but apparently she knows how to do it. If I went to work with Scott tomorrow, all the ins and outs of used car sales and all that stuff. I'd see that it's working, but it'd be hard for me to understand that. The Scriptures are too hard to understand. Do you search them? Do you dig in them? Do you study them? Job says, the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. Verse 16, what do we have the Scriptures for? All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for what? What's the first one? Right, everybody say, doctrine. That's the rightly divided truths of the Bible. That's doctrine. Then it goes on to say, and is profitable for doctrine and then for reproof. Everybody say, for reproof. That is to cast blame for a fault or a wrongdoing. What reproof does is it stirs up a sense of guilt. Children, have you ever had your parents point out something wrong in your life? You can't do this, you can't do that. What are they doing? They're reproving you. The Scriptures act as a fault finder. To reprove is to prove you're wrong. People say, well, you're condemning me. No, the Scriptures are. reproving you. Does that make sense? It's a living book. Brother, the more you read this book, the more it's going to reprove you. The more you read this book, the more doctrine you're going to understand. And then the next one, everybody say doctrine, reproof. And then the next one is, everybody say correction. That's the art of bringing back from error. to adjust to a right and to a holy standard. That's what correction is. And the Bible corrects. It corrects wrong teaching. It corrects wrong thoughts. It corrects our hearts. By the way, if our heart isn't corrected first, it's going to be hard to receive correction. Well, I've not heard that before. Is your heart willing to hear it? Well, that goes against what I've known to be true or what I've been taught. Are you willing to search the Scriptures? But I'm not used to that. Are you willing to See if the Scripture wants you to get used to that. That's the idea of how the Scriptures work concerning correction. You see how Timothy, Paul is letting Timothy know, look, you're going to be very, very well equipped. You're not going to have to worry, Timothy. I know times are tough, but you've got something right here. And then the last one we see here in the list is for instruction in righteousness. Everybody say instruction. Instruction is the art of teaching, informing, giving understanding, conveying knowledge. Did you young people have school today? Were you instructed in some things? Are you going to have school tomorrow? Are you going to be instructed in some things? You certainly are. Go to Proverbs 8. Is it fun all the time? It isn't. But look at Proverbs 8. Be a good cross-reference. Proverbs 8, look at verse number 10. The Bible says in verse number 10, here's the proverb, receive my instruction. It might not always be fun, it might not always be exciting, but receive it anyway. receive my instruction." And then it says, "...and not silver and knowledge rather than choice gold." May I ask you this? Would you say that silver and gold is pretty valuable? Pretty valuable. The proverb teaches us, the wisdom principle is this, it's not as valuable as instruction and knowledge. This is why we need instruction in righteousness. because it's the most valuable thing we can possess. And there are people that are willingly choosing gold and silver over instruction and righteousness. And that's wrong. And we need to understand that because silver and gold, man, you can have the most successful business Have you heard some of these multi... I mean, they're billionaires now. It's like we're living in a time where it is easier to become a multi-billionaire than it ever was. I have a hard enough time imagining the multi-millions, but people have far exceeded that. And it's like, God says it's like right in front of them. Man, that is so immaterial. All that materialism is so immaterial. There is something so much better and more valuable. Righteousness. Instruction in righteousness. People won't choose it. The majority of people won't. But you've got to be willing to hear it, receive it, hold it, love it, apply it, not hate it, not despise it. Children, not reject it. Proverbs 5 talks about you'll die without instruction. Go back to 2 Timothy 3. Let's look at verse 17, the last verse that we find here. 2 Timothy 3, verse number 17. The Bible says that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." Do you want to be a man of God? Do you want to be a woman of God? Do you want to be a young child of God? It all surrounds around, the idea of being a man of God, all surrounds around how deep are you immersed in the Scriptures. And then it goes on to say, it may be perfect, throughly furnished. You can't have just one thing and be throughly furnished. When the Martinez's reoutfitted their house, Eric didn't do all the stuff in there to get it right, and then and then tell Chrissy, yeah, just put a sofa there and then we're done. Because when you walk into their house, it's not just one sofa. That would mean the house wouldn't have been thoroughly furnished. There are pieces that need to be placed within the home so that it is made perfect and it becomes fully furnished. A refrigerator sitting in the middle of the living room isn't going to cut it. The idea is to be is to you might have to start there. But the idea as when they go through that whole process and re outfitting the entire home, when they go through that whole process, it's about getting it fully, throughly, perfectly. It's a little bit here, a little bit there. And then all of a sudden, now it's throughly furnished. That's the scriptures, by the way, folks, that's the scriptures. Acts talks about the Word of His grace which is able to build you up. That's one piece of furniture. The Scriptures will build you up. In 1 Peter 1, it talks about the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. The Scriptures have a regenerative effect. That's another piece of furniture. It's not just one thing about the Scripture that fully and throughly furnishes us. James 1, it's speaking of the new birth, of His own will begat us with the Word of truth. The Scriptures are truth that we can settle our hearts and our mind on. It'll build us up, it'll regenerate us, it'll be truth we can stand on. Psalms 119, it says, strengthen thou me according to thy word. Not only will it build you up, but the scriptures also strengthened you. That's another piece of furniture to make the man of God, the woman of God, the child of God. Perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. Psalms 19 talks about, "...moreover by them is thy servant warned." When it's talking about by them, the reference in Psalm 19 is the Scripture. Them refers to the Scripture. Another piece of furniture is, that Scripture will warn you. That's how we become throughly furnished. Romans 15, we already read about this. It talks about how the Scriptures comfort us. Because sometimes you don't need to be built up, sometimes you need some comfort. The Scriptures provides all of the furniture that we need for our life. 1 Corinthians 10, there's so many of these. The Scriptures are written for our admonition. Anybody want to sign up for someone telling you you've got something wrong in your life? That's a piece of furniture that the Scripture provides. Brother, you might not need to be comforted this week. You might need to be admonished. You might not need to be admonished this week. You might need to be built up. You might not need to be built up this week. You might need to be strengthened. You can't have one piece of furniture. The Scriptures aren't one piece of furniture. It's all of the pieces. that will throughly furnish us, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." Now, why do you think Paul said that to Timothy? What type of concern do you think he might've had for Timothy? He might've had the concern that Timothy was thinking about, maybe I just quit. He said, hold on. Throughout this whole chapter, did Paul sugarcoat anything with Timothy? He did not. But he said, Timothy, look, you want to be a man of God? You're not going to be a man of God if you quit being a man of God, because in five years you're not going to be the man of God you are now. You see how immersed you are in the scriptures, Timothy? If you quit, you will be led in another direction. Timothy, there's a danger you could end up like all the stuff we read in verses 2 through 5. That's there, Timothy. So just in case you're thinking of quitting, and look, Timothy, I've got this concern you might quit, Timothy. If that crosses your mind, I just want to remind you, let me just leave you with verse number 17, that the man of God may be perfect, truly furnished unto all good works. Two lessons I'm going to leave you with. First one is this, all of us have weaknesses. Because of that fact, I need, you need, we need the right influence. We need it, we all do. Second lesson, it's absolutely impossible to stay the course on your own. I thank God that the days, you know, paddling and trying to keep your head above water are over because you will eventually drown. That's a key lesson. It's impossible to stay the course on your own. The road to perfection has been paved for us. The Scriptures. And we need each other to keep us accountable to the Scriptures. The thing is, every single one of us in this room tonight have deficiencies. And we have a book with the sufficiency. And this is what he's trying to get him to understand. The Scriptures provide the sufficiency for all the men and women and children who have the deficiencies. The Scriptures are sufficient. Ladies, gentlemen, at home is your house thoroughly furnished? Yes. Ladies, gentlemen, myself included, Is our house thoroughly furnished? This temple where the Holy Spirit resides, is it as furnished with as much effort as we put into our own houses that we live in? I hope you wouldn't trust Lowe's and all the DIY stuff for the furnishing of your house. I hope you wouldn't trust all of that more than you would trust the Scriptures to furnace this house. Amen? Amen. Let's pray.