Let's look in 2 Timothy here tonight, chapter 3, and just through a few different conversations, a couple things that I've been reading here recently, the Lord's really put something in my heart, I think that will help us, and just about our confidence, our faith in the Bible, and the Bible that we hold, the Bible that we use. and really just planting our feet firmly on the fact that we have God's Word and God is faithful to give us His Word. And I think that's really, really important for us. You know, back here on one of our core values and way back in September, October, whatever it was when we moved into here, spent some time talking about the core values of the church. One of those being that the Bible is the authority of this church, and we really do believe that. We believe that if we don't have a Bible that is trustworthy and reliable, if we don't have a Bible we can put our confidence in, we really don't have a foundation that we can stand firmly on for anything that we believe. And so it is essential that we have faith. And it is a matter of faith to a great degree that we believe that the Bible that God has given us, God has given us. It's God's word. It's not man's word about God. It's not words about God, but it is God's word. I just wanted to spend a few weeks here going through some of these things. Some of it will actually, not tonight, but some of it will even be a little bit, dare I say, technical, get into some of the history and the processes by which we have a Bible in our hands here today. And it really is a work of God. I mean, I know some of it will be already familiar to many of you, but the sheer circumstances, physical circumstances that had to be overcome in order for us to have the Bible that we have today is nothing short of absolute evidence that God is in it and God has blessed it. And so we'll spend some time here for a few weeks on this thought here tonight. But I want to start here with something that's just very foundational and important and introductory to us. And these are familiar places. This is a familiar place here in Second Timothy. I'll be making reference to many, many places in the scripture here tonight and probably places that we'll visit in the next few weeks also in a little bit more depth here, but just so many important scriptures that we'll look at here tonight. But I would say with that, among many religions and denominations that make up, I guess, what you could broadly call Christendom, the Christian world, and this is a very, very broad term, the Baptist Church is distinguished in that broad expanse of what Christendom might be made up of, distinguished by a collection of certain beliefs, doctrines, practices, and positions that we refer to, commonly referred to as the Baptist distinctives. And they would be some things that are not an exhaustive list of our beliefs, of our doctrines by any means. It wouldn't be things that are only exclusively held by the Baptist Church. But as a collection, It would be the Baptist churches in history that have held to these positions and these beliefs as core beliefs and as important distinctive beliefs. And so these beliefs, again, are not an exhaustive list of our doctrines. And these beliefs are not only held by the Baptist church, but taken as a whole, they would distinguish the Baptist church from other denominations. Sometimes people will ask that. I don't know if you've had conversations with people out door knocking, soul winning, you've been out just having a conversation with somebody at work or something and they go to one kind of church, one kind of denomination and they don't understand. What's the difference between this and Baptist? What's the difference between what I go to and what a Baptist is? And sometimes the distinctions are pretty easily pointed out and pretty easily seen. And sometimes it's a little bit more subtle. But there are some things that really, really distinguish the Baptist Church from other types of churches and other denominations and certainly other religions that are maybe Christian, Bible-adjacent maybe, but not really Christian in the pure sense of the word. Sometimes those distinctions are easily seen, sometimes they're not. But when it really comes down to it, and always the answer that I give to people when they ask that question is, I said, the first and most important thing about a Baptist church is that the Baptist church only stands on the authority of the Bible. We believe the Bible, we preach and teach the Bible. If it's in the Bible, we believe it, we teach it, we preach it. If it's not in the Bible, we don't. And that's the first thing, and it is the foundational premise of what it means to be a Baptist, and from which all other distinctive and important doctrines that we hold to come out of. And if we don't have confidence that the Bible that we hold in our hands is true and we really don't have an authority to plant our feet on. We don't have any reason for making any other distinction. We don't have any reason to split hairs over some of the things that we absolutely must and do split hairs over. We don't have any way to point to them and say the way that they believe or practice this, we don't believe that's scriptural. Because if the scriptures aren't scriptures, then we're just kind of doing what we want to do. And that's not, of course, not our goal at all. And our goal is not to lift ourselves up in any way, but our goal is to be true to the word of God and true in honoring to God in all of these things. And so the first of those in the top of every list where the beliefs, the core beliefs of a Baptist church are listed out, whether it be in a statement of faith or whether it be in a Baptist distinctive Zoroastric, and that might mean something more to some of you than others, at the top of every list is our belief about the Word of God. Because the Word of God is the foundation of our beliefs and of our practices and of our positions that we hold to. And so, therefore, it is absolutely important that we have confidence in the Word of God. And I just want to take some time here and just teach on some things and encourage us about some things here. I know that the reformers and the Protestant Reformation in the late 1400s, 1500s, into the 1600s even, that all of that was taking place. kind of on my mind freshly because I've been reading some things that are dealing in history broadly and in church history a little bit more specifically. Out of the Protestant Reformation, as the Protestant Reformation began out of the Catholic Church, there were different ones who started reading the Bible and started rejecting some of the positions of the Catholic Church and they protested those things and ultimately led to some fractures and some schisms away from that And they came out of that with their five solas. And one of those was sola scriptura that was owned by the authority of the scriptures alone. And I know that they claim that as one of their tenants. But when you really start to look at it, what they meant by that was they were rejecting the authority of the church, the Catholic church. They were rejecting the authority of the Catholic pope. only to go and set up their own system of hierarchy and system of traditions and system of authorities that still stood in the way of the authority of scriptures alone. And so you can go and you can look at the Protestant denominations that came out of the Protestant Reformation and all they did was reject the authority of the Pope and set up their own system. And so they say, oh, we only believe in the authority of the scriptures. Not really. Not really. And the fact is, is they didn't invent that idea that there were Bible-believing churches and Bible-believing Christians who always rejected the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and of the Pope in Rome, the Bishop of Rome. There were always Bible-believing Christians that rejected his authority and stood on the authority of scriptures alone for a thousand years up to that point. They always were. And so, Those people, they didn't necessarily call themselves Baptists, because that wasn't really a term yet. They were called by their enemies. They were called, in some cases, the Anabaptists, and it was an epithet because they re-baptized people who came to faith in Jesus Christ, in believers' baptism, scriptural believers' baptism. They were called that, but they were called by many, many names. And they were persecuted by pagans. And they were persecuted by the pagan Roman emperors. And they were sent to the Colosseum by those who worshipped all of the pantheon of Roman gods and Greek gods and all of those things. But they were also sent to the Colosseums and to the stake and to various ways of martyrdom by the Catholics. And they were sent to various ways of martyrdom by the Protestants. and they were persecuted. These people who truly believed in the authority of scriptures alone have been persecuted everywhere and in all times all throughout Christian history for over 2,000 years and still are today by the way. They say that there's a group called the Voice of the Martyrs and there's a at least some reason to believe that in certain places around the world, and not in the United States of America, and really not in the Western world, the first world to any degree really at all, but in third world countries, even some certain second world countries, there are Bible-believing Christians that are being murdered and martyred all of the time. And at a higher rate than was even taking place during some of the most intense times of persecution in the dark ages. You go to a place in the Middle East and Christians are persecuted and killed. If you catch it and you have to look pretty deep on your American news network and news outlets to find it, but you'll find stories of entire villages, Christian villages being wiped out in Eastern, South, and Central Africa on a regular basis. and being martyred and being murdered for being Christian and for being Bible believers and for holding to the truth of the word of God. And given that we view the Bible As a little bit of an aside, I'm sorry about that. We're going to review the Bible as the sole authority for the church. Again, we must have confidence in God's word. I want to read our text here tonight and just give you some things. This won't be anything unfamiliar to us here tonight, but we'll get into some things in the coming weeks that maybe you've never heard before. But tonight, we'll read from Second Timothy chapter three, verse 14. And we'll cross over into the beginning of chapter four, also read the first few verses of chapter four. So just when we get to verse 17, just hang in there. We're going to read a few more after that. But it says there in verse 14, 3-14, it says, And that's been assured of knowing of whom thou hast learned them. 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. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing in his kingdom. Preach the word, be instant, in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lust shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry." So Paul is giving instruction here to Timothy, and then Timothy, a young pastor in a church, passed these instructions on to his church. And then we have them here for us in scriptures to receive the same admonition, the same instruction here. But the theme here over these many verses is the Word. You see the Word coming up again, the Scriptures coming up over and over and over again, and the importance and the impact that the Scriptures has really being the foundation for the ministry of the Church and for the beliefs of the Church and for the practices of the Church here. And we say the same thing today, is that we look to the Word of God when it comes to matters of what we believe and what we stand for. the positions that we hold, even the things and the ways in which we practice, we look to the example and the pattern and the truth of scripture. And so it's so important that we believe that the Bible we have is reliable, is trustworthy, is not made by man, even admirably made by man about God, but that God delivered this book to us, as it says there in verse 16, by inspiration by the inspiration of God. And why is it so important that we have a faith in the, a faith and a confidence in the reliability of Scripture? Why? Because right there in verses 14 and 15, it says, "...continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and has been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them, and 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." The Bible has the message of salvation. Realize that what we believe, what we preach, what we teach about salvation, we believe the gospel is, comes from the Word of God. Comes from the Word of God. Why would the critics of truth and why would the critics of the church, why would critics of the faith, why would they try to undercut the authenticity and the authority of the Word of God? Because if they do that and they undercut the authority, they undercut the gospel, they undercut our purpose, they undercut our mission, they undercut our message even. At its very core, the truth of salvation comes from the Word of God. And salvation is impossible without the Word of God. What does it tell us in Romans 10 verse 17, kind of at the end of what we would call the Romans road, and it all leads up to one point, verse 13, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And then in verse 17 it says, so then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. That in hearing the word of God and hearing the word of God delivered clearly and plainly that it produces faith unto salvation. And every person that gets saved, they don't get saved because the preacher told a really good story. I'm all for the use of testimony and I think there are some really important testimonies for us to hear, but no one got saved hearing someone else's testimony. A testimony can be used in support of the gospel message and praise the Lord every time that it is, but without the gospel and without the scriptures, salvation is impossible. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. 1 Peter 1.23 says that we're being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. The word of God is essential to salvation. The preaching of the word of God is essential to salvation. I don't mean the preaching in a public church service alone. Certainly that is an important aspect of it, but anytime the word of God is proclaimed, the proclamation of the word of God is essential to salvation. The gospel is, as it says in 1 Corinthians 15, that Jesus Christ was died and he was buried and he rose again according to the scriptures. The Scriptures, the Word of God, if we don't have a Bible that is reliable, if we don't have a copy of the Word of God that we have utmost faith in, then we are left in doubt even of our own salvation. We're left in doubt even of our own eternity. We're left in doubt of our own belief about eternity. Without a pure Bible, the Gospel is unreliable. Jesus said to the devil in Matthew 4, he said, he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. This is actually Jesus quoting the book of Deuteronomy that says essentially the exact same thing. The Lord is literally quoting the book of Deuteronomy to Satan. But he says there in both of those places in Matthew and I believe also in In Luke it's recorded, in quotation from the book of Deuteronomy, that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Eternal life is not something that is contrived of by man or worked for by man, of course we understand that, but it comes from the faith in the Word of God. The Bible has that message of salvation. If we don't have confidence in the Bible that we hold, we don't have confidence in the gospel that we preach. And so our very souls hang in the balance of whether or not we have the Bible or not. If the Bible is the word of God or not. Very truth hangs in the balance. And going on, verse 16, it says, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness, that the man of God may be throughly furnished unto all good works. We find also that the Bible is the source and is to be the source of all of our beliefs and all of our doctrine, all of our instruction, all of our preaching and teaching. A lot of things that have been written. A lot of information that's out there. A lot of philosophy and ideology that's been around for hundreds of years and thousands of years. A lot of things that we could draw from and we could teach. And a lot of that has unfortunately been incorporated into a lot of church teaching. The Bible says that it is to be the source. It is to be the foundation for what we believe and what we preach and what we teach. Preaching and teaching is to be based on the authority of scriptures. Ephesians 2.20, an interesting verse, it says, you're built upon the foundation. In talking to the church, you're built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. When it makes a reference there to the apostles and the prophets, it's making a reference there to the doctrine of the apostles. We call that the New Testament. Talking about the prophets, it's making reference to the Old Testament prophets. Those are the, that's the Old Testament scriptures. were built upon, the church is built upon, the beliefs of the church are built upon the apostles and the prophets, the Old Testament and the New Testament, the foundation of the scriptures, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone, Jesus Christ being the theme of scriptures, right? Jesus Christ being the living word, of course. The Word of God, the scriptures are to be the source, the only source of our teachings, of our instructions, of our doctrines. Many other denominations, other religions have the Bible and use the Bible, but they'll have something else in addition to. and have, whether it be some other, they might even call sacred text they use in addition to the Bible, or they have some, they have the writings of some important leading figure or founding figure in their, their movement, in their denomination, in their religion. And those are also authoritative, And in most cases, in many cases, if you really pin them down, more authoritative in their belief system than the Bible itself. And viewed on par with, if not above, the authority of scriptures. I appreciate the efforts made to study and to comment on the scriptures, and there's a lot of good study materials that are out there, but when it really comes down to it, we're challenged as Christians to compare scripture with scripture, spiritual things with spiritual, to look to the Word of God for the answers that we need, and to be built upon foundation of the scriptures, and what we believe, and what we preach, and what we teach. If we don't have a reliable Bible to preach and teach from, then essentially our teaching is just man's philosophies. It's just another book of man's philosophies and ideas compiled together, and they might be high-minded ideas about God and about truth and about the origins of life and the world and the purpose of all of it, but if we don't have a Bible that has been delivered to us by God, that's all we have. And if it is made by man, it is flawed. Because the best of men are men at best. 1 Thessalonians 2.13 says, For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because when ye received the word of God, which ye heard of us, you received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which worketh effectually also in you that believe. And thank God for a church that at this point, the New Testament scriptures were being written and the letter he's writing to them is scripture. And they're willing to accept it as such, which is a blessing to understand how much more for us to be thousands of years down the road and the New Testament books to have endured and to have been preserved and to have been translated and codified and canonized into the Word of God for us to hold in our hands and then for us to, I don't know. It really comes down to a matter of a great deal of our faith about what the Word of God is. Those who hear the word of God, whether it be the gospel or otherwise, and reject it, they don't believe it's the word of God. It really comes down to a matter of our faith in it here, but it has to be, it has the message of our salvation. It has to be the source of our doctrine, of our instruction, of our beliefs. And then in chapter four, those verses we read there, it says, I charge thee therefore before God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead that is appearing in his kingdom, preach the word, be instant, in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine, for the time will come they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lust shall heap to themselves teachers having itching ears and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables, but watch thou in all things and endure afflictions do the work of an evangelist to make full proof of thy ministry. And we could dive deeply into all of that. We're not going to do that here tonight. All of what it was, what was being instructed here to him. the general sense of those verses there was Paul was giving to Timothy and to the church instructions for how to conduct the mission of the church and how to conduct the ministry of the church and what the church is there to do. And we take our instructions, we take our patterns, we take our examples for what a church is and what a church does. We take that from the word of God also. And not to say that we haven't developed along the way some things that are a little bit formalized and even to some degree a tradition. A tradition is not a bad thing per se. A tradition by itself is not a bad thing unless the tradition itself becomes on par with the authority of scriptures itself. But to say like we come together and we have a set order of schedule, we have a set place and a time that we meet, all those things, none of that is mandated from the Word of God. We're not mandated to have a Sunday morning church service at 11. That's not, you don't find that anywhere in the scriptures. You do find that the church meets together, and we do find when the church comes together, they come together in prayer, and they come together in singing, and they come together and gather around the Word of God for instruction for the Word of God, and they fellowship with one another, and they minister to one another, and they encourage one another, and they rebuke one another, and exhort one another, and they go out and they They reach the community that they're in and they send out preachers and missionaries from there to start new churches and reach new places. All those examples, all those patterns are in the Word of God. The things by which even here, 2,000 years later, we're trying to emulate and trying to replicate the structure and the function of the church is patterned in Scripture. In the previous book of 1 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 15, it says, And the truth of it says, behave thyself in the house of God. He's not just talking to the kids, saying, hey, you know, don't fall asleep. Don't scribble in the hymn books. and don't run, you know, and stand on the furniture. It wasn't what he was saying. It was how does a church conduct it? How does a church behave? How does a church act? What is the function and the duty of the church? What does the ministry of a church look like? So in the scriptures, we have the patterns, the examples, the mandates of the ministry of the church. And if we don't have a Bible that we trust, a Bible that we hold as the sole authority, not just the final, but the sole authority of the church, then there's chaos and there's disorder. There's confusion. 1 Corinthians 1440, simple instruction, let all things be done decently and in order. And we could not possibly follow that and be obedient to that if we don't have a word of God that we hold in highest esteem as our instruction manual for how to be a church. What we teach, what we believe, but also what we practice and how we minister taking from that name from the Word of God what a church is supposed to be. As I just clearly hear, we are committed to believing the Bible and obeying the Bible as the only authority of the church. And say that, I don't think I could say that enough. I want that to be unapologetic and I want that to be very, very clear. We look to the Word of God and the Word of God alone. There are other good churches around, churches that we fellowship with, churches that we cooperate with on some things and praise the Lord for that. And we have, we can even have a good relationship, a fellowship with those churches and the churches we'd be in 99.9% agreement with in all of that. But we don't look to other churches to take our cues from them. We look to the word of God. We look to the Word of God and we follow God as closely as we possibly can to the instructions that He gives us in the Word of God. We take our beliefs directly from the Word of God. We don't just say, well, you know, the church, I grew up and believed this, so I do too. The pastor, and I said this to the guys in the class, the pastor, this is what the pastor says, so I believe it. Well, thank you for your vote of confidence, but like, let's get into the Word of God for ourselves, right? I appreciate the vote of confidence, but don't just take my word for it. We as a church, we have to look to the Word of God to be the authority, not the preacher and not some other preacher and not some internet personality or anything else. Not some figure from the past who wrote some really good things. Any of that, we look to the Word of God as our authority. And I just want to, over the next few weeks, give you some other thoughts about this, but This is an important place for us to start here, just a reminder of where we stand on these things. And so let's go to the Lord in prayer. We'll have a time here of invitation response. Lord has challenged your heart, spoken your heart here through the day. About anything at all, we have an opportunity to respond, certainly. some clear decision you need to make, whatever that may be also, it's a good time to do that before we dismiss from the service tonight. And so the piano's gonna play, give us a few moments here before dismissal to respond to whatever the Lord is leading in our hearts.