If you ever get into a little bit of a spiritual dry spell, I have found that one of the best ways to get out of it is not to take a break but to lean in even harder to Bible study. Sometimes I am not even really looking for inspiration, hoping someone can just pump me up and use emotions to drive me back to the Bible. For me that only lasts so long before I am just down again, you know what I mean? But I have found that when I remember what the Bible is, I feel like I fall in love with it all over again. Hello, church. Today’s video is lesson two of a 20-part video series on Bible study, and in these first few lessons we are just going to look at what the Bible is and how we can stay passionate about Bible study for a lifetime. I recorded this video over a year ago for an extension ministry of a Bible college, so it might look a little different than normal. Our channel is primarily for our church, but if you wanted to tune in, and if you are new here, my name is Ryan Rench. I am a pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California. Today’s video is part two of the Bible study series, where we will cover a Bible study of 2 Timothy chapter 3. I consider this kind of the premier text on what the Bible is and what the Bible does for us, and we want to relate that to your passion for the Scriptures. Then we will close at the end of today’s video with four practical tips on learning to be a person of the Word and what that might look like for you. So with that, enjoy this week’s video.
Ever Learning
Well, hello, and welcome back to our second class. In the last video I introduced myself, introduced the video course, and set up the series we are going to be going through. We were in 2 Timothy chapter 3. I might pull up my Bible program and show some of those verses on the screen, but if you have a Bible, it is always better to search the Scriptures for yourself, so come to class with a Bible, and that will help you with some of these times that we are opening the Scriptures. The next couple of lessons will be like little sermons. We will be focusing on the Scriptures, so I encourage you to get into the Scriptures for yourself. Then we will be connecting a lot of these Scriptures that are setting us up for Bible study to a local church. Hopefully you have a local church that you are a part of, a good Bible-preaching church, and if God’s plan for this world is connected to a church, then I would encourage you to connect your life there, to a church. Second Timothy chapter 3 is where we are going to look once more. Look at verse number 7: “Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was. But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience.” So he starts with the idea that they are in a place where there are all kinds of doctrinal errors. There are issues with these false teachers who are getting in here. Timothy was in the church at Ephesus, and he was put there to try to combat the false teachers who were there. You might think, “Well, why do we care about false teachers? Let’s just get ahead to the good stuff, to the Bible study side of things in this class.” But we have to understand the false teaching that Timothy was facing, that the false teachers were promoting. There are false teachers still today, and we are going to be facing false teachers, and you are going to be facing false teaching. So instead of just saying, “Well, let’s move past this and get to the good stuff of how to study the Bible,” I am trying to say, no, we need to understand that if we are not careful about studying the Scriptures carefully, then we will open up our lives to all kinds of false teaching. There are going to be so many things out there that make Christianity seem really weird, and you will be marked as a fool, or marked as an outcast to society, if you accept Christianity. You will be chewed up and spit out by this world if you do not have that anchor in your life of the Scriptures, and if you do not know that what you are studying is valid and truthful and has meaning for your life. If it is just an emotional feeling you are getting, that is not going to last. You need to understand: I am approaching Bible study with the same responsibility Timothy had. He was going to have to face false teaching and false teachers all the time.
Persecutions and Afflictions
So how did he accomplish that? Well, the Scriptures teach us in verse number 10: “But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience, Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me. Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” So the Apostle Paul is telling Timothy, “Look, you are going to face persecution, but you have to understand, I have been there, man. I have faced all these same persecutions.” Look at it. He is talking about the persecutions which came to him, and he says everybody who lives godly is going to face these same persecutions. So it is not just, “It’s me against the world, and if they don’t agree with me, they can just get out of the way.” He is saying it is not going to be some solitude thing. It is not going to be this happy-go-lucky life where there are not going to be any problems. It is not that Christianity is just some kind of crutch that works for a couple of select people. He is saying, “No, this is something I have lived by, Timothy. I have faced persecution over this. I have given my life to studying the Scriptures. You know me. You know that I have poured my life into this.” The Apostle Paul saw in Timothy something: he was passionate about helping other people. He had given his life to serve alongside Paul. So Paul saw something in Timothy and knew, “Look, I see that you have a heart for other people, and I see that you want to minister, but you have to realize that before ministering, you are going to have to have so much resolve in the Scriptures. You cannot rely just on me,” Paul says. “You cannot rely on just the feelings of when you first got saved, or the feelings of when your mom and your grandmother were teaching you when you were a kid. You cannot rely on those things. That is not going to carry you through, because when you face persecution and afflictions like I faced, there has to be something enduring and something strong that you can rely on.” You might be coming from a background where your life was just one party after the next, or just living for yourself, but there was no grounding. There was nothing rooted there. It was just one experience to the next, one high to the next, just a string of emotions, a life that was all about you. And Paul is telling Timothy, “No, your life must be about something so much deeper than this. Your life must be about more than just going from one party to the next. You need to realize that when God is calling you to be a Christian, to be a student of the Word of God, it opens you up to a somewhat difficult life. I have seen your heart. I have seen that you want to serve people, and yet you cannot have a false understanding of what to expect.”
Continue in What You Have Learned
So he sets him up in verse number 13, where we left off. Look: “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” The Apostle Paul says, “Man, these false teachers and these evil men and seducers are going to try to draw people away. They are going to try to draw you away, and it is going to get worse and worse all the time. They are going to be deceitful, and not only are they deceitful, but they are being deceived.” They are digging into their own deceitfulness, and they need somebody who is going to show truth to them, and you need truth to expose the deceit and uncover the deceitfulness. So in verse 14 it is like he is saying, “Don’t get caught up in all that deceitfulness.” Verse 14 says, “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them.” “Timothy, don’t get caught up in all of these issues that are going on. Don’t get caught up in the persecutions. Don’t get caught up in the evil teachers, the deceitful teachers out there.” Back to verse 14: “You stay strong. Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of. Timothy, you learned these things. You have been assured of these things.” Look at the end of verse 14: “knowing of whom thou hast learned them.” It is interesting. The Apostle Paul was the one who had taught him about the Scriptures, and he had spent time with him, and verse 15 expands on that: “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.” I love that the emphasis here is not on the Apostle Paul, as though he is some kind of really great teacher. You know what? As great a teacher as the Apostle Paul was, you know where his emphasis was? It was on the Scriptures. He loved the Scriptures. He loved that the Bible had changed Timothy’s life. He loved that the Scriptures were the thing that had brought him salvation. It was not in the Apostle Paul, as much as he probably could have taken credit for where Timothy was in life. The emphasis was not on how good a teacher Paul was. It was all about the Scriptures. It was all about the Bible.
Deeper Than Our Mentors
So we understand from that that any kind of lasting change that is going to help you endure through persecutions and afflictions and all the things that are going to come, the evil teachers and the false teachers who come your way, the only thing that is going to help us endure through all of that, is not going to come from a spiritual mentor. The mentors might change. They might pass away. Their doctrine might change; their personality might change; they might hurt you or offend you. So your stability, the rock of your life, cannot be tied only to a spiritual mentor. Now, I love the mentors in my life. I am not knocking mentorship. I love Brother Jason Gattis. He was my pastor in Bible college. Brother Sam Davison was my pastor before him. They taught me to love the Scriptures, and I had great conversations with my pastors, and I love them very much. After Bible college I went and worked for a man named Pastor Wayne Hardy, a man who was mighty in the Scriptures and loved the Lord and cared about mentoring the church and taught me so much about those things. But my faith was not in those spiritual mentors. My parents raised me in a godly home. I love my parents to death. They are still in my life, and I still put a great amount of weight on their counsel, and I love what they teach me and how they teach me, and I love their faithfulness through decades and decades of ministry. But my faith is not in my parents. It is like the Apostle Paul is saying, “Look, Timothy, I know that you have come to faith, and I want you to continue in those things that you have learned and been assured of. You stay strong in those things you were taught, but not because I told you to.” He says, “From a child you have known the holy Scriptures. You have known that the Bible is the foundation of your life.” So no matter how many good mentors are in your life today, you can thank God for all of those godly mentors. You can thank your mentors themselves for being a blessing and a help to you, and you can cherish those conversations you have had with them, and those can be a blessing to you. But if that is where it stops, there needs to be something deeper than even the greatest mentors you have in your life. There has got to be something that goes beyond mentorship, something these mentors themselves are tied to. The Apostle Paul says, “Not even myself. I am not even the greatest mentor.” Verse 15: “From a child thou hast known the holy scriptures.” I love that. “Which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” There is something to Christianity being for somebody when it is easy, when everybody is on your side and when it is popular to be a Christian, but Paul says this is not a popular thing to do. We are in this because this is right and this is true, and we love the Scriptures because that is the anchor of our lives.
All Scripture Is Profitable
Now, what is it about the Scriptures that becomes so powerful for change, for lasting change, for enduring change? What is it about the Scriptures that allows you to anchor your life to them even deeper than to spiritual mentors? What is it about the Scriptures that helps you hold on to something that will carry you through afflictions and persecutions? What is it about the Scriptures that will guide you through those really rough times? Well, that is what the Apostle Paul is trying to get Timothy to understand in verse number 16, which we read in our last class. This famous verse is here in 2 Timothy 3:16: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” It is God-breathed. “All scripture,” he says, and that means all of it as a whole, and it can also mean every Scripture. That is the word indicated by verse 15, the Scriptures, wherever you turn: “Thou hast known the holy scriptures.” And by the way, not just every individual part of it is profitable and inspired by God, but all of it as a whole is profitable and inspired by God. All of it is a wonderful revelation of God to us. So when we open the Scriptures and study the Scriptures, we are hearing God’s voice, and we need to approach it like that. This is God’s voice, and we are so careful with it. We never want to put words into God’s mouth. We want to make sure that what we are studying truly is the Word of God. It “is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” It will correct all the falsehoods out there. It will correct all the false actions out there, all the false living out there. It will teach us how to live and how to do these things in our lives accurately and righteously. So the Apostle Paul is telling Timothy, “Look, the way to live is found in the Scriptures, so trust your life to the Scriptures.” Now, I imagine that Timothy probably felt inept. He was a man probably about my age, and he was dropped into Ephesus and sent off on his own to try to pastor a church and try to correct false teachings. The Apostle Paul knew there would be issues in the church he left him in. He had heard about some of those things. So Timothy might have felt personally inept and unqualified and unable to do that, but Paul gave him some foundational truths and just said, “You trust the Scriptures, and just let God do the work through the Bible. You study the Bible, and you stay strong in the Scriptures, and do not veer off into your own thoughts or your own voice. You just stick to God’s voice. Do not try to grow people by yourself; you just trust the Scriptures to grow people. Do not try to bring spiritual change by yourself; you let the Holy Spirit of God bring the change through the Scriptures.” It is like he was saying, “Timothy, knowing the Scriptures is the only right way to live. It is the only source of anything right in your life. It will be more right than your mom and your grandmother, and it will be more right than even me, the Apostle Paul. It is more right than your teachers and your mentors.” So you need to focus on the Word of God. Again, do not dismiss the teachers in your life. Do not dismiss the mentors in your life. But trust the Scriptures. Make sure the mentors in your life are trying to guide you in the Scriptures, in the Word of God. Many times people will ask me questions and I will say, “I do not know. I bet the Bible has the answer, though,” and I will have to go search it out from the Scriptures. I do not want to just give my thoughts out here. I want people to know the Bible. And I do not want to just know Bible stories either. I do not want to just know about David and Goliath and Adam and Eve and know the details of stories, but I want to know God through the Scriptures. I want to know what it means to be a follower of God, and come at the Scriptures humbly, and trust that the Bible is the most important thing in my life. This is what I want to give my life to. This is something I am going to learn.
Will You Commit?
This is just class number two, but I would really like to encourage you, inspire you, to set out in this class and just say, “You know what? I want to commit myself to studying the Scriptures. I want to commit my life to the Scriptures. I want to be a person of the Word. I want to know that my life is going to endure, that I can weather the storms, that I will be able to push through any of the issues that come up in life. I want to follow the Scriptures and trust them. I will commit to listen to God’s voice from the Scriptures. I want to learn that. I want to commit to sticking through this course and give myself to the study of the Scriptures, learning how to study the Scriptures. I want to hear from God. I want to commit to that.” One of the questions I asked our church when we were talking about this was, do you have the same kind of passion for the Word of God that maybe you once had? Maybe there was a time in your life when you used to be more passionate about the Bible, and you are not there anymore. Well, can you get back to that place where you love the Bible and want to study the Bible and really want to say, “Man, I admit I do not know everything about this Bible, but I want to learn more about it. I want to know God through the Scriptures”? Would you like to start there? I think that is a pretty good start for us. If you say, “Yes, I want that,” then are you ready to act on that admission? Just say, “I may not know everything, but I want to learn more, and so I am going to be a part of transforming my life through the Scriptures and actually put the work into studying the Scriptures, and I want to do that as a focus of my life.”
The Scriptures Change You First
I want to take probably about ten more minutes or so and continue on in 2 Timothy chapter 3 and chapter 4 and look at Timothy, who seemed to have committed himself to focus on the Scriptures like that, and at what some of the Apostle Paul’s final words were to him. If the Scriptures are that transformative, if they are that life-changing, if they have that amount of power, then I guess we have got to be able to trust that if they can do that in other people’s lives, they can do that in your life first of all. That is where we left off, in that final verse, verse number 17. We read verse 16: the Scriptures are given by inspiration of God; they are profitable for every aspect of life; they have the answers. If you want to commit yourself to being able to weather and endure the storms as they come up in life, then you say, “Okay, I want to study the Scriptures.” Well, it is going to change you first. Verse 17 says, “That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” In light of that, it is like Paul is telling Timothy, “Man, the Bible can change you, Timothy. The Bible can change you.” If the Bible is changing you first, then that is going to be the outflow of your life of preaching. That is going to be the way you have a life that is ministering, once you realize that the Scriptures have changed you. For Timothy, his focus was on preaching. Your ministry or your life may not necessarily be in a pastor role or a missionary role. It may be, and then a good chunk of your ministry will be about the preaching of the Word of God, like it was for him. But look at what the Scriptures do for Timothy, and we will cover these verses in more detail later: “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.” So there is where preaching is a big focus for Timothy. The preaching of the Word of God is very, very important for the person whom the Scriptures are changing and moving.
Itching Ears
You might think, “Well, okay, all that spiritual effort, all of that change, has to come from the preacher then, because Timothy and other preachers and pastors and missionaries have to do a good job of preaching, or else the truth is not going to mean anything.” Well, no. Even if you are not a preacher, even if you are not a pastor, a missionary, an evangelist, even if your job is not preaching the Word of God, even if you are in a church listening to the preaching of the Word of God, you still need to have the right focus on the Scriptures. “Well, what do you mean? I thought you just said it was the pastor’s job to preach the Word and to inspire the people to let God’s Word change their lives.” Well, yeah, that is his job, but he cannot change other people’s hearts. He cannot do the work of change. Look at what the next couple of verses say. Verse number 3 says, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” That puts a lot of responsibility on us. If you are not a pastor or a preacher, a teacher, a Bible teacher of some kind, if you are not in some kind of church setting like that where you are teaching in that way, well, the Apostle Paul says that no matter how good the preaching is, there is going to come a time when people will not endure sound doctrine. They are just not going to enjoy the straightforward teaching of God’s Word. “Timothy, I know it has changed your life. It is meant to change your life, and you preach it like that.” But everybody in the pew has a responsibility, because there is a nature of man. Verse 3: “after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” There is a nature of man that does not want somebody to tell them what to do, and so they are going to go try to find a source that fits what they want to hear, and they are going to heap to themselves teachers. Again, whether you are a Bible preacher or teacher or not, this is your responsibility. This is our responsibility, to not be in the position where we heap to ourselves teachers and our ears are just itching for some new thing we want to hear, a teacher who is going to tickle our ears, in a sense, a teacher who is going to tell us only the nice things we want to hear. No, we as listeners need to have that open heart that says, “Whether I want to hear it or not, if it is the Bible, that is what I want to focus on.” And verse 4: “And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” Well, that is a dangerous place to be: “and shall be turned unto fables.” Wow. So every single one of us has a responsibility to make sure that our lives are about truth and about the Scriptures, and that we never get to the position where we are heaping to ourselves teaching that is apart from the Scriptures, teaching that is different from what has already been revealed to us. As I said before, I hope you are part of a good Bible-preaching church, and I hope your church loves preaching. I hope your church loves the Bible. I hope you are one of those people in your church where, if everybody looks around and sizes everybody else up, they look at you and say, “That person loves the Bible. Oh, they love preaching. They never miss. They just cannot get enough of the preaching of God’s Word. They are always asking for more, and they are always soaking up more and more Scripture.” I hope that is what the people in your church say about you. I hope that is what others see in you: a hunger for the Word of God, that you love the Bible.
Ways to Show You Love the Bible
When I was talking to our church about this, whether it was our teenagers or our church family, I thought about six or seven of these external things you can do, especially in a church setting, to express, and again, these are external ways, to say, “I love the Bible, and I do not want teachers who are just going to tickle my ears. I want the Scriptures to change me. I want my life to be about the Bible.” Well, one good biblical example of being that kind of person, of being vocal, external about that, is just to say amen. Say amen during the preaching. You can amen what is going on, which just means “so be it.” In a sense you are saying, “I agree. I agree with the Scriptures, even when they step on my toes and make me feel uncomfortable and convict me.” It is exactly in those times that I want to say amen: “I agree with what is being said.” By saying amen, you say, “Look, this is not just the preacher’s faith. This is not just the preacher’s Bible. This is all of our Bible. This is our Bible. This is our book. This is God speaking to us, and we agree with that.” I enjoy the people in our church who say amen. That kind of focus, that kind of agreement: 1 Corinthians 14 teaches that when there is a whole group of people focused on the Word of God, unselfishly attending, not just to gain something but to give to others, 1 Corinthians 14 teaches what a powerful impact that can have on somebody who is unlearned or unsaved. So say amen. That is a good way to show that you love the Scriptures. Another good way is just to bring your Bible. If you are going to church, or even going to work, or throughout your life, have the Scriptures with you. It is a good visible presence to have. We are getting more and more technological, putting the verses on the screen and all of that, but I do not think an iPad should replace your Bible. I think you should have a physical Bible. That is not a Bible doctrine; that is just my preference. But I think it is a good habit to get into. If you love the Bible, you carry a good Bible around with you. If you say, “Ah, it is no big deal. I do not need it. I do not need to look up the verses,” that kind of attitude trickles down into every part of life. So let’s treat our Bibles with respect and care for the Bible, not just toss it around, not just not care about bent-up pages, but love the Scriptures, love the Bible you have, and respect it and care about it. So say amen, bring your Bible, and the third one would be stay awake. I know some people in our church work all night long and then come to church, and boy, it is a difficult service to sit through and stay engaged in what is being taught and said. But I encourage you to stay awake, and to make sure you get good rest if you can. If you are going to church on Sunday, do not use Saturday nights for all kinds of late-night activities, but set that day aside for the Lord, starting on Saturday night, being really attentive to the Word of God, so that you can be a person of the Book. I would encourage you to do that. The fourth thing would be to sit up, to sit up and be attentive and alert. That is a good way to approach the Word of God: “Look, I am into this. I am fully engaged in what is going on.” That is a good encouragement for us. Fifth would be do not talk. Give attention and respect, attentiveness, to the preaching of the Word of God. Another one would be to pre-read the text. If you are looking at studying the Scriptures and you want to get as much out of the Bible as you can, then when the preaching of the Word is going on, if your pastor is in a series, or going verse by verse through the Scriptures, you can read ahead of where he is and pre-read those texts, so that you come to the sermon not just with the anticipation of saying, “I hope I learn something new today,” but having already put some work into it, so you are saying, “Oh, I wonder how he is going to explain that,” or, “I wonder what he is going to say here,” and you are very excited about that. I think that was number six. The seventh one would be to change. If the Scriptures tell you something, if they expose something in you, if the preaching of the Word of God convicts your heart and tells you something about yourself, exposes some kind of issue or a sin or an error in your life, then I would encourage you to change. Take some time to be a doer of the Word and not a hearer only, and do not deceive yourself. So be a doer and not just a hearer. Well, I am going to wrap that part of the lesson up today and save the rest of this for future classes. I encourage you to love the Word of God and let it be what changes you and what motivates you. Well, thank you for watching this video from our 20-part series on Bible study. I realize this kind of content, or our Baptist perspective, might not be for everyone, and I do not want to waste your time, but if you did find it helpful or enjoyable, would you subscribe to our channel? We are releasing videos every Monday at noon Pacific Standard Time, and I just want to help you bring the Bible home. So we will see you maybe in person this Sunday at our church. That is it for now. God bless you, church. Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
