Written (Putting the Bible In Its Place #1)

Yes, I am starting with sports. How many of you are football fans?

I notice it is mostly the kids’ hands that went up. So I apologize to the adults, but the kids clearly need this illustration.

This afternoon my television will be on for the conference championship game, because my two boys are fans of a team making its fourth straight appearance. Whoever wins goes to the Super Bowl.

On social media I have watched fans arguing about who will win. My boys’ team’s fans point to experience — four consecutive years hosting this game, which has never happened before. The other side says, yes, but we beat you four weeks ago. We have your number.

And then I saw a fan of a completely different team say he was rooting against the challengers because their fans do not know how to act right now — they need to be put in their place.

That phrase, put in their place, normally means to humble someone, or even shame them, because they hold too high a view of themselves and need bringing down to reality.

Which is why some of you may be uneasy when you realize I have titled our next series Putting the Bible in Its Place.

It does not merely sound provocative. It sounds sacrilegious. Am I here to lower the Bible? To humble it?

Actually, the opposite.

I sense in myself, and in most of us, that the Bible probably does not hold a prominent enough place in our lives — that we need to raise its value in our eyes and in our hearts. That is its proper place.

Why This Series Almost Did Not Happen

Many of you know that every November I take a 48-hour spiritual retreat, and part of that time goes to planning the preaching calendar for the coming year. Last fall I laid out most of 2022 — and some of it already stretches into 2023, if you can believe that.

I had something completely different planned for this stretch.

But during our twenty-one days of prayer this year, I kept having an underlying sense that my original plan was not right for this moment. So I began asking God what we ought to be looking at instead.

Some of it came back to our mission. If you were here last week for Vision Sunday, you heard the reminder that our mission is to invite the spiritually disconnected to find and follow Jesus. To follow Jesus is to be a disciple — someone who wants to grow spiritually. The way we say it here is that we want to help people live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus loved.

So I asked: what can we do to help you become more like Jesus?

I started wondering whether we needed to look at the basic doctrines of the faith. We have never done a doctrinal series — the doctrine of God, the doctrine of Jesus, the doctrine of salvation, the doctrine of man. Those things come up every week, but we have never taken the time to actually study them.

So I began sketching out a series. And that is when I ran into a problem — though not really a problem.

I realized that all of these doctrines are based on the Bible.

Despite what some critics say, the church fathers did not pluck these doctrines out of thin air because they sounded appealing. They took what they believed to be God’s word, studied it, and worked to understand who God is, what his nature is like, what the whole story of Jesus means, and why God does what he does. They were studying the Scriptures.

So a couple of weeks ago, after talking it through with our team, I decided that rather than a doctrinal series, we should go even more basic and do a series on the Bible itself.

This series will be different from anything we have done. It will lean more toward a Bible class than a traditional sermon. Today will still feel fairly traditional, since we are looking at a single phrase. The coming weeks will feel quite different.

My goal is to increase your respect for the Scriptures and your hunger for them — so that as you want to read and study them, the Bible takes its proper place in your life.

The Text: 2 Timothy 3:16–17

This passage will anchor the entire series.

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

Who wrote it and why

Second Timothy was written by the Apostle Paul, who had been traveling the known world planting churches. Paul’s life had been transformed by the gospel, and he wanted people to know about Jesus — his death on the cross for the forgiveness of sins and his resurrection.

He ended up in Ephesus, and the church he planted there grew into a prominent congregation. If they had held church conferences back then, Ephesus would have been the church hosting them.

After three years, Paul got the itch to move on and plant more churches. But because Ephesus was so strategic, he was not comfortable leaving it to just anyone. So he asked his protégé Timothy to take over.

But Paul was not finished mentoring him. He had more to say and more to remind him of. So we have at least two letters from Paul to Timothy — named, in a triumph of creative labeling, First Timothy and Second Timothy.

In 2 Timothy, Paul keeps reminding him what to give the people: sound doctrine. Paul knew they needed to believe the right things, because believing wrong things leads to wrong behavior.

But sound doctrine alone was not enough for Paul. He also wanted sound living.

And in Paul’s mind there was one great tool for producing both. The Scriptures.

Which is why he reminds Timothy — who almost certainly already knew this — that all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.

Where we are headed

Next week we look at the reliability of the Scriptures — why this is something we can trust. The following week, how the Bible became recognized — Protestants hold to 66 books, while Catholic and Orthodox churches include others, and we will work through that. And we finish with revelation — why God gave us the Scriptures at all.

But before those three, we need today’s: the Bible being written, and written by God. And we see it in that opening phrase.

“All Scripture”

The Greek word translated all can also be rendered every. Some of you are looking at a translation right now that says every part of Scripture. That is equally accurate.

This is one reason I am grateful we have so many English translations — it helps us see both that it is all of Scripture and every part of Scripture.

You may wonder what the difference is. Not much — but each word carries a different nuance. All gives you the comprehensive whole, the complete story. Every gets you down to the finer details.

Think of a film critic sitting in a theater among the audience. Afterward the review might say that at certain moments the entire audience laughed, or that they all gasped. And then, describing conversations in the lobby, the review might note that each individual person was raving about the film. The critic is telling you about the comprehensive whole and about the parts that make it up.

That is what Paul is doing. It is all of Scripture, and it is also every part.

We have to avoid two mistakes here.

If we focus only on all, we lose the truth that even the finer details are part of God’s word. But some Christians make the opposite error — they get so preoccupied with every small detail that they forget this is one grand narrative, and that the whole of it is from God.

The critic’s objection

There are critics who will say: fine, we will grant that the Bible as a whole is God’s word, but every individual part was written by humans, and humans make mistakes.

Let me illustrate what they mean.

This past Friday night the second-ranked Iowa wrestling team hosted the top-ranked team. The arena was electric, because earlier in the season Iowa had been number one — until their 125-pounder needed knee surgery and was ruled out. The rankings flipped, and Iowa dropped to number two. So they came out with something to prove.

And the meet started badly. The first three matches went the other way, and Iowa was down 10–0 in team score.

Then a Hawkeye won the fourth match. Then the fifth. And in the sixth, a Hawkeye not only won but won by a major decision — tying the meet at 10–10.

A sports columnist in that building might write that the entire arena exploded with cheers.

And the critic would say: that is not accurate. The visiting wrestlers were not cheering when their teammate lost. Their coaches were not cheering. The visiting fans in the building were not cheering. So you cannot say every person cheered.

That is the critic’s argument about Scripture. Fine, all of it is broadly the Bible — but you cannot say every part is from God, because humans make mistakes.

I think if Paul were here he would say: I used this particular Greek word deliberately. All of the Bible is Scripture, and so is every single part of it. You put all those parts together, down to the finest detail, and it produces this remarkable, holistic whole.

“Breathed Out by God”

Notice Paul did not say all Scripture is merely from God. He did not even say it was penned by God.

He said it is breathed out by God.

Your translation may say inspired by God, which is genuinely accurate — the word is inspire. But many English speakers misunderstand it, because we have changed what that word means.

We use inspired to mean something like: I saw a sunset and was so inspired I wrote a poem. Or: the graduation speaker was so good that I was inspired to change how I live.

So when we hear the Bible was inspired by God, we imagine the writers thinking, God is so wonderful, I feel inspired — I am going to write some Scripture.

That is not what it means.

The word means breathed. Think of it this way: a coupon expires on a certain date — the air goes out of it, there is nothing left, it has no life, it is no good. To be inspired is the reverse: something has been breathed into it.

That is the picture. God breathed into these Scriptures and breathed them out to us.

What that means for the book

First, it means the Scriptures are ultimately written by God. Yes, he used the hands of forty different authors, but he is the one true author.

That is why we find such striking consistency from Genesis to Revelation. Next week we will look at the supposed inconsistencies and why they are not what people assume. But looking at the whole, if you try to write this off as a purely human document, it does not add up. There are connections across it that forty human authors writing sixty-six books could not possibly have coordinated — especially across thousands of years.

And how do you explain Isaiah describing a virgin giving birth, fulfilled six hundred years later in Jesus? No human pulls that off. That requires the divine.

But what about the authors?

Does this mean they fell into a trance — unaware of themselves while God operated them like puppets through the Holy Spirit? Or that Jesus showed up and said, Hey Moses, how are you? Sit down, I have some dictation for you?

No. God did not dictate to them, and he did not override them. He used their personalities. Their backgrounds. Their cultures. Their quirks. And through them he wrote exactly what he wanted the original readers to receive and what he wanted carried down through the generations.

While researching this week I came across a helpful illustration.

Imagine I have three instruments up here: a trumpet, an oboe, and a kazoo. I pick up the trumpet and blow, and it sounds like a trumpet. I pick up the oboe — which I chose because that is what I played in band — and it sounds like an oboe. I pick up the kazoo and blow, and it simply annoys you.

Same breath in each case. I can even make each one produce the melody I want. And they each sound entirely different.

Peter may have been the trumpet. Paul may have been the oboe. I will not speculate about which biblical writer was the kazoo.

But you can see how God could work through their personalities and backgrounds and still produce exactly the melody he intended.

Peter describes this process himself in 2 Peter 1:21: no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Men did not invent these things on their own. And just a couple of chapters later Peter mentions Paul by name and refers to Paul’s writings as Scripture — because he understood that God was using his own contemporary to breathe these words out.

Two Reactions

When you hear this, you will probably have one of two reactions.

Some of you scoff

And I do not blame you. When you hear about an invisible God doing supernatural work by breathing Scripture through human authors, it sounds fanciful. A little mystical. You are more comfortable with science, with things that can be seen and tested, and this sounds like mythology.

I hear you. I get it.

I grew up being made fun of for everything. I was smaller than my peers. I got glasses far too early. I was no star on the playground or the football field. I had a name most people assumed belonged to a girl, and a last name that rhymed with words no child wants their last name to rhyme with. Every item that could possibly go on the list of things to mock me for was already there.

So the last thing I wanted was to add gullible fool to that list. Which meant that when someone started telling me something, my instinct was immediate doubt — because I did not want to get suckered and then laughed at.

So if you hear about God breathing out the Scriptures and think no chance, I understand. You do not want to fall for a religious trick and be exposed as naive.

Which is exactly why I want you here next week, when we look at why the Scriptures are reliable and why we can trust them. I am not the expert — I will be leaning on a great many other sources to build that message. But I will do my honest best to lay out why I believe you can trust this book.

So if you have family or friends or neighbors in that skeptical camp, invite them next week. I cannot promise they will walk out convinced. I can promise I will do my best.

Some of you are filled with awe

For others, hearing that these Scriptures are God-breathed — that he is truly the author — fills you with wonder. It is almost as though by breathing out the Scriptures, God has breathed life into you.

Let me tell you about a man I met years ago when my family lived in Kansas City for sixteen months.

I knew of him before I met him. His soon-to-be ex-wife had joined our church and our small group, and as she told us about the difficulties in her marriage and why she was leaving, I heard a great deal about him.

He was a lawyer who had been a champion debater in college — his team traveled to national competitions and often won. That carried into his corporate law practice, where his cases rarely reached court, and his claim to fame was that he had never lost.

She said the very skills that made him formidable in practice were devastating in their marriage. He would take what she said, twist it, and use it against her. She felt trapped. She could never win. And eventually she reached the point of saying she could not take it anymore.

In the middle of that pain she visited a church, heard about Jesus, and gave her life to Christ. And we had the joy of watching her grow.

The Sunday he stayed

During the separation they had agreed to alternate weeks with the kids, swapping on Sundays. One particular Sunday she asked him to drop the children off before the service so they could go to the children’s ministry.

He agreed — and then decided to stay.

He wanted to know what had so captured his soon-to-be ex-wife, and what his children were being exposed to.

He was not an atheist. He was a deist. He believed there was a God who created the world and then stepped back. He saw evidence that God had created, and no evidence that God was still working.

Now, I was there on a leadership residency, seeing multiple areas of church ministry in preparation for eventually planting a church. I rarely preached — only six times in sixteen months.

That Sunday happened to be one of them.

After the service he came up to me, and I had no idea who he was, and began asking questions. Before long I caught on. This is the husband. And I was now trapped in conversation with an extremely intelligent attorney who was asking for my email address so we could correspond.

And I was thinking: no thank you. I did not want him taking my written words and twisting them against me.

So in my foolishness I decided it would be better to meet in person, and invited him to dinner.

Three nights later we were sitting in a restaurant. I remember the evening precisely, because every television in the place was covering the death of the founder of Apple. And for three hours I answered questions about the Bible, the gospel, and the world.

Now, when pastors tell this kind of story, the man walks out having given his life to Jesus.

That is not what happened. He walked out still unconvinced — but willing to keep talking. So we exchanged numbers and went our separate ways.

The phone call

The next morning I was walking my third-grade son to the bus when my phone rang. It was him.

And I thought: oh no, another hour-long conversation. What question has he come up with now? So I sent it to voicemail, got my son on the bus, and started walking home.

The voicemail said only: Call me as soon as you can.

So I got home, walked out onto the back deck, and called him back.

He told me he had woken up with his head swirling — replaying our entire conversation, with things not adding up and pieces refusing to settle. And finally, standing in the shower, he said: God, if this is true, would you just show me?

And it happened. His eyes were opened.

He realized there is a God who not only created everything but never stepped back — who stayed involved, and whose greatest involvement was sending his Son into this world to die on the cross for the sins of humanity and rise again from the dead.

And in tears, he gave his life to Christ right there. And as soon as he dried off, he picked up the phone and called me.

Why I was not celebrating

Now, you would think a pastor preparing to plant a church aimed at reaching the spiritually disconnected would be on cloud nine.

I was not.

Because I also knew that throughout their marriage he had taken things from his wife. Not jewelry or possessions. He took moments. He took friends. He took hobbies.

After their second child she had put on some weight and decided she wanted to get back in shape, and told him she was going to start exercising. The next morning, as they got up, this man she had never once seen exercise was pulling on shorts and a t-shirt. She asked what he was doing. Going for a run. And out the door he went — leaving her home with two small children, and by the time he returned there was no time left for her to exercise and get ready for work. And that repeated nearly every day.

Or she started a new job, loved her coworkers, and made new friends. Before long he had met them at some event, and soon he was going out with her work friends while she stayed home with the kids.

So her fear was this: if he got involved at her church, and if I as her pastor began meeting with him, he would steal her church, steal her pastor, and steal her Jesus. She wanted him nowhere near it.

So when he called that morning to say he had given his life to Jesus, my first thought was: she was right. He is manipulating his way in to take one more thing from her.

So I tested him

In 1 Corinthians, Paul writes that the natural man cannot discern the things of the Spirit.

I believe that when someone puts their faith in Jesus, God’s Holy Spirit comes to live in them — and because of that, they begin to see and understand things differently.

So I decided we would read the Bible together. If he understood it, I would know this was genuine. If he did not, I would know he was faking.

With considerable skepticism, I met him a couple of days later at a Vietnamese restaurant. Phenomenal food. I had bought him a Bible and gave it to him. And after we ate, I asked him to start reading in Romans.

And partway through, he interrupted himself and said, I get it. I get it. And he began describing back to me everything he had just read — in his own words.

I sat back in my chair, stunned. It was genuine. This man was not trying to steal anything from his wife. God had stolen his heart.

And over the next fifteen to twenty weeks I had the joy of having lunch with him almost every week, watching him read the Scriptures and come alive.

God used these God-breathed Scriptures to breathe life into him.

What I Am Not Saying

I do not tell that story to suggest that when you read the Bible you should immediately understand everything in it.

I have known Jesus since I was four years old, which means I have been following him for around forty-five years. My goodness, I am old. I have also been in full-time ministry for twenty-five years.

And there are still things in Scripture I cannot explain to you. You and I could open Revelation together and I would repeatedly shrug and say I do not know.

And yet, so many times I have opened the Bible, read something I had read before, and either seen something fresh or been reminded of something — and had that same experience of thinking, I get it. These God-breathed Scriptures are breathing something into me.

That is what I want for you.

I want you to have a hunger for the Scriptures — so that when you read, you sense God breathing into you. So that you feel inspired not merely to write a poem or a song, but to give your life to Jesus and follow him.

I want to see the Bible take its proper place in your life. That is why we are taking four weeks to study this book: why we can rely on it, how it came together, and how to apply it, so that we too might live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus loved.

Let Us Pray

Heavenly Father, thank you for your holy Scriptures — these timeless truths written so long ago, which have shaped so many cultures and so many people throughout history, and which still reach us today.

I pray for the scoffer, that you would open their heart and mind and give them a moment where they realize this whole thing is true.

I pray for those who know you but have been casual about the Scriptures — increase their hunger and their desire by increasing their trust in your word.

And for those who have already been inspired by your Scriptures, keep doing it. Take these words you inspired through those authors, and use them to inspire us to live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus loved.

Let this be the beginning of a beautiful journey. Help put the Bible into its proper place in our lives, so that we hold a high view of it and respect it like nothing else — because you created it for us.

Help us bend our lives to you and to what you teach us in the Scriptures. Not according to what our culture says, not according to our past experiences, not according to our own biases — but truly surrendering ourselves to you. And accomplish in us what you need to, so you can then accomplish through us what you want to. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.