To Make You Wise

2 Timothy 3:10-17

January 5, 2025 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I was raised on the Bible. By that I mean I was taught the stories and principles found in the Bible from a very young age. In fact, I don’t remember a time when this book didn’t have some impact and influence in my life. We learned the stories in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. We heard and sang the Scriptures in worship. And I especially enjoyed collecting our Sunday School papers. We had those take-home papers from David C. Cook Publishing that had the Bible made into a comic book. It was awesome. I think at one point I had collected every single segment; now you can just buy it all in a book without the weekly commitment. But those images stuck with me. For as long as I can remember I have loved the Scriptures, and in my home church there was never any question about the role of the Bible in our lives. The Bible was authoritative. What it said was what we believed.

I was in college before I learned that there are all these controversies about the Bible. Not only disagreements on how to interpret it, but questions. Lots of questions, like: did Adam and Eve really exist or is that a fable? Was Jonah really swallowed by a whale or his story a parable? Was the world made in a literal seven days or is that just poetic license? Was Jesus really raised from the dead? Was he born of a virgin? Is he really returning one day? These questions never occurred to me when I was growing up because if the Bible said it, we believed it. I believed it. So I began to ask questions. What role does the Bible play in my life and in our world? What does it mean to “believe” the Bible?

These are not uncommon questions. You may have heard some or all of them before from people who ask about or challenge your faith. And, increasingly, to respond the way I would have when I was a kid—that if the Bible says it then I believe it—is unhelpful, in many faith matters, not just concerning the Bible. For a long time, Christians have had what we might call “Unquestioned Answers,” pat answers that we throw out to people who ask questions that, let’s just be honest, really don’t help. These unquestioned answers have really become cliches, and what they really say is that we don’t know why we believe what we believe. So for the next few weeks we’re going to look at some of these unquestioned answers and see if we can’t dig a little deeper, see if we can’t understand a little better that there really is a firm basis for our faith. And there is no better place to begin than with the Bible, the Holy Scriptures.

One of the ongoing struggles in the larger church today (not just our own denomination) is what authority the Bible has in our lives. Some people say they just want to follow Jesus and that they don’t have time for all that Bible stuff. Other people believe we must follow the “letter of the law” and obey every rule and principle that they believe they find in the pages of the Scripture text. Some try to determine which passages still apply and which ones don’t. And there are preachers who say they just preach “the Bible” without any interpretation, which (by the way) is impossible. None of us preach in Greek or Hebrew, so we’re already dealing with interpretation just by using a translation. In our tradition, our Book of Discipline says that the Bible is authoritative in matters of faith and contains all things necessary for us to find salvation (2016, pgs. 50 & 66). We all talk about this book, but the question remains: is the Bible true? And does it matter if it is (cf. Myers, Unquestioned Answers, pg. 38)?

In what is perhaps the last letter he wrote, the Apostle Paul is giving direction to a young pastor, a young man he mentored, named Timothy. Timothy is a pastor in the coastal city of Ephesus, a major metropolitan city that today is located in Turkey. If you come with me this fall on the Journeys of Paul trip, you will get to visit Ephesus and yes, that is a shameless plug. Paul loved Timothy; he calls him his “dear son” (1:2). Timothy’s biological father was not a believer (cf. Acts 16:1), so in many ways, Paul filled that spiritual role in Timothy’s life, serving as an example for how to live as a godly man. And in this letter, he wants Timothy to know that a faithful follower of Jesus needs two main things: someone to look to as an example and regular reflection on the Scriptures.

Scot McKnight says, “Education in the ancient world was always about emulation more than information, about imitation more than about intellectual grasp” (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon, pg. 136). That’s why Paul tells Timothy to “continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it” (3:14). In other words, model your life after those faithful Christians who taught you how to live, and specifically Paul. He has already reminded Timothy, “You…know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purposes, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings…” (3:10). Timothy, you know all about the way I have lived my life. So live that way, no matter what comes. And things were getting difficult in Ephesus. False teachers had moved in who were trying to lead people in other directions. That’s a big part of why Paul is writing Timothy, urging him to remember what he experienced under Paul’s mentorship and to keep living and teaching and following Jesus that way. Paul isn’t trying to make Timothy into another Paul; he wants Timothy to be able to follow Jesus and the best way Paul knows how to do that is to encourage Timothy to follow him as he follows Jesus (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:1). Again, as Scot McKnight has written, “Our story works only when it leads others to follow Jesus” (138).

But where has Paul learned how to follow Jesus? He didn’t know Jesus personally when Jesus was on earth. He did encounter him in a blinding vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus (cf. Acts 9:1-9), but he wasn’t an original disciple. No, Paul says he learned about being a Christian primarily from the “Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (3:15). Well, of course, we say, we’re learned about Jesus from the Scriptures, too. But wait a minute. When Paul is writing this, there is no New Testament; not even the Gospels have been written yet. The only texts Paul knows as Holy Scripture are what we collectively call the Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures. The Bible Jesus read and the Bible Paul knew was the Old Testament; that might come as a surprise to those who want to do away with or ignore those particular books in favor of the New Testament. As far as Paul was concerned, though, the writings that became our New Testament simply continued the narrative of God’s dealing with humankind and the fulfillment of the promises God had made in the past. There wasn’t a separation between “old” and “new.” It’s all one story. Everything we need to know about finding hope and salvation is contained in the pages of these sixty-six books (cf. Towner, 1-2 Timothy & Titus, pg. 200).

That’s why Paul asserts two things: the Bible is God-breathed and it is true. Paul says it this way: “All Scripture is God-breathed” (3:16). Some of your translations might say “inspired,” but the problem with that translation is that we think too lightly of inspiration. We talk about music or artwork or a sports performance as being “inspiring.” A movie can inspire and so can a really good quote or these days a funny video on social media—all of these things get labeled “inspiring” because they make us feel good or all warm and fuzzy. That’s not what Paul meant. Nor does he mean that the author’s brain went into neutral and God just used certain people as a dictating machine. The sixty-six books of the Bible each bear the unique imprint of their human authors. The Spirit of God did not give each person word for word what to write. That’s not inspiration, either. So a better translation here is “God-breathed.” Literally, Paul says the Scriptures are “God-spirited.” God’s Holy Spirit came alongside each author (that’s what Jesus says the Spirit does, John 14:16) and helped the authors see and hear the world in new ways, in God-driven ways. God helped each one understand things they hadn’t understood before, and then allowed them to write it down in their own unique way. That is what Paul means when he says that the Scriptures are able to make us “wise.” When we study and internalize these books, we begin to see the world the way God sees it. That is wisdom. And it is life. Do you remember in the very beginning how life came into the first people? Genesis 2 says, “God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). God breathed life into humanity. And he still does, through the Bible. The Scriptures are God-breathed (cf. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Pastoral Letters, pgs. 120-121; McKnight 139).

But are they true? People like to point to the apparent discrepancies, especially in the Gospels, to say the Bible isn’t true, that it was made up and the authors weren’t very good about keeping their stories straight. Like the story of the resurrection. How many people went to the tomb that morning? Matthew says two, Mark says three, Luke doesn't give us a number just that a group of women went, and John says it was only Mary Magdalene. Obviously they were not Methodists or someone would have been counting! There’s a couple of things to say about that. First of all, we have to realize that the Bible was not written for us. It’s written from a different mindset and worldview than we have. In the West, we think of history as linear, facts and figures, people and places. Hebrews and the ancient mindset saw history as a story, less about facts and figures (and numbers) and more about the meaning behind it. That’s not to say they didn’t record facts and figures; the Old Testament in particular is full of lists and numbers and genealogies. It’s just that those things are less important than what they mean. So did it matter how many women went to the tomb on the first Easter? No, that wasn’t the point of the story. And exact numbers of years weren’t all that important for the record. You can’t just add up the numbers in the Old Testament, for instance, and come up with a date for creation (which some have tried doing, by the way). Truth was found in the meaning of an event, not in the details of the event itself.

That also contributes to why you have different accounts of the same event in the Gospels. The Gospel accounts are either eyewitness accounts or nearly so. Matthew and John were both disciples who walked with Jesus and listened to his teaching. Mark is based on the preaching and remembrances of Peter, another disciple. And Luke is careful to tell us he interviewed people involved in the story (cf. Luke 1:3); I mean, only Luke has the account of the night Jesus was born and he has the story of where Joseph lost Jesus in Jerusalem. Who do you think told him those stories? They could have only come from Mary. But like any eyewitness account, even though the stories match, the details sometimes vary. Memory is a funny thing; you might remember certain details about this service that the person sitting next to you completely misses. And they might remember parts that you miss. It’s only by putting the stories together that we begin to get a good idea of what actually happened. That’s why I’m glad we have four Gospels and that they have different details. Together, they give us a pretty good idea of what actually happened. And it’s also important to point out that none of the details that vary have any impact on our salvation. The Gospels, as is the Bible in full, is completely accurate in everything that helps us find their way to God.

None of that is to say that history is unimportant; quite the contrary. The Judeo-Christian tradition relies heavily on history. Ours is a faith rooted in history, in the belief that God broke into time and space and did something extraordinary. The stories are true because they actually happened. Every time archaeologists unearth something new that has to do with the Biblical account, they find that the Bible’s telling is true. For instance, scholars had long doubted that King David ever existed until archaeologists uncovered an ancient inscription that referred to the royal “House of David.” Overnight, people had to admit that there was, in fact, someone named David who was a king in Israel’s history. Recently, a palace has been discovered that just might be King David’s (cf. Myers 42). If you want more proof that the things written down actually happened, come with me to Israel next year. You can see for yourself the places described in these pages. You will never read the Bible the same after you’ve walked in that holy land. Yes, another shameless plug, but true. Our faith is not made up; these things actually happened in real time and real space to real people.

Some of you may have been told or led to believe that you can’t ask your questions about faith or about the Bible, that you’re just supposed to take things at face value. If you’ve been attending here for any length of time, I hope you know that’s not my approach. Questions and doubt are not the opposite of faith; the opposite of faith is unbelief. Questions are part of growing in faith. I honestly don’t believe you can truly grow if you don’t have questions because the stories we believe are fantastic, incredible, or as I said on Christmas Eve, impossible. So if you haven’t heard me say it before, let me say it this way: your questions are welcome here. The Scriptures can stand up to any question you want to ask. But there is one requirement: you can’t hide behind your questions. If you have questions or doubts, I’m going to challenge you to study the Scriptures and see what they have to say. In fact, that’s what all of us should be doing, each and every day. This book was given to us not just for history, not just for information, not just for bedtime stories. These writings were given to us for transformation. In fact, we’re promised five things (at least) if we give ourselves to reading and studying the Bible. Very quickly, here they are (cf. Myers 44-45):

1. You will be blessed. Psalm 1 says, “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night” (1:1-2). When we study the Scriptures, we learn what God requires of us.

2. You will grow spiritual fruit. In fact, Paul told the Galatians that when the Spirit is working in you, which the Spirit promises to do through the Scriptures, you will grow in “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).
3. You will experience freedom. Paul also said this: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

4. You will receive direction in life. Proverbs says, “He [God] will make your paths straight” (3:6). And…

5. You will begin to understand the difference between truth and error. Paul says, “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4).

“No other holy book issues an explicit call for careful study the way the Bible does” (Myers 44). Bring your questions. Bring your challenges. Bring your doubts. The Bible can handle them; these words are life and they will shape us into the people we are meant to be. So, Paul basically asks Timothy, do you want to be wise? Then study the Scriptures. Get them into your mind and heart because knowing what God has said is the only true way to wisdom.

Augustine was like a lot of young men in his day and now, searching for meaning and answers to his questions, but his life was anything but God-centered. Even though his mother prayed constantly for him, he continued to live in a way that broke her heart. largely characterized by immorality. One day, however, he was sitting outdoors when he heard a voice that sounded like a child singing. “Take and read,” the voice said. “Take and read.” He first thought the song was part of a children’s game, but he couldn’t see any children. Having recently heard a Christian bishop preach, his second thought was that maybe the voice meant to take and read the Bible. So he found a Bible and did the thing where you open it and read the first passage you find. Not a recommended way of studying the Bible, by the way, but Augustine’s eyes landed on this passage in the letter to the Romans: “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh” (Romans 13:13-14). He was cut to the heart and believed that was a word just for him. Within a few months, he was baptized and later became one of the most powerful defenders of Christianity in history. All because he “took and read.” The Scriptures exist to make you wise.

So let’s take up the challenge this year to better learn the Bible. Almost every week we provide you with Scriptures to read and study. You can also do a “through the Bible in a year” plan; a lot of them exist and you can even find several on the YouVersion Bible app. If you don’t know where to find one, ask Pastor Rick or myself; we’ll be glad to help you. Take and read, but don’t just read. If you don’t know how to start studying or how to approach the Scriptures, let me quickly suggest three questions you can ask of any passage in the Bible. What does this passage tell me about God? What does it tell me about human beings? And what does it tell me about the relationship between the two? Those three questions ought to be enough to get your mind going and maybe spark some other questions. Seriously, though, if you need help, ask. There is little that excites me more than seeing people dive into the Scriptures and encounter the God who breathed them. I don’t know if I mentioned it or not, but doing this will make you wise. Think how much wiser we will be in the coming year when we study the Scriptures.

And now, because we are told to do so in the Gospels, we are going to share together in Holy Communion on this first Sunday of the year. Will you join me in prayer as we prepare our hearts and minds for this sacrament of grace?