Sound Doctrine, p.1

Grab your Bibles. Let's go to first Timothy, chapter six, verse Timothy, chapter six versus three three five. The apostle Paul writing this letter to Timothy.

Who he has left in charge of getting the church in order. We've called this exposition beautifying the bride because that's God's goal. He wants his bride, his church to be like him, to reflect his beauty and his glory to the world. And that involves a lot of things that involves believing the right things and functioning the right way. And for the right motives are with the right term reasons in our hearts. And I call this beautifying the bride, her fashion, the way she's to be structured and her function the way she used to function and carry on.

And we've learned a lot about this. I am certain that time, the future, my exposition first, Timothy, will be a course for pastor because there's so much here that we're going to first. Timothy, six versus three, three five that I've simply in entitled the unpacking of this text sound doctrine.

Sound doctrine. First, Timothy, chapter six, verse three.

Paul writes, If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ and with the doctrine could form into godliness. He's conceded and understands nothing. But he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words out of which arise. Inbee strife, abusive language, evil suspension, suspicions and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth. Who suppose that godliness is a means of gain?

Wow. A lot there. Paul gets to this point in writing to Timothy and says, Art, there's going to be people who are gonna follow what I'm teaching, and if they're not following what I'm teaching you, Timothy, and what I'm building the church upon, then they're out following Lord the Lord Jesus Christ either. So I come to Roman numeral one and I call it sound doctrine, it's ground and source. Divinely inspired scripture, grounded sources, somewhat redundant. But I like being redundant. The Bible is quite redundant. What is the ground, the foundation stone for sound doctrine? Are you could say the truth. What is the source? Where does it come out of?

Paul gives us good insight here. Let's unpack it beginning in verse three with the two words sound words. So where I get the phrase sound doctrine, literally the words sound, they are means wholesome.

Then he says, those of our Lord Jesus Christ. So it's interesting that he talks about the words of Jesus Christ, though. It's Paul who's writing the words. It's Paul who's writing this doctrine. So is it Paul or is it Jesus words?

It's both Paul's words are Jesus's words when he says, those of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ. I think he means more than just exact quotations from Jesus. He means the doctrine and the instructions that Christ taught himself. And now this includes the words of Paul. That is the instructions in his epistles that we have in the New Testament. Paul was fully aware that he was writing divinely inspired text.

The scriptures.

Have often been viewed as the same as saying these are Jesus words, for example, and Colossians 316. Paul writes, Let the word of Christ ritually dwell within you net and just mean the words again of quotations that Christ made. But the word about Christ, the true doctrine of Christ. When you receive the true doctrine, biblical doctrine, you're receiving Christ word.

You can amplify that on out God's word, of course, let the word of Christ fruitfully do it within you. What does that mean? Let the Bible richly dwell within you? It's the same thing you say. God has spoken to us. His last revelation until his second coming.

God has spoken to man.

His final revelation, until he unveils himself and the person of Christ and appears on Earth the second time, Hebrews one, one and two God after he spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions. And in many ways in these last days has spoken to us in his son, whom he appointed heir of all things. And through him also, he made the world God's final word to man as Jesus Christ and the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And of course, we hold that the words and the revelation of Christ have been mediated to us through the early apostles as they penned and completed the New Testament and gave us the 66 books of the Bible. That's God's final word now. I think that's something that jumps out to us. Now, of course, the flow of what Paul saying in Chapter six and those early verses is about false teachers creeping in and teaching false doctrine. But in doing that and in confronting those false teachers, he brings out this statement that there are sound words. The words of our Lord Jesus Christ and Paul himself are writing those words.

So he gives us a strong statement of the authority and the infallibility of the word of God in this in this overall argument, if you will, of a exposing an opposing false teachers, which is my next point. And just a few minutes, another inside if Asians to 19. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens. And that's Christians who used to be strange to God and alienated from God, but no longer.

But you are fellow citizens with the Saints and we are of God's household. Verse 20, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And that's an interesting phrase. You're built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. What you mean? I thought we were built on Jesus Christ. Well, he goes on Jesus Christ himself being the cornerstone. Now notice that Jesus is the cornerstone. But the foundation for our faith is the apostles in profits. What does he mean? Means I have used men who are very aware of what they were doing to right my perfect revelation of myself in my gospel to mankind.

It's it's built on them.

The fact that the apostles and prophets, because they communicated through writing the remainder of the scriptures, the New Testament, the truth of God to man. That is the truth about Jesus Christ. So when you say God revealed himself the Christ, that's true equally so, God revealed himself to his word. That's true. They're equally true. And that word was superintended through men who were God's early apostles in the early church. Now, after God closed the canon of scriptures, the church is no longer being built, in a sense, on prophets and apostles. It's now built on those early apostles and prophets who penned for us the doctrines, the faith that we stand upon forever. OK. There's no one that's going to be able to say, hey, I'm a new prophet. I've got a new book that we need to add to the Bible. I wrote this. I said this book, The Bible.

Not gonna happen. It's built on the writings of the early apostles, and that is the authoritative word of God. They're the foundation Christ, the cornerstone.

It was held in the early church that the apostles writings were indeed divinely inspired. This is how Peter says this. And second, Peter, 316, and his second, Peter, 316. Peter is referring to the writings of Paul. Paul wrote these letters and they're being circulated around many of them. And here's why. The way Peter says or what Peter says about Paul's writing, as also in all his letters speaking in them of these things in which which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught in unstable distort as they do also the rest of the scriptures to their own destruction. He said. Peter said, Have you noticed as when the apostle Paul wrote these things for the church? We know they're God's divinely inspired writings and noticed people tried to distort them and misuse them, just like evil doers have always done God's scriptures that he equates the Holy Scripture with the writings of Paul. That was the conviction of the early church. So as Paul is writing to Timothy and he writes about the doctrines and instructions he's given Timothy. He says These are also the words of Jesus Christ. These are divinely inspired words, as if Christ himself were giving it to you.

Now, conservative Bible scholars. Let me let me qualify that phrase. That is Bible scholars who study the Bible with the conviction that they have God's word and they want to understand it better. Liberal Bible scholars are those who approached the word of God as if it's just another ancient writing like Homer or Shakespeare. And they want to dissect it and cut it up and tear it apart and be the final judge of it. Conservative Bible scholars say they're not the judge of the Bible. The Bible is authoritative. We just want to understand it as thoroughly and as well as we possibly can. So it's the predisposition of the heart that matters greatly when you talk about, quote, a Bible scholar in the quote.

Conservative Bible scholars tell us that the New Testament is by far and away the best attested document of all ancient literature. You take all the ancient literature known to mankind, home or Shakespeare, whatever you want to pick out, and they'll tell you that the New Testament is far, far more attested to by ancient fragments and manuscripts than any other ancient literature. For example, in the works of the Greek author Homer, scholars have only a few copies of his ancient writing. Yet they say, since we had those few copies and they're all practically identical, we believe we have the truth of Homer. We have Homer's true writings. We know we do because we've got these manuscripts and they all agree. But now compare that that to the New Testament when it comes to the New Testament. There are two thousand ancient manuscripts are fragments that researchers have filed. Two thousand. And you know what happens when they lie? All two thousand together and read them all together. They found almost no contradictions whatsoever. You could say they're practically identical. And where there is a little difference here and there, the scholars say it absolutely has no bearing on any essential doctrine of the Christian faith. So if you just want to go from a scientific perspective, there's no ancient document known to mankind that come close to the authentication that the scholars have found for the New Testament.

But laying that aside.

Much more importantly is the truth.

Now, listen to you, Pastor, this morning that the word of God, the 66 books of the Bible is self authenticating. It needs no scientists. It needs no scholar. It needs no professor. It needs still high up muckety muck somewhere in an ivory tower to tell us what we think you can trust. To know the word of God is self authenticating.

It's like Spurgeon says, you don't have to defend it, just just let it loose, it will defend itself. You don't have to to off helping along. And that's what we're seeing in a lot of churches. They we got all this fanciful stuff to help the word of God. You have to help the word of that fact. When you have the word of God, you heard the word of God. Study it. Pray over it. Preach it in its grammatical, historical, systematic context. And let God's spirit do his work through his word itself. Authenticated. What do I mean by that? You said here under my preaching, you hear me preach the word of God and every one of you who knows Christ would leave and be able to say, God spoke to me today.

Where's that come from? You can't find that under a microscope.

You can't view that through a telescope. You can't discover that the scientific investigation. It's beyond that. It's spiritually revealed and spiritually confirmed.

It's self authenticating. You see anyone who will open the Bible with humility and ask God to show him the truth.

We'll find the truth. Did you hear that?

If they'll open this book and say, oh, God in heaven, I need to know you. Show me.

Show me your self through these words. They will find God.

He will show himself to them. You know, the skeptic says and they've been saying it for generations and generations. Well, I can't believe the Bible is God's word, God's word, because the Bible contains errors, are the Bible contains contradictions.

And I will say to you, there are difficulties in the Bible. There are things we read we can't understand. We don't know. How does this fit? What is this? There are difficulties in the Bible. But there are no difficulties discerning the major doctrines of scripture, and even the difficulties are inherent, even the difficulties are divinely inspired. Because over time, sometimes God allows us to see what the difficulties actually meant.

So there's no basic doctrine. Even the seeming errors that men think they find are the seeming contradictions. They think they fine tend to be cleared up as we understand more and more about the word of God.

Let me give you an example. Never get studying this years ago.

The Bible has a whole lot to say about an ancient empire called the hit type people. The Hittite Empire matter fact, the Old Testament references a great empire called the Hittites forty six different times. That's a lot. Forty six different times, the Old Testament refers to an ancient keen about 4000 years ago called the hit times. And during the 19th century, agnostics, atheists and Bobbo skeptics had a field day pointing out that with all the anthropological and archeological work that's ever been done, there hadn't been one tiny frag. But if anything, they'd pointed to their ever being a people called the Hittites. So they just say that's one of many, many examples that this book is not correct. This book can't be the book of God. It's got a clear area. They talk over and over and over again about the Hittite people. And they don't even exist.

But then an Irishman, William Wright, in the early eighteen eighties discovered some ancient writings.

And over a little time, they deciphered and began to interpret those writings and lo and behold, it was the writings of a people who called the Hittites.

So excavations begin to commence and they begin to excavate vast areas of that part of the Middle East, and they begin to find fragments and tablets and stones and potteries and foundations and on and on. All inscribed with the hit top empire on them. So much so that just a couple of years after this, this Irishman made the discovery, the Encyclopedia Britannica had to change their whole section on the only Hittites.

It went from a couple of sentences about this is a believed to have been a people spoken of in the Bible to two full pages documenting all the truths that this people existed.

And the excavations continued today. Brothers and sisters, there are whole museums, field of fall of Hittite Empire, fragments and artifacts. The Bible, was it wrong? It just takes science a while to catch up with the word of God. And but but here's the thing. I'm not waiting for signs to give me their blessing. I'm going to tell you the spirit has already told me. I've read the word. I've studied the word. I've preached the word. I've taught the word. I've heard it taught. I've heard it preached. And God makes it clear to me. This is his word.

So when the skeptics says that he can't trust the Bible, really what he means is as he opens the Bible, not define God, he opens his Bible to find error. And trust me, when a man opens the Bible to find mistakes or error, God will never reveal to that man the truth.

He'll never reveal the truth. Listen to Jesus and Luke Teahan, 21, at that very time. This is Jesus. He rejoice greatly in the Holy Spirit, notes Jesus, rejoicing greatly about now. This is gonna fill a Qik in your version of Jesus, unless you have a biblical version of Jesus.

He rejoice greatly in the Holy Spirit and said, I praise you, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent.

Jesus, his father, I thank you that you had the truth from those who think they know it all.

You hide the truth and those who are not humbled and those who think they have the answers and those who think they can dissect and distort and then place themselves as authority over your word.

I'm amplifying here. OK. Well, that's where the Lord is coming from.

I praise you that you've hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants. That is, those who had come to the babbling. Sounds just like a baby. I need to learn. God, open your word to me. Let me see.

Then Jesus goes on to say this for this way was, well, pleasing in your sight. So listen to me. The next time you hear some atheists or skeptic or agnostic scoff and ridicule and today just get in your face and revile and rant.

Usage said, you're safe. I price your father. You have not revealed these things. To those who think they got the answers, revealed them to us, babies, us, who know we don't know anything.

You see, for you and I to come to the settled conviction that the 66 books and the old and the New Testament is the word of God requires the Holy Spirit and faith. I apologize. Not one big backup. Not one bit from saying to you. This is not a scientific conclusion. This is a spiritual conclusion.

It is faith by the working of the spirit of God in my heart.

And you know what's interesting? Are you listen to me. The more you open this book, the more you read this book, the more you memorize this book, the more you meditate on this book, the more you study this book, the more you believe it's true.

It's just that's the way it work. Some of you are a little a little a little off amateur skeptic right now. Some of you have your little doubts going right now. You know what? You hadn't been in the word of God. You had to approach it with the humility and prayer.

Watch. God reveal himself. Billy Graham tells the story early in his ministry. And, you know, and Billy Graham just started. I'd be hard. The German hard texture criticism of the scriptures had floated across the oceans and had settled on our universities and in many of our graduate schools and our seminaries where we try to train pastors and German higher textual criticism again. Was that approach that you come to the Bible and you critique it, you hold yourself in authority over it and they begin to discuss, well, this can't be the word of God and that can't be the word of God in this can't be trustworthy. And that must be an error that must not be historically accurate. And Billy Graham was struggling because that became the cool, popular thing. And by the way, that viewpoint has killed many old denominations that used to be solid. The Methodist among them, mainly the Presbyterian. Quite a few of the Baptist. Billy Graham tells the story that he was out in the woods just praying to God and struggling about his faith and struggling about what he's going to believe, and he knelt down and I think he said he knelt over a stump and he said, God, I've settled it in my mind. This is the word of God.

And that's why the rest of Billy Graham's ministry.

He said something over and over and over and over in his preaching, the Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says what made Billy Graham come to that conviction was some new some new scholars, some new theologians, some new brilliant man had an insight.

No. God brought in.

You say men do not believe the Bible. Let me put this I men do not disbelieve the Bible because it has contradictions. Men disbelieve the Bible because it contradicts them. You open the Bible, you going get corrected. You open the bob. You're going to get convicted.

You open the Bible. You're going to get humbled.

And only the spirit transform heart likes that. The Proudman does it like that.

They do not reject the Bible because it contains the error. They reject the Bible because they can't contain the error. And God points it out. The Bible is divine lie that exposes them. And John, three, not Team Jesus, said men love the darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil. Men know their hearts are evil and black. They know their deeds are evil. And when the Bible is opened, it just magnifies the truth of that. And they want to run from it and to cover themselves. They use pseudo intellectual ism. Oh, but it has error. Oh, it's has contradictions.

No, it contradicts you. It shows you your air and you will humble yourself before God. And that's why you throw the Bible out.

The skeptics and the unbelievers cannot find God. The same reason a crook can't find a policeman.

They're not looking for it. It's not their heart, passion and their joy to find him.

And John, five thirty nine, 340. Jesus said you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And it is these that testify about me getting back to our point sound doctrine and divinely inspired scripture. Here we have Jesus again saying you search the scriptures, you find me, you find me through the scriptures shows the divine inspiration that Jesus sailed in the Old Testament text.

He himself said it was true.

John, five forty six and forty seven. Is that the one you just put up? No. OK, four if you believe Moses, you would believe me. Well, who's Moses? Well, he wrote the first five books of the Old Testament.

Is that interesting?

Jesus said if you believed the Bible, you'd know I'm God, son.

We're equal here as far as the revelation of God. I've come to reveal God to you. But the scriptures reveal God to you.

If you believe Moses, you'd believe me for he wrote about me. Noah notices percent. Forty seven. But if you do not believe his writings, the scripture, how you believe my words. Wow. You they say, well, if Jesus was just here and he would speak to me, then I'd know it's right.

You said no, you wouldn't. If you won't believe the book God given you, you won't believe if I'm standing in front of you speaking to you.

What a great and hard place. The early apostles and Jesus are safe gives to the written word of God. So here, when we come to our text in First Timothy, chapter six, verse three here, the apostle Paul states that his writing was sound doctrine.

How does he work it there versus if anyone advocates a different doffed and does not agree with him, it is sound words. Oh, what word is he talking about? He's talking about the words he's written and the words he's talked to Timothy and throw Timothy to the whole church and churches. He says these things are true. They're divinely inspired. And then he says so much so he says sound words, next phrase, verse three.

Those of our Lord Jesus Christ. And with a doctrine conforming to godliness. So Paul states that his writing was sound. It was Christ doctrine as well. It has divine authority, sound doctrine, source and ground is one person. Jesus Christ. There's one foulon to the all truth flows out of. And that's Jesus Christ. And he has ordained in his wisdom that he would use a regular and to write the ballots of biblical truth. Complete the 66 books of the Bible and therefore the Bible phrase would be. So our faith, what we believe is built on the foundation of the prophets in apostles. They wrote it down for. As Judy said, it's the faith once for all delivered to the Saints. We can trust the word of God. Brothers and sisters, this church will never, ever, ever, ever hold to any other conviction other than the absolute authority and full infallibility of the word of God. The scriptures. That's where we're going to be.