Number 3, in just a moment we'll read
verses 14 down through verse number 17.
Very familiar portion of scripture, and I hope
it'll be a great blessing to you.
I tell you, this is a portion of
scripture that God has used to challenge my
heart and challenge my Christianity and my character
and my Christian life on many, many, many
occasions.
And this is a near and dear portion
of scripture to my heart, and so I
hope it'll be a blessing to you.
2 Timothy, chapter number 3, verse number 14.
That's all, stand please.
Out of respect for the Word of God.
2 Timothy, chapter number 3, and verse number
14, please.
The Bible says, But continue thou the things
which thou hast learned and hast been assured
of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them.
And that from a child thou hast known
the holy scriptures, which are able to make
thee wise unto salvation through faith which is
in Christ Jesus.
All scripture is given by inspiration of God
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man
of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto
all good works.
And using this very familiar portion of scripture,
I want to preach this afternoon a simple
message entitled, The Wonderful Word of God.
Thank you very much.
You may be seated.
Let's bow our heads and hearts, and let's
ask the Lord to bless our time together
here in our chapel, shall we?
Now, Father, we need your help for the
next few moments in this Christian school assembly.
Thank you so much for the young men,
the young ladies that are before me.
Thank you for the privilege that I have
all this week to share my heart with
these young people in the mornings and then
in the afternoons to go with Brother Smith
over to the detention center, also to the
juvenile boot camp, and also each night at
seven o'clock to break the bread of
life.
Lord, you've given me a lot of responsibility
this week, and you said to me, who
much is given, much shall be required.
So I pray that I'd be prayed up,
studded up, and I'd be fired up for
the things of God.
And you would help me not to be
lollygagged as a preacher and not just to
preach some old mundane microwave sermons.
But Lord, help my heart to be hot.
Lord, help it to be full.
And help me not just to preach from
overflow of knowledge.
But, oh, dear God, I pray that you
would open up my heart and open up
the hearts of these young men and young
ladies before me and just knit us together
as we preach and teach and study through
the Bible this week.
Use 2 Timothy 3 today, I pray in
Jesus' name, amen.
In person, as I travel and as my
wife and I travel in evangelism and as
we have for the past four years, I've
met some interesting people.
Now, I've met some people that were greatly
wonderful in my ministry and I've met some
people that were not so hot and not
so nice to my ministry.
My wife and I, we have been to
museums, we've been to zoos, we've been to
science places, we've been to fairs, we've been
to some huge churches, we've been to some
tiny churches, we've been to some medium-sized
churches, and we have seen some wonderful things.
Man, we've been to the Natural Bridge.
I've got a meeting scheduled close to Buffalo,
New York.
We'll be going to Niagara Falls.
And we've got meetings scheduled all over and
I've been all over California and different places.
And I mean, my wife and I have
been privileged and honored and blessed of the
Lord to be able to see some wonderful,
wonderful things.
But, you know, in all of my travels
and all of my studies and of all
the people that I've met across America and
around the world, I have never come up
to know anything more wonderful, more marvelous, and
more supernatural than the Bible which we hold
in our hands right now.
I want you to understand a few things
about the Word of God this morning.
We're going to have three points and I
want you to help me with the points
this morning.
But before we do, I want you to
look back in your Bibles and I want
to study, just for a few moments, verse
number 16.
Just make some preliminary remarks as we go
down through this verse and just kind of
teach you a few things and then kind
of get into the preaching message.
Verse number 16 of 2 Timothy chapter 3,
Paul is writing, and he says, "...all Scripture..."
That means the 39 books of the Old
Testament and the 27 books of the New.
You put them together, do your math right,
that's 66 books of God, all right?
So he says, "...all Scripture..." Not some of
it, but every bit of it.
"...all Scripture is given by inspiration of God."
Now, that word inspiration is a fancy New
Testament word.
It doesn't mean perspiration.
The word inspiration has the idea of God
-breathed.
Did you know if you and I, every
time we were to open our mouth, if
every time I preached or every time you
talked to one of your friends, if every
time you was talking and opened your mouth
when you walked around, if you kept your
hand up in front of your mouth, one
of two things would be true.
Number one, most of us would die because
of our bad breath.
But secondly, you would find out that air
comes from our vocal cords.
It'd come across our tongue, out of our
jaws, across our little flappy gums, and through
our teeth, off of our tongue.
And you would fear air or breath coming
out of your mouth because when you speak,
you breathe.
That's the exact same implication here that Paul
is writing young Timothy.
He spoke, and as he was speaking, he
breathed the very words of God into existence.
So, let's see what he says about this
inspired Bible, shall we?
Verse 16, "...all Scripture is given by inspiration,"
or God-breathing, if you will, "...and is
profitable."
Now, a lot of people have a bad
problem in America and around the world.
You know what it is?
They think the Bible was written by a
bunch of old, foggy people for a bunch
of old, foggy people.
It's got old, foggy rules and regulations, dictates
and commands, statues and testimonies, and it's not
relevant to today's society.
That's a lie.
This is the living, abiding, breathing Word of
God, and it is just as relevant today
as it was when the ink pen of
inspiration ran out in Revelation 22, 21.
Young people, I want you to know this
Bible is profitable.
It's profitable for your life.
It's profitable for your soul.
It's profitable one day for your marriage.
It's profitable for child-rearing.
It's profitable for churches.
It's profitable for Christian schools, for public schools.
It's profitable, today's November 7th, for elections and
for America and for around the world.
The Bible is a profitable book.
It's not a dead book.
It's not an old, lethargic book that belongs
on some Vatican shelf or some religious library
or some biblical zoo somewhere.
It is a profitable, profitable book.
Now, if God, in fact, is going to
say that His book is profitable, then isn't
He going to tell us what it's profitable
for?
I believe so, and He does.
Look back at verse 16.
It says, "...all Scripture is given by inspiration
of God."
And it's profitable, number one, it says, for
doctrine.
Now, the word doctrine is a much overused
and much abused term in modern-day Christianity.
The word doctrine basically means teaching.
There's a lot of people that say, well,
doctrine's just not important.
But that's a lie, young person, because doctrine's
very important.
It's very important what you believe.
It's not just enough to know what you
believe, but you ought to be able to
base it on the Bible and know why
you believe it.
And doctrine is very, very important.
We have the teachings of heaven and hell.
We have the teachings of God and the
devil.
We have the teachings of the virgin birth
of Christ.
We have the teachings of the tribulation and
the rapture and the second coming of Christ.
And we have the teachings of the inspiration
of the Bible.
We have the teachings or the doctrines of
creation.
And there's all kind of doctrines and teachings
in the Bible.
And if we say that doctrine's not important,
then who's to say what's right and who's
to say what's wrong?
So the Bible says that itself is profitable
to teach us that which is right, to
teach us that which is wrong, to teach
us what is Scripture and what is contrary
to Scripture.
So the Bible's profitable to teach us some
things, but it's also profitable, the Bible says,
secondly, look at your Bibles, for reproof.
Now, what is reproof?
Well, reproof is God telling me what is
wrong with my life.
Now, you know, the word reproof is a
negative word in the Bible.
A lot of people think everything in the
Bible is rosy-posy and everything's wonderful.
It's a walk in the park and it's
a nice little cream cake walk and there's
nothing bad.
And God is always love.
God is always love, but now there's not
only positive in the Bible, there's also negative
in the Bible.
And sometimes people have to be reproved and
rebuked when there's open wicked sin in their
life.
For example, let's say I were to go
outside and I was to get in my
diesel trunk.
And let's say right before I got in
it and started it up, I cranked up
the hood.
I popped the little latch there on the
front there.
I lifted it up and I took the
negative side cable off of my battery.
Now, a battery in a vehicle has a
positive cable, has a negative cable.
Those two coming together, the positive and the
negative, they make the car start, they make
the car go, and they work all the
little apparatuses there.
They run this and they run that.
But let's say I took the negative off
and I thought, well, I'm just going to
be positive all of my life.
I don't care anything about negative.
I don't like reproof and rebuke.
And I'm just going to drive my vehicle
on the positive.
No, you wouldn't get very far.
Matter of fact, you wouldn't even start the
vehicle.
You've got to have the positive cable and
you have to have the negative cable to
make the car go.
And you've got to have positive in the
Bible and there's also negative in the Bible.
When you put them together, they cause everything
to come together.
So, OK, God shows me that His Word
is profitable for teaching or for doctrine.
But He also tells me that it's profitable
to teach me what is wrong with my
life.
For example, God says, OK, Greg, you are
living your life in a way that is
not pleasing to me.
You are living your life with sin.
You are living your life for the world.
You're not living for me.
You're not pleasing to me.
So God tells me what is wrong with
my life.
And specifically points out the area.
But I'm glad it didn't just stop there.
You know, sometimes some people will rebuke you
and reprove you and say, Hey, this is
wrong with your life.
But then they don't tell you how to
fix it.
But God does.
Look what your Bible says, verse number 16.
It says it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction.
So first of all, God says His Bible
is profitable to tell us what is right
and what is wrong.
And then it's profitable to tell me what
is wrong specifically with my life.
And then thirdly, it's profitable to tell me
how to fix that which is wrong in
my life.
So God says, Greg, this is wrong.
And this is how you fix that which
is wrong.
But it doesn't stop there.
The Bible even goes further and says this,
for instruction in righteousness.
You know what that means?
That's God telling me how to keep it
fixed.
So God says, Greg, this is wrong.
This is how you fix what is wrong.
And this is how you keep it fixed
for the rest of your life.
And this is what keeps you in the
Bible from ever going back to the place
where I had to reprove you and rebuke
you ever to begin with.
So you can see how profitable the Bible
is for daily living.
All right.
Now, I want to give you three undeniable,
three unchangeable, and three most unforgettable facts about
the Bible.
And I'm going to say them to you.
And then when I do that, I'll hold
out my hands and we'll all say them
together.
And I want you to say them nice
and loud.
So make sure we get it not in
our heads, but we get it in our
hearts.
All right.
Number one, God's Word is true.
Would you say that with me?
God's Word is true.
From Genesis 1-1 to Revelation 22-21.
There are no mistakes.
There are no contradictions.
There are no lies.
There are no falsehoods.
There are no misconceptions, if you will.
This is the Word of God.
That's why we have this Christian school.
That's why we have revival meetings in this
Baptist church, because we want to open people's
heads and open people's hearts and fill them
with the truths of the stories and the
pages and the doctrines of the wonderful Word
of God.
This is not a comic book.
This is not Sports Illustrated.
This is not Reader's Digest.
This is not USA Today.
This is not the Chicago Tribune.
It is not the Wall Street Journal.
This is the Word of God.
And we don't have to apologize for that.
We don't have to back down for that.
We don't have to say we're sorry for
that.
And as young men and as young ladies,
you can know this afternoon that this book
that we hold in our hands, this book
that we memorize, this book that we study,
this book that we read, this book that
we learn, and this book that you work
in your paces in your different studies on,
this book that you hear taught from, and
this book that you hear preached from, from
this chapel platform every day, this book is
not a book.
It is the book.
It is the Word of God.
And young person, you can stake your life
on that.
God's Word is true every bit of it.
Now, I want you to think about something
just for a moment.
Jesus said in John 17, 17, sanctify them
or set them apart from that truth or
through that truth.
Thy Word is truth.
Now, there's a verse in the Bible that
I want you to understand.
Please don't turn there, but listen to me.
Jesus was talking to a religious group of
people called the scribes and Pharisees.
And here's what he told them.
John 8, 44.
He said, you are of your father, the
devil and the lust of your father.
He will do.
He was a murderer from the beginning and
a vote not of the truth.
Why?
Because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of
his own.
For he is a liar and the father
of it.
So, what did Jesus just state to those
people?
And what was Jesus trying to reiterate to
you and I as God's people today?
Simply this.
The devil is 100% all lie.
He has no truth in him.
He is a false.
He is a fake.
And he is a phony baloney for sure.
He is a liar.
And the Bible says the father or literally
the originator of lies way back in the
garden.
So, the devil is a liar.
Now, let me paint you a picture here,
all right?
Not on a wall, not really drawing a
map, but just think for something for a
moment.
If the devil is 100% liar.
If he is all falsehood.
If he is all fake.
If he is all wicked.
And if the devil has no truth in
him whatsoever, which the Bible does say that.
We'll put the devil right here.
We'll go to this side of the platform.
And we'll say that here over here is
the Bible.
We've already established that the Bible has no
lies, has no misconceptions, has no things that
are contradictory in one book and contradictory in
another book.
No lies, no falsehoods whatsoever.
So, way over there on that side of
the platform, we have 100% falsehood and
lie.
And way over here on this side of
the platform with the Bible, we've got 100
% truth and 100% right and no
falsehood and no lies whatsoever.
Now, if that be the case, and it
is, does it not stand to reason logically
that he who is a liar wants to
do his best to keep you as far
away from the truth as he possibly can?
He wants to keep you out of the
Bible.
Why?
Because he wants you to live a life
of a lie.
He wants you to be a liar.
He wants you to be a fake.
He wants you to be a masked Christian,
if you will.
He wants you to be a lying, phony,
baloney, false Christian.
He wants you to live the same life
that he is living.
And the devil is doing his dead-level
best to keep people away from the truths
of the Word of God, because those truths
will transform your life.
Those truths will help you be a better
young person for God.
Those truths will help you be a better
student.
Those truths will help you be a better
son, a better daughter, a better brother, a
better sister.
They will help you one day be a
better father, a better mother, a better husband,
a better wife.
They will help you be a better worker.
They will help you be a better person.
And yes, most certainly will help you be
a better, more godly, sold-out, surrendered, and
separated Christian.
And the devil is a liar.
And for years he's trying to tell people
that the Bible is a lie, the Bible
is a lie.
But I will remind you, Titus chapter 1,
verse number 2, the Bible says that God
cannot lie.
And if it's in this book, and since
this book is from God, therefore my God
cannot lie.
So this book is the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth.
So help me God.
All right?
So number one, God's Word is true.
But number two, I want you to see
this.
God's Word has been tried.
Would you say that with me, please?
God's Word has been tried.
Say, Brother Locke, what do you mean by
that?
There have always been people that have tried
to stamp out the Bible.
There have always been people that have tried
the patience of God.
There have always been people that have ridiculed
the Bible, and kicked the Bible, and put
the Bible under the rug, and tried to
hide the Bible, and locked the Bible away.
And there have always been people that said
the Bible's full of lies, and the Bible's
full of contradictions, and the Bible's full of
all these presumptions from God.
And there's no real miracles.
And Jesus was just some old fictitious man.
And He never really died.
He was never really buried.
He never really rose again.
And the Bible's not the Word of God.
It's just a nice little storybook.
It's just a nice book to color in
and to take notes in.
And it's just some book that gets a
bunch of preachers all riled up.
And there's always been people that have tried
to disprove the Bible.
But you know what?
They're dead and gone, and the Bible's still
living.
They're dead and gone, and the Bible is
still believed, and is still breathing, and is
still abiding, and the Bible is still with
us.
And the Bible says, Forever, O Lord, Thy
Word is settled in heaven.
Sometimes you ought to read, especially not right
now, because it'll take you some time.
But you ought to read Psalm 119, verses
1 through verse 176.
A hundred and seventy-six verses, and every
single one of them have one theme.
David said in Psalm 119, verse number 9,
Wherewithal shall a young man, or a young
person for that matter, cleanse his way by
taking heed thereto according to Thy Word.
And there's always been people that say, Well,
the Bible's just a fictitious book.
The Bible's just a storybook.
It's not a real Bible.
But you know what?
They tried the Bible, and they tried the
Bible.
They put the Bible in the fire, and
it comes out.
They tried to drown out the Bible.
They tried to burn out the Bible.
They kicked it out of public schools.
They kicked it out of the courtroom.
They kick it out of here.
They kick it out of there.
And they say, The Bible's not the Word
of God, but it's still the Word of
God, no matter what they say.
They can lie about the Bible.
They can make falsehoods about the Bible.
They can kick the Bible anywhere that they
want to.
They can rip up the Bible.
They can retranslate the Bible.
They can rewrite the Bible.
They can reread the Bible.
They can do anything they want to, but
they can't change the fact that this is
the eternal, precious, wonderful, perfect Word of Almighty
God.
And young person, the Bible's always been tried.
On Sunday morning, I was in Sunday school
here, and I was preaching from Matthew chapter
number 6, from Psalm chapter 11, from Isaiah
chapter 40, and also from 1 Timothy chapter
3, verses 15 and 16.
And as I was preaching that, I said
something about, we don't need to worry about
tomorrow, because tomorrow the Bible will still be
the Word of God.
Perhaps you were here, perhaps you were not,
but let me give you a quick little
rendering of something that I said.
I believe it'll be interesting to you.
There was a wicked vile infidel by the
name of Voltaire.
Voltaire hated God.
Voltaire did not believe in heaven, did not
believe in hell, but he knows better now,
I'll promise you that right now.
He did not believe the Bible.
He kicked around the Bible, he said that
God was fake, he believed in evolution.
And here's what Voltaire said.
This was years and years and years before
anybody's time in this room.
He said, 50 years after I'm dead, the
Bible will be a book of nonexistence.
There won't be any Bibles in existence 50
years after I'm dead.
He said, 100 years after I'm dead.
Not only will the Bible not be in
existence, he said, but no one will own
a copy and no one will have ever
heard of a copy of the Bible.
Can you hear the great irony in what
that man said?
50 years after I'm dead, the Bible will
not be in existence, not be in circulation.
No printings of the Bible, no readings of
the Bible, no preachings of the Bible.
And then he said, 100 years after I'm
dead and gone, nobody will have heard of
a Bible.
Nobody will ever have seen a Bible and
nobody will own a Bible.
And it's been more than 200 years since
Voltaire's been dead.
And did you know that right now the
very house in which Voltaire lived is the
national headquarters for the British Bible Society?
The very house in which this man lived
is now headquarters where millions and millions and
millions of scriptures are printed every year.
Hey, the grass withers and the flower thereof
fades, but the Word of our God shall
stand forever.
I remember when I was in fifth grade,
and I knew a lot about fifth grade
because I spent two years there, amen?
I had the same teacher.
Her name was Miss Grandstaff.
I remember Miss Grandstaff, the Gladeville Elementary in
Nashville, Tennessee, outside of Mount Judah there where
I grew up.
I remember I was there and I'd ride
the bus and I'd get there and I
failed for several reasons in the fifth grade.
But the second year that I was there,
I remember we went on a field trip.
Now, we took the two fourth grade classes,
the two fifth grade classes, and the two
sixth grade classes.
And I was the only fifth grader because
obviously I was supposed to be a sixth
grader.
Probably this time I was supposed to be
a seventh grader because I spent nine years
in K-6, all right?
So I don't command that anybody should try
to do something like that, okay?
It took me all those years, like I
said yesterday, to figure out that F meant
failure, not fantastic.
And so here I was.
We went on a little field trip.
We got on our bus, we had our
sack lunches, and we drove to Hendersonville, Tennessee
to an Amish community.
How many of you know what I'm talking
about when I say something about an Amish
community?
All right, some of you do, not all
of you.
I'll put your hands down.
It's just a way that people kind of
live way back in the backwoods.
They kind of live their own way, kind
of have their own little community, if you
will.
They don't have any electricity.
They don't have any running water unless you
get a bucket and run down to the
creek and pick it up yourself, you know.
They don't have, like, trains and planes and
Ford trucks and nice big houses and trailers.
Whatever they have, they just build it all
right there on site.
You know, they don't go to Lowe's, they
don't go to Walmart.
They got their little horse and buggies and
nothing wicked about that.
If that's the way they want to live,
that's fine.
And so these people are just real primitive.
That's the way they enjoy living.
And, man, the men dress like men, by
the way.
Ladies got to dress on from their ears
all the way down to the bottom of
her toes.
You know, you ain't got any trouble figuring
out which one's a man, which one's a
lady, that's for sure.
And so these guys walk around, got these
big old bushy beards sticking out, and they
grow all their own watermelons and corns and
cantaloupes and, I mean, everything.
I thought, man, that's pretty neat.
We're walking around, we're going to these little
general shops and we're going to these little
stores and they're making fudge and they make
molasses and honey and they got this corn
and all this kind of stuff.
And I was pretty interested in what was
going on.
Then they took us to the blacksmith shop.
Now, I'd never been to a blacksmith shop
before then and I'd never been to one
since.
Many of you maybe have never had a
privilege to go to a blacksmith shop.
There's just not many around.
Nowadays we got the big steel industries and
we got the big earth movers and this,
that and the other.
And so unless you really live in the
Amish community, unless somebody's really primitive and old
-fashioned way back in the woods, they just
don't do work like that anymore, but the
Amish people still do.
And so I went there and there was
about, I suppose, there was maybe 185, 200
of us kids.
And we was all in there.
We crammed in a building about this big.
It was the blacksmith shop, a little tent
that he was in there.
And he was in there and he had
that great big black anvil and he had
a big old sledgehammer and he had these
little sickles and these little pipes and the
stuff that he was using.
Man, he was working in front of this
big fire, big old, just big old tears
of sweat just dripping all down.
He had his overalls on, but he was
all dirty.
He's hitting there with them sparks just to
fly.
He's hitting them sparks just to fly.
He'd bend that horseshoe and he'd bend that
bar and he had all kind of beautiful
tools and things and arrangements that he had
made all over the wall.
And finally he opened it up for a
question and answer time.
He said, now boys and girls, the only
silly questions in life are those that go
unasked.
I beg to differ because I've heard some
pretty silly questions.
But anyhow, I thought it was my turn.
I put up my hand.
I said, mister, I've got a question.
I said, I mean this with all my
heart.
I said, this might be common knowledge.
It might be kind of silly.
I said, but you're hitting that anvil pretty
hard.
By the way, if you don't know what
an anvil is, if you've ever seen Saturday
morning cartoons where the roadrunner and the coyote,
it's what coyote gets dropped on his head
about every five minutes.
All right, so anyhow, here's this big black
anvil.
He's beating on it and beating on it
and beating on it and beating on it.
And I said, mister, I said, how often
do you have to change that anvil?
I said, listen to me, like it's going
through a pretty good beating, you know.
Kids are kind of snickering, but I wanted
to know.
Here's what he said, I'll never forget it.
Years and years before I was even saved,
but I'll never forget what he said.
He said, you know son, that's a pretty
good question.
He said, this anvil belonged to my great
-great-granddaddy.
He said, pass it on to my great
-granddad, pass it on to my granddad, pass
it on to my dad.
He said, now it's mine.
He said, now we've got some certain little
polishes and some little things that we go
through and make sure that it's done right
so you don't leave it out in the
rain and mess it up.
And he said, it might get a little
dent in it.
He said, you could drop this thing off
the Empire State Building.
He said, it wouldn't break open.
He said, these things are solid through and
through.
He said, these things are wonderful.
He said, these things work for years and
years to come.
And he said, more than likely.
He said, I'll pass it on to the
next generation of my family and down to
him and down to him and down to
him.
And he said, these anvils are always the
same.
And then he said something interesting.
He said, but these anvils are so hard.
He said, we have to rebuild tools all
the time.
He said, our tools are a little bit
different than that which you would buy down
at a hardware store, Ace Hardware or Lowe's
or something like that.
So he said, we're all the time changing
tools.
He said, about every couple of years, we'll
go through several hammers and we'll go through
several bars and things that we hit with
and sledgehammers.
He said, we'll make another tool and then
it'll mess up on the anvil.
We'll make another tool, we'll beat the anvil,
mess up on the anvil.
And we'll make another tool and make another
tool.
And he said, we're all the time changing
tools.
He said, but the anvil is the same
one that we've had for years and years.
You know what, young person?
The old hammers of evolution and the old
hammers of secularism and worldliness and rock and
roll music and wickedness and Hollywood and the
secularism and the people that don't believe the
Bible and the people that are wicked and
immoral and the people of the world and
the people that want to serve the devil
more than they want to serve God, they
beat on the anvil of the Word of
God and they beat on the anvil of
the Word of God and they beat on
the anvil of the Word of God and
they try to disprove it and they try
to get rid of it.
You know what?
They keep changing their methods all the time.
They change their avenues of science and mathematics.
They change the rules.
They change their laws.
They change their own statutes and their own
regulations and they beat on the Word of
God and beat on the Word of God
and they try to make the Bible go
out of existence and they try to disprove
the Bible and they're always changing their methods,
but the old black anvil of the Word
of God just stands the same, young person,
and we've got the Word of God.
It is true and it's been tried and
it always comes forth and stands true like
the rock of Gibraltar.
It always stands strong and they beat on
it and they spit on it and they
burn it and they drown it and they
kick it and they curse it and they
scream at it, but we still have the
Bible.
And that brings me to the third point,
and man, I rejoice in this particular part
of the message.
God's Word is true.
God's Word has been tried.
But thirdly, I want you to see God's
Word can be trusted.
Would you say that with me?
God's Word can be trusted.
You can trust your soul to the Bible.
You can trust your life to the Bible.
You can trust every decision you will ever
make in life as a young person, as
a teenager, as a middle-aged person, as
an older gentleman or a lady.
You can trust every decision you'll ever make
on this Bible right here.
Let me show you something.
Go back to verse number 14 where we
started, would you?
2 Timothy 3, verse number 14.
Paul is writing.
Look what he says.
He says, "...but continue thou in the things
which thou hast learned and hast been assured
of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them."
Verse 15, "...and that from a child," from
just a young person, "...that from a child
thou hast known the holy Scriptures," or the
holy Bible, "...which are able to make thee
wise unto salvation, through faith which is in
Christ Jesus."
What is Paul telling Timothy?
This is the only book whereby we learn
about God's salvation.
This is the only book that can show
us the true mercy, the true grace, the
true love of Almighty God.
And he said this is a book that
you can trust your soul to, you can
trust your never-dying soul to, your eternity
to, based on heaven, based on hell, based
on having your sins forgiven or your sins
not forgiven.
He said this is a book that can
make you wise to know about God so
you can know how to be saved.
So you can trust what Jesus said about
salvation, what Paul said about salvation, what is
written in the pages of Scripture about salvation.
You can trust your soul to the Bible,
alright?
I know I'm saved.
I'm not worried about being lost.
I'm not worried about the devil snatching me
out of the grips of God.
I'm not worried about some little petty sin
or some big sin taking me out of
the fold and going to hell one day.
I'm not worried about that.
I know, based on my Bible, that I
have been assured that I have eternal, everlasting
life.
So you can trust the Bible when it
talks about that.
But you know what?
You don't just have to trust your soul
to the Bible and that be it.
After you get saved, you can trust your
life and every decision that you will ever
make in life on the Bible.
Is that not why God said in Proverbs
3, 5, and 6, Trust in the Lord
with all thine heart and lean not unto
thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge Him, not the
preacher, not yourself, not the teachers, but acknowledge
Him, Almighty God, and He shall direct thy
path.
How does He direct our path?
Psalm 119, 111, Thy word is a lamp
unto my feet and a light unto my
path.
So you can trust this Bible.
It never leads you astray.
This is the road map for life's busy
highway.
This is the flashlight for the dark caves
and crevices and crawled spaces of life.
This is the instruction manual, if you will.
I remember when I was a little boy,
my grandmother and I, who's now in heaven,
godly lady, I remember we used to put
a puzzle together about every weekend.
I guess we probably put this puzzle together
50 or 60 times.
But I remember the first time we ever
got that puzzle.
It was one of these little three-way
jobs.
Not only was it a regular puzzle, but
it was also one of them little 3
-D deals.
You kind of had to stack up pieces
here and kind of stack the castle here
and kind of build it here and then
kind of stand it up, you know, type
of deal, you know.
And then also, the third thing it is,
before you stood it up, you had to
find all the little hidden pictures.
After 50 or 60 times, you knew where
all the hidden pictures was.
But I remember the first time we got
that thing out, I got the instructions, I
looked at them for a minute and I
said, I just threw them in there, closed
the box up, dumped all the stuff out
there.
I had this piece here and this piece
there.
That thing was discombobulated and disconjolted and messed
all over the place.
And I thought to myself, what in the
wide world am I going to do now?
How in the world am I ever going
to get this puzzle together?
I was so mad.
I was so frustrated.
And all of a sudden, my grandmother went
over there.
She opened up that box and she pulled
out the instruction manual.
She got to reading this and she got
to reading that and she got to looking
at the pictures.
And man, it wasn't an hour that we
had that thing put together.
Why?
Because she found the instruction manual.
And the Bible, young person, is your instruction
manual to putting all the little bitty, itty
bitty pieces of life together.
Because life is very confusing.
Life is very complex.
There are high times of climax.
There's low times of no climax whatsoever.
There's discouragement.
There's discontent.
There's hard times.
There's all these things.
And we've got to have direction.
We've got to have a source of somebody
and something that is leading us down the
right paths.
And David said, that you lead me in
the paths of righteousness for your namesake.
How does he do that?
Does he do it through the newspaper?
No, he does it through the Bible.
Let me give you this illustration and we'll
be through it.
I'll let you go back to class because
I know you're dying to get some work
done.
Amen.
Okay.
And so let's say for a moment that
we loaded up on a bus and we
went to Nashville.
And when we went to Nashville, I was
not with you.
Pastor Ward obviously was driving the bus.
We got down there.
And when you're walking around, the reason I'm
not with you is because I'm living on
Skid Row in the red light, dirty district
town of Nashville.
And I'm living in a cardboard box.
And so you come all walking by.
And Pastor Ward knocks by my little door
there or knocks by my little box and
knocks on my little door and I come
sticking my head out of, you know, a
big old washer and dryer box.
Hey, what do you want?
He says, you're Greg Rock.
And I say, well, the last time I
looked.
But I didn't look quite like I look
now.
Big old bushy beard, mucus and mess all
in my beard.
Nasty.
My eyebrows all bushy.
Got wax coming out of my ears, you
know.
Look like a bushel of corn.
And my hair's all messed up and matted.
My fingernails are long and dirty.
And my shoes are all cut off.
My hole's in my socks.
My old nasty big long toenail sticking out.
Look like some kind of claw, you know.
Some kind of beast.
And I'm laying in there all nasty.
I got a big old pack of cigarettes
here.
Got a big old can of liquor over
here.
Bottle of liquor laying over here.
Got vomit all over the ground.
And I stink and nasty.
And I dig around through a trash can
just so I can get a little bit
of food every now and then.
And I'm scrounging around like an animal just
to find some fish or some chicken or
some hamburgers.
I find some old things old behind McDonald's.
And I live like an old dirty bum.
And so all of a sudden Brother Ward
comes by and says, Son, I'm going to
give you something.
He reaches in his pocket.
He pulls out a gospel tract.
And he pulls out a checkbook.
He hands me a gospel tract and says,
Son, you read that.
That'll tell you about Jesus Christ.
Then he pulls out a checkbook and says,
You got any needs?
And I said, Any needs?
I said, Look at me, I'm a bum.
Go inside, I got some needs.
And so he says, How do you spell
your name?
I said, G-R-E-G-L-O
-C-K-E.
Make sure you get the E on there,
alright?
And so he gets to writing out one
million smackeroonies.
Now if you're writing a check, by the
way, And so he writes a check for
one million dollars.
He puts on the bottom, just for a
love gift, signs his name on there, hands
me the check, and goes on his way.
And I say, Oh, thank you.
God bless you.
Get out of here.
And so y'all leave.
And I look at that check and I
pull it out of my pocket and this
is what I say.
He's crazy as a bed bug if he
thinks I am going to take this check
and go down to the bank and try
to cash it.
Because one of two things is going to
be true.
Either number one, he don't even have an
account of this bank that's on the check.
Or number two, he don't have anywhere near
a million dollars.
And so I take that check, stick it
in my front pocket, for the next six
hours, for the next six days, for the
next six weeks, for the next six months,
for the next six years, all the way
to my death.
I still live on Skid Row in Nashville,
still have dirty shoes, dirty face, still talk
dirty, act dirty, live dirty, still have dirty
hair, old bushy beard, still scrabble through a
trash can just to get a little bit
of something to eat, and I live that
way and I die with a million dollar
check rotting away in my front pocket.
You know what you would say if you
found me doing that?
You'd say, Brother Locke, that's the most foolish
thing I've ever heard in my life.
That's silly.
Why would I not go to the bank
and cash the check?
Why wouldn't I cash that check that could
take care of all my needs and all
of my wants and I could even help
other people?
Why wouldn't I do it?
I'll tell you why.
Because I didn't trust the person that gave
me the check.
I didn't really believe that money was in
the bank to begin with.
I thought he was just being nice and
cordial, just doing his Christian responsibility.
You know what?
I know a lot of Christians that live
just that way.
Because they will not trust the one that
gave them the pages of the Bible.
Because they will not trust in a loving
God and they will not trust in Jesus
Christ as the Lord of their life and
they will not trust the pages of Scripture.
Hey, they won't cash in on the product,
if you will.
They won't go to the bank of heaven
and by the way, we've got something worth
more than a million, a trillion, a billion,
or a googolillion dollars if there's such a
thing.
We've got a Holy Bible and I know
young boys and young girls and teenagers and
men and women and people in schools and
churches and colleges, all of this country, that
they live the rest of their lives as
Christians like spiritual bums.
They have spiritual dirt in their life.
They're not pleasing to God.
Spiritually, they stink in the nostrils of a
holy God and people look at them and
they have bad testimonies and sorry testimonies and
they have sorry Christian character.
Why do they live that way when they
have something that is more valuable than a
million dollars?
Well, there's only one reason some Christians would
only live that way because they just won't
trust the one that gave them the check
to begin with.
They just won't trust the one that gave
them the Bible and if they just learn,
hey, God said in His Word, so whether
I believe it or not, that settles it
because it's the Word of God and if
they were just cashing on the product, hey,
God would change their life.
I'm not talking about God would give everybody
health and wealth, but He'd show you how
to live a victorious Christian life.
He'd show you how to have peace.
He'd show you how to have joy.
He'd show you how you can have assurance.
So God's Word is true.
God's Word has been tried, but, oh, young
person, please understand, God's Word can be, should
be, and needs to be trusted.
Now, with all of that in mind, I
suppose I just can't think of anything more
wonderful than the Word of God.
He said in Joshua 1, 8, this Book
of the Law, not another book, but this
Book of the Law shall not depart out
of thy mouth.
Thou shalt meditate therein day and night.
Thou mayest observe to do according to all
that is written therein.
For then, thou shalt make thy way prosperous,
and then thou shalt have good success.
Let me ask you a question.
Don't answer it out loud.
Answer it in your heart.
Then we pray.
How much do you love the wonderful Word
of God?
Father, thank You so much for this time
that You've given us to share.
Thank You for the Bible.
Thank You for the Word Lord, we could
never thank You enough for a book that
is so marvelous, so supernatural, so dynamic, and
so wonderful.
Thank You for it.
I pray every teenager, boy and girl, teacher
as well, under the sound of my voice,
oh, dear God, help each and every one
of us to love and admire and hold
dear and near to our hearts the precious
truths of the Bible.
Thank You that Your Word is true, 100
% true.
Thank You that Your Word has been tried,
and it showed us through all these trying
times that it stood true and that it's
righteous and that it's truly the living, breathing,
abiding Book of God forever and ever.
And thank You, dear God, most of all,
that Your Word can be trusted and that
we can have victory in Jesus and have
peace and joy and assurance based on not
what people say but based on thus saith
the Lord.
Bless these young people as they go back
to class in Jesus' name.
Amen.