A Disciple is Biblical
“We will bury you!” Nikita Khrushchev, the Premier of the Soviet Union said that about America at the height of the Cold War. He went on to say “I can prophesy that your grandchildren in America will live under socialism. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side.” Well, that was 1957. But this is 1989. The year that the Communist Party of Hungary voted itself out of existence. The year that the people of Poland elected a non-Communist government. The year that the Berlin Wall became an open border. And the year that the winds of change blew like a hurricane through the Communist world from the Kremlin to the Brandenburg Gate. This has been perhaps the most momentous year of the 20th century.
How fascinating to watch as the followers of Marx and Lenin abandon their once mighty movement as it is more and more apparent with every passing day that Communism just doesn’t work. It’s bankrupt - literally and figuratively. But how ironic for the thousands upon thousands of Party members around the world - the disciples of Communism - to discover that the cause to which they have given their allegiance, the ideas that they so zealously embraced, the writings that they have revered and memorized, have turned out to be disappointing lies.
But sooner or later this is what happens when people put their trust in the ideas of great men, and not in God. Any human document, however great, be it Das Kapital or the American Constitution, can never take the place of the Bible. Because the Bible is the Word of God - the God who made us. And if you want to be a man or woman who knows what life is all about and how to live it, you must become a man or woman of the Bible.
We have been studying a portion of the Bible that deals with discipleship. It is the book of 2 Timothy, and in it, we have discovered that a disciple is one who is a follower of Jesus Christ. We’ve learned that a disciple of Jesus Christ is one whose life is being worked on by the Spirit of God. Day by day, as we willingly submit to the leading of the Spirit, our lives are developed and changed in certain very positive ways. God is interested in building several characteristics in us that will equip us to live as His people.
We’ve learned that God wants to give his followers courage. We’ll need that because we live in a world that often singles us out, ridicules us, and even persecutes us for being Christians.
We’ve learned that God wants to give us inner discipline - the ability to get our priorities straight like a soldier, our will submitted like an athlete, and our purpose focused like a farmer. Without discipline, we’ll never be able to follow God effectively and really make our life count for Him.
We’ve learned that God wants to give us durability. God often brings suffering into our lives to build this quality in us.
We’ve learned that God wants us to be pure. Pure in the way we handle the Word, pure in the company we keep, pure in the way we have our physical appetites under control, and pure in the way we deal with the people who give us a hard time in life.
We’ve learned that God wants His people to be set apart. The Bible tells us that we are living in the last days and because we are, there are people all around us doing things that we shouldn’t be doing. So we’ll have to be willing to be different if we want to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
We’ve learned that God wants His people to be models to others. Our lives as followers of Jesus Christ will have a real impact on people if they see that the way we live really measures up to what we say we believe. If they don’t sense that we are people of integrity, they’ll reject the message we stand for, because we don’t practice what we preach.
Now this week, we want to look at another quality that is essential for a follower, a disciple of Jesus Christ. It is something very simple and yet very necessary. Without it, you cannot be a disciple.
It is that if you want to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, you need to be a person of the Bible - you need to be Biblical. In the passage we read earlier, Paul gives us the reasons for this. There are three reasons:
1. The Bible is a book that has a special power
2. The Bible is a book written by a special person.
3. The Bible is a book that has a special purpose.
1. The Bible is a book that has a special power
2 Timothy 3:14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
Timothy was a young man whose mother and grandmother were godly women. They taught him the Scriptures from childhood. And what were those Scriptures able to do? They were able to make Timothy wise for salvation. They led him to put his faith and trust in the person of Jesus Christ.
Now at the time Paul wrote this, there was no New Testament. The Bible simply consisted of the part we now call the Old Testament, or more properly, the Hebrew Scriptures. This is what Timothy learned at his mother’s knee. He learned about Moses and Joshua, he heard the stories about David and Samson and Abraham. He knew all about how the Israelites escaped from Egypt with God’s help, and how they settled in the Promised Land. How they turned away from God and were exiled from that land, but how God in His goodness and mercy brought a remnant of them back.
But the most important thing Timothy learned from the Hebrew Scriptures was that there was a Messiah coming - one who could save people from their sin and make them right in the sight of God. Timothy learned that all the sacrifices spoken of in the Torah couldn’t really cover sin - that they were mere shadows of the sacrifice of one perfect substitute who would take away sin for all time. And Timothy learned that the Messiah wasn’t just for Jews. He was for Gentiles too. It must have been important for him to know that, because Timothy was the son of a Gentile father.
Then one day when the Apostle Paul showed up in Lystra, Timothy’s home town, preaching that the Messiah, Jesus Christ had come, Timothy recognized that what he was saying was true. This Jesus fulfilled all the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah. And so Timothy put his faith in Him.
People don’t get saved unless they put their faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior. And they can’t put their faith in Jesus Christ unless they know what the Bible says about Him. That is why the Bible alone is able to make us wise unto salvation. We don’t get saved by having a religious experience. We don’t get saved by doing good works. We don’t get saved by seeing a vision of God. We get saved by understanding and responding to what the Bible says about our Savior. This is why it says that the Scriptures are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
The Bible is a book that has that special power because
2. The Bible is a book written by a special person.
2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed
The word that is used in Greek means literally that - Scripture is the breath of God. It is the voice of God. It is the Word of God. It came out of His mouth. Scripture came to us via human authors, to be sure, but it originated with God. The Bible itself talks about how this occurred. There is a very important passage in 2 Peter which says
2 Peter 1:20-21 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. This is what we mean when we talk of the inspiration of Scripture. It means that God wrote the Bible and He used human authors to do it.
Think of it! This book that we hold in our hands is from the mouth of God. It is His Word to us. That is why it is able to make us wise unto salvation. Because God wrote it.
Now you might be sitting there saying “Well, why should we believe that the Bible is the Word of God just because it says it is?” After all, couldn’t anyone write a book that claims to be the Word of God? And when you think of it, many other books make a similar claim - the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Urantia Book, the Upanishads - the list is endless of books that claim to have come from the mouth of God. Why believe the Bible? What makes the Bible so unique?
Well, to begin with, the Bible is a book that is actually a collection of books - 66 in all. Various human authors wrote it:
• Moses: a political leader with an Egyptian university education
• Peter: a rough–hewn Galilean fisherman
• Amos: a herdsman
• Joshua: a military general
• Nehemiah: an official in the court of a Persian king
• Daniel: a Babylonian prime minister
• Luke: a Greek doctor
• Solomon: a Hebrew king
• Matthew: a tax–collector
• Paul: a Jewish Rabbi
They wrote in different locations:
• Moses in a desert wilderness on the Sinai Peninsula
• Jeremiah in a dungeon in Israel
• Daniel in a palace in Mesopotamia
• Luke while traveling in Asia and Europe
• John on a remote island in the Mediterranean
• Paul in Rome
They wrote at different times:
• David in times of war
• Solomon in times of peace
• Moses in times of wandering
• Nehemiah in times of rebuilding
• Ezekiel in times of exile
They wrote in various moods:
• heights of joy
• depths of despair
They wrote on 3 continents: Asia, Africa, Europe
They wrote in 3 languages: Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic
They wrote over a period of 1,600 years.
In spite of all that, the Bible is a unified book, with a unified theme, and a unified message. It doesn’t contradict itself. I have given thousands of hours to the study of the Bible over a period of 18 years, and I have yet to find a single instance of inconsistency or error in this book.
What’s more, the Bible is historically reliable. There has never been an archaeological discovery that has refuted any detail of the Bible. Although there have been many instances where scholars have felt that the Bible was incorrect, later discoveries have always shown the Bible to have been historically accurate and the scholars to be the ones who were wrong!
These are just some of the reasons why I believe that the Bible is the Word of God. When it says “this is the Word of the Lord”, and it does so over 3800 times, that is no empty boast. The Bible has the credentials to back up that claim.
We have learned that the Bible is a book that has a special power - it is able to make us wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus - because the Bible is a book that was written by a special person - it is the Word of God. And finally,
3. The Bible is a book that has a special purpose.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
The purpose of the Bible is to equip us for living. It teaches us what to do and how to live. It rebukes us when our feet stray from the path. It corrects us by helping us get back on track. And it trains us in righteousness by showing us how to stay on the path. The simple fact is that if you want to be a man or woman of God, you have to become a man or woman of the Word. There is no alternative. There is no substitute.
The Bible has all the answers to life. Whatever your situation, the Bible has a relevant message for you. When people come into my office to talk about their problems, we turn to the Bible for help. When I go into a hospital room to minister to the sick, I read them the Bible. When I preach at somebody’s funeral, and wonder what I can possibly say to people who are grieving, I find comfort for them in the Bible. When I help young couples prepare for marriage, I try to help them build a foundation for their marriage on the Bible. It’s no wonder, then, that Paul said to Timothy “Preach the Word!”
If you want your life to really count for the Lord, you’re going to have to become a Biblical person - one to whom the Bible is the source of truth and wisdom. One who looks to the Bible for help in daily living. This is what I mean when I say that a disciple is biblical. I think you’ll find, if you spend some time in the Bible each day, that your life will start to become a lot more satisfying, that you’ll have resources of wisdom and strength, stamina and joy that you never had before. Because you’ll be getting into a book that has a special power; a book written by a very special person; and a book that has a special purpose - namely, to help you live your life the way it was meant to be lived.
A disciple is courageous
A disciple is disciplined
A disciple is durable
A disciple is pure
A disciple is set apart
A disciple is a model
A disciple is biblical