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The Apostle Paul wrote that all scripture is breathed out by God. How does that frame the way we approach and relate to Scripture? Join Reverend Wei as we continue our superficial to spiritual series with this Sunday's focus on Scripture.

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Good morning, Church. The first reading this morning is taken from Psalm chapter 119, verse 105. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. The second reading is taken from the book of 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verses 14 to 17. But as for you, continue in what you have learnt and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learnt it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. All scripture is briefed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

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Church, this morning we are continuing our series on spiritual formation. And this is the second sermon in that series. And I just want to I thought to just kind of start off with this idea of spiritual formation. Whether or not you're Christian, right, we are all spiritually formed. We are spiritual beings. We may have physical bodies, right? But we also have a spirit or a soul or an immaterial center that sort of directs the way we see the world and the way we see ourselves. It directs our choices and our actions. Or what kind of work do we want to get into? What kind of lifestyle do we aspire? What we think uh it impacts what we think are the most important things that give us meaning in life. Right? It impacts the the things that we pursue with this short 80 years or so we have on earth. And we're all spiritually formed by thoughts, by uh ideas, by philosophies in in life, and there are competing views about what life truly is about and what we must pursue for self-fulfillment and self-actualization. And of course, for the Christian, there is something that stands above and beyond these voices and these narratives, right? And that is the Bible for us, which we believe is a unique book that spiritually forms us in a distinctively Christian way. Right? It meets our spiritual formation Christian. But what makes the Bible so unique, right, that it stands above everything else. Uh this morning's scripture reading from 2 Timothy chapter 3, verses 14 to 17 spells out why we hold scripture in such uh in utmost regard. The Bible, of course, is a collection of uh literary works uh written about by about 40 or so human authors and over a span of about 1,500 years. But it is far more than a human work, right? Paul in 2 Timothy 3 calls it sacred writings, and he says that they are breathed out by God, and there's a very important phrase there, breathed out by God. Right? It translates a particular term in Greek, and NIV translated it as God breathed, and ESV says that it is breathed out by God, right? And the main point Paul was trying to get at is that the Bible has a divine origin, right? It is breathed out by God Himself, and therefore sacred for us. And so it has priority and it has the final authority in our lives. Every human wisdom, personal experience, or cultural norm must be measured against the Bible. And so the Bible has the final word on what is right and what is wrong for our lives, right? Much like in an argument between the husband and the wife, normally it's the wife that has the final say, right? The husband sometimes will get the final word if that word is yes, dear, or if that word is sorry, dear, right? Anything else after that is a start of another argument, right? Sorry, that's not gospel truth, by the way. But but but this is, right? The Bible has the final word in our lives. Our faiths, our beliefs, our moral, uh, our values and our characters, right? The choices we make, the actions we take must all be shaped by the word of God, which is our final authority. And from today's scripture, we see that there are broadly three functions of scripture in our lives. And the first one is this salvation. Um, verse 15 tells us the sacred writings are able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Right? Holy scripture contains all things necessary to salvation. It reveals to us the fundamental problem of humanity that plagues each and every one of us, right? Which is our sin and our rebellion against God. That resulted in broken relationships, whether it is with the world, uh, whether it is with God, with the world, with others, or with ourselves, right? We have become spiritually dead and unable to do anything to save ourselves. And so, no matter how much we do, no matter how good we try to be, we are unable to enter the kingdom of God based on our merits. And we are in need of a savior. And so, this is where scripture points us to Jesus Christ, it gives us the wisdom and leads us to salvation, to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, who loves us so much that He came from heaven to take our place on the cross and to die for our sins. And whoever believes in him will not perish and but have eternal life. Right? So scripture is uh scripture contains all things necessary for our salvation, it is sufficient to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. But it doesn't end there. You know, once we are saved, we are caught into a growing and a deepening relationship with God. Right? God doesn't save us and leave us be. The word sanctify means to make holy so that we become set apart for God, right? And he uses his word to sanctify us. And that goes to my uh to the second function of scripture, right? In verse 16, it says, All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for all teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. Uh elsewhere, Paul talks about how the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. So there's a sense that we are already saved, right? On the one hand, but on the other hand, we are still being saved in the sense of being sanctified by God who continues to work out his salvation in our lives, right? Um, and so he says this, um he does it by his word, right? John 17, 17 says this um Jesus tells uh God the Father to sanctify his disciples in the truth. Your word is truth, right? So there's this sense that the word is also used to sanctify our lives, and we need that sanctification, right? We're not called to remain where we are, but to be sanctified so that we may uh continue to grow spiritually and mature. Right? It is like how when astronauts they they they they come back to Earth after spending months out there in space, they have to rehabilitate themselves. Right? We may think it's quite quite nice. I go into space, you're kind of floating in the air, you know, not even air, you're just kind of floating in space, and then there's no stress on your body, and that's great, right? But because there's no stress, because there's no gravity, right, their heart weakens the longer they stay in space. Right, their bone density is diminished because there's no stress on their bone in zero gravity.

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They lose their muscles, they lose their sense of balance. A lot of them, when they come back, they they report that they get dizzy, right? And they lose their coordination. So even though they actually come back down to back to earth, right, um, they are technically not ready yet, so to speak, right? They have to go, they have to go through uh weeks or months of training, even, right, to uh to be rehabilitated. And it's kind of like that for us as Christians, but once when we are saved, right, God continues his work of sanctification, to rehabilitate us, so to speak, to the kingdom values, right? And we are not perfect people, we need uh cleansing from time to time. We need God to continue his sanctifying work in our hearts, right? And that's uh so that's the second function of scripture, right? That God, God's word teaches us his will, right? It reproves or reprimands us when we have gone astray from his will, it corrects us so that now we we turn away from uh from our sinful way and turn back to the right direction. And lastly, it uh trains us in righteousness, that we may walk in God's way and do what is right in his eyes. Right? And so first is salvation, it leads us to salvation, second is it sanctifies us, so sanctification, and third is it reveals to us our vocation here in uh life, right? Verse 17 says that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Uh the Lord saves and he sanctifies us so that we may be complete, uh, which means to be fully prepared to be adequate. Adequate and equipped for the good work that God has prepared for us. So elsewhere in Ephesians 2, um from verse 8 onwards, Paul talks of us about salvation, right? By grace we have been saved through faith. It is not your doing, it is the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no man, no, no one may boast. In verse 8, he goes on to say that we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. God saved us from sin and death, but he saves us for his purposes. Right? And God has a mission in this world, and he has called each of us to participate in it with him. Right? And that calling is God's vocation for us. That's where we get the word vocation from. The calling of God. And so as he equips us with the word, you know, through teaching, through reproof, uh, through correction and through training in righteousness, we uh become we become prepared or become adequate to fulfill his vocational call for our lives. And so when we read scripture, you know, we read about God's grand story in the world, right? Of creation, the fall, of redemption, and the final consummation. We read about God's mission to deal with the sin of humanity and to put the world to rights. We read about God calling a people to be his own, right? Making covenants with them, blessing them, guiding them so that they may fulfill God's purposes by walking closely with the Lord, and so that they may demonstrate God's truth and wisdom. And so, from very young, I think I'm sure many of us have learned about the stories of the different characters in the Bible, right? Like how Father Abraham has many children, how uh Moses, you know, and the the splitting of the Red Sea, about David versus Goliath, about Daniel in the lion's den. Or read about the fishermen, Peter, Andrew, James, and John, who were called to follow Jesus and to become fishes of men. Or read about Saul, who did bad things to Christians until he became Christian himself. And there's a thread running through all these stories and all these characters in the Bible. And that is that God is working out his salvation story, he's working out his mission through the lives of these people who walked with God and who demonstrated God's truth and wisdom. And each of us here today, we are likewise called to do the same, to demonstrate God's truth and wisdom in our lives, right? To show the world and that above all the other voices and noises that offer different ways of thinking about the world, right? Of all the different philosophies and narratives there are out there, there is only one that holds the truth, and that is the word of God. And we show it to the world through our good works, the fruit of our faith in Jesus Christ as we are formed more and more into his likeness. And so uh just a quick summary of these three functions from to this passage to 2 Timothy verses uh chapter 3 verses 14 to 17, we see that the Bible's origin is God. God is the author of scripture, and because of this divine origin, we say that it is the word of God, it is the holy scriptures, and so this scripture has the priority and authority for us, and it's vital for our spiritual formation, for our growth, and for our maturity as disciples of Christ. Right? It is vital for our salvation, it is vital for our sanctification, and it's vital for us to fulfill our vocation from God. And hearing about the nature of scripture and and you know what God does with the His word for us, right? Uh here are some takeaways for us. Uh, there are three for us this morning. And the first one is that we read to hear him speak.

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It may sound like an obvious thing, right? We read to hear him speak. And there are many times we read just because we want to read the Bible or we need to read the Bible because quiet time. We need to actually interact somehow with uh the Bible, right? Or sometimes we study scripture, but more for the sake of studying. More for the sake of, yeah, yeah, what did this person say? What's the historical background, what's the context, what the grammatical uh or the syntax issues here, and so on and so forth, right? Um, you know, reading and studying is important, right? And we all often advise, you know, follow a reading plan or you know read through books of the Bible if you can, follow, you can follow the lectionary reading, you can discuss with your friends, join a Bible study group, and so on. Yeah. But there's something more to reading and studying the Bible just for its own sake, right? Because scripture is not like any other literature that we just study and then we are unaffected by it. I can read Shakespeare, I can read Law of the Rings, and I can generally be unaffected by it. Right? God uses scripture to act on us. Right? And we've just seen how he leads us to salvation, he sanctifies us with his word, he calls us through his word. God uses his word to act on each of us. So that when we read scripture, it is not just us doing something, right? It is also God doing something in us. And so we're not reading scripture just to gain information, gain more knowledge about the Bible. We read to hear God speak. And when God speaks, we can't be left unaffected or unchanged. God seeks to transform us with his very word. Uh, Hebrews chapter 4, verses 12 to 13 tells us this, right? The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. God's word is living and active, and it still speaks to us today. It pierces and he penetrates deep into the innermost depths of our hearts, and he judges our thoughts and our intentions. And so it is when we become open to God that we can allow him to act in us through his word, so that he can correct us, he can teach us, reprove us, and train us, right? So that he can reform our hearts and cause spiritual growth. And so, what does it mean to grow from superficial to spiritual in our reading of scripture?

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That is kind of the tagline of our series, right? From uh superficial to spiritual. And what does it look like? And we might make the mistake of thinking it means delving deeper into scripture at the historical, the grammatical, the literary levels, um, read commentaries, read all the criticisms and so on. Right? And of course, deep dives and in-depth studies are helpful, but they are not the end goal. To put it another way, you can be a scholar of the Bible and yet be superficial in your spirituality. You can be a scholar of the Bible and yet have no spiritual death. And really to approach scripture in a way where it helps us grow, right, is to approach it spiritually, to ask the Holy Spirit to help us. And so the next time we read the Bible, we can start by even saying just a short word of prayer and asking the Spirit to give us true understanding of God's word for us. To ask the Spirit to prepare our hearts and make us receptive and submissive to His word, to how He wants to act in us. To help us to remember that we are called hearers, we are called to be hearers and doers. Right? James has a passage where it says, you know, those those who read the word, hear the word, but don't do the word. It's like those who go to the mirror, look at yourself in the mirror, and then you won't go off and you forget how you look, right? Um we ask the Lord to help us to be both hearers and doers of the word. And so we prayerfully read scripture to understand the Bible more and to ask God to expose our hearts, thoughts, and desires to reform us. And it is kind of scary, but we ask the spirit to surface any issues. We ask the spirit to speak to us through his word. Is there anything that I've gone astray in? Is there anything, Lord, that you want um you want change in? Is there anything that I need reformation? We do all this so that we may not end up reading the Bible and uh become unaffected or unchanged, right? But that our understanding of God will lead to real transformation and real spiritual growth. And that's the first thing, right? We read scripture to hear God speak. Um, the second point that I want to make is kind of from the other verses of uh today's text, which is quite simply to teach your children, right? Verses 14 and 15 has this very interesting detail here, right? Um, Paul writes to Peter, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learn it, and from how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings. Um Paul was taught from childhood, most likely by his grandmother, Louis, and his mother Eunice. Right, Paul tells us in 2 Timothy verses 1 to uh chapter 1 verse 5 that sincere faith dwelt in both these two persons, right? In both in Louis, the grandmother, and Eunice the mother. And now it is evidently in Timothy as well, right? The sincere faith that was in Lewis and Eunice is now in Timothy. Timothy also. Scripture has so formed them spiritually that very they they very naturally taught it to young Timothy so that his life was also shaped by scripture since uh childhood. God's word is not just for the grown-up, it's not just for those who can read or comprehend and understand. Right? It is for children as well. In fact, Deuteronomy 6 tells the people to teach the word of God diligently to your children. And so we can tell biblical stories, we can have conversations about God and about who our children are in Him. And we can demonstrate biblical truths with our words, with our actions, so that our children may learn to live a life shaped by God's transformative word. And to the young ones, the the children here, the the youths here, right? God wants to speak to you too. Right? You're not left out because you are too young and can't do much. God has a plan, has a purpose for you too. And He calls each and every one of you to learn and to dwell in His word. And you're never too young to take God's word seriously. And I pray that you may encounter God and hear him speak whenever you read His word. And the third and last point for us this morning is this to trust in God's word to guide our path. I mean, on the outside, I've said, you know, there are all these competing voices and philosophies, and they promote a different kind of wisdom for life.

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And the reality is that sometimes we wonder if the way of scripture is really the right way. We fear losing out. We fear missing out on life because we have decided to follow what the Bible teaches. And we sometimes have to wrestle with God's calling for our lives as well, right? Wrestle with the good works that He has called us to. What if I have to sacrifice my careers and my ambitions because of God's vocation for me? Our other reading this morning is from Psalm 119, verse 105. A very, very familiar and popular uh verse for all of us, I'm sure. It reminds us to put our faith in God's word. Your word is a lamb unto my feet and a light to my path. Right? And the lamb in the past is just a small little fire, a small little flame, right? And it doesn't light up much, right? But it lights up enough for us to see the next few steps. Which is kind of scary, right? But think of it this way we may not know entirely what the future holds for us, but we know who holds the future. We don't know what will happen if we give up things to follow God. But we can trust and rely on his word to guide us one step at a time. We can have faith that because he created us for his purposes, whatever our future may be, he truly holds it and will lead us to a life that is abundant and fulfilling. And during my time in seminary, I've you met many people who uh actually give out like lucrative jobs uh and careers to serve God full time. Um one of them had to uh told us they had to he had to prepare his family. They used to go to holidays quite often, right? But once he said he told his family, okay, Papa is gonna do this, right? I'm gonna go into full time now. After I do that, you know, we're gonna have to cut down on our vacation, right? Which must have been a travesty to the children. Ah, cut down vacation, you're crazy, right? Um but that was the sacrifice he was willing to make. And if we if we were at church camp two years ago, you would have heard Archdeacon Wong Talk Min's story as well about how he heard God's call and gave up his illustrious career to serve him. As we engage with God through scripture, as we read the word to hear him speak, right? Sometimes he may call us to into uncharted territories, right? It may not, it may not be full-time, right? Uh God may be calling you to some other vocation, right? Um, most of us will be probably be called to some other vocation and not an actual full-time ministry, right? Whatever it is, it will likely be a place where you never thought you would go. To do things you never planned for yourself. And your instinct may be to shrink away. But we remember where God is leading us. He is leading us to an abundance of joy and of flourishing that we can never hope to achieve on our own. And we may not see that now, but we can know we can trust in his word: a lamb to our feet and a light to our path. So, church, as we approach God in his word, may we do so humbly. May we ask the Spirit to search our souls and to allow God's word to pierce into our hearts and reform us. May we become more able to pass on the faith that dwells in us to our children. May we be equipped and resolved to do God's good works in calling for our lives.

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We pray that you've been ministered to by the Word of God today. If you'd like to know more about each Christian church, please visit our website at yccanglicant.com. Have a blessed day.