2 Timothy 3, verses 16 and following. Let us listen attentively to the Word of God. 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 complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Let us pray. Herein, Lord, as we read this well-known passage amongst ourselves and Protestants in history, that we would learn thereby anew what God we have been taught, I’m sure, most of our lives as we were Christians. And if it is indeed new, to that extent, God may we be encouraged to embrace the truth herein.
And in all this, that your name would be glorified through the instruction here, and that the saints would be edified and strengthened and equipped to trust and depend upon you through the Word of God. For it is only through here we learn of Christ and the good news of Christ and salvation and of the gospel. And thus, it is precious to us.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, may your name be glorified in our honoring of the Word of God. Amen. We now come to the most well-known, one of the most well-known in our circles, in beloved passages.
In short order, as we progress through the book of 2 Timothy, as Paul often does, theological riches are poured out from the pen of the apostle. He’s not writing a theological treatise where he breaks down every subject matter by logical category and gives proper definitions like he would in a science class or systematic theology, but rather it’s tied to practical matters at hand. Now Timothy here, in particular, needs to stand firm in the truth that was taught to him as a child.
But you must continue, in the things that you have learned, Paul writes to Timothy, and be assured of knowing that from whom you have learned them and from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which is able to make you wise unto salvation, which is in Christ Jesus. And so, naturally, Paul pivots from here to the Bible because he talked about it. This is the knowledge of Jesus and of salvation that Timothy grew up with.
Paul first directs Timothy to his past where he learned the Holy Scriptures, these holy words of salvation of Christ. And from here the apostle lays down why Timothy, and indeed all of us to this day, can depend upon this Holy Scripture, to learn of Jesus and of salvation, because they are given and inspired by God Almighty. This is Timothy’s sure foundation for his belief in Jesus Christ.
It is not his mother or her words as such, but to the extent that she was faithfully describing and teaching and applying the Word of God to young Timothy, founded upon the revelation of the written word. And that’s where we find our hope as well. Let us see why.
All Scripture is given, all Scripture given, excuse me, is inspired by God. All Scripture that is given is inspired by God, the first point.
All Scripture Given is Inspired by God
Because God, of course, is the source of all truth.
And that’s divided two ways. Natural or general revelation, as it’s called in systematic theology, to describe that which we know of our Lord in heaven above, of the Creator God. Psalm 19, heaven is declared the glories of the Lord.
So this is everywhere. The unbeliever knows it’s written on his heart and it’s written in creation. The thumbprint, as it were, of God upon all things shows that there is a God, that He is just, that He is good.
This is general revelation. Everyone has it. That’s the foundational understanding of Christian theology, that we are talking about the same thing and the same universe created by God and all points to Him.
Not to salvation as such. We do not know how to be saved by looking at creation. We know that there is a Creator and this is impressed upon our souls as well.
And then the other way of understanding the will of God, of finding the will of God, is special revelation or supernatural revelation. It’s particular. It’s specific here.
Anything bypassing natural revelation and adding to that is this supernatural or special revelation, particularly the spoken word, voices from heaven, angels and prophets talking to men about things they could not find out otherwise unless God told them through the mouth of these men. And of course the written word, which came from, many from prophets or apostles, like in the New Testament, who were already saying holy things and writing them down. And the writing them down, God in His superintending providence, kept them all together and we have the word of God today.
It’s formally here written for us. And the substance of what Paul is writing here when he says all scripture is given by inspiration of God, the substance is the Old Testament. That’s what he’s talking about.
There isn’t a New Testament yet. It’s being written as he’s writing. Although one of the later books, 2 Timothy here, they hadn’t all been collected yet.
We know of. He had written other things. There’s apparently a 3 Corinthians, for example.
We don’t know where that is. God doesn’t want us to have access to it. What we have is sufficient.
They wrote other things and other letters. And at the time, it’s of course unclear to what extent they knew what they were writing would be for us, posterity. Certainly, he was in the moment, as we are, if we write letters to people and concerns and helping them, as he was here, and drilling into and dealing with these problems.
But God so directed it for us today. But Paul has in mind, particularly the Old Testament, that Timothy grew up and learned about Jesus Christ without the Gospels. The first four books of the New Testament.
He had the Gospel in the Old Testament. It wasn’t as clear. It wasn’t as precise as we understand it today, to be sure.
But it was enough that he could say that you have wisdom. It makes you wise, verse 15, for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus as a young Jew growing up. But of course, the Lord knew what he was doing.
And he gave us the New Testament, basically telling us the Old Testament is good, but I’m going to give you more. More understanding, more revelation, more grace, because they go hand in hand. So formally here, he’s speaking of the Old Testament.
But materially, he’s speaking of anything written down by God is inspired by him. And that, of course, would include the New Testament, what the apostles did. They were what? Sent by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to give further instruction in accordance to the Great Commission of the New Testament era.
And their words were God’s words, like the prophets of old had God’s words upon their lip, by the power of the Holy Spirit. So it’s given by God, this very God who gives us the Old Testament and eventually the New Testament as time progresses in history. And he did what? All scripture is given by inspiration of God.
Inspiration, or the word is literally in the Greek, God breathed. We don’t want to translate it expire. That sounds terrible in English.
That’s the idea of speaking out. In English, we have inspiring. But that’s where we are.
It’s inspired directly from God. Without his mouth, if he had a mouth, breathe forth the very words that we have here. Because, of course, God is a spirit and has not a mouth or a body like a man.
And yet this imagery is clearly very precise. It’s an interesting and unique word and clear that it’s got the authority of God behind it. It’s not just whatever man thought and threw together.
He doesn’t say all scripture is given by the inspiration of mere men and prophets, but looks beyond the instrumental means, the human means that God used to put the Bible together. He used humans. And behind that was God himself as he superintends and guides all things for the good of his people.
And it’s important to understand this doctrine that it’s from God, it’s directed by God, it’s the truth of God. Because if we don’t have this in our theology, in our life, in our belief as Christians, we’re not going to take the Bible very seriously. It happened.
You’ll hear a little bit about it, I think, in the next couple weeks in our Presbyterian debates and the Auburn affirmation of 1923 or thereabouts, in which they didn’t take the inspiration of Bible very seriously. It’s just one of many theories in the Presbyterian church. They’re opening the door to all kinds of chaos, as we are living proof of this three generations later, because they would not take the Word of God at face value as divine, as significant, as infallible even, that is without error.
1 Peter 1.21 gives us an idea of how this is the case. How is this inspired by God? Paul does not give us the particulars here. He just basically lays out this truth for Timothy to encourage him to take seriously the Word of God.
It’s not just some letter by a holy high priest or someone you take seriously, like your parents or your spouse, but God himself. How? 1 Peter 1.21, for prophecy, he writes, never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. That’s how we have the Bible today.
Peter is describing more carefully what is implied in Paul’s description here of the Bible, the Holy Writ, the Holy Scriptures, as inspired. God breathed. He did it through instrumental means of men.
This was taught in the churches for a long time. It wasn’t hashed out as much until the early 1900s and even into later parts of the 1900s about inspiration and the fallibility of the Word of God. Because again, the liberals within the church, these people who don’t take the Word of God seriously, would say, yeah, I believe these things.
Sure, the Spirit moved men, but these men are fallible. And so what they wrote probably had some errors in it. So whenever you bring up a truth, unbelief finds some way to finagle it.
And find an excuse to make some kind of doubt and carve out a space of error somewhere. And thus the church always has to fight and stand firm every generation to renew to themselves what God has taught. But it’s important to understand that if we believe God is omnipotent, God is omnipresent, God is immutable, He makes no errors, then of course if He’s using men, in spite of their errors, the truth gets through.
That is the errors in their mind. What they wrote was not error. What is there is infallible and true, as only God can so direct fallen men to bring about the truth.
If you don’t believe in that kind of God, your whole system falls apart. The sovereignty of God is very significant for Christianity. And I hope we see that here in the doctrine of inspiration.
How can we know we have the Word of God if God isn’t superintending? Remember the language of the Continental Congress of 1776, I read in Sunday school class, using the language of Calvinism, not once but twice, believing that God’s behind all things. If you don’t believe that, then you’re going to be living in fear and doubt all your whole life. It’s scary.
Because Satan’s very powerful. And wicked men are very powerful compared to us. But no, we can rest in confidence here that He, because He is our God, preserves such things and the Word in particular for us.
In fact, God chose His prophets and chose the apostles and guided and molded their lives such that where they were born, the influence upon them, their families, their instruction was by His hand. So that they could write these things and learn them. I know that the Pharisees made fun of the disciples that these are, quote, unlearned men.
They didn’t mean that they didn’t have any instruction. They just meant they are not like us. We’re the elite, right? Of course, they knew how to read and write.
They did it. We can read about it. We have their letters.
But they just didn’t have the kind of instruction that they thought they should have. But God so designed it that way. These men learn how to read and write.
They could have been someone who didn’t know how to read and write, and God could have still done it. But He works through the means of providence, cause and effect. You’re not going to have a letter unless you know how to write.
You can’t learn how to write unless you have a teacher. You can’t have a teacher unless you’re born by a family who cares about you being instructed in reading and writing. And all of the piece goes together.
All the moving parts. God guided and superintended. That’s what that word means.
Not just overseas in general. That was my job as the principal at school, at homeschool. I just kind of looked at it in general, made sure things are going along.
I wasn’t getting down to the nitty-gritty. God’s in the nitty-gritty. Spirit moved men of old to write these things, so that we can have confidence that Jesus is Lord and our Savior.
It’s the foundation of the Christian life. We cannot hear God’s good news in any other way than the Word of God. The heavens declare the glory of God, but they do not declare the salvation of our Lord and Savior.
You cannot find it in general or natural revelation. What you’ll find is what? Judgment. Romans 1 tells us that they know that there’s a God, that He’s a wrathful God against their wickedness, and they suppress the truth and unrighteousness.
They don’t want to face it face-to-face. The Bible declares the good news for us. And if Paul writes here, all Scripture, not some or the ones I like or a canon within a canon, sometimes people talk about, well, this is the real part of the Bible, and the other parts, not sure why it’s there.
It’s an appendage. Usually, that’s the Old Testament when those errors come along. Or the red-letter edition, not inherently wrong, right, where you have the words of Christ in red.
But if you have people who aren’t instructed, they might think that’s more significant than other parts of the Bible. It’s all God-breathed. It’s as though Christ was writing these words.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. That’s the kind of authority this has. It’s not just Paul.
It’s God, the Spirit, working through Paul. And it’s all of the Bible, old and new alike. Jesus, Paul, they quote what? Vast portions of the Old Testament.
They quote Deuteronomy. They quote Isaiah. They quote the Psalms.
Peter does it. James does it. It’s there because they believe that the Old Testament was given by God in such a way that it’s God’s own letter to us.
And, of course, the New Testament as well, because we have the apostles. And it’s preserved. I mentioned a little bit about this, and I want to say a little bit more about the preservation and history of the Word of God for us.
There are many more writings of the Church Fathers quoting sections of Scripture. There are so much of the early Church Fathers, right? Late 100s into the 200s. So John the Apostle probably died in the 90s thereabout, A.D., just before 100 A.D. And then Justin, Martyr, and others are like 130 and thereon.
You take all their writings and their quotes of the Scriptures, we can reconstruct virtually the entire New Testament from their writings alone. It was already there. It was already there.
The Word of God was complete from the beginning. So contrary to the likes of the Roman Catholic Church who say, well, the Church put the canon together. And the canon was already there.
We’re just now acknowledging it with our councils because unbelief comes in and says, well, that’s not the Word of God. We’re like, okay, let’s help the saints. And one way you help the saints is you gather together as a church leadership and you tell them, this is the Word of God.
The Roman Catholic Church says, we created the Word of God. We made the canon. No.
The canon was already there. Canon is the official collection of books that’s declarative and authoritative for the Christians. The Old Testament has been more accurately transmitted to us than any other ancient writing of comparable age.
The textual evidence is greater for both the Old and New Testament together than any other reliable ancient document that we know of. So Aristotle’s work, for example, he has apparently 49 copies of his original works. We have like 5,000 copies.
It just was spread everywhere. It spread quickly. God preserved it and spread it around all across the Mediterranean there.
Homer’s Iliad has 643 copies and they have about 95% accuracy between the copies. So there’s fairly significant, I mean, in terms of 5%, not the Bible. No comparison.
Nothing is like the Bible historically. Unbelievers recognize this. It is so accurate.
And of course, it’s without error, as I said before. It is the very words of God and there is no factual error. People confuse some things and call it a factual error when they are usually something along the lines of a phenomenological, we call it, description.
We say the sun rises and sets. And if we write this down and people read it 1,000 years from now, they’re going to be like, oh, they believe the sun rises and sets. Or the more humble of them will say, well, that’s just the way they spoke.
We know what they meant by that language. They’re not lying. It’s not a factual error as such.
It’s the way of speaking. And that’s how humans are. We have things that we say.
Idioms, usually they’re called. A combination of words that don’t really mean what they say on the surface. One of my favorite ones, I was shooting a breeze yesterday with my family.
You were doing what? Just talking and having a relaxing time. You don’t take the words. So they misunderstand how to read the Bible, frankly.
It’s just on one level, it’s human literature. God used human language talking to you. And so you have to take, and unbelievers can do this, and they have done this, know how to read epistles, know how to read history books, know how to read prophetic books.
There’s lots of imagery that you don’t take literally. And you read it by context, all of that. You can be taught all those tools.
Of course, you won’t believe it unless you have what? The Holy Spirit to wake up your heart to say, I believe it. Even though I can exegete it without the Holy Spirit as a word, that is, explain it and say that’s the words. I just don’t believe it.
That’s how God designed it. It’s a wonderful thing in many ways. So you may, of course, disagree over what the text means.
But having disagreements is not evidence that there’s not purity and infallibility of the word of God. I mean, we have debates over the Constitution. No one runs around and says, well, therefore, what’s the point of having a Constitution? It’s just full of error all the time.
No. Men have error, and men confuse and fight, and sometimes it’s just basic ignorance. So there’s no factual error.
There’s no doctrinal or teaching error. It is perfect because God is perfect, and He guided it by His Spirit. And so we have confidence.
And therefore, it is morally binding in a way that my preaching from the pulpit is not morally binding. The moral authority I have is secondarily granted by the church, so a human institution, outwardly speaking, in which you more or less trust the authorities to examine the minister. And he’s done a good job, and we kind of trust him.
It’s an implicit trust, in that sense. We do this with our parents. We do this with employers.
We do this with people in our lives. But the word of God, if I preach against that, if I say something in gross error, contrary to the word of God, listen to the word, not to me, that’s the difference. It is morally binding.
The fact that Jesus, the second member of the Trinity, when tempted by that old serpent, the devil. Remember, in the desert, three temptations, and how does Christ counter the lies of the devil? You would think, perhaps, hey, Jesus, the Son of God, thus says me. I’m going to tell you, you’re wrong, devil.
But what does Jesus do instead? He quotes the Bible. Think about that. How incredible that is.
How much he is, therefore, honoring his own word, for us to follow that example. If Christ is going to use the Bible, we better be using the Bible. And so, it is morally binding upon us.
All Scripture Given is Profitable
All scripture is profitable, the second point. So, he says, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. From that truth comes the next truth, and it’s profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction, and then the third point, that the man of God may be complete, or mature, and equipped.
The Bible is profitable. Of course, that doesn’t mean that word, it’s translating a Greek word often, a New Testament, you run across this, it doesn’t mean making money in the market, or anything like that, the best guide for your job, or something like that. But rather, it is useful.
It is profitable, spiritually, or morally speaking, for your life. You want to become more like Jesus? Know your Bible. It is profitable for your soul, is the idea here.
Belief that the Bible is God’s word to his people means that he designed it for our good. He didn’t write it for himself, brothers and sisters. He gave it to us, to his church, so we wouldn’t be left in the dark.
And he wrote as much here through the pen of Paul in 2 Timothy 3. Now, the four words used here, I’ll go over, for doctrine, or teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. For teaching, doctrine, as we talked a little bit about this morning in Sunday School class, and the division between the new school and the old school in 1837 of the Presbyterians. Doctrine, and careful teaching, and the like, sometimes an ugly or a dirty word in American circles, American Christian circles.
They don’t like that. It takes too much precision. When the Puritans were mocked, not only morally speaking, they were called Puritans.
It wasn’t a term of endearment. That’s not what they meant. We would say, goody two-shoes today.
But they were also known as precisionists. Why are you so precise with the word of God? Why are you so careful in handling the truth therein? I mean, just saying that, you kind of hear it like, well, dude, you just answered your own question. If you believe it’s inspired, if it’s God speaking to you, you want to be careful with it.
And just like you’d be careful with any letter given to you by your grandparents, your parents, or your loved one that has important instructions for you, important sentiments of love and care for you. How much more are God’s very words for us? And so, teaching here, Paul, many passages, as you know, over and over again, Paul hammers the importance of instruction by example as well. Paul, in his letters, often brings up doctrine.
Here, as a letter, talks about doctrine. These very verses is giving you teaching, giving us teaching today and instruction. For Paul, it’s the heartbeat of the Christian faith.
Without knowledge of the Bible, how can anyone be saved? You can’t. Without instruction of the truth, you wouldn’t know about this verse. We need it.
It’s foundation to the mission of the church by Jesus Christ himself, Matthew 28, 19. Matthew 28, 19, you recognize this? Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I’ve commanded you. It’s the demand and command of Jesus to the church as a whole, and of course, the church officers who carry that out in a public, formal fashion, to teach or instruct, to preach truth, doctrine, and the word of God.
The Bible has much truth, and we should therefore want to learn and grow thereby and not live in darkness and ignorance. And in learning thereby such things, we can teach one another and help one another. It’s not just for your sake that God has given you the truth, but for those around you as well.
So that’s just a short overview here of how it’s profitable. It’s profitable to give us truth for doctrine, for teaching. That’s all that means.
And for reproof and for correction, these two words are similar in many ways. Now ask yourself, who likes reproof and correction? It strikes at our pride. I don’t want to hear it.
You don’t want to hear it. And yet, we need to hear it. God has given it to us.
We have things within us and without us physically, our body, or spiritually, that we don’t like. But we need to hear about it. Like the testing I had, by God’s grace, it came out good, but I had to go to the doctor after many years and get something.
And you do the same thing. You know you need to have that correction from the doctor, because you’re not doing your diet or your exercise or whatever the case is. And we know that living in ignorance can be embarrassing.
I didn’t know that in public. You’re like, I never taught that. I didn’t grow up with this knowledge.
And you kind of feel ashamed about it. All the more the word of God. We should know these things as we grow as Christians, more and more, day by day, as best we are able.
And so the Bible does simply that. What we expect in anything else in life, some kind of correction, some kind of reproof, because we want to grow as a human being, just a citizen, and have more knowledge of whatever we need to know to vote better, whatever the case is. All the more, it’s a spiritual truth for our soul.
We must learn the Bible. And that’s where teaching comes in. Teaching wouldn’t actually slide into the idea of reproof and correction.
That’s wrong. This is right. This is the word of God.
This is the gospel. This is Jesus Christ, who is the Holy Spirit, what’s the Trinity, all that can be used not just for head knowledge, you need to have that shouldn’t be ignorant, but to also direct and guide you both negatively, these are more negative terms in the sense of that’s bad, right reproof and correction. You need that.
Kids need it, you need it. The Bible brings direction, both moral truth and moral practice for us in these things. And it’s important to learn these things.
And so the light shines in darkness, the darkness did not like it. We read that in John one, by God’s grace, the spirit within us, we get uncomfortable. Yes, but we want to hear it.
If we’re his people, we want to hear the truth, and nothing but the truth. And of course, it points to a better life.
All Scripture Given is for Maturation
And that’s the third, the fourth point here, or third, I put reproof and correction together.
For instruction in righteousness, the Bible is profitable for teaching for correction, this is wrong. And here, lastly, for instruction in righteousness, this is an interesting word as well. It’s almost technical at times, it means correction with direction.
The word of God isn’t just slap your hand, that’s bad. But also, this is good. This is the way you ought to travel as a believer down the path of holiness.
And of course, that’s how we learn isn’t just the bad part, this is wrong, but also the good part. This is right, this is the way to live better as a child, as an adult, as a citizen of this world as a Christian. We need this in all parts of our life.
It’s the wrong direction, it’s the right direction, we want to hear these things. And so that’s what this last word emphasizes, is correction with direction. The Bible brings this direction both with respect to instruction and teaching, as well as practice, both what we believe and what we do.
We need both of those for the Christian life. And it therefore teaches us who this God is not, that’s the correction, and who He is, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Blessed, three in one. And it helps us therefore to walk down the path of holiness all the more with our Lord and Savior.
And our Savior Himself gives us an example in His own ministry, and the apostles followed this, and the pastors today should follow as well, that He taught, that was His number one tool. He opened His mouth and waters of living life came forth. But He also corrected and reproved them, His own disciples even, privately as we know, sometimes publicly.
You can imagine they were embarrassed at times. And He also pointed them the right path by His own example, and of course by His words. All scripture is given, I use the word here maturation, because that’s the idea here, verse 17, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
The word that emphasizes, in order that. Why is the Bible profitable for us? Well, through these means or these objects of tools of reproof, it teaches us and instructs us to what end? Why all this stuff? In order that the man of God, that you, brothers and sisters, who are of God, may be complete or thoroughly equipped. He’s being emphatic here.
And I use the word mature to cover the whole idea. You need and have what you have by God’s Spirit, that you can be more like Jesus. It is suited and fitted for the goal at hand the Bible is.
And the world laughs at it. You need to take the Bible seriously. Why do you need the Bible? Why don’t you just go to college? Why don’t you just get a trade and learn all these things, talk to some wise man, go talk to a Buddha, as they do out East, in Eastern culture, that’s a wise man.
We don’t, they have their place to be sure, not Buddha, but wise men with respect to the things of this world. They may know politics better than you. They may know economics better than you.
They do not know the word of God. They don’t know your soul and what it means to be brought to heaven and redemption through Christ. That is found in the word of God.
The Bible is fitted to equip you therein to be thoroughly equipped for every good work. And I already talked about this in the prior sermon. The Bible is not a geography book.
You got to grab a geography book to figure out where Jerusalem is, where Nineveh is. That’s not what it’s here for. It’s here for the saving of your soul, for your sanctification, for your growth.
And that’s the point of this passage here. Paul isn’t going in that direction as some do in some circles. Rather, as our history, the best of our history recognizes, it’s here for us for every good work that being born again by the Spirit and justified by faith in Christ alone is significant, important, and only found in the word of God.
You can’t save yourself in ignorance. You must find Christ in the Bible. And from that, you can and could be by the Spirit of God, born again, justified, adopted, and sanctified.
And that’s the emphasis here. Sanctified. We are not sanctified to nothing, to no purpose.
Sanctified just simply means to be set aside. Another word for that is holy. Another word for that is godly.
Set aside morally with respect to the world. To take God’s law seriously in our hearts. And we can do that by the power of the Holy Spirit within us.
And so therefore, although not saved by good works or through our sincerity and how hard we try to get to heaven, but we are saved unto good works. Ephesians 2.10 tells us this. From the foundation of the world, God had ordered all these things, these good works, for us to walk therein.
So the Bible is here to help us to walk therein, thoroughly equipped for every good work. The Bible is here to help guide us in that way. And the greatest of all these good works is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
And that’s not an abstraction, but it’s accomplished in the here and now by what? Faith, working through love, and a life of holiness and obedience. Saved unto good works. And the Bible’s here for us.
God is good, and we know that because He gave us His word. Let us take it and learn it. Learn the word in our family readings, repetition, perhaps some research and cross-references.
Teach the word, although you’re not a formal teacher as such in the church, but you know some things other people do not. You can talk to one another, especially your kids. You have your own family to look after, and your grandkids.
Live the word of God by His grace and encouraging one another in this regard. Get multiple copies of the Bible if you can. We’re a rich society now.
A Bible that is God-breathed, salvation-oriented, and profitable for godliness. Let us meditate upon these truths. Let us act upon them by the Spirit of God, and let us read the Bible as a letter from our dear Lord, a letter of love for us, a letter of how to live in light of that love.
Let us pray. We praise and bless you, Lord, that you did not leave us in darkness, but brought Adam and his posterity out of darkness by the gospel of Jesus Christ and the gospel promise therein, revealed from the special revelation of your own mouth from heaven, as it were, that Lord God also written down ultimately for our sake and for our good. We’re thankful for this, Lord, that we have the written Bible and that we are blessed to be in a nation that has so much rich heritage and history of that Bible and influence upon us.
And Lord, may it continue to be a blessing for us that all of us here would have hearts attuned to your grace because your Spirit within us. Keep us humble and keep us ever eager to learn more of your truth, we pray by the word of God. Amen.