The Right Tool for the Job

 

This is the transcript of the sermon I preached this past Sunday, re-formatted for easier reading.  More lengthy than my usual posts, but I hope you find it “useful.”  Praise God for the amazing “tool for life” He has given us!

Using the Wrong Tool

Time for a quick little survey:  How many of you have ever used a screwdriver as a chisel, or a wrench or another heavy tool as a hammer?

How many of you have ever had the experience where you couldn’t find a mallet to pound your tent stake so you grabbed the nearest large rock?

How many of you have been swinging a hammer or an axe and all of a sudden it’s way lighter because the head has fallen off or maybe flown off…becoming a deadly projectile?

How many of you have used a tool with a wooden handle and it gave you a splinter in your hand?

Not surprisingly, surveys tell us that most of the injuries from hand tools come from using a tool for a purpose that it isn’t made for or from using a tool that hasn’t been properly maintained.

In short, using the wrong tool for the job can do a lot of damage.

And it can be this way with life.  We face challenges in life: unemployment, parenting struggles, betrayal by a friend, indecision about college and career.  Sometimes we feel like we’re just spinning our wheels.

Or maybe we’re imprisoned by a struggle with sin.  We’re struggling with bitterness, or anger, we’re paralyzed by fear or feelings of inferiority.  Maybe your struggle is the same as my struggle: which is always comparing myself to others and feeling like I don’t measure up.

So we’re staring down the challenges and struggles of life, and we feel like we’re staring at a nail that needs hammered and all we have is a wrench.  Or the hammer we’ve always turned to seems to be giving us splinters—doing more damage than it’s actually helping.

You see where I’m going with this?  Is there a go-to tool for the challenges and struggles of life?

The truth is, many of us have given up on the existence of such a tool.

Paul’s Go-to Tool

The good news is there is such a tool.  And the Apostle Paul talks about it in the book of 2 Timothy.

This book is actually a letter to a man named Timothy. This is Paul’s last letter, these are his last recorded words.

The interesting thing about last words is they tend to reveal what is most important to a person.  Paul believes this may be the last time he will be able to communicate with Timothy, his student.  Timothy is like his spiritual successor, and since Paul doesn’t have any kids of his own and Timothy’s father wasn’t a believer, Paul has become a father figure in a sense.

There’s nothing new here for Timothy.  This is all stuff he’s heard before, but Paul is reminding Timothy of the things that are foundational for a Christian leader, and encouraging him to keep going in those things.

2 Timothy 3:14-17

14But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,17so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

Really I want to focus on one particular word in verse 16 and we’ll spend a little time on the other ones.  I want to focus on the word, “useful.”  I think this word often gets overlooked because what comes before it and after it is so good.

Those familiar with the Bible know this verse is the go-to verse on the inspiration of Scripture.  It most clearly tells us that the origin of the Bible is God Himself.  His words were given, or “breathed” into human writers, and as they wrote the Bible, they were writing the words of God.  I think sometimes, though, we give lip-service to the divine origin of the Bible, but we miss what Paul is really saying here.

We may say we believe the Bible is from God.  That it is authoritative.  We may like the idea of the 10 Commandments being in courtrooms because they contain foundational moral principles.  We may have John 3:16 memorized and Psalm 23 hanging on our wall.  And those things are good.

But do we see the Bible as useful?

When we face a challenge or a problem in life.  When we are struggling with a particular sin, or a bad attitude, or a particular person who really gets on our nerves.  When we really need to be encouraged, when really want to hear from God…we’re desperate to hear from him.  We’re screaming, please God, can you hear me?

Do we reach for the Bible?

The Bible is nothing less than the perfect tool for that job.  It is the God-given tool for helping us live a life that pleases God.  That’s the bottom line of these verses.  And Paul makes it clear that ALL Scripture is useful.  Every verse of it.

And the usefulness of Scripture is tied to the fact that it is God-breathed.  Let’s think through this.  If we believe that God has always existed and that he exists outside of time, then his words in Scripture are by definition timeless.  This is timeless wisdom in here.

God isn’t surprised by the new challenges posed by modern society on people.  It’s not like he’s going, “Oh, man…I didn’t see this internet thing coming.  I wasn’t anticipating smart cell phones, only dumb phones.  I didn’t think they’d ever actually map the human genome.  Time for a second revised edition of the Bible so I can address some these new issues.”

No.  God sees it all, and he intends the Bible to speak to it all.

How? You may be asking.  The Bible doesn’t seem to directly address some of these things.  No it doesn’t address many of these things directly, and that’s because it is aiming for something much more foundational.

It strikes at the very root of all issues: the human heart.  What makes us tick, what motivates us.

And theses verses point out some things that the Bible does particularly well in regards to the human heart, the human motivation.  Paul says the Bible is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

We aren’t going to go into each of these words in detail, but I do want to search for the common thread that is present in each of them.

Teaching –

That’s an easy one: it involves learning new information and applying it, right?

Reproof –

It’s a word we don’t use much, but it basically means to point out a fault in someone else, to make it known to them.  Presumably this is something they aren’t noticing about themselves, or they are choosing to not address it.  And presumably it’s bring pointed out to them in a loving way so they can work on the issue and be a better person.

Correction –

Putting someone back on the right path.  This involves pointing out that they are on the wrong path and pointing out the right one

Training –

So think about the last time we were in some kind of training.  The Olympics just happened, and we saw these athletes who had been trained their particular sport.  Some since they were little kids.

What’s involved in training?  Well in some cases you’re learning a new skill, like how to do a backstroke.  But as you progress in your training, it’s less about learning new skills and more about perfecting old ones.

Your coach watched you do a backstroke and he says, you need to make sure your elbow is always pointing down at the bottom of the pool instead of turning your arm.  You can’t see that you’re turning your arm, but your coach points it out to you so you can work on it.

So what do these four things have in common with one another?  They are all about giving new information or reminding or pointing out what’s already known.  They are all about revealing.  Revealing for the first time or revealing again as a reminder.  Do you see it?

The main purpose of Scripture is to reveal.

Sometimes revealing looks like new information and new insights and sometimes revealing looks like reminding.  Other times it looks like pointing out those things we don’t see, sometimes by choice.  But any way you look at it.

Scripture’s usefulness resides in its ability to reveal.

It reveals a lot of things: the main revelation of Scripture is God Himself.  Scripture is really good at revealing God.

But we’re focusing on another revelation of Scripture in these verses: the revelation of the human heart.

Perfectly Wrong

The main mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope is the most perfectly crafted object ever created by mankind.

It’s about 9 feet across, and it’s so perfectly crafted and polished that if you were to enlarge to be the same diameter as the earth…the biggest bump on it would only be 6” tall.  Almost perfect.

But after it was launched in 1990, NASA started getting the first pictures back from Hubble and they realized something was very wrong.

Here’s one of the pictures that NASA got from Hubble after the launch.  Next to it is what that same picture is supposed to look like.

The mirror was the wrong shape causing a diffusion of light instead of a focusing.  It was perfect, but it was the perfectly wrong shape.

Hubble was a tool designed to give us a better look at the stars than we’ve ever gotten.  And it failed miserably at its one purpose.  So NASA essentially had to install the world’s most expensive contact lens on the telescope.

But after NASA installed some new components on the telescope from 1993 to 2009, people began using Hubble to take some amazing photos.  I just want to show you two.

This is a picture of stars forming out of dust and gases thousands of light years from earth.

This is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image.  Those different colored dots are GALAXIES not stars, and there are about 10,000 of them.

And the way they got this image was they chose the darkest section of the night sky—if you can imagine holding a tiny scrap of paper that’s just 1mm x 1mm square at arm’s length that’s how big the section would appear to us—and they snapped some pictures using some special gear they installed on the Hubble in 2002.  None of this would have been possible if they had let the Hubble remain the failure it was when it was first launched.

And I can’t help but feel like this is such a painful metaphor of the human condition.  We strive so hard to be wise, so hard to not repeat the same mistakes, so hard to rise above our situation.  Then we realize the perfection we’ve been striving for is completely wrong.

We’re not even close.

But like that corrective lens on the Hubble, what the Word of God does is it focuses us on the right things.  It is useful because it reveals what we’re actually striving for.  It gives us a picture of what God, our Creator, would have for us, His creation.

AND, instead of pointing at the darkest corner of space, the Bible points at the darkest corners of our heart and shows what’s really there.  There’s no hiding and there’s no escape.  But nothing else, no other tool, is useful for leading us to a life that pleases God.

Bridges of Meaning

So how does the Bible reveal?  How do we put this tool to use?

Tools have to be put to use.  They don’t just work on their own.  This is pretty easy to illustrate.  Say I need to drive in a nail, and I have a hammer.  I don’t just set the hammer down and expect it to fulfill its intended purpose.

The Bible works the same way.  Just because I own a Bible doesn’t mean I use it to face the challenges of life.  Just because I READ the Bible doesn’t mean I am equipped to face the daily struggle with sin.

Here’s one that hits close to home for me as a Bible teacher: Just because I TALK ABOUT the Bible with other Christians doesn’t mean it’s useful to me as the right tool for life.  I can get really good a describing the details of my hammer, but that doesn’t mean I’m driving any nails.  We talk about the Bible a lot more than we put it into practice.

There’s only one way the Bible fulfills its USEFUL purpose of revealing where we really are and where God would have us be.  I call it “building bridges of meaning.”

We’ve already seen that God intends the Bible to speak to any and all challenges the human race could encounter.  The way it speaks to those challenges is for us to take a foundational teaching of Scripture (for example, we’re supposed to love our neighbor as we love ourselves) and build a bridge of meaning FROM THAT to a specific situation in our lives (for example, how we respond to something somebody posts about us on Facebook).   Does the Bible say anything about Facebook?  Of course not.  Does it talk about how we should interact with people on Facebook, or email, or snail mail for that matter?  Definitely.

Bible scholars call this Biblical Interpretation or Biblical Hermeneutics.  I prefer the word picture of “building bridges of meaning.”

I was really reminded of this principle when I was on a short-term mission trip in Haiti last year.  I got to share the gospel with people and pray with people, but it was all through a translator because I don’t speak Creole.

One Haitian man wanted me to pray for his struggle with anger, and so I did.  And I was struck by how my words were ministering to him.  God understands prayer in any language, but my words wouldn’t have meant anything to this man without being interpreted.

Another man—and this was really cool—he wanted to become a follower of Jesus and so I got to explain the gospel and pray with him.  And I remember thinking, without an interpreter, how would this man get to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ?

In order for these guys to hear the truth, someone—my awesome interpreter, John—had to build a bridge of meaning for them.  It’s the same way with God’s Word.  There’s meaning there, but sometimes we need to build a bridge.

So how do we do it?  I’m convinced that this building bridges of meaning task is best accomplished in an environment where we are interacting with other people and together we are interacting with Scripture.

This group can read scripture together and together begin to draw connections with how it applies to the day-to-day life of a person who is seeking to be more like Jesus.

This why being a part of a small group community of Christians is so important.  In these groups, bridges are being built.  And it’s a lot easier to build a bridge when several people are on the job, and not just one.

So, in short, the Bible is useful.  It’s useful particularly at revealing through bridges of meaning being built.  And those bridges are best built by many people rather than just one.

The End Result

But the best part of these verses is how they describe the end result of seeing the Bible as a useful tool and doing the work of applying it to your life.  Actually there are two results, depending on where you are in your journey with God.

The first result is that you will be equipped to do the good works that God would have you do.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

16All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17SO THAT everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

So, for those who are followers of Jesus, the Bible teaches us a deeper level of obedience: to do more of the things God loves, and less of the things God hates.  But verse 17 makes it clear that we don’t do these good works to earn acceptance from God.  It makes it clear that good works of obedience come because we are ALREADY accepted by God through Jesus.

I love how this version (the New Revised Standard Version) puts it: “everyone WHO BELONGS to God.”  You’ve already been accepted by God, and now you are free to focus on doing what pleases Him.

We need to begin to see that the Bible is useful for showing us how to live as the people of God.  Regardless of the challenge or struggle, the Bible can speak to it.

The second result is the result of finding salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.  In verse 15, it says “…you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”  If you are not yet a follower of Jesus, then the Bible will be useful for revealing your need for God’s grace to save you.

You will see in its pages evidence that you are God’s beloved creation, created in His image.  But because of sin you can’t fully experience the blessings of God in this life, as well as the blessed reward of the next life.

But you will also see how God sent His Son to take the punishment that was meant for us.  That he gave himself as a sacrifice for all of mankind.  God gave you the Bible to reveal your need for grace and to proclaim to you that forgiveness of sins is possible.

We need to begin to see that the Bible is useful for showing us the unfailing love of God.  We see this love expressed in His grace and forgiveness.

It is this grace and forgiveness that we celebrate during the time of communion.

During communion we take these ordinary items: a little piece of bread, a little cup of juice.  But they represent infinitely more than you would think just by looking at them.  They represent the body and blood of Jesus our Savior, who the Bible points to as the only way we can be saved from our sins.  The only way we can go from being lost to being those who belong to God.

We need to be reminded of this fact regularly: that we need a Savior, and a Savior has been given.  Praise God for that.