Dr. Blair Smith | Knowing, Loving, and Doing the Word of God

Sunday Evening, October 26, 2025
Given by Dr. Kevin DeYoung | Senior Pastor
Christ Covenant Church

Knowing, Loving, and Doing the Word of God
Sermon Text: 2 Timothy 3:14-17

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Transcript

Well, please turn with me in God's word to 2 Timothy chapter 3. If you go to your New Testament, towards the end of the Bible – you'll want to go through Paul's epistles, past Colossians, past the letters to the church at Thessalonica. Then you get to the Timothies. It's not two Timothies. It's just one Timothy, to whom he wrote two letters. If you’ve gone to Hebrews, you've gone too far. So, just back up a little bit. 2 Timothy chapter 3, verses 14-17. 2 Timothy 3:14-17. Hear the word of the Lord:

“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”

This is the word of the Lord. Please pray with me. 

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word, and indeed that is our theme this evening, that you have given us a word, that we can know you, and we can know your ways and your intentions for us. We give you praise, and we thank you for that. And as we seek to know more the importance of what it is to have your word specifically in scripture, may your Spirit give us light and understanding. Keep me from error, clarifying what my words say to the hearts of all those that are here, and may we all have hearts to receive your word, to trust it, to follow it, to give you praise and thanks for it. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. 

A few months ago, when I agreed to preach a sermon on a favorite passage – that's the theme we've been on here in the evenings, for preachers to preach from a favorite passage – I chose this one, 2 Timothy 3:14-17. But I did so not thinking that today is when we remember the Reformation, what we call Reformation Sunday. But it's God's wise providence that brings this text together with remembrance of this day, because I can think of no more appropriate text to see on this day than this one on the scriptures. When we think of the teachings of the Reformation, we think of many things, but we especially think of the importance of scripture. In the Reformation, the importance of scripture was highlighted for reasons of authority. For reasons of authority. What is our ultimate authority? When we preach, when we teach, when we live the Christian life, is our ultimate authority the church? Is it tradition and the word? Today we might ask, is our final authority me and my feelings? Is it the perspective of my group, my tribe, or is it, as the reformers rightly championed, scripture? Scripture alone. That was one of the battle cries. So, as we explore this text together, I'm going to do so topically. Now, I don't think this should be regularly done. I'm solidly committed to what we call expository preaching. What is expository preaching? It's where we go verse by verse, section by section, chapter by chapter, book by book through the Bible. It's a practice with a long history in the church – so long, we have a Latin phrase for it, lectio continua. We continue through the scriptures, verse by verse. This is a practice not only rooted in the early church, but the great reformers of the 16th century – they revived it. Let me tell you a little story that highlights the importance of this to the reformers. John Calvin – one of the great reformers of the 16th century – he, early in his pastorate in Geneva, ran into some difficulties so difficult that they expelled him, and they told him to get out of town. And so he did for three years. But in 1541, they asked him to come back. And when he came back and gave his first sermon, he went right back to the verse where he left off three years prior. That's an expositional mindset. 

Well, why this commitment to expository preaching? What stands behind this practice? It is a submission – a submission to the word of God – but not the word of God in bits and pieces. The whole word of God. It says the driving force that should be there from Sunday to Sunday in this pulpit and in any pulpit – it's not the whims of the preacher. It's not the shifting headlines of the day. That's not to say, of course, that a pastor should not be applying the word of God to where we are in our lives, the place and the time. He should. And there are times and places for topical sermons, maybe such as this one, I hope. But the Word sets the agenda. The Word sets the agenda. And the practice of expository preaching ensures the widest exposure to God's people, to God's Word – with all of the Word’s mountains and valleys, all of its psychology and spirituality, all of its poetry and its letters, all of its history and its prophecy, and most of all, all of its Christ. Now, this may lend itself to some awkward sermons. In a church where I served previously, it led to a sermon on Judas on Mother's Day. Or it may lead to having to tackle some hard and difficult texts, like why is it unlawful to boil a young goat in its mother's milk as it says in Exodus 23? But when the whole Word is preached, we are submitting to the reality that God is wiser than we. His Word, which he inspired, speaks to the varieties of our human experience and addresses our genuine deepest needs. 

The most basic physical need for we, humans – it's food. To any who have gone hungry, you know those pangs of hunger, and they are real pangs. They remind us we need this thing. We need food to live. And Jesus used that dynamic of hunger and the need for food to teach us about the role of Scripture in our lives. Facing his own hunger in his 40 days in the desert, remember what he said to the devil: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” And just now we read in 2 Timothy 3:16, “all Scripture is breathed out by God.” Because all Scripture is breathed out by God, because we live by it, and it alone, it is our food. It is our food from Sunday to Sunday. Its stated purpose, as our text says, is that we should be wise unto salvation and equipped. In other words, we live by this food because of its role in supplying salvation and sustaining that spiritual life through discipleship. You could summarize it – salvation, discipleship. 2 Timothy 3:14-17 provides for us three points we will cover regarding the word of God this evening. Number one, we must know it. Number two, we must feel, love it. Number three, we must do it. Know, feel, do, or if you prefer alliteration – head, heart, hands. Those are going to be our three points. 

One of the great questions of our day is what can we know? What can we know to be true? Really true. What some have called true truth. To many today, true truth, you know, that's something – T, you know, truth with a capital T – that we might want to avoid. It's dangerous for people to hold to something like the Bible as big T, capital T, Truth. If there is a God, he or she or it we don't want to say can be genuinely known. Truth touching on the divine, touching on the moral, touching on what it means to be human for all people in all places – that's best relative. And so it often goes today. The question for us is can God and his will be known? Can God and his will be known? Do we have a knowable word from God? Has he spoken? And if so, where? Where has he spoken? 

Well, these questions that I'm posing, they concern revelation. To reveal – to reveal means to pull back the curtain. Has God done so? Has he pulled back the curtain and revealed who he is? Has he told us what his will is for us? One of my favorite passages in all of scripture, in addition to 2 Timothy 3, is Deuteronomy 29:29. And there we read, "The secret things belong to the Lord, but those things that have been revealed belong to us and to our children forever.” God does not tell us everything – not everything about himself, not everything about the world. There are secret things. There's secret things even about this world and other people we do not know. But there's especially secret things about God. He's infinite. We are finite. But he does reveal. He does reveal, and that revelation belongs to us. That is – it is for us. The wonderful thing about an infinite, almighty God is he is able to communicate to his creatures through his revelation. Sometimes people come across as pious and humble when they say, you know, God, he's too big for our thoughts. Who are we to talk about God with any certainty? God has concerns too big to speak into your life and into mine. That's a devious half-truth, isn't it? A devious half-truth. Yes, God is big. Yes, he is mighty, but he's God and he is able. He is able to communicate to us. As one author recently put it, at the heart of the postmodern skepticism about knowing God is an inferior conception of what God is like. The question is not whether we are haughty enough – that is, puffed up, prideful enough – to think we have peered into the recesses of eternity and understand God omnisciently. The question is whether God is the sort of God who is willing – willing to communicate with his creatures – and is able to do so effectively. Can God speak, or is he gagged? 

Well, Paul makes clear here in 2 Timothy that scripture is where he has – he's breathed out his words. He's done it through human instruments, but he's done it so that we can know, so that we can indeed understand. Over and over, especially in the Psalms, scripture compares God's word to light. To light. The word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, Psalm 119:105. God communicates through human beings in order to reveal, to cast light – not to obscure, not to have us scratching our heads, befuddled. What's more, he gives to us his Spirit. His Spirit illumines our understanding of the word. We do not need to fall prey to arguments which would have us, at best, grasping in the dark at slivers of truth. Left to our own, we do fumble around in the dark to make sense of things. But the glory of scripture is God, the creator of all things, who brought light into being in this world itself, gives us light from himself, direction in this word. He gives us understanding. 

Well, in the beginning was the Word. Since the beginning of creation, God has had a word for us. In his providence, he has ensured that that word has been preserved, and today we have it in the scriptures which have been breathed out by God, as Paul says here. But you say, don't we know that the scriptures are riddled with errors and inaccuracies? There's some inspiration there, perhaps, but it's so mixed up with arcane cultural bricolage, we must parse it. We must go in very, very carefully. This isn't the place to solve all these questions that you or others might have related to the issue. But we can consider one profound reality. This has been very helpful to me as I consider the truthfulness and accuracy of scripture, and that is Jesus' own attitude towards scripture. Jesus’ own attitude. Follow him around the gospels for any period of time, and you will quickly learn that he approached God's written revelation as if it could be known, as if it could be understood. If he debates scripture, it's the fact that it's been twisted through devious interpretations, not its own inherent integrity, as given by God. Indeed, in his reference to person after person in the Old Testament, event after event, miracle after miracle, Jesus clearly believed in the historicity of biblical history. It wasn't a myth. It wasn't a fable to Jesus. So, if we question the Bible, we cannot separate Jesus from that interrogation, for he bound himself to God's written revelation. Indeed, he sees himself as its fulfillment. It was all pointing to him. 

So, because of God's desire and ability to communicate himself and his will, we have true knowledge. We have true knowledge. It's not exhaustive, but if you think about it, even the – if you're married here tonight – even the knowledge you have of your spouse is not exhaustive. Knowledge of a good friend is not exhaustive. Yet, nonetheless, it's true. It's reliable. So the case with God through his word. When we get to know another person, we cannot simply acknowledge that person is real. That person is able to be known. We make efforts. We make efforts to get to know the one who exists and is able to be known. Just because we acknowledge there's a God who has revealed himself in his word does not mean we, ourselves, have knowledge of it. Recognition of what God's word is – it's just the first step, right? It's the first step of knowledge. And that step gives us confidence to move forward. But we must proceed. We must proceed to move forward, to read and study and listen to the word. Paul says here in verse 16 – back to our text – it is profitable for teaching, that is, for understanding, for knowledge of God and knowledge of his ways. There's too often this gap among us between saying we believe God speaks, we believe he is knowable through his revelation in scripture, but actually knowing scripture because we've taken the time to read it, study it, regularly put ourselves under its preaching and teaching. 

It's a challenge for us who say we believe in the integrity of scripture to not only know it ourselves but also pass it on to others, pass it on to the next generation. Paul speaks here to Timothy, who he charges to continue in the things that he has learned from the Bible. And remember who he learned them from? He learned them from his mother and his grandmother, the previous two generations. Now, some of you might say that one thing holding you back in your own pursuit of knowing scripture or teaching it to the generations is you do have these serious questions about the Bible. Your confidence in it is rattled. You're not sure it's worth the effort. I believe you will find the most effective means for bolstering confidence in the Bible is to actually spend time in the Bible. You see, when we make an effort at prayerfully knowing what's in the Bible, we put ourselves in the way of the Holy Spirit. By that I mean the Spirit is committed to working through the word. Jesus promises in John 10:27 that his sheep will hear their master speaking to them in the word. And that is because the Spirit attends the word, opens our ears so that we can hear, so that we can know what is said. So a few simple questions for us in closing out this first point: is our stated belief in God's word as scripture matched by our desire to know God's word, a word that Paul says is profitable for teaching us about God and his ways? Is our stated belief matched by our desire? Are we and our children as catechized in the teaching of scripture as we are in the world's catechism? And I hope we realize, yes, indeed, the world has a catechism, even if it doesn't admit it. We're taught, through a variety of powerful means, what the world values, what it considers virtuous, what it believes to be true, where authority lies, so on and so forth. It has a whole series of teachings. It may not be upfront about it, but they're there. But the scriptures themselves catechize us in the truths of who God is and his ways. So let's be like the Bereans Paul found in Acts 17, who examine the scriptures daily to see if the things taught to them were so. We are being bombarded by teaching, subtle or explicit, day by day. Let's continue together to examine the scriptures to see if what is taught Monday through Saturday is true, and let us do the same on Sunday. This is a posture to have towards those things taught to us both inside and outside the church, for in both realms, the scripture is the ultimate authority for the Christian. The scripture is the ultimate authority in this church – not the pastor. The pastor himself submits to God's word. The scripture is the ultimate authority for us throughout our days. 

And this posture under the word of God requires a heart-level, a fundamental heart-level humility. And that's our second point. Our feeling toward – our heart disposition, our affections with regard to scripture – it starts with humility. And we're not talking about humility, you know, before a bare text, a book with mere pages, pieces of paper. No, God has bound himself to his word. It's God-breathed, as Paul says. We hear Jesus’ voice, the voice of our kind Lord, in this word. And so there's a personal dynamic, is there not, as we approach the word, where our humility before the authority of scripture is not before just a book. It's a humility before God. This is basic to Christianity. This is central to the character and integrity of our faith. There's no room for autonomy in the Christian faith. We are bound to an authority. We are humble before it. An honest skeptic can even recognize that this is central to what it means to be Christian. 

I read years ago about one of the famous American pragmatic, sort of, philosophers who, at least towards the Christian faith, was a skeptic. His name was Richard Rorty. He's no longer living. But this thing I read, this piece about him, recounted his confronting whether he was going to be a Christian or not. And he presented his dilemma of whether he was going to be a Christian as if he were choosing between two of the sons in The Brothers Karamazov. The Brothers Karamazov is one of the great novels written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, a Russian novelist. And there's two sons in there, in particular, that he was faced with. And one was Alyosha, who was this humble figure, a Christian, and then the other is Ivan, who is a rational atheist. These two types – humility, following the Lord, trust in one's reason. And as he unpacks this, he rightfully saw humility as fundamental – sort of the ingredient without which you cannot come to the Lord, without which you cannot begin to speak about being a Christian. Sadly, in the end for Rorty, he stated he could not become Alyosha, the humble Christian in the novel, The Brothers Karamazov, because of this: he said, “of a prideful inability to believe what I was saying when I recited the confession.” So, Rorty looked elsewhere, to places that did not require that fundamental ingredient of humility that Christianity demands. He felt himself incapable of it. Well, despite his remaining skepticism, he did rightfully understand one thing about our faith, about the Christian faith, and that is humility. It's the starting point for coming to Christ and therefore coming to his word. It's a heart posture which is willing to say, I need salvation from my sins. And I find that saving gospel message in the word, the word revealed by God in scripture. It is willing to say in the Christian life, I do not know the path to walk on, but only those paths I find in the scripture, in the word. It is willing to say that when I step off these righteous pathways, these words correct, these words train me, that I might more directly and faithfully follow the way of Jesus Christ. 

But as we're called to a humble heart, that is never apart from a loving heart. A loving heart. I sometimes hear today a sort of grudging admittance to the authority of scripture in the church, but a sort of, if I can put it this way, emotional distance – an emotional distance to scripture. It comes across as, almost as, a wish that we really didn't have to believe what's in the Bible because it's so in tension with this culture in which we live. But we do. Well, you know, this is what Bible-believing Christians are called to. We sort of have to. But if maturity is being conformed to the image of Christ, is that the attitude towards God's word that we should aspire to? The longest love poem in all of scripture is about nothing less than the word of God. It's written by David. It's found in Psalm 119. There you have the king of Israel who was also a poet, a man after God's own heart, who writes things like he delights. He delights in God's word. It's sweet to him, like honey. It's the joy of his heart. He states he loves the testimonies of scripture exceedingly. You could go on and on. It's a very long poem. The words of scripture were precious. Precious to David. They were to be held in esteem, guarded, delighted in, and yes, loved – deeply loved. To be sure, the Bible can feel dull at times. You know, when you in your Bible reading get to Leviticus, it can be a struggle. We need to pray. We need to see it in light of the whole. But taken as a whole, the Bible is the greatest story ever told. And those who know it best are usually those who delight in it most, savor it, love it. Mary, the mother of Jesus, Luke tells us, received the word of God and pondered it in her heart. 

Well, those who know me well know that I love food. I hope it's a healthy love, though there's a fine line, I admit, between loving what is a gift of God and loving one's belly. In my love of food, I can talk about it. I can think about it. I can pursue it. I want to know what's coming next in the day. What's for dinner, Lisa? That question she probably doesn't welcome every day. But unfortunately, sometimes, you know, it can be an obsession. I can think a little bit too much about it. I'm not indifferent towards it. So, I find it very interesting, though, in light of this dynamic, and maybe you share in it, that Jesus would compare scripture to food. Food, one of God's greatest gifts, he compares scripture to it. It's not only something basic to our survival – food – but it is something to give thanks for and indeed delight in, enjoy, maybe even love. Love is that mother of all motivation. And Jesus said we live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. It is this love for living that has motivated thousands throughout the history of the church to preserve the words of God in scripture. And we remain grateful to them for the easy access we have to the Bible today. For centuries, this required the hard work of copying words in dark, cold rooms with flickering candlelight just so people could live by God's word. They could have their spiritual food. Under the threat of death, many in the history of the church have not only ensured that the word survived and we have access to it, but we also have access to it in our own language, so that we can understand it. Think of the English reformer William Tyndale in the 16th century. He spent his own life, dying by strangulation, so that God's word could be known in the native tongue of English by the ploughboys of England, just as much as the learned men who knew their Hebrew, Greek, and Latin translations. What would most motivate the labor of a Tyndale or others like him? What kind of mission would be generated and moved forward? It was because of love for God's word, a love so alive and vibrant that it wanted others to share in it. 

Centuries after David penned his great love poem to the word, the Word enfleshed, the son of David, came. And as he walked this earth teaching his disciples, he connected two vital points in one simple, conditional sentence. He connected two vital points through one simple, conditional sentence. He said this: "If you love me, keep my commandments." If you love me, keep my commandments. The same one who recorded those words in the Gospel of John said in First John, "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” The Bible will not let us separate our affection for God, for Christ, for his word from keeping it, doing it. 

And this is our third and last point. We've had the call to know God's word, both the ability to know and the pursuit of that knowledge. That's the head. We've had the call to feel, touching on this fundamental disposition of humility, but a humility married to a love for God's word. That's the heart. And now the hands. Our love for Christ and his word is naturally connected to our commitment to do the words found here. And that's not to say – we want to be very clear here – that we do them perfectly. The same word that calls us to obedience acknowledges there's no perfect obedience so long as sin remains in us and in the world. But there is a pursuit, is there not, born of love. If you love something or someone, you pursue. If you love Christ, he is saying pursue – pursue the word. You desire, you make an effort to put it into practice, into the substance of your life. And perhaps here we find one of the great difficulties that shakes our confidence in scripture. That is because we're not committed to practicing it. Because we're not committed to practicing it, we lose a category for its very reality. Unbelief often stems from not being, say, convinced by clever arguments, but from our own giving in to temptation, again and again, without recourse to repentance. There's a confirmation that takes place in our hearts as to the truth, as to the authority, of scripture when we seek to practice it – when we seek to practice scripture in our own lives. And there's likewise, the flip side of that is, there's a loosening of the bonds of belief when we do not follow the word we say we believe in. Sometimes we don't admit it, but I think our hearts know it. 

John Owen – a very perceptive 17th century preacher and theologian – he grasped this dynamic when he said this: “The gospel is the truth, which is according to godliness. (That's Titus 1.) And it will not long abide with any who follow not after godliness according to its guidance and direction.” He goes on to say this: “Hence we see so many lose – they lose that very understanding which they had of the doctrines of it when they begin to give them themselves up to ungodly lives.” I imagine many of you have been taught something by a parent or a boss or a mentor, and you remained somewhat skeptical until you saw the reality of what you were taught in action, living, and matching the way things are or should be in your life, the life of an organization. When you saw that – when you when you saw that truth in action, as it were – it produced in you a certain loyalty. It confirmed to you the integrity, the validity, of the one who taught you. Well, this same dynamic is at play in scripture. Owen is saying in that quote I just gave that if we do not bring the truth of scripture into conversation with our lives and with our practices, we will never attain stability in our belief and in our love of scripture. We will not gain assurance of its truthfulness and authority. Indeed, is he not saying, and I think it's true, we will begin to lose a category for the reality of scripture itself, that God speaks, and he can speak into our lives. And I'm afraid that is so often the case when we see a total lack of confidence in God's word today in people's lives. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. That's the order of the Christian life. Know me, set your heart on me, follow me. And as we follow Jesus according to his word, we will find our hearts beautifully enlarged, filled with a more sure love. And we will see our knowledge deepened, just as with our bodies, the head, the heart, and the hands are all connected. 

We see these dynamic connections illustrated in the vivid, compelling life of the great church father Augustine, who himself was so inspiring to many of the reformers. Augustine was a very clever young man. He was a blossoming intellectual in his late teenage years, and he wanted to study the Bible, he says, from a distance. He wanted to study the Bible, but from a distance. In his autobiography, the great Confessions, Augustine links his skeptical attitude toward the Bible very clearly to his pride. He wrote this: "They, the scriptures, were indeed of a nature to grow in your little ones" – and by little ones, he means humble ones – “but I could not bear to be a little one. I was only swollen with pride, but to myself, I seemed a very big man.” Later on in his life, he wrote these words that were in a sermon, and he was preaching to his congregation, and he says, "I who speak to you – I was deluded in the past while still in my youth. I tried to start by applying the divine scriptures’ critical discussion rather than humble pious research. Through my lax morals, I closed off my access to the Lord. In my pride, I dare to seek that which no man can find unless he practices humility.” 

Well, after becoming a Christian, Augustine was convinced of the inseparable link between knowledge of scripture, humility, and love in obedience. And as one newly ordained to the ministry, still growing in his understanding of the word, he wrote to an older minister, he wrote very humbly, and he said, "I ought to study all God's remedies in the scriptures, and by praying and by reading so to act that strength sufficient for such duties may be granted to my soul. Help me with your prayers.” That last phrase, help me with your prayers, is a fitting close, for if any of us are going to grow in our knowledge of, if any of us are going to grow in our love of, or any of us going to grow in our obedience to God's word, it will only be through God's help mediated through the prayers of God's people by the Holy Spirit. May the Spirit empower and direct us as we hold fast to the word of God by knowing it, loving it, and doing the word. Let's pray. 

Our Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your word, which is spoken of so clearly by Paul, coming from your very mouth for our very salvation and our discipleship. We thank you that you have given it to us, but may we seek to know it. May we study it. May we put ourselves before it regularly. We thank you so much for a church here at Christ Covenant, which preaches it regularly and faithfully. May every minister here continue to do so. May we know your word. May we make it a part of our daily lives. But as we would know it, may we put ourselves under it humbly, a heart disposition – not thinking we are wiser than it, but that it has all the light, all the wisdom that we need. And as we submit ourselves to it, may we do so lovingly, passionately, believing it and seeking to follow it. May you fill our hearts in seeing these words as precious. And may indeed you give us the Spirit and direct us to do, out of that love, to do the word. If you love me, your Son said, we will keep the commandments. Give us that direction, that power, by your Spirit to do this word. And may it rivet it in our souls and our understanding that indeed this word is true. We thank you for the recovery of the word in the 16th century. Layer upon layer of church tradition and the wisdom of man had been keeping the bright light and purity of the word from God's people. We thank you for the zeal of the reformers that we remember today, that sought to preach the word regularly and with clarity. May that great impulse that came forth in the 16th century continue in the church today, even this church. We pray these things through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.