Do You REALLY Believe Scripture is Sufficient?

Hosts: TJ Freeman, Joe Wagner, & Josh MacClaren

Summary: In this episode of Rural Church Renewal, TJ, Joe, and Josh discuss the importance of relying on the sufficiency of Scripture in all aspects of life and ministry. They share personal experiences and reflect on the challenges of consistently depending on God's Word rather than traditions or human wisdom. The conversation highlights specific areas such as dealing with gossip in the church, making difficult decisions, and integrating Scripture into daily life, both at home and in your ministry. The episode emphasizes that Scripture provides everything needed for life and godliness, urging pastors, church leaders, and members to anchor their actions and decisions in the Bible.

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Transcript

We all say it. We believe the Bible is enough, but then there are those moments where we're not really relying on it. Like when the counseling gets really tough, do we really trust God's Word to bring healing? Or when we're planning our preaching, do we find ourselves leaning more on popular topics than on what God's Word says?

We face the pressures of things like traditions or our own frustrations. Are we willing to hold fast to scripture as the foundation of everything we do? If we really believe the Bible is enough. It should shape not just some decisions, but every decision, every action, and every moment of ministry. And today, we're going to take a hard look at what it really means to rely on God's Word in all of life, and why trusting in the sufficiency of Scripture is not just an ideal,

for joining us for another episode of Rural Church Renewal. This is a ministry of the Brainerd Institute for Rural Ministry, and we are here to help equip the saints to lead healthy churches. Which means we need to talk about the sufficiency of God's Word. My name is TJ Freeman. I have been a rural pastor for, I don't know, Decade and a half. A little more than that. Closer to two decades. I guess the gray hairs are starting to come out a little more frequently.

You're getting more and more forgetful. I am. And I'm joined by… 

Hey, I'm Joe. I've been in rural ministry for about as long as what TJ has. I'm associate pastor here at Christ Church as well. 

What's going on guys? Josh McLaren here I was raised in a rural church and I've been serving the rural ministry for over six years.

True or false? 

True. You have always held to the sufficiency of scripture in all areas of life. 

Oh, of course, a hundred percent, all the way through. It's scripture all the way down. False. Yes. For me. I'm a liar as well. If you were to ask me that question, I'd say, yeah, of course. 

Well, since becoming believer and becoming a pastor and those things, you mean to follow God's Word in all areas.

Certainly, and I probably think that we are maybe mistaken sometimes by saying that we want to follow Scripture, but we don't really seek the Scriptures to follow them. 

Yeah, we have frameworks that inform what we believe and how we believe it, so Even if we know that God's Word is important, it might not be ultimate for us, and we bring, some preconceived beliefs or frameworks, and we impose those things on Scripture.

Yeah. Instead of allowing Scripture to inform those frameworks. 

Like, good morals. Yeah, or even the doctrine of the church. Like, what we just articulated in our last episode, when I was a believer, at first, I would definitely not have had The capacity or the biblical understanding believe those things.

You and I just started riffing, TJ's got a point. 

No, I was going to say to my shame for a while, I was thinking I was walking according to the word, but I was actually walking according to human logic and wisdom. And this happened to me as a pastor. I was a church planter. And I had grown up in a really legalistic kind of environment.

And as I transitioned out of that into. Let's just take a real quick time out from your story. Legalism is often rooted in what? Personal moralisms, personal feelings, personal beliefs that kind of come out of tradition, out of people's hearts. And I was steeped in that.

And then I realized, okay, the gospel is bigger than that. And as I trusted Christ and grew in my understanding, I actually went a little too far with the pendulum and went to the other side. So, to Josh's point, a new framework is put on this, which is kind of like, you know, when people say things like, I'll do anything except sin to make Christ known. And you start to feel like you can cast off all restraint and the church can look wild and hip and you just want to get people in there.

Skinny jeans, start playing Hell's Bells at your Christmas Eve service. Well, I never did that, but I read books by guys who did. Yeah, right. It feels biblical in the sense of like Jesus went to the prostitutes and these kinds of things that get thrown around. But really, In either of those cases, legalism or whatever the other crazy nonsense is on the other side, You're not necessarily sticking straight to scripture. But those are two extremes. Joe you have shared before, you had an experience when you were in ministry. Right. Where there were times where it seemed like you were holding to the word, But then you get into the weeds and get a little Tripped up.

So you'll have to listen to future podcasts. Maybe I'll share my testimony at some point, but there was probably a decade of my ministry where I Really did not have a great somebody to disciple me, to lead me along the way. Just kind of muddling our way through. 

Hey, well, let me say here's why because you're at a church in the middle of nowhere. Right?

Yes. And there's not a lot of resources here to have helped you. Exactly. 

Thank you for coming around and sharing that. And I think a Lot of people out there are probably . And so, let's take for an instance like gossip in the church. And I would not necessarily act upon gossip in the church unless it hurt somebody's feelings or unless it really caused a big issue or a problem.

Can you clarify? 

When you say act upon, what do you mean? You weren't a gossiper or you were not Dealing with people's gossip? Yeah. I was not 

dealing with people who were gossiping. Thank you. Continue. Why not? Because, oh man, that's rocking the boat and it's gonna upset one of the families or two of the families that are so important to the church when you only have maybe six or seven families in the entire church.

Right? Yeah. Is it really worth that? Or maybe just kind of handling obliquely and saying, don't listen to person who was gossiped about 'em. Don't listen to them. It's okay. Just shrug it off. 

Minimizing it to keep the peace. Thank you. It could feel biblical. Which could feel biblical. Love covers a multitude. Really, That was not me being relying upon the sufficiency of Scripture. If you were to read something from Jude. Get in the middle of that one chapter book.

You mean Titus? Oh, you're, Go ahead. And so Jude's telling the church about all of the How sin in the church and false teaching in the churches is really, really bad. It's as bad as Balaam, it's as bad as Korah and his rebellion, and he uses all these Sodom and Gomorrah, He works his way through all of these really terrible examples. And then he turns to the people takes a breath and says, hey, you want to know what they are?

They are grumblers, and they're malcontents, and they're people who cause problems in the church. Oh my goodness, gossiping, grumbling is much, much bigger, much more dangerous to the church than what I had considered. And so if I'm relying upon the sufficiency of scripture, then I've got to deal with those sorts of things as a pastor or church member.

Hmm. So that the church is pure and holy, and so people are growing, and so they can Overcome the temptation to sin, when they could really realize how dangerous what they're doing is. 

Yeah some of the listeners are gonna be elders or deacons or you just reference church members. You may not be in a leadership role in the sense where you're the pastor, and in the rural church a lot of times it's the pastor and the deacons who are leading. And you're thinking why I don't lead, but actually you do. You are an example to the rest of the body. You got a great responsibility. You do. Of what it means to obey God's Word.

And there's a form of leadership that takes place when you say, no, I'm going to do what the Bible says here instead. And that's really instructive to the whole rest of the congregation. 

Even if you were to follow along with something that we probably all of us are familiar with, like from Matthew 18, your responsibility as a church member, then is if you hear gossip to go to the person and shut it down, so that it doesn't have to go up to the pastor or deacons or elders. In love. In love, right?

Speaking the truth, in love, for the purpose of redemption. 

So what are some of the areas where it might be tempting to not believe? And by the way, when we say sufficiency of scripture, what do we mean by that? Josh? 

Two Timothy three, 16 and 17 says, all scripture is breathed out, inspired by God, and it's profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training and righteousness. That the man, and the women, of God, may be complete, equipped for every good work.

There is this sense of sufficiency, that it is complete and it will equip the person for every good work. When we talk about the sufficiency of Scripture, we're saying we have everything pertaining to life and godliness. As Peter would say in second Peter chapter one. In what Jesus has revealed to us.

We don't need to go outside to secular wisdom or counselors. God has revealed everything we need. For life and for godliness. So it needs to be our primary resource in the church. There's not to say that they're you know wisdom that we can glean, but primarily we need to be Studying, knowing, and applying God's Word.

Put that in a sentence. God's Word is enough. Use it. Okay. Is it merely enough? Right, yeah. Help me out, guys. My brain just. What do you think, 

Joe? Well, alright, so in our podcast prep for this episode, we're pulling back the curtain, and Josh wrote this verse up on the board, and I, what did I say? 

You said, lame.

Lame. Boring. Which caused my heart to skip a beat. Yeah, but I was speaking in irony. Cause that's, that is like, it's one of these verses, right? Sure. Right. 

And because that's a verse that we always run to look at. But the reason why I said it's lame is not because the scripture was lame, it's because we're lame.

We don't actually take the time to look at each one of those particular words that the scripture is proclaiming is true. Everything, for the life of godliness, teaches, rebukes, corrects. Trains. Trains. That is super incredibly important for us to hold fast to that passage, to that truth of what scripture is.

Because it is not just enough, it is sufficient, it is effective. Well, and it works. Yeah, like Hebrews 4. To make you complete and fully equipped. Right. So those two words, I think, are really important. Those two, one's a word, one's a phrase. Complete, so you're whole. That's what we all want. If you were whole, you'd never spend another dollar.

You'd never wish you had something that you lack. You'd never need to take another vacation. You would just be whole. You're completely content. And we want a sense of wholeness. We're kind of chasing that in some sense in our lives. And we want to be equipped for every good work. We don't want to fail.

We actually are equipped for every good work. Through the word of God. So we don't have to fail and we don't have to feel unwhole, as a result of God's word being present. We all get that. The scripture is sufficient, meaning it has everything we need. 

Let me just jump. Okay, I just jumped to one other passage description.

I hope you do. This is what the Lord intends for his word. All right. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there, but water the earth. Making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word that goes out from my mouth.

It shall not return to be empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose. And shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. God's word actually works. Like a divine mic drop. Yeah, it is. We need to be rooted in it. It's not just like enough in the sense that you don't need something more.

It's enough in the sense that it's everything. You actually need all of it. We think in many cases that we're doing that okay. Like when I was defending legalism I thought I was doing it based on the word. When you were saying I'm not gonna engage the gossip. And muddling through and trying to, yeah.

Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow. When we start to really take some inventory, I think that's when we start to realize there are times I'm not allowing the scripture to be sufficient. There can be a lot of reasons for that. One right now, I think we all face, is increasing pressure from culture to compromise.

This could be in a number of areas. Your stance on sexuality and gender. The way you view, Issues like abortion. What you put in front of you, through your screen. There are a number of areas where we could face a cultural pressure to compromise biblical values. It can sneak in before you even realize it.

I think something just as deadly as that is the general biblical illiteracy of the church. 

Yeah. And not knowing the Word of God. We love the Bible, we just don't know what it says. 

Yeah. 

Super common. I think another big one is just frustration and fatigue. We can be so busy and on the go, go, go, go, go.

We're just too frustrated and too tired to actually sit down and analyze our lives in light of God's Word. Yeah. That's why we end up doing the verse of the day a lot of times or even if you feel really holy, you read your chapter, But you didn't actually sit down and meditate. Yeah. On God's Word. And I felt like we were rapping there.

Yeah, that my words. Yeah. Some other things that we could struggle with. A big one I've already mentioned is tradition. We can allow tradition, in our minds, to replace Scripture, thinking that we're following Scripture. 

I think one of the things we all have to do, whether you're pastors, deacons, elders, church members, piano players, is to make this a primary thing.

Right? It's not something that comes along secondary to the job that we have to do at church. 

Yeah. 

This is a primary thing. And why we do the job that we do at the church. Why we care for people, why we love people, why we worship, why we sing, why we have Bible study, why we have prayer meeting on a Wednesday night. It's all got to be tied into God's Word.

So here's the challenge is, go and evaluate your life a little bit and ask, am I living like Scripture is sufficient in the church? Is that really what's driving me or am I clinging to a tradition? Am I behind the scenes slipping into little sinful behaviors like gossip in the form of a prayer request?

Am I really doing that? Am I doing it at home? That's another area that sometimes we have our church self, and then we have our home self. And husbands, are you leading your wives? Using the Word of God.

This is also going to make difficult decisions a whole lot easier. Oh, that's true. Let me come back to the benefits in just a second. But just to finish the challenge here, as you're raising your kids Are you applying God's word?

Are you reasoning and rationalizing reasons that you don't need to do it like the Bible says to do it? I'm thinking especially in terms of something like discipline. Or, you know, daily bringing your kids into the word and talking all the time wherever you go about the things of the Lord. Are you doing that as a dad, as a mom, as a kid, if you're a kid listening?

I don't know what you're doing here, but I'm glad you are. Praise the Lord. There's a few. Are you obeying your parents? Are you honoring them? Not just doing what they say, but then when they walk away you're rolling your eyes. No, are you honoring your father and mother? When you read the Proverbs and you see what it means to listen to your father's instruction and hold fast to your mother's instruction, are you doing that joyfully and trusting the Lord with it?

Or are you secretly thinking, I know better than them? And there's all kinds of areas like this. Where in the home, we may feel like that's our safe place to let down a little bit from the word of God. But if scripture is sufficient, it informs the way you act at church, at home, and then out in the community as well.

It's shopping season right now. I'll tell myself one more time. Yesterday, I was walking through a parking lot at a local shopping establishment, and a vehicle pulled out right in front of me and almost ran me over. And you know what I caught myself doing? I was rolling my eyes and making a face. And this is a small town.

Everybody knows everybody. And I thought, what a misrepresentation of God and his word and the grace that I've been shown. And I was ashamed of it. It was too late to do anything about it. I didn't even want to go into the store because I was going to have to face this person. It's so easy to drift from a reliance on the word as all sufficient.

What are some of the benefits Joe? 

Before I get to the benefits, my kid came home from youth group last night. They were talking about prayer and youth group. She said to me dad I really have a hard time praying for myself. It doesn't seem like it's something that I should do. To pray for myself. And I wish that I would have had the wisdom in that moment to say one of the things that you can pray For yourself is that you realize and see the sufficiency of Scripture. I think that if we ask the Lord and pray for that, he will honor it and that will begin to grow on our heart. You think someone right?

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but is delighted in the law of the Lord. 

And delighting in the law of the Lord, and loving his scripture, loving the word of God, it's gonna make hard decisions a whole lot easier.

Yeah. 

Okay so, let's say that at your business meeting, or your member meeting, you are faced as a congregation with a really difficult decision to make, and you've got this choice.

Is it A, or is it B? And, which one of these is a more scriptural thing. Which one of these is the Word of God going to back up? I think that, I wish I had an example off the top of my head. You guys are tasked to come up with an example right now. But following the Word of God, that is your guide. You're going to be able to figure out the thing that your church should do.

Well, just going back to your original example, if gossip is happening, And you as elders are aware of it, and maybe it's even been addressed by someone who's been faithful in the church. It seems like it'd probably be your responsibility to go with that person, and use the word to show why it needs to not happen.

We were going to move locations as a church, because we had outgrown our old church building, and that was the Recipe for disaster. We had been in this other church building as a congregation for well over a hundred years. It was paid off. A lot of people's grandparents had plaques with their names on it around the building. It was a pretty sacred space. In talking about leaving that place and moving into a bigger building, we knew that this could be the potential for division in the church.

And we, we understood it. It was irresponsible to stay in a location like that when the Lord was helping our congregation grow. One of our older members, who has been a member of the church for over seven decades, understood the sufficiency of scripture, even though he had a strong emotional tie to that old building.

And was married there, buried his parents from a funeral there. He looked at our congregation in a members meeting and said, this is the best possible thing we could do as stewards of what God has entrusted to us. So he took all that emotional weight. And he went to the word of God and it changed the tone and it created a hunger and an anxiousness to let's hurry up and get to the new place, which was just awesome.

That's an example of a church member taking their responsibility to lead well and pointing the whole congregation back to the word of God. That's the kind of things that, if we're going to have healthy churches out here in the middle of nowhere, we need congregations who understand the sufficiency of the word and and rely on it and treasure it and Agree to uphold it as central and everything we do in the life of the church. We have to start there if if we don't recover that we'll never see healthy rural churches.

All right Let's quickly get to application in 30 seconds or less four different ways. Okay pastor Deacon, Elder, Worship Leader, Member, pick one of those groups. How can somebody fulfilling one of those roles hold to the sufficiency of Scripture? 

Whoever's choosing the worship songs in your church, do your songs actually communicate what's true, or do they just make people feel good?

And, can you connect them to the text you're preaching that day? Yeah, yep. So that'd be one, I think, really simple application. 

All the above. If you're not in the Word daily, you're not functionally living out the sufficiency of scripture. If you're not in the word every single day, Then you are to some degree relying on your own strength as a choice, and you need to stop making that choice and be the word.

Teachers, I'm gonna do one that I didn't even announce out there. Adult teachers, kid teachers, youth group teachers, Don't just go in to entertain the people who are there. Hold to the sufficiency of scripture. Preach the Bible. 

Trust the Lord to do the transformation.

You got to deliver the real truth. That's our responsibility. Well, thank you for joining us for this episode. We're looking forward to seeing you next week. For now though, if you want some more resources, head on over to Brainerdinstitute.com. 

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Goodbye.