Thy Word is Truth (1 Peter 1:16-21)

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Thank you for those who just did the music. It's rare to be in a church that does the old traditional hymns, and I love them.

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And again, my name is Jonathan, or I usually go by John Harris. I come from Grace Bible Church in Wappingers.

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And I understand you've had Ed Colon here, who is also from Grace Bible Church, at least once.

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So we've known each other for a long time. And I live in Highland, New York, so about an hour, depending on traffic, north of here on the

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Hudson River. And I had a wonderful, beautiful drive here this morning. I wish my wife and my daughter could be with us, but we actually have our first newborn, and she's about a month old.

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And I miss her. Right now, I miss her. It's kind of a weird feeling.

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I haven't had that most of my life. But yeah, just a rough night, so they weren't able to come this morning.

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But I am the minister of music at Grace Bible Church. I've been involved in college ministry there for years.

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We have a ministry with the Culinary Institute of America, probably similar to what you have here with West Point, as I understand it, which is just a really great ministry.

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And of course, there's a lot of apologetics that go along with the college ministry because there's a lot of questions that people have during their college years about the

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Bible, which is somewhat, I suppose, what inspired this message. And also,

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I suppose it's worth mentioning, for a living, I'm actually an author and a podcaster, and I speak across the country on issues of mostly

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Christianity and the social justice issue, and try to explain why some of these threats today to our faith are important for us to think about and refute.

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So you're gonna get a little bit of a apologetics sermon, I suppose, this morning, and hopefully that's okay with you.

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I know your pastor called me yesterday, or your incoming pastor. I guess, is he your pastor yet?

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He will be on Tuesday. He'll be here Tuesday. So I feel like, yeah, the prophet

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John, I'm paving the way here. He told me all the offensive things that I need to say before he gets here, so he doesn't have to say them.

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But no, in all seriousness, he called me, and he wanted to know what I was preaching on, the contents of my message.

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And I thought that was pretty impressive, to be honest with you, because I thought, well, you're not even at the church yet, and you're very concerned with who's gonna fill the pulpit.

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And he prayed with me and encouraged me, and I'm excited for you, that you have a man like that coming, who already cares about the sheep so much, that he wants to make sure

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I'm not gonna pull a fast one on you or something, and promote some heresy. And so excited for you on that point, and he's excited to come.

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The three points I wanna talk about today, or the three, I suppose, categories you can think of this message in, and they teach you this in seminary.

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So I have been to seminary, and they teach you fancy things like this, called alliteration, right? So the Bible contested, the

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Bible confirmed, and the Bible confided. And if you notice, there's three Cs there. So you'll all remember it, right?

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But the Bible contested is the first section I wanna talk about, which is the challenges to scripture, both in the context in which 2

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Peter was written, and our context. How is the Bible challenged? How is the word of God challenged? Maybe even in your daily lives, in the media, in our institutions.

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And then the Bible confirmed. In other words, the truth of the Bible, we believe, you wouldn't be here if you didn't believe that the

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Bible was true, that it was the actual word of God. And so why do we think that?

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What justification do we have for believing this? Some people think it's crazy, right? And then the

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Bible confided in, and this is more the application, we should trust it.

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Why should we trust it? Because it's the word of God, but we should trust it in our day -to -day life. We should put our confidence in it.

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We should live according to it. And I believe you see these three elements coming out of 2

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Peter as well. So I'm hoping at the end of this message, you'll be able to better answer questions like how do we know the

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Bible is true? Why must we follow it? And these are the kinds of questions you're gonna get in the course of your life, whether it's in the doctor's office or on the job.

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I try to bring up the fact that I go to church or drop something spiritual in the conversation when

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I'm talking to people in the world. And this is a question that will sometimes come up when you drop that into a conversation if the conversation progresses.

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And they might wanna know why you go to church, or maybe they went to church at one time, but they don't anymore. And that's something to explore.

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And oftentimes you'll find out it's because maybe they don't actually believe that the truth is contained in the

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Bible anymore. So why do we believe it's true? Why must we follow it? Some relevant news along this point.

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I was reminded of this as I was preparing yesterday. And these are in red states, not

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New York, but in deep red states. In Oklahoma, the state superintendent named Ryan Walters recently ordered school districts in Oklahoma to integrate the

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Bible as an instructional support into the curriculum for grades fifth through 12th. And of course, this is meeting major backlash.

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There's at least five districts that are saying they will not comply with this, and their reasons are because that's a violation of the

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Establishment Clause and the Constitution in their minds. We're not gonna talk about that this morning, but underneath all this is the idea that the

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Bible's really not true. And it's not, I looked at the law because I thought, wow, this must be some draconian theocratic law.

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And it just basically said, the Bible was important to our founding, and we should probably teach it. Not even in an authoritative way.

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We could teach it in this multicultural context, but it's good for kids to know about it. That was enough, that was enough.

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And then in Louisiana, in actually just last month, in June, public schools are now required to display the

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Ten Commandments in every classroom following a new law that was signed by Republican Governor Jeff Landry.

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And of course, this sparked a lot of controversy. Some of you might remember, if you keep up with the news last month, that this was such a violation of separation of church and state, and how could they do this?

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And I wanna just make the point that I think we could talk about the political things going into all this, but at the end of the day, what this reveals is that the opponents of these measures really do not believe the

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Bible. That's really underneath all of this, that they see a threat in the Bible because they don't think it's true. They think that it's false and there's dangerous things within it.

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And if we were to believe those things, it might train wreck our lives or something. So I wanna talk about some of the reasons people might think this.

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Why do they contest the scripture? And let's read again. I know we already read it, but just I think repeating it is important so we understand the context.

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2 Peter 2, verses 16 through 21. Hopefully you're already there in your Bibles. I'm starting at verse 16, if you wanna follow along.

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Peter says, for we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when we received honor and glory from God the

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Father, such as an utterance, as this was made to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved son with whom

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I am well pleased. And we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.

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So we have the prophetic word made more sure to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.

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But know this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the

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Holy Spirit spoke from God. Now the context of this particular passage is

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Peter writing to the churches in Asia Minor in modern day Turkey, warning about false teachers who would secretly introduce destructive heresies, including denying

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Christ, according to chapter one, verse two. And they also denied, according to chapter three, verses three through four, the second coming of Christ.

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And I want to examine these challenges because Peter writes in a context, he's writing these things to push back against something that is threatening the church.

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And that's the spirit I bring this message in with today is that there is a zeitgeist out there pushing against the church.

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And what Peter identifies here is we could categorize today as a proto -Gnostic libertinism.

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And I know that's a fancy word, but really all I mean by that is people who want to do what they want to do, and they don't care what the

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Bible says about it because they're their own authority. The Gnostics, which eventually developed in the first and second, or really more the second centuries, were a group of people that, and this is an oversimplification, but they believe that the physical world and the material world and then the spiritual world were different.

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And they are, but they took that difference to mean that the physical world was either evil or not important.

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And so there were different schools of thought that would teach things like, you can do whatever you want in the physical world because it doesn't matter.

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It's not spiritual. So you can sin all you want. And there were other schools of thought that went the opposite direction and said, well, you should be an ascetic.

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You should go off into the desert and make sure that you never enjoy earthly pleasures because that's bad because that's the physical world.

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And so opposite applications to the same destructive ideas and we see kind of a pre -gnostic or proto -gnostic tendency here along the lines of doing whatever you want.

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Libertinism. You have the liberty to do whatever you want. If we read in chapter two, verses 18 through 19, you can read along with me.

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It says, for speaking out arrogant words of vanity, they, meaning these false teachers, threatening the church, enticed by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption.

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For by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. I love that last line there because it's so profound.

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By what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. And we have this thinking with us today.

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This thinking has always been around that you can unchain yourself, do what you want, follow your heart to the vices that you enjoy, and this is actually freedom.

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That's true freedom. There's a lot of people who believe that. In fact, today, if I even hear the word, you know, terms like human rights or just even rights language in general,

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I'm ready for what kind of sin they're going to push on me, right? That's the language they use to justify the behavior.

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It's not really linked to responsibilities as it was during the founding era of the United States where you have a responsibility to your civic duty and your family and these kinds of things and that's the basis for the rights you have to operate to fulfill those duties.

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Now it's just whatever you want to do, whatever feels good, that's your right. And this group of libertines, it says in verse one of chapter two, it says they deny the master who bought them and the reason for this is because they don't really think they need to be bought.

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They don't think they're bad. They think that the things they engage in, the sinful tendencies they have, they're not really actually sinful.

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They're not really actually bad. So why do you even need Christ to die for your sins, to come as an atonement, to pay the penalty, to justify you before God because you don't need to be justified.

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In the extreme forms that developed later, one of the extreme forms of Gnosticism was called

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Marcionism named after a second century heretic named Marcion who denied the

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Old Testament revelation. He cut the whole thing out and said it doesn't really apply to us.

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It's actually evil because it represents a separate God, separate from Jesus who laid down law and Jesus came to liberate us from law and so most of the

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Bible was simply excised by him. Now today we have many examples of this. In fact,

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I could probably talk for the rest of the sermon. I won't do that about examples of this but one that came to mind immediately when

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I was reading this is queer affirming Christianity. This notion that and it's understandable would be popular today that you can justify homosexual behavior or homosexual desires because there's an overriding law of love in the

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Bible. Because God is love, this justifies these actions or behaviors and it doesn't matter what

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God has clearly stated on this issue in very clear passages because we're going to override that with this vague notion of love and it's really the same basic error.

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It's actually denying scripture even though some of the people who come to you might say that they are Christians, that they don't deny scripture and they have fancy ways of trying to interpret certain texts perhaps but at the end of the day, they really are just justifying sinful behaviors and denying scripture in the process to do it and the lie at the root of this is has

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God said not to eat? It's the same lie that the serpent gave to Eve when he questioned her.

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Has God said not to eat? Has he really said not to do these things? Is he really against sin and the things that you maybe enjoy in your flesh, has he really said not to do that?

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Now the second error that we find in chapter three verses three through four is denying the second coming of Christ and this group of heretics that came into the church and was threatening the church in Turkey, modern day

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Turkey, Peter says this about them starting in verse three of chapter three.

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Know this first of all that in the last days, mockers will come with their mocking following after their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming?

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For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation and so this is essentially a denial of Christ's promise when

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Christ said in John 14 three, if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am, there you may be also.

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They say that's not actually going to happen. That's not true and in so doing, they really deny the resurrection of the dead because in 1

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Corinthians 15, Paul says, for if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless.

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You are still in your sins. That's pretty serious. That's an error. If you say Christ is not coming back, that leads you to Christ didn't even rise from the dead if you connect what

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Paul's saying to what Peter's saying here. Now today we have different versions of this,

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I would say but I immediately thought of schools of thought that deny supernatural events because they're somehow inconsistent with natural ones.

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So Darwinian materialism that the only things that exist out there are material things. There's really no immaterial abstract things out there or Marxist conflict theory which posits that history is really just a clash between oppressors and oppressed and there's really no motivators outside of that.

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Those are the only two motivators that exist and when you narrow the scope that far and you limit all experience to those things, when the

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Bible speaks of other motivations, when the Bible speaks of other things, then you have to cast those things out because they don't fit your theory and that's what

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Darwinian evolutionists do, that's what Marxist conflict theory advocates do essentially and so they have a tension between what they're advocating and what the

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Bible clearly teaches and because of that, they I think repeat the lie of the devil when the devil came to Eden and said, you surely will not die.

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You surely will not die. So one lie has God said not to eat, challenging

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God's authority and then outright contradicting God is the other lie, right? You surely will not die.

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Sure, God said that but it's not gonna happen and that's what we find as well and I wanna read for you from Genesis because I think this is, no matter what challenge we're looking at from scripture, no matter what school of thought says scripture is untrue, shouldn't be followed, we're looking at these same basic lies repackaged over and over again.

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So let's go to the foundation, let's go to the root of these lies for the first time in human history and go to Genesis chapter three, you can turn there and we're gonna read verses one through six and this is what

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Satan says to Eve in verse one, now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the

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Lord God had made and he said to the woman, indeed has God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden and the woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden, we may eat but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden,

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God has said, you shall not eat from it or touch it or you will die. The serpent said to the woman, you surely will not die for God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

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When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate and she gave also to her husband with her and he ate.

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Now one of the first things that jumps out at me and it's somewhat surprising in a way about this passage,

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I know we've probably read this over and over but the fall of man resulted from ultimately a mistrust of God and his word.

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That's where it stems from. You would expect the fall of man to be something super egregious in our minds, right?

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Murder or rape or something of that nature and what you find here is that really it's something so simple.

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God said not to eat of that tree and mankind questions that with the help of the serpent cheerleading away.

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And Satan's strategy here is this and it's the same strategy that Peter's dealing with. It's the same strategy that we're dealing with today when it comes to challenges to God's word.

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He wanted to sow doubt. He wanted to sow distortion and he wanted to sow deceit. And that's what he did.

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He sowed doubt. Has God said? You sure that you heard it right? Are you sure that God came to you and said these words?

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And then he sows distortion. He exaggerates God. He makes God sound unreasonable or unfair.

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You shall not eat from any tree of the garden. Well, God didn't say any tree. God said the one.

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But Satan wants to make it sound so unreasonable as if, man, he's telling you all these trees.

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He made all this fruit for you and then he says you can't eat it. Well, that just seems like a killjoy. And then he sows deceit.

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You surely will not die. God's withholding good things from you. Things that other people are enjoying.

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Things that other people say gives them fulfillment. And you can't do it because God said not to do it.

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So you won't die. Don't worry about the consequences of that. Well, we see these challenges today and I want to share with you a few modern philosophical schools or just broadly speaking popular philosophies people live their lives by and show you how they sow doubt and distortion and deceit.

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And I struggle with this a little bit because we don't have a lot of time but I want to give you some what

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I think are very popular understandings people in our context come to us with when they challenge the word of God.

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So the first school of thought is relativism and there's a lot of different kinds of relativists but ultimately they all come down to perception determines truth or determines how you should morally live.

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Perception. What's true for you may not be true for me, right? You've heard this before. Therefore, the

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Bible can have multiple valid interpretations. You see it one way, I see it another and that's perfectly fine.

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And I want to go through just a few of the statements that you may hear from someone who doesn't know it perhaps but they are a relativist at some level.

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They'll say things like all opinions are valid yet they believe the opinion that they believe that if you hold an opinion that not all opinions are valid that opinion is invalid, right?

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They'll say things like those who know there is no such thing as truth. Sorry, I'm confusing my notes here.

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They will come to you and they will say things like there is no such thing as truth, right? It doesn't exist, not out there but they think it's true that they know that there's no such thing as truth, right?

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So they assume on a certain level that what they're telling you isn't actually accurate.

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They will say that no absolutes exist and they're absolutely sure about it. They know that there's absolutes.

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They're not sure if truth exists but they're sure that they're not sure that truth exists, right?

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And we could do this all day. They say truth isn't clear but they're very clear about it. And so I think of Romans 1 verse 21.

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It says their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. And in verse 25 of that same chapter it says they exchanged the truth of God for a lie.

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Let me just sum it up for you in my language. It makes you stupid when you start saying things like that.

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You say ridiculous things and even people who are very influential in our country in the affairs of our nation, nationally speaking they will say things like this.

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They will live by these kinds of dictums and it's foolish, it's stupid. It doesn't make any sense and if they just listened to themselves they would know it doesn't make any sense but they're looking for a justification.

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They're looking for a way to have their cake and eat it. They want to live in a certain way and they don't want anyone hampering that.

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And at the same time though they want to enjoy the blessings of the structure and the things that we've enjoyed in this country for a long time.

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And so they sow doubt. It's not very clear what the Bible says. We can make it sound, we can make it say whatever we want.

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They sow distortion. I hear this a lot, you need to affirm who you are.

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You need to find who you are and self -actualize and just really affirm that. We hear that a lot in the gender affirming care stuff today.

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Well, this is a Satan's strategy that we see in the garden. To sow distortion. Who are you?

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It's assuming that you're this person that you're not being affirmed in, in society. And so we need to change the rules and if the church isn't affirming you then we need to change the rules so you're affirmed.

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That becomes the highest good. But what if what you believe about yourself is a lie? And then of course it sows deceit.

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You can make it whatever you want it to be. You can make your reality whatever you want it to be.

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In 2023, so last year, there was a poll by Barna Research Group and I found this interesting.

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They said that only 4%, which is pretty discouraging, of all American adults have a biblical worldview.

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And according to them, a biblical worldview means things like rejecting moral relativism, which we just talked about, affirming the exclusivity of Christ and the inerrancy of scripture, believing in the sovereignty and holiness of God and the existence of heaven.

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And this means only 4 % of American adults completely believe the Bible. Now, I don't know if you know how many people in the

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United States claim to be Christians. It's almost 70%. That's how many people claim to be some kind of variety of Christian, according to polling.

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But 25 % of adults in the United States strongly disagree that determining moral truth is up to each individual and that there are no moral absolutes that apply to everyone all the time.

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So you have almost 70 % saying they're Christians, but 25 % explicitly embracing this kind of relativism.

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Now, like I said, you can't live that way. So not everyone really truly believes this. They don't get a check from their job and then say, well, whatever you want it to be, right?

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They're very adamant that that check needs to have a number on it that they agreed to.

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And they're very adamant that you need to drive on the right side of the road, right? You don't get to make up the rules when it comes to those kinds of things.

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But when it comes to things that they wanna do, sinful things, they'll start making up the rules. Now, the

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Bible and the God of the Bible claim to be truth. And this is the iceberg that they will hit as they try to live out their philosophy.

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2 Peter 1 .16, which we already read, says, for we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. Psalm 33 .4, for the word of the

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Lord is upright and all his work is done in faithfulness. John 14 .6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

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No one comes to the Father but through me. This is a running theme in scripture that the Bible is the capital T truth.

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It's objective. Now, there's another challenge to scripture that I'll broadly call empiricism, and it often goes along with materialism, that only empirical evidence can be admitted.

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And so the Bible, they'll say, is somewhat subjective. The Bible, it was written a long time ago, a lot of the things it says, how can we really trust it scientifically?

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How can we test these things? There's a lot of miracles in there. Those don't seem to line up with what we know today.

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And so we reject it. Empiricism cannot be subjected to an empirical test itself, though, because it's an immaterial philosophy.

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Have you ever thought of that? Empiricism, the idea, the very notion that you must have a scientific test to determine truth or some kind of an empirical test assumes that not all of reality is actually empirical because you can't actually subject empiricism to science.

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It's a philosophy. So again, it's the same thing with the relativist challenge. They don't really believe what they say at the end of the day.

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And this has crept into the church in many ways. You have, I learned this in college, but the Wellhausen theory, that there were these multiple authors of Genesis, the documentary hypothesis, which teaches that there's a

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Q source. We don't have it, but they assume that there's this Q source that some of the gospel authors relied on to write their gospel.

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Of course, Darwinism comes up here again. And the challenge is, how can we trust the Bible if it were written by men?

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Doesn't it contain contradictions? Did Christianity just steal their ideas from other religions?

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Don't miracles contradict science? These are the kind of questions that you'll get from someone who advocates this. And in college ministry,

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I used to get those questions, I'd say 15 years ago. And now I don't get them as much.

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I get more of the moral relativists and people who have questions about the Bible's specific morality.

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How can it be just and those kinds of things? But you're still gonna find this in certain places, especially if you're involved in science and that kind of thing.

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Now, these are some basic challenges that we have today in modern society. I wanna go through what

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Peter's refutation is, what Peter's answer is to those who challenged the Bible in his day, and then how these refutations also apply to the challenges we face in ours.

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Peter's first refutation concerns apostolic experience. And he says that they did not follow cleverly devised fables, right?

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And then he gives to us the story of the transfiguration. If you remember the transfiguration in that story,

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Peter, James, and John go up to a mountain with Jesus, right? And Jesus is transfigured before them.

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His face is glowing, his garments become white, and a voice comes from heaven.

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This is my beloved son, in whom I am well -pleased, listen to him. And Peter, James, and John are just, you could picture them with their jaws on the floor.

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And the only thing they can say is, we'll build some temples for you here. We need to do something to honor and commemorate this, which wasn't the right answer, which wasn't the right response.

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But this is something that they would have remembered. And just imagine this with me. I was thinking about this the other day because it was really hot.

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And on a hot day in the summer, do you ever wanna just, I don't know, take a cold shower?

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Or if you're near a swimming hole, I don't know if they have swimming holes here. My wife's from the Catskill Mountains, and there's all sorts of swimming holes.

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And they're really cool mountain water, you know? And on a summer day, when you go in some of those cold swimming holes, it's the best feeling

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I think I've ever experienced, in my opinion. Like, it's euphoria. It's just like, this is amazing.

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Or just even a cold wind or something on a hot day. Well, I have vivid memories of being in swimming holes, of enjoying that, because it's such a shock to the body.

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It's such a, the sense perception is very stimulated in those moments. And so it kind of ingrains itself into your mind.

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And then even right now, probably some of you are enjoying and savoring the feeling of that cold water on a hot day, even though you're not enjoying it physically.

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But you remember it, right? You remember it. And in neuroscience,

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I understand, and psychology and so forth, there's a term for this. It's called emotional memory.

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And I guess there's other terms for it. They're more technical. But essentially, when you have a memory that is vivid, that affects your senses, you will remember it more than other memories, right?

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And think about what happened in the transfiguration. I mean, Peter, James, and John would have remembered that.

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That would have stuck in their minds. They don't remember that till their death, because it was such an overwhelming experience.

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And so what Peter brings is an apostolic experience, apostolic authority.

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And he says, this is what we experienced and it's corroborated. We all saw it. We were all there. Another example too, from the negative side,

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I noticed there was some new 9 -11 footage released this week. And I was young, but I remember exactly where I was when that happened, because it was such an emotional thing.

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And so that's what Peter's saying. There was this really intense moment, and it made an impression on us.

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And there were two or three witnesses there, which fulfills the Old Testament standard for truth.

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And in the future, obviously, Peter has not passed away at this point, but in the future, he would die.

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From martyrdom. And so would the other apostles, with the exception of John, who was exiled to Patmos, which was also persecution of a certain sort.

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And they went to their deaths, all believing that what they saw was indeed accurate.

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And of course, there's religions today. I think of Muslim terrorists, especially where they will go to their death for what they believe to be true.

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And that certainly happens. But what they don't do is they don't go to their death believing that what they know to be true is actually false.

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In other words, Peter, James, and John, when they went to their deaths, when they were persecuted for their faith, they did so knowing that they had experienced

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Jesus firsthand. If it was all a lie, if it was all made up, if it was all a power play that the early church was trying to do, they wouldn't have gone to their death.

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There was no reason to go to their death. They could have just said, hang on, it's all fake. It's all a lie. We were just kidding. We don't want to suffer these consequences.

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And yet they suffered intense consequences because they knew what they were saying was true.

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And that is different than the terrorist example. They don't have access to that. They certainly have a belief, but they don't have the experience to back up that belief.

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And that's what Peter is appealing to. We have the experience to back this up. And then he goes to something that I want us all to pay attention to this morning.

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Most of all, he goes to the nature of Scripture. And he says, this is a more sure word. Go to verse 19.

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It says, so we have the prophetic word made more sure to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.

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But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the

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Holy Spirit spoke from God. Now, this is profound. Think about this. I just described to you the transfiguration experience and what they saw, this miraculous thing that they would never forget, that they'll go to their deaths believing.

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And he says, there's something actually that I can put more confidence in. It's more sure than even that.

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And that is the word of God. That's the prophetic word. And the prophetic word is made more sure because the prophecies in Scripture are actually fulfilled.

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They actually come to pass. They're not fake. There's been many false prophets out there. In fact, this year with the eclipse,

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I remember there were many false prophets out there predicting this was the sign of Jonah and in 40 days, we're gonna have severe judgment and nothing really happened out of the ordinary 40 days later after the eclipse.

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Well, these are false prophets. And the Bible's not that. When the Bible says something's gonna happen, it happens.

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It's a more sure word. He also says, and this is an interesting analogy, in my opinion, he says, you're well to pay attention to it as to what?

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What's the analogy he draws? A lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

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And there's different views about what that means, the morning star rising in your hearts. It probably is in reference to the final state when we will be with Christ.

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And like 1 Corinthians chapter 13 talks about when the perfect comes, there's this time coming when we will not need even the gift of prophecy, right?

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We will see him face to face. Well, that's most likely what it's referring to. But either way, this analogy that he draws is a theme you find throughout scripture.

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Psalm 119, 105, it says, your word is a lamp. There's that again, that light to my feet and a light to my path.

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It illuminates the room. You ever been, I don't know, hiking or somewhere and it got really dark and you didn't have a light and it scared you?

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I know I have. So this, by my own stupidity, last year, I like to hike a lot. So I was in the

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Catskills and my light fell out of my pocket while I was hiking. And it was really just my phone.

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It was doubly foolish because I probably should have had another light. I was like, I'll just use my phone if it gets dark. Where's my phone?

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Oh no, it fell off when I was sliding down the mountain. And it was in a very remote part of the Catskills and it started getting dark.

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And I was panting. It was, I was not even on a trail. I was bushwhacking. It makes it even worse.

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Trying to find my way back to my truck. And I remember as the sun was setting and I see no houses and just trees.

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I remember thinking about my wife and she was pregnant at the time and my daughter who's about to be born.

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And it's like, it's just weird stuff. Like my whole life is flashing. And I'm like, I hope I don't get dehydrated.

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I found this little creek. I started drinking from it. I'm making it sound more dramatic than it actually was. And eventually

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I found my truck and I got home. And of course I told my wife this whole story and she was like, you were fine.

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She didn't really think I was such a hero for it. But I felt like I was Bear Grylls. I gotta survive off the land here.

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Maybe I'll have to kill something to survive the night. But I was really considering this possibility.

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Like I might be out here all night without a light. And it's scary a little bit, right?

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As soon as you have a light, it's not. It's like a different world because you can see where you're going. And life is a lot like that.

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Life without the word of God is a lot like that. When you don't have the word of God and you try to live, it's like being in a scary wilderness where there's bears and there's all kinds of threats.

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You don't know if you're walking up to a cliff. You don't know if you're gonna step into a lake and drown. There's challenges all around you but you can't see any of them.

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The word of God illuminates everything in your life so you see them. I think this is what Peter is saying.

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He is saying the way that we treat God's word, God's revelation is the way we would treat a lamp.

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You don't question whether a lamp is true or false. It doesn't occur to you to question what you're seeing because of the light of the lamp.

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You're not questioning if it's a mirage or something. You know it's the way that you find truth.

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It's the means by which you know truth. And that's what the word of God is. It's the means by which you make sense of everything else that is around you.

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God's revelation. And we have the special revelation in the word of God.

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So let me just go through a few things with you briefly here. Some evidence because certain, especially the more empirical schools of thought, they want that, right?

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They want evidence. And I think evidence, we should not be afraid to question what the word of God teaches and submit it to scrutiny because it stands the test of all these challenges.

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So just a few things. I saw this. This is a few days ago. This is this week. And I knew because I'm not an expert on archaeology, but because I've done enough apologetics over the years,

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I knew implicitly all I had to do was go to a search engine online and type in the

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Bible archaeology in the news section. And I knew there would be something from the previous week confirming the

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Bible. That's how common and frequent it is. You don't always hear these things, but here's the one from this last week.

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You ready? A few days ago, this was reported in many mainstream publications, archaeologists found a 3 ,800 -year -old textile that contained a dye from oak scale insects or kermes, hopefully

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I'm pronouncing that right, which they identified with the biblical reference of Tulaat Hashani, which means scarlet worm.

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And this is referenced 25 times in the Bible, often mentioned alongside blue or purple.

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And the most precious and prestigious colors of the ancient world, it appears in the association with luxurious clothing, tabernacle textiles, and in other cultic contexts.

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What does this mean? It means that there is a specific dye that comes from these worms.

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And the Bible, the word there that the Bible uses is a scarlet worm. And we didn't have confirmation of this.

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We didn't have evidence exactly that the Bible was telling the truth when it talked about this. Well, we just had confirmation this last week.

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Turns out the Bible was accurate when it talked about dyes coming from these worms. I'm not gonna go through with you how they made the dye from the worms.

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You can use your imagination, but they confirmed it. I was just recently, a few months ago, with Dr.

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Stephen Collins in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and he is an archaeologist with Veritas International University.

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And he has been part of the dig uncovering the lost city of Sodom, from Sodom and Gomorrah.

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I got to hold pottery in my hand that was charred. And I wish

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I could talk more about this. It was so fascinating. But he took some of their findings, rocks in the area and those kinds of things, to, and this is

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New Mexico, so there's a lot of nuclear test sites and so forth. He took them to some scientists, didn't tell them where it came from, and said, what do you think produced these formations on these rocks, these burn marks and so forth?

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And I guess when it gets to a certain temperature, there's some molecular things that happen. I don't know how that all works.

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But the scientists looked at it and they said, well, this could only happen in the conditions that would be in a nuclear explosion.

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That's how hot it has to get. And then he told them where he got it from. And everything he told me, it just lines up with the biblical story.

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And they use the Bible's account to go find where Sodom was. Fascinating stuff.

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Well, this kind of thing is out there. It happens all the time. And it really bolsters our faith,

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I think, or it reinforces what we know to be true. There is fulfilled prophecy in the

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Bible. Isaiah 46, 9 -10 says, Remember the former things long past, for I am God and there is no other.

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I am God, there is no one like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things which have not been done, saying my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure.

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Christ fulfilled over 400 prophecies alone. That's just his coming. Psalm 22, 12 -18 contains a detailed description of the crucifixion 1 ,000 years before Jesus was born.

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His birthplace was prophesied in Micah 5 -2. The rejection of his people was prophesied in Isaiah 53 -3.

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His forerunner was prophesied, John the Baptist in Isaiah 40 -3. Daniel catalogs not only the exact time of the coming of the

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Messiah, but the rise and fall of nations, things Daniel could not have known by himself.

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Christ states in John 5 -46, For if you believe Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote about me.

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Fascinating when you get into prophecy and you look at how the Bible fulfills the prophecies of the

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Old Testament in the New. We, of course, have science. We find that every scientific fact recorded in Scripture is 100 % accurate.

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From the earth being a sphere to the currents of the sea, things modern science only figured out in the last 500 years.

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We have unity in Scripture as well. 66 books written over the period of 1 ,500 years by over 40 different human authors, and somehow it's consistent and coherent and flows together as if it had one author because it does.

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We have confirmation from literature. Now, this is going to sound weird.

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I realized as I was going through this. In our country, maybe we are an exception here in some ways, but most countries, and for most of human history, people didn't like to say bad things about their country.

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They would embellish how good they were. Insert United States in 2020 and all the things we said bad about ourselves, but that's kind of an anomaly.

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It doesn't happen. It's very rare that that kind of thing happens. And what you find in the Old Testament is a record of not just the triumphs, but also the flaws.

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And that is a remarkable thing, that they would be honest about their own sins. I mean, where else are you going to find a book where half of it seems to be, yeah, we messed up again.

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Yeah, we were grumbling in the wilderness. Yeah, we were exiled. That was pretty bad. Yeah, our judges, not too good.

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Most of our kings, pretty bad too. I mean, it's not the kind of history you generally want to pass down to your kids, and yet they do.

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They pass down the triumphs. They pass down the crossing of the Red Sea and the conquering of the promised land and the great stories of virtue.

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And they also pass down some of the ugly things, and they talk about those as well. And that is part of their identity.

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That's an amazing thing to find. Not something you're going to find in other religions.

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Now, the last point I want to make to you, and it's probably the most important point by way of application, is the

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Bible confided in. We should be confident in the Scripture. That's the point. The Bible is not true because we can verify it, okay?

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Let me say that again. The Bible is not true because we can verify it. The Bible is true because it is from God.

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That's why it's true. And we know that it's true because the Holy Spirit has convinced us of its truthfulness.

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It doesn't mean some of these other lines of evidence can't bolster our faith. It doesn't mean that they can't confirm what we already know to be true.

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But we do know it to be true as believers in Jesus Christ, as redeemed ones, because the

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Holy Spirit has convinced us of its truthfulness. We find in the book of 2

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Peter a cause and effect that the Bible delivers on its promises.

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We have two groups of people in the book of 2 Peter. We have true converts and we have false teachers.

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And we find that the true converts engage in virtuous living. In chapter 1 verses 5 through 15.

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And this virtuous living is based on God's word. Verses 16 through 21 of chapter 1.

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And these true converts are forgiven. Verses 9 through 11 of chapter 1.

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And they escape judgment. Chapter 2 verses 4 through 9. This is the path that you are on if you are a believer in Jesus Christ.

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If your sins have been forgiven. And then there are the false teachers. They have a little bit of a different description.

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They are arrogant. They follow their lusts. Chapter 2 verses 10 through 18. This is based on their own lies.

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Chapter 2 verses 1 through 2. And they are not forgiven. And they are judged. Chapter 2 verses 4 through 9.

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And what does this tell us? What are we to draw from these two parallel examples?

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One group stands on the word of God. And their house is on the rock. The other group stands on their own human reason.

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And their house is on the sand. And the evidence for one being true over the other is how they live their lives and what happens to them in the end.

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It's a confirmation. We find this even in our temporal existence with many proverbial truths.

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Think of the book of Proverbs. And all the wisdom principles that you find there. They're all true. They all conform to human nature.

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If you practice the principles that Proverbs says concerning finances or family life.

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Hey, it actually works in the real world. Who would have thought if you discipline your child as the

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Bible teaches that that would actually be something to help improve the child's behavior. Amazing.

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I mean, it's such a simple thing, but it's something that's rejected today, right? And we could give you a number of examples of that.

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You know, look to the aunt, right? Be diligent. These kinds of things will secure you against things like poverty.

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These are just, this conforms to human nature. Acts 13, 46 through 47 records the work of Paul to the

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Gentiles in preaching the word as a light. And I want to return to this theme. This light theme is seen throughout scripture.

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Paul talks about it. Jesus talks about it. Jesus is the light. Actually, it says that shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.

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This darkness light theme is, I think, one of the biggest confirmations as I already stated about the

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Bible's truth. But it's also the reason we should trust the Bible. Because as we step out in faith and we trust what

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God says is true concerning his moral law, concerning trusting in Jesus Christ, concerning relying on his

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Spirit and his sustenance, as we step out in faith, he proves to us over and over that what he said is true.

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And we walk in light. The room gets brighter. I have many personal testimonies I don't have time to share with you of times when

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I just thought, God, you're going to have to provide my needs because I don't know how it's going to work right now. God, you're going to have to save me in this moment because you promised to do so.

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You promised to sustain me. Please make good on that promise. And he does. This is what an unbeliever doesn't know.

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The unbeliever doesn't know that he's lost. John 3, 19, this is the judgment that the light has come into the world and the men love darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil.

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Men don't want the Bible to be true because it exposes their evil. Man doesn't think he has a problem.

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Man thinks he's okay without God, but he's fumbling around in the darkness. And we should have compassion because of that.

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This is where we engage the non -believer. So I would, in closing, just say to you, assume the

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Word of God. Assume that it's true. 2 Peter 3, 16, these things have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. Assume that this is true. All scripture is inspired by God, is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.

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We must use the law of God to bring about the knowledge of sin. And we must at every turn destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.

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And this is really engaging in apologetics, and it doesn't take an expert to do this kind of thing. The folly of the non -believer is that he thinks he's

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God. He sets himself up as the judge of scripture, and we need to point out that not only is he not

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God, but he is God's creature, and he's a sinful one in disobedience, and he needs the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

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The war that we are in currently is over souls. It's over the souls of men.

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And the Jews ask for signs, the Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. To Jews, a stumbling block.

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To Greeks, foolishness. But to us, the power of God. And the other two things an unbeliever doesn't realize about himself is he rejects scripture because he doesn't,

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God does not allow him to see. There is a judgment, and this is a scary thing. If you're sitting here and you don't know

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Christ, I would just ask you talk to myself or talk to someone here who knows

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Christ and make sure that you know him, make sure that you're his child, that you're forgiven of your sins. There is a judgment that comes.

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James 4, 6 says, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Mark 4, 12 says that while seeing, they may see and not perceive, and while hearing, they may hear and not understand.

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Otherwise, they might return and be forgiven. There is a judgment that God brings to humans who rebel against him.

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He will blind them at times. And there's also the devil. That's another thing the unbelievers don't realize.

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They are influenced by. And we saw this with Eve. But 2 Corinthians 4, 4 says, In whose case the

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God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God?

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So you have our own sin, you have the devil, and sometimes God's judgment, all working to, in different cases, in different ways to blind the hearts of the unbeliever.

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The only thing that can penetrate that is God's Spirit. God can use us as the means to do that, but no fancy arguments are going to be the ones to do that.

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It's going to be the Spirit of God. It's going to be a heart conversion, ultimately, that makes someone trust the Word of God. And for those of us who know

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Christ in this room, I'm sure that you resonate with this. This is why you trust the Word of God.

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You knew it was true. You just knew. That describes who I am. I'm a sinner. That's what

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I need, Jesus Christ and his death and the power of his resurrection. Well, the believer's blessing that you have is that I think 1

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Thessalonians 1, 4 -5 sums this up. Knowing, brethren, beloved by God, his choice of you for our gospel did not come to you in word only but also in power and the

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Holy Spirit and with full conviction, just as you know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake.

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So the three points, the three things that we dealt with this morning is the challenges to the Bible, why the

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Bible is contested, what are some of the arguments used against the Bible, why we believe the Bible is true, and then the

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Bible confided and why we trust the Bible and we should trust the Bible. And hopefully you are better equipped now to answer some of those questions if you get them.