This series we’re going through right now is called I’ve got a question. It’s based on questions that you all have submitted. So it’s a lot of fun. We get to talk about things that are on our minds. What’s things maybe that have troubled us or doubts we’ve had over the years?

And maybe it’s just something where we’ve never got a clear answer. And we’re going to hope to look through scripture to get answers to those questions. And this Sunday this morning we’re going to be talking about the Bible. We’ve got lots of questions that were submitted related to the nature or the reliability of the Bible. And so I just kind of put them all under the same heading of isn’t the Bible hopelessly corrupted?

Isn’t the Bible hopelessly corrupted? And it’s not going to shock you that my answer to that is emphatically no. The Bible is not hopelessly corrupted. Now you could easily say, well, yeah, but you’re a pastor, Jason. Of course, you’re going to say that the Bible is the authoritative, uncorrupted word of God.

It’s true. Now, but I wasn’t always a pastor. And the question is, how did I come to that conclusion? See, questions have a way of helping us understand and figure out not only what we believe. That’s important.

It’s also important to know why we believe what we believe. It’s important to know that we’re standing on solid ground when we make claims about the life to come. When we make claims about what God is like, it’s good to know that we have firm earth beneath our feet. And that’s what we’re really going to be talking about. Now, some people would say something like, now look, can’t we just all agree, let’s love and follow Jesus, love our neighbor?

Why don’t we get into this stuff about is the Bible the authoritative word of God? Isn’t that superfluous? And my response would be, okay, let’s talk about about that, but who is this Jesus really? How do you know? And when you talk about following him, what does that look like?

See, it always comes down to authority. It always comes down to who are you looking to? What are you looking to tell you the truth about who Jesus is? Some people, their authority might be, what is it, a documentary that says we found the bones of Jesus, the entire story of Christianity has been exploded. The answer, after other people, the authority might be a YouTube video that says we found groundbreaking claims that undermine everything you thought you knew.

Or is your authority the inspired text of scripture, the God breathed word given to us? It always comes down to authority, and that’s why this question about what you believe about the Bible always, always impacts what you believe about Jesus. You can’t separate the two. You can’t say I’m a Jesus guy, but not a Bible guy. Or I love following Jesus, but the Bible, that’s secondary.

No, you can’t do that because who you are following is talked about in this book. As you can see, our theme for VBS was all about illumination. We talked about how Jesus is the light of the world. He came into this dark world, and he brought the light of life. And the Bible talks about itself using very similar language.

Psalm 119, 105 says, I know it’s very easy for Christians to think, you know, we live in a very spiritually dark, and there’s so much moral chaos going on in the world around us, so many evil things, so much hatred. That’s all true, but the fact is we are incredibly blessed. The light often shines brighter. And we have the light we need. Now, not only do we live at a time in history when we have more access to the Bible and more access to biblical resources than any other time, but it’s also the best-selling book of all time.

So that alone tells us people have access to Scripture. All over the world, in fact, people are getting access to the Bible and never had it before. People are getting translations of the Bible when they didn’t have it before in their own language. Yeah, even though the Bible is the best-selling book of all time, by far, it often sits on the shelf on red. It’s a strange thing, but I think that ultimately this is something that can happen when something is so available and so catered to our needs, we can take it for granted.

And I, for one’s think that at some point, we are gonna be held accountable. What did we do with all of our access to the word of the living God? Did we look into it? Did we let this book shape our lives? Did we let it give us the wisdom we need?

Or did we just let it gather dust on the shelf? Now, we’re gonna ask the question, is the Bible we hold in our hands today a reliable translation of what the authors wrote? That’s a good question to ask because, you know, if we don’t have what they wrote, then it’s not really the inerrant-inspired authoritative word of God, is it? It’s something else. If you don’t ask the hard questions, you may never develop the firm convictions.

If no one ever asked me, do you really believe the Bible is the authoritative word of God without error in all that it teaches? And if I never was asked that question, I wouldn’t come to the convictions I have today. But the truth is I’ve had to wrestle with this question. But if we never settle that question in our minds, we’re always gonna be wondering, always gonna be standing on that ground that’s a little bit shifting all the time on us, always wondering, is this really what I need for life? Is this really from God?

Like many of you, I’ve gone through some painful stuff in life. When I was in college, a good friend of mine named Nick was killed in a drunk driving accident. And, you know, that experience left me with a lot of questions. I had some doubts at times. But the thing that helped me the most was knowing deep in my soul, having that conviction, this book is true.

What it claims about God as all powerful, all loving is true. That’s something I can base my life on, no matter what happens in this world. And I know many of you can relate to that. You’re going through something maybe where you’re thinking, I don’t see how any of this could come to something good. I don’t know how any of this is something that I can take and say that’s a good lesson to learn.

But if you have the word of God as your lamp, as your light in this dark world, it makes all the difference. Turn with me to 2 Peter 1, 16. We’re going to answer some of these questions related to the Bible by looking at what Peter, a good friend of Jesus, said about Scripture. 2 Peter, chapter 1, beginning in verse 16. And here you’re going to see Peter compares Scripture to a light in a dark place.

2 Peter 1, verse 16. Verse 16 says, for when he received honor and glory from God the Father and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this, first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Thank you.

You may be seated. The big idea this morning is this. The Bible is God’s unique written revelation for all time given to us so that we might know God ourselves and why we are here. Now the first thing I want you to notice about what Peter is talking about here is the origin. He says, I want to tell you about where the Bible came from.

It’s almost like he’s responding to 21st century skeptics who say, you know, the Bible is just full of myths. It has all the markings of being made up. And he confronts that head on and he says, look, I was there. I am an eyewitness. I saw Jesus in the flesh.

I was there for all the miracles. I was there on the mountain. I saw Jesus crucified hanging from the cross. He died from the dead. And he says this in verse 16, “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.”

See, people don’t invent myths and then go and die for that myth. People don’t do that. They give their lives to something they really believe in. If they’re going to suffer and die for something, they think that really happened. New Testament was not written by fantasy authors.

That’s important. We need to know where the Bible came from. It was written by people who said we were eyewitnesses and we are so convinced this is true that we are willing to die for this belief. And history confirms that Peter shortly after writing this letter was crucified under Nero upside down around 8064. So here’s the first question.

And if not, is that a problem? So the answer in brief, I’m going to tell you right away. No, we don’t have the originals and no, it’s not a problem. Let me explain why. But first let me say something that might surprise you.

We do not have the original autograph, the original manuscript of Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address. We don’t have it. But no historian worth his salt is doubtful of what he actually said on that day in 1863. Why is that? Well, because as it turns out, there were at least five early copies of the Gettysburg Address made right away.

So we can have every bit of confidence that we know what was said back then because of these copies. We also don’t have the original manuscripts for the works of Plato, for Aristotle, for Shakespeare, for many, many others. It is not something that we take typically have from works of antiquity. They were written on papyrus. This was a plant-based paper.

It was handled right away. It was passed around. It was copied from. And they dispersed all of this in the early centuries to get it to all the churches around the Roman world. So we shouldn’t expect to have copies or the originals, I should say.

But for the same reason that we can be confident we have the Gettysburg Address and all these others, we can have confidence that we have accurate copies of the New Testament. The difference is we have far more manuscripts for the New Testament by a lot compared to those others. And when I talk about manuscripts, I’m talking about physical handwritten copies that scribe, sat down, and wrote out tediously, carefully, word for word, every passage of Scripture. And we have over 25,000 manuscripts of the New Testament in Greek, Latin, and other languages. Now that’s just a number.

So I want to give you a visual here. If you were to take all the manuscripts of the New Testament from the ancient world and stack them on top of each other, New Testament scholar Daniel Wallace says it would stack up to 5,816 feet tall. That is the Empire State Building times four and a half. That is just the meaning of manuscripts of the New Testament. Now just think about this.

The average number of manuscripts we have of works of ancient history, like people like Plato and others, the average is typically about four feet tall. Just think about that comparison for a moment. Four and a half Empire State Buildings versus four feet tall. One scholar said we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to manuscripts for the New Testament. So the number one in your notes, New Testament has a wealth of manuscript evidence confirming that we have a reliably transmitted word of God in our hands today.

But here’s a question asking, worth asking, why is it that we have so many manuscripts? Why the New Testament? Why all these other books? The Iliad is the next closest and it’s far less. Why is it that we have so many of the New Testament?

And I think this is testimony to the fact that Christians have always loved, revered and relied on the word of God. And so as soon as those manuscripts were made, copies were made. And copies were made and they were dispersed. They were sent out to all the churches around the Mediterranean world because they knew these people need the light. These people need Scripture.

And so why do we have so many copies? Even though there were guys like Domitian and other Emperors that tried to burn and destroy all the copies of Scripture. Why did it survive after all this time? Because Christians have known we need this book. We need it.

It is the word of God. We have to get it to everybody. Who here has heard of the Da Vinci Code? In that book, it’s claimed that the Emperor Constantine gathered up all the copies of the New Testament and got rid of the ones he didn’t like. Let me just say that is absurd.

First of all, that is not what happened at the Council of Nicaea. That is a complete fiction. What happened is they were determining, do we all come to agreement? And they all did, that Jesus really is divine. That was what the Council of Nicaea had nothing to do with determining what goes into the New Testament.

It was already deemed to be Scripture. And it had already been so widely dispersed around the Mediterranean world, it would be impossible for one man to say, no matter how much power he has to say, I want all the copies brought in and only I get to look at them. Now, some people will say, yeah, but that’s fiction. That’s Dan Brown’s imagination. I know, but the problem is that fiction influences people’s thinking.

And I have talked to college students who have repeated the same version of the story that Dan Brown gives in that book. Now, why do we have so many manuscripts again? Because Christians love the word of God and because they were so widely dispersed, because these manuscripts were found all over the Mediterranean Sea, down in Egypt, in Greece, in Turkey, all over the place, because of all those manuscripts, we can compare them and we can see how preserved, how carefully preserved was this New Testament. See, if we didn’t have so many manuscripts, it would be really hard to tell, did they hand it down to us faithfully? Because we have so many, we can compare all of these side by side and take a look.

And scholars have said, you know what, it is breathtaking how close these matches. Not perfectly, but they are very close. 99.9% of the New Testament is the meaning is agreed on. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but what about that?.01%.

That sounds kind of troubling. You got a.01% in there. Well, here’s what you need to know. The majority of the differences across these manuscripts, first of all, were spelling differences.

There were differences in missing an article or something like that. Not changing the meaning of the text. In that.01%, it’s bracketed in your New Testament. If you have a modern translation, it tells you when there’s some uncertainty.

But here’s what you’ve got to know. This is the baseline thing you have to know. Of all those disputable passages where the manuscripts, there’s some questions. No Christian teaching is in question. In other words, you never have a copy of Luke that says Jesus was born of a virgin, and then another copy that says he wasn’t born of a virgin.

You never have anything like that. In fact, one scholar said it this way. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that no Orthodox doctrine or ethical practice of Christianity depends solely on any disputed wording. That’s why I say you can be 100% confident in the Word of God. The Bible in your hands today is teaching exactly what it taught by the original authors.

Jesus himself backed this up. He said, “John 1035, Scripture cannot be broken.” Do we believe him? He said, “Heaven and earth will pass away. My words will never pass away.”

Do we believe him? Many religions can test that. I know Islam and Mormonism for one will say that scripture has been corrupted over time. But the question is, where is the evidence? Let me see the evidence for that claim because we have manuscripts that date back to within 50 years of the originals and the way they match up so precisely is incredible.

Also, you just got to think about this. How big is your view of God? Because if God went through the trouble of giving us a written text and he said, “This is my inspired Word for you,” what kind of God then does not providentially preserve that text? You see why that doesn’t make any sense? How big is your view of God?

If he’s giving you the Word of God back then and he says, “This is for all time, my words are not going to pass away.” If he does let them pass away, how small must your God be? Right? We can trust the Bible as it’s handed to us. Second question is, why did God give us an old and new Testament?

Well, the Bible explains that God has revealed himself in different ways throughout history. He’s revealed himself through creation. The Bible says this. You can look at it to the stars. You can look at all of the design and complexity and nature and you can know intuitively there is a creator.

There is an intelligent mind behind all this. It showcases God’s glory and power, which is why true science is a friend of Christianity. It’s not an enemy. We also know God is real because we all believe that real right and wrong exist. Everybody believes that.

Because if you step on their toes, suddenly they have very strong moral convictions. Real right and wrong exist. We all know this. We all know child abuse is wrong. We all know that human trafficking is evil.

It’s not just something I don’t like. It’s objectively evil. That is proof that there is an objective standard. There is a transcendent authority that is over all human opinion and says when something is right or wrong. That’s how you know there’s a God.

But what we most need is for God to actually speak to us in words and that’s why he gave us the Bible. He wanted us to know with crystal clarity what we should believe about him, what we should believe about ourselves and what we should believe about what comes next after death. God is not a mute God. He has spoken. He did it through a written text.

Now, why does that matter? Well, if you have a written text, that means you have something that can be looked to objectively and we can try to understand it together. It’s not just a private revelation where I tell you, here’s what God told me. Now you need to follow what I say. No, it’s a written text.

So that means we all can see it. We can make copies of it. We can translate it into languages. So everybody across the earth knows what God said. It’s not that God couldn’t speak from heaven every time he wanted to speak to us, but the reality is he wanted to give us a word where if we genuinely seek him, we can come to this book.

We’re not overwhelmed every time he speaks to us as this thunderbolt from heaven. We are given the opportunity to come to him ourself to read what he said. Secondly in your notes, in our relativistic age, we need a written word from God and a truth to stand on. Proverbs 30 verse five says, “Every word of God proves true.” Every word of it.

There’s no part where you can say, I don’t believe that because of this and that. Every word of God proves true and the point is that if you will humbly trust the Bible, believe that it is true and live according to its truth, it will vindicate itself. The Holy Spirit will convince you that you are hearing from God. We live in a world that says you can believe whatever works for you, but that’s not how objective truth works. Raised Jesus from the dead or he didn’t.

It can’t be true for you and not for me. It’s true because of it being an event in history. But how can we know the truth about who Jesus is unless God tells us? We need a word from him. How can we know the truth about what comes after death unless he speaks to us?

So without a written word from God, we’re all sinking in a sea of relativism. Is the word of God. We have something we can stand on. We don’t have to speculate. We don’t have to wonder, have I done enough to please God?

Is God’s grace enough? We don’t have to wonder these things because God has spoken so clearly to us. He loves us. He’s a good father. He doesn’t speak in strange riddles and confuse us on purpose.

No. He gives us his word plainly and says, go and study it. Get to know me. Learn what kind of God I am. Now some people like to set the Old Testament against the New Testament.

Many will claim even today that maybe we don’t need the Old Testament because it’s old after all. But the reality is God gave us revelation in this progressive way on purpose. He gave us the Old Testament so that we could see prophecies about this coming Messiah that were fulfilled in the New Testament. That’s proof that it’s a supernatural book. That’s the next question.

We’ve already talked about the unique manuscript evidence. You could look at the specific prophecies that have been fulfilled in history. That is unique. No other book has that level of supernatural character. Even the way it was delivered to us is unique.

The Bible consists of 66 books. So it’s actually more of a library. And yet together it tells one unified story of how a holy and righteous God came to us to redeem sinners and make them his adopted children. It goes through this timeline of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. It all has this perfect flow, this unity to it.

Now other books claim that God, other religious books I should say, claim they received this from God because God just dictated it. Or it came down on golden plates. That’s not how God gives a scripture according to 2 Peter. He says, no prophecy of scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Now notice it first says, men spoke. In other words, God didn’t bypass human personalities or styles or experiences. He used Paul while he’s sitting in prison and he’s thinking about these churches. He uses his experience to write the letter to the Philippians. He uses Luke’s advanced medical expertise as a doctor and as a historian to write the Gospel of Luke.

He used human beings in their own sphere to accomplish exactly what he wanted. But the revelation originated with God. That’s why it says men spoke from God. See, God so filled them with his Holy Spirit and carried them along that even though they are still giving what they want to say, he is giving what he wants to say. In 2 Timothy 3, we read that all scripture is breathed out by God.

So think about this. Every time you read the Bible, it is like the breath of God is hitting your face. You are hearing directly from the mouth of God. It’s breathed out. If we think about this, whenever we believe and obey scripture, we are believing and obeying God.

If we reject scripture, we’re rejecting God. Because whenever scripture speaks, God speaks. It’s not just some scripture. All scripture is breathed out by God. And notice Peter says, men, plural, spoke from God.

It wasn’t just written by one man. Just think about how unique this is. Just as an example, the Book of Mormon is based on the teachings of one man. Joseph Smith, what he claims was revealed to him. One man.

You look at Joseph’s witnesses based on teachings of Charles Tays Russell. You look at Islam. It is based on what is claimed to be revelation received by one man, Muhammad. But when, now, if I was to write out a text, it would be far easier for me to have unity in that text if there’s just one guy writing it, right? But if you have 40 different people across 1500 years, very different backgrounds, very different cultures and times that they’re writing, and yet they still give one unified message that’s proof we’re dealing with a supernatural book.

And especially when you consider all the fulfilled prophecy that what Isaiah wrote about was fulfilled in Matthew. That what Jeremiah wrote about was fulfilled in Romans. All of these things come together in an amazing way. No human could write that. Next question is, how do I know if God is speaking to me?

Now, many Christians struggle to know God’s will. We wonder, you know, is this a job I should take? Is this a person I should marry or not? When should I retire? You know, we would love it if God would just send us an email from heaven, right?

Or leave us a voicemail on our phone or write something in the sky. You know, that would be great. Then we’d know what to do. And all this comes down to understanding the way God speaks to us today. Now, sometimes we imagine that God was speaking audibly to people all the time in the Bible.

But actually, if you look at it across thousands of years, when God speaks audibly from heaven is a very rare occasion. Peter does talk about one of those rare events when God the Father spoke audibly from heaven. This is an event called the Transfiguration. Listen again to what Peter says though. Verse 17, Peter says I was there with Jesus.

I saw these events unfold. I heard the audible voice from God confirming Jesus as his beloved son. Now, does he then say, and you all should expect God to speak to you in the same way? No, he doesn’t. This is what he does say.

Verse 19, In other words, we have the prophetic word. We have scripture more fully confirmed. It’s more reliable than what I experienced. That’s what Peter’s saying. It’s more reliable because here it is.

It’s something you can all pay attention to. You can look at it. It’s a lamp in a dark place. And on rare occasions does speak audibly from heaven. That’s not the way we should expect God to speak to us today.

We shouldn’t expect our alphabet soup to spell out something to us or try to exegit some kind of sand writing or whatever. We can understand what God says to us personally, not based on strange signs or murky details, but what he’s plainly told us. What does God want to tell us? And then we close our Bibles and just pray for wisdom. No, God invites us.

Look at my word. Look, pay attention to this revelation I’ve already given you. And as you study this word, it will inform your mind. It’ll change your heart. It’ll train you in righteousness.

It’ll fully equip you for every good work. You’re gonna have the wisdom you need for life if you live right here. The Bible is God’s sure word to lead us through all of life and the principle way God speaks to us. Now, God speaks to us primarily through his word, but he also leads us in various ways. We all have experienced providential events that happen in a certain way and that kind of opened a door and we realized, oh, that’s what God’s leading.

Or we’ve talked to a friend who said something we needed to hear. Or we’ve, maybe it’s, you know, something comes to our conscience and we recognize I can’t do that ’cause I know it’s wrong. Sometimes the Holy Spirit will bring something to mind, but all of these things have to be seen and understand through Scripture. James says, ask for wisdom. Ask for it and then look to where it’s found.

It’s in Scripture. That doesn’t mean you should not read widely in other areas where Scripture doesn’t speak to. If you want to learn about neurobiology or Euclidean geometry or if you’re, you’re wanting to find out how to change the oil of your car or you want to know the history 250 years of history of the United States, you don’t need to look in the Bible wondering what’s the Bible gonna tell me about these things. It doesn’t talk about those things. But all truth should be tested by Scripture.

This is the standard of truth. One last question. How do we know Paul is a reliable author? Now, this question came with some other related questions about times when it seems like Paul is contradicting Jesus. And so this person who submitted this provided several examples.

I can’t deal with all of them in this message just ’cause we’re gonna run out of time. I’ll address more of them later in the series. But again, if we conclude with Jesus and the apostles that all Scripture is God-breathed text, if that’s our baseline starting assumption, when we come to a passage that looks like a contradiction, we can either have an assumption, the Bible’s wrong and I’m right. Or we can assume God got it right and I don’t understand either some of the context. Maybe there’s something in the history of that time that just doesn’t, I don’t know the full picture.

That’s why it looks like a contradiction to me. And we’ve all had these times where we’ve wondered, is that a contradiction? You look in depth at those contradictions. Oftentimes, those troubling passages are the ones where God wants to teach you something especially unique. Don’t give up just because it’s claimed that there’s a contradiction or it looks like a contradiction.

Assume God knows what he’s talking about. The letter to Romans, by the way, is just as much the word of God as the words of Jesus. All Scripture’s God-breathed. So when we talk about is Paul contradicting Jesus? What we’re really saying is, is God gonna contradict himself through Paul?

Or is God gonna speak the same word he spoke through Jesus? So what is it? Are we to keep the commandments of the law like Jesus said, to enter life? Or do we not need to do that like Paul said? And Jesus is giving him the standard and explaining to him, this is the standard for getting into heaven.

It’s perfect obedience to the commandments. In fact, the Jewish law says if you fail to obey the commandments, even one, you’re under a curse. And so the question is, who has kept the commandments perfectly? Only Jesus. Which means if we’re gonna enter life, we need to be united to Jesus by faith.

Because not only did he live the life we should have lived, keeping that law perfectly, he died the death we deserve to die. He took the curse of the law for our disobedience on himself. He died in our place and rose again. So that’s why we’re justified by faith, like Paul said. Yes, we gotta keep the commandments.

He’s God, he’s the authority, but we don’t keep the commandments to enter heaven because Jesus kept the commandments for us. He’s the one who paved the way, he’s the one in whom we are justified and made right with God by faith. See, that’s the gospel solution to our law-breaking problem. In Luke 18, by the way, Jesus is the one speaking this time and he tells a story about a Pharisee and a tax collector and he gives justification by faith. That’s what he teaches in that parable.

And so it’s so important to look at the context and what is being addressed in each particular passage. Here’s the big thing to know about Paul in your notes. And then on the next page, he is the most passionate, zealous, proclaimer and missionary of Christianity. And the question is, what happened to Paul? In a word, Jesus.

Jesus showed up, transformed his life, transformed his heart, gave him a new vision for all of things and made him an apostle. Lastly, it’s important to know that Paul’s writings were accepted and believed as scripture by the early church immediately. In fact, at the end of this very letter, second Peter, Peter says, you know, Paul’s letters are counted among scripture. And so there’s no disagreement about that. The early church was unanimous.

Paul’s letters were scripture. We can believe them. All that to say, if we believe we have a word we can trust, we can have a solid foundation for all of life. We don’t have to be anxious when we hear a story about something discrediting the Bible. We don’t have to be fearful when people claim they have a different revelation.

Something new that you didn’t know about that’s going to change your life from God. No, we have a sure word. Peter says, you pay attention to the lamp that is given to you in this dark place. You pay attention to the revelation that God has given you. And you will be on a sure footing.

Of a copy that you can grab of more than a carpenter by Josh McDowell. It’s a very short book, a great place to start. That was, he was a skeptic, didn’t believe the Bible, went and investigated all the evidence he could, traveled all over. And he wrote that book and then our much larger book as well. But at the end of the day, the goal is not just to learn more about the Bible.

The goal is that we would get into the Bible ourselves, that we would read this word, that we would come to it full of expectation. God is here to speak with me, me of all people. He wants to speak to me and he’s done so. And he can change your life through this book. I’ll leave you with this question.

In what sense would your life be different if you didn’t have the truth and wisdom of the Bible to guide you in all of life? Sad is correct. Let’s pray. Lord God, what a gift. As Proverbs says, your word, every word of it is proven true.

It’s a treasure, unlike anything else. It’s more precious than gold. All the billions and trillions of dollars out there, your word does not compare. It is far greater, far greater than anything this world would offer. And we know that because it comes from your mouth, because it’s all breathed out by you, it’s something we can count on, Lord.

So Lord, I pray that for those of us who are doubting, for those of us who have just these skeptical intuitions or skeptical feelings about scripture, Lord, I pray that you would just help us to see your word for what it is, to let the Holy Spirit convince us that it is from you and that this is a lamp we need for dark times. We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus, amen. Amen.

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 6,192 words.