Well, if you have your Bibles, or if you don't, there's a Bible somewhere close to you on the chair. And we're in 2 Peter, Chapter 1, as we read for the Gospel this morning. You can see the title of my sermon is Religious. In his recent movie, Religious, Bill Maher of, I forget what his television show was called, now he moves to cable, makes fun of faith, otherwise known as, quote, insanity. He asks the basic question, why is faith good? And then he cites suicide bombings, wars, crusades, burning witches and the like as the obvious reasons for why faith isn't good. Now, he was recently interviewed by Governor Mike Huckabee on the Fox News Network And Maher told him that all religious people have a neurological disorder, adding that a part of our minds have been Waldorfed. And to combat this militant agnosticism, Huckabee gave this defense for why faith is good. He said, people of faith find a sense of joy, peace, and justice. That's it. And Maher asked Huckabee if a god has ever spoken to him personally. And the response was, God speaks to me through the circumstances of life. When I see hurt and poverty, God speaks to me and tells me to do something about it. Now, Governor Huckabee is a professed Baptist Christian. Huckabee is not alone in how he seeks to defend the faith in our day. A friend of mine once told me that he knew he was saved because one time at a conference, a pastor touched him and he felt a shock of electricity go through his body. You see, you just can't argue with an experience any more than you can argue with finding a sense of something. This mirrors the way I see millions of people defining the essence of Christianity in our day. How is it? What is Christianity? It's having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. In other words, it is entirely experiential. I recently opened up a can of worms on a friend's Facebook site when I suggested that Christianity was as much a religion as it is a spirituality. I did not deny that Christianity is a spirituality, a relationship with Jesus, or something that a person experiences. Of course it is. But when I suggested that it is also a corporately held set of beliefs and practices, the flames came on. One person wrote, religion is a set of beliefs and behaviors that people embrace to get right with God, which I would very much disagree with that definition. I was then asked, Doug, how do you know that some of your creeds, ethics, etc., are not manmade? I was told that early Christians interwove Plato and Greek philosophy into the accepted view of God. The view of the first and second century Christians is very different from the fourth century and on. Now, I know this person would not admit it, but the logic is that if I can't trust anything more than my own sense of right and wrong, that I can't trust anything more than my own sense of right and wrong and my own interpretation of the Bible, because it's all been corrupted anyway. So he told me instead of focusing on religion, we just need to focus on God, whatever that means. Now this subjective, anti-rational, uber-experiential religion of America is a far cry from biblical Christianity. In fact, it's so much of a far cry that I say if you honestly compared what is going on today with the scripture, you would not be able to conclude that it even is Christianity. And again, I'm not denying that Christianity is experiential. or that we have a friendly relationship with Jesus Christ. But if we hang our hats on this, friends, then when it comes time for Judgment Day, many people are going to be turned away by a Jesus that never knew them. Peter's second letter is deeply concerned with people who are being led astray from the faith by false teachers. The faith Peter has in mind is not that feeling that you get from a religious experience or from drinking pure apple cider vinegar. But the only holy apostolic faith, that's the faith he has in mind. grounded in eyewitness testimonies in history, made more certain by the prophetic word of the Holy Scripture, which testifies to the goodness and truthfulness of God that is borne out in the godly lives of its adherents. Peter's making a defense of the faith here in chapter 1, and his defense of the faith talks about historical events that were witnessed by many people. It talks about the Holy Scripture given by God, and it talks about the virtuous life implanted in the believer by the Holy Spirit. All three are intimately related, as I'm going to show you this morning. Not a single one of these things can be defined as subjective. even though it is certainly true that God confirms the truthfulness of them in subjective experiences of anybody who believes. In verse 12, it says that through Christian virtues, virtues last week that I told you, begin in the mind and work their way down to the hands and feet and finally outward to other people. Through these things, Christians are established in the truth, it says. But the truth of what? I'll answer that in a moment. But sadly, I probably need to begin an even more fundamental place in this, because the truth of what presupposes that there even is such a thing as truth in the first place? And in our world today, you can't even take that idea for granted. Like Pilate, the spirit of our age declares, what is truth? It's generally accepted that truth is that which accords with reality. Truth is that which is correct. Truth is the actual state of affairs. There's an objective world outside of you, you see. Outside of your mind. It's governed by laws. If you stand in the middle of a busy freeway, you will get hit by a car. If you jump out of a tall building, you will fall to the ground. If you lie to your mom about stealing the yummy cookie, your conscience will torture you and she will certainly know that you are lying to her. If you see a film where thousands of people are systematically starved, tortured and thrown into poisonous gas chambers, you know that this is neither good nor right. But why is the truth this way rather than the opposite way? Why is it always wrong to torture little babies for fun? As Christians, I think we need to define truth a little more precisely than somebody like Mike Rosen might do on his radio program. Because we understand as Christians that truth is whatever corresponds to the mind of God. That's what truth is. This means that truth is not arbitrary. Truth is not changing. It is absolute. It is eternal. Its origins are not in abstract laws, but in a personal being. So in the Old Testament, truth is basically trustworthiness, believe it or not, and reliability, especially God's. Truth has a moral flavor in the scripture. Listen to Deuteronomy 32 for the rock. His work is perfect. All his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he. You hear that it's moral. That's what truth is. Because God is just, injustice is always wrong. In the New Testament, Jesus is the truth. And we know the truth through the revelation that he brings and for what he, as the revelation of God, actually is. So again, in 2 Peter 1, 12, Peter talks about the truth that you have. So what is the truth? Well, back in verse 1, he told us, a faith of equal standing by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. It's a faith of equal standing. It's a righteousness of God. The truth is that we stand before God clothed in the righteousness of someone else, in garments that were put on to us by somebody else. Through faith, we have the divine power that has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of God, through him calling himself to us. We've become partakers in the divine nature. We are now and will soon escape the corruption of the world. This is the truth that we have. He's talked about it all in these first few verses. But now, you read about the truth and you have a million dollar question. How do you know that this truth really does correspond to reality? Especially when this reality is not something that you can see with your eyes or put into a test tube to make experiments upon. How do you know that Your hope is sure. You know, Bill Maher told Governor Huckabee that he could never be so arrogant as to say there is or isn't a God. And he knows that Huckabee can't know that there's a God because he, Maher, doesn't know if there's a God either. So if Maher doesn't know, nobody can know. It's awful arrogant. We're all just lost in a spiritual sea of relativism, constantly guessing, never being able to know anything for sure. Except, of course, the fact that we can never know anything for sure. Are you prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within you? What would you say to Bill Maher if you had the opportunity? Would you say that you know God is real because of your experience? If so, then you would walk right into the spider's web, just like Huckabee did. Peter grounds his hope in that which is sure and unchanging, and objective and eternal. And he does it in three ways. The first is ethical behavior. Obeying God's laws establishes you in the truth that you have. That's what it says. In this way, Peter is like John, who says, By this we know we've come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Or we know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. You see, a godly life is a way that you know that God is telling you the truth. Because God puts that life into you, doesn't he? And he establishes you in that life and in the truth. Ethical behavior is not some arbitrary creation of powerful elite people in history. Right and wrong is not what it is because a democratic community takes a vote and decides it. The thing is not virtuous to you and a vice to you. The Holocaust was wrong because it is objectively evil, not because the Allies won the war. Man, I wish there was a lot of people in Boulder who are listening to this message right now. Abortion is immoral even though most countries in the world have laws protecting it. Islam does not, by fiat, make suicide bombings morally virtuous. Gossip is a sin even if the church secretary and prayer chains baptize it to make it appear holy. Peter gives us a list of qualities to add to your faith. And I talked about these last week. Virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly love, and unconditional love. These are not right because Peter says they are, but because they originate in the mind and the character of God himself. Most people realize that these things are good qualities to possess. Like I mentioned last week, Aristotle talked about virtue. But only Christians are able to know why and to give a proper justification for that knowledge. Go back to the Marr-Huckabee interview again. Huckabee rightly defended true religion against perversions, against sins that have been committed in the name of religion. But Marr's response was that he was conveniently apologizing away a host of things that are done because of religion. And you know what, I'm not so sure that he's entirely wrong, because it's pretty evident that it is religion, for example, that makes suicide bombers do what they do, at least in the Muslim world. But what Marr can't admit is that Christianity and other religions are actually in contradiction to one another, so that at most only one of them is correct. You simply can't lump all religions together any more than you can lump clay in the same category as gold. Now listen to this. Even if you have some moral overlap in religion, and frankly there's a lot of moral overlap in most religions, it's why people follow them. But even if there is moral overlap, it's how those moral principles are derived that makes all the difference in the world. So listen. In one religion, it is Confucius that says this, and he said this before Jesus, by the way. Do nothing to your neighbor which afterward you would not have your neighbor do to you. Confucius said that. In another religion, Jesus says whatever you wish that others would do to you, do to them. What's the difference? It's not the moral principle. The golden rule is virtually the same, and it appears in almost all the religions of the world. It's the person making the claim and the ground upon which that claim is made. That's the difference. And so everything hinges on Jesus's divinity, doesn't it? Either he really is the truth, because he said he was, or he's the worst liar in history. And not only that, he's a deceiver and a blasphemer to boot. You simply cannot take Jesus's ethic and throw away his divinity because it's his deity that grounds his ethic. If Jesus is a deceiver and a liar but tells you to do good things, isn't that contradiction? He either is who he says he was, and so you believe what he says, or you don't take anything that he says because he's a lunatic. So Peter talks about Jesus's promise to him and about an event that Peter was an eyewitness to. Now, this is the second part of Peter's defense of the truth. First one is that we know that God is telling us the truth because of the way that we live our lives, because there's fruit that is poured into your life. How can you trust that Peter and the hope that he asked you to believe is the truth? Well, this next way is that Jesus was able to predict when and how Peter was going to die. Now, this makes Jesus, at the very least, a mighty prophet. Second Peter 1.14 says, I know that the putting off of my body will be soon as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. Now, what is Peter talking about? The fact is, we don't know for sure. It could be a lost saying. It could be a saying that nobody ever told us about. Interestingly, there's a legend that grew up around Peter's death. that is recorded in the apocryphal book, The Acts of Peter, that was written in the second century. It's called the Quo Vadis. And Quo Vadis in Latin means, where are you going? It's a question. It's a legend. It says that Peter, at the urging of his Christian friends, flees Rome to escape arrest. And on his way out, he's confronted by Jesus. And so Peter asks the Lord, where are you going? And Jesus replies that he's going to Rome to be crucified again. And Peter says that he will follow Jesus back to Rome. And suddenly, Jesus is taken up into heaven, out of his sight again. And at this point, Peter realizes that Jesus had been talking about the way that Peter was soon going to die. So Peter returns to Rome with joy to meet the death that Jesus had predicted would occur shortly. Now, of course, another legend has it that Peter was crucified upside down because he didn't consider himself worthy to die in the same manner as his Lord. We know that Peter died. Peter says he was going to die, but I don't think that we need to really go any farther than John Chapter 21, verses 18 through 19, because here we actually have a recorded saying that Jesus told to Peter. Jesus said to Peter, Truly, truly, I say to you, When you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted. But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go. And then John adds a parenthesis. This, he said, to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God. It's the only time I'm aware of in the New Testament that Jesus tells somebody how he's going to die. The problem is Jesus made this prediction 40 years before Peter died. So how can Peter say that the Lord made it clear that it was going to happen soon? It is what he says in this text today. I think the answer isn't that difficult. Jesus's prediction had enough information in it that Peter would have been able to know from the circumstances that the prediction was about ready to come true. And based upon what John tells us, I don't think that's too difficult to believe. Here's kind of an application out of what Peter says that I want to give to you here. Peter says that the putting off of his body will be soon. Now, this is an interesting thing, because the word body here is not the normal Greek word that's used. And that word is soma. And I think it's because Peter wants you to think about what your body really is. And the use of this is a means of encouraging you to finish your race well. He uses a word that's normally used in the Septuagint for the tabernacle. It's a very different word than body. It's the word schenoma, and it really literally means an earthly tent. Normally when you think of a tent, you think of a very temporary house or a dwelling. It's not the place that you would think of calling home. Even God says of the tabernacle, I haven't lived in a house since the day I brought the people up out of Egypt to this day. But I've been moving around in a tent for my dwelling. Well, those among us living with constant physical pain or who have a very difficult time keeping their body healthy might be more sympathetic to what Peter's saying here about a tent. But let's face it. Most of us love our bodies. And we rarely even stop to think that one day they're going to be taken away from us. And so we grow lazy in our bodies and we begin to indulge in all sorts of recreational sins, even as people grow accustomed to living in a dirty house, never cleaning up after themselves. Especially when they don't have guests coming over. Now, when do you clean your house? It's when friends are coming over. It's not just because you want to make your husband or your wife happy, right? That's not the normal state of affairs. We go lazy in our houses and we go lazy in our bodies. But the scripture tells us to think differently about our bodies. It's not a permanent dwelling. 1 Corinthians 5 is very similar. For we know that if the tent, which is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. When you learn to think about life as a temporary, and as your body as a tent, then you cannot grow lazy. Because like Israel in the wilderness, you always have to pick up and move it somewhere else. And when you think about inheriting a resurrected body in an eternal promised land to come, then it stirs you up to make sure that you're prepared to enter that land. Because more than anything else in life, you want to make sure that you actually get there. And so it reminds you again and again of the need to obey God now. And this, again, helps you to know that what you believe is true about life. Now, I want to get back to the point about Christ and who he is, though, because I've shown you that he is, by Peter's own words, a great and mighty prophet. But he's more than this in the passage. Peter refers to a singular event which he and others were eyewitnesses to. Now, an eyewitness is the language that we use in courts. We call on an eyewitness to validate the accuracy of an event. This is not the language of subjective private religion, but a very public and historic religion. Peter uses the first person plural, we, to say that the Christian faith is not some cleverly devised myth. How many cults can we think of that have been started over the centuries just this way? Some person, like a Muhammad, or Joseph Smith, or Mary Baker Eddy, or Edward Casey, or Swedenborg, or Harold Klemp, or Benny Henn, or Juanita Bynum, or Joyce Meyer, claims to have seen a vision or received a word of knowledge that no one else on earth has seen. They write it down and speak the very words of God, and you're asked to believe it, completely apart from any proof or any other person to corroborate the story. The opposite of these myths are, here's what he says, the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is fascinating to me because that hasn't happened yet. The opposite of the myth is the power and the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Or to put it another way, it's the very hope that I'm asking you to think about. How do you defend this hope? How do you know that this is not a myth? It hasn't happened. How do you know that you're not just deluding yourself? That we're not all just kidding ourselves here this morning on Sunday morning? Well, Peter tells you how. First, he tells you that eyewitnesses were testimony of Jesus's majesty. Now, Peter says that Jesus received honor and glory from God the Father when, quote, now this is verse 17, The voice was born to him by the majestic glory. This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. So they not only saw this, but they heard the voice. So it's multiple sense eyewitnesses. And it says that they were with him on the holy mountain. What's Peter talking about? Well, he's talking about Jesus's transfiguration that Matthew and Luke both record, where Jesus's face suddenly shone bright as the sun. Now, this is kind of like Moses. Remember, Moses would go in, talk with God, and he'd have to come out and put a veil over his face because his face shone. But Moses' face was more like the moon reflecting the sun. Jesus' face, Luke says, was changed. And Matthew says it was shining like a bright star. Now, keep that in your mind, because this is all going to start weaving together very quickly. And I think it's really very interesting and exciting to think about what Peter's going to do here. Jesus's face is shining like a bright star in the Transfiguration because Jesus's glory is an intrinsic glory. A glory that belongs only to God. And Peter, John, James, Moses and Elijah all witnessed this personally at the same time. And I wanted to add the other two. They're not normally added because the point is that it was witnessed by the chief figure of the Old Testament law and of the chief of the Old Testament prophets, meaning that this event was anticipated by them. And now they're here. They've been invited to the mountain to see it take place. How do I know this? It's because of what the father says to the son. This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Now, we've all heard this as Christians a lot of times, haven't we? That God says it twice. He tells it to Jesus at his baptism and then he says it again at his transfiguration. Now, please listen, because this is very important. This is learning to read the New Testament in light of the Old Testament. God the Father is not just being a nice guy, speaking kind words to Jesus here. For the sake of Peter, James and John, so they can hear a voice from heaven. No, no. This saying is a composite of two Old Testament texts, Psalm 27 and Isaiah 42. One. The meaning is that at the transfiguration, Jesus is fulfilling prophecy. He is both Messiah. And suffering servant. Messiah from Psalm 2, suffering servant from Isaiah 40. In fact, in Psalm 2, 6, it's very interesting. The verse right before Psalm 2, 7 says, This is my beloved son. Well, Psalm 2, 6 says God is installing his son king on his holy hill, granting him honor and glory. It's exactly what happened at the Transfiguration. And now on the mountain, the son is being installed before their very eyes. Peter raises the transfiguration as a chief point proving the divinity of Jesus Christ. No one else in history has ever been transfigured and no one else claims to have been. This separates Jesus out from every other person that has ever lived. And it is Jesus, the person, the truth, that makes our hope in his power and his coming absolutely sure. Now here's the thing. The experience of the historical transfiguration that took place there on Mount Tabor in Israel is made more sure, Peter says in the next verse, made more sure by the sacred scripture. Now, this is hinted at a little in the father's words to the son. But Peter doesn't rest his case on an experience that he asks you to believe out of some blind faith. I'm supposed to just believe that these guys saw this thing on a mountain and, I mean, lay everything upon this experience that they said they had? Uh-uh. They didn't do that. Neither should you. Indeed, Jesus did not rest even his own word on himself. But even when he said the golden rule, he said, this is the law and the prophets. That's what Peter does, too. He says we have something more sure even than the event of the transfiguration that was witnessed on the mountain. He said, what can be more sure than that? And Peter says it's the prophetic word in verse 19. It's the Holy Scripture, which he tells you, you do well to pay attention to this word. Now, it's terribly important that you learn to read the Scripture properly, because too many people take these verses totally out of context. But Peter brings up prophecy because of the transfiguration event. What is the Holy Scripture? Why should you pay attention to it? Follow what he's saying here in the text. It is a lamp shining in a dark place, verse 19. Where does that come from? How about Psalm 119, 105? Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. There's a relationship between the shining Jesus on the mountain and the lamp of Scripture. The word of God illumines your walk so that you do not step into moral potholes or theological crevasses or spiritual black holes. This is what the truth does. It illumines, it brings light to the darkness that is around you. That's why we preach the scripture and not our own ideas every week in this church. Because I want you to actually leave here and be able to see where you're going. And if I just came up with a bunch of things from my own head, you'd walk out of here and fall flat on your face. The darkness stays around you even as the darkness before creation is still only intermittently broken up by the daylight. And this is because the darkness hasn't yet fully retreated in the coming day. So there's something greater than even the word itself that illumines your walk. You are people of the day, Paul says in Romans 13. Not of the night. You're not to live as people of the night, but live as people of the day, because it's almost gone, Paul says. You're not to grope around like a drunken hobo in a dark alley, in other words, because you have the lamp of God that shines in the darkness until, Peter says, the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Where does that come from? Is this more imagination of Peter? No, none of this is imagination of Peter. This is the climax, as far as I'm concerned, of the whole section that I'm preaching on this morning. The morning star will one day eliminate the darkness forever. Though he's talking about the Word of God as a lamp, Peter talks about a greater light than the lamp. The lamp shines in the darkness, but the light takes away the darkness forever. Does this remind you of John chapter one at all? The light is called the morning star. Notice that Peter continues the comparison of light. First, Jesus is transfigured. Then there's a lamp shining in the darkness. Now there's a morning star. What is this morning star? It's a reference to another prophecy in the Old Testament. How do I know that? Because Peter immediately starts talking about how no prophecy of Scripture comes from somebody's own interpretation. Why in the world, in verse 20, would he bring up prophecy if he hadn't just talked about prophecy? It doesn't make any sense. It just could be completely random, like Peter's writing a bunch of Proverbs. He's not writing Proverbs. He's writing a letter, and it's all related logically. Now, there's a wonderful prophecy in Numbers 24, 17. Very well known. It's taken up in Matthew's gospel at the birth of Christ. Here's the prophecy says, I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob. A scepter will arise out of Israel. This was the Oracle of Balaam, remember Balaam? This is the messianic promise that got Herod so afraid that he sent all of his dogs to go chew up all the little baby males of Bethlehem when Jesus was born. It was made literally apparent at the Transfiguration as Jesus began to shine. And because prophecy has always come true, you may be absolutely sure that the rest of the prophecies will also come true. You see, some prophecies have come true in the first coming. Therefore, you know that the rest of the prophecies will come true in the future. It's interesting to me that Balaam the pagan gave this particular prophecy in numbers, because what reason could he possibly have for making a prophecy of Christ on his own? I mean, he hated God and his people, was doing everything he could to curse them, but God wouldn't let him. Peter says about prophecy now, something that should be obvious in light of what it's Balaam's word. He says in verse 21, no prophecy has ever been produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Surely this is obviously true of Balaam. He didn't say this of his own accord, but God spoke through him and he was compelled, that's what he told Balak, to say only what God said. So now verse 20 and 21 are important clues for how we get at interpreting the scripture. It's actually a class we're talking about in Sunday school. Because not only does the prophecy originate with God, so does its interpretation it says. No interpretation of scripture comes from somebody's own interpretation. Verse 20. This is a strange thing to say unless the context is taken in mind. As I was thinking about this this week, I thought, you know, normally when verse 20 and 21 are talked about, it's not tethered to anything that comes before it or after it. We just kind of do what a prophet of mine called helicopter exegesis. We just pick the verse completely out of the context. This is an interesting verse because It can be read in two very different senses grammatically. On the one hand it could mean, no prophetic writing is a matter for private interpretation. It's a legitimate way of reading. No prophecy is a matter of private interpretation. Now in light of the heretics that seek to interpret God's word in the next chapter of their own accord that we will look at, that we've already looked at a lot in Jude, This is a possible meaning of the verse, and even though I don't approve of Rome's lording their interpretation over everyone as if their interpretation is infallible, you know what? I also cannot stand individuals who become their own little popes, thinking that their interpretation and theirs alone is correct. At the very minimum, the interpretation of Scripture is not a matter of private interpretation. Interpretation of the Bible is a public matter. Belonging to the whole church as it rests itself upon Sola Scriptura. But this way of reading the verse, even though it's grammatically OK, doesn't seem to fit very well with the flow that comes before it. And the whole entire discussion on prophecy doesn't make very much sense until you remember, as I've already said, that Peter is just referred to at least three different prophecies in the Old Testament. What does the prophecy talk about? It talks about Jesus. Jesus is the bright morning star of Balaam's oracle. Just ask Herod. Jesus is the beloved messianic son about to be enthroned. Just ask those at the Transfiguration. Jesus is the suffering servant who was despised and rejected by men. Ask anyone who witnesses death that day. So it seems to me that if we want to take the verses in context, when Peter refers to the interpretation or making clear of a prophecy not coming from somebody's private guesswork, that the meaning of that interpretation has to have at least something to do with Christ and his plan of redemption. Whether it be choosing a people incarnating like us, dying, being raised from the dead, sending the Holy Spirit to indwell the church, returning again at the end of time. This is how Peter interprets the prophecy. This last idea of returning at the end of time is what's taking up most of Peter's thought in this letter, as we saw in verse 16. There is a power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ that is going to take place very soon. And as we will see as we move along in this book, many people in Peter's own day and in our own day mock the return of Christ, don't they? Deliberately forgetting, he says in chapter three, the past in order to justify their present sin, which they do to their future peril. But you, beloved, are not like that, because you have a sure and certain faith. It has been proven in history, witnessed by many, attested by prophecy, spoken by God, demonstrated in godly living that's a result of the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. This is a very different way of defending the faith that is so common in America in these last days. You are to be as those who seek to understand the truth of God's revelation in Scripture, in objective truth, and especially in how this comes together in the person and work of Jesus Christ. I am the way, the truth, and the life. Perhaps if Christians could once more realize that we have so firm a foundation We would not need to rely upon our own private, subjective experiences to defend Jesus. We can defend the faith and shut the mouths of skeptics like Bill Maher and others with the truth that cuts to the very heart and soul of a man. You do well to remember these things. I, like Peter, have tried to stir you up by way of reminder, although you once fully knew it, so that your hope and confidence may be sure. And so you will desire to leave here today renewed to fight the good fight, to run the race, knowing that even this day Jesus could return and usher in the great day of judgment upon the earth. I'd like for you to bow your heads as we close in prayer. Lord, the more we read Scripture, the more it becomes apparent to us You are deeply concerned that we, in our faith, trust more than our own private experiences and feelings. We are so grateful. Anyone who has been saved is deeply grateful that you give us experiences and that these experiences continue throughout our life, that we know that you live inside of us because of the things we experience. But Lord, We do not rest our faith on these things. And far too many of us are resting our faith only in our experiences. And that's a reason why so many are running away from the faith en masse in our in Western civilization on our day. We have a certain and sure faith, Lord, that you have given to us in your word and that you have revealed to us through your son that was witnessed by many people, and that prophecy came true in his life, and that the hopes and the things that we look forward to in our own futures are not just wishful thinking, but it is sure and certain because of what has already taken place in the past. I pray, Lord, that You would ground us in this truth, that the objective truth of Your Word fall deeply into our minds and into our hearts, so that when we doubt, when we lack faith, when we are tested by those who have no faith, that we will come back to these kinds of things that Your Word over and over again goes back to, so that we may be sure, so that we may be strengthened in the faith that You have given to us, so that we will not doubt, we will not waver, we will not be tossed to and fro waves in the sea. I pray, Lord, that you would do this for us. I long to see the people of this church have faith that is solid, that is secure, that does not waver, that is excited and experiences Christ as he is proclaimed to us in the word. I would pray that you would do this for us, O Lord, because you have sworn that when your word goes out, that it will accomplish all of its purpose. And you have promised that when your word goes to those whom you have called to yourself, that you will use it to do these very things. And I call upon you and ask you to fulfill your word because it pleases you to do it and because it gives you great glory when you change the lives of men and women and children who have done nothing but rebel against you. to save them by your grace alone, because of your electing love, because of your goodness and kindness. I pray that this would be something that would be magnified this morning and as we leave here today. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.