Would you turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Peter chapter 1? Chapter one, please, this morning is where we'll be. Last summer, Kate and I were going through the home buying process, and we finally, I think after the fifth try, purchased a home, had an offer finally accepted. But as we began through this process as first time home buyers, we noticed a number of homes had foundation floors that were cracked or even buckled. And yes, we were ignorant and naive first-time home buyers, but we looked at a floor that was buckled and thought, that shouldn't be that way. That's not good. I don't think that was designed like that. And as we began searching, we found actually more and more. We knew that a cracked or buckled foundation was no bueno, not good at all. In fact, one house that we looked at, we went to an open home, and the realtor was there, and he had a structural engineer's report And we walked into the house and he's like, here's the engineer report. We're like, why? Then we went down to the basement. I think there were like three or four inch gaps between some of the buckled foundation plates. And we're thinking, yeah, pass. When we asked about the cause for all of this, we learned, being new to Colorado, that because of the soil here in the front range, some areas had this phenomenon happen. Because the soil here has large amounts of bentonite in it. Bentonite is a type of clay soil that expands when mixed with water. And when this happens, foundations buckle or crack under the pressure, which, as you can imagine, can damage the entire structure and can cost thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to repair. Choosing to build on bentonite soil carries a risk of future structural failure. It's certainly a risk that must be analyzed. Well, the foundation of a person's life or the foundation of a family must be built on something secure. Every person has a moral authority that functions as the foundation of their lives. What do we mean by moral authority? It's something that they can appeal to that will help them make the ultimate decision. Who is the authority in their life? The person who trusts in the wrong authority builds on the wrong foundation. And the wrong authority will lead to being unstable. The person that builds on the wrong authority won't be able to handle the pressures of life. When pressure begins to be exerted on a person or on a family, their foundation won't be able to stand up to it. It'll buckle or crack or perhaps even topple completely. Far too many people, even believers, far too many people live unstable lives because they have an unstable foundation. Our culture doesn't help with this. Our culture teaches us to build our lives on the foundation of personal autonomy and personal authority. What does that mean? Personal autonomy, I am my own being. Personal authority, I can decide what I'm gonna do. You can't tell me what to do. Is that not the spirit of our city? I am my own person, I rule my own life. And this autonomy, this authority comes from really two sources. You say, well, how can you determine your own life? How can you decide to be that way? Well, I have reasoned that way, personal reasoning, my own thoughts and personal experience. I've been through it. If it makes sense to me or I have experienced it, you can't tell me what to do. Again, is that not the spirit of our age? The bottom line is our culture has a different worldview. They reason and think from a secular perspective. Our culture teaches us things like this. No one can tell you what to do if you believe it to be true. Just follow your heart. It's what I like to call the Disney syndrome. If you experience something, your experience is absolute truth for you. No one can contradict what you experienced. Or how about this one? Your truth works for you, but I have my truth. Don't let anyone try to change your mind if you have your truth. You have your truth and I have my truth. And just as an aside, there's no personal pronoun attached to the front of truth. It's not my truth or your truth, it's just the truth. It's not a commodity to be possessed or traded. But to the secular worldview, that's the way it is. The secular worldview believes personal experience to be the highest moral authority a person can appeal to. If you experienced it, nothing can contradict that experience. Well, what does the Bible say about that? In 1 John 2, verse 16, we learn that the desire for experiences called the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. The authority of personal experience that our culture so celebrates It stands in contrast and stands in opposition to the authority of Scripture. So then, we as believers have a choice. We are in the world, but not of it. We interact with these ideas, but we have to be careful not to let these ideas take us over. Who or what will be the authority in my life? Who or what will be the authority in your life? Will it be your reasoning, your independence, your experience, your word? Or will it be God's reasoning, God's authority, and God's word? Now, I want to clarify something here, because some of you are thinking, wait a minute, experience is a good thing. Yes, experience is not bad. Experience teaches valuable life lessons. Experience helps us to mature. It enables us to relate to one another. It helps us really to have ministry with one another if we have some shared things in common. But let me ask you this. Is your personal experience a sufficient enough authority to build your life on? Let me put it this way. Though experience may be a good teacher, is it the best pilot? Is it the best navigator? The apostle Peter answers this very question about the authority of experience versus the authority of scripture in his second epistle. The theme of second Peter is this, building a stable faith. That's the theme for the whole book. Every part of this letter supports this theme of building a stable faith, starting in second Peter one, verse one. Let's do a brief overview. 2 Peter 1.1, he writes to those who have obtained like precious faith so that we can understand how to grow in the knowledge and grace of Jesus and thus build a stable faith. Verses 3 and 4 describe the underlying beliefs that stabilize our faith. It's God's sufficiency and God's power. God is more than enough for me and anything he says he will do, he will do it. Verses five through 11 call the believers to give maximum effort to grow in their faith. Look at verse five, for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith. Why should we give maximum 100% effort to grow in our faith? On verses nine, 10, and 11, we see that growth in virtue results in sure footing and spiritual stability. In verses 12 through 15, Peter shares with his audience his purpose in writing, which was to stir up the readers by reminding them of truths that they already knew and that had already established them. In other words, Peter wanted to remind them of the things that led to their spiritual stability in the first place. He spends the entirety of chapter two describing false teachers because they're a huge threat to spiritual stability. If you're believing the wrong things, your life will just teeter and totter. And in chapter three, Peter focuses on the second coming, which gives the believer hope and perspective in this life. The hope of an eternal future stabilizes the believer and really just pulls the teeth out of present hardship. If you know that the sufferings of this life are not worthy to the glory that will be revealed, you can endure. And that's why the New Testament over and over again points our attention to the coming of Jesus Christ. So our text today is 2 Peter 1, verses 16 through 21. And in this passage of scripture, Peter identifies the foundation of a stable faith, the foundation of a stable life, the word of God, holy scripture. Peter calls scripture the believer's foundation and he articulates three arguments to prove the following truth. Scripture trumps experience when it comes to moral authority. Scripture trumps experience in the area of authority. So what should our response be? It's very simple. What do we do on foundations? Do we frame them? Do we put them in museums? No, we build on them, right? We build on foundations. And so my encouragement to you this morning is to identify Scripture as your foundation in life and to build your life, your family, your ministry on the foundation of Scripture. So why does Scripture trump experience? After all, that's a pretty big claim, isn't it? Let's look at our text now, verse 16 of 2 Peter chapter 1. Let's read through the whole text this morning and then we'll get into our first point. For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to him from the excellent glory. This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation. For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Why does Scripture trump experience? First of all, in verses 16 through 19, Scripture trumps experience because Scripture is absolute truth. Experience, by definition, is subjected, subjective, and limited. Well, what evidence does Peter have to prove his claim that Scripture is absolute truth? Look at verse 16. The apostles' eyewitness testimony confirms the truth. Well, Peter begins his argument here in a logical starting place. He could verify the truth because he personally saw it. Eyewitness testimony confirmed what the apostles taught. Notice in verse 16, he says that we don't follow cunningly devised fables. That word fable is the Greek word mythos, from which we get the English word myth. Many of the religions of that day, from the Greeks to the Romans, to the Egyptians, to the Persians, all of the different religions of the world at that time, and frankly, many of them today, follow pagan mythologies. They have hierarchies of gods and temples of demigods, and it's this confusing structure of worship. And Peter stands directly in contrast to that and says, unlike the Romans and the Greeks around us, our God is not a mythos. He's not a myth. He doesn't come with this fabled mythology. He's real and he's true. Well, how did Peter know that these things were not made up? Well, he continues in verse 16, we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. The eyewitness accounts of the apostles teach us that this is accurate. It's true. They saw it. In the field of apologetics, eyewitness testimony is extremely important. If you're studying something and there's an eyewitness account of it, that's more valuable than gold in that field. When it comes to eyewitnesses, the closer they were to the actual date as far as when they wrote, so they saw something and they wrote the same day, that's excellent as far as criteria and evidence. If they waited 60 years, what happens in 60 years time? What happens to your memory? Maybe it deteriorates slightly. But when it comes to recording evidence very early on, we have a more reliable account. Well, Peter's account here fits the criteria. He was an eyewitness, so he saw what happened, and he wrote just a few years after the actual events. Well, at the end of verse 16, Peter specifically claims to be an eyewitness of Jesus' majesty. What's he referring to here with Jesus' majesty? Verses 17 and 18 make it very clear. He's talking about his experience on the Mount of Transfiguration. The Apostle's experience on the Mount of Transfiguration confirms the truth. Matthew chapter 17, Luke chapter 9, and Mark chapter 9, which was read earlier, record what happened at this event. So what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration? In verse 17, Peter records that Jesus received glory from the Father. He, Jesus, received from God the Father honor and glory. Matthew 17, two describes this. And Jesus was transfigured before them and his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as the light. Mark adds, his clothes became shining, exceedingly white like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them. Interestingly, the apostle John, years later, would describe the Lord Jesus in the same way. Except this time, he wasn't seeing Jesus in his earthly ministry. He was on the Isle of Patmos in Revelation chapter one, and he was seeing the risen, glorified Christ. Revelation 1.16 says, and his countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. What were these disciples seeing here? They weren't just seeing a bright light, they were seeing the glorified body of Jesus. This transfiguration gave the disciples a glimpse into the glory of our Savior. As we continue in verse 17, God the Father spoke approvingly of Jesus, so they saw his glory, then they heard the voice that came. Peter calls the Father the excellent glory, And God the Father gives his stamp of approval on the son. This is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. So the disciples now have seen, they've heard, they were with him, they experienced this transformation. Verse 18, and we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. He's saying, look, I was there, I saw it, I heard it. This wasn't a mirage. I had multiple senses involved in this. In referring to eyewitness testimony, the more senses involved in something, the better. If an eyewitness saw something, that's good. But if they saw and heard, and then maybe felt the heat of a car accident, that's three different senses that were involved to give credibility to their eyewitness testimony. Well, Peter, James, and John, three eyewitnesses saw, heard, experienced this event. So as far as evidence goes, this was an open and shut case. Talk about a great argument for our faith. What does Jesus look like today? Well, Peter saw and he told us he's glorified. His countenance is like the sun shining in its full strength. That's amazing. But instead of citing this experience as the evidence for our faith, Peter completely changes direction and frankly writes something very shocking. He claims that we have a more reliable piece of evidence than even his eyewitness experience of Jesus's glory. Wait a minute, we have something more reliable than something the apostle saw and felt and heard? Yes, because in verse 19, he says that the written word more reliably confirms the truth. Look at it with me. And so we have the prophetic word confirmed or more fully confirmed. This word confirmed speaks to reliability. The definition of it is this, of something that can be relied on not to cause disappointment. Hebrews 6.19 uses this word metaphorically as an anchor to describe the stability and reliability of our hope. So let's make sure we grasp what Peter is really saying here. Let me quote the MacArthur Study Bible. Peter is ranking scripture over experience. The prophetic word, scripture, is more complete, more permanent, and more authoritative than the experience of anyone. More specifically, the word of God is a more reliable verification of the teachings about the person, atonement, and second coming of Christ than even the genuine first-hand experiences of the apostles themselves. Peter submitted the best evidence he had and claimed that it was still not as reliable as the Bible we hold in our hands. Now this may seem really strange to us. After all, how amazing would it be to listen to someone tell us about Jesus who had actually been with him? Imagine if Peter or John walked through the door and said, hey Pastor Zach, I'd like to take the rest of the service. You know what I'd do? I'd sit down, because we'd wanna hear that, right? We would love to hear the accounts of what Jesus was like, and we'd love to explore more about who he is and hear it from a firsthand eyewitness. But actually, what Peter is saying here rebukes that thinking. We don't need a firsthand eyewitness because we have the revealed word. Living and ministering by faith means that we trust what God has revealed to us in the scriptures. We believe it is sufficient and reliable even for me, even above things that I could experience. When our experience contradicts scripture, something has to give. And what Peter is telling us is that it's our experience that has to bend. Believing that the scriptures are more reliable than an experience is totally foreign to our culture today, right? Go down to the 16th Street Mall and start talking to people about how an ancient book written 2,000 years ago by about 40 different people is more reliable than what they experienced last week. And you know what they're gonna do? They're gonna laugh in your face. They're gonna walk away from you. They're gonna think you're even weirder than all the addicts down on that same strip of the mall. You get something wrong with you if you believe those things. So why should we give priority to the scriptures? Because it's very counter-cultural. We have to admit that. Why do we give priority to the scriptures then? Because experience can be subjective. and can vary based on a person's background, training, and perspective. Truth, by definition, is absolute. Therefore, it is true always in any circumstance and does not change. And that is, again, very backward in our culture. So let me give you an illustration. Sometimes eyewitnesses disagree about an event they had seen earlier because each person sees and interprets things from their own perspective, their own biases, their own backgrounds. Even when you have a major accident that four, five, six people saw, you're going to get slightly conflicting reports about it. Absolute truth clearly trumps subjective experience on the scale of reliability. So even our Christian culture, unfortunately, seeks and promotes experiences above scripture. Do you realize this? Do you realize that there are a lot of Christians out there who are saying, we need some experience more than the Bible to make our faith complete. There are some that claim to be Christians that say that. That's one of the huge problems that I have with the charismatic movement. They seek an experience of speaking in tongues or seeing visions or other things to bring them closer to God and to give them an additional word from God. Well, do you understand now from 2 Peter 1 what's wrong with that thinking? We don't need an experience. We don't need something more. He's given us enough. We have the complete word. We don't need a new word from God just because this word is 1900 years old. God has already revealed the living word through the written word. There are some evangelicals that have downplayed the importance of the Bible in recent years. Some have said we don't need the Old Testament, we don't need the scriptures, it's indefensible, the historical parts are wrong, we need to look for a word from God in other places. All of these things we can lump together and say that it's heresy, it's wrong. If there's a pastor or a preacher on TV or the radio that are downplaying the scriptures and encouraging you to look for God's voice somewhere other than the word of God, stay away from them. We don't have to wonder if God's gonna speak to us, we just have to open our Bible and listen to it. When we start to sweep away the scriptures, we have already compromised our foundation. The scriptures are absolutely true. They're more reliable than personal experience. And in verse 19, Peter kind of gives an offhanded implication. It's kind of obvious to us, right? Look at verse 19, the first phrase. And so we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, which you do well to heed. Like, oh yeah, right, yeah, we do well to heed that. Well, yes, duh. Yes, we would do well to heed it. We would do well to live it and pay attention to it. So how do we do that? How do we pay attention to the scripture? How do we heed the word of God? Well, first we believe the sufficiency of scripture. Sufficiency means it is more than enough. Do you really believe that your Bible is more than enough for your problems or your struggles in life? Because if the answer is well, or maybe, or no, you're gonna have an unstable spiritual walk. The Bible is sufficient. Do you need experiences of some kind to validate or confirm the truth before you start practicing it? Do you need an experience of truth before you apply it? Or do you simply say, well, God, your word says it, therefore I'll do it. How do we pay attention to the scriptures? We believe the sufficiency of scripture and then we exalt the scriptures above other authorities. The world around us encourages us to look to all different types of religions or gurus or philosophies or look inside of ourselves for moral authority. And as we've discussed already, that's all lies. it will ultimately lead to failure. It may sound good at first, all of those roads may promise success and prosperity and the things that you want, but ultimately only the scriptures can get us through life. But then third, seek the Bible's guidance in decision-making, decision-making. Some of you, even today, perhaps, are weighing a critical decision in your life. I don't know what it is, but you may have a life-altering decision coming up in the next month or so. Others of you don't have such a huge decision, perhaps, but we all make hundreds, thousands even, of decisions every day. Where do you turn for your decision making? The Bible shouldn't be our last resort if things aren't working out. Scripture should have the ultimate say in your decision making process. When the decision comes up or when the need arises, the first thing we should do is say, what does my Bible say? What does God want me to do? How can I please the Lord through this circumstance? If you were to go back to school, some of you are still in school, so this is, I'm sorry, it's summer break, I'm bringing up painful memories now. But if you had the opportunity to go back to school and take an open book test, first of all, you'd say yes. It's an open book test. How foolish would you be to take the open book test without any notes or the textbook? Unless you knew everything you could know, you'd be pretty foolish. Yet how many of us walk through life with a closed Bible? How many of us say, yes, Lord, I know you've given me all things that pertain to life and godliness, 2 Peter 1.3. I know that you've provided everything I need, but you know, I'm just gonna keep my Bible closed today, because I'm good. We're foolish. when we do that. Don't trust your reasoning or your experience as your guide. Look to the scriptures instead. So we see Peter's first point. Scripture is absolute truth, and that's why it trumps experience. Well, let's look at the second reason that scripture trumps experience. Verse 19, the second half of verse 19. Scripture reveals life-altering realities that experience cannot teach us. Verse 19 contains a couple of phrases that require careful thought. So let's read the verse. And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Well, the scriptures reveal both present and future realities. The present truths are revealed to us to guide us through our lives today, and future realities provide us hope and stability through the challenges of life because we know what is to come. Well, by definition, if something is in the future, have you experienced it yet? No. You can't experience something that is yet to come. You have to wait for it. And if you're a Christian, your best life, the thing that you hope for the most, is not yet experienced. It is still to come. The scriptures guide us, first of all, through life's present darkness. As a light that shines in a dark place. That's what this phrase refers to. Psalm 119, 105 says, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. The word of God is like a lamp guiding us through a dark place. One of my favorite books is the Lord of the Rings series. It's a series of three books, and I get teased for using illustrations out of these books all the time, but I'm gonna plunge ahead anyway. In the third book of this series, called The Return of the King, the hero, Frodo, entered a dark tunnel in his quest to destroy the one ring. If he can destroy this ring and this specific volcano, all the evil in the world goes away and the good guys win. That's the simplified storyline. So he enters this dark labyrinth and there's a creature in this labyrinth that eats anyone that comes into it. It's a massive spider. Spoiler alert, sorry. And Frodo needed to get through this labyrinth safely, but it was pitch black. It was dark. He needed a way through. And just when he thought that all hope was lost, he remembered that he had been given a light in the earlier part of the story. And this light was given to him to guide him when all other lights failed. He used this light to illumine the darkness and provide him the light he needed to escape. They adapted these to the movie, to the screen. And so in the movie, you know, he gets this light out and he says this phrase in Elvish and it's this, you know, really triumphant phrase and the light comes on and then the spider is like right behind him and you kind of jump out of your skin a little bit. That light illumined what he needed to know, that the enemy was close by. And he used that light to guide himself through the darkness and out of that tunnel. Well, our journey through life is short and dark. Oftentimes, it is very dark. But thankfully, we have the light of scripture to guide us. The children's song goes something like this, hide it under a bushel. No, and I know that's talking about testimony, but it applies here to guidance as well. That as we navigate through life, we have a light to guide us, a light to show us how to live, a light to get us through to the other side. But how long do we need the light for? Well, once you get out of the darkness, do you need the light anymore? Do you need a flashlight in the middle of the day, outside? No, because there's plenty of light around. So the scriptures guide us until Jesus' return. The second half of verse 19 is a little confusing at first, but that's what it's teaching us. That the scriptures guide us until Jesus' return. How long will we need this prophetic word to guide us? Peter answers, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. So what's this business about stars and the day dawning? Was Peter a closet astronomer or something? Was he studying the stars outside his home? Well, what's he talking about here? The morning star is better known as the planet Venus. Many of you know that. Because of its place in the sky, Venus often would appear and often still appears just before dawn. When ancient people, especially ship navigators and such, saw the planet Venus, they knew that morning was about to arrive. The morning star had come, the dawn was not far behind it. Here's Peter's point then. The Lord Jesus is the believer's morning star. When he returns to take his church home at the rapture, we will know that the morning of eternal living is about to begin. Just like we know that dawn is near when the morning star appears in the sky. Well, this phrase rises in your hearts is again a little confusing, but what's it referring to? The morning star rising in your hearts, I believe points to the confirmation of seeing Jesus in that day. All of our weaknesses, our doubts, our walking by faith and not by sight, all of that gets set aside when we see the morning star in person. And then we'll walk by sight and not by faith. Our faith will be fulfilled. And so the scriptures guide us until the return of Christ. A lamp is no longer needed when the day arrives. And when Christ returns, we will exchange the written word the scriptures for the living word and fellowship directly with him. Now imagine, imagine back to our story about Frodo. Imagine if he decided it wasn't worth using the light he had received. Imagine him saying something like, I can figure this out on my own. It's not that confusing. I'm sure I could stumble around in the dark here. He would have been eaten. And the quest would have failed. He would have been foolish not to use the light he was given. And again, I ask, how many of us are so foolish because we're trying to walk through life while putting the light back in our pockets? See, the Bible isn't just something for Sunday mornings. It's not something just that the pastors do. It's not something we open at family devotions. The Bible is what we live our lives by. It guides us. And the beauty about having a church with old and young in it is that the younger of us can come to the older and say, how did you get through the struggles and trials of life? And to a person, what are our older saints say? They're gonna say something to the effect of, the Bible got me through, the Lord Jesus directed me, the scriptures sustained me. People who last for the Lord live on the scriptures. The light of scripture imparts us with hope as we wait and watch for the morning star, Jesus Christ. So I encourage you to cling to it. Strengthen your hearts with it. Yes, life might be difficult. It might be hard. There may be trials and disasters to come, but if we understand that the present darkness is simply that, present darkness, and that there's a morning to come that will last an eternity, and it's soon coming, we can endure. Your experience in life won't teach you that, but your Bible will. The scriptures reveal life-altering realities that shape the way we think and the way we live. Let's hasten on. The scriptures guide us and reveal to us life-altering realities. Let's identify now the third and final reason that Peter gives why scripture trumps experience. And it's in verses 20 and 21. Scripture trumps experience because it never makes a mistake. It never makes a mistake. Verse 20, knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation. What's Peter saying here, private interpretation? Is he saying that somebody went into a closet and interpreted the Bible and came out to us and told us what to believe? That sounds an awful like the Mormons actually. No, he's saying that no scripture was written from somebody's own private interpretation. Nobody went into a corner and said, hmm, I wonder what this book should say today. Interpretation is the act or the process of explaining something. You see, man can't make up scripture or put their own spin on it. It's not a myth. It's not personalized truth because that doesn't exist. It is absolute truth that never makes a mistake. This statement stands in contrast to eyewitness testimony because eyewitnesses can emphasize certain parts of their experience. You say, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Isn't the Bible like eyewitness testimony? Weren't Peter and the other apostles like Matthew, Mark and Luke and John, the gospel writers, weren't they writing about what they had seen? Aren't the gospels in much of the scriptures eyewitness testimony? Yes. But that doesn't nullify that no person produced scripture. Why? Because in verse 21, we understand that the scriptures are the product of the Holy Spirit coming upon men to record exactly what God wanted to record. You see, God revealed scripture to man through the Holy Spirit. He didn't call a person and say, hey, I want you to write a book of scripture for me. Check back with me in three weeks. He sent his spirit to superintend the process. Look at verse 21. For prophecy never came by the will of man, man didn't just make it up, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Men who were dedicated to God and walking with the Lord, they were holy men, were moved, they were born along by, they were driven by the Holy Spirit. So what happens? This is what we call the inspiration of scripture. It's one of the primary doctrines, a fundamental doctrine of the faith. If you deny the inspiration of scripture, your foundation is very broken. God the Father revealed the Son through the Spirit, and the Spirit captured the witness about Christ in the Bible. You see, the Spirit used the experiences, the styles, the education of men to record every word that the Spirit intended. And this resulted in a complete and perfect canon of scripture. That's why we have different books that read different ways. If you read Paul and you read John, they're going to read differently because there are two different men writing it. The Spirit didn't sit down with them and say, all right, now record the exact words that I'm going to tell you here. That's what we call dictation. There were times in the Old Testament that he did that. But that's not what inspiration is. Inspiration is when the spirit moved and blew across men, we could say, just like the wind driving a ship sails to record exactly as God willed. The spirit moved Peter as Peter wrote, not just to record eyewitness testimony, but eyewitness testimony superintended by God that is now inspired scripture. So that means that God is the ultimate source of scripture, right? There are different human authors, but there is one single divine author. It is a miraculous book. Titus chapter one, verse two says, God that cannot lie. Hebrews 6, 18, in which it is impossible for God to lie. So if God cannot lie, and he inspired the scriptures, then what's the conclusion about our Bible? It is the truth. And it is worth banking our lives on. It is perfectly reliable. And I would even say it is supremely reliable. It's more reliable than man-made religion. It's more reliable than your personal experience. It's more reliable than even your own reasoning or your own thoughts. Because it is perfectly reliable, you must commit to building your life on it. There's no other way around it. You must commit to building your life on it. That's what Jesus taught in Matthew chapter seven. You remember this story? Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on a rock. And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house and it did not fall. Why? For it was founded on a rock, on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand and the rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house and it fell and great was its fall. The moment we have built upon a foundation other than the rock of scripture is the very same moment we've put ourselves in spiritual danger. It's the very moment that we have started to compromise our spiritual stability. It's the moment that we need to return back again and build on the foundation of scripture. On April 24th, 2013, just a few years ago, around 9 a.m. an eight-story factory building collapsed in Savar, Bangladesh. Eight-story factory building. A total of 1,134 people died when the five-story factory building came down. There were actually 2,500 people approximately that survived the disaster amazingly, including one woman who survived for 17 days under the rubble. Survivors claimed that the building basically imploded was the words that they used. The building imploded that morning as it collapsed. And it is known as the deadliest building collapse in modern history. With any tragedy like this, there's an investigation to determine the cause, the reason why. Well, there are a few reasons why the building collapsed. Now, some of you had caught that I said it was an eight-story factory building, then a minute later said that a five-story factory building came down. That's not a contradiction. The original permit allowed for five floors. The building had eight floors. Because of the cost of steel rebar, the builder skipped the rebar and only poured concrete. Building codes had been ignored and the building was still being used, though it was under construction. That's like rule number one in construction is that if a building is being constructed, you don't live in it, you don't dwell in it. Because if it collapses, then it's just the building loss and not people loss. But the final cause of the collapse was described in these words, quote, the building was built on a filled in pond which compromised structural integrity. It had a bad foundation. In our age of secular worldviews shifting moral authority, we must build our lives, our families, our ministries on the foundation of scripture. Experience, again, don't get me wrong, experience is not bad. It is a good thing for us. but it is insufficient and not reliable enough to build our lives on. It cannot guide us into the future. Our own reasoning will be flawed. We need a higher authority, an authority that has stood the test of time, an authority that will continue to stand the test of time. That authority is our Bible, Holy Scripture, which reveals to us the living God through the Lord Jesus Christ. Build your lives on it. Let's pray together. Father, we're thankful that you have not left us without a witness, that you have not told us to live life in our own strength, in our own power. You've not saved us and left us alone. You've given us a vast treasure. You've given us your word, your thoughts, your self-revelation. that not only reveal yourself to us, it reveals the plan of salvation, it reveals truth about us that we would never come to on our own. The scriptures know more about us than we know about ourselves. It is the greatest self-diagnosis we could ever read or understand. And so we thank you, Father, and praise you for it. And as we consider what Peter has said through the inspiration of the Spirit, we pray that hearts would be changed, that we would recognize when we are starting to give in to other authorities and starting to lend credence to secular thinking, to worldly philosophies, as 2 Corinthians 10 says, to ideologies that stand as strongholds against Christ. May you empower your people individually and corporately to build their hearts, their families, our ministries on the authority of scripture. We pray this in your son's name, amen.