Sermon: Sunday, 22nd March, 2026
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: 2 Peter 1:19-21
Let’s start this morning with some crucial questions. Is the Bible true? Is it reliable? Is all of it reliable or just some of it? How do we know? Does it even matter? And if it is true, what difference ought that to make to our lives? These are crucial questions but they are also exciting questions, because the more we dig into the evidence and the more we ask all kinds of questions of the Bible, we discover that we really can have confidence in the God’s Word. Every verse and every word of the Bible is God speaking directly to his world. This is wonderful news. God has not created us and then just left us without any explanation of who he is, who we are, and what he wants from us. In his wisdom, he has written to us, telling us everything we need to know.
But let’s be clear: many people attack the truth that the Bible is God’s Word. They claim it’s not trustworthy. This has always been the case. From the beginning of the world, Satan has been doing this.
The woman said to the snake, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ‘You will not certainly die,’ the snake said to the woman. (Genesis 3:2-4)
Here, Satan is attacking the truthfulness of God’s Word. The actress Wynona Ryder is Jewish but does not have much time for the Bible. She says: ‘Religion is fiction. I have read the Bible. It’s a great book but it’s a novel.’ I’m sure we’ve all heard all kinds of accusations against the Bible. For example, that its meaning has been lost in translation, or that it is full of contradictions, or that it is been altered by people wanting to control us, or that it has all been made up- like a novel! Some say it is just the ideas and philosophies of clever men trying to understand life. These accusations are false.
Before coming to our passage, let’s remind ourselves of why we need God’s Word. We need God’s Word because without an explanation directly from God, we could never truly know who God is, what our purpose is as human beings in the world he has made, or how we can be forgiven by him and have eternal life. I cannot read the mind of anyone in this room (I’m sure that is just as well) and you cannot read my mind. The only way you can know what I am thinking is if I reveal that to you. This is exactly what we need from God – revelation. We can look at the beauty and diversity of the stars and mountains and flowers and animals in this world and know there must be a Creator God, but that is not enough to understand what is going on. It’s like have lots of jigsaw pieces but no picture to tell us what is going on.
JI Packer: ‘Creation says not a word about redeeming love.’
If we are to understand him, God must communicate to us, and wonderfully he has done just that in the Bible.
1. What makes the Bible reliable?
‘For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.’ (2 Peter 1:21)
This is a wonderful verse. Notice the balance in the verse – it says that the Bible is 100% human and at the same time 100% divine. This is because God was pleased to use humans in the process of writing the Bible, using their various personalities, backgrounds and experiences, but did so in a way in which he superintended the whole process, making sure he was in control from beginning to end. It says that the prophets, though human, were carried, or ‘ferried’ along by the Spirit of God. Picture a ferry carrying its passengers to a particular destination. That is what God did in writing the Bible – he carried the various writers along, empowering them, setting them down at the correct destination.
As wind drives a sailing boat along at the harbour, so God moved his human prophets to write down what he wanted them to say. However, God did not use them as human typewriters, but involved their own characters, research, eyewitness experiences and writing styles. The sailor is active, not passive – but the ultimate power and direction come from outside him. Without the wind, there is no movement; without the sailor, there is no shaped journey; God and humans together in writing the Bible.
You could also think about light spilling through a stained-glass window in a church. As the sunlight passes through the stained glass, the light is pure and unchanged in source, and yet the glass gives the light colour, shape, and pattern. In the same way, God’s truth is perfect, but the human authors give it distinct expression. Each book of Scripture is like a different window; the light is the same but there are different hues. All this means that the Scriptures are 100% the words of men, and therefore richly human – and 100% the Word of God, and therefore utterly trustworthy. ‘Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.’ (2 Peter 1:21)
Sometimes we say that people have been truly inspired in their work. Perhaps a composer is inspired to write a beautiful piece of music or an author to write a great novel. But that is not what we mean when we say the Bible is inspired. In fact, it is better to say that the Bible is expired, which means it is breathed out of the mouth of God himself. ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.’ (2 Timothy 3:16-17) This tells us that the Bible is not just a mere collection of human ideas. Nor is it full of contradictions and mistakes. It is God’s message to you and to me.
Christians are followers of Jesus. What is his view of the Bible? ‘…Scripture cannot be broken…’ (John 10:35)
Donald Macleod: ‘The Bible, in the judgment of Jesus, has the authority of law: absolute and infallible authority. It can’t be wrong. It can’t be false. It can’t mislead. It can’t deceive. It can’t be violated. That is the Lord’s own testimony…
I cannot see how one can be loyal to Christ and yet defy him on something as fundamental as His view of the status of the Bible…
I believe in inspiration not because I can prove the Bible to be inerrant but because the Lord and his apostles attest it as being inspired, as coming to us through men carried by God and as having an infallible authority. It is on this self-attestation of God’s Word that we rest our doctrine of Scripture.’
2. How do we know Jesus is coming back?
We looked at this question last week, but we need to return to it. We believe that one day, we do not know when, Jesus will come back to judge the world, to set everything straight and to make a new earth for his people to dwell in forever. Is this all ‘pie in the sky?’ No, it’s based on evidence. Peter’s goal, in this section of the letter, is to convince us of the truthfulness of the 2nd Coming of Christ. How does he do it? Through evidence.
In a court of law today, evidence is weighed up, including eyewitness accounts and written statements. As we saw last week, what is fascinating about Peter’s argument is that he appeals to these very same things- eyewitness accounts and written sources. Last time our focus was on the eyewitness accounts but this morning it is on the written sources (verse 19): ‘We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts’. The ESV renders the translation as: ‘And we have something more sure, the prophetic word…’ How can God’s people be ‘more sure’ now about the reliability of the Bible than they were in the past?
I think part of this is because we have seen so many Old Testament prophecies already fulfilled. For example, there are over 300 Old Testament prophecies about the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, made hundreds of years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and yet each one of them comes true. This is why we can be ‘more sure’ that the prophecies in the Bible are reliable. So, when the Bible prophesies about Jesus coming back, we can logically conclude that this will happen because this has been the water-tight pattern with all the other prophecies. It was said Jesus would be born of a virgin and born in Bethlehem and he was. It was said 1000 years ahead of time that he would be rejected by his own, that his hands and feet would be pierced and it all happened.
It is extremely unlikely that the Bible would be right about all these hundreds of prophecies thus far and yet be wrong in its prediction of Jesus’ Second Coming. He will come again and take us to be with him. We can be certain about this. So, we know Jesus is coming back because of the eyewitness evidence of the transfiguration and also because of the written sources of evidence. Let’s be confident about all of this friends – the evidence is compelling!
3. What are the practical implications of the Bible’s reliability?
V19 gives us one immediate application: ‘…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.’ The word to ‘pay attention’ to the Bible suggests to be devoted to reading the Bible over and over and putting its teaching into practice in our lives. It involves knowing our Bibles really well, so that whatever we are facing and whatever decisions we need to make, we can be guided by the Word of God. After all, we have already been reminded that the Bible is sufficient for all that we need: ‘All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.’ (2 Timothy 3:16-17) That is pretty comprehensive!
What happens if we do not pay attention to the Bible? Peter says that that the Bible is the only lamp to guide us in this life. Without the Bible, we are in a dark place, not able to grasp who God is or the worship and service he deserves.
Donald Macleod: ‘For the sake of our own souls we must know the full content of the Word of God. I say this because it seems to me that many of our most pressing problems in areas of personal faith are due simply to ignorance. Problems with assurance, problems of anxiety and problems in coping with such traumas as bereavement often stem wither from ignorance of Christian doctrine, or from a failure to apply it. The same is true of the church itself. Many of its problems are really problems in relationships, and these are often the result of a defective Christology. We simply fail to live our lives in the light of the fact that in Christ, God shows himself as the One whose nature it is to put the interests of others before his own.’
We should meet new the financial challenges of our church family being guided by Scripture. We should improve relationships with those we struggle with, guided by Scripture. We need the comfort of the Psalms and other passages in times of trouble. We can build our lives on Scripture. Most wonderfully of all, God meets with us in a personal way as we prayerfully read his Word and meditate on it. We are changed and live fruitful lives, like the tree in Psalm 1: Those who meditate on the Bible prosper… ‘‘like a tree that’s planted by a stream, and in due season yields its fruit; its leaves are always green’.
4. Other reasons we know God’s Word is God’s message
Only God’s Holy Spirit will persuade you that God’s Word is the truth. However, there are many significant reasons to believe this logically. Let me focus on a few. The evidence from ancient manuscripts. How many very old manuscripts do we have? Livy’s History of Rome has 20 ancient copies; Julius Caesar’s account of the Gallic wars has 20; Homer’s Iliad has 643; the New Testament has 25,000. The abundance of early manuscripts means that it’s easy to test its accuracy, and it is incredibly accurate. Sir Frederick Kenyon, once principal librarian of the British Museum said: ‘It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain, and this can be said of no other ancient book of the world’.
Then there’s the unity of the Bible. It was written by over 40 authors, in 3 different languages spanning 1500 years, and in many different genres. Remarkably, its message is marked by total unity, and not by disjointed contradictions which you might expect. Finally, 30% of the Bible is prophecy and these prophecies all come true. ‘You may say to yourselves, ‘How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?’ If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.’ (Deuteronomy 18:21-22)