Sola Scriptura: Light for Dark Times

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
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How do we know what, if anything, is true in this world? 
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Where do you go when you want to know if something has really happened in this world? Do you go to the TV and tune into your favorite news caster? Do you run to your social media of your choice to follow after those who know the “real story”? Do you pull up your favorite long-form podcast and hope that somewhere in those 3 hours of a comedian interviewing a guest will you find what is really true? Or do you run to your favorite AI bot hoping that the machine will filter out human error (spoiler alert: it won’t).  
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What we are increasingly finding is that really no matter which one we choose, there is some sort of drawback to getting the full truth. No matter who you listen to, there are biases in presenters. It’s just part of being human. There are limitations because of how they present their message. TV presenters are limited to how long their segments between commercials are (usually somewhere between the 7 and 15 minute mark) and podcasters have the opposite problem of making the key point in a sea of content. AI, for as interesting as a field as that is makes just as many, if not more, mistakes as the humans do! 

To sum it up, we live in an age of information but not an age of wisdom. 
Don’t you wish there was a reliable source not only of information but of the information you actually need? 

Well, I’ve got some good news for you: It’s the Bible, God’s Book. 

Now, I’m sure that most of you absolutely saw that coming. You knew I was going to say that. This is something that you are hopefully reading every day, so why do we still feel lost in navigating this world? You may be thinking to yourself, 

“This world has gotten too complicated for the Bible. They weren’t doing trans surgeries back then. Teenagers can get in way more trouble today then they could two thousand years ago. In an age where morals are degrading faster than they ever have before, can we really expect the Bible to mean anything to people outside the walls of the church? Doesn’t the Bible just guide people who already have most everything together? For those who don’t, they are going to need something more.” 

If you are feeling like that today, then this passage is here to comfort you. We are in the midst of a series that I have sprung on myself and the rest of you. We are going to be looking at the 5 Solas of the Reformation, the five key principles that define what it means to be a Christian. Last week, we saw that everything depends on Christ, Christ Alone is able to purchase our peace. The fancy term is “Solas Christus.” Today, we are going to be looking at how we know that as we dive into Sola Scriptura: the Scripture alone. 

God’s Word is Sure 

When the Reformation was happening the battle was over who gets to finally decide what Christians should believe: is it the Word of God on its own, or is it the Word of God AND the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church? 

Traditions are funny things. They involve things that you do or say around specific times, like the fact that most of us are going to be roasting a whole turkey for lunch in a few weeks when we would almost never otherwise do. It is part of the doctrine of being American! If you show up to someone’s house on Thanksgiving and they are serving burgers off the grill and pretzels, you’ll call the cops! 
But why? Didn’t the Pilgrims eat Turkey for Thanksgiving? Yes, William Bradford makes mention of that in his journal (page 105), but it is in a list of many other things including fish and deer. Turns out that Turkeys ended up on American tables for a whole variety of reasons including a popular novel from 1827 detailing what an American Thanksgiving looks like. Interestingly, the author of that novel, Sarah Hale, campaigned to make Thanksgiving a National Holiday granted eventually by Lincoln in 1863. 

Did you know all that? Probably not! I didn’t. But it didn’t matter to us because we have Turkey for the plain reason of “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” And who is to say that one tradition is better than another’s? 

That’s all well and good for a holiday meal, but what about when we are trying to figure out how we get to heaven? What about when we are trying to figure out if the way we are living is worth it? “That’s the way we’ve always done it” doesn’t cut it, especially when we don’t even know why that’s the way we’ve always done it. That applies for churches, families, and even individuals. “Well, it’s worked so far” is a flimsy foundation for living. Every building that eventually collapsed had a foundation that got them that far. 

We don’t want to rely on tradition. Let’s rely on a sure word. 

That’s what we see at the beginning of our passage in verse 16. Peter is speaking to the church in general, but this letter is the second one that he has written (3:1). “He addresses a wider range of readers (all believers) than in the first epistle, but includes especially those therein addressed, as ch. 3:1 proves” (Brown). Likely, this is the same audience as 1 Peter in which he is writing to people who have been scattered all over the Mediterranean because of their faith in Christ. They’ve lost everything, so let’s be sure it’s worth it! 

Here in verse 16, Peter is reminding them that this isn’t some sort of made up story they’re telling. This isn’t some fiction to help children get to sleep. Peter saw Jesus in glory. Here he is referring to the time he and the apostle John went up onto the mount of transfiguration and saw the divinity of Jesus shine through. We have an eyewitness account of the very glory of God as he details in verses 17-18. They saw the light, they heard God’s voice say of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” They were THERE. They didn’t see tweets about it. They didn’t watch a YouTube clip. They didn’t hear it from a friend of a friend; they saw it for themselves and wrote it down for us here. 

Now, you may say, “Well, what if Peter is just a liar or crazy? After all, didn’t Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon cult claim visions of this sort?” 

Well, Peter was crucified upside down for what he is claiming here. If he was just making it up, right before execution would be a great place to recant!  Spurgeon put it this way: “He had no retractions to make as he came toward the close of his ministry. He did not have to say that, after all, he had been greatly mistaken. There had been an advance in theology since Jesus Christ had died, and he was sorry to say that he had preached a good deal when he was young that he would like to unsay now that he was old. Oh, no! Peter held fast to what he had previously preached because he knew that it was the very truth of God.” (Spurgeon) 

Ok, so he wasn’t lying, but what if he was just delusional? Well, that’s where we get to verse 19. 
Peter says that because of what he has seen, it makes the prophetic word (the Old Testament, and what had been written of the New Testament by then [see 3:16]) “more fully confirmed.” In other words, this isn’t something invented whole cloth from Peter’s mind. There is an entire canon of Scripture predicting these things. They were already sure because they came from God, but now that he himself has seen it in action, it is even more confirmed. 

Have you ever been given driving directions from someone you trust? You’ve never been there before, and you’re a little nervous about making it there. There isn’t GPS signal, so you have to rely on their directions and landmarks. Now, you trust them as you set out driving, but don’t you feel an extra layer of comfort once you start seeing the things you were told you would see? You knew the directions were good because of their source, but now you know that you know it is good because you see it just as they said. 

 God had communicated since Genesis 3:15 that there was going to be one to come who would crush the head of the snake. Isaiah 53 goes into great detail of a Servant who would suffer for His people. Psalm 110 spoke of a descendant of David who was also David’s King. And there He was on the mountain with Peter and John who also writes down his experience of that moment: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) These passages are thousands of years apart. There is no conspiracy that would last that long to force it. This is God.

And, skipping over the rest of verse 19 for just a second (we will come back to it), look onto verses 20-21. 

Peter makes it obvious here that God is the one who wrote all this down. He used men, but they were carried along by the Holy Spirit “as by a mighty wind” (Brown) to write it all down.
God’s Word is sure. 

God’s Word is Your Only Guide 

Ok, so we’ve seen that God’s Word is sure, more sure than anything else in the world because it is written by someone who doesn’t make mistakes and sees all things. So what does it mean? How should we now live? What is the takeaway? 

Remember that part of verse 19 we skipped? Here it is now. That prophetic word, God’s written words “you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place.” 

In other words, listen. This  book was written by the Being that made marriage and parenting, so you should listen to what it says about your marriage and parenting. There is literally no better source. Hear what it says about starting well and ending well. Know what it says about your life. God didn’t write all this just so we can buy 15 copies of it and look at it on our shelves. Jesus didn’t transfigure in front of Peter, James, and John just to show off. After God said “this is my beloved Son,” he closed with the line, “Listen to Him.”  

Notice how Peter describes how we listen. We look to it like a lamp in a dark place. 

You know when you had to go somewhere in the dark as a kid, you would be afraid unless you had a flashlight? You wouldn’t go in that room unless you had that light with you. Even as an adult, if you go outside at night, you don’t step somewhere unless that light as shown on it. You rely on that light and trust that light as an adult. As a kid, though, you love that light. It doesn’t just provide safe stepping; it provides security. 

That is what the Word is for your life. Psalm 119 describes it as a lamp to your feet and a light to your path. It’s dark out there. You need that light. Don’t look to other people walking in the dark without a light. Sure, by God’s grace they haven’t fallen yet, but there are a lot of holes, a lot of roots, a lot of dangers in the darkness. Your Father has given you a light to illumine and comfort in the dark. It is sure. Read it. Hold up everything in your life to it. Don’t be satisfied with “life as you’ve always done it.”

Instead, take up this light. Let it lead you and your family as we all walk in the dark. 
But my friends, as we see at the end of this verse, it won’t always be dark. It’s a long walk in the dark, shadowy woods, but there is a brightly lit new day that will dawn. In heaven, we won’t need the lamp anymore, because there we will know. We will see it for ourselves. We will see God in the same glory that Peter saw and sees even now. And we will simply and joyfully get to say, “this word is even more fully confirmed.” 



Bibliography 
David Brown, A. R. Fausset, and Robert Jamieson, A Commentary, Critical, Experimental, and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments: Acts–Revelation, vol. VI (London; Glasgow: William Collins, Sons, & Company, Limited, n.d.), 622. 
Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon Commentary: 2 Peter, ed. Elliot Ritzema and Carrie Sinclair Wolcott, Spurgeon Commentary Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014), 2 Pe 1:16.