This sermon emphasizes the importance of staying rooted in the truth of God's Word, highlighting the reliability of the Bible through manuscript evidence, archaeological findings, and expert scrutiny. It addresses the dangers of drifting from truth and the significance of recognizing the transformative power of the Bible in contrast to mere reformation. The sermon also warns against pride and self-reliance, urging humility and dependence on God to avoid spiritual downfall.

Matthew 26 31 and I'll read from the New King James Version of the Bible. Then Jesus said to them, All of you will be made to stumble because of me this night. For it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. And after this I will be raised, and I will go before you to Galilee. Peter answered and said to him, Even if all are made to stumble because of you, I will never be made to stumble. Meaning to deny him, to run away. Jesus said to him, Assuredly I say to you that this night before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. And Peter said to him, Even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you. And so said all the disciples. Now, we know that's not true, correct? Everything but that happened. And before I talk a little bit more about what we just read, I want to remind you, it was a good reminder for me, that when Jesus says it is written, it means it is written, it is truth. And we've got to go back to the foundation of truth. The nation has drifted from truth, the church has drifted from truth. Many times we can drift from truth. And when he says it is written, you can take that to the bank. Because that is absolute truth, that's God's Word. And a few things that will help us remember this. And I found, there's a lot of good resources, but EssentialBibleBlog.com lists these, and I borrowed it from them, and I want to give them credit for that. They list, number one, the Bible's reliability, the manuscript evidence. There are tons and tons more copies of the biblical manuscripts with remarkable consistencies between them than there are of any of the classic works like Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. There's a plethora more, 6,000 I believe, and numbers are increasing. More than we have of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, yet not too many people deny those famous works. But when it comes to the Bible, that's where they seem to get upset. It's because it's truth. So always remember that. There is no body of ancient literature in all of the world that is more consistent than what we have in the manuscripts. What about archaeological evidence? The more they dig, the more it confirms. The more they dig in the dirt, the more it confirms that the cities existed, the kings existed, the kingdoms existed, the tablets, the scrolls, they'll dig up coins. Everything that the Bible talks about, they're confirming. Now, with that said, as an example, in the Book of Mormon, you cannot find anything in there archaeologically that is substantiated. The kingdoms. The tools that were used. The names of the people. The cities that existed. None of them. At all. It's almost like it's a fairy tale. And that's what it is. And on these points sometimes, people say, why do you have to say things like that Shane? Because I have to speak the truth. And it's in love. I'm not upset. I'm not angry. I'm not arrogant. I'm passionate that they've drifted from the truth as have other religions that deny the inerrancy of Scripture. So when you say, hey, by the way, did you know that nothing in that book can be substantiated? Nothing. Gold tablets. Special glasses. Nothing. It's another gospel. It's what it is. And Paul said, if we are an angel from above, that's who spoke to Joseph Smith. If we are an angel, supposedly, we know who really spoke to him, but if we are an angel, preach to you another gospel, let them be accursed. It doesn't say, well consider it, and be friendly, and of course be friendly, but don't concede to that. They are to be accursed if they preach another gospel. And that's what the Word of God, it goes to the heart and it convicts. And I think it's okay to tell other religions, hey, have you considered this? Have you considered this? That you might be going in a wrong direction based on the Bible. Or will we use the Bible? No, you don't. It's secondary. The other book is primary. And it's okay to speak the truth in love. And encourage people, but at the same time warn them. If you go on the Christian Post today, or other different news sites, I release an article that they actually changed the title a little bit, but it said, Can the Pope Bring Revival? And the reason I wrote that is because a lot of these awakening, or not awakenings, but a lot of these events that are happening here in Southern California, or there's a big one in Washington D.C., you'll see that Hillsong has been invited, and Lecrae, and I listen to both of those. No problem there. But then they announce that they're going to televise a message from the Pope. And wait a minute, I understand you're trying to reach the masses and involve that, but when that doctrine is so far removed from historical biblical Christianity, when the Pope is the vicar of Christ, the same level as Christ, when the traditions supersede the Word of God, when Mary worshiped, and co-redeemer, and all these things, you can't be united when you're divided on fundamental truths. And that's just the truth. See, that's why I'm not mad. I'm not arrogant. I'm saying we're so much better. Ha, ha, ha. We're just saying, hey guys, you can't believe purgatory that your sins weren't quite paid for. You still have to be punished. What is that for? Tell Jesus that when he said, my heart is in anguish. My soul is in anguish. Father, Father, if there's any other way, take this cup from me. And God basically said, Son, there's no other way. So if Jesus said there's no other way, God the Father said there's no other way, who in the world do we think we are that we can say all religions lead to salvation, all paths are true, when Jesus himself died for the narrow path? We can't. And it's okay for the church to be filled with the Spirit and say here's where you're going away from God. When you put a bumper sticker on your car that says can't find Jesus, look for his mother, that's blasphemy. And we should be able to speak the truth in love. So of course I season the article with love and grace. And we love Roman Catholics. I could go to lunch with the Pope, but I could not worship with them. You can't when you're fundamentally at odds on the scriptural truth. You just can't. And people say, well, we don't really believe that. Yes, you will. Look at the papacy. Look at the 1850s and what they proclaimed, praying to saints and all these different things. And I don't mean to go on a rabbit trail here, but I'm showing you, trying to show you that when it's written, it is written. And when you deviate away from that, you deviate from God. And if the pulpits would start speaking the truth, you would see more people being changed and helped. But how many people come up here, and I can come up here the same way if I'm not filled with the Spirit of God. I'm out in my truck for the first hour praying, God, fill me with your Spirit. Fill me with your Spirit. God, I need you. Because I'll just come up here and say, no, that's going to offend the people living together. That's going to offend the person who's maybe a Catholic, and they brought their Mormon friend. Well, now that's going to offend the person. Darn it all anyway. Well, you know what? Let's just focus on Jesus said, love your neighbor. And let's just stay there for an hour. But that's what we do because we don't want to offend. And we don't want to upset, but the truth offends. And I believe that's one of the reasons that God wrote His Word. And later we'll read where Jesus said the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And actually, the flesh is very strong. What He's talking about, it's weak in pursuing the things of God. The flesh will not pursue the things of God. So the Word of God comes and it should crucify your flesh and my flesh. It should wake us up and put us back in the right direction. And if you come into church and all they do is help to feed and fuel the flesh, you will not see change take place. Because the flesh isn't being crucified, it's being coddled like a little baby and not offended. You should just read Romans and see what Paul feels about the flesh and how it should be crucified. And in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. Nothing good is in my flesh. What about when we're talking about it is written, the Bible, expert scrutiny. I mean, you can take atheists that are now Christians to people like Lee Strobel. Astronauts. You can take all kinds of experts in their field and they scrutinize the Bible and they see the validity in the root word of God. There's validity there. Just, many of you know, my mom's doing good now. She had a heart surgery. They removed the aorta valve, the aorta valve above her heart because it was an aneurysm. It was double its size. And I'm talking to the physician. He said, yeah, we stop her heart for a few hours and we remove. Wait a minute. And a couple hours later we were talking to her. It was amazing. She wanted her phone and glasses four hours later. And anyway, he said, so when you undid the clamps to the new valve, to the new, I guess, aorta. It's not really a valve. It's a vein that goes into the heart and feeds the neck in different areas. When you undid those clamps and the blood hit the heart again, he said we didn't need to resuscitate it. It just started right back up. And I kind of joked. And two planets just hit and here we are and we just kind of formed ourself. And he said, oh no, this is the hand of an almighty Creator. This is a ticking time bomb. Basically. Maybe it's me, but the heart's off for a few hours and you reconnect it. The blood hits it again and it just starts pumping. I mean, it's clear. That's why the fool has said in his heart there is no God. The fool has said, expert scrutiny changed lives. Look at all the lives that have been changed by the Word of God. And many people on this point will say, well, yeah, but sitting in the church down the street or other religions that people change. No, what they have is reformation, not transformation. They have to be good. I have to be good to get to heaven. That's not transformation. That's reformation. You're reforming. You're changing your ways, but the heart's not being transformed from the inside out. And only the Word of God truly changes lives. The eyewitness accounts, we've talked about that before. How can all these eyewitnesses to Jesus' death and His life and His resurrection, pretty much 11 of the 12 disciples were all killed because of what they believed. So if they hid the body, if they made all this up, they're not going to die for that. So when it says it is written, you can take that to the bank. The literary consistency, we don't need to talk about that much. The prophetic consistency. There are over 300 specific prophecies in the Old Testament that are fulfilled in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the new. I didn't say three, and I didn't say 30. 300. He'll be martyred. He will be unrecognizable. No bone will be broken. He'll be like a sheep led to the slaughter. He'll die between thieves. He'll be sold for the silver. It was fulfilled in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ 300 times. So that's why when Jesus, and it's funny, he's just talking here, and he says, but after I've been raised, I'll see you in Galilee. Can you imagine? I tell my wife, when I die, a couple days from now, I'm going to meet you up in High Sierra on vacation. But he said it because that's the truth. It's consistent. He said, I will be raised, and He was raised. And even to this day, they believe that the body was stolen. And my concern is, if we drift from what is written, you will drift from God. Young adult, if you're in here. Old adult, I don't care what age you are. If you drift from this, you will drift from God. And it's just a sad fact. When God said, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. Do you realize that God said that? And that God actually struck the shepherd? You think it was the enemy's plan? God used it for evil. But God struck the shepherd. And the sheep scattered. And that's what many times the enemy will also do. He'll go after the leadership. In the home, he'll usually go after the man first. He'll go after the shepherd. He'll go after a leader in an organization. Because when you strike them, the sheep scatter. That's why I know, if there's a .30-06 rifle scope right here on you, there's about three on me. From the enemy. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of life. It's been settled that he is coming like a thief. He's sent to kill, to steal, and to destroy. That is my adversary. That is your adversary. If I can get the shepherd, the sheep will scatter. But I was also reminded that many people leave church, or they get disgruntled when leadership fails. But remember, Christ will never fail you. And I invite people to church all the time. It's probably hard to believe, but I do. And just this week, I gave a gentleman a card to come and check it out. And a lot of times they say, oh, there's too many hypocrites at church. I've been hurt by the church. Yeah, but you haven't been hurt by God. And we have to be careful because many times we never grow because this church hurt me, this person hurt me, this hurt me. And we just never grow and mature. We stay in the victim mentality. A lot of it has to do with our attitude and how we respond to that. Did not Judas Iscariot have the best pastor? The best teacher? The best preacher? He had the best of everything. What happened? His attitude, his heart was wrong. So I would encourage you, before you give up on a church or on leadership or anything else, look at your heart. Because the Holy Spirit, here's an interesting fact, the Holy Spirit is never divided. Ever. So if there's division in a church, where's it coming from? The Holy Spirit is a spirit of unity. Unity of faith and truth and love. The Holy Spirit's not divided. So when there's division, we all have to look at our hearts and say as we said last week, Lord is it I? Is there something in me that's not pleasing You? And then the third point we read here is pride comes before a fall. Peter said, I will never stumble. I will never stumble. And I kind of just cringe when I read that because God help us when we say that. You can say I will never stumble because God is holding me. And I need Him to hold me. If I came up here, I'll never stumble. I'll never do that. I'll never fall into this. No way. I'm self-righteous. Guess what will happen? Because what really that is is that's pride. And then a prideful person makes their own rules. And then when you make your own rules, you can make your own compromises. And I actually grabbed this last week a book by Steve Farrar. I would encourage you to read it. It's called Finishing Strong. It's good to start out strong, but do you know how many people don't finish strong? In the Christian walk, especially in leadership. He interviewed I think it was 250 top Christian leaders who have fallen. Probably mainly due to moral failure. On the top of his list, in the top three or four I believe it was, I think it was 80 to 90% all said it will never happen to me. Now if they would have said by God's grace, it will never happen to me if I can hold on to the anchor. If I can hold on to Christ. Because it's God who makes me stand firm in Christ. And see in our weakness, our strength is actually our weakness. When we think I can do this, I can handle this. You have to give it to God. Other areas that he talked about in the book where he said it will never happen to me. They also got too busy. So they had no more private time, no more devotional, no more time in God's Word. And they drifted. And 80% of them counseled those of the opposite sex. 80% of those. So they put themselves, not only did they say it will never happen to me, then they put themselves in an environment to where it will happen and flourish. So be very careful when we take a smug approach. And I'm guilty, I've been guilty of this before. How could that happen? Look at that. How could? Well it's in me. See the DNA to sin is in me. It's in you. I know it's not very pleasant. We don't want to hear that on Sunday mornings. But the ability to sin is in us. Acknowledging our dependence and asking for God's help allows Him to help. The humble, He teaches His way. When I say, God, I need You. God, You have to hold me. You have to get me through this. He will acknowledge that humility and help guide us.