Sermon Tone Analysis

/We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

For he received honour and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

/

/And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, 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.

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation.

For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit/.

What do you believe concerning the Lord God and human responsibility to Him?  What is the basis for your beliefs?

What is the foundation for your beliefs?

It is greatly to be feared that much of Christendom forms belief on the basis of hearsay, emotion, and even personal desire.

Revelation is twisted into whatever shape is convenient to the individual; and having thus distorted His Word we think ourselves pleasing to God.  Surely those who profess to speak in His Name must give an answer for the failure to confront the spirit of this age which has infiltrated His churches.

Is the Bible the Word of God?  Were this one question to be answered in the affirmative, it would be difficult to imagine anyone who could easily reject the claim of Christ on life.

Can I trust the claims the Word makes concerning itself?

Without doubt this is a major battleground for many outside the Faith.

Nor need we think these questions to be solely of recent origin.

Since earliest days prophets and apostles found it necessary to address these very issues.

These men of God consistently arrived at the singular conclusion that the Bible is the Word of God; and they accepted the corollary that the message it presents is reliable and trustworthy.

Thus, they rested life and practise on this written revelation of the mind of God.

We can do no better than to emulate their faith and accept the written Word of God as divine revelation.

One such spokesman for God who was compelled to address the verity of the Word was the Apostle Peter.

Early in his second letter he spoke to the issue of the certainty of the Word.

He spoke of the source of the Word, the uncertainty of trusting human experience, and the confidence we may have in obeying the Word.

Though the text was explored recently, I invite you to join me once again in exploration of Peter’s presentation which assures us of the certainty of the Word.

*The Word is Reliable and Accurate* – We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Several questions quite naturally arise from this brief declaration of one who actually wrote portions of our Scriptures.

Who is meant when Peter speaks of we, when he says we did not follow cleverly invented stories?

What sort of /cleverly invented stories/ might some imagine in place of the Bible?

Why would anyone question the veracity and the verity of the Word?

Such questions demand answers, which are carefully thought out while treating the questioner with respect.

While there are excellent commentators who consider that Peter is referring to the Apostles, or at the very least those who wrote under the tutelage of the Apostles, when he uses the first person plural pronoun, I believe it appropriate to understand that Peter speaks of Christians, and more especially those Christians to whom he writes.

We who have believed in Christ are not followers of fairy tales and myths.

Subsequent verses seem to make it clear that Peter is speaking in behalf of those who have received the Word as revelation from God.

In short, the Word of God is reliable and accurate.

Far too many contemporary scholars are quick to relegate the Word of God to the category of quaint stories having no relevance to the world today.

It is considered to be a collection of myths compiled by premodern men in an attempt to explain the spiritual dynamics of the world about them.

Thus, such learned individuals consider the Word of God to be a relic of bygone days without notable function or importance in this modern, scientific age.

We have grown beyond the Book, and we no longer need what it presents.

Isn’t it strange that in our world, more scientifically advanced than any generation to date and with greater understanding of the world about us, that strange cults multiply at such an alarming rate?

Those consulting astrology charts on a regular basis number more than forty percent (40%) of our population according to one study recently conducted.

Indeed, on one occasion I requested that an ad announcing a message which challenged the casting of a horoscope be placed in the paper next to the daily horoscope, but the editors declined because they feared such action would offend too many readers.

Listen to this exert from an article printed in a recent newsmagazine.

The believers are in the condo next door, the office down the hall.

An insurance company administrator, a woman in her mid-40s with two children, believes that one night in the late 1970s, on a country road in southeastern Michigan, she witnessed the landing of a UFO.

A 29-year-old law student, working at a public prosecutor’s office in Pennsylvania, believes the Native American medicine bag he wears around his neck will keep him safe and “always lead me back home.”

A 57-year-old business consultant keeps crystals in his house.

According to the American Booksellers Association, the sale of New Age books jumped from 5.6 million copies in 1992 to 9.7 million in 1995.

Close to $2 billion, according to /Forbes/ magazine, is spent each year in the United States on aromatherapists, channelers, macrobiotic food vendors, and other aids to spiritual and physical well-being.

And in a 1994 Roper poll, 45 percent of those who responded agreed that meditation had given them “a strong sense of being in the presence of something sacred.”[1]

So much of what we think to be so precise, so definite and so accurate, is mere speculation.

I studied in the field of biochemistry for a number of years.

Many of the “facts” which I learned as true and verified in the 1970s have been discarded today.

Scientific knowledge which my parents received as accurate in the 1930s has been utterly discredited long before this day.

Even histories are rewritten on a regular basis to meet the changing expectations and points of view held by contemporary scholars and those interested in matters of the past.

Go into any used bookstore and you will find textbooks of recent vintage which have now been discarded and which now beg a home on some library shelf; but who wants a book which presents a view which is passé, trite or utterly discredited?

The facts which are known and accepted at one point in time change and are mere footnotes of history at another point in time.

This is not the case for the Word of God, however.

It is humbling to think that the same precepts which guided David guide those reading his Psalms today.

The cosmology of Moses is as fresh today as when he inked those words at God’s direction.

The need of mankind has not changed and the provision for salvation in Christ the Lord is the only permanent hope yet offered to mankind.

In his previous letter, Peter wrote these words: /you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

For//,/

/“All men are like grass, /

/and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;/

/the grass withers and the flowers fall,/

/but the word of the Lord stands/

/forever.”/

/And this is the word that was preached to you/

[*1 Peter 1:23-25*]

Have you ever considered the fact that the whole of the Bible is a seamless garment?

If one portion of the Word is in error, then all is in error.

If God did not create all things by His Word, then man did not fall.

If man did not fall, there is no need for regeneration or redemption; we can wait until the race has perfected itself through acquisition of knowledge or evolutionary advancement.

If there is no need for regeneration or redemption, the death of Jesus was a farce and unnecessary.

If the death of Jesus was not the sacrifice of the Lord God for sinful man, He could not have been demonstrated to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the grave.

If Jesus did not rise from the dead, we have believed a lie.

If we have believed a lie, we are indeed to be pitied more than all men.

We are not permitted the luxury of picking and choosing which portions of the Word we will believe today.

We witness an increasing number of scholars so-called who speak of the Bible as being errant; they imagine that they, with their great learning, are the only ones qualified to recognise truth and avoid error.

What unmitigated arrogance!

Either the Word is true or it is not.

Either we who are believers in the Lord have received /an anointing/ and /do not need anyone to teach us/, or we are utterly dependent upon arrogant professors of an errant Bible to tell us what is true and what is not.

While the Bible is not a science text, it must speak truthfully when it speaks of the natural world if it is the Word of the God of truth.

Though the Bible is not primarily a textbook of history, it must be historically accurate when it provides recorded facts concerning events witnessed by the various writers.

The Word of God is not an economics text, but when it provides instruction in the financial realm it must be reliable.

I haven’t time to provide details verifying these various aspects of biblical teaching, but you may assure yourself that God has spoken and His Word is true.

The cosmology and the cosmogony of other religions are fantastic?

To the Hindi mind the earth was a great ball situated on the back of an elephant which stood on the back of a great turtle which was constantly swimming through the universe.

To the Egyptians the sun was a god consigned to move endlessly across the skies.

To the Greeks, the sun was a fiery chariot which was driven across the sky each day.

I would expect to find such cosmologies in the Word, if the Book were composed of myths and fables.

Instead, I read in the Bible of the hydraulic cycle and of the movement of the stars and the planets and of the spherical shape of the earth.

The Bible states that Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians [*Acts 7:22*].

According to the Egyptian cosmogony the world began with a great egg which flew around and around.

When mitosis was completed, it burst open and the world was born.

This was the wisdom of the Egyptians.

I expect to find such an account of creation when I pick up the Bible, but instead, I read: /In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth/ [*Genesis 1:1*].

That same Moses, educated in the contemporary cosmogony, wrote by inspiration precisely what God chose to reveal.

Were I to think in evolutionary terms, according to the anthropologic myths of the moment, I would be constrained to imagine multiple origins for the races of mankind.

Logic would compel me to assign the different races to categories deemed more or less inferior since they arose at different times and would evidence greater or lesser suitability for the modern environment.

Yet the Word teaches us /that from one man [God] made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live/ [*Acts 17:26*].

If I follow the best thoughts of the greatest pagan minds to attempt to discover God, I will repeatedly find myself discouraged and disappointed.