The Word You Need
Notes
Transcript
The Word You Need
The Word You Need
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which 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, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
We are still in the Christmas ‘state of mind’ this morning, even as we begin a new year. That’s perfect. We step into a new year, and still fresh in our minds, is the birth of Christ, the Son of God - come to save us.
Now, I know that almost every one of us is just fine with closing the door on 2020 - - happy to get a fresh start in 2021. When someone wishes you ‘Happy New Year’ - this year, more than maybe any year before, your FIRST thought in response is, ‘I sure hope so.”
There is no more important reality to have, dominating your mind, as you step into 2021 than this: God loves you, in this broken world, enough - that even though you are part of the problem that adds to its brokenness - and so am I … God loves you so much that He sent a rescuer. In response to your need - He sent, not a teacher, not a prophet to remind you of your need to get right, not a motivational speaker. No, God sent His Son - the Eternal Son of God, second person of the Trinity … sent Him to take on flesh - to join Himself to humanity - so He could rescue you and me. And at the beginning of 2021, There is no more confidence-inspiring, hope-filling reality than that!
Think about it .... as you step into this new year: what’s the greatest fear you have? What’s your greatest challenge?
If that’s the case - - then the most imporatant thing you can dedicate yourself to, in this coming year, is to KNOW THIS Jesus better, so that you can DELIGHT in Him more .....
But how? How do you get to know Jesus better? How do you grow in truth? What’s your authority to give you confidence that what you think about God is true?
You are going to be bombarded by information - it’s going to come at you from a thousand different directions. There is a news media that dominates tv screens when you’re at the gym or the the airport, or just sitting at home, trying to catch up on the news of what’s happening in the world. That media is going to tell you what you should be worrying about, or, by what they don’t report - they’ll be telling you what not to worry about - what’s not a big deal.
Twitter, Facebook - will trend information … and, again, by what is trending - social media will proclaim to you what you should focus on, what you should worry about - and what you should think.
Many of you are Christians - you have a Bible - many of them. Some of them catching dust right now.
What role does your Bible play in your outlook on life in this world, at the beginning of the uncharted waters of this new year?
That’s what I want to focus on this morning, from Peter’s words in 2 Peter 1:16-21
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1 THE HISTORICAL BASIS FOR HOPE 2 Pet. 1:16-18
What’s going on in the Church when Peter writes this letter?
Well, interestingly, there are a LOT of similarities between Peter’s day and ours. It is somewhere between 65 and 67 when Peter is writing. He doesn’t have long to live. Within 2 years, he will be dead - crucified for his faith .... crucified upside down at his request, because he doesn’t feel worthy to be crucified right-side up, as his Saviour was.
Already, many of the other apostles are gone - they’ve been put to death - the Good News of Jesus Christ is being proclaimed around the world - in ever-expanding areas. The Church is growing - which is amazing. But there’s a problem: You see, Peter and the other apostles have been proclaiming that Jesus is coming again in glory - to make things right in this world. Now, 30 years have gone by .... and no Jesus. No resurrection from the grave. And on the seat of authority in Rome .... there sits Caesar - not just any Caesar, but Nero.
This is the Nero who reputedly started the great fire of Rome - that almost completely destroyed the city - all because he wanted to make room for his palace … and then used the Christians as his scapegoats, to turn attention away from himself. Of course that brings horrific persecution against Christians - Christians being hung on poles and set alight as torches to give light to garden parties.
In the year 67 - Nero enters the Olympic Games and is named the winner of every event. See the kind of ego he has.
He also has a temper problem. This letter is written right around the time Nero’s wife dies - because he kicked her to death after an argument.
Do you struggle with discouragement as we kick off a new year? You’re not sure about the future - I mean, who saw 2020 coming? You don’t trust the government to have your best interests at heart? You’re not alone. See the connection with the Christians alive when Peter writes this letter?
Peter looks at the 12 apostles of Jesus, one by one they’re dying off - martyred by the earthly powers of the day - and will the Church be able to carry on when these Christ-appointed apostles - leaders of the faith - when they’re all gone. The Church is dangling by a thread over the precipice of extinction.
What adds to the concern about Christianity’s future is that there are false teachers, who’ve crept into the Church and they’re saying that Christ isn’t coming back.
“This idea of a glorious return of the physically risen Son of God, coming in the clouds of glory to bring judgment and justice and set the world right … that’s just not realistic. It’s already been 30 years since Jesus left .... look around. Do you see any sign of return?! Nero’s on the throne, not Jesus.”
“What the apostles are teaching … well it’s the stuff of fairy tales!”
That’s what Peter’s responding to in v. 16: “We did NOT follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord JEsus Christ.” It’s the Transfiguration Peter’s talking about - and how that makes the second coming certain.
But don’t miss the relevance to us right now. We’ve just been celebrating the birth - the FIRST coming of Jesus - and there a lot of hard things to believe when it comes to the Christmas message, aren’t there?
Angel apppears to a teenage girl with the announcement that she’s going to give birth to God’s eternal Son in human flesh. That a virgin gave birth to a child - that shepherds were surrounded by a heavenly choir, that astrologers from a foreign land followed a star fro months to find the newborn king.
So many people say, “FABLES - MYTHS … I’ll accept Jesus as a great guru - a religious teacher who had some gold nuggets of wisdom - but don’t ask me to believe in fairy tales.”
“We DID NOT follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus CHrist , but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”
Please don’t miss this, friend - Peter anchors his faith in the bedrock of history. Some of you are so acclimatized to Christianity that you don’t realize the uniqueness at this very point:
History is not vital to the credibility of other faiths.
“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.” The reference is to the transfiguration. “For he received honor 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,” and so forth.
Consider Buddhism. Buddhism is a deeply ahistorical religion. If you could prove somehow (I don’t have any idea how) that Gautama the Buddha never lived, you would not destroy Buddhism, because Buddhism, for its credibility depends, at the end of the day, on its intrinsic attractiveness and its intellectual cohesiveness. It does not depend on any historically contingent datum. None.
Go to Hinduism. In Hinduism there is one universal truth that manifests itself in quite literally millions of gods. Supposing you could prove somehow, I have no idea how, that Krishna never lived. Would you destroy Hinduism? Of course not, go down the street to a Shiva temple, instead. Because Hinduism is not finally dependent on any alleged ostensible manifestation of a particular deity. It’s built on something bigger.
Go to Islam. Now you go to your friendly neighborhood imam and you say, “I’ve got a question for you. I need to word this carefully so you will understand me. Could you imagine that God, Allah, could have given his final revelation to someone other than Muhammad?” Probably he will misunderstand the question.
He will probably say, “I believe that he, Muhammad, did receive the final revelation. God revealed himself through Abraham and he revealed himself through Moses and he revealed himself through the prophet Jesus, but the final revelation came through the prophet Muhammad.”
You say, “I’m not disputing that. I’m a Christian. I don’t believe that, but that’s not my point. That’s not my question. My question is, could God in his sovereignty, had he wanted to do so, give his final revelation to somebody other than Muhammad.” The imam will say, “Of course. Muhammad is not the revelation. He’s the bearer of the revelation. God could’ve given it to anybody he wanted to. God is sovereign. But we believe that he gave it to Muhammad.”
Now come to Christianity. The same question in Christianity is not even coherent. Could God have given his revelation through someone other than Jesus? But Jesus is the revelation and he’s not an abstract man. He’s a first-century Jewish man, a particular man at a particular time and place. There are some facts that you have to believe about him to be saved, including his resurrection, for example.
So what does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 15? “Supposing,” he says, “Christ was not risen from the dead.” What follows? First, he says, “Your faith is in vain.” Because in the Bible, faith’s validity is in the truthfulness of its object, not the intensity with which it is held. You could believe something passionately and it would not be true faith if the object of that faith is false.
In fact, Paul makes the point even clearer. Supposing you believe passionately in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but Jesus did not rise from the dead. Paul says, “Your faith is in vain. More, the apostles are liars.” Because, you see, your faith in the resurrection of Christ turns on historic testimony. Christianity is a historic religion in the sense that God has manifested himself in space and time.
The way we come to know about what God has done in space and time is by witnesses. How do we come to know something? Not just to believe it, but to know that certain things happened? How do we come to insist that certain things did happen as the truth such that we now have faith in them? In the first instance, by witnesses. If Christ did not raise from the dead, then the witnesses are all liars.
“Then it follows,” he says, “that you’re still dead in your trespasses and sins.” In fact, he says, “We’re of all people most to be pitied because we believe something that isn’t true.” In other words, Christian faith is profoundly tied to objective claims about what takes place in space-time history.
You cannot know those things with the knowledge of omniscience, but you can know them in any meaningful sense in a human knowledge sort of way through the reliability of the witnesses that have told us about these things. Our confidence in the truth is established on historical witness.1
1 Carson, D. A. (2016). An Exposition of Scripture on the Relationship between Experience and Truth. In D. A. Carson Sermon Library (2 Pe 1). Bellingham, WA: Faithlife.
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2 A CERTAIN WORD 2 Peter 1:19
So Peter says: “Believe me - this Christian truth and the hope that it brings - it’s no fable. We have the glory of Jesus Christ proved on the solid rock of history … We have seen it with our own eyes.”
And if you’re wired like I’m wired, your first instinct is to say, ‘But I need a little more than YOUR word, Peter. If I’m going to build my life on the hope of Jesus Christ … I need something more sure than that.”
Peter doesn’t stop with eyewitness testimony. He cements his testimony on the written Word of God. Take a look at 2 Peter 1:19:
“We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed (in other words - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
… to which 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, (20) knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation.”
Peter is poin
“And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which 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 ...”
Now we can see the connection between verses 19 and 20 more clearly. When Peter says, "Give heed to the prophetic word as to a lamp shining in a dark place . . . knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation," what he means is, "Pay close and careful attention to the prophetic word, and the first principle to guide you in how to pay attention is the principle that the true meaning of Scripture does not come from the mind of the reader." Or to put it another way: the principle that should guide our attention to Scripture is that its meaning is objective, not subjective. The meaning of Scripture does not change with every new reader or every new reading. It cannot be twisted to mean whatever we like. It is what it is, unchanging and unending. The first principle, therefore, in giving heed to Scripture is that there is a true meaning and there are false meanings, and we must submit our minds to trace out what is really there rather than presuming that whatever pops into our minds at our first reading is the true meaning
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3 THE SOURCE OF CERTAINTY 2 Peter 1:20-21
In verse 20, Peter says that the human authors of Scripture didn’t speak on their own … and, in v. 21, he makes a stunning statement about the authority of the Bible. I want to focus on this statement as our last point this morning.
Let’s pick up the passage in v. 21: “… knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. (21) For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
Don’t skip over these words, friend. They are radical - massively important words. “Men spoke from God AS THEY WERE CARRIED ALONG BY THE HOLY SPIRIT.”
This brings me to the urgency I sense and why I wanted to start the new year in this text. I know that if you haven’t already heard it - you will hear, this year, people saying, “Sure the Bible’s a good book - but it’s still just a book, written by a bunch of men stuck in the world of their own age.
They did the best they could at pointing to God - but we’ve learned so much since then - we can’t get stuck in the handcuffs of ancient opinions. Society has progressed. WE have to progress in our views.”
You hear it more an more, even INSIDE the Church: “Sure I believe the Bible - but you can’t really use it as your only authority for what you believe -
Some of us read a certain passage of Scripture and say, "That's so regressive, so offensive." But we ought to entertain the idea that maybe we feel that way because in our particular culture that text is a problem. In other cultures that passage might not come across as regressive or offensive.
Let's look at just one example. In individualistic, Western societies, we read the Bible, and we have a problem with what it says about sex. But then we read what the Bible says about forgiveness—"forgive your enemy;" "forgive your brother seventy times seven;" "turn the other cheek;" "when your enemy asks for your shirt, give him your cloak as well"—and we say, "How wonderful!" It's because we are driven by a culture of guilt. But if you were to go to the Middle East, they would think that what the Bible has to say about sex is pretty good. (Actually, they might feel it's not strict enough!) But when they would read what the Bible says about forgiving your enemies, it would strike them as absolutely crazy. It's because their culture is not an individualistic society like ours. It's more of a shame culture than a guilt culture.
Let me ask you a question: If you're offended by something in the Bible, why should your cultural sensibilities trump everybody else's? Why should we get rid of the Bible because it offends your culture? Let's do a thought experiment for a second. If the Bible really was the revelation of God, and therefore it wasn't the product of any one culture, wouldn't it contradict every culture at some point? Therefore, if it's really from God, wouldn't it have to offend your cultural sensibilities at some point? Therefore when you read the Bible, and you find some part of it outrageous and offensive, that's proof that it's probably true, that it's probably from God. It's not a reason to say the Bible isn't God's Word; it's a reason to say it is. What makes you think that because this part or that part of God's Word is offensive, you can forget Christianity altogether?”
Tim Keller, in the sermon Literalism: Isn't the Bible Historically Unreliable and Regressive?,
Do you see the importance of what Peter says here in v. 21? Do you se how it changes everything?
Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The Greek word translated, ‘carried along’ here, is phero - and it’s an image of the wind carrying a great sailing ship through the waves to get to its destination.
Or, to use an image more familiar to us - it’s like a BC Ferry, carrying passengers across the water to Vancouver Island. So what the Bible writers put to paper wasn’t just their time-imprisoned thinking … it was God’s very word.
“Wait a minute!” You’re not sure what to make of this whole idea - lots of people stumble across this idea of the Holy Spirit carrying the authors along. “Does that mean that the human authors went into some kind of trance and God’s Spirit dictated the words He wanted - so the human authors had as much to do with the books they wrote as a computer keyboard has to do with the document that is composed on it?”
No- that’s not Peter’s idea - that’s not the Bible’s idea about itself.
Let’s go back to the Ferry analogy. When you drive your car onto the Ferry - do you lose your freedom, because you’re hitching a ride? No - you don’t lose your freedom, you don’t lose your identy - you can walk around, you can choose to go to the cafeteria and spend a small fortune on a hamburger. You can to to the giftshop and buy a souvenier. When I was a kid we would go to the part of the ship where people they kept that new piece of cutting edge technology - the new computer game ‘PONG’ - and we would be mesmerized by that pixel going back and forth across the black and white screen. You’re free on the ferry - you’re still you.
… But the whole time you’re using your own personality - the ferry is continuing on course, getting you to your destination. Like the Holy Spirit bearing the Biblical writers.
And if you don’t quite get what I’m saying - go read the different books of the Bible and you’ll understand. Johyn writes differently than Matthew or Luke, the Old Testament narratives are very different from Psalms or Proverbs. Then there’s Paul.
Oh, there’s such a rich depth of personality on display in the Biblical books, but the Holy Spirit is carrying these authors along, so that every word that is on the pages of this book … is EXACTLY God’s message to you and me - complete, coherent and authoritative as the very voice of the God who inspired it Himself.
So do you see here how important that makes the Bible for your life, today? You need to sit yourself under this Word and saturate your life in its life-giving waters.
Some still are struggling - because you know that to sit under THIS Word - means that your life is going to be challenged sometimes. Is that really a problem?
In 2004, there was a remake of a film from the 1970s, entitled, The Stepford Wives. The 2004 movie tells the story of a group of wives in whom you just stick a little microchip and they never argue with or contradict their husbands again.
Pause … okay men … before you go off in a dreamland fantasy of the possibilities - I don’t think it’s as great an idea as you may be dreaming of right now.
You see, if there is no conflict, you don't have a person anymore. You have a robot. If you have a person, you're in a personal relationship where there will be contradiction and conflict. If that's gone, one of you has stuck a microchip in the other person. Where am I going with this? If you consider the Bible and say, "I like a lot of things in the Bible, but not this part," that's a good thing. Unless you have a completely authoritative Bible that can contradict you and come after you, you've got a Stepford God. You've put a chip in him. You have a god of your own making. An authoritative Bible that you have to submit to whether you like it or not is not the enemy of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God—it's the precondition.
The person who had the greatest relationship with God was Jesus. When he came as a human being, he bled Scripture. He was always talking about it. When Peter challenged him, he pointed to Scripture needing to be fulfilled. When he was confronted by the Devil, how did he respond? With Scripture. When he confronted hell on the cross, he quoted Psalm 22. When you cut Jesus, he bled Scripture. That's how he had this incredible relationship with God. Jesus shows us the relationship with Scripture we've got to have.
Do you want your heart to burn within you? Do you want the deepest longings of your heart to find their rest in a personal encounter with God?
I’m not here to guilt trip you into reading your Bible this year. I know, I’m a pastor who preaches and teaches the Bible . You think, “Of course he’s going to make me feel guilty if I don’t read the Bible enough - it’s his job.”
No friend - It’s not your guilt I’m looking for: I want your joy - because I care about you and long to see a people in 2021 who are steady, stable and who stay on course in the year ahead - in holy, joyful freedom.
I want you to rise above a frantic and frazzled world that runs 100 miles an hour in one direction and then 100 miles an hour in a different direction: “Oh no, look over here and panic! Look over there and panic about that new crisis.” All the while ignoring the issues of eternal significance.
Are you starting this new year still tired from last year’s panic? If you belong to the Sovereign God through faith in the finished work of His Son who’s birth we just celebrated … then you are in the hands of the One who is unfailingly guiding history to the purpose He designed it for. Nothing can stop Him .... and He loves you enough to give you His word as His letter of love to you - to guide your footsteps … and to give you joyful peace.
So won’t you do yourself the favor of making a plan, right now - today … of how you are going to get more of God’s Word into you?