A More Sure Word

An expository sermon from 2 Peter 1:19-21.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

If you have your Bible, would you open it to 2 Peter chapter 1? 2 Peter chapter 1. We're going to be reading the last three verses of this first chapter as we finish out this study that we've been in. And the reason I do it this way is because I want us to be able to take it in bite-sized sections. If we try to cover the whole Bible in one service, we're not going to do it, right? And we try to cover a whole book in one service. It's still way too much to process. And even in text like this, for me, the entire chapter, way too many details for us to be able to take in. And so I break it down into these bite-sized pieces and do that by subject, by paragraph, by sentence, by word, whatever encapsulates what that big idea is. And so we come to this last section here in verse 19 through verse 21. And it says Peter is writing, and he says, We have also a more sure word of prophecy. You might want to mark that word prophecy as it's repeated here. Whereunto you do well that you take heed, as unto a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the day star arises in your hearts. Knowing this first that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Let's pray. Lord, we are people in constant need, and we need, Lord, an encounter with you. So, Father, I pray today that you would get our attention, that we would give our attention to you, that we would lock in for these next few moments and focus on your word, give it an honest hearing and search the scriptures. Father, I have no doubts that on this subject that is addressed today in these verses, that there are some people whose uh jury is still out on whether or not they believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God. While there are others who have accepted that by faith based upon fact, all of us, Lord, I believe, need to be strengthened in this area, as it will do us so much good in our own Christian life when we take every word of the Bible as your word to us. And so, Father, I just pray that you would do the work that you are faithful to do when your word is preached, and I pray, Lord, that you would help me to be a vessel fit for use. In Jesus' name, amen. In these verses, Peter is building on the subject in the preceding verses. If you remember last week, he was validating his claims about Christ. All right, this entire chapter. He's been claiming that Jesus is the Messiah, he is the Lord, he is the eternal God, he's the eternal king, he has divine nature, he has divine power, he gives divine revelation. Those are a lot of bold Christ claims, and it prompts any hearer to say, How do I know that that is true? And so Peter in the previous verses validated this by the attestation of eyewitnesses who gave their testimony. And so he cited an eyewitness account. I saw with my own eyes. He was transfigured. I wasn't alone. James and John were with me. We looked at the gospels, those are eyewitness accounts. Paul said over 500 people, eyewitnesses, saw Jesus after his crucifixion. And so he is validating these Christ claims with this eyewitness testimony. But obviously, all of these eyewitnesses, or I should say, all of those eyewitnesses, would pass away. And in the day and time that we live, they have all passed away long ago. Peter is cognizant of this because even in these texts, in these verses, he has said, I'm not long for this world. I'm going to be putting off this tabernacle, this body. And so it begs the question, where are the subsequent generations, the generations that live after all the eyewitnesses die, going to be able to stake their truth claims? Isn't that what we need? We need to be able to have confidence that what we are believing is right and true. I don't want to believe wrong. I don't want to believe in the wrong God. I don't want to believe in the wrong Savior. And there has to be evidence that confirms that I am believing in the right person and in the right place. Peter has previously stated that he wants us to be able to be in remembrance of these things and be assured of these things even after he is gone. And so now he points us to the scriptures with a full-throated endorsement. Get what he's saying here as it begins in verse 19, right? He comes right off of the eyewitnesses that we've not followed cunningly devised fables, but are eyewitnesses of his majesty. And then he goes on to say this we have a more sure word of prophecy. A more sure word. Just listen to that transitional statement. We have. And what I would say to you is that we have a perfect witness in our hands, namely the Bible. That's what Peter is saying. We have it. We're not searching for it, we're not pursuing it, we're not in danger of losing it. We have a permanent witness that we can count in. We have something we can hold in our hands that is a witness to the truth. He goes on and he says, also, we have also a more sure word. Well, that word also means, in addition to the eyewitness testimonies, we have a written record for posterity. So God gave the eyewitness testimonies while the eyewitnesses were alive, and then he had eyewitnesses write it down so that we now have also a written record, which he refers to as a more sure word. That's an interesting statement. We have also a more sure word. Well, that word sure means that it is trustworthy. It means that it is steadfast, that it is firm, that it is stable, that it does not change with the times. And it is in no way inferior to the eyewitnesses. Get that in your mind. Sometimes we think, well, if I could talk to an eyewitness, if I could be an eyewitness, then I could believe. But what Peter is saying is we have a witness that is in no way inferior to the eyewitnesses. Furthermore, he calls it prophecy. Which means that it is divine revelation. To remind you, divine revelation is knowledge that is given from God to human beings that could in no other way be discerned. Divine revelation. For example, we believe that God's Almighty. How do we know that? Because He revealed that to us. We believe that God is a Trinity, one God and three persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Why do we believe that? Not because we discovered anything in nature, it is because God divinely revealed it to us. Prophecy, more specifically, is the human communication of divine revelation. So divine revelation, God chose to reveal certain things to certain people in times past. Prophecy is when that person who received the revelation then shares it with somebody else, communicates it with somebody else, verbally or written, they communicate that divine revelation. I'm reminded of Amos 3.8 when it says, the lion has roared, who will not fear? God has spoken, who can but prophesy. The point of that verse is that just as surely as you would be afraid, your natural response would be to be afraid if you hear the roar of an apex predator, right? And I'm not talking about like when we took the kids to the San Diego Zoo and they're way over there, separated by like this 12-foot deep, 12-foot wide ditch and a wall. And we know that we're perfectly safe, and they roar, and you're like, that's cool. But it'd be an entirely different setting if you're on the Serengeti in a tent in the middle of the night and you hear the roar outside of your tent. There's not a human on the planet that who is not going to have a strike of fear in them in that moment. And so the prophet's using that analogy of saying, just as surely as that's the natural reaction of a person to fear in the presence of an apex predator, it is also the natural reaction of a person who receives divine revelation to share that divine revelation, to communicate that divine revelation. And so, if God spoke to you, if he gave you a message, do you not think that you'd be like, I've got to tell people. I've got to share this. This is a word that has come. And that's what we get here in this word prophecy. It is the idea that a person is communicating what they've received from God. But I know that people have questions and even doubts about the transmission of divine revelation. How do we know that this person received a word, but that person didn't receive a word? And what about the people who say that they've received the word of God and they're just talking crazy talk? And then not only that, even if you say, well, I believe that there were some people who God spoke to and that they had the word, but you know, that's been a long time ago. How can I be confident that it hasn't been messed up by mankind since then? And we find the answers to that question in our text. Number one, I'd like to show you the process of inspiration. In verses 20 and 21, this process is described specifically verse 21. The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man. It didn't originate with man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And so, how do they receive this? Well, one, a couple of things. One, holy men. These are men who knew God, these are men who walk with God. They received the word from God as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 2 Timothy 3.16 calls this process inspiration. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine. That word inspiration is the Greek word theonustos, and it means God breathed. It is the idea that God is the one who's speaking. Just like it takes breath when we pronounce words and speak. The word of God, the scriptures are the word of God. And so God spoke the word to these men. These men wrote it down. I would also point you to that word in verse 21 that says moved. Holy men of old, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. That same Greek word is used in Acts 27, verse 15, and verse 17. And one of the methods of Bible interpretation is you let the Bible interpret the Bible. I want to know what that word means. Then I look at how that word's used in other places in the Bible. In Acts 27, it's an entirely different context. In Acts 27, the Apostle Paul is on a ship that is headed for Rome, and it is caught up in a storm, and they say that they had to raise the sails and let her drive, and that she was driven of the wind. That's the same word. It's the same word. Get the picture in your mind, like the wind is driving that sail ship. That's the word that's used to say that these holy men of God were moved by the Holy Spirit. In fact, the word translated as wind in Acts 27.40 is the word nostos. It is part of that word, theonustos, which means breath or wind or air. So I would say here's the picture, similar to how the ship has its sails up and the wind comes, and the sails catch the wind, and it is moved by the wind. That is how the process of inspiration works. It is the Spirit of God that blows on the right man. The wind doesn't move every vessel. It moves the vessel that has the sails to harness the wind. And the word of God doesn't come to every person, but it came to these chosen men, these holy men, who had their sails up to be able to be moved by the Holy Spirit of God. Peter says that this prophecy did not originate with men. It's of no private interpretation. It didn't come about by their will. He says that it originated with God and that God gave it to those men. It is the idea that the words are God's and the writing instruments that God uses are these men. Just like when you write, you don't write with your finger, do you? You use an instrument, a pen or a pencil. I should take that back. I know some snarky person be like, well, on my device I can write with my finger. Okay, I got you. I got you. But it's still an instrument, isn't it? And so there is an instrument, and then there is the writer. Perhaps uh maybe a more vivid description of it, uh, of how this works would be like a wind instrument. Think about the wind instrument. The wind instrument has a capacity to make a sound. The sound does come out of that instrument, but unless somebody blows wind into the instrument, no sound is made. Is it the sound of your air? No, it's the sound of your air through that instrument. That's how I would describe inspiration. It is that God used those men. It wasn't all mechanical inspiration. Sometimes it was. Sometimes God just told them and they wrote it down. Like that that happens with Jeremiah in Jeremiah 36. God says, I got a message for the nation of Israel. And God gives the word to Jeremiah. And somebody asks, like, how did you come about? Like he gives them the scroll. He's like, Well, he pronounced it with his mouth, and I wrote it down with ink on paper. Like, don't super complicate this. Sometimes the word of God, God just tells them. Other times the Holy Spirit of God uses that person's personality, their vocabulary, their background, their frame of reference. That's why you have the four gospels that are all essentially the same record. And yet they are all different. Why? Because they're written by different men with different perspectives and different personalities. And so this process of inspiration is where the Holy Spirit of God speaks through these human pen. The process of inspiration, mind you, took place over fifteen hundred years. And through forty different human penmen in three different languages. And yet there is an undeniable continuity to this book that could not be fabricated by mankind. You say, How can I trust it if it was dispersed over 1,500 years, 40 different people, three different languages? And I would say, step back for a moment and read it and tell me if you don't think it sounds like it all comes from the same person, the same source. There is a continuity that could not be fabricated, especially over 1,500 years by 40 different penmen in three different languages. Do you know how many obstacles there would be to having continuity and not contradicting itself? And yet you don't find contradiction in the Word of God. You find continuity, and it can only be explained by the inspiration of God. But even if God did give the revelation, even if God inspired these guys, how do we know it hasn't been corrupted? I mean, it was 1,500 years in the making from the time of Moses to the time of John. But it's been almost 2,000 years since the last letter was written. How do we know that this has not been messed up? Isn't that a valid question? Our text tells us that there's a promise of integrity. In verse 19, the first half of that verse, it says that we have also a more sure word of prophecy. More sure. Which means that it is firm, that it is fixed, that it is steadfast, that it is not changing. Notice that he qualifies it by saying more. More sure. He could have just said we have a sure word. We have a fixed word, we have a steadfast word, we have a stable word, an unchanging word, but he said, more sure. And so it prompts us to ask, more sure than what? And the answer is that it's more sure than the eyewitness testimonies that were given. It's more sure than the eyewitness testimonies. Now that is not to say that the eyewitness testimonies are questionable. It's not to say, well, we can't trust those eyewitness testimonies. This is a more sure word. No, it is to say that eyewitness testimonies are temporary because eyewitnesses are mortal. That is great in the first century. That's great in the first 25 or 50 years after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But what happens after that when the eyewitnesses pass away? And that's why God inspired them to put it in writing so that we could have a permanent record. Take, for example, the opening lines of the Gospel of Luke, and listen for some key words, I'm sure you'll pick out. Luke begins the introduction to his gospel as a personal letter. He says, Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were from the beginning were I witnesses and ministers of the word, delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed. It's interesting. Peter addresses it and he says, Listen, I'm writing this, not because we haven't had eyewitnesses, but that I am moved by the Holy Spirit to write it down in order. So that you can know without a doubt what you have believed is true. Not only is it permanent. Because it is written, but it is permanent because God promised to preserve it. Remember, if it is God's word, if it came by divine revelation and it was transmitted by divine inspiration, then don't you think that the God who's big enough to speak and reveal it to man is also big enough to preserve it? Divine preservation? And there are some verses that speak about this. For instance, Psalm 12, verses 6 and 7 says that the word of God is like silver that's tried in a furnace seven times. It is so pure, and that God will preserve it to all generations. What does that mean? It means all generations. All generations that will ever live upon the planet of earth will have the word of God accessible to them. That's not strong enough for you. Well, I would point you to what Jesus said in his very first sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, right after he gives the Beatitudes, he goes on to say, Don't think that I'm come to destroy the law and the prophets. That's the Old Testament. That's how they call the scripture of the Old Testament. Don't think that I've come to destroy it. I'm come to fulfill it. As a matter of fact, he goes on to say, not one jot or tittle will pass away till all of it is fulfilled. Now, that jot and tittle, sometimes we say it's like every i dotted, every t cross. That's about as close as we can get to it in the English language. But in the original Hebrew, what we understand is that a jot was the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. It's about the size of our apostrophe. Not all their letters were uniform like ours are. And so Jesus says, not the smallest letter out of all of the Bible will pass away until it is fulfilled. And if that's not enough for you, a tittle is an accent mark that differentiates between two letters. It is a penstroke that makes the difference between the Hebrew letter death and resh. And he says, not the smallest letter, not the smallest accent mark will pass away to all. That's what Jesus said. And so if you don't believe that the Word of God is preserved somewhere, you don't believe the testimony of Jesus Christ. And then we've got Peter himself, the guy who is writing this letter. Back in his first letter, he talked about the preservation of the Word of God. He said it this way in 1 Peter 1 23, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God which lives and abides forever. And then he goes on. He says, All the flesh is like grass, the glory of man like the flower. The grass withers, the flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached to you. Those are just a few verses that I share with you. But the point is, there is a promise of the integrity of God's word. That he would preserve it against the attacks of the enemies. Have there been people who have tried to corrupt it? Yes, there have been. Or there's some bad versions of the Bible. Yes, there certainly are. But God has ultimately preserved his word so that we can say with confidence, I hold, I have a more sure word in my possession. The proof of this promise can be supported in history by comparing the number of ancient copies of the New Testament to other literary works of antiquity. So let me uh let me engage the skeptics for a moment, if I can, right? You say, well, your circular reasoning, right? All of your reasons that the Bible is true is coming out of the Bible. I recognize that. Because I believe the Bible is the Word of God and what it says about itself is true. But I understand if you're just looking at it from a purely debate stance, you're going to say that's a bit circular. You're using it to support yourself. Well, let's just look at this. Let's look at these ancient documents, these historic works, and let's compare the number of copies. For example, Plato's Republic. You've heard of that, haven't you? It has seven copies. So get this. There's no originals. We don't have original of any of the books of the Bible. We don't have the original of Plato's Republic. All we have are copies. How many copies of Plato's Republic are in existence? Seven copies. Ancient copies, what we're talking about. I know that they've been published and translated, but we're talking about ancient copies that would have been copied within a few hundred years of the original. Here's another one. Thucydides. He wrote an ancient work called History. It has eight copies. Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. Hits double digits. Ten copies. And Homer's Iliad has a whopping 643. Let me ask you, does anybody doubt the validity of those writings? No, we believe it. We've got seven copies. We've got it confirmed. We've got eight copies. We've got ten copies. We've got six hundred and forty-three copies. Well, in comparison, the New Testament has over 5800 original Greek language copies. And this is mind-blowing. A total of 24,000 ancient copies in other languages. But 5,800, let's just think about that for a moment. 5,800 copies of the New Testament in the original Greek language. And this is what really, I think, drives it home for me. When you're talking about copies, you always have to talk about the period or the gap between the time of the original writing and the time of the copy. Do you know who has the shortest gap out of all of those? It's not Homer. It's not Homer's Iliad. It's not Julius Sealer's Gallic Wars. It's the New Testament. It has the shortest gap from as short as 30 years after the writers wrote it, up to 300 years after. Most of the others begin 100, 150 to 400, 500 years after. And so not only does the New Testament have more documented copies in history, but the gap between the original writing and the copy is documentable to be shorter than all the others. That's a powerful, that's a powerful witness to us. It's astounding. How do you explain that? Only God. Because God said, I will preserve my word. I'll make sure every generation gets it. And that's some pretty powerful evidence, but I believe it pales in comparison to the power of illumination. This is where I'd like to finish today. Point number three, the power of illumination. We find this in the second half of verse 19. Promise of integrity. In the first half, we have a more sure word of prophecy. But then it goes on. Listen to how Peter advises his readers. What do I do about this more sure word of prophecy? Peter said, Well, you would do well to pay attention to it, to take heed to it. As a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns and the day star arises in your heart. What he is referring to here is what I call the illuminating power of the Word of God. Being an unbeliever, somebody who has not yet received Jesus Christ, is like being in the dark. And the scriptures are like a light that shines into the darkness. And if you will follow those beams of light, they will lead you to the source, which is Jesus Christ. Think about this verse that many of us have memorized, Psalm 119, 105. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. The word of God is like a lamp. It's like a light. It shines light into my darkness. And if I will follow those beams of light, they will lead me back to the source. But here's what I notice: that is, rarely does the light come all at once. Rarely does God just go woo and you're like, ah, I see. Usually it is like these rays of light that prick the darkness of your life. And if you respond to it, then more light comes until it rises like the sun in your life. I believe this can be seen with the Bereans in Acts 17. Remember, the Apostle Paul has been preaching and he went to Thessalonica, and those people rose up against him, tried to murk him, they ran him out of town. I mean, they were just all kinds of hostile towards him. And then, in sharp contrast, he goes down to Berea, and it says that the people here were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, since they welcomed the message with eagerness and examined the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Consequently, many of them believed. Is that not the process? They're sitting in darkness. They're in pantheistic Greece. And here comes an apostle and he preaches to them the word of God that Jesus died on the cross, was buried, rose again the third day, and by believing on him you can be saved. And he points back to the prophecies of the Old Testament about who Christ is, where he would be born, those signs that he would be pierced, that he would be stole for 30 pieces of silver. And he is telling them that. And these people take that little bit of light and they go back to the scripture and they search it out, and as they're responding to the light, consequently, they come to full faith in Jesus Christ. This process is summarized in Romans 10, 17, where it says, So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. You say, I'm not yet a believer. What would you say to me? I would say, read and listen to some Bible, because it is the Bible that brings you to faith. That historic antiquity stuff, that's great to tickle your fancy. But it's not going to bring you to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Only the word of God does that. The day star that is being referred to here is the sun, right? It's the brightest star in our solar system. It's the center of our solar system. It is the center around which all of our planets orbit, and it's our main source of light. I see that this Peter is saying your heart, your heart is the core, and that you need to allow the Son of God to rise in your heart to become the one that you orbit around. The one who becomes your main source of life. You know, I think there's a cool illustration of this in the conversion of Saul. Remember, Saul is on his way to Damascus. He hates the followers of Jesus, he's trying to stamp them out. And all of a sudden, in the middle of the day, there is this blinding light that shines, drives him to his knees, and there's a voice that says, Why are you persecuting me? And Paul says, Who are you? Who are you? And he says, I'm Jesus, whom you persecute. It's hard for you to kick against the pricks. And then we find the conversion of Saul. Lord. He calls Jesus Lord. He recognizes his Lordship. Lord, what would you have me to do? And it's interesting, you know, we always talk about the pricks of being like these little prodding convictions that Paul has been kicking against. But this week, as I was looking at that again, I thought, you know, we say the same thing about light. Light pricks the darkness. Could it also be that these lights had been pricking the darkness of Saul's conscience until the day star arose in his life? And you know what's neat about that? From that very moment, from that very moment, Jesus becomes the center of Paul's life. Before that moment? No. He's not the center. He's not even close to the center. But after that day, after the pricks of light have been breaking through and the day star rises in his heart, from that day forward, Paul lives his life around and for the Lord Jesus Christ. It's at that moment that Saul comes to faith in Christ. And so I ask you, and we'll be done. Will you follow the light of Scriptures until it brings you to full-blown faith in Jesus Christ? Are you ready to believe? Maybe you're here today and you're honest. I'm not there yet, preacher. I'm not there yet. I mean, I ain't against God. I I I I believe that there is a God. I just don't know about, you know, Jesus being the only way. I'm not I'm not sure about all of that. I understand. I understand. It's a decision that everybody has to make. So I would ask you this. If you're in that place, right? We're just an honest conversation right here. Would you at least take an honest look at the light that is shining from the Bible? Would you at least take an honest look at because here's what most people do. I don't know if I believe that. And there it stays. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Hey, will you at least take an honest look at the light that is shining to you from Scripture and be willing to follow it where it leads you? Perhaps you've heard of the journalist named Lee Strobel. Lee Strobel did not believe in God. His wife did. Lee got quite aggravated about those things, and using his journalistic skills, he decided that he was going to investigate this thing of Christ and he was going to prove that it couldn't be real. And so he began setting up interviews with all of these experts and digging into the documents. And in his attempt to try to debunk what he thought was false about Christ, he actually became a Christian. And instead of writing a book that debunks Christianity, he wrote the cause for Christ, the case for Christ. And it becomes a number one bestseller. Why? Because he took an honest look at the light that was shining from Scripture and it led him to the source. And so I ask you today, if you're not a believer, will you at least take an honest look at the light that's shining to you from Scripture and allow it to lead you to its source? Would you bow with me? So we bow our heads for just a moment. Not only is this a message for those who may not yet believe, to give them light, to help put them on their search, but it's also a message for us as believers. We need to have a strong confidence in the Bible as the Word of God. It needs to be the book that we turn to when we encounter difficulties in life, when we go through crises of faith, when we face temptations that we cannot overcome. There is no real help in other places that is going to aid you as greatly as the Word of God. But for you to go to the Word of God, you have to recognize that it is the Word of God. And so may this message not only bring people to that belief, but may it strengthen those who already hold it. Dear Lord, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for the eternal witness that it is. Thank you for the way that it worked in my own life, and I know that it works in the lives of others. I pray that if there's anybody here who does not yet know Christ, I pray that the light of your word, Lord, would prompt them to take notice and to pursue. And Father, I pray and ask that you would help us to be faithful, to shine this light as believers, to share the gospel, the good news, the lighthouse in a dark world, that others may come to faith in Christ. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.