October 18, 2009
Morning Worship
Text: 2 Peter 1:19-21
Subject: The Word of God
Title: You Can Trust This Book?
One of the world’s favorite words concerning the church is “Hypocrite”. And I suppose that there has been occasion over the past twenty years and beyond that those outside the church world could validate their fascination for the word. We know the past history of the Catholic Church and priests who have been child molesters and how the church tried to sweep the allegations and facts under a rug by sending these priests to a different parish. We know about Jim Bakker and his problems – sexual immorality and fraud. We even understand that the problem even reaches into our own Assemblies of God with then A/G pastor and evangelist Jimmy Swaggart who was accused of immorality with a prostitute. One of the latest scandals, of course, involved the head of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard, who confessed to having and affair with a male prostitute. As the world looks on at these fallen ministers, they now feel they have reason to point a finger and cry out, “Hypocrite!”
The problem is that the world looks at this problem of fallen ministers of the gospel and they relate it to the gospel itself. If this is what they say they believe, but act like this, then how can their bible be true?” The world is more likely to believe their own philosophy of life rather than the word of Life.
So how do we address the problem? How can we help the world understand that this bible that we hold so dear contains everything that we need for this life and for eternity? The first thing we need to do is to help them understand that the bible is perfect even if ministers of the bible are not. Hebrews 12:2 says that if we want to look at someone as a model, 2Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…
I want to help you to see today that this bible that we hold in our hands today is God’s perfect written expression of His very nature.
You can trust His word.
2 Peter 1:19-21
Lord, open my eyes to see and my ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.
I. THE PROOF OF PROPHECY. 19And we have the word of the prophets made more certain… The prophets that are referred to here are the OT prophets of Israel and Judah. The first mention of prophecy in the bible comes from Genesis 3:15. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” The Law of First Mention in the Bible says that the value and meaning of what was said for the first time in the bible carries the same meaning every subsequent time that it is mentioned. In this case the enmity between the offspring of the woman and the serpent would culminate in Christ’s crushing the head of the serpent satan. Now I want you to look at this, not specifically from the point of what was said, but rather who said it. This is a prophecy that would be fulfilled and it was given by God. So with that truth in mind we can be certain that any prophecy from scripture that has been fulfilled comes from Whom? – from God! When Peter wrote, 19And we have the word of the prophets made more certain… what was he saying? What ever the prophets said about the coming of the Messiah has been proven. It is fulfilled. It was prophesied so long ago that the only person who could have known those future events must be the eternal God who sees all things from the beginning of time till the end. Many in the world cannot understand this line of reasoning. Let’s go a little deeper into this line of thought. First of all, there is no other religion that has the proof of fulfilled prophecy as a proof of its inspired nature – nothing in the writings of Buddha, nothing in the Koran, or nothing in the Hindu scriptures. In the case of the Koran there was one prophecy that was fulfilled. Mohammed said that he would return to Mecca. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. General Douglas MacArthur said the same thing about his return to the Phillipines during WW II. It wasn’t God inspired. It was self-fulfilled. Now, take into consideration that Deuteronomy 18:22 says, 22If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him. Outside of those self-fulfilled prophesies I talked about, there are no prophecies that have been fulfilled on a continual basis outside of the Holy Scriptures. Yes, there have been “prophets” over the years, Nostradamus, Jeanne Dixon, Edgar Cayce, but the truth is that their prophecies are more like guesses. Their accuracy is less than six percent. Now, take into consideration that in the OT there are at least three hundred prophecies concerning the coming of the Messiah. About one hundred were accurately fulfilled with the birth of Christ. You may not realize it but the odds of all those prophecies being fulfilled in one person are astronomical. For instance, if I had the ability to predict the future, and I went to an expectant mother and told her eight things about her unborn child – the sex, date of birth, name, weight at birth, college, occupation, manner of death, and age at death, the chances of all those things coming true is 1 in 10 to the 17th power, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. If you look at the 100 prophecies that were fulfilled in the first coming the odds go up to 1 in 10 x 64th power. Or 1 in 100,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000. That doesn’t even take into consideration the hundreds of other prophecies that have been fulfilled in the bible.
II. THE PURPOSE OF PROPHECY. Prophecy has one very important function. It is to prepare us for things to come. …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. We don’t have to look very hard today to see bible prophecy being fulfilled in our world. I shared with you a few weeks ago about the events from Matthew 24 that Jesus called the beginning of birth pains. Prophecy illuminates the darkness of the world - as to a light shining in a dark place… Prophecy always points to a fulfillment - until the day dawns. Prophecy always points to a purpose - the morning star rises in your hearts. The purpose of prophecy is to help you see that there is a coming fulfillment to everything that God had said would happen, and that you need to be prepared for it. Going back to what I talked about in the Law of first mention. Prophecy comes from God. It is the word of God. Jesus said in Matthew 24:35, Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. So the words that He spoke about eternal life to Nicodemus in John 3 are still true today. 3In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again… 16“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” Prophecy leads us to Christ.
III. THE PLACE OF PROPHECY. 20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. I want you to see something here. Peter equates prophecy with all scripture. Why does he do that? It is because all scripture comes from God and not just fulfilled prophecy. 2 Timothy 3:16, 16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Do you understand this? First of all, the scriptures did not come about because someone had an agenda. No body is pushing what they think God ought to be like, what Jesus should be or how we, the church, should respond to all these things. It is simply stating a fact. Scripture never came from man. It has always come from God. It is according to the NKJV, given by inspiration of God – or is God breathed. So then what is the place of prophecy? It is to have a place of preeminence in the church. Too many in the “church world” today have relegated the word of God to a second rate position with church tradition taking precedence over it. They say that the bible contains the word of God but that it is not the word of God in its entirety. I remember preaching a sermon on the word of God when we first came here. In my bible I had hidden a small notebook and as I began to talk about certain biblical principals I would either agree with it or disagree with it. For instance – I said, “the bible says that we are saved by grace… I believe that. Now the bible says that we are to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. I don’t believe that” And whenever I came to a part that I said I didn’t agree with I would tear out a page of my notebook like I was tearing a page out of my bible and I would throw it away. Do any of you remember that sermon? The best part of the sermon was looking at the congregation from my side. The looks on your faces told me that you held the bible in high esteem and my tearing out pages was a horrible thing to do. So as a church, if we don’t believe the whole bible then can we believe any of it? If we don’t believe it all then who gets the privilege of deciding what is true and what isn’t? If we cannot trust the entire word of God then we have become the church that Paul warned Timothy about in 2 Timothy 4:3-4, 3For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
IV. THE PRESENCE OF PROPHECY. 21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. I want you to turn over to 1 Kings 22. Here we have the story of the godly king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, who became an ally of Ahab, probably the most wicked king the ever reigned in Israel. They were going to go to battle together but they wanted to here from the prophets if it would be a successful campaign. Here’s the problem. Ahab’s prophets were not prophets of God. 6So the king of Israel brought together the prophets—about four hundred men—and asked them, “Shall I go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain?”
“Go,” they answered, “for the Lord will give it into the king’s hand.” Jump down to verse 7, 7But Jehoshaphat asked, “Is there not a prophet of the LORD here whom we can inquire of?”
8The king of Israel answered Jehoshaphat, “There is still one man through whom we can inquire of the LORD, but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but always bad. He is Micaiah son of Imlah.”
Remember 2 Timothy 4:4, 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
15When he arrived, the king asked him, “Micaiah, shall we go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain?”
“Attack and be victorious,” he answered, “for the LORD will give it into the king’s hand.”
16The king said to him, “How many times must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the LORD?”
Now it is interesting to see that Ahab could tell a lie when it was coming from the man of God, but couldn’t see it when it was coming from a false prophet. That is because Michaiah’s life lined up with the message he preached.
19 Micaiah continued, “Therefore hear the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne with all the host of heaven standing around him on his right and on his left. 20And the LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?’
“One suggested this, and another that. 21Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the LORD and said, ‘I will entice him.’
22“‘By what means?’ the LORD asked.
“‘I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,’ he said.
“‘You will succeed in enticing him,’ said the LORD. ‘Go and do it.’
23“So now the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The LORD has decreed disaster for you.”
21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Closing:
Micaiah didn’t birth the prophetic word that came from his mouth. It was not his will that Israel be destroyed. His life validated the message he preached. But what about the Jimmy Swaggarts, the Ted Haggards and the Jim Bakkers of the world. Do their failures make the word of God invalid? Do their lifestyle choices mean that the bible isn’t true? On the contrary. Their choices only prove that mankind is flawed – even those who are saved make mistakes. The word of God validates itself. The prophecies of old have proven that it is true. Let’s read verse 21 from the NKJV. 21for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. This describes the prophets as “holy”. But their holiness did not make the word of God true. It is the source that makes it true – it comes from God by the Holy Spirit.
So my message today is to all who have looked at fallen men of God, or people you know who preach the word of God but live like the devil, or church groups or denominations that appear to act differently than you think God would want, and it makes you wonder if any of it is real. What is the answer? How do we deal with those situations?
Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth
Will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.
19And 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. 20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. 21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
