Why You Can Trust the Bible
2 Peter 1:16-21
Rev. Brian Bill
May 2-3, 2015
Revelation Song
Announce National Day of Prayer this Thursday and then pray for Nepal, Baltimore, and the Supreme Court.
Communion Meditation
On Tuesday and Wednesday I was up in Madison to speak to some young men who are involved in a ministry called Cru. Being in Madison is good for me because it’s where I got saved 36 years ago. It helps me think about what my life was like before I met Christ. My mind floods with memories of how God used my college roommate to lead me to Jesus and all the things I learned through Cru (called Campus Crusade then) and other campus ministries. As Pastor Dan preached last weekend, these memories “stir me up” and help keep my faith fresh.
My college friend Jim arranged for me to share my top ten insights for “Making an Impact.” I came up with 12. Interestingly, Jim put his own list together and he came up with 12 as well. I won’t take the time to go over all of them but I did post them on the sermon extras tab on our website. Here’s the very first thing I wrote down: Preach the gospel to yourself every day – don’t ever forget God’s grace. And on Jim’s discipleship dozen, he made a similar statement: Remember your plight before you found Christ…repent frequently and thank God for Christ’s perfect sacrifice.
I found it fascinating that we both came up with something so similar: “Don’t ever forget God’s grace…Remember your plight before you found Christ.”
That’s exactly what the ordinance of communion is designed to do. When I go to Madison I recount God’s grace in my life and replay the gospel. When we participate in communion we remember the cross, where Christ made the perfect sacrifice. And, we repent frequently as we replay the gospel.
Jesus knew that our faith would become fickle and we’d be forgetful so he gave us something tangible that we can see, touch and taste. Communion is designed to jog our memory, to stir us up again spiritually and even to correct us.
We see this in 1 Corinthians 11.
1. Look up. 27 Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
2. Look within. 28 - But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
3. Look around. 33 Therefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.
And so, we evaluate our relationship with God, we do an inventory of our own lives and finally we’re called to consider whether we have any relational ruptures. Up, in and around.
→ Take some time right now to do that.
After giving some correctives we’re then given some directives in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26:
“For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 25 In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.
• You will be given two cups stacked together.
• Twist the top one to take them apart.
• Hold a cup in each hand and meditate while others are being served.
• We’ll then take the elements together – “co” – mmunion, to demonstrate our unity
→ OFFERING
→ The Bible: Man on the Street
→ MESSAGE
Those interviews were quite eye opening, weren’t they? Here are some of the Bible beliefs I heard…
• I have my own spiritual thing.
• I see it as my own conceptualized feeling.
• I find my spiritual source within myself and from the people around me.
• It’s better to take your religious or spiritual stuff from everyday experiences and put it in more modern terms.
I experienced some of that a week and a half ago when I attended an interfaith dialogue in Rock Island featuring a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim imam. I was surprised when I walked in the room to see that there were well over a hundred people in attendance. The title for the dialogue was this: “Intersections, Bridges and Divided Highways: Meeting Each Other on the Path to God.”
While dialogue is desirable I cringed when I heard statements like this: “We have more that unites than divides us…we’re all journeying toward our Creator. Let’s deepen our appreciation and understand our differences as we discover the truths we share…We are all children of the father who calls us to live in unity and peace…My God is their God and their God is my God… God wants us all to be one. We all have one responsibility and this is to return to the Father. …Try your best to be a better person and in the end its the decision of God to decide on eternity for each of us…Everyone has the ‘spark of the divine’ within them. We need to help connect these sparks in others.”
During the Q&A time a question was read but never answered: “How would you describe God?” I wish they had tackled it because that is the question. As I reflected, it hit me that the question of truth never came up either. The Bible was not consulted. Are these three religions simply different paths to God or is there one that is true? How do we know? Is our faith just built on a conceptualized feeling? It ultimately comes down to our truth source, the Bible.
We’re going to see today that our faith is not built on feelings or fables but on facts. Our text is found in 2 Peter 1:16-21: “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”
And so here’s a question: How can we trust that the Bible is true? This passage gives us three compelling pieces of evidence.
1. Power of witnesses. Peter makes it clear that he was present when Jesus ministered on earth. Check out verse 16: “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty.” Peter and the others did not fabricate fables or skillfully weave stories together in order to deceive people. Being a fisherman, he was no doubt capable of spinning a fish story! Instead, Peter spoke of the power and presence of Jesus Christ. Jesus came and He’s coming again with power, a fact that false teachers deny as we’ll see in chapter 3.
These early followers of Christ were actually “eyewitnesses,” which means they “inspected and observed” Jesus. This word was used to refer to someone with first-hand knowledge of an event. 1 John 1:1-3 puts it like this: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us— that which we have seen and heard we declare to you.”
The defining event for Peter was the Transfiguration of Jesus on the Mountain as stated in verses 17-18: “For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.”
This eyewitness encounter showcased the power, majesty, honor and glory of Jesus Christ. Jesus is revealed as God himself with His glory on full display above the mountain, much like the Shekinah above the mercy seat. His clothes turned exceedingly white, like snow and when Moses and Elijah appeared, there was no doubt in their minds that Jesus was fully divine. And notice that this was not just Peter’s perspective because he uses the pronoun “we” emphatically, referring to his buddies James and John who were also there.
2. Prophecy of the Word. Eyewitnesses are strong but we have something even more certain as seen in verse 19: “And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” We can trust the Bible because of eyewitness experience and because of the authority of the Old Testament prophets. The word “confirmed” means, “certain or fixed.” One translation captures it well: “The prophetic Word is made more sure.” The Word of God is more authoritative than experiences or the so-called expertise of anyone.
Have you noticed the Word of God is under attack today? One presidential candidate recently said, “Deep seated…religious beliefs…have to be changed” regarding “reproductive health care,” which is a euphemism for abortion. And on the topic of marriage a columnist for the New York Times said last month that the Bible itself should be rewritten. Amos 8:11 describes exactly what we see today: “‘Behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘That I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.’”
There has never been a famine of hearing the Word of God at Edgewood and there never will be as we feast on the riches of the sure and certain Word. But, friends, let’s face it. If you stand on the certainty of Scripture you will be going against the tidal wave of moral relativism in our society. You will be mocked, ignored and perhaps even persecuted. That’s why I was delighted to see that over 5,000 pastors attended the most recent Shepherd’s Conference led by John MacArthur entitled, “Inerrancy and the Prophetic Word.” BTW, there are some new books in our church library on how develop a Christian worldview.
What Ray Pritchard says is certainly true: “What we believe about the Bible is fundamental and foundational to everything else we are trying to do as a church.” That’s why the number one doctrine listed on Edgewood’s belief statement is the Bible: “We believe the Bible from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21 as the verbally inspired and infallible Word of God.” Verbal means “word-for-word.” Another term that is often used to describe the doctrine of inspiration is plenary, which means “to every part.” Every word and every part of the Bible is the Word of God, whether we like it or not, or whether it’s popular or not.
Psalm 19:7: “The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.” Incidentally, one way we know that the Bible is certain is because over 300 Old Testament prophecies have been fulfilled with pinpoint precision!
We’re called to “heed” the Word, which means, “to bend our ear to hear it.” One reason people battle against the Bible is because it’s like “a light that shines in a dark place.” The problem is that people often don’t want the light turned on because it hurts their eyes and exposes deeds done in darkness. That’s exactly what Jesus said in John 3:19-20: “That the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.”
As I weep and wonder about what’s happening in our world today, this passage contains at least four very practical truths that speak right into our news headlines.
• As our world continues to slip into darkness, we can stand on the Scriptures. No matter what our culture or the courts declare, God created marriage to be a covenant commitment between one man and one woman for life. We stand on this truth and we can be certain about it because that’s what the Bible teaches.
• As our world gets darker, the Word shines brighter. Peace has been restored in Baltimore in large part because of Bible-believing Christians who are serving as peacemakers. And it’s Christ-followers who are bringing light and life to the darkness and despair felt by the people of Nepal. Samaritans Purse and World Relief are taking the lead in these efforts. If you’d like to help out financially, there’s more information in the bulletin.
• In the midst of hopelessness, we must be a people of hope. I love the last part of verse 19 because it’s filled with hope: “…Until the day dawns and morning star rises in our hearts.” To “dawn” literally means to “shine through,” like the first gleams of sunlight piercing the darkness. Listen to what John 1:5 says: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” Isaiah 60:1 calls us to stand with confidence: “Arise, shine; for your light has come!” The “Morning Star” is a reference to the planet Venus that is so bright that out in the desert it looks like the sun. In Revelation 22:16, Jesus calls himself the “Bright and Morning Star.”
• The Bible satisfies our head and our heart. When Peter says that the morning star rises in our hearts, we can have the same outward certainty about the Scriptures on the inside. Scripture is verifiable objective truth and its also confirmed subjective truth in our hearts. We could say it this way: We can be certain that the Bible is true and we can sense that’s its true. We can know it in our heads and feel it in our hearts. 2 Corinthians 4:6: “For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
We can be certain because of the power of witnesses and the prophecy of the Word. The third piece of evidence is overwhelming.
3. Proof of writings. The word “Scripture” means, writings. We see this in verses 20-21: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” When it comes to the Bible Peter takes us to what is most important. That’s what “first” means here – “first of all, before all.”
• Scripture is not made up by men. No section of Scripture came about based on the prophet’s own ideas or thoughts. The word translated, “interpretation” means “release” or “unloosing” and refers to the origin of Scripture. They’re not just letting their thoughts and ideas come out like false prophets do according to Ezekiel 13:3: “Woe to the foolish prophets, who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing!” Revelation of God “never came by the will of men.” The word “never” means, “absolutely none.”
• Scripture came about as men were moved by the Holy Spirit. The word “moved” was used of ships being driven or borne along by the wind. It’s the idea of being carried along or driven. The writers of Scripture simply raised their sails and the Spirit moved them to write what He wanted written. God himself spoke authoritatively through human instruments as His Spirit carried them along.
Did men write the Bible? Yes. But there’s a lot more to it than that. What these men wrote came about because they were moved by the Holy Spirit to write what God wanted written. The human authors were instruments, not originators. The Holy Spirit is the divine author of all Scripture. One pastor puts it like this: “As the writers of Scripture put their words on paper, God so controlled them and the Holy Spirit superintended the process so that what was ultimately written was exactly what God wanted written. No more and no less.”
Action Steps
Ultimately the Bible must move from importance to experience to our very existence. Here then are some steps we must take.
1. Need the Word. Do you need the word? Do you long to know what God says? Donald Whitney writes, “Some of the most important changes in my life occurred when I asked, ‘What does the Bible say about this?’”
2. Read the Word. Jesus assumes that believers will know the Bible and be reading it regularly. Matthew 21:16: “Have you never read, ‘From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise’?” If you’ve slipped on your “Take 15 in 2015 reading,” start again now. We have Bible reading plans available in the back.
3. Feed from the Word. Be like the Psalmist who prayed in Psalm 119:18: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.” Let’s not be content to just skim on the surface of Scripture but instead to dive deep. If you’re not in an ABF or a LifeGroup or a Bible Study, plug in ASAP.
4. Heed the Word. It’s not enough to just believe in the inspiration of the Bible, we must also live under its authority. We believe the Bible and then we obey it. Go back to 2 Peter 1:19: “You will do well to heed…” Get in the practice of saying to God, “I will do what your Word says, no matter what it says, no matter how hard it is.” If you’re looking to find your purpose in life, obey the Bible. You will find the will of God in the Word of God.
5. Seed the Word. Finally, we’re to seed the Word by sharing it with others. Let’s redouble our efforts to go with the gospel to people. Use Sunday nights this summer to seed the Word in your neighborhood by building bridges through get-togethers, block parties and other activities.
It’s tempting to think that the Quad Cities is saturated with churches that are getting the gospel out. Not so much. In a just released Barna study, our community is #27 on the list of America’s top churchless cities. There’s only one other Midwestern city that ranked higher on this list – Flint, Michigan. That means that God has placed us in the second most churchless metro area in the Midwest so that we will live on mission for Him as we seed the Word of God in our community with love, passion and urgency!
The year was1949 and a young man started to doubt the truth of the Bible. He wrestled with questions he could not entirely answer. One of his close friends went to a liberal seminary where his faith in the Bible faltered. He came back and told his buddy, “You need to give up this fundamentalist view of the Bible. This is the twentieth century…If you keep preaching the Bible this way, your ministry is going to come to nothing.”
This further cast doubt on the young man’s faith. A few days later he went on a retreat where he wrestled with two main questions: “Is the Bible the word of God or is it not? Can I believe it or not?”
Finally he knew he had to make a decision. He skipped the evening meeting to spend time praying. Listen to how he described what happened: “I dueled with my doubts, and my soul seemed to be caught in the crossfire. Finally, in desperation, I surrendered my will to the living God revealed in Scripture. I knelt before the open Bible, and said, ‘Lord, many things in this Book I do not understand. But Thou hast said, ‘The just shall live by faith.’ All I have received from Thee, I have taken by faith. Here and now, by faith, I accept the Bible as Thy Word. That which I cannot understand I will reserve judgment on until I receive more light. If this pleases Thee, give me authority as I proclaim Thy Word, and through that authority convict men of sin and turn sinners to the Savior.”
That was the turning point for Billy Graham. Six weeks later the great crusade began in Los Angeles, which would change the course of American history as thousands came to faith in Christ. He has gone on to preach the gospel to over 215 million people in crusades in more than 185 countries and territories. Hundreds of millions more have been reached through television, video, film and webcasts.
By his own admission, everything that has happened in Billy Graham’s life goes back to that night when he put the Bible down and knelt before God. He later wrote these words: “During that crusade I discovered the secret that changed my ministry. I stopped trying to prove that the Bible was true. I had settled in my own mind that it was, and this faith was conveyed to the audience. Over and over again I found myself saying, ‘The Bible says.’ I felt as though I were merely a voice through which the Holy Spirit was speaking…I found that the Bible became a flame in my hands. That flame melted away unbelief in the hearts of people and moved them to decide for Christ. The Word became like a hammer breaking up stony hearts and shaping them into the likeness of God…I began to rely more and more upon Scripture itself, and God blessed.” (From “Give Me That Book” by Robert Coleman in The Alliance Witness, January 7, 1987)
All of us stand in that same spot right now. We can trust the Word of God even though we don’t understand every part of it. Or we can follow the way of liberal unbelief and apostasy and ultimately drift away from God. There’s really no middle ground. Either you believe the Bible is the Word of God or you don’t.
I want you to stand and hold your Bible in your hand. Let me remind you what Edgewood believes about the Bible: “We believe the Bible from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21 as the verbally inspired and infallible Word of God.”
I’m going to ask you three questions and if you can affirm these statements, shout it out by saying, “I DO.”
1. Do you believe the Bible is the verbally inspired and infallible Word of God?
2. Do you trust the power of witnesses, the prophecy of the Word and the proof of the writings?
3. Do you commit to need, read, feed, heed and seed the Word of God?
Invitation – Lord, I Need You
2 Timothy 3:15 says that the “Holy Scriptures are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” The Bible doesn’t save you; it’s the gospel of Jesus Christ. Believe and receive Him right now.
