For free audio or video download of this message, visit https://www.treasuringgod.com/sermons-by-scripture or my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DarrellFerguson.
Introduction: Two Worlds
Well, it’s 2026. The future has finally arrived—a whole new world! Actually, two worlds. We live in one, secular people live in the other. And only one of the two worlds is real. It’s like that movie The Truman Show where the main character lived his whole life on a movie set, but he thought it was the real world.
Now, if you ask an atheist, he might say the real world is one where there is no God, and the fake, imaginary, movie set world is one where there is a God. They think the difference between our worldview and theirs is all about God’s existence. But that’s not really the issue.
Atheism, Agnosticism, and Anti-theism
Have you ever noticed how well atheists and agnostics and anti-theists all get along with each other? You’d think the people who say there is no God and the agnostics who say maybe there is a God would be natural enemies because they’re making opposite claims. But they’re not enemies. They’re allies. When I get online and express my worldview, they all join forces and argue against me, and their arguments all sound the same. You can’t tell which ones are anti-theists and which ones are agnostics—they’re like peas in a pod.
Why is that? Why are they all on the same side despite the fact that they have opposite beliefs about God’s existence? It’s because despite the labels they use for themselves, it’s not the existence of God that bothers them. What they all hate is the existence of a God who communicates. It’s not about whether there’s such a thing as God; it’s about whether there’s such a thing as God’s Word. They’re fine with a god, as long as he’s silent.
The reason all those people are living in the same world is that the implications for life if there is no God are identical to the implications for life if there is a silent God. The way you live your life is no different.
But a world in which God has spoken is a totally different world. That changes everything
Above All
And the reason I bring all that up is to explain the first two words of 2 Peter 1:20. We’re going verse by verse through 2 Peter and we’ve arrived at the final paragraph of ch.1 which begins with these two words:
2 Peter 1:20 Above all[1] …
He says, “Above all …” and then goes on to talk about the fact that God has spoken. How he spoke, where he spoke, what is his Word, what isn’t his Word, what to do with his Word. The questions surrounding God’s communication to mankind stands above all.
Our World vs. Theirs
And if you doubt that, just compare the two worlds—the one where God has spoken versus a world where God is silent.
In a world where no one above man has spoken, the final word on everything is what people say. Think of how empty that is. The only purpose of your life is what you dream up. So if you get depressed one day and feel like your life has no purpose, then it really has no purpose. If you feel worthless, then you are worthless. There is no reality higher than your judgment. Objectively, outside of your own feelings, human life has no more meaning than a glob of slime at the bottom of a garbage dumpster.
But in a world where God has spoken, meaning comes from what God says. If God delights in you, you have value regardless of how you feel. If God says the greatest command is to love, then that means you can accomplish the most meaningful and important action possible—you can give your life immense meaning simply by loving God and loving others.
In their world, love is nothing. When you tell your spouse, “I love you,” all you’re saying is “Sweetheart, my brain is having some hormone surges and I’m responding with some evolved behavioral patterns that are likely to help my offspring survive. Don’t you feel special?”
In their world, the wonder and beauty and magnificence of the creation points nowhere. In our world, we look up at the night sky and hear the heavens declaring the glory of God and the skies proclaiming the work of his hands. They look up and see nothing special at all—just a giant mess. Richard Dawkins wrote, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”[2] They can’t see anything in this creation other than the wreckage of a big explosion. There is no glory in their world—nothing transcendent. All those feelings of awe and wonder and inspiration, they say, “Oh yeah that’s nothing. Just chemicals in your brain.
But in our world, all that beauty and wonder clearly points to a source that is supremely magnificent. When you’re deeply moved by a great piece of music, or a stunning sunrise or a majestic waterfall—that’s all pointing to a source of beauty in the world that is the supreme beauty and goodness which means, in our world, there is no end to how good things are going to get.
In a world where God has spoken, we have a clear, objective standard for right and wrong, moral and immoral. But in their world, right and wrong are nothing but popular opinion. So if you live in Nazi Germany, murdering innocent Jews is good, not evil. Enslaving Africans and treating them worse than animals in 1800 America was morally good. Morality is nothing more than popular opinion, and you just have to hope popular opinion never turns against you.
And when Dawkins says there’s no evil and no good, that’s the definition of the word “psychopath”—a person without an understanding of right and wrong. Thankfully, most atheists borrow morality from our world, otherwise the entire culture would be almost all psychopaths. The atheist Nitsche predicted that. He said, “God is dead,” and then said, “And now that he’s dead, brace yourself because there’s going to be a whole lot of chaos and violence now.” And he was right. Atheists like Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao who were consistent with their beliefs, murdered 100 million people in the 20th Century. That’s their world.
In their world, there is no one who can see more than human eyes that you can appeal to for guidance or protection. There is no one to talk to who knows your heart. No companionship when people aren’t present.
Why is it that every movie you ever go to, every novel, every story, the plot is some version of not just good vs. evil, but good triumphing over evil? Why has mankind been captivated by that storyline throughout human history? When someone tries to get artsy and makes a story where evil wins at the end, people hate those movies. Why? It makes sense in our world because every story of good struggling against evil and coming out on top at the end is a little sample of the story of redemptive history and the ultimate good ending where everything is headed.
But in their world, there is no good ending. Life is the ultimate dead end. In their story, everybody dies and evil wins.
I could go on and on, but let me just give you one more. This one is probably the biggest difference between the two worlds, and it’s the part of our world that they hate the most. This one is probably the main reason they came up with their whole alternate world: Judgment Day. They really, really don’t want there to ever be a Judgment Day. They imagine a world with no ultimate accountability or justice, no promise of wrongs being set right. And no need for justice because there’s no objective guilt. We’re just all animals operating on instinct, “dancing to our DNA,” doing what our genetic programming compels us to do.
But in our world, everything will be set right, nobody gets away with anything, all good will be rewarded, and perfect justice will prevail in the best possible ending.
Do you see why Peter says, “above all”? The question of whether God has spoken or not is at the core of every worldview. We use the phrase “God’s Word” so often that we can forget the massive, universe-shaking implications of that phrase. God’s act of communicating to mankind is so fundamental to all of reality that the gospel of John starts this way:
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word
Is that talking about the Bible? No, it’s talking about God himself.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
God’s activity of communicating truth about himself is so essential to his nature that many times Scripture almost uses God’s Word interchangeably with God himself.[3] The self-revealing aspect of God’s nature is the starting place for all understanding of reality.
Where Did God Speak?
Now, there’s no question which of those two worlds is better. But if there is a world where God has spoken, the most essential question then is, “Where did he speak?” Where can I go to find his words? There are lots of religions, lots of prophets, lots of people claiming to speak for God—how do I know where the actual words of God are? Peter’s answer to that is two-fold.
Apostles & Prophets
God spoke to mankind in two stages. The first stage is what Peter calls, “the prophets” (which was a common Jewish way of referring to what we call the Old Testament. That was stage one of God’s self-revelation to mankind. It’s a library of 39 books written by about 30 different authors.
Stage two is what Peter calls, “the Apostles.”[4] That’s another library of 27 books written by the Apostles of Jesus and their associates.
Scripture Sandwich
And if you want to understand the structure of this passage, Peter is serving up a Scripture sandwich. The top piece of bread is God’s Word through the Apostles (vv.17-18), and the bottom piece is God’s Word through the prophets (vv.20-21). The meat in the middle is v.19, but I’ll save that for the end. For now let’s look at the pieces of bread.
We looked at the top piece last time (the Apostles). The most important thing you need to know about them—they heard the voice of God.
2 Peter 1:17 the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven
The bottom piece of bread is the OT prophets. And the main point Peter wants you to get about the prophets is the same as his point about the Apostles—that’s it’s God’s Word.
2 Peter 1:21 men spoke from God
The Old Testament is the voice of God. The clearest summary of this whole section is three words: God has spoken. First through the Old Testament, then the New.
Prophecy Isn’t from Man
But how did that work, exactly? If it was human beings who wrote it, how can it be the Word of God? Some Christians have suggested this idea: They say, “All of God’s Word is in the Scriptures, but not everything in the Scriptures is God’s Word.” God’s Word is in there, but some human ideas also worked their way in there so it’s a mix.
If there’s one idea Peter wants to demolish, it’s that one.
2 Peter 1:20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy ever had its origin in the will of man
That’s absolute language: “no prophecy ever.” At no instance in the formation of Scripture did man’s will ever prevail over what God wanted to communicate. In fact, if the prophet managed to work some of his own ideas into the prophecy, that’s the OT’s definition of false prophecy.
Jeremiah 23:16 Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD.
Ezekiel 13:3 Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit
Peter mentions those guys in the very next paragraph.
2 Peter 2:1 But there were also false prophets among the people
There have been plenty of prophets who spoke their own ideas, but Peter is assuring us that none of that ever made it into Scripture. And Peter isn’t just giving his opinion—this comes on Jesus’ authority.
John 10:35 the Scripture cannot be broken
When Jesus said that, he was affirming that the Jewish Scriptures are the Word of God. That’s why it can’t be broken.
If you want me to prove anything in the entire OT—whether it be Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood, Jonah and the fish, Tower of Babel, Daniel in the lion’s den—I can prove every one of those, and my proof is exactly the same for each one. Jesus believed it was God’s Word. And Jesus is a man who is able to raise himself from the dead, so it’s irrational to disagree with him.
So every bit of it is God’s Word, none of it originated with the prophets themselves. In fact, not only were they unable to interpret their own visions—they didn’t even want to.
21 For no prophecy ever had its origin in the will of man
If God asked one of the prophets, “Hey, would you like to prophesy?” they would say, “No thanks.” For some of them, it was a hard no. Jonah tried to run away when God called him to prophesy. God had to send a whale to bring him back. It was rough on Ezekiel too.
Ezekiel 3:14 The Spirit then lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit, with the strong hand of the Lord upon me.
Moses got into an extended argument with God: “No, God, I can’t speak, the people won’t listen, send someone else.”
Jeremiah 1:4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying, 5 “before you were born I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” 6 “Ah, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.”
None of it originated in the prophet’s will.
How Did God Speak?
So where did God speak? In the Bible—through the prophets in the OT and through the Apostles in the NT. Next question: How did God speak?
Driven by the Spirit
How can you have human beings writing, but the content is from God? How did the process work? Peter answers that in v.21.
21 but men spoke from God as they were driven[5] by the Holy Spirit.
That word “driven” is normally translated “carried.” But it’s also used of sailboats being driven by wind, and I think that works a little better here. This is the only mention of the Holy Spirit in 2 Peter. And what did he do? He drove the prophets to write Scripture.
Peter used that same word in the previous verse to describe what didn’t happen.
Verse 20: “No prophecy was driven by the prophet’s will.”
Verse 21: “but men were driven by the Holy Spirit.”[6]
The prophets didn’t drive the process; they were the ones being driven by God.
More Certain
So, the NT is God’s Word, the OT is God’s Word, and now Peter wants us to understand the relationship between the two. Peter doesn’t just bring up the OT prophets out of the blue—he wants us to see the relationship between the testaments. In v.18 Peter says the Apostles heard God’s voice (that’s the NT), and the beginning of v.19 should be translated this way:
2 Peter 1:19 And as a result[7] we[8] have the word of the prophets made more certain
It’s inferential. As a result of the Apostles hearing God speak from heaven about Jesus, we now have the word of the prophets made more certain than it already was.[9] The New Testament makes the Old Testament more certain.
You say, “Wasn’t the Old Testament already as certain as it could be?” It was already as true as it could be, but the more confirming evidence you get, the more certain it is in your heart. And what God says in the NT (especially at the Transfiguration) confirms what the OT revealed. The fact that the Apostles saw Jesus’ Second Coming glory and heard God speak from heaven supercharges our ability to trust the Old Testament prophecies.
For example, Psalm 2 where God calls the Messiah his Son. That psalm is very clear, not difficult at all to interpret. Everyone already had a good understanding of what it meant. But then, when God spoke audibly from heaven and saying, “Jesus is the guy in Psalm 2,” that makes it ultra-clear.
So we have the word of the Prophets made more certain. The New Testament increases our confidence in the Old Testament because it sheds additional light on it. In the words of Augustine, “The new is in the old concealed; the old is in the new revealed.” Taken together, we have rock-solid certainty.
What to Do with God’s Word Review: Peter’s Purpose Is to Keep You from Falling
So, we’ve established that there is such a thing as God’s Word. Where is God’s Word found? The Bible. How did God communicate it? Through inspiration—driving the Apostles and prophets to write exactly what he wanted written. Now, the most important point of all: what are we to do with God’s Word? This is the centerpiece of this passage, the meat of Peter’s Scripture sandwich at the end of v.19.
Now remember Peter’s overall objective in writing this book. It’s to keep you from falling away. So he’ll spend the next two chapters warning you about the false teachers. But before he gets to that, he does something that’s more important than any warning. He anchors our faith in God’s Word. That’s the purpose of this closing paragraph of ch.1.
The false teachers will work their hardest at undermining your faith in the Second Coming. If they can get you to question whether Judgment Day is a real thing, plant the idea that it’s all mythology and not literal—if they can get you to take your eyes off the destination, then maybe you never reach that destination. So Peter prepares you for that onslaught by making sure you have absolute certainty that the world where God has spoken is the real world.
But to live in that real world, there’s something else that’s required. If you want to live in the marvelous real world and you want to make sure you will never fall away, it’s not enough just to be certain that God has spoken through the Apostles and prophets, and it’s not even enough to know what God said. To live in the real world we need to do what Peter says in v.19.
2 Peter 1:19 we have the word of the prophets more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it.
There’s the heart and soul of this passage. You will live in the real world and you’ll be safe from ever falling away if you pay attention to the Word of God.
Pay Attention
That word translated “pay attention” is a strong word. It means to take it to heart.[10] Look deeply into God’s Word, think hard about it, take it to heart, and put it into practice so that you never fall away. The writer of Hebrews uses that same word to make the same point.
Hebrews 2:1 We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.
It is your attachment to the Word of God that can anchor you in the real world and keep you from falling away. And it’s when you become decoupled from the Word that your faith becomes vulnerable.
Different Kinds of Attention
That much you already knew, and that’s the point where every sermon I listened to on this passage stopped. The big conclusion was, “Pay close attention to the Scriptures—read your Bible.” But we can’t stop there, Peter doesn’t stop there because that’s not enough. Paying close attention to the Bible is not enough.
You pay attention to a lot of things, which is good. For example, you pay close attention to stop lights. (You’d better, or you’ll die.) But you pay attention to them in a certain way. You pay attention to them specifically as the authority on stopping and going. If you pay close attention to a stop light, but you’re paying attention to their size or their shape or beauty or their texture—you’ll die. To stay alive in an intersection, you need not just pay attention to them, but the right kind of attention—attention as to the indicator of when to stop and when to go.
You pay attention to a comedian, but you pay a very different kind of attention to a physics professor. In order to get the benefit you need from something, you have to pay the right kind of attention to it.
A lot of people pay close attention to the Bible and still fall away. Bart Ehrman is a well-known NT scholar and he’s an atheist. He’s a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina. That’s a guy who is devoting his entire career to paying attention to the Bible, and he probably looks at it more closely than any of us ever will, studying nuances of verb tenses and all kinds of minutiae. But his world view and belief system aren’t shaped at all by the Bible. Close attention, but not the right kind of attention.
Many Christians pay attention to the Bible as a chore that needs to be done each day—read your chapter. Some pay attention to the Bible as to a collection of inspiring quotations, or the way they pay attention to books like Chicken Soup for the Soul.
But what’s the right kind of attention to pay to the Bible Peter? What kind of attention will put me in the real world and keep me from falling away?
As to a Light
19 you will do well to pay attention to it (what kind of attention?) as to a light shining in a dark place
That’s the only way of reading the Bible that will keep you safe.
You’re In a Dark Place
This word for “dark” means murky, gloomy, filthy, or dismal. You could translate it, “…like a light shining in a gross place.” If God gave you some special glasses that made you able to see the spiritual realm, as soon as you put them on you’d say, “Oh, yuck! Don’t touch anything.” It would turn your stomach.
And not only is it gross; it’s also dark in the sense that you can’t see to navigate. You can’t tell what’s true and what isn’t.
Recently our pastor had an illustration about darkness so he had them cut all the lights while he was preaching. I was surprised how dark it got in there—you couldn’t see anything. It was actually kind of disorienting. It really would have been bad to be in that kind of darkness if you were in a really filthy, disgusting place and had to move around. You’d be desperate for any kind of light.
As the pastor gave his illustration, you could still hear his voice coming through the sound system, but you couldn’t tell where he was. Then, all of a sudden a light blinked on way over on the side of the platform. He had walked over there in the dark and lit the advent candle. Every eye in that auditorium was fixed on the exact same spot. It was impossible not to look at it. And it was impossible not to think about it. In that kind of darkness, one single light captures all your attention. That’s a light in a dark place.
Peter is saying if you want to live in the real world and if you want to make sure you never fall away, it’s not enough to just pay close attention to God’s Word. You have to pay attention to it like that—like you would pay attention to that lamp in the pitch dark, dangerous, murky, disgusting morass where you can’t see your hand in front of your face.
Until the Day Dawns
19 pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place until the day dawns
Just until the day dawns? Are we going to stop paying attention to God’s Word after Jesus returns? No. Jesus said his words will never pass away. We’ll pay attention to them forever in the eternal kingdom. What will change at the Second Coming will be the way we pay attention to it. But not as to a light shining in a dark place because it won’t be a dark place anymore. Peter’s talking here about how to pay attention to the Word in this life, which is a time of darkness
Scripture refers to this present age as night time and the age to come as daytime.
Romans 13:12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.[11]
The Second Coming will be the first time this world has ever seen daytime. Spiritual darkness will be dispelled forever.
Your Heart Is Also Dark
And not just in the world, but also in your heart.
2 Peter 1:19 pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star[12] rises in your hearts.[13]
So why does he say the morning star rises in your hearts? Is the Second Coming is just a subjective experience that will happen in your heart and not in the outside world?” No. Peter is very clear in ch.3 that the Second Coming is an external, physical event that will affect the whole world—the heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will melt, etc. (2 Peter 3:10-12).
So the Second Coming will happen to the outside, physical world, but it will also happen in your heart. When Jesus comes back, a bright new day will spread over the entire creation. But something is going to happen inside you as well. The morning star[14] will rise in you.
What is the morning star? Let’s see if we can dig in and unravel that mystery.
Revelation 22:16 I, Jesus, am the Morning Star.
Well, thanks Jesus. Mystery solved.
So at the Second Coming, two things will happen—Jesus will appear in the sky where every eye will see him, and he will also rise in your heart.[15] It has to be that way because the darkness and murkiness are a problem in both places. We need the lantern of God’s Word for two reasons—because the world is dark and because our own hearts are dark. Even if the world were well-lit spiritually, I still wouldn’t be able to navigate because of my own internal darkness.
“Wait a minute, doesn’t the Bible say that the Holy Spirit enlightens the hearts of believers even now, in this life?” Yes.
2 Corinthians 4:6 For God made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
We have enlightenment, but only through Scripture. The Spirit enlightens you by enabling you to understand and accept what is written in His Word. Without the Bible, your heart would lead you completely astray. We have limited brain power, we have wrong attitudes and assumptions, we have all the effects of sin on our minds. We can’t perceive spiritual realities apart from the guidance of Scripture.
So Jesus will appear in the sky with thousands upon thousands of angels in glorious brilliance, and on that day he will also rise in my heart and bring a new dawn of enlightenment. When that happens, all our internal doubts will give way to rock-solid certainty. And you will have sharp, clear spiritual perception. You will be able to just look around and see the spiritual realm because the morning star will rise in your heart. There will be glory without and glory within.
Is bright the sun that you behold?
Then let imagination fly,
And multiply ten-thousand fold,
Then let the answer fill the sky.
The Lord Majestic will return
Ten-thousand brilliant suns ablaze,
And in my heart a star will burn
With endless worship in its rays.
[16]
That’s what’s coming, but until that day, our only hope is to pay attention to the Scriptures the way you would pay attention to a lantern in a filthy, dark place.
Application
Okay, so what does it look like in practical terms? You open up your Bible, turn to the portion you want to read that day—how do you pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place?
1) Stark Contrast
For one thing, light and dark are opposites, so what you see in the Word should be in stark contrast with what you see in the world. If you paid attention to it as to a light in a bright place, then you’d expect it to match. If something in the Bible didn’t line up with the world’s ideas, you say, “Oh, I must be misinterpreting the Bible. I’ll massage my interpretation of the Bible to make it match up with conventional wisdom.”
But Peter said, “No, it’s a light shining in a dark place,” which means your conclusions from Scripture should be very different from what the world is saying. So if your interpretation of the Bible does match up well with the world’s ideas, that’s when you should assume you’re probably making a mistake.
2) Central Focus
Secondly, a light in a dark place is impossible to miss. If someone would have lit that candle at church with all the stage lights on, no one would have even noticed it. But in the dark, it’s the only focus of attention. Paying attention to God’s Word like a light in a dark place means keeping your attention fixed on it. You don’t just read a chapter in the morning and then forget about it until the next morning.
Psalm 1:1 Blessed is the man 2 whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
3) The Only Light Source
So it’s a contrast with the dark world, it’s the central object of your focus, then a third application: paying attention to it as to a light in a dark place means it’s your only light source. Again, if there were other lights in this world, then it wouldn’t be a dark place.[17]
There are people who read their Bible as one of many lights. They get spiritual guidance from the Bible, but they also get a little from Chicken Soup for the Soul, or from their therapist, or from philosophy or psychology or science. Those people are not paying attention to God’s Word as to a light shining in a dark place. You can read all that other stuff, but every bit of it has to be checked against Scripture, because Scripture is the only spiritual light. You trust it as the final authority on everything, it gets the last word on everything, it’s the final court of arbitration for everything.
It’s a lamp to your feet and a light to your path,
it’s the only way to fight back the darkness of moral corruption inside you and out in the world,
It’s the tether that connects you to the God who has spoken, keeps you in the real world, and holds you so you never fall away.
Conclusion: The Forest
There are two things Christians and atheists can fully agree on. First, we’re living in two very different worlds. And second, one of those worlds is make believe.
One world has hope, purpose, objective morality, direction, meaning, ultimate justice, a glorious design, and a bright, reliable lantern to guide you through the morass and show you the truth. The other is just particles bumping into each other and nothing else. No lamp, no happy ending—evil and death win in the end. And the one factor that makes the difference between those vastly different worlds is expressed in two words: God spoke.
Let me give you one last point in closing. It’s important to know that these two worlds are adjacent. Picture a beautiful forest next to a desolate wasteland. Over here, a hot, dry, waterless desert. And here, a plush, green, beautiful, enchanted forest. And the farther you explore into the forest, the more health and life and vigor and joy you have. The farther you go into that desert, the more your life withers away.
Here’s the crazy part—even though you and I believe God has spoken, when we take our eyes off that lamp, we wander into that desert. When we go through those times where we let our Bible gather dust, or we read it, but not with the singular focus as to a light shining in a dark place, what are we doing? We’re turning our back on the real world, the life-giving forest, and stumbling out into their dead, hopeless, dark, make-believe desert-world. That’s an insanity that’s even worse than the atheist who’s never experienced the real world.
But the more we turn our attention to the light of God’s Word and welcome it into our hearts, the deeper into God’s glorious realm we go, and the fuller and richer life becomes. What a treasure God has given us in his Word!
Summary
A world where God has spoken is drastically different from one where he hasn’t. God has spoken, he did so through the prophets (OT) and Apostles (NT), and the new solidifies the old. So we must pay it the same kind of attention you would pay to a lamp shining in a dark, dismal place—as your only access to truth and guidance in the world. Do that until Jesus comes back and brings light to the world and to your own heart. The more you pay attention to it as to a light in a dark place, the deeper into God’s real, life-giving world you go.
[1] Peter uses this same phrase in 3:2. It means for the topic he’s addressing, this is the starting place for your thinking.
[2] From River Out of Eden (1995)
[3] For example, see Psalm 119, where the psalmist speaks of loving God’s Word with the same terms normally used for loving God.
[4] The prophets and the Apostles is Peter’s way of referring to the whole Bible—Prophets for the OT and Apostles for the NT. He does it here and again in ch.3.
2 Peter 3:2 I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.
The prophets spoke the Word of Yahweh, the Apostles spoke the Word of Christ—put them together and you have the whole of God’s Word. And that’s our foundation.
Ephesians 2:19 … you are … members of God’s household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.
[5] Being carried is in the present tense here, in contrast to the aorist tense in the negative statement. But “spoke” is also aorist. Prophecy was never carried (aorist) by human will but men being carried (present) spoke (aorist). It must be that the present is there to show linear action rather than anything to do with time.
[6] Peter used that same word two other times back in vv.17-18. It’s hard to translate into English, but basically the idea is that when God spoke from heaven at the Transfiguration, the words were driven from God the Father to Jesus.
Peter uses this same word (Gr. Phero) 4 times in this chapter to describe the delivery of God’s Word.
2 Peter 1:17 “he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice was driven to him from the Majestic Glory”
2 Peter 1:18 We ourselves heard this voice that was driven from heaven
2 Peter 1:20 No prophecy of Scripture was driven by the prophet’s own interpretation
2 Peter 1:21 But men spoke from God as they were driven by the Holy Spirit
So each time Peter uses this word, the point is the same—it all came from God, not from a human source.
[7] The word and (Gr. kai clearly has an inferential sense here. The alternative is that Peter just randomly brings up the Old Testament out of the blue with no connection to what he has been saying and without any indication of what makes it more sure.
[8] The “we” refers to the Apostles, in contrast to the “you” who must heed the Word.
[9] Strangely, many interpreters take this to mean either the New Testament is more certain than the Old, or vice versa. Is Peter saying, “Our stuff we got from God is pretty good, but it’s a little sketchy compared to the OT”? Is Peter undermining the reliability of his own book and the whole gospel of Christ through the Apostles? To cast any doubt on the reliability of either testament would fly in the face of Peter’s whole point. Scripture never pits parts of it against itself.
Some teach that Peter must mean the Old Testament is more reliable than the Apostles’ testimony about the Transfiguration because Scripture always trumps experience. But the Transfiguration wasn’t just one person’s subjective experience. It was an event of divine revelation. And isn’t that what initially validated the Prophets—God doing (experiential) things that proved them to be speaking from him?
[10] See, for example, Acts 16:14.
[11] For now, we’re in the dark of night, but since you and I are made for the eternal day, God calls us to live like it’s daytime even now, at night.
1 Thessalonians 5:5 You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. 6 So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day
So how do you live like it’s day when it’s the middle of the night?
You need a lantern.
[12] Most interpreters agree that this is a reference to Numbers 24:17 “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel. He tells them they would do well to pay attention to the OT prophecies about Christ, and then he alludes to one of those very passages (Nm.24:17).
[13] The “in your hearts” part has thrown some people. They see that and say, “Wait, is Peter saying the Second Coming is just a subjective experience that will happen in your heart and not in the outside world?” No. Peter is very clear in ch.3 that the Second Coming will affect the whole world.
2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. … 12 That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.
He most definitely does not teach some kind of figurative second coming that’s just an emotional or subjective experience that takes place in your heart.
[14] They used that term to refer to Venus because it’s the brightest object in the sky right before sunrise. The word the Greek word is pho¯sphoros, which means light bringer. They called it that because when you see Venus, that guaranteed you’re just about to see daylight.
[15] The morning star is mentioned twice in Revelation. Once in 22:16 where Jesus identifies himself as the morning star, and the other in 2:26 To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations … 28 I will also give him the morning star.
[16] John Piper quoted this poem in his sermon “Listen to the Eyewitness of His Majesty.” I believe it is his own poem written for this passage. https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/listen-to-the-eyewitness-of-his-majesty.
[17] There is natural revelation (see Psalm 19 and Romans 1-2). But there is nothing revealed by nature that isn’t also in the Bible. And what’s in the Bible is far more specific. If you look at a mountain and draw conclusions about what God must be like, those conclusions could go many directions, and the only correct ones are the ones verified by Scripture. Psalm 19 is known as the psalms of the 2 books of revelation—natural revelation in the first half of the psalm (“The heavens declare the glory of God…”), and special revelation in the second half (“The law of the Lord is perfect …”). But it is only the latter than edifies and informs the human soul.
