The Importance Of Personal Bible Study Series

Peter moves from a tight circle where he’s speaking about predictions of the Second Coming of Jesus to a larger circle where he speaks about all of Scripture in verse twenty: “knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation” (2 Peter 1:20). He’s moved from specific predictions in the Bible about the Second Coming to now include all of Scripture. Verse twenty says to us essentially, “No individual is entitled to interpret prophecy, or any Scripture for that matter, according to your personal whim.” Peter says in effect, “You cannot take twist the Scriptures to suit your needs.” Now add verse twenty-one that says, prophecy doesn’t come from humans but prophecy comes from God Himself.

Now, you might say, “Pastor, when Peter mentions Scripture, he’s speaking of the Old Testament because the Old Testament is the Scriptures for him. So you cannot tell me the New Testament comes from God from verse twenty & twenty-one.” Flip over to 2 Peter 3 – just turn over a page where we read this: “And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:15–16). Paul did not write Old Testament Scripture. No, Paul was a contemporary to Peter and he wasn’t alive when the Old Testament was written. Paul wrote thirteen letters of the New Testament but note what Peter is doing here. While the New Testament is being written, Peter is already elevating the writings of Paul on par with the Old Testament. That is remarkable for a good Jewish religious man to elevate any person’s writing alongside the elevated status of the Old Testament. In fact, it’s simply shocking for this to occur.

Today, you’ll hear a skeptic say, “The Bible is just a book written by a bunch of men a longtime ago.” But the earliest witnesses closest to Jesus say something entirely different. Three times Peter denies that men just made up the New Testament. They tell us that the New Testament is not “cleverly devised myths” in verse sixteen and “no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation” in verse twenty. And lastly, the New Testament is not “produced by the will of man” in verse twenty-one. Instead, the New Testament is produced by “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21b). Yes, the New Testament is from human beings but it ultimately from “men who spoke from God.” Again, Human beings did write the Bible and you can see their different respective personalities shine forth as you turn the pages… …but the collection of twenty-seven books ultimately came from God. Underscore these forceful words in verse twenty-one “men who spoke from God.”

1.3 What about the Old Testament?

Let’s quote Jesus here because Jesus is talking about how the religious teachers of His day are killing every one of the prophets God sends their way: “so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar” (Matthew 23:35). Jesus names two martyrs – first, Abel which is mentioned in Genesis 4:10, and the son of Adam and Eve. Then Jesus mentions Zechariah, a priest who spoke as a prophet and is mentioned in 2 Chronicles 24:20-22 where he was stoned to death. Jesus is then mentioning the first and last murders in His Bible, our Old Testament. Now, the Christian Old Testament sequence starts with Genesis and ends with Malachi but our Jewish friends start with Genesis and end with our 2 Chronicles. We agree with our Jewish friends on what should be in the Old Testament but the Jewish people switch the order to end with 2 Chronicles. And we know that our Old Testament is also the Old Testament that Jesus recognized.