You Can Trust This Book

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.