This week we
have been looking at a section of a letter that has been preserved and recorded
for us in the New Testament of the Bible called the book of 2 Peter, where we
have discovered a timeless reminder about Jesus and the message and teachings
of Jesus that we are to always have at the forefront of our lives. And that
timeless reminder is that we need to be reminded of the authority of the
letters contained in the Bible.
In 2 Peter
1:12-21, we saw Peter reveal three aspects of the authority of the letters
contained in the Bible that we need to be reminded of. First, in 2 Peter
1:12-15, we see that the authority of the letters contained in the Bible is
found in their timeless truth. Then, in 2 Peter 1:16-18, we saw Peter reveal
for us the reality that the authority of the letters contained in the Bible is
found in their eyewitness testimony. Today, we will see Peter reveal for us a
third aspect of the authority of the letters contained in the Bible that we
need to be reminded of in 2 Peter 1:19-21:
So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a
lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises
in your hearts. 20 But know this first of all, that no prophecy of
Scripture is a matter of one's
own interpretation, 21 for no prophecy was ever made by an act of
human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
Here we see
Peter explain that because he and other early followers of Jesus who would go
on to write the letters that have been preserved and recorded for us in the New
Testament of the Bible had firsthand knowledge of the glory and grandeur of
Jesus, we have the prophetic word made
more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in
a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.
Now to fully understand what Peter is communicating here, we first need to
understand a few things.
The first
thing we need to understand is what Peter means when he uses the phrase the
prophetic word. With this phrase, Peter is referring to the inspired
interpretation of the Divine words of God and the inspired words of God that
are contained in the letters that make up the Bible. In addition, when Peter
uses the phrase made more sure, this phrase refers to something that can be
relied on not to cause disappointment. Peter’ point here is that the inspired
interpretation of the Divine words of God and the inspired words of God that
are contained in the letters that make up the Bible are reliable and will not
disappoint.
Now that leads
us to the next thing that we need to understand, which is what Peter is
referring to when he uses the phrase “until the day dawns and the morning star
arises in your hearts.” Peter here is making an allusion to a section of a
letter that has been preserved and recorded for us in the Old Testament of the
Bible called the book of Numbers. In Numbers 24:17 a prophet named Balaam
predicted and proclaimed the coming of a rescuer, a deliverer, a Messiah that
would come from the Jewish people to rule over the world. Peter connects this
allusion to Numbers 24:17 with the phrase the morning star arises, which
referred to Jesus return to earth at the end of God’s story here on earth,
where Jesus will defeat selfishness, sin, and death and to usher in the kingdom
of Heaven in its fullest sense.
Peter’s point
is that the claims of Christ and the message of the gospel as proclaimed by
Jesus and as proclaimed by himself and the other writers of the letters that
make up the New Testament are inspired by God and are reliable. And because of
that reality, Peter explained that the readers of his letter would do well to
pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place. With this word picture,
Peter is revealing for us the reality that the letters that make up the Bible are
worth paying close attention to, because they are reliable and they are able to
reveal and expose what is present in the world along with providing guidance
and direction in an otherwise dark world.
Then, in verse
20, Peter stated but know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own
interpretation. Peter here is basically saying “The first thing that you need
to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that none of statements made by those who
are communicating God’s Divine will or purpose and none of the interpretations
of the Old Testament of the Bible that are being made by those who are
communicating God’s Divine will and purpose are simply the result of human
opinion. Peter then reinforced this reality in the first half of verse 21 by
stating “for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will”.
In other
words, Peter is basically saying “No one who is communicating God’s Divine will
and purpose by applying the predictions and promises of the Messiah from the
message and teaching of the Old Testament to Jesus is doing so at by their own
desire and direction. What is being communicated by those who are writing these
letters is not the result of their own desires to proclaim their own opinion.”
Instead, Peter explained that these letters were the result of “men moved by
the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” Peter’s
point here is that what was being communicated by those who were writing these
letters was the result of the Spirit of God moving and motivating them to
direct their energy and efforts to speak for God through the writing of the
letters that we know today as the New Testament of the Bible.
Now the big
fancy church mumbo jumbo talk word for what Peter is referring to here is the
word inspiration. When
we talk about inspiration, we are talking about a dynamic process that was led
by the Holy Spirit where God worked through the personalities and life
experiences of the writers of the letters that make up the Bible to place His
timeless truths on paper. We see this
dynamic process most clearly in the gospels, which are the four accounts of
Jesus life that are found in the Bible.
We
see a tax collector, a doctor, and two fisherman moved by the Holy Spirit to
write about Jesus life. Each one of the gospel writers had different levels of
education and experiences that God used while inspiring, or moving them, to
choose and write His timeless truth of His story of the rescue and redemption
of selfish and rebellious humanity through Jesus life, death, and resurrection.
One of the best ways to summarize this idea of inspiration is to think of
inspiration as the process by which God worked to ensure that what God says the Bible says and what the Bible says God says.
But not only do we believe that the Bible is a collection
of letters that were written by men who were inspired by God to write the very
words of God to humanity. We also believe that the letters that make up what we
call the Bible are without error. In other words, we believe that the Holy
Spirit not only inspired the thoughts of the writers who wrote the letters that
make up the Bible, but that the Holy Spirit also led the writers of these
letters to use the very word structure into which these letters were written so
that the original documents were inerrant as to fact and infallible as to truth.
In other words, the letters that make up the Bible are totally true and are
totally trustworthy.
Now you might have heard people say
that we cannot be sure about whether or not the 66 letters we have in the Bible
are the only letters that we should have in the Bible because the church did
not establish what letters were to be in the Bible until a bunch of men got
together because of the Roman Emperor Constantine hundreds of years after these
letters were written. Another
common objection or pushback to this idea of God inspiring human writers to
write the letters that make up the Bible is often made by asking “Well Dave, how
do we know that we have all of God’s truth? Who and how did they decide to have
66 books?” What about other books like the gospel of
Thomas, and the Apocrypha in Catholic Bibles? What about the books that the
Mormon Church views as being equal to the Old and New Testament?”
Good questions. You see, the
Council of Carthage, which occurred in 397 A.D., merely approved what was already an
accomplished fact generally accepted by the early church for a long period of
time. In addition, as we will discover later in this series, the letters that
make up the New Testament of the Bible were already widely circulated and had
been collected together within 50 years after their original writing. And it is here that we see Peter reveal for us the
reality that the authority of the letters contained in the Bible is found in
the Holy Spirit bringing them into circulation.
You see, it is
the activity of the Holy Spirit that brings a reliability that requires that we
pay attention to the message of the letters in the Bible as we await Jesus
return. It is the activity of the Holy Spirit that brings a recognition that
the letters in the Bible were not written as a result of the desires men. And
it is the activity of the Holy Spirit that brings a recognition that the
letters in the Bible were written as a result of the direction of the Holy
Spirit.
Because the
timeless reality is that we need to be reminded of the authority of the letters
contained in the Bible. We need to be reminded that the authority of the
letters contained in the Bible is found in their timeless truth. We need to be
reminded that the authority of the letters contained in the Bible is found in
their eyewitness testimony. And we need to be reminded that the authority of
the letters contained in the Bible is found in the Holy Spirit bringing them
into circulation.
So here is a
question to consider: What is the source of authority in your life when it
comes to your relationship with God and how you live out your life? How do you
view the letters that make up the Bible what it comes to their authority? Do you submit your thinking to the letters
that make up the Bible? Or do you submit the letters that make up the Bible to
your thinking?
Do you need to
be reminded of the authority of the letters contained in the Bible? How often
do you find yourself thinking “I know the bible says but?” Do you need to be
reminded that the authority of the letters contained in the Bible is found in
their timeless truth?
Do you need to
be reminded that the authority of the letters contained in the Bible is found
in their eyewitness testimony? Do you need to be reminded that authority of the
letters contained in the Bible is found in the Holy Spirit bringing them into
circulation?
Because the timeless
reality is that we need to be reminded of the authority of the letters
contained in the Bible…
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