"God-breathed" Sermon: II Peter 1:16-21

“God-breathed”
[II Peter 1:16-21]
June 29, 2008 Second Reformed Church

We have seen over the past few weeks that Peter was about to be put to death, so he wrote this letter to get the most important information out to the Christians scattered across the known world – to remind them of the Truth that was now being challenged, even in the churches. The Truth, Peter said, is this: Salvation is by Jesus Christ’s Work Alone, with no help or input from us, and we respond to, but do not add to, that salvation by thankfully doing good works. Salvation is completely a gift, and we respond to that gift by doing good works. That is something they – and we – need to hear over and over, because we forget and there are false teachers trying to get us to believe something other than the Truth of the Gospel.

In this morning’s Scripture, Peter is responding to one of those false teachings that was making it’s way through the first century church. If we look at Peter’s response, and we can figure out what the false teaching was. Peter wrote, “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (ESV). So, the false teachers were saying that Peter and the apostles were teaching “cleverly devised myths when [they] made known to [them] the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Peter and the apostles were teaching that Jesus is going to return with power and majesty and glory, and as Judge. The false teachers were teaching that Jesus was not going to return and that Jesus certainly doesn’t care what you do.

The false teachers were teaching that Jesus was not going to return – after all, it had been more than thirty years. Wouldn’t He have returned by then, if He was going to return at all? And, they taught, Christians are free from the moral law and judgment – after all, Jesus forgave all of our sins, so, they said, we can do whatever feels good, whatever we enjoy, and we won’t be held accountable.

Peter argued against them saying that they had not spread myths: “they were eyewitnesses to his majesty.” Like Moses and Isaiah, Peter, James, and John had the unparalleled and rare experience of seeing some of the glory of God while they were still sinners, and they survived. As Peter summarized, “For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved Son,’ we ourselves heard the very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain” (ESV).

Peter is, of course, speaking of the Transfiguration, as Matthew records, “And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’ When they heard this they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Rise, and have no fear.’ And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only” (Matthew 17:1-8, ESV).

Peter told them, “James and John and I were on the holy mountain. We were witnesses to the Transfiguration. We witness a little of the unveiling of the glory and the holiness of Jesus. The false teachers did not We were terrified in the presence of the Glory of Jesus and when God the Father spoke from Heaven. If Jesus is holy, and we are eye-witnesses to His Holiness, then He cannot, by nature, allow sin in His Presence. And, after His Resurrection, Jesus said He would return, and this He said in the presence of witnesses. And, whereas the Law requires two or three witnesses for a thing to be believed (Deuteronomy17:6), in fact, “he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive” (I Corinthians 15:6a, ESV).

So, Peter’s first argument against the false teachers is that there are more than five hundred eye-witnesses, most of whom were still alive, that can attest to Jesus’ Promise to return and judge, plus, the witness of the three to Jesus’ Glory and Holiness, as they saw Him at the Transfiguration.

And we might imagine how the first century false teachers would respond: “Mass-hysteria. On the mountain, you three were stressed out and tired. You heard Jesus speaking, but you didn’t really see what you thought you saw. Neither did the five hundred disciples who were afraid of persecution after Jesus’ crucifixion.”

If we dismiss the eye-witness testimony, no one will ever be able to prove anything by eye-witness testimony again, and to so totally doubt our senses is irrational. Besides, even if someone maintained that no eye-witness testimony can be used as proof, such a person will demand that eye-witness testimony be used as proof if he is an eye-witness to a crime that effects him or his loved ones. Still, Peter has a second argument against them:

Our pew Bible has: “So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed” (NRSV). That is at least a clumsy translation. What Peter says is, “And we have something more sure, the prophetic word,” (ESV). Peter says, “If you’re seriously going to argue against five hundred eyewitnesses who are in agreement about what they saw, alright. But I have an even more compelling, more sure evidence: the Word of God.”

Peter’s second argument against the false teachers is to point them to the prophecies of the Old Testament. See how every prophecy about the Incarnation and the Birth of Christ came to pass exactly as the prophets said it would. There are no prophecies in the Bible that have turned out to be wrong. Every word of the Scripture is True Truth, in every sense that that can mean. And the Scripture says that Jesus will return as Judge.

And someone might argue today, “Well, the Bible says that God created humans out of the dirt of the earth, and science tells us that humans evolved from lower species. So, the Bible is wrong.” And we must say to this person, “You are half right: the Bible says that God created humans out of the dirt of the earth, and there is a popular scientific theory that tells us that humans evolved from lower species. That theory does not prove the Bible wrong.”

Peter argues that the Church ought to pay attention to the word of the prophets, to the Word of God – we ought to read it and know it, so we can recognize it as it comes to pass before us and be ready for the return of our Savior and Judge, Jesus Christ. After all, the prophetic word is “as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (ESV).

This world is clothed in the darkness of the anti-Christ, and the Only Light – not matter who bears it – the Only Light in the darkness is Jesus and His Word. The early church father, Justin Martyr said that any truth any false teacher has was stolen from Moses. In other words, all truth is God’s Truth, and there is no truth apart from the Truth of God. And when the Truth comes again, He will expose what has been in the darkness, as Jesus said, “So have no fear of [those who persecute you], for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops” (Matthew 10:26-27, ESV).

“Knowing this first of all” – Peter gives us two facts about the prophecies of the Bible: First, no prophecy is a matter of human interpretation. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says we can restate that as, “no prophecy of Scripture originates in the prophet’s own understanding of things” (Expository Sermons on 2 Peter, 95). The prophecies of the Bible are not lucky guesses – in fact, they didn’t come from the prophets at all, but God gave the prophecies to the prophets, which is the second point: “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (ESV). Our pew Bible says, “men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (NRSV). The question in understanding what Peter is saying is what does he mean by “carried along” or “moved”?

Paul was a prisoner, on his way to Rome to be tried and executed, and they took him by ship. And we read in chapter twenty-seven of Acts, “Now when the south wind blew gently, supposing that they obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor and sailed along Crete, close to the shore. But soon a tempestuous wind, called a northeaster, struck down from the land. And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along. Running under the lee of a small island called Cauda, we managed with difficulty to secure the ship’s boat. After hoisting it up, they used supports to undergird the ship. Then, fearing the wind would run aground on the Syrtis, they lowered the gear, and thus we were driven along. Since we were violently storm-tossed, they began the next day to jettison cargo. And on the third day they threw the ship’s tackle overboard with their own hands. When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned” (Acts 27:13-20, ESV).

The ship was “driven” along by the tempest northeaster. The ship was “driven” towards the Syrtis. The prophets were “moved” or “carried along.” They’re all the same root word, pharo. Just as the ship did not will or desire or decide to travel as it did in the violent storm, in the same way, the prophets did not will or desire or decide the prophecies they wrote. Just as the violent storm took the ship wherever the storm went, so the prophets were taken by the Holy Spirit wherever He desired them to go.

And we moderns protest, “But the Bible is full of errors ” I challenge anyone to bring me an error. Not something like creation versus evolution, but a real error in the Bible. It’s never been done. It’s a popular myth that the Bible is full of errors. If it is so full, why has no one in my forty-one years been able to show me a single one?

“But what about The Da Vinci Code?” What about it? “Well, in the Preface, he wrote, ‘all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.’” Point of fact: that statement, like the utterly unsubstantiated blasphemy he wrote about, is fiction. Whether he is a liar or something else, I don’t know, but I have a stack of books showing that he misquoted and distorted and made up evidence throughout the novel.

“Well, what about The Gospel of Judas?” At the time of the “so-called” discovery of this text, in a bank safe deposit box, where Judas had left it two thousand years ago, I produced for us documents showing that this gnostic lie was known by the second century and easily debunked. And the current The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the text was mistranslated and sensationalized for profit and that the text actually “depicts a Judas who turned Jesus in as a sacrifice to a demon god named Saklas” (World, June 28/July 5, 2008, 12). All scholars now agree it is fiction.

The devil and the false teachers are counting on us not knowing the Word of God and not really believing that it is the Word of God. We must commit ourselves to the Word – to reading it, to knowing it – and to not accepting just anything anyone says is true without testing it. The Bible is True Truth – the Only Light in this darkness.

And Jesus is returning, and this time He is returning as the Judge of the world. Over five hundred eye-witnesses were around at the time the New Testament was written, who agreed that this is what Jesus said. And all sixty-six books of the Bible agree and have no errors in them, and every prophecy that was made about the Incarnation and Salvation and everything that has occurred up until this day was accurate. Because this is the Word of God. It is not something humans made up, it is what God the Holy Spirit drove the prophets to write.

The Christian musician, Larry Norman sang, “Some folks say that the Good Lord’s dead, that He doesn’t exist ‘cept inside your head. Well, I wonder how many gonna be surprised, when they look straight up and see Him coming through the skies. You gotta watch what you’re doing.”

Let us pray:
Almighty God, we thank You for giving us both eye-witnesses to Your Son and His Salvation and for Your Word, which God the Holy Spirit drove the prophets to write. We thank You that You cannot and do not lie, but You have built Your Church upon Your Word, where it alone stands. Now, drive us to Your Word, convince us, convict us, teach us, and help us to remember, as we confront the false teachers of this age, and those willing to peddle lies for a profit. For it is in Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.