A More Sure Word of Prophecy

We heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with him in the holy mountain. And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. So Peter has now dealt with his introductory remarks, and he is now getting into the meat of the letter, if you will. And remember that we said that the main purpose of him writing is to deal with false teachers that had come in. The problem with the false teachers was that they were denying the coming or the second coming. They were saying that Jesus is not coming again. Obviously, we don't know exactly word for word what they taught, and as with any letter, you have to read between the lines and look at what someone is saying to try and figure out what the other side were saying. But basically, there was an attack against the idea of the second coming. Now he spends chapter 2 then dealing with false teachers in general, but specifically having these guys in mind. And then in chapter 3 and around verse 14, he comes to what the real issue is. And of course, as we said, the real issue then is that they deny the coming of the Lord. But right here in chapter 1 of verse 14 already, he begins to deal with the heart of the issue. And the heart of the issue really is the rejection of the inspiration of Scripture. And that's what he deals with in these next verses, and I don't think we'll exhaust those verses through 21 this evening. And so they were coming up with their own interpretation and saying, well, Jesus is not coming again. And Peter is now laying a foundation for his argument. So he has exhorted the believers to go on to perfection, and now he's dealing with the argument or beginning to deal with this issue. And so he begins in the place that we must always begin, and that is with the word of God. Before we even begin to deal with arguments and begin to deal with the debate and with the issues, we must always have a solid foundation. If we have agreement that the word of God is our final authority, well, then we can begin to discuss things, and we can begin to try and come to some kind of agreement. If there's a lack of agreement between two people as to the inspiration of Scripture, then we have a real problem, because the very basis of the facts that we're dealing with is in question. And how do we come to some kind of agreement on the argument if we can't even agree on what the foundational facts are? And of course, so Peter begins at the very beginning, and he establishes the importance of Scripture, and because that becomes the foundation on which everything is built. All right. So then he says then, for we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you, when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. So here he's coming right into the issue, the coming of the Lord Jesus. So he says, when we told you about Jesus' coming, we did not follow cunningly devised fables. The word there, fables, is the same word, the Greek word, musoi, from which we get the word myth. And you remember that this word appears a number of times in the New Testament, particularly in Timothy. And in Timothy, one of the three, I think, occurrences in Timothy, Paul says that men will have itching ears in the last days, and they will follow cunningly devised fables. They will follow myths, or fables, or stories. And that's where we find ourselves today, is that generally people in the church believe all sorts of stories that are not based on the word of God. A lot of competition tonight. But he says we have not, we did not follow myths. We did not follow fables. We did not follow stories. But we followed facts. And of course, this is a real problem today, and in many areas of life, because there is no absolute truth. Absolute truth has come under attack, and has been under attack for a long time. But particularly in recent years, absolute truth doesn't exist. What do we mean by absolute truth? Well, when something is absolute, it means that that is the way it is. It doesn't change. Absolute truth means that truth is truth, and nothing changes that truth. So I can't even say that the earth is round, because to some people that's not absolute truth. I guess we can speak about gravity and say, well, gravity is an absolute truth. You can't interpret it. You can't make of it what you want. The fact is, if I drop this thing, it's going to go down. The fact is that when you get on the scale, whenever you do, you realize that in fact you're pulling down harder and harder as the days go by. So gravity is just a fact of life. It is an absolute truth. It is not something that is a relative or a relevant truth. All of God's word is absolute truth. It doesn't change. Gravity doesn't change, whether you're in space even. It doesn't change. It doesn't change whether you're in Los Angeles or whether you're in Rio de Janeiro or whether you're in Australia on the underside of the world. It is still the same. It still works the same. The truth is unchanged. The problem is that most truth today is relevant or relative, should we say, rather relative. In other words, there is no definitive truth. It is whatever you want it to be. And you'll hear people speak often today about his truth, your truth. In other words, this thing may be truth for you, but it's not necessarily truth for me. And so whatever it is, is whatever you think it is. And when we look at the political environment right now, there are two versions of the truth. Now, there is not two versions of the truth. There is only one truth. There is only one truth. And that's the problem, is that when we follow cunningly devised fables, well, then if I can bring a good argument, I can convince you that my truth is the truth. But in fact, it may not be the truth. There is only one truth, and that is God's truth. That's the only truth that there is. That is the only reality that there is. So he says then, we didn't follow cunningly devised fables. We didn't make this thing up. We didn't generate or create our own version of what truth is. Every false religion is based on their cunningly devised stories of what they believe to be truth. But none of them can say what Peter is saying here, because he says we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. But he says we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. In other words, we're not telling you something that we thought up, or that we sucked out of our thumb, or that we heard second or third hand. But we are declaring to you, we've told you what we saw. And I'm going to come back to that. Let me take a step back again. When we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's really not speaking of two different things here. And all the commentators are agreed on this. They don't often agree, but on this one they're all agreed. That literally what he is saying is that we have made known to you the powerful coming, or the Lord coming in power. It's not His power and His coming. But it's His coming in power, or His powerful coming. So he's not speaking of the rapture so much as he is speaking about the Lord Jesus' second return. And I'm not going to split those right now. When He comes and every eye will see Him. When He stands on the Mount of Olives, and He comes with a sword, a flaming sword from His mouth, and He sets His enemies at His feet, and He sets up His kingdom. When He comes in power, remember the first time He came as a servant. He came in meekness. He came in weakness. But when He comes again, He's going to come as the King of kings, and the Lord of lords. He's going to ride on a white horse, and He's going to conquer, and He's going to set up His kingdom. And so when He comes then, He's going to come in power. So He says, when we spoke... And so you can see that He's not speaking about His first coming. He's speaking about His second coming. He didn't come in power in the first coming. He's coming in power in the second coming. And so, when we made known to you the powerful coming, or the coming in power of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. Now, this issue of eyewitnesses is very important. You remember that when Judas Iscariot fell away, they had to replace him to make up the number 12, which was preordained that there needed to be 12. And so they said, we need to find someone to take his place. And one of the qualifications was that he needed to have been an eyewitness to everything that Jesus did. Why did he have to be an eyewitness? Because that was probably the most important function of the 12. And that was to be eyewitnesses. Their function was not that much to plant the church. Jesus would plant the church. But their function was to be eyewitnesses, to testify to what they had seen, to testify to the cross, and to the crucifixion, and to the burial, and to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul calls them to witness in 1 Corinthians 15, when he proves the resurrection. And he says, he was seen by these brethren. And so their prime function was to be eyewitnesses to what they had seen. Their testimony is proven by their martyrdom. As far as we understand, all of them except John were martyred for their faith. Now, how does that prove their testimony? Well, clearly, if their testimony was a cunningly devised fable, would they be willing to die for a fable? No, nobody's going to die for a story. You will only die for the truth. And when push comes to shove, and they're about to crucify you, and you built your whole life on a story that you made up, and that you conspired with the other 12 to make up the story. When they begin to light the fire, or they begin to nail you to the cross, you're going to say very quickly, no, sorry, sorry, sorry, it didn't happen this way. Only for the truth will you die. And so they were witnesses, and they witnessed by their death that what they saw and what they testified was the truth. And so this becomes a foundational aspect of our faith. And you'll see in John's gospel that John particularly calls different people as witnesses to who Jesus is. And in this passage also, you'll see that Peter calls a number of witnesses. And we're going to deal with those, hopefully, tonight. So in John 1, verse 14, John says, And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we behold His glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. So John says we beheld His glory. We saw His glory. In other words, we saw Him on the Mount of Transfiguration. Remember that there were three on that Mount of Transfiguration, and by God's leading, we were able to deal with the same passage in Luke a few weeks ago, where they were on that Mount of Transfiguration. Remember there were three, again, three witnesses. By the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word will be confirmed. And there was James, Peter, and John on the mountain. And Peter speaks about that. We're going to come back to that in Peter. John is speaking about that. He says that we beheld His glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father. We saw Him. And then in 1 John 1, verse 1, That which was from the beginning. What was from the beginning? Well, in John chapter 1, remember this is his epistle, but in John chapter 1, he begins, he says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So what was from the beginning? The Word, Jesus. That which is from the beginning, which we have heard. Not that we had heard from someone else, but we heard Him, which we have seen with our eyes. We didn't see a video, we saw Him, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled. In other words, we touched Him. And remember, John is writing to people who are saying, well, Jesus was really just a spiritual apparition. And John says, no, no, we touched Him. I lay on, and he's not saying that here, but he's inferring that, I lay on His bosom at the Last Supper. We physically touched Him concerning the Word of life. Verse 2, The life was manifested. In other words, the life, Jesus' life was manifested, was made real, was made alive. And we have seen, and bear witness, and declare. So that is the function of the apostles, to have seen, to bear witness, and to declare to you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested to us. That which we have seen and heard, we declare to you. Can you see the similarity between what John is saying and Peter's saying? We didn't tell you cunningly devised fables, but we've told you what we saw. John says the same thing, what we have seen and heard. Just look at those two things. We didn't just see Him, but we heard Him. We declare Him to you, that also you may have fellowship with us. Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ. So go back to 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 16 then. The last two lines on the screen, the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. We saw it for our own selves. Then verse 17, for He received, this is what we saw. Remember where he says, we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. Here's what we saw. For He received from God the Father honour and glory, when such a voice came to Him from the excellent glory. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. So clearly He is speaking about the Mount of Transfiguration. Remember that's what happened. Now, why is He, why doesn't He tell us about Moses and Elijah? And remember, why was Moses and Elijah there? They were to be witnesses. But Peter doesn't talk about Moses and Elijah. Peter doesn't talk about the fact that they wanted to build little huts or booths or shacks for them. Why is he saying there was this voice from heaven? Because the Father was testifying to the Son. The Father was bearing witness to the Son. Remember the same thing happened when Jesus is baptized. He comes out of the water. This is my beloved Son. And so the Father is bearing witness. So can you see what Peter is saying? He's saying, we didn't suck this out of our thumbs. But we're telling you what we saw in Jesus. And what we saw in Him was not a prophet who came and said, well, you know, I'm a great prophet and you better follow me. But what we saw was a prophet that God Himself from heaven spoke and confirmed that this is the Son of God. And so you can see that He is building a watertight case. He is saying, we're telling you that which is indisputable because God attested to, God witnessed to who Jesus is. When such a voice came to Him from the excellent glory. The excellent glory, just by the way, is just another name for God. Remember the Jews have a little bit of a problem using the name of God and why He uses it at the beginning. And the excellent glory or in other places they would speak about heaven would just be a euphemism. It would just be a nice way of referring to God without using His name. So we heard the voice come from God Himself. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. Now remember what John says. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you. Peter is saying, I'm telling you what we have seen and now he tells us what he has heard. So again, a twofold witness. Can you see how he's building his case based on Jewish tradition that by two or three witnesses every word must be confirmed? And so he's saying, in case you think our eyes fooled us and we saw something that wasn't really real, we also heard it. I think that we all have dreams and we wake up in the morning and we sort of have an idea what we saw. But what did we hear? Well, we didn't hear anything. We just saw stuff in our mind. But Peter is saying, no, we saw Him and we heard this voice from heaven. And of course we saw Him transfigured. We saw Him glorified and in His majesty. Now verse 19. Now he says, we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. All right. So he says we have the word of prophecy confirmed. What does the word confirmed have to do with? What does it deal with? Truth, witnessing. When you have one witness and you have a second witness, what does the second witness do? It confirms what the first witness said. Obviously, if they were saying the same thing. That was the problem with Jesus' crucifixion. Remember, they found witnesses, but none of them could agree. But when the two witnesses agree, the one confirms the other. So he's now saying then that we saw Him. We heard Him. We heard the voice from heaven. God confirmed that this is His Son. But now He's calling yet another witness. Who's the other witness He's calling? The prophets of the Old Testament. And in fact, when he uses the prophetic word here, I believe that he's referring to the whole of the Old Testament. And so he is saying then that the Old Testament confirmed who Jesus is. Remember, Jesus calls the Old Testament as a witness. He says you search the scriptures because in them you think they have eternal life, but it is they that speak of Me. They speak of Me. And so Peter is saying we have the word of prophecy, the Old Testament, confirmed. In other words, we now have what we saw, we have what we heard, we have the voice of God, and we also have the Old Testament scriptures that confirm who Jesus is. Now, obviously what he is saying is the prophetic word is confirmed. What confirms the prophetic word? What confirms the Old Testament? Jesus confirms the Old Testament. So while the one confirms the other, essentially what he is speaking about here is that Jesus came exactly the way that the Old Testament said He would. A hundred and seventy prophecies concerning Jesus' birth and His life and His death, every detail of His birth, every detail of His death is prophesied in the Old Testament, and Jesus fulfills every one of those prophecies. And so Peter is saying the word that we are basing our faith on is not just the word of prophets. There are many prophets in America right now who are prophesying that President Trump will win the election. Now, you're going to find out, maybe tonight still, probably tomorrow, whether their prophecies are true. If he is not the next president, then they are lying prophets, every single one of them. And there are hundreds and hundreds of them that are prophesied. Now, I'm not calling the election. I don't know which way it's going to go, but we will know something about those prophets when the results are known. And remember, it's not a difficult thing. You have a 50% chance of being right as to who's going to win the election. So when you're prophesying 6,000 years, 4,000 years ahead of time, how Jesus would be born, where He would be born, how He would live His life, how He would be crucified, what He would say on the cross, how He would be raised, when He would be raised. When you're prophesying those things, you don't have a 50-50 chance. This is a million-to-one chance of getting... And I don't even know what the mathematicians can calculate that. But they can tell you how infinitesimally small the chances are of getting all 170 of those prophecies right, every single one of them exactly the way they were. And so what we have is a more... The old King James uses the word, the more sure word of prophecy, a confirmed word of prophecy. So all of the Old Testament is confirmed. You say, well, what about the New Testament? Well, that has also been confirmed. But remember that Peter and Paul and John and the others are not basing their arguments on the New Testament because they didn't have the New Testament. Now we can make the same case for the New Testament as they made for the Old Testament. And when it comes to the second coming of the Lord Jesus, we can prove His second coming based on the Old Testament alone without the use of the New Testament. And that's what Peter is talking about. So he's not talking about the many prophecies we have in the New Testament, particularly, of course, the book of Revelation and 1 and 2 Thessalonians and so on, Matthew 24 and 25, and the list goes on and on. He's not even speaking about any of those. But he is saying what we know about the second coming is based on the Old Testament, and we have a more sure word. Now he says that you do well to take heed to the prophecies, to the word of God. And I believe that we can quite legitimately extrapolate that or move that into our situation and say that when Peter is talking about the prophetic word, when he wrote to them, he was meaning the Old Testament. When he's writing to us, and remember he is writing to us, he's also meaning the New Testament. And so he says that you do well to take heed to the word of God. Now I think most of us do take heed to the word of God, but I think that we need to be reminded of it again. Remember that's what he said that we dealt with last week. You know, I need to remind you again and again. It's necessary for us to be reminded of these things. It's necessary for us to be reminded that we need to take heed, pay attention to. And the word take heed doesn't just mean to pay attention to or to pay intellectual to listen to what it says, but it means to actually order your life accordingly. If you tell, if a man's walking down the street and there's an empty manhole cover missing, and you say to him, there's a hole in the sidewalk and there's no cover on the manhole. And he says, yeah, I heard you. And he walks and he doesn't pay attention to what you told him. He didn't take heed to what you told him, and he's going to fall in the hole. And so taking heed doesn't just mean hearing, but it means doing, paying attention to and applying ourselves accordingly. And obviously he's now speaking about the second coming. So when he's speaking about the second coming, we need to take heed to the fact that Jesus is coming, and He is coming very, very soon. So now he says, and I'm going to just finish on this verse this evening, which you do well to take heed as a light that shines in a dark place. So he's talking about the prophetic word, the word of God. It is a light in a dark place. Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. And so the word is a light, and it shines right out of the Old Testament, right through the Old Testament. It is shining. And what is it revealing? It's revealing Jesus, and it is still shining. And if ever we were in a dark place, we're in a dark place today. And I'm not meaning that we're outside here without sufficient light. We're sociologically, politically, environmentally, we're in a desperate place, in a desperate time in the world today. But we have a word that is shining. And obviously the purpose of shining is to lead us to truth. There's that great hymn, Lead, Kindly Light. The word of God leads us. It is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Notice it's not a lamp for us to read by. Well, that's a legitimate use of the light. But the Old Testament says that His word is a lamp to our feet. Why do we need a lamp for our feet? Because we are walking in the way. It is a light on our path so that we can walk in the way that we should, in the place and in the direction we should. And so the word is a light, and it is shining in a dark place. And right now there's a lot of darkness around us, but there is one ray of light, and that is the word of God. And He says that that light will shine until the day dawns. Until the day dawns. What day? The day of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the prophecies of the Old Testament shine from the darkness of the Old Testament. Where is the first prophecy? Genesis chapter 3, if I remember right. You will... The serpent will bruise your heel, but you will crush his head. A prophecy of the cross when Jesus would be bruised by Satan, but he will crush Satan and gain the victory over him at the cross of Calvary. But there was never a darker moment in that time of history, because Adam had sinned, and they were locked out of the garden. And under God's judgment and God's wrath, they had brought death upon all flesh, the book of Romans says. But in the midst of that very darkness, there's this prophecy that He will come and He will bruise, He will crush the head of the serpent. That even while the devil has gained the victory for a moment, Jesus will gain the ultimate victory. Right there in the darkest hour in those first few chapters, the light of Jesus' coming, of His first coming is spoken about. And then, of course, there is Enoch, the third descendant of Adam. And he prophesies not just of Jesus' first coming, but he prophesies of Jesus' second coming. The Lord comes, he says, with ten thousands of His saints. And so right through from the Old Testament, from the very beginning of man's existence, God's word begins to prophesy towards that day when the light will shine, when the day will dawn and the sun will rise. And the morning star rises in your hearts. The morning star rises in your hearts. The morning star, obviously, is another term for the Lord Jesus. The devil also likes that term, he also calls himself the morning star, but Jesus is the bright morning star. The morning star here, the Greek word, is the word from which we get the word phosphorus. Phosphorus is an element that, if it's exposed to oxygen, begins to glow. It is, interestingly enough, the element that there is most of in the human body. But in its natural sense, it glows, it burns. And so we'll speak about phosphorescence. In other words, it glows, it makes light. And so when the day dawns and the morning starts, the phosphorus of God, the light of God, rises in your hearts. The morning star is also the planet Venus. Now, some of you get up early like Henry, I'm not one of those, but if you get up just before the sun comes up, in the east, you'll see Venus beginning to rise on that side, as it catches the first rays of the sun right up there. And so Venus begins to reveal itself. And when Venus comes, we know that the morning is about to break. And what he says is that that morning star will rise, notice, not in the world, but in our hearts. He's not giving a sequence, the sequence is jumbled here. He's just giving us all this information. And he is saying that the day will dawn, but before the day dawns, the morning star will rise in our hearts. In other words, we will know when you see Venus in the morning, you know that the day is near, the sun's about to rise. And when that reality begins to grow in your heart. And so I believe that that's where we're at right now, looking at what's going on in the world around us. I believe that the morning star is rising in the hearts of every true believer. And there is a sense that the day, that the night is over, the night is past, the day is coming. And Jesus is at the door. And very, very soon, we're no longer going to be needing this light that shines. And we thank God for the light of his word. But then we will see him face to face. We will know all things, even as we are known, it says. And so while we are going by the light that shines in a dark place, the light of his word, we're looking for that morning when the sun will rise. We'll no longer need, you don't need a flashlight during the day. We don't need these spotlights to do the recording on Sunday morning, because the sun is up. And when Jesus comes, we will no longer need his word. His word will still be true. His word is not, never going to not be true. But we will not need his word, because we will have him face to face in reality. And so what Peter is saying is be encouraged. Because what we have is a sure foundation, a foundation of the word of God, a foundation of a confirmed message, confirmed not just by the prophets, but by the person of Jesus Christ, confirmed by the father attesting to his son. And all of that is a light pointing to the coming of the Lord Jesus. And so all of it fits together from the beginning through to the end. And he says, you better pay attention. You better pay attention to the word of prophecy that says he's coming. And he's coming soon. And he's coming in power. And he's coming in majesty. Now, let me just answer one question as we close. Why does he then refer to the Mount of Transfiguration? Why does he not refer to the resurrection? Or to the ascension? Because remember, they saw him being caught up in the clouds. And he said, I'm coming in the same way. Or the angel said, he's going to come back in the same way. Why doesn't he refer to those things? Because on the Mount of Transfiguration, we see the only time in Jesus' life, in the gospels, we see his majesty. He is transformed, transfigured before them. And he has the radiant glory that he has with the Father. And so while they were discussing, remember, he's talking with Moses and Elijah. They're talking about his decease. They're talking about the cross. But it's also a pointing to the glory that would come when he comes again. And remember that I believe, and while I'm not going to make a doctrine of that, I believe the two witnesses that the book of Revelation speaks about. Because here we have a tie-in again, this idea of two witnesses. There'll be two witnesses, and those will be Moses, in my understanding, and Elijah. You may have a different point of view. But all of this ties together. They're discussing his crucifixion, but they're pointing to his coming again. And that's why Peter is referring to the transfiguration, not to the resurrection, or to the ascension, or to any of the other important events in Jesus' life. And so we have something which is sure, but we need to pay heed to it. You can know the truth, but if the truth is not leading to a change, if you know there's a manhole missing, cover missing, and there's a hole, and you don't pay attention, you're going to fall in the hole. Jesus says, I'm coming. We need to pay attention. We need to give heed to this sure word of prophecy. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord, that we're not dealing with stories, or fables, or things that men have thought up or concocted. But Lord, we're dealing with your indisputable, absolute truth, the word of God, which is confirmed by the prophets in the Old Testament, confirmed by Jesus Christ, and confirmed by the Father, and confirmed by the apostles. And so, Father, we thank you that we're building our faith not on a maybe or a say-so, but we're building our lives on that which we know is absolute truth. And Lord, we pray that you would give us grace that we may pay attention to, that we may give heed to your word, and particularly to your word that speaks about your coming. And Lord, particularly in the time in which we're living, in which men are saying, well, where is his coming? They've always been speaking about his coming. But Lord, that we may pay attention. And Lord, that we may prepare our hearts. Lord, that we may find and see that morning star rising within our hearts, declaring to us, witnessing again with our spirit, that the day is dawning, and Jesus is about to come. And so, Lord, I pray that you'd help us to have our hope and our confidence in Jesus, and in his coming, and not in anything else in this world. Lord, to have our eyes fixed on that light which is shining, and to follow the way that that light leads us, rather than follow the desires of our own hearts. Help us, we pray, in Jesus' name. I pray, Lord, that you'd continue with us in the rest of this meeting. And for those, Lord, who've joined us on the video, we pray that you would bless them as they've joined with us. In Jesus' name, we pray.