The Power of the Bible | The Bible For Grown-Ups

Hey everybody, thanks for tuning in here at Trinity Streetsville. We are a group of ordinary

people learning to follow Jesus in our day. Hey, do you ever wonder what people mean when

they say that the Bible is inspired or that the Bible has authority? Well, today we're

in for a treat. We have a guest speaker, Professor Justin Stratus from Wycliffe College. It is

here today to talk to us all about the power of the Bible.

A reading from 2 Peter chapter 1 verses 16 to 21.

2 Peter 1:16–21

For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we were told you about the coming of

our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He received honour

and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the majestic glory saying,

This is my son, whom I love. With him I am very well pleased. We ourselves heard this

voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well

to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the

morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of scripture

came about by the prophet's own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin

in human will, but prophets through human spoke from God as though they were carried

along by the Holy Spirit. This is the word of the Lord.

So yeah, my name is Justin and I'm your guest preacher today. Apologies for that. Rob will

be back next week. Let's have a word of prayer and then we'll get into it.

Lord we believe, help thou our unbelief. Amen.

Okay, so our text this morning comes from 2 Peter, which if you haven't read it, is

for my money one of the weirdest books in the New Testament. It's very strange. There's

so many strange aspects to it. I mean there's bits that talk about angels that are going

to hell. There's stuff about the entire world being destroyed by fire. Not to mention the

fact that most scholars actually don't think that Peter the apostle wrote this letter.

So it's a very strange book of scripture, but it's the weirdness of 2 Peter that I think

actually helps it fit quite well into our sermon series. Because as Rob has been teaching

us over these past few weeks, the trick is to learn to think about the Bible like grownups.

And that means frankly grappling with the fact that the Bible is so weird. Not least

because it was written thousands of years ago in all sorts of cultures that just aren't

familiar to us today. And therefore it would be immature to just kind of pretend that those

confusing aspects of the Bible just aren't there. Right? That it's easy to read. That

you can just pick up the Bible and fully understand everything about ancient Near Eastern and

Greco-Roman culture immediately. Because at the end of the day, grownups have to face

reality and grownup readers of the Bible have to face the reality of what the Bible actually

is. As one of my old Bible professors used to say, when you pick up your Bible, it's

like you're traveling to another world. But there's another side of the coin. The Bible

isn't just an ancient text. Mature readers of scripture also want to say that the Bible

is God's Word. And that means there's more to this book than the times and places it

happened to come from. In fact, mature Christians believe that the Bible is in some sense alive.

That it has the power to transform us from the inside out, as Rob explained last week.

Which is why, in addition to Rob, the book of Hebrews also claims that, quote, the Word

of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, dividing soul and

spirit and joints and marrow. To put it another way, Christians believe that the Bible does

stuff. It can do things. So what is it about the Bible that makes it both an ancient text

that was written many, many thousands of years ago and also somehow the words of the living

God? Words that address not just its original readers, but even us sitting here in Mississauga

in 2024. Now the answer to that question concerns what theologians have traditionally called

the doctrine of biblical inspiration. Some of you might know that my day job is talking

about theology and stuff at Wycliffe College. So I like to say words like doctrine a lot.

So apologies for that. But this is the doctrine of biblical inspiration. It's the idea that

the Holy Spirit had kind of a hand in the writing of scripture in and with the human

beings who did the actual writing. And that word, inspiration, comes from the passage

that we heard about last week from 2 Timothy chapter 3, where the apostle Paul says that

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

all scripture is inspired of God, or literally breathed out by God. That's what that word

means, inspire. So what I want to do this morning is talk a little bit about how this

morning's passage from 2 Peter 1 fits in with this doctrine of biblical inspiration.

First by talking a little bit about the context of that passage, and then by thinking through

some of the implications of it for how we think about the Bible. And I want to focus

especially on verse 21, which, true to form, is a weird verse. In that verse it says that

prophets spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So let's turn to

2 Peter 1. And if you have a Bible or a Bible app, now would be a time to get that in hand.

There's a couple places in the world where it's not weird to just whip out a Bible, and

one of them is church. So if you have it, now's the time. Now, as the title suggests,

this letter claims to have been written by the apostle Peter. And whether or not that's

true, it's clear that the author wants his readers to do something very specific. He

wants his readers to remember what the apostle Peter taught them about Jesus. In fact, he

says three times in verses 12 through 15, I will always remind you of things. It is

right to refresh your memory. See that after my departure, you remember these things. In

particular, he wants his readers to remember a very specific thing that Peter taught them.

And that is that Jesus Christ was coming back. That he didn't just sort of float away into

the ether, you know, like a hot air balloon in the ascension, but Jesus was coming back

just as he promised he would. Now remember, Peter was there when Jesus Christ ascended

into heaven after his resurrection. He was there when the angels told the crowd, men

of Galilee, why do you stand here looking at the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken

from you into heaven will come back in the same way you've seen him go into heaven. Peter

was there when that happened. That's why he says in verse 16, we did not follow cleverly

devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power,

but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. What Peter's worried about here is the possibility

that after he dies, people would start to forget that all these things about Jesus actually

happened. That somehow Jesus's teachings, all that he said and did would transform from

being an account about real events and turn into some kind of abstract religious sort

of thing. In fact, even that word that's translated cleverly devised stories in the NIV is based

on this Greek word mythos. It's the word that we get our English word myth from. So Peter

saying, if you forget my teachings, you're going to be more and more tempted as time

passes on to think of Jesus as just kind of like a religious myth rather than a real person

that we saw, that we talked with, that we hung out with. It's the same sort of thing

that we do on Remembrance Sunday. It's the idea that if you're not absolutely intentional

about remembering the past, it starts to get easy to sort of mythologize the past or in

some cases deny the past altogether. Right? There's people in this world that deny the

Holocaust. One of the most monumental, horrific events in human history. And they say it never

happened because the further you get from certain events, the easier it gets to deny

that they ever even happened unless you make it a point to remember. So Peter is saying,

look, when you hear stories about Jesus, remember that they're based on the testimonies and

the memories of actual eyewitnesses, people who were there, who talked with Jesus, who

spent years with him, who watched him die on the cross, who saw him after he was resurrected

and who heard him with his voice promise that he would return again. But more than that,

Peter says, these people actually saw Jesus' glory. As he puts it in verses 17 through

18, he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the

majestic glory. What an interesting phrase. Saying, this is my son whom I love with him

I'm well pleased. And Peter goes on to say, we ourselves heard this voice that came from

heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain. So Peter's very exercised that people

are going to forget this. Why is he so concerned that his readers would forget all the stuff

that he taught them about Jesus? Well, there's two reasons. The first one, as he hints in

verses 12 through 15, is that he's about to die. He's nervous that once he goes, once

his generation goes, that the stories of Jesus will go with him. And I'm sure many of us

have experienced this with our elderly relatives. That sort of frantic telling and retelling

of family stories that comes at the end of one's life. I had that experience, I remember

when my grandmother died, I got many, many stories over and over, the same thing. I thought,

oh no, is she sort of getting into senility here? Or maybe she's just concerned that even

the words she's using to tell these stories get burned into my mind. Right? Peter's like

that. He wants these people to remember. People get nervous at the end of their lives that

the family lore will get buried with them. And Peter was no different. So he urges his

readers, look, one day I'm going to be gone, but don't forget this stuff about Jesus. But

there's another reason that he's worried. And that's the fact that there were people

in the church who were actively trying to get people to deny Peter's teachings. In fact,

pretty much the rest of the letter is Peter warning his followers to be on their guard

against what he calls false or pseudo prophets and teachers. I mean, pretty much the rest

of the letters, him kind of ranting about these people. If you want to avoid getting

tricked by these people, Peter says, you can't forget what I taught you. But why should we

trust Peter's teachings? What makes Peter's teachings and his message so special? Again,

two reasons. The first, as we already said, is that Peter and his companions were eye

witnesses to Jesus. They were Jesus's homies, if you like. They knew him. The false teachers

did not know Jesus. They were speculating. But the second reason is this. Peter says,

you should trust me and all the other apostles' teachings about Jesus over and against the

false teachers because our teachings are authorized by the Old Testament scriptures. In other

words, not only did they see Jesus with their own eyes, but they also knew who Jesus is

because they believed what the Old Testament prophets said about him, that Jesus is the

Messiah and the Son of God. So if you're Peter's readers, you have a choice. Either you're

going to believe the false teachers who claim that Jesus is never coming back, that we should

turn Jesus into just another religion and trust them about what that religion is about,

or you believe Peter and the apostles and the prophets who insist that Jesus is real

and he is coming back. Ah, but you say, skeptic that you are, maybe the apostles and the prophets

are just making things up. No, says Peter, we're not making stuff up. We knew him personally

and we actually saw his glory revealed right over there on that mountain that I'm pointing

to right now, the imaginary mountain. But maybe the prophets were just making things

up. No, says Peter in verses 20 and 21, no prophecy of scripture came about by the prophets'

own interpretation of things for prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but

prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

So the implication is this, you go with the apostles and the prophets and you kick the

false teachers to the curb. That's Peter's argument in this whole letter. But what's

interesting about this for our sermon series especially is what Peter says about the prophets.

Now back in the Old Testament, as you know, God used to call certain folks and have them

kind of say whatever he wanted them to say. So you have, for example, the prophet Amos,

who's hanging out tending sheep one day when all of a sudden God sends him a vision and

off he is prophesying God's word to the people. Or Isaiah, who's chilling in Judah when God

grabs him and shows him everything that's going to happen to the southern kingdom for

several generations. These prophets played a major role in Israel's history and what

they wrote down became precious writings and scrolls that are cherished by the Jewish community

to this day. But even if you buy that God really revealed himself to these people, right,

that Amos didn't just have a bad trip, that he actually had a vision of God in that sheep

field, even if you buy that, can you really trust that what they wrote down about those

visions is accurate? I mean, I've had all sorts of dreams in my life, right? I would

be hard pressed to write down everything I've dreamt with pinpoint accuracy, let alone interpret

my dreams with any sense of coherence. So the prophets had visions. Are they remembering

them correctly? Are they interpreting them correctly? To put an even finer point on it

for us, can we trust what they wrote down? Peter's argument is that yes, you can trust

the prophets. Not only did God give them the vision, God also helped them to interpret

the vision and he carried them along by the Holy Spirit so that what they said and wrote

really was the word of God. That's why the words of the prophets are, in Peter's words,

completely reliable, as he says in verse 19, because the prophetic writings are a product

of God's will as God used these people to speak and record what he wanted them to, not

just for the generations in which they lived, but for future generations too, particularly

the generations who would be the eyewitnesses to the reality of what the prophets talked

about, which was the coming of the Messiah and the person of Jesus Christ. So here's

where things get interesting. So the prophets were carried along, carried along by the Holy

Spirit as they wrote down the word of the Lord. What about the New Testament? Were the

New Testament authors also carried along by the Spirit in which they wrote? Well, there's

a lot of reasons why the church eventually recognized the New Testament as having the

kind of authority that the Old Testament has. And we don't have time to go over all these

this morning, but there's one reason that's present right here in this epistle in 2 Peter.

In chapter 3 verse 16, the author actually mentions another apostle, the apostle Paul,

and he refers to Paul's letters as hard to understand. Maybe for him, I find Romans incredibly

easy to read, but for him, it was hard to understand. So hard that people use that as

an opportunity to try and distort Paul's message, quote, as they do the other scriptures. And

that word scriptures, graphé in Greek, is the same word that's used in 2 Timothy 3 16,

which says, quote, all scripture graphé is inspired of God. So what Peter is implying

is that Paul's letters actually belong in the same category as those Old Testament writings

that he appealed to in the first chapter to bolster his own teachings about Jesus. The

point is this, what makes something more than just writing, what makes a particular text

scripture this higher category is the fact that the Holy Spirit supernaturally oversaw

its composition. The Spirit was there when this stuff was being written down so that

the text is somehow able to reflect or participate in the actual word of God. It's why when we

read the Bible today, the Lord is able to reveal himself through these old, old texts

to us, just like he did to the original authors. So yes, the Bible was written by human beings

in all sorts of times and places, but because of the presence of the Spirit, the Bible is

also the word of God. That's what the Christian doctrine of biblical inspiration teaches.

And that's the reason why we can talk about the Bible, which again, in Greek, is just

a word that means book. Vivlos means book. That's why we can talk about the Bible as

holy. It is the Holy Bible, a holy book, not just because it's closer historically speaking

to Jesus and the prophets and the apostles. The Bible is holy because it's a human text

that has been sanctified or set apart, made holy by the Lord from the very point of its

writing as its authors were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And that's where the

power of the Bible comes from, because the Bible is ultimately a product of the Holy

Spirit's ministry in our midst. All Bibles are Pentecostal Bibles. They're all charismatic

Bibles because they're works of the Spirit. As Rob said last week, the Bible can do things

that other kinds of books can't do because of this. It doesn't just inform us, but it

can also transform us. Of course, it can also do normal booky type things, right? It can,

for instance, give us a glimpse into the way people lived in the past. It can help us get

to know all sorts of interesting historical personalities like Moses and David and Isaiah

and Nehemiah and Peter and Paul and John and James and all the rest of the Beatles. It

might even have a good idea or two about morality and ethics or history or ancient religion.

But those sorts of things aren't what makes the Bible special. Other books do that stuff

too. What makes the Bible special is that it has been set apart by the Spirit to reveal

God to us. And as the Spirit continues to be with us, so the Bible will continue to

show us the power and presence of God even today. One of my favorite theologians is a

Swiss dude by the name of Karl Barth. He once said, within the Bible, it's like there's

a strange new world, the world of God. And that's what makes the Bible so interesting

to me personally. Other books are easily domesticated. They can be tamed. They can be understood.

Other books can be mastered, but not the Bible. No matter how much you read it, no matter

how much you memorize it, no matter how many degrees you get studying it, you cannot master

this book. It won't submit to that because the Bible is the holy word of a holy God.

And because of that, it will always stand above us. It won't fit into our categories

and our expectations. But on the other hand, it's because the Bible is just so strange,

so divine, so weird that even the least educated person can read it, can hear it, and can hear

in those human words a word from God. It's why even a small child can hear the phrase,

the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. And sense the presence of their heavenly Father

right there in their bedroom as they drift off to sleep. It's the Spirit, the Spirit

who carried along the authors of Scripture who still whispers those words to us today

when we read them. That's why the Bible is a holy thing, a divine thing. It's why we

gather together week in and week out to hear it read to us, to have it preach to us, to

pray its words, and to meditate on its truths. It's not because we want to tap into some

kind of ancient wisdom. It's because we want to hear from the living God, and we believe

that we will. Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift. Amen.

Thank you so much for joining us today for our sermon here at Trinity Church, Streetsville.

We hope you can come again next week and join us for our last sermon of the series, The

Bible for Grown-ups. Thanks again. Today's sermon was taken from the April 28, 2024 service

at Trinity Church, Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario.