7 Transformational Habits, Part II - God's Word

So thank you for being here today.

My name is Randy, so glad to have you, so glad to have our first-time guest here.

Hope to meet you at the tent afterwards.

Hope you just relax and enjoy your worship time.

I say it occasionally you're surrounded by some of my best friends in the world.

We're all incomplete, though.

We're all still work under progress, and that's why we come here every week is to learn more about our Savior and to be more, hopefully, closer to His model for what we should be doing.

So just really glad that you're here.

We started a series last week Seven Transformational Habits and it will lead right up to Easter.

Did you know we're only six weeks, 42 days, from Easter?

The countdown has started.

So be thinking and formulating who you're going to invite to come with you that day.

Who needs to be here too?

Last week we talked about prayer, and we defined prayer as simply surrender.

If we can begin and end our prayer time, our conversations with God with surrender will be much, much, much more like the image that Christ wants us to be.

And today, of course, is about the Scripture.

Last week, you all are aware that we had another incident where a very troubled person walked into a public place with a firearm.

Genesee Moreno walked in to the lobby of a church in Houston and by the time some gunfire was exchanged.

Her life was taken and her seven-year-old that was with her is now fighting for his life.

Right now, what we know of her is deeply troubling.

She had a record of criminal run-ins and firearms and rape violations and drama having to do with neighbors and friends and ex-relationships.

She had dabbled into the gender identity confusion issue.

She had actually entered that church a couple of times maybe she had posted some very anti-Semitic sayings.

This is maybe a sketch of a deeply troubled lady who is deeply, deeply affected by things, to the point that she is scrambling, looking for some hope, some meaning, some sense of identity, and sadly she did not find it.

It's a reminder that, but for the grace of God, we all could be that person.

She clearly was not all right and in a day in which the sides line up to start assigning blame to what caused that incident, the real issue maybe should be and has not been issued very often publicly and that is what are we going to do about people whose mental health is in that condition?

Where is their hope for them?

Well, if you agree with me, you know where hope is, you know who has our hope right.

But also we know that 2,000 years ago a young man could have been in that very same boat, not with a firearm, but there was a time that he was so anxiety laden, so fearful, so distrusting, so bothered, that he picked up a sword and tried to kill someone one night.

And if it had not been for his leader to step in in front of him, we may have never heard of the name of Peter.

And so with that, we're going to study some things that he wrote, based on eyewitness accounts, which make his words to me so authoritative.

So let's stop and pray.

Lord, we understand clearly that we are as anyone else.

When we don't have the foundational truth in our lives, we're subject to anxiety.

The anxiety can grow into mistrust and the mistrust into fear, and the fear into very, very drastic actions, or just in a bad place where we're not okay.

Lord, we're grateful for the hope.

So, god, show us today how to be closer to you, how to be more alert to you, how to follow you in a more clear, concise way, because there's probably other lives at stake around us.

And we give you this time, Now.

Thank you for the unbelievable beauty and value of your Word.

So, lord, do what you need to do in the next several minutes.

We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

You know there's one thing we'll say two or three times in two or three ways today If the Bible is timeless which has been called timeless then that means it's timely.

Right, it's timeless, got to be timely.

It's got to apply today just as much as it did in the days that it was written or voiced.

And 1 Peter 1.23 that's on your screen is exactly that living and enduring Word of God.

It's alive, it has the power to change life, but it has endured, as we'll talk about, through centuries and centuries and centuries.

So thank you for bringing your Bible.

A lot of you do that.

That's a great practice to have.

There should be some pew Bibles in front of you.

If you have a device on, I mean you have your device and you have an app on that phone.

Turn to 2 Peter, not 1 Peter.

2 Peter, it's way over in the back of the New Testament.

I'll give you a hint it's right after 1 Peter.

Okay, just for 1st, 2nd and 3rd John and Revelation.

Go to Revelation and go back to the back and you'll find it.

So, of course, this is a letter, the second letter that we have a record of from Peter.

What do you know about Peter?

This is important today is to know who the author is.

Selene, if you can put that, a lot of you like me.

What comes to mind first is he happened to be on the spot for some major miracles, and this one, probably, you figured out right.

You see two boats side by side.

One of them, in the foreground, is just full of fish.

The Gospel of John says they went out.

They got shut out all night.

They said once you tried the other side of the boat, they did it as professional fishermen, thinking this is not going to do any good, and bang 153 fish almost capsized the boat and everything.

I love this picture for a lot of reasons.

Tore was the artist there, of course, jesus is in the background, all in white in the other boat and you see someone kneeling down on his face before God.

That is Peter and he says something to the effect Lord, I am a sinful man.

There are times when the power of God and the magnitude of His presence is so great that the only thing left for me and you to do is to hit our knees and understand how broken we are, because he has the ability to unbreak us and to remold us and remake us, called transformation.

I also like the.

I see a little humor in it.

See the guy in the very foreground, closest to us, looking over the side.

The look on his face like whoa, what just happened here?

He's still trying to come to grips with that.

That's not the Peter that wrote this, though.

The Peter that wrote this was probably a late 60s Peter 66, 67, 68, and this is one depiction of him that is done by we don't know who painted this.

It's in a studio that collects a lot of religious art and I think it's well done and it might be hard for you to see, but he is holding in his hand two or three keys, and that for some of you.

You know why that is right.

Jesus tells him you will have the keys to the kingdom, and that's the symbolic significance of that.

He's looking up as if he's looking to his master.

Maybe today he will come back, or maybe today I will go to him.

It is thought, y'all, that 2 Peter was written from Rome.

He's in captivity.

It's shortly before he is martyred, like Paul was under Nero, and so he alludes to that later on in 1 Peter when he says my days are short.

Either had been told or he had this sense of knowing from God that his days were about up.

The value of 2 Peter, though, is this he is writing a letter to some new followers of Jesus Christ.

He's warning them to stay, stick to the truth of what they do know and not wander into heresy, and he is so sure that he has and is telling them the truth that he is willing to stake his life on it, because, in a few days, that is exactly what he will do.

He will give his life on the fact, not the theory, the fact that this is actually the Word of God, and we all are grateful for that today.

If it's timeless, then it is timely, so let's read, if we will, 2 Peter, chapter 1, 16 through 21.

2 Peter 1 · chapter mention

I'll read a little bit of this, and then we'll talk about why it's timeless.

From the points of the Scripture, the first reason that this is timely for me and you is it journals the earthly presence of God, which is huge.

The earthly presence of God.

Look at verse 16.

We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses to His majesty.

He says cleverly invented stories, in other words opinions, one guy's opinion.

That's not what we're after here.

We're relaying the power of the Son of God, now Jesus.

Earlier in Matthew 28, he says all power, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

That pretty much covers everything, doesn't it?

And that was exactly true.

And then I love the way he includes it by.

There's a Greek word for eyewitnesses that meant this I see something with a mind to believe it.

In other words, I'm open to what I'm hearing and I'm seeing with my mind Seeing with Jesus.

For three years he was an eyewitness to a lot of things, but a lot of people saw the same thing and did not believe.

What's the difference?

Peter walks into those rooms and into the courtyards and into the what not with a mind of this man I believe is could be, and so I'm open to what I see here.

And then, when he saw the same events, he heard the same teaching.

It made sense to him as he is the Savior, he is the Messiah, and that's quite a different story when you're listening.

17, for he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the majestic glory, saying this is my son and whom I am well pleased.

Well, let's talk about that for a minute, verse 17,.

What's it talking about?

You think the Transfiguration?

The Transfiguration is recorded in Matthew 24, I believe it is, and it's where he takes Peter, james and John up to a high mountain and for justwe don't know, we think, a few minutes, he begins to unveil his human body structure and they start to see, as he says, the glory and the majesty of God and what we believe to be a blinding light, and that's what's depicted here in this other portrait.

That goes on for a while and two other figures come in, who are Elijah and Moses, long gone, prophets of the Word of God.

A prophet would speak on behalf of God and it was always the true speech from God, and those three are there to witness such a thing.

So when someone says I spent time with Jesus, who was a man, but he was also the Son of God, making him God, this is one reason the Roman Empire could not make him think, otherwise His voice today would probably be.

I know what I saw and I know what I heard and that's tremendously authoritative to us.

Today we're going to trust in something you thought about.

This Every day you spend is a trust or a faith statement.

We put faith in people and things and events every single day.

We don't process it that way, but I love it when people say, well, I'm not a person of faith because I believe you have to empirically be able to prove everything.

I don't do anything that I cannot prove the accuracy of it.

Oh yeah, every day we get in that hunk of metal called a vehicle.

We're putting trust in the fact that we're going to make it alive right, we do that constantly, every single day.

Don't tell me you're not a person of faith and trust.

You wouldn't be living still.

The only question is who or where we're going to put our trust in.

We can put it in all these systems, and they're good things.

I'm not knocking any of them.

We need higher education.

We need social societies.

We need civil law.

We need our lawmakers and our politicians to try to do what they're supposed to do.

We need structures for government and how to get along in a society.

We need all those things, but those are not the Savior and our salvation is never going to come in those forms.

The Savior will never come in on Air Force One, I don't care who's in the office.

That's not our hope for that level.

We can choose to put our hope in all of those things or we can choose to put our hope in a person, and the best way to know that person is through what he authored and who knew him?

Who are writing in here?

And that's what we're saying as far as the very, very presence of God 1600 years to compile the canon of the Scripture, 40 different authors, but the miraculous thing is same theme from one cover to the other, and I'll show you in a few minutes.

But you all know examples too.

It is consistent in its message or in its theme all the way through.

The more we understand this, the more trust we have and, by and large, the more acceptance and the less fear, the more trust and the less loss of hope or anxiety.

It doesn't mean we'll be scot-free.

It means this is a far greater source of finding peace and hope and comfort in our future than any other document there is and when applied correctly and when understood and believed correctly.

It is an amazing, amazing thing, and what gets me what I love?

Just as a side note, it seems like every month there is an archaeological find, a scientific find, either inside of our earth or out in space.

That never negates the Word of God, it only affirms it if there is a correlation.

There's a thing that's out now like top ten archaeological findings of the past year and in 2021, one of them that made the top five was actually a dig up just north of the Sea of Galilee, and they went down under the ground and they found the remnants of an old, old, old church, which had always been rumored to be there, because it was built over the very site of the house where Peter and Andrew were raised.

If that was the case, that would have been where Bethsaida was the lost town of Bethsaida, their hometown, and also Philip, one of the twelve and they dug down and they found a wall, and when they went in, there was an etching in Greek on that wall.

They brought in scholars, greek scholars they read it and it basically said here was the chief of all the apostles, had to be Peter, and so now nobody's arguing the fact.

Right, there is where Peter and Andrew grew up.

This was Bethsaida.

Jesus would have walked the streets.

This is where he probably personally saw some of the miracles that he saw.

Now we can't base our faith on just strictly that, but when it happens, isn't it cool?

I've got another one that was top five.

You're not going to believe the number one ranked.

Now don't let me forget, come you know, raise your hand and something when I get to that point where I should be.

But if it's timeless, it's timely.

So what do we do in number one here?

So you know, he was here in the flesh at one point.

We need to get good at asking questions of the Scripture.

That's not a bad thing If we come to him reverently, humbly, and say Lord, I see this, but I want to see between the pages.

A lot of people who are atheists are really, really knowledgeable in the Scripture.

What's the difference between them and you who may be a Christ follower?

They haven't developed the ability or the want to yet to see through the pages and let the Holy Spirit enlighten them and I'll talk about that in a second because when they do, they read what's on the page.

They read the words, but they're getting a meaning behind it.

That's what we need to ask questions, to ask about Lord.

Why is this in here?

Why is this accounting in the Old Testament?

Even there, what did it mean in their day?

Why is this so revolutionary?

Why did Jesus say a rich man can't go to heaven?

That kind of bothers me.

Not that I'm rich, but you know, I thought it was trusting him here.

Well, he said that for a reason.

When you get in and you dig like that, that's when you grow in your faith.

You don't get weaker, you get stronger.

So please start asking questions, and for our younger generations, you especially need to ask those questions because it needs to become your faith and not your grandmom's faith or your dad's faith or whoever.

It needs to be your faith.

And so let's move on to the second thing, in verse 19,.

It also presents truth clearly, and we have the Word of the prophets made more certain, more certain and there you will do well to pay attention to it as into light shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star Remember that phrase and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Let's go back.

And he says we have made this more certain.

This one reason I love reading 1st, 2nd Peter.

When Peter says, oh, it's pretty certain to me.

What's he basing it on?

Things he saw as an eyewitness and things he heard from Jesus own lips.

You can't get more verifiable than that.

And later he and others, he contributed, we believe, to Mark, which was the first gospel, and Mark relied heavily on his testimony.

Paul relied heavily on Peter's testimony for some of the things he records in places like 1st Corinthians, when he talks about the resurrection of Christ, because guess who looked into the empty tomb?

Peter did.

He's there for all the major occurrences.

So when he says, man, it's a certain thing with me, this is true, I believe it and you do too.

It can't just be believed though y'all.

It's got to be personal.

We can't have a personal relationship with God, who was a person and is still our personal God, if His Word does not become personal to us.

It's got to come off the pages and into here and into here.

How about turn back to your left real quickly, to Ephesians, chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

This gives us another little hint Ephesians 1, 17 to 21.

Paul wrote this.

He wrote it probably before Peter wrote 2 Peter, but either way, it's 30, 35, 40 years.

Paul said no, not that long 30, 35 years after Jesus' ascension.

And Paul is a very eloquent writer, and in 17 through 21, follow along as I read I keep he's talking to a church.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord, jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you what?

The spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better.

I pray also here's key that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.

Now, peter says I was an eyewitness.

Paul wasn't an eyewitness to the stuff going on because he didn't believe Jesus was legit until later.

And he says I'm praying that youthat the heartthe eyes of your heart may be enlightened.

Same effect we read and we listen with an open mind and an open heart, like to me.

This is the Word of God and if it is, you will start to have more than just a common knowledge.

There's general revelation that applies to all of us in the Scripture.

But there are days when we're reading a passage, maybe for the hundredth time, and it hits you like never before, at an angle that applies specifically to something in your life or in your nature, and you walk away saying how in the world did that happen?

Well, it's called special revelation.

Doesn't happen every day, but when it does, you sit up and you take notice, because the special revelation is just another sign of the fact that he is who he says he is and, furthermore, he loves you enough to spend time out of His day to come down and share something very specific and very personal with you.

And then, 20 years later, you'll be saying exactly what I picture Peter saying hey, I know what I heard, I know what I saw, and there's no changing and there's no going back from that.

Verse 19, has an incomparably great power.

For us who believe, that power is like the working of His mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised Him from the dead and seated Him in His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.

And then he's skipping on down.

He says for this present age, but also in the age to come, which is after he comes back again.

You see what he's saying here.

You tap into this.

You have the same power accessible to you that raised Him from the dead.

There is no greater power.

That's it.

You belong to the Creator of the universe who, oh, by the way, came to earth and walked around for 33 years and put up with a lot of drama and a lot of mess and a lot of disappointment and a lot of suffering and a lot of pain.

Oh, and then, for His trouble, they hang Him on a cross and kill Him, but then on the third day he burst out of there Because he's alive.

It always has been and always will be, and you can't kill God.

And now he sits on the right hand of the throne and just waiting to hear from me and you.

Prayer is surrender, but also, since this is timeless, it is timely.

That means it matters today and that means it matters tomorrow and it always will matter.

So why, again, is Peter so confident?

He seemed too much, he's heard too much and there's been no contradictions, no duplicity, no inconsistency in the life of this Jesus.

When he puzzled him, puzzled Peter.

He later would straighten it out, or Peter would ask him and he would clarify what he meant or why he did what he did.

In John, chapter 9, that's a good read for this week, all chapter actually but early, early on, they have one of those questions.

John 9 · chapter mention

They're walking through Jerusalem on the streets and see a beggar, a blind beggar, and one of them says so what did he do wrong?

It's pretty obvious God got him.

What's his big crime?

And Jesus said he didn't do anything wrong.

God did his parents.

But this has happened.

So the glory of God may be revealed, and of course you know the story.

He goes over and heals him, but then he says something curious.

Jesus said you know, my father's always at work and I too am at work to this very day.

We work while it is light, because the night comes when no man can work.

So Peter is there listening to all of that and he's like okay, he's always at working.

This man is highly urgent in what his mission is.

There is a day it's going to be dark.

When all of this is over.

He's asked me to follow him.

That means I got to have the same intensity and the same urgency and I got to quit branding people and stereotyping people based on outer appearance.

Because he didn't know it, jesus already had his future mapped out and he spent a bunch of his time after the ascension ministering and leading who to salvation, gentiles who he had spent his entire life learning with their off limits.

They're prohibited from God?

Oh, not, yet.

It's the marvelous ability for the Word of Jesus to change our lives.

If it's timeless, it's got to be timely.

Okay, number three, real quick, not only present truth.

Clearly, number three is the Scripture is inspired and consistent over millennia.

Look at 20 and 21.

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation.

Here we go Private opinion.

We didn't factor in private opinions, or I think so or I believe so.

We only factored in the Scripture from like, for instance, the prophets and others who had directly heard from God.

21, for prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit Spoke from God.

If you want to look at 1 Corinthians, 2, 14 and 15, paul makes the case there.

Hey, there's only one person who knows the mind of God.

Guess who?

That is Holy Spirit.

When you come to know, when you surrender your life to Jesus, you get the Holy Spirit.

So it stands to reason.

If you want to understand his Word better, then you have the Spirit who authored it in.

You tap into him because he knows the mind of Christ.

Then you have a goal later to know to have, I'm sorry, the mind of Christ.

And that's not all hocus pocus, fairy dust.

That's actually a logical sequence we accept by faith.

But there's a lot of reasoning and logic that can go into this practice, unlike other major war religions, and it's not purely a blind leap.

It's an informed leap, if you will, or step of faith, which is trust.

But then he goes on and says they're carried along by the Holy Spirit.

I love that phrasing.

The literal phrasing in the Greek meant a ship being drifted along by the current when his sails are up, and if you've ever gone sailing, the wind catches it.

It goes right on across the water.

That's the imagery he uses here.

These men were carried along, influenced, breathed into by the Holy Spirit.

They weren't writing their own stuff, they're not making this up as they go and from Genesis all the way through the fathers, abraham, then Moses, the prophet, and all of them, then into the prophets.

They went at it the same way, they recorded the same way, and then the minor prophets, and then we get over to men like Peter in the first century and then the people after Peter up to what we call the church fathers in the first and second and third century, fourth century AD.

They're carried along right up through the Reformation, with people like Luther and Smith and Calvin and those guys right up until the present age.

Me and you, it's the same Holy Spirit, it's the same Word.

It's still inspired and it's still consistent.

So can I give you real quick, some questions to ask when you're reading for meaning, when you're trying to understand, for meaning better.

There's many we could ask, but one that's actually underused and underrated in my opinion what did it mean back then?

What did this mean back then?

That helps us determine whether this was a cultural law, a type of law that is not like a have to literally to do now, or oh, yes, it is.

What did it mean to them right now?

Here's another one Is there a sin?

I just read about that.

I need to confess right now.

That means confess and repent.

Is there a sin to confess right now?

Number three is there a principle to apply?

Is there a principle to apply?

That's like the top three, because there's a simple, simple formula, but it's so true Interpretation plus application equals transformation.

That's on the screen.

Interpretation plus application equals transformation, and that's what we're after.

Transition is.

I'm a different person and Paul and others reminded us that's not a one-time shot.

We are being transformed, we are being sanctified, we are being a better person today, hopefully, than we were this time last month, and everything.

Oh, and I almost forgot, can I give you the top archaeological find in the religious world from 2021?

You're not going to believe it.

It goes all the way back to 1700 BC.

This isand they found a piece of elephant tusk and it had been carved into believe it or not a really fine-tooth comb for your hair.

But on the handle of that comb they have a complete sentence in Chaldean or Canaanite, which was about probably, we think, the only language developed and being able to be written down at that time 17.this is before Moses has come along, and they've been finally able to get it to where they can interpret that sentence.

Are you ready for it?

This is on a comb made out of ivory.

I said May this tusk keep the lice out of hair and beard.

That's it.

That's it.

That's what it says.

It was a lice brush, but they found it intact, intact.

So how do we apply that to our lives today?

So this is not only in places.

Some of the most beautiful phrasing and poetic is deadly accurate, and one writer said it so well oh, it'll cut right to the bone too.

You've had that experience, right when you're bleeding from where it cuts you, but in a good way, in a good way.

So go back to the verse that said Morning Star.

That's in verse 19.

Here's where it goes, from Genesis to Genesis.

Basically, that phrase Morning Star is found in the Old Testament and none other than the book of Job, which is believed to be the oldest book in the whole Bible.

Job happened first and it's listed in the words Morning Star.

It also is one other place other than this in the whole Bible guess where?

That is Book of Revelation, where it says the day is coming when the Morning Star will return, will return to claim what is his Cover to cover?

Consistent, inspired, authoritative and accurate.

And Peter, in the middle of all of that, picks up the same phrasing Can we put Selene?

Can you put that last?

This is shortly before dawn of a couple of years ago, I think.

A picture in the lowerthat lower light.

Closest to the horizon is the planet Venus.

This gets its name from a Roman goddess who was the goddess of fertility and power, and later they adapted on to her the title of love.

She was the love goddess and she was worshiped all over the Roman Empire.

They created statues and idols to make it a little bit easier to worship her, so they would get down and pray to a cold, dead piece of rock year after year after year.

Why don't we just worship the one who created the star, the planet that she was named after?

And, as you know from going out and stargazing, when is it darkest?

Right before the dawn.

That's when this was taken, right before the dawn.

I don't care how dark your days are right now, there's a dawn coming.

I don't care if you're at the end of your rope and you have no earthly solution to what the rest of your life needs.

The dawn is coming and he is called the morning star.

He will be none other than the ruler of the universe and he's coming to claim his people.

So don't believe the dark.

Wait on the light, because the light, surely, is coming and we have this ability to understand the light in the meantime, every single day.

If I were to introduce him to you today and you're not quite sure you know the name you know a little bit about him, but you don't really know him can I introduce him to him?

He wants desperately to meet you.

He's been waiting all your life to meet you.

He created you and he knows everything about your past good, bad and ugly but he's so not deterred by that that he waits to hear from you every single day and he loves you, but it's an unconditional love that has nothing to do with your ability to earn it, because you can't.

And here's the amazing.

I still don't understand this.

He wants you just like you are.

He'll take you, but then he's going to transform you.

Why?

Because he's got better plans for you.

He has an alternative for you and you're guaranteed success.

Well, how can you know that?

Because he's already mapped out your future step by step.

And if you stay in step with him as he directs you step by step, you'll be okay and at the end of your life, whenever that is, no serious regrets, no serious pain, nobody left on your hit list that you'll never forgive, no bitterness, no remaining anger, because you have walked with the Savior, the Creator of the world, the rest of your life, and the farther you've walked, the closer you get, and there'll be a day coming that the only logical, rational thing left to do is to go home with him, because you're closer to his house than your house now, and so we're all on this journey.

We have the easy part.

He's already done the hard stuff.

He gave his life so we can live.

If you don't know him, will you please?

Will you please open your heart up to him today?

If you've gotten cold and distant and sort of robotic and unfeeling, will you please just come back to him today and open your heart back up to him and ask him to take you back.

He's waiting to do that, actually, and he's going to come up and lead us.

We get the awesome opportunity to pray one more time and then to worship one more time.

He'll be here if we can help you with a decision about a church family that needs to be here, a decision to come back, any of those things.

I'll listen.

Are there maybe somebody close to you who is not close to him and you're just going to intercede for these next few minutes for him?

Why don't you stand up and let me pray for you?

Lord, we are only as good as our daily existence with you, how well connected we stay with you.

We understand most of us in here.

We understand that, boy, we are really going to be vulnerable when we are not connected to you.

We're susceptible to anything, but with you.

But with you, all things are possible and we can do all things through him who strengthens us.

So just do that, lord, please.

In Jesus' name, we pray, amen.