Our Trustworthy Bible (Part A)

These men would have been reluctant to believe and follow and die. They would not have died for a myth. And not only did they die, they suffered persecution leading up to their deaths. Men don't suffer like this for fabricated stories.

They didn't and nor should we. We should have conviction. It is God living and powerful. It is able to convict, to rebuke, to exhort. We are in 2 Peter chapter 1. 2 Peter chapter 1.

If you have your Bibles, open to chapter 1 verses 16 through 21. For we did not follow cunningly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory, when such a voice came to Him from the excellent glory, 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. 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 rises 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. Our trustworthy Bible, that is where Peter is going with it in this section. He moves from the subject of virtues, our Christian walk, and now he is talking about the trustworthiness of God's word. This is sort of an affidavit on Peter's part. What is the tone that he would have used to say such words that we find in verse 16, where he says, For we did not follow cunningly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses. What kind of tone would I use if my audience was sort of defying my testimony, if they were saying, I don't believe in the Bible because, or man wrote it, and just all of the easy to shoot down arguments that we are faced with. Peter is not writing to foes, he is writing to believers. But I read this and my tone would have been, we didn't follow cunningly devised fables. It's sort of a defiance that I know what I believe in, I'm not asking your permission to believe in what I believe in, but I'm inviting you to believe in it too, because it's true.

And the consequences of letting something as powerful and significant as this pass by will be something you will never be ready for. I did not follow a bunch of myths and fairy tales. It's a word of God. In fact, that word where he says fables, that word mythos in the Greek means a myth. We get our English word myth from that Greek word.

The story of Jesus Christ, it is fact, it is not fable. Okay, well it's not enough to insist that it is the word of God to someone who does not believe it. Satan smuggles in the assumption that God's word is somehow subject to our judgment or approval. He sneaks it in, he does this by blocking out those things that could only come from God and magnifying those things that come from men, such as objections. Well, men wrote it.

We'll get to a little bit of that in a moment. Modern man falls for the ancient lie that God's word is not trustworthy. It goes all the way back to Eden. Eve was told, has God indeed said, what was the tone of Satan? Who cares what he was saying was wrong?

Has indeed God said, yeah he did. And hell is populated by countless multitudes who just don't want it to be true, God's word. They just don't like it. It offends them. It goes against their carnal nature.

Well, we understand that. I once held the view that the Bible was not God's word, that it was not trustworthy. I held it in contempt because I didn't know what I was rejecting. So many people don't know what they are rejecting. Many times they're rejecting Christian or aberrant Christian behavior, weirdo Christianity, which is all over the place. People believe kooky things in Christ's name and demand you agree with them.

Whole churches subject themselves to this. And the unbelievers look oftentimes, I don't want any part of that. I reject it. It's not God's word because of what they see. And so I was rejecting what I did not understand. But when I came to the word itself, then in the mercy of God, I understood. I thought then it would be easy to convince my friends of the trustworthiness of God. I was wrong. Unbelievers, they have their fortifications up.

They don't even know their fortifications many times. So this book that they insist is mythological is far from that. Its judgments are true. Its opinions are right and sound.

It is loaded with reason. It is everything man needs in this life to meet his maker so that he can be with his maker after this life. But back to Peter. We did not follow cunningly devised faith. That pronoun, we, is inclusive of the other apostles. Now he just referenced the trustworthiness of God's word concerning his own life. In the early previous verses, verse 15 up, Peter talked about his death that was prophesied. Jesus told him that he would die a martyr's death.

He believed that as God's word because it was. And it will happen. It has happened from our standpoint. But Peter was the type of man, everything we know about him, his character, was the type that was interested in facts.

They came first. And you really couldn't move him with emotions. A lot of us are just moved by so many things we read on the internet that sounds true, that we wish were so concerning the faith. But if you fact check it, if you dig so often, it's just emotionalism.

Sometimes it is true. We don't have to inject emotionalism into God's word because the emotions are catered to by the Holy Spirit in Scripture. So much so that Paul had to tell the Christians, tone it down a little bit.

You got it outside the box that you need to be in. But this man Peter, he first heard about Jesus Christ from his brother Andrew. It's a beautiful story. Andrew and John were following Jesus. John the Baptist said, Behold the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. Well John and Andrew wanted a piece of that. So they went to follow Jesus and they caught up to him and said, Master, what do you want?

Where are you staying? He said, Well we don't want to stand here on the road talking to you. We have so much to talk to you about. And Jesus said, Come and see. You look at the revelation of Jesus Christ, you find John never stopped seeing.

He saw all the way into heaven. Well this Andrew was with him. We read it in John's Gospel chapter 1. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, We have found the Messiah, which is translated to Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. I am telling you, this was no casual moment with Andrew and his brother. Andrew came convinced that Jesus was the Christ. Peter would have picked it up instantly if his brother was anything less than sure.

There was no halfway conviction in Andrew. Peter identified it. He saw it.

No doubt, no question mark. A decisive eagerness to share this truth that every Jew wanted to see happen. Messiah.

Even though they did not fully understand all that that meant. Suppose Andrew had said, I saw a man yesterday who I think might be the Christ, who might be the Messiah. But Peter said, You go run with that.

I got to go get fish. But there was something in Andrew's eyes and his tone and his mannerisms that drew Peter in because he was able to say, This, this is worth investigating. Well, here he is decades later writing, having been through so much, having seen so much. I have not followed fairy tales.

That's what he is saying. He doesn't have that tone necessarily with his audience of believers. But if anybody should say, Peter, you follow this fable, he would have heightened his tone. Not anger or wrath, but contempt for the challenge because he knew the truth. Thomas, the apostle who is an apostle of courage.

I really don't like when people say he's doubting Thomas. They all doubted. It tells us that they all doubted. They all fled. They all didn't know what to do.

They were all in the upper room with the door locked, ringing their fingers, broken hearted and weeping. Thomas, his behavior indicates that these men were not gullible. Jesus has risen. Thomas didn't say, Oh, okay. You said it.

I believe it. You had to cross a lot of bridges to get to the heart of Thomas again because his heart was so crushed. Remember, they never saw Jesus fail. And then there he was on the cross, dead. Those men were devastated in what to do. The point is that had the story of Christ been fabricated, these men would have been reluctant to believe and follow and die. They would not have died for a myth. And not only did they die, they suffered persecution leading up to their deaths.

Men don't suffer like this for fabricated stories. They didn't and nor should we. We should have conviction, the word of God living and powerful. It is able to convict, to rebuke, to exhort. He continues here in verse 16, when we made known to you the power of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. What we preached is what we lived and we know it's true. We did not preach to you junk just to get your money from you, which he'll deal with in chapter 2. We have many charlatans, have had them over the centuries from the early days of the church till this present day. There are people in, not pulpits, but standing at lecterns trying to get into the pockets of the people whose don't sit in pews but they sit in seats.

My point is I'm disassociating church behavior from greed, that movement that is not interested in what and who Christ is but what you can get out of him. And so he says, we made known to you the power and the coming. This is that present, the powerfulness of Christ because Peter had come to know him.

He lived with him, you could say, for at least three years. Apostates, then and now, they lose sight of this. Listen, if you walk long enough with Christ and you serve, there are going to be times when Christ withdraws his discernible presence and you are left with faith and faith only. Those days of when you were just singing glorious songs, you could feel the Lord in your life, he would lead and guide you and it was so sweet and beautiful but as you mature, he pulls back to develop you to the next phase. And you can't sense his presence, you don't feel like singing so much and now it comes down to faith.

Do you believe what you claim to believe or did you just feel you believed what you claim to believe? And Christ, if he loves you, he's going to get this straight if you are serving any length of time. Well, the apostate can't handle that. The apostate thought it was just another movement of something in life and all of a sudden when it's now an issue of faith, they begin to look to the world and other places to fill that void instead of suffering. Because the faith, to live by faith, the just shall live by faith, does not come easy to your flesh ever. And Christ knows this. There's one reason why as new believers he is so delicate with us on this topic. Many people come to church and they want their feelings ministered to. But the minister of the word has to minister the word and it will hit in season and out of season. There's a time when it is just nothing but exhortation. Yes, that's what I need to hear. Thank you.

And there are other times when it's ouch. I know I'm working on it. But always it is the love of Christ. The apostles were told to share it, to go into the world and share it.

Mark's gospel is 16. And he said to them, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. You preach every chance you get.

They're not casting pearl before swine. The parameters were put around it in the precepts of the apostles as they went forward. But the idea is that they were to go out and to preach to anyone who would have them preach it. And that stands for each and every one of us who claim Christ is Lord to this day. If you want the gospel, we are more than happy to give it to you. Could these men have written such moral superlatives, such wonderful things about decent behavior while they themselves were immoral and lying about what they saw? Does not stand to reason.

Would anyone genuinely fall for them saying things that could easily be disputed and shot down? For instance, the days of Peter, much of the New Testament was written and circulating. The Gospels were out before he died. Those contradictions that appear to be contradictions that we struggle to reconcile, they were there. The people could have said, Peter, Luke says this, John says that, and Mark says this.

How do you reconcile it? He would have went one, two, three, and they would have said thank you. Otherwise, the gospel would have not continued to be circulated and we would not have over 20,000 fragments and whole documents of the New Testament.

It would have died. But they were there and they did have their answers ready and they did reconcile and straighten it out. These men did not say, let's make up a religion that preaches good things, but it really never happened and then let's die for it. We saw in our lifetime during the days of the Nazis, we saw Nazis that were so totally taken by Hitler and his rhetoric. And then, afterward, many of them realized he was a lunatic and they were angry. They were enraged. They were ashamed to have ever fallen for it, but they did.

Too much damage was done by then. My point is, when people realize they've been following a fraud, when they become disillusioned by truth, they don't continue to follow it. Those apostles, if they preached Christ rose again, they would not have continued to preach him if he didn't rise again.

They certainly would not have let someone lay their hands on them and abuse them. Well, here, he says, we made known to you because they are to go out into the world and preach the gospel and that weed is inclusive of all the apostles and Paul and any other believer preaching the truth. You could say, you could expand it to, we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, that power, dunamis, is explosive power. That is the identical power that is found in Genesis 1-1. In the beginning, God, or God in the beginning, created the universe. Now, again, it's expanded to include all preachers of the gospel, but initially, Peter is talking about the apostles that were with him in the upper room, but especially the three, himself, John, and James, who went up the Mount of Transfiguration to come out in a moment. This word, the coming, the power and the coming, it is inclusive of the incarnation, the perpetual presence of Christ, which is here right now. Christ is here right now. He is not blocked out of his universe. He certainly isn't blocked out of his church, although the churches that have become apostate, the churches that are turning their backs on him, he stands outside the door and he knocks for entrance because he's not in there.

You say, well, how do you know the ones that he's in and the ones he's not? It comes down to the word. That's why the church at Philadelphia was told, because you stuck to my word, I will spare you. The tribulation is coming on the whole world, the whole planet, the earth. So we do know it's been given to us, the coming, the incarnation, his perpetual presence, and his return. It is all in that Greek word, the presence of Christ, so that when Christ withdraws, I did not say leave.

He will not leave his people, but he will withdraw relative to what we're used to in that sense. I am training myself to say back to God when he does this to me, and he does, I'm not there yet. I still don't like it, but to train myself, it is an honor for you to do with me as you please because you are my Lord and I am your child. Notice I did not say servant. See that inconsistency, Lord servant, you would expect that would be consistent.

You know, apple, orange, pencil, fruit, and lead. But anyway, because yes, I am his servant, but if that's all I am, I'm missing out. If I only see myself as the servant of the Lord, I miss out that I am his child. You parents with children know what that means, and you children who have had parents, loving parents, you know what that means.

And if I've missed any group, because there are those that have not had loving parents, you have a Father in Heaven that opens his arms to you and say, I will love you back more than anyone has ever loved you in this life. Will you accept it? Do you believe it?

Will you receive it? Well, it means essentially the power of his coming. He says we were eyewitnesses of his majesty there in verse 16. We are going to get out of verse 16 this morning, but where you got to go? Eyewitnesses, we saw it on the Mount of Transfiguration, as we know it, the Mount of Transfiguration, an undisclosed mountain somewhere in the Middle East, you could say, right?

We don't know it's been hidden because somebody would put a plaque there and charge people to see the plaque. Why did he allow these three, Peter, James, and John? James, the brother of John, you just can't say. The Bible doesn't say much about him. It doesn't have to. The void says it all, but we're not doing a character study on James.

Why these three? Well, Peter was the first influence among the men. I mean, everybody looked at Peter. Jesus said something that was questionable. They all looked at Peter.

What are you going to do? What do you think, Peter? They wouldn't say that out loud, but he was, of course, the natural leader, and they were happy with this. James was the first murdered, so we have the first influence in Peter. We have the first murdered. You know what kind of shockwave that sent through the early church? When one of the apostles was murdered, if they're going to kill him, what's going to happen to me?

If God doesn't protect James, what's he going to do for me? One of the reasons probably why the Lord allowed it, to shake up the church. And then John. Well, if Peter was the first influence and James was the first martyr, John was the last to write. That influence of that day for these three men, it went a long way, and it's still going.

What happened on that mountain? Well, the Bible, of course, tells us there would be no doubt as to who Jesus was in the eyes of these three. They already saw so much. They had no need for more evidence, and Jesus says, Yeah, well, I'm going to supercharge it. I'm going to inject into your understanding of who I am something that you will never forget.

You won't get it now because you're too dense, but you'll get it later. Not a wasted investment, that he was not merely a man in touch with God, but that he is God the Son in human form. They saw the prophecies of the Old Testament prophecies. They saw them confirmed in Christ, fulfilled. They had the Old Testament. They could turn right open to it. They could turn to Isaiah chapter 6 and see the promises. They could turn to Isaiah chapter 9, see the promises. Unto us a child is given.

Wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the principal. They could turn and they could see that. This Mount of Transfiguration, it just blew the doors off of doubt. It would come back because that's what doubt does. Look at what victory you have in Christ. Doubt will hunt you down again.

And the same thing is to take place. You face it, you deal with it, and fruit comes out of that. Otherwise, nothing gets done because doubt is everywhere.

We all get our doses of doubt in this life. Well, Peter, James, and John, they witnessed something held back from every other human being on earth. It was held back from everyone else, but they got it.

His majesty, his magnificence, his splendor, what does that mean? Did they not see it when he was healing and teaching and walking on the water? Not like this. Imagine if you had a friend who could do what Jesus could do as far as healing. Teach like he could teach.

Open insight to matters that you just never would have thought possible. That's all we have time for on today's edition of Cross Reference Radio. You've been listening to Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia as he teaches through the book of 2 Peter. If you'd like to listen to more messages from this series or if you'd like more information about this program, please visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never have to miss a program. Just search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music, or your favorite podcast app. What a great way to keep God's Word with you wherever you go. We hope you'll tune in again next time as Pastor Rick continues studying through the Scriptures, right here on Cross Reference Radio.