Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Plenty of people claim to have answers and solutions to our problems.
Opinions are abundant wherever we look. But the Bible is different. It is, as D. Helm put it, the true and authoritative story of God as He enters human history. Biblical faith, far from being man-made, is a response to God's self-disclosure. He has turned on the light for us through His Word. Scripture is reliable and trustworthy. It holds the answers for the greatest longings of our soul. Today we're tuning into this message titled, Written Authority.
Let's listen in. This is part two of the message, which was first preached on August 6, 2025 at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. It's part of a sermon series through 1 Peter titled, Live as People Who Remember. What is written is authoritative. That did not escape Peter when he talked about the prophecies of Scripture. And he's going to give us a very deep and profound and high understanding of the authority of written Scripture in these two verses 20 and 21. What is written is trustworthy because there is accuracy there, so long as the information is correct.
When we just bought a house a little over two months ago, we were not allowed to even have the keys of the house in our possession until the record was on file at the county clerk's office. Because what is written is authoritative. When our board meets, the church board, when we meet, we take notes. Well, Ernie does anyway. And we harass him.
No, I just, he writes down whatever he wants to. That was covered in the last board meeting. Anyway, no, that's not true. That's not true. Because he takes notes and then the next board meeting, the board has to, having reviewed that, they say, yes, this accurately represents what happened in the decisions and the action that was taken in the last board meeting. And then that goes on record.
Why? Because what is written is what? Authoritative. The church has bylaws. Every organization has bylaws. And if there's going to be an accusation against the organization, what they're going to come in and say, what do you have in writing? And are you following what you have in writing?
If you're following what you have in writing, you're okay. But if you're inconsistent with what's in writing, then we have a problem. Because what is written is authoritative. It's not about how I feel.
It's not about what I think necessarily. It's about what is written. And so it is with the Word of God. The Word of God, God's self-disclosure with its written authority is the foundation of the church. Ephesians, Paul says in Ephesians 2, verse 20, the foundation of the church is the apostles and the prophets. They spoke.
They were commissioned by God. They spoke and they wrote down. That's why the church is built upon the apostles' doctrine in writing and we have it in writing today. Jesus prayed for us in this sense. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the night he was betrayed, the night before he died, he prayed for us as those who would believe through their word.
That's you and me. Now you and I have not heard the apostles speak in person, but we have, what? Read their words. The authority of written scripture. And their writings of the apostles and even the New Testament, the writings of the apostles were equated with scriptures. Peter says, you look at chapter 3 and verse 16, he talks about the writings of Paul and other scriptures.
So he's talking about their authority. David Helm, expositor, says this, the scriptures are not a human record of the history of God. Rather, they contain the true and authoritative story of God as he enters into human history. This is why I call it God's self-disclosure.
To disclose something means to reveal something, to draw back the curtains so that now you see it and God has made himself known to us. Biblical faith is not man-made. Now that is the conventional idea of the secular society is that religion is a human fabrication. They will give you that in the secular materialistic history of humanity going back to all the periods and ages of evolution and all that and then a certain point where man develops a sort of consciousness and he creates religion. Biblical faith is not man-made. It is a response to divine self-disclosure.
God has made himself known to us, the God who came to us in person. So that is the foundation of the faith with its biblical authority. Also understanding that truth is affirmed in community. Truth is affirmed in community, just like I said about objective reality. If something is truly objective reality, it is affirmed in community.
In other words, more than one person affirms this to be true. For example, somebody said, I saw a car driving down the parking lot. If certainly you look out the window and you see a car driving down the parking lot, we can consider that objective reality. However, if we're all sitting here listening and Bill looks out and says, I saw a car driving down the parking lot and nobody else saw it, we're going to say, Bill, what's going on? What are you seeing?
I'm seeing things. Objective reality, it's affirmed in community. Same thing with written authority. And other faith systems, all of them built upon one man's subjective experience. Very unlike the Scriptures. The Scriptures were not built upon one man's subjective experience. It says no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. All that God declares beforehand about redemption, about Messiah, that is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It prophesied centuries, millennia before, and it comes to be reality in one person, Jesus Christ.
And we talk about the Scriptures, the biblical Scriptures that we have before us, understand this. We call this a book, but it's not actually a book, is it? It's a compilation of 66 books and or letters. And this was written through human agency. It was written over a period of 1500 years by 40 different authors. And over that time of 1500 years and 40 different authors, you have a remarkable unity, accuracy, and continuity.
What do I mean by that? It's one story. What's in the Old Testament is pointing to Jesus Christ, and then the New Testament records the arrival, the activity of Jesus Christ. And then the New Testament, the rest of the New Testament looks back at what has happened in the church because of Jesus Christ.
All one story. All of it focused on Messiah, one person. It was not his own personal subjective experience. The understanding of verse 20 where it says no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. I like A.T. Robertson's understanding, his translation of that. He says no prophecy of Scripture comes out of private disclosure.
I think that's a really good understanding of the words that are written there. Another scholar says the trustworthiness of Scripture is proved by the fulfillment in time and history of the Old Testament prophets writings. If they had just made things up out of their own imagination, subsequent events would have found them out and their writings would have been forgotten long ago. In other words, now this is an apologetical term, all right, but the Scriptures are falsifiable.
Hang on to that. What do I mean by that? If what is presented here, if it were untrue, it could be manifestly demonstrated that it is untrue. For example, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If it were untrue, it could have easily been shown in history that it was untrue. So the record of Scripture, the prophecies of Scripture, all that was fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ, if any of it was untrue, it could have easily been manifested and shown and demonstrated that it was untrue.
In other words, if you encounter a truth or a philosophy that is not falsifiable, it's not worth your time. But the apostles and the prophets wrote Scripture and they wrote it in a sense of what we call today peer review. You had the apostles, the apostles that Jesus called and then Peter, Paul come lately comes along, right? He says like one born out of due time, he comes along and does he write his own stuff and it has nothing to do with what the rest of the apostles are writing and doing? No, it blends together perfectly and he needed to be accepted into the company of the apostles before he would be considered an authoritative apostle of Jesus Christ. You see, there's a peer review there. It's like an accreditation of truth for the church and for the rest of humanity in fact. So none of this, none of this of the Scriptures that we have in the Bible, none of it is due to some personal subjective experience.
All of it is done and affirmed and recognized in community. They also, the apostles were commissioned specifically by Jesus Christ with authority and his authority and they were given the ability to do what is called in Scriptures attesting signs and this is why the sign gifts were necessary during this era of the church. They were attesting signs. Mark 16, 20 for example, the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.
Why? Because they couldn't just say well go to 2 Peter chapter 1. No, it wasn't written then. And God gave them the ability to do miraculous things, sign gifts so that the people hearing the message could have the confidence that what this person is saying is truly of God and therefore is to be brought to bear upon my life. Thanks for joining us here at Delight in Grace. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in him, the one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.
