Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Mark Twain once said that the trouble with the world is not that people know too little, it's that they know so many things that just aren't so. There is a barrage of opinions available to us. Plenty of voices claiming to have the answers. Where is your truth coming from? We all want to know truth. We crave a higher purpose and an ultimate good.
It's part of being made in the image of God. Thankfully, God gives the truth of His Word. Truth that transcends all boundaries.
It's the truth for all people. You know, a robust memory of His Word is vital to a meaningful life because in it, He tells us who we are and why we're here. His Word tells us our greatest need and heaven's most beautiful answer to that need. Let's listen to this message titled Transcendent Truth.
This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice, born from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic Word, more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place. Until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.
For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man. But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. This is God's Word.
Let's pray. Father, it is no mistake that the people doing the most for the least in our city and throughout the world are doing it under Your name. Lord, the Rescue Mission, Samaritan Ministries, Bethesda, the Salvation Army, all of those organizations are doing it on command from You.
And others that I haven't named. Lord, giving to those that are addicted, to those that are in need, to those that are displaced. Lord, they're doing it because of the gift that You gave to us. They in turn are giving to others. We are thankful for that.
Not only here in Winston-Salem, in North Carolina, but the U.S. and throughout the world. Lord, the ones doing the most are doing it under Your banner and in Your name. Lord, we pray for those blessings for those hands and feet, ones that are giving, ones that are serving locally and throughout the world. Continue to watch over them and bless them.
Lord, those ministries have needs, not only financially, but in elbow grease and in time. Lord, I pray that we are giving of our time and energies, Lord, to advance Your work and advance Your kingdom. We are grateful in Jesus' name. Amen.
Thank you, Jeremy. You've got your copy of the Scriptures open to 2 Peter for the message from God's Word today. Live as people who remember a robust memory is vital for a meaningful life. This is God's design for us, and He constantly in the Scriptures calls us to remember. And we have a solid foundation for the truth that we are called to remember, and that's what we're talking about in this small paragraph in 2 Peter verses 16 to 21, the text that Jeremy just read. And we're going to wrap that mini-series up today, Foundations of Faith. There's four parts to that Foundations of Faith, and the first one is objective reality. Objective reality. In other words, Christianity is built upon real events that happen to real people in real time and space. This is not myth.
It's objective reality. It is history, and Christianity is built upon that. History is God's story. The second one is fulfilled prophecy. All of the Old Testament looking forward to the Messiah coming, the New Testament giving us record of Messiah having come and walking upon earth, and then the letters from the apostles looking back at Christ and the spread of the Gospel throughout the world. Fulfilled prophecy. 332 prophecies specifically fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.
Statistically, that is impossible, but it's reality. That is another element of the foundation of our faith. The third one that we studied last week was written authority. Scriptures. No prophecy of Scripture.
What is written is authoritative. God has made himself known, and we have a written record from the apostles. So the church is built upon the apostles' doctrine because they were specifically commissioned and given authority by Jesus Christ, and we have that written record today. The fourth part is what we're going to look at today, and that's transcendent truth. Verse 21, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Five points to today's sermon. Number one, Scripture came to us through human agency. In history, there has been no shortage of men who have claimed to speak for God. It all started with my dad, from my experience, right?
If dad said, Rich, you need to do this, and I would ask why, and dad would say what? Because I said so. That's speaking for God, right? Well, that was the beginning of my experience, but you look through history, there's been no shortage of men who claim to speak for God. They claimed to, because of their subjective personal experience, they claimed to have arrived at enlightenment, and they became self-proclaimed prophets. Here's the truth.
Here's the reality of the matter. All of them, all of them, went looking for truth beyond what God had already revealed. That's problematic, and that's even true of the Gnostics who are starting to develop in this time that Peter was writing this letter. And this is why Peter writes chapter two. That's the reason why he writes this whole letter. But chapter two is focused specifically on these who claim to come to you with new truth. And he says, here's the problem. Many of them will come to you from within the church claiming to have new truth.
Listen, please. Whether it's me or Pastor Sean or Pastor Bobby, Dwight, whichever pastor, if any speaker comes and says, I have a new truth for you, you need to run. Whenever we preach, there is nothing original that we preach. What we preach, what we proclaim, is the Word of God. It is from the Word of God. That's why at Grace I say, the Word of God sets the agenda for our ministry.
I don't come up with truth. It is revealed to us in God's written Word. But it remains that in history, God has used people, human agency, to communicate truth to other people. And the biblical prophets, here's the difference. The apostles and the prophets, who were the authors of Scripture, they didn't go out looking for a prophetic revelation. In fact, when they encountered their prophetic revelation, all of them were shaking in their boot, well, sandals. And many of them ended up flat on their faces when they encountered God, and He gave them a word to give to the people.
They weren't looking for it. It came to them, and God chose them to be His instruments. And that's why it says, no prophecy, look at verse 21, no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man. That is such a critical statement in Scripture. And that is something that sets biblical Christianity from other faith systems that have their written authorities.
And that can be demonstrated. This Scripture that was given to us was affirmed in community by attesting signs, miracles if you will. That was the whole reason for miracles. Anytime new revelation was given, God was doing miraculous signs to give affirmation that, yes, this is indeed a word from God. And so, in the history of written Scripture, 1,500 years over 40 authors, all of them contributing to what we have as the written word of God, the canon of Scripture today. And in that, over 1,500 years, 40 different authors, there is a remarkable accuracy and continuity, unity in the whole story of Scripture.
In other words, it is impossible, it is utterly impossible for one crafty person to put all this together. It's a God thing. This is the word of God.
I love what Jeremy said after he read the Scriptures. This is the word of God. It's to be brought to bear upon our lives. Here's the second point.
First of all is human agency. The second is, this is divine disclosure. Divine disclosure. The title of today's sermon is Transcendent Truth. What does transcendent mean?
It means beyond merely physical human experience. Now, when we speak of God being transcendent, we speak of God existing apart from and not limited to the material universe. God exists outside of, listen to me, you ready for this? God listens outside of time and space. He created time and space. Of Him, through Him, and to Him are what? All things.
It says it all. Do you understand God that way? Because we have such a propensity in our humanness to treat God as if He's one of the mythological Greek demigods, as if He's some super human, but He acts like us. No, that's not God. That's not the God of the Scriptures. He is the one by whom and for whom are all things, and in Him all things what?
They consist, they hold together. So, that means that God is the sovereign one. What do I mean by sovereign? God is absolutely free. 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.
