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Let us begin our final session by reading the second half of the first chapter of the Second Epistle by Peter. Beginning, therefore, at verse twelve. Wherefore I shall be ready always to put you in remembrance of these things, though you know them, and are established in the truth which is with you. And I think it right, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance, knowing that the putting off of my tabernacle cometh swiftly, even as our Lord Jesus Christ signified unto me.
Yea, I will give diligence that at every time you may be able, after my decease, to call these things to remembrance. For we did not follow cunningly devised, excuse me, devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honor and glory when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And this voice we ourselves heard come out of heaven when we were with him in the Holy Mount.
And we have the word of prophecy made more sure, whereunto you do well that you take heed, as unto a lamp shining in the dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of private interpretation, for no prophecy ever came by the will of men, but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit. For my part in this last session, I do not need to detain you very long.
For important as are the thoughts that are left for us at the end of this chapter one, nevertheless, they can be expounded comparatively briefly. That will allow you, at any rate, in your question time, not only to deal with these last few verses, but to deal with whatever other questions are outstanding during the day. Peter, as I have before observed, tells us that in this epistle he is determined to remind us, and having reminded us, to stir up our pure minds by reminding us, and to go further still, and so to remind us and to get us stirred up, that, uh, we may thereafter be able to recall what he says ourselves.
If that's Peter's intention, I better be sure that I don't lag behind. And at the risk of seeming to remind you too many times, do you see the message of the, uh, th- second book of Peter is as we have seen it. This world is temporary. Not only temporary, but it is a world of change, thank God. That gives us opportunity for change and development. It gives us opportunity for that fundamental change that is conversion, radical repentance towards God, and faith in the Lord.
Opportunity for salvation. Thank God for a world that permits of change. Where wrong choices can in some part be put right. And on that fundamental of all things, our relationship with God, we can come to reconciliation and peace with God. A world of change in which we are all progressing in one direction or another. Not only is the world on which we live moving incessantly and traveling through space, but, uh, we ourselves as personalities are changing.
You are not exactly what you were ten years ago, are you? Nor am I what I was, uh, altogether the same as last year, I hope. I hope I've made some progress, nearer to becoming conformed to the image of Christ. Ourselves, not merely what we do, we change. Change we will of some kind, we can't stop still. And therefore, this world of change is the time when we make progress, and God puts before us his great promises of what is possible for us in the future, that the desires he has placed within us may home in on those promises and draw us towards eternity.
That's why our Lord said, didn't he, lay not up treasure on earth. He didn't say lay up, didn't say don't lay up money on earth. There's a difference between money and treasure, you know. Treasure is what I put my heart on, where my value is. Why don't put your, why not put up your treasure on earth? Because your treasure will draw your heart. Where your treasure is, your heart is. It's that power of treasure over our desire that is the important thing. Therefore, in this temporary world, we are to lay up our treasure in heaven, that our treasure being in heaven, it may pull us heavenwards through our desires.
Next week, we are to see, God willing, what happens to people when they are deceived and their desires are diverted to false and wrong things as a result of listening to deceptive promises and the terrible slavery in this life that overtakes them and the indescribable doom that waits them in the world beyond. For you see, this world is temporary. There comes the eternal kingdom, and all of us must one day, by this way or another, pass out into that eternity.
God has no magic wands. No good hoping that even if I'm not converted in this life, and I haven't trusted the Savior, and I have lived without God, that somehow when I die and go out into eternity, God has a magic wand that he can wave over me, and hey, presto, I'm formed into a saint overnight. You don't believe in magic, no more do I. No good, my fellow believer, arriving in eternity and wishing I had spent more time sincerely cooperating with God to develop my Christian character.
God has no magic. When I see Christ, says the Bible, we shall be like him. When we see him, we shall be like him, and every believer will be like the Son of God. Thank God for that. We shall all be like him. What there is of us. A little baby is like its father. So is the eleven-year-old, So is the twenty-one-year-old. There will be no age in eternity. There will be different sizes of personalities.
And all of them from the tiniest to the largest, like Christ. What determines whether we shall be small or large in that day? This in part. Now this is a temporary world where change is possible, where development is God's idea. All true progress made here will have eternal consequences. So let me now just remind you just once more of the thought flow as we have found it in the first part of the letter.
First paragraph. Let's go over it just the once more. We've got to remind ourselves so that we can recall it tomorrow without the overhead projector. Haven't we? Ha. Grace and peace. On what ground? On this ground, seeing that his divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness. That's the starting point for all true progress. Eternal life, the gift of God. The gracious Holy Spirit, the gift of God, and all we need given.
But that doesn't mean that, therefore, we can sit down and do nothing alongside of that life given, that Holy Spirit given. Now we have to add and bring to pair all our diligence that we may supply by active practice in the art of Christian living, actually living and making a practice of referring everything to God, and in life laying hold of our resources to develop those Christian qualities and graces that Peter enumerates for us. And if we do it, do you see?
Uh, if we do it, says Peter, they make you to be not idle or unfruitful. But your knowledge of the Lord Jesus will become fruitful, lead to progress. And I'll tell you something else. Not only then will your knowledge of the Lord Jesus become fruitful and lead to progress, but your progress will lead to knowing the Lord Jesus. I wonder if you've ever had the experience of a close friend who has been wrongly treated by somebody, grievously wrongly treated. And to your amazement, your friend, having been grievously wrongly treated, has forgiven the people that mistreated him.
And you say, I don't understand that. I wouldn't have done it. Oh, well, perhaps not. But then you don't understand your friend, do you? Whatever made him do that? Why don't you understand your friend? Because you haven't developed that same attitude that would lead to the forgiving of those folks when they repented. How mo- what must I do then to understand my friend? I must develop that same attitude, or I shall never understand him. How am I going to understand the Blessed Lord? There will be things about our Blessed Lord I never understand.
Unless, by his grace, I begin to develop a character like his and begin to look at things like he looks at things. So that if I add all diligence and supply these things, if I do it, it makes me to be fruitful and not a barren. If I don't, I'm blind and forgetful of what the whole thing is about. So let me add, therefore, even the more diligence to make my calling and election sure. And if I do it, I shall never stumble.
And in doing it that way, I shall not only get into the eternal kingdom, my entrance will be abundant. That the first half of chapter one. and as we saw, the second paragraph begins with Peter's declared intention to remind us progressively more intensively. But let us, uh, sorry, let us notice now the phraseology that Peter uses. Dear old Peter. Appeals to our hearts suddenly because, well, perhaps he's a little bit more like us than some other of the apostles, always putting his foot in it.
And then, after all, he did come a cropper, and so he teaches us with a certain sympathy, and we can take it from him anyway. But now he's elderly, and he writes, I'm going to remind you, he says, you know it. And what is more, you see, the putting off of my tabernacle cometh swiftly, even as the Lord Jesus told me. What terminology. Now he's getting older. He begins to realize, as he hadn't done maybe so vividly before, that this body, what is it?
But a tent. Who, you strapping young maids and men? You're like a side of a mountain, aren't you? Oh, I don't mean the ladies, but you know what I mean. Ah, ooh, strong. Who, us elderly? But now you can begin to see the facts. This body of ours is but a temporary thing, made so it can easily come down. Isn't that so? Puffered wind would blow some of us over. Yes, but you see, this is a temporary world. You know, it took me a long while to get twenty.
Ha. And even when I was twenty, a year seemed a long time. I tell you why. Because a year was only one twentieth of my experience. So it seemed a long while. When you're ninety six, uh a year seems a very short time. Why? Because it's only one ninety sixth of all your experience. It's gone like that. Let the old gray heads tell you, don't get mournful. But life is temporary, you know. It'll be gone sooner than you think. I must shortly put off my tabernacle.
He isn't getting down in the mouth, he's going home to glory. And the Lord had told him by what death he should glorify God. Oh, isn't that delightful? They say, put on meetings for the young folks. They're important. They are. They're the people of tomorrow. Of course, of course they are. They are important, therefore. The life's biggest battle's at the end, you know. To die well. To die still a believer. To get old with the grace of Christ and the mellowness of Christian years, instead of dying disagreeable crotchety.
Ah, my older brethren and sisters, allow me to say it. We're looking to you, you know. You carry the flag. To you we look, not just for the theory, but to see the reality of Christ as you come to the great issues of life and soon pass to the great and eternal kingdom beyond. Oh, to begin life well is good. Ah, but to live triumphantly, what a thing. To glorify God as you put off your tabernacle and show us who come behind the reality of God's salvation.
I must soon put off my tabernacle. I must soon go out after my decease, literally after my exodus. You say, now tell me, Mr. Lecturer, tell me. When a believer dies, now is it his spirit goes to be with God, or is it his soul goes to be with God? Or what? Well, I wish I knew. According to Peter, what's going to happen is this, he says, I am going home. I put off the tabernacle.
And you know, there's a sense in which that, that almost satisfies me. I have such a shallow mind or way of thinking. I'm going home anyway. Don't just my soul isn't going, nor my spirit is me going. Thank the Lord for that. Absent from the body, me present with the Lord. I must put off my tabernacle. And if you're a believer, that's what will happen to you. It's the you that will go home to be with the Lord. On all the other interesting matters, and they are interesting and profoundly important, of soul and spirit, of that this afternoon we don't speak.
They are profound things. I don't know if I have the real answer. Let's this afternoon content us with, after all, what is the most important. Have we got hold of this? Our bodies are but tents. The real me, bound for eternity. At home in the body, in that sense I'm absent from the Lord. Absent from the body, at home with the Lord. And when he comes, I shall be given a body like to his glorious body, able to express perfectly the redeemed character and personality that I have, by God's grace, been able to develop.
Ah, but of course, if we're going to take Peter's advice, we've got to be persuaded that this eternal world is real. The eternal kingdom is actually there. How can we be sure of it? Our modern world pours scorn of it. And sad to say, some professedly Christian theologians themselves likewise cast doubt upon it. So now, in these final verses, Peter is at pains to assure us of the absolute reality and rel- of that world and the reliability of what he tells us about it.
And he cites as evidence for the reliability of what he says, the reality of this eternal world, he cites two major pieces of evidence. We did not follow cunningly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus. But we're speaking what we speak on the grounds of eyewitness. We saw, and we actually heard. The point of that remark?
Well, as Peter tells us, this is not a story, a made-up story in so- somebody speaks, but it was only a story after all. No, it was an event. A literal event. We actually saw with our two eyes. It wasn't some kind of a mental vision inner to our souls when I, when Peter was asleep one morning or gone snoozing in the noonday sun and had visions within his head. He actually saw it with his two eyes. There was Jesus. You could touch him. He saw him transfigured.
He heard not merely Moses and Elijah speaking with the Lord, he heard, what is even more important, a voice come out of that majestic glory, which is another way of referring to God. He heard God speak with his own two ears. What, therefore, he is saying is that he is not following myths, and we'll come back to that in a moment. He's recording an actual event that took place on the Mount of Transfiguration when our Lord was transfigured. Then he says we have the word of prophecy, the prophetic word, to which you do well to take heed because there are certain features about that prophetic word that guarantee its validity.
Two pieces of evidence, then, that Peter's account of this eternal wor- world is reliable. Let's try and get hold of them and see their point. The modern liberal theologian is given to telling us that the major stories concerning our Lord in the New Testament, his incarnation, his resurrection, are myths. It is important that we understand what the liberal theologian is saying when he says it's a myth.
He's not necessarily saying that the story is, uh, unreal, false, untrue. But what he's saying is this. The apostles, the evangelists, the apo- the disciples, they had an experience of Christ, a spiritual experience of Christ. It was real. They did their best to take in this experience of Christ, and they did quite well, but then they were, of course, merely men, and perhaps they didn't altogether hundred percent manage to grasp this experience like they ought to have done, but they they did on the whole well.
Then came a problem. How were they to convey what they had learned through that experience to the likes of us? So they racked their heads and they made up some stories, some myths. Well, that's the meaning of the word myth, a story. They were a kind of parable, if you like. It was the best way they could think up to express and embody this experience that they had.
So, for instance, the Bishop of Durham would tell us that these apostles, they had an experience of the Lord Jesus, and they said, you know, he's very special. That's the impression they got. So then they said, well, how shall we express what we have discovered to the general populace? So, having thought a while, they came up with an idea, and they they made up a story of a virgin birth. Well, of course, that wasn't, that wasn't historical fact. It was a story they made up, kind of a parable, a way of saying that Jesus was somewhat special. And they say the same thing about the stories of the resurrection.
Superficially, it sounds very intellectual. When you look at it more closely, the things becomes a nightmare. Because what we start with are the stories. And now we're told that they're not literally true, they're not events that actually took place. Our Lord wasn't born of a virgin, says the bishop. He didn't literally rise from the dead the third day. The stories were merely the stories the apostles made up to tell us, uh, their impression. I see. So now you've got to do some sorting now. You've got to get rid of the literal bits, and now you've got to come to, well, the impression. Well, what was the impression? And how will you decide what the impression was? And how would you know when you got to the impression that you got it?
And what about the impression? Was that a hundred percent true? Oh no, they say, because they were only failing men. Oh, I see. So even if you could manage to get the impression, that wouldn't be a hundred percent true either. And what a pickle you'd be in. What would the ultimate truth be? And ah, for this horrible heresy. Intellect that has tried to make progress, has gone astray from God's revelation. How many a young man and woman in the pulpit and in the school has been taught this kind of nonsense in their theological faculties, and when they get up to preach, they're no longer certain of what they can preach. They have no gospel then.
They would fain preach the story of the Transfiguration, but then they say, but no, that's a myth, you see, so I can't preach that actually happened. This is merely a story made up to convey the impression that the apostles had of Jesus. Well, what was the impression, or what was it? And so they've no confidence to go and preach it. Nor the virgin birth, nor the resurrection of Christ, and so they fall to preaching morality and politics. No wonder Peter called it a damnable heresy, a heresy of destruction, for it destroys people's faith. Listen to Peter. No, we did not follow myths.
This isn't a story that we made up out of our own head to convey our general impression of Christ. This is a narrative of an historical event. We went up the mountain, we saw his majesty, we heard the voice. Notice he's repeated, he received from God. A voice was born to the Lord Jesus by the majestic glory.
It was the direct communication of the Father to his Son, and we heard it. And third time over, to emphasize the source of it, which voice we heard born out of heaven. Notice then the source, not a voice made up, not a story made up, but an historic event with a message coming from that eternal kingdom, coming from the living God himself, born to Christ, and heard, and then reported by the apostles. That is the account the apostles give, not following a myth, but relating an historic event.
Well, if you must, turn around and say that they're all mistaken and liars to boot. But then, pray have the common sense to say that you'll cease to be a Christian. Because the apostles, knowing what myths are, tell us they haven't followed myths. And if your theology is that they did follow myths, well, tell Peter to his face he doesn't know what he's talking about then, and set yourself up as an apostle, perhaps, and start a new religion. But pray don't call it Christianity. Secondly, we have the prophetic word. Now, there is a little difficulty of translation in the phrase, uh, that in verse nineteen, that in many of our English Bibles has reads, we have the prophetic, we have the word of prophecy made more sure.
Because there stands in the Greek an adjective which means sure, only it is in the comparative form. And that to an ordinary Irishman, let alone an Englishman, seems as though it demands a translation in comparative fashion, more sure. And some people, many people have therefore scratched their heads and wondered what on earth can that mean? In what sense is the prophetic word more sure? And some people have said, well, the prophetic word was sure to start with, but after Peter had this experience, that made the prophetic word even more sure. Ah, but if that's what the the Greek meant, it would have said it differently. The Greek does not say we have the prophetic word made more sure.
Made sure by what went before or something, up the Transfiguration Mount. So some people have said, well, it simply means that when all is said and done, important as was Peter's experience on that mountain, more important still is the prophetic word of scripture. Because, well, this was the experience of one single occasion. Whereas this is the written word of God that has lasted for centuries. Actually, our difficulties proceeded in great part from our ignorance. In the kind of Greek that Peter, or his amanuensis more likely, was writing for him, it's very, very sophisticated, uh, Greek, such as you would expect in that part of the world at that stage in history.
Not the kind of Greek, if ever, Peter spoke in Galilee. But in that kind of Greek, the comparative of the adjective has often used without any comparative sense, not meaning more sure, but used rather in the superlative sense. We have the prophetic word as something that is utterly sure. Now you say, that's a funny way of talking. If Hellenistic Greeks wanted to say very sure, why didn't they say very sure instead of saying what appears to be more sure?
Well, why didn't they? I don't know, except that they hadn't the advantage of being Englishmen or Irishmen. Do you see? But there are nations abroad upon the face of the earth that do things a little bit oddly to our way of thinking, and many nations there are that use the comparative the comparative of the adjective, where we in English would use the superlative. What Peter is actually saying, therefore, is not we have the prophetic word more sure, but we have the prophetic word that is something utterly reliable. In the sense of more sure it could not be.
Why is the prophetic word something utterly reliable? Well, he says, know this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of private interpretation. For no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost. Well, the first simple answer, why is the prophetic word utterly reliable? Consider its source. Men spake from God as they were borne along by the Holy Spirit.
Do you notice the repetition of the vocabulary, the borne along bit, and the repetition of the preposition from? Men spoke from God, and the connection between God and them was that they were carried along by his Holy Spirit. What they spoke, therefore, was the voice of God coming to us through them. But the first clause has proved a little bit difficult and remains difficult to be sure that we've understood it and translated it right. No prophecy is, and many English translations have it, no mo- no prophecy is of private interpretation.
And then you have to decide what that means. And some people have said that means simply this. No prophecy of scripture is of private interpretation, that is, the ordinary individual Christian can't hope to understand it. He must accept the interpretation that the church as a whole puts on it. That can't be true, can it? Because as we read our epistles, we find the apostles constantly appealing to us to judge what they say, to think it through for ourselves, prove all things, and decide what is good and what isn't good, and hold fast that which is good.
Other people have said, no, no prophecy is of private interpretation, literally of its own interpretation. If you're going to understand a prophecy correctly, you can't just take that one prophecy, you must take it in the context of the whole of scripture. Otherwise, if you try and explain it just by itself, all by its lonesome, you're liable to go astray. You must take it in the context of the whole of scripture. Well, now that is certainly good advice, and maybe that's what it means. I myself think, however, it means something a little differently, as I have indicated by putting in the word here, the prophets. I think it is not talking to us about our interpretation of prophecy.
I think it is talking about the prophet's own explication of his experience. You say, what do you mean? Well, let me take an example. You read the prophet Daniel chapter seven, He said he had a vision, and he saw four beasts coming up out of the sea, one after the other, and a motley crew they were, and fierce and terrible. And he saw what happened. He saw the throne set, and God Almighty hold judgment, and the final beast consigned to destruction, and the kingdom given to one like unto the Son of Man and the saints. Daniel saw the vision. He heard the word spoken. Daniel said to himself, well, what does that mean?
That vision I just had. Well, now he tells us a very interesting thing. He didn't go away home and say, I wonder what that means, and try and make up what it meant. In the vision, he asked, and he was told what the vision meant. So not only the description of the vision came from God, but the explanation of the prophecy came from God. Now, this is a very important, if that is what our verse is saying, I personally think it is. It is once more contradicting those who say these things are myths. Do you remember what they say?
They say the apostles had an experience, the prophets had an experience of God. And that was good, but they didn't take it in one hundred percent well. And then what they did take in, then they tried to explain by making up stories. No, they did not, says Peter. That is not how it happened. Certainly they had the experience, but they didn't then turn around and make up stories to try and explain it. Along with the original vision and communication, the explanation of what the prophecy meant came from God. And if that be true, then the whole notion of myth, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, as is called that the myth theory is ruled out of court.
The story of the virgin birth, the story of the resurrection, the story of the transfiguration, these are not stories made up by the prophets and apostles to explain what God was saying to them. The prophecy came from God. The meaning as they give it to us, that came from God as well. And therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to these things. For these are the true sayings of God. Alas for those destructive heresies that in this critical time of human history destroyed men's faith in God's holy word.
Of all crimes, this ranks surely among the first few. Rather than stumble one of these little ones that believes in me, rather than break a man's faith or stumble him in his faith, just in case you were proposing to do it. It were better, said our compassionate Lord, that a millstone be hung round your neck and you be put in the depths of the ocean. At least you'll be out of, out of the way of doing any harm to anybody. To break a man's faith in the reality of these great divine events, into the reality of that eternal kingdom, into the certainty of the coming again of our Lord.
To break a man's faith in that, you have done the man the biggest possible injury you could ever do to a fellow human. Ah, but let's not end on gloomy things. We have the word of prophecy as something absolutely reliable. It comes from God, and the explanation comes from God as well. And we have the witness, the eyewitness and the ear witness of the apostles, who, when our Lord was here on earth, were favored to see, even without dying, they were favored to see it, actually to see and hear that eternal kingdom.
And so Peter, not one to lose an opportunity to remind anybody of anything at all, he tells us, doesn't he? You see, if I could remind you, I would. Here it is. This world is temporary. There is an eternal kingdom. All progress here will have eternal consequences there.
And now to our final session of classes. Questions for the fourth session. The inspiration and authority of Holy Scripture. Question one: What do liberal scholars mean by calling the virgin birth and the resurrection myths? What do liberal scholars mean by calling the virgin birth and the resurrection myths? Question two: On what grounds does the apostle assure us that he- when he speaks of the second coming of Christ, he is not telling us a myth.
On what grounds does the apostle assure us that when he speaks of the second coming of Christ, he is not telling us a myth? Question three: What does chapter one verse twenty tell us about the process of divine inspiration? Question four: Do you think that chapter one verse twenty is talking about A, the prophet's own interpretation of his God-given revelation, or B, our interpretation of his message.
Do you think that chapter one verse twenty is talking about A, the prophet's own interpretation of his God-given revelation, or B, our interpretation of his message. Question five: What relevance would either A or B have to the lesson Peter is teaching us in this passage? What relevance would either A or B have to the lesson Peter is teaching us in this passage? Message.
