New Year Evening Service

New Year Evening Service

January 1st, 2012 (PM). By: Guest Preacher

At times in our life we are faced with big decisions that will have long-term consequences. We find ourselves at a fork in the road of our life. What should I do after leaving school? Should I accept the job I have been offered? Should I change career? Should I propose? The years ahead seem to be hanging on a single decision.

 

This evening we’re going to be reading about such a decision facing the church in it’s infancy. The decision was this: do we follow the teaching of the Apostles or other teachers? You see, the Apostles weren’t the only ones who claimed to have authority or the right to influence and lead churches. There were other groups of teachers and leaders who seemed very impressive. And what was most appealingly was that their lives were pretty easy going.

 

What these teachers seemed to be saying was that we shouldn’t worry about the ‘facts’ and ‘details’ of Christianity. “Was Jesus really God and man? Was Jesus really going to return?” The answer wasn’t so much “no” but “it’s just not important”. We shouldn’t be restricted and confined by rules and laws, but instead enjoy liberty, freedom and acceptance.

 

Which sounds quite nice doesn’t it? Well it certainly did to New Testament believers. The book of 2 Peter, which we’re looking at tonight, is the Apostle Peter writing to the church in this situation.

 

So what can Peter say to this church on the brink? He’s now an old man who will soon die. How can he be sure that this young, fragile church will stay on the right track and know what the truth is?

 

Let’s read it for ourselves in verses 16 to 21.

 

We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. ¹⁷ For he received honour and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” ¹⁸ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

¹⁹ And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. ²⁰ Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. 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.

 

So what is Peter’s dying message? Quite simply it’s ‘trust the Bible’.

 

Within one generation of Christ, false teaching was rife amongst the early church and Peter sets out to address it in this letter. This false teaching didn’t concern just theologians or intellectuals but it was an issue that was affecting normal Christians. Would these young, precious believers have a faith based on personal feelings and inclinations or would it be grounded in the historical truths of Scripture?

 

I don’t not what you think of this book. May be you thinking the Bible is nothing more than an old book of myths. May be you think the Bible has got some good teaching in it but also some bits that are clearly wrong or misled and it certainly shouldn’t dictate every part of our lives. Or may be you give the right answer to every question about what the Bible is, but you don’t find it quite so simple for it to change how you live. I think we probably all fall into one of those three groups.

 

It is also an on-going crucial issue, may be the crucial issue, facing the wider church. The most important thing any church must decide is: what is our final authority? Does a church hold to God’s Word above all else? Or does it relegate the Bible below tradition or cultural acceptance?

 

Well, as we look at these verses this evening we’ll see that Peter gives his readers, including us today, three reasons to trust the Bible:

 

1. Trust the Bible because it really happened
2. Trust the Bible because it gives you hope
3. Trust the Bible because God wrote it

 

1. Trust the Bible because it really happened

 

So first of all: Trust the Bible because it really happened. Verse 16:

 

For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

 

Peter is saying that the reports about Jesus aren’t “cleverly devised stories” – it’s not as if the Apostles got together and hatched a cunning plot of what Jesus said and did. Christianity is not just a clever idea, a philosophy that just seems to work or some kind of emotional crutch – it’s the truth.

 

In verse 16 Peter says “we”, that is, the Apostles, “were eyewitnesses”. “I was there! I heard Him. I saw Him. With my own eyes I witnessed it all.” Of course Peter might be lying just to make him seem worth listening to. To make himself look clever. Problem, is you read the gospels He really doesn’t look too clever – he’s all over the place.

 

Who’s the person who bottles-it on the sea of Galilee? Peter. Who does Jesus rebuke for not treating Him as Mary Magdelene did? Peter. Who does Jesus respond to with “Get behind me Satan?” Peter. Who falls asleep in the Garden of Gethsemene when Jesus asked him to keep watch? Then later in the Garden, who attacks the high priest’s servant, cutting off his ear, only for Jesus to reprimand him and heal the servant.  And who, most shamefully of all, even when he was warned he would do it, just before Jesus was cruelly crucified, denied that he even knew him three times?!

 

The Gospels don’t reflect all that well on Peter. If you were going to invent some stories that included you in them, you wouldn’t write it like this.

 

And when Peter is writing this letter – he’s an old man. He may even be writing this letter from a Roman prison. And it is believed that Peter was martyred not long after this – still professing belief and trust in Jesus. Still claiming to be an “eyewitness of his majesty”. You see, people who make up stories tend to stop lying when they’re about to be killed for them.

 

The Gospel that Peter is proclaiming really happened – he was an eyewitness to it. Peter then illustrates this point with an example – the transfiguration. Let’s keep reading from verse 17:

 

He received honour and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

 

Peter is recollecting a time when Jesus took himself and a couple of the other disciples up a mountain. While up the mountain Jesus is transfigured – that is, utterly transformed. This is how the Gospel of Matthew (17:1-8) describes it:

 

There he [Jesus] was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

 

It goes on to say:

 

While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

 

When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified…

 

Pretty extraordinary isn’t it? Which I think is kind of Peter’s point. This is, Christ at his most awesome and glorious. Peter is saying: “I am an eyewitness of Jesus. And He was no ordinary man – I’ve seen his majesty and power.”

 

It’s one thing to claim to be an eyewitness of a very ordinary event. But to be an eyewitness of something extraordinary is quite a different.

 

If you spoke to someone who said they had been to an England football match you would not think it very remarkable because England have played plenty of football matches. However, if the match that person had gone along to was a certain 1966 World Cup final (which England won) – it would kind of change your perspective wouldn’t it?

 

You would start drilling him with questions: “How old were you? Where did you sit? Who were you with? How did you feel? Did you think it was a goal?” And so on.

 

But of course, the claims of Jesus Christ are of infinitely more importance than even the greatest footballing triumph.

 

Here is a man, who fulfilled prophecies about Him given centuries earlier. A man who walked on water, feed 5,000 people with a few scraps of bread and fish and who was transformed into a figure of shining brilliance – too terrifying to look at. A man who claimed he could forgive sins. A man who said He was God. A righteous man who was crucified. And a saviour who rose from the dead.

 

That is the story Peter has to tell. That is the account of which Peter is an eyewitness. It really happened, and it’s worth listening to and living by.

 

And that is the challenge for us today, just as it was for Peter’s readers back then. We cannot just read the words of this book and nod our heads and say a cold ‘amen’. If you think this book is wrong then say so, but if you think it’s true then live like it. Just as Jesus was transformed before the disciples so our lives should be utterly transformed before those around us.

 

People tend to spend New Year looking forward to how they’re going to change in the year ahead. But I wonder whether the challenge for Christians is to look back at the year just gone and consider how God has changed them – moved them on. So take a minute to stop and think about how your love for God has deepened in the last twelve months. What lessons have you learnt? In what ways are you becoming more like Jesus? What are they events that we need to thank God for his grace being at work in them?

 

It can also be tempting in our increasingly secular surroundings to overlook or downplay the historic nature of parts of the Bible. We tell ourselves that any area where contemporary science or history disagrees with the biblical account is a ‘stumbling block’ to non-Christians and so just to brush over it as insignificant. That wasn’t Peter’s approach. He holds unswervingly to the truth of the Bible, not just in a fuzzy, proverbial sense but in a real, undeniable, historic sense.

 

We can with absolute confidence hold to the historic truth of this whole book – from creation, to resurrection, to second coming. When we deny part of it, we in affect denying all of it because we are calling into question the very nature of God’s Word and by consequence God himself.

 

We trust the Bible because it really happened.

 

2. Trust the Bible because gives you hope

 

Secondly: trust the Bible because it gives you hope. We’re going to look at verse 19 now and take it a bit at a time:

 

And we have the word of the prophets made more certain…

 

Peter is saying that what he saw as an eyewitness confirms the Old Testament and its prophecies. He’s bringing together all of scripture as being about Jesus.

 

and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place…

 

Here Peter is giving us a picture of what the Bible does. The Word brings light. Light which penetrates darkness.

 

we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

 

The point of the light is that it brings change – a new day dawns. Light which reveals sin. But also brings hope, through transformation. “The morning star rises in our hearts” – our hearts are changed. Through the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel (36:26) God said:

 

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

 

When we become a Christian, and as we continue our Christian life, God gives us new hearts – ‘a new day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts’.

 

However, I don’t think this passage is just about the internal workings of a Christian. Throughout these verses there is an undercurrent relating to the second coming of Christ. And the final chapter of the Bible refers to Jesus as “the bright Morning Star” (Rev 22:16) and his return will be the ultimate dawning of a new day. In that day our heart’s will be absolutely changed. But it wont just be our heart’s that are changed, but the whole world.

 

If you look out on the world it is dark. It does not have much hope to offer. The hopes and rewards are all pretty temporary and meaningless. A new job, a new diet, a new coat, a new car. They don’t last – that’s not real hope.

 

How many of those who are today making sincere New Year’s resolutions will actually be able to keep them? A study last year suggested that two thirds of New Year’s resolutions are broken within a single week. Pretty hopeless.

 

But we have hope. Great hope. I don’t mean to say you don’t face hardships – I’m sure you do. Maybe you’ve got financial worries. May be your physically unwell. May be there’s people in your life that you find it really hard to get on with. May be the Christmas season has just raised tensions in your immediate or wider family – as it does with many.

 

Or may be your struggles are internal: you think your own heart can’t really change. You seem to keep on struggling with the same sins and temptations – falling into the same traps. And I guess that darkness around us, out there, all comes from in here – our hearts. Yet these verses hold out hope. (1) God can and will change you from the inside and (2) the world will not be dark forever.

 

Hope can overcome the greatest of hardships.

 

There was a story a little while back about three teenage boys from a remote Pacific island who set off in a very small aluminium boat to visit a neighbouring island. However, they strayed off course and ran out of fuel. Night fell and they were still out in the open ocean just drifting, no-where near land. Their families get worried and a search and rescue mission was launched from New Zealand. After six days covering hundreds of square miles the search and rescue mission was called off. The families back on the small island descend understandably into grief.

 

50 days after the boys had set off from their island a fishing trawler finds them alive. They had had a few coconuts on their little boat but they had run out after two days. For the next 48 days they had endured the sea and the sun with nothing but rainwater, a few small raw fish and a seagull which one of them had somehow managed to catch. When they were asked how they survived they simply replied: “God”. They went onto to say that they were scared and almost gave up complete hope of ever being found but “praying was the only thing that kept [them] occupied every day”.

 

They hadn’t lost all hope. A truly hopeless person doesn’t pray, because they have no hope in God answering that prayer.

 

However hard your problems (internal and external), you have no reason to lose hope. We hope in a God who saves. A God who is changing us and the world around us. We have hope that one day Christ will return and He will wipe away our tears. How do know this all to be true? Because the Bible says so. It’s the Bible that tells us we have all have a problem with sin and it’s the Bible that tells us that Jesus is the only answer to this problem. That is why we proclaim this gospel. Not because we believe it’s the best gospel, but because it is the only gospel. Everything else is hopeless.

 

Jesus brought hope into a dark world and as we read and live and proclaim the Bible, we do the same.

 

3. Trust the Bible because God wrote it

 

Trust the Bible because it really happened. Trust the Bible because it gives you hope. And finally, trust the Bible because God wrote it. Let’s read the last couple of verses:

 

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

 

“Above all” – here Peter reaches his climax, and it underpins everything that has already been said. Why do we know it to be true? Why does it give us hope? Why, ultimately, should we read the Bible? Because it is authored not by humans, but by God himself.

 

Remember what we were saying at the start. The young church that Peter is writing to is at a crossroads – will they follow the false teachers or Peter and the Apostles. And this is Peter’s killer point. He doesn’t try and argue with the false teachers as one human to another – trying to out do them with a better knowledge of history or a better execution of logic. Instead he says “These are not my words. And when you read the Old Testament they are not the words of human prophets. They are the words of God.”

 

For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God

 

This book we hold in our hands is the most precious thing in the world, because it is God talking to us. The holy, unfathomable, awesome, infallible, mighty God, who created the universe, has chosen in his amazing grace – to reveal something of Himself to us, in this book. And this book is so closely tied to God that it itself reflects His perfect character.

 

After I left school I spent some time living with an older couple who had this great kitchen pantry (basically a big cupboard) full of the most amazing selection of spices, herbs, tins, sauces, dressings and so on. So if you weren’t picky about use-by-dates you could flavour your food in an unimaginable number of ways. And I did. But while the food was really fun to cook – it didn’t always taste so good, because I’d never really cooked before. And while the ingredients were amazing I just didn’t know what I was doing.

 

Well, to be honest, I still don’t really know what I’m doing in a kitchen, but I’ve learnt my lesson, so when I cook now I like to use a recipe by someone reasonably well known for being a good cook. And I like to follow the recipe precisely. So of Jamie says I need Organic Greek-Style Coconut Yoghurt then I need to use Organic Greek-Style Coconut Yoghurt.

 

I’ve got to follow the recipe. The celebrity chef’s job is to make nice food, and they’ve certainly made more money out of it than I have. So I trust the professional cook and do just what they say because they probably know what they’re talking about.

 

God definitely knows what he’s talking about. Historically, theologically and practically, he knows what he’s talking about. The most important person in the world is God. And so what he’s got to say is the most important thing in the world to know, and he knows us infinitely better than we know ourselves.

 

If we trust the Bible because we know it really happened, if we trust the Bible because it gives us hope, and if we trust the Bible because it was written by God, then I would like to conclude by giving us one simple challenge – to know our Bibles better.

 

I don’t mean read it more but know it better. To know it in your heart and mind in such a way that it affects every part of your life. What does that mean in practice? Well, in closing, here are a few suggestions for improving personal Bible study:

 

• Pray First: Before you read your Bible, pray to the Holy Spirit for His help to understand God’s Word.
• Quality Not Quantity: Far better to be mentally engaged for a few verses than reading ten chapters in a semi-conscious state. Use caffeine if necessary.
• Read It Every Day: Consistent, regular, daily Bible study should be of the highest priority for any Christian. Block off however much time you are able to every day.
• Have A Plan: Bible reading plans are a massive help in being disciplined with Bible reading. You can make your own or find loads online. They can vary from a few weeks to a couple of years in length. Some are topical and others just help you work through scripture.
• Resource Plug #1 – YouVersion: YouVersion is a superb online application which not only gives you easy access to the Bible but also lets you sign-up to reading plans. YouVersion also has an app for most smart phones – which is what I use each day. It tells me exactly what passages I need to read that day and even lets me listen to them being read, one after another. And when I get behind with my plan it sends me an email to check I’m alright!
• Ask Questions: There are lots of good questions you can ask a Bible passage – two really good ones are: what does this tell me about God and what does this tell me about myself?
• Resource Plug #2 – Search the Scriptures: One book I can recommend which takes this a stage further is called ‘Search the Scriptures’ which just asks specific questions about Bible passages.
• Make Notes: This is really important – keep a notebook with your Bible that you can make notes in and also use as a prayer diary. Even if you just right down questions about things you don’t understand, it can make a profound difference to really engaging with the text.
• Talk About It: Talk to others at church about what you’re reading. Don’t be afraid to ask others what they think – Bible study should never be a completely solitary activity.
• Read Together: May be try reading a book of the Bible with someone else and aim to meet up every fortnight to talk and pray about it.
• Memorise It: Try memorising sections of scripture – so you can meditate on it throughout the day.
• Read Lots: Try reading your Bible in a year. It only works out at about four chapters a day and there’s no better way of understanding the full spread scripture.
• Read Little: Try studying one book carefully. Read it for yourself writing down things that strike you, over arching themes and questions you have. Read it again with commentaries or Bible notes on the book. Try reading it in different translations.
• Resource Plug #3 – Open Up The Bible: Finally, The Good Book Company, has just launched a new set of resources specifically for helping you read your Bible. This includes these small booklets that give you a Bible plan and structure. There’s more resources on their website: openupthebible.com and the promise of an app for smart phones sometime soon.
• Watch Your Heart: Finally, it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that how much scripture we’re reading directly equates to our holiness. The challenge is not to read God’s Word, but to fall in love with God’s Word, that we might fall in love deeper with the one who wrote it.