In certain spots the contour of hills or the set up of certain rooms can give the illusion that the law of gravity is askew. Perhaps you have been in a room like this at an amusement park where it seems that a bottle set on its side rolls uphill. But if a level is placed on the table or the ground it will immediately be shown that the bottle is rolling downhill. The eye can be deceived; the level cannot.
This is similar when it comes to truth. People can be deceived. But God has given us a similar apparatus to measure truth. This is the Bible. Peter has outlined for us in this passage the truthfulness of the Scripture and why it is so important to believe it.
Why does Peter take this time to go into such detail about the certainty of the Scripture’s accuracy? Before he proceeds into chapter two he discusses the Scripture’s accuracy because he is going to relate to us the plague of false teachers that will enter the picture shortly after the apostles leave the scene. It is imperative for him, therefore, to establish the veracity of the Scripture while he still has time.
The key idea of this passage is the wonderful promises of salvation and spiritual growth in the Christian life must be built on the necessary character of truth. Without truth, the message of salvation cannot stand. As I said last time, “If the Bible is not true then we are ultimately lost. As the Apostle Paul noted, ‘If Christ has not been raised [from the dead] then your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.’”
Peter describes three different aspects of the truth of the Gospel in this passage. We will quickly review the two aspects we looked at last time and then move into this last aspect that Peter discusses.
I. The Truth Remembered
The first aspect of the truth, which we discussed last time, that Peter describes is the truth remembered. There are three reasons Peter reminds these believers about the truth.
First, Peter says we need to be reminded of the truth for spiritual growth. Satan is going to seek to take our minds off the wonderful truth of God’s grace toward us. If he can effectively do this we will be hindered in our spiritual growth. This is why we need to be continually coating our minds by a reading of Scripture. If we don’t, our view of the world and God will be tainted by the world system instead of the Word of God. We will be like those who are deceived by the bottle rolling uphill. We need to be reminded of the truth for spiritual growth.
Second, we need to be reminded of the truth for revival. Our hearts need to be stirred by the Word of God being applied to our lives. We need to seek to stimulate one another to love and good works. It is only through reminding one another of the truth that this will take place.
Third, we need to be reminded of the truth for recall. Face it, we forget. No matter how important what we hear is, we forget. And for this reason Peter says we need to be reminded so that we do not grow dull in our spiritual reasoning.
II. The Truth Reported
The next aspect of the truth that Peter describes is the truth reported. He delineates this in verses 16-19. Here Peter tells us three details of the report.
First, he notes that it was an eyewitness report. They saw Jesus on the mountain in all His majestic glory, showing Himself to be God. They heard from God declaring Jesus to be the beloved Son showing Him to be also the perfect man. From this eyewitness report he was able to see that Jesus was the God-man sent to be our Savior.
Second, Peter notes that it was a reassuring report. He says this verified all the truth of the Old Testament Prophets. Those things that the prophets declared about the Messiah were now even more sure in Peter’s mind. This shows us that as God is the God of truth He loves to give us assurance that His Word is true. He has done it through the ages by fulfilled prophecy, in His faithfulness to His promises, through archeological discovery, by creation’s complexity. He loves to give us assurance. And He gave these three apostles a verifiable witness in showing them a glimpse in Christ’s deity.
Thirdly, Peter notes that it was an enlightening report. Peter said that we do well to pay attention to the Word of God as to a lamp shining in a dark place. The only real light in this world is the Word of God. And if we want to get around in the world without groping in darkness we would do well to pay attention to it.
And since, as Peter says, God’s Word IS true you had better not neglect its message for it is a message of hope and life and forgiveness to those who believe it. And it is a message of judgment to those who reject it. Now let’s turn to what Peter has to say in verses 20 & 21.
III. The Truth Recorded (vv. 20-21)
The third aspect of the truth that Peter describes is the truth recorded. In verses 20-21, Peter looks at the Bible and its character. He discusses three characteristics of the Bible that we need to note.
A. The Bible will not contradict itself
(One’s own interpretation)
The first characteristic of the Bible Peter discusses is that the Bible will not contradict itself. He mentions this in verse 20. “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation.” Now the original reads a little more positively than this. It literally says, “Every prophecy of Scripture is not a matter of one’s own interpretation.” This means that everything the Bible says is not open to man’s own ideas about it.
How many times have you heard, “That’s your interpretation” or “The Scripture can mean anything you want it to.” Well this verse makes it extremely clear that if it is an interpretation not grounded in Scripture then it is wrong. There are a few clear rules to help you as you seek to understand the Bible.
The first is: Scripture interprets Scripture – If you want to understand Scripture, read the Scripture. I remember when I first became a Christian in college God gave me a voracious appetite for His Word. I was reading about 20 chapters a day. But it wasn’t forced. I didn’t say, I must read 20 chapters today. I just read as I had time. I loved His Word so much that if I had a few minutes before Crew practice I sat and read it. If I had a few minutes before a class I sat and read. I loved to read God’s Word. It allowed me to read through the Bible every 3 months. And what did that do for me? It gave me a great understanding of the context of the Bible as a whole. It allowed me to begin to get the big picture. I didn’t understand it all. I didn’t see everything in it. In fact, every time I read through the Bible I always find some new discoveries in it. God continues to open it up to me and I always find more than I had seen before. But if you want it to make sense of it you have to be able to compare Scripture with Scripture.
In comparing Scripture to Scripture the most important part is understanding the context in which you are reading. If you don’t understand the context in which you are reading you will begin to sacrifice goats in your living room or build an ark in your back yard (Talk about trouble from the health dept!). You have to understand to whom the writer was speaking and why he was saying what he was saying. You have to understand the principles of what God is communicating in His Word and apply them.
I’ll give you an example. Some time ago I drove by a sign that read 40 miles an hour as I passed it going about 55. Did I slow down? Was I breaking the law? Was I concerned about it? Not at all. The sign I saw was on a road parallel to the one I was on. That sign did not apply to me. If I were to start following it there would be other people who would be upset with me (Those people behind me).
Words can mean all kinds of things but in context they mean one thing. And by looking carefully at a passage we need to find its meaning. Now I am not saying that every passage we read is going to be easy to understand or that reading in context will clear up every question we have about a text.
And this brings us to the second apparent rule in understanding the Scripture. That is: Always understand the difficult passages in light of the clear passages. It is true that there are some passages difficult to understand. Peter mentions it in chapter three of this very letter that unstable people distort these Scriptures to their own destruction. But if you follow the axiom to understand the difficult passages in light of the clear passages you will do well.
There are clear teachings of Scripture. These important teachings are evident. They are not detailed in one or two verses throughout the Bible. They are described in a plethora of verses. As a matter of fact if someone tries to teach you some new doctrine without significant Scriptural proof then you need to be wary. What are some of these clear teachings abundantly taught in Scripture? Salvation comes through faith by God’s grace apart from works. Jesus was both fully man and fully God. Jesus Christ’s death on the cross paid for our sin completely. Jesus rose bodily from the dead. These are not some hard to find details about Christianity but they are clearly taught throughout Scripture.
Does this mean, however, that we have answers to every question we encounter? No. I have many questions about the Scripture to which I don’t think I’ll have an answer until heaven. But these aren’t questions concerning the important clear matters but of peripheral issues.
The cults will break both of the aforementioned rules and twist Scripture to make their cults. They do not compare Scripture with Scripture nor do they allow the clear passages to interpret the difficult. As I mentioned another time, in the early church, while witnesses of the Gospel events were still alive, someone wrote that the cults (yes they had them back then) tried to find contradictions within the Gospel accounts. Being unable to do so they took isolated verses and built their new doctrines on them by which they enslaved people.
You see this in the fact that they cloud the clear teaching about salvation with their pet doctrines. They obscure the simplicity of the good news of forgiveness through Christ by faith with things like, “Sabbath keeping,” or “their view of the Kingdom.” And it is these peripheral doctrines that become the touchstone to their orthodoxy and these become their message instead of the simplicity of the Gospel. They result in religious enslavement instead of freedom through Christ alone. The trappings of false religion always seek to add to Christ’s sufficiency to save. They always describe salvation in “Christ plus” terms.
So what does this mean for us that the Bible will not contradict itself? What practical application can we derive from it? It means we need to be studying the Scripture. Acts 17:11 says that the people of the city of Berea were more noble minded than the people from the city of Thessalonica because they studied the Scripture daily to see if what Paul was declaring to them was true. So read the Bible. But don’t just read it mindlessly. Think about what you are reading. Ask yourself pertinent questions to find out what the text is saying. And most important of all apply it. Find out what the Word is telling you to do and do it. James says that we must not deceive ourselves by being those who simply hear the Word but do not put it into practice.
B. The Bible is not man’s thoughts about God
The second characteristic of the Bible that Peter discusses is the Bible is not man’s thoughts about God. In verse 21 Peter says, “no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will.” Nothing that has been recorded in the Bible has been made because someone thought it would be great to be recognized as a writer of Bible prophecy.
Many people have endeavored to write about God but these private thoughts have not been confused with Scripture. People have attempted to say that what they have said or written is Scripture but God has made it clear that they weren’t speaking for Him. God sought to curb false prophecy by making the penalty very stiff. The penalty was a rock bath. False prophets were to be stoned to death. God wanted to make it very clear that speaking falsely in His name was a very serious thing because He is the God of truth. And because his adversary Satan is the father of lies God wanted no one to mistake what He spoke for what Satan spoke. God ensured that no one who spoke or wrote of their own accord would ever get a sentence into the Scripture.
He also made it a point that even if a prophet made a prediction that did come true (Jeanne Dixon gets them right every once in a while) if whatever they said contradicted what God had told them previously they were likewise not to follow it.
It has been said that the Bible is a book that no one could write if they would nor would write if they could. The prophets who wrote didn’t do so because they thought it would be a good idea to speak about God. They were moved to do so by God’s Spirit. Jeremiah is but one example of the working of God in the life of a prophet. In the first chapter of Jeremiah he describes his call to the prophetic ministry. He details it by noting, “The Lord said to me, ‘Behold, I have put My words in your mouth.’” Later in the book Jeremiah speaks about the difficultly with which he brings the message of judgment that God told him to proclaim. He wanted to shut up about it. And there he says, “If I say, ‘I will not remember Him or speak anymore in His name,’ then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I am weary of holding it in.” Jeremiah, as difficult as the message was to speak, was unable to keep himself from proclaiming and recording the message. The Spirit of God was working in His life to carry it out. It wasn’t Jeremiah’s determination that caused it to be spoken but God’s. Jeremiah at some point might not have been willing but God made him willing.
2 Timothy 3 says, “All Scripture is God breathed.” The Bible is the Word of God because God’s will has brought it into being. It is not the thoughts of people about God but the thoughts of God brought to people. He says that His thoughts are not our thoughts nor our ways His ways. To believe that some great thinker could reason his way up to know God is absurd. God has made Himself known to us but we could not reason our way upward to Him.
C. The Bible is accurate through the Holy Spirit’s supervision
The third characteristic of the Bible that Peter discusses is that the Bible is accurate through the Holy Spirit’s supervision. The end of verse 21 says, “men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” God ensured the accuracy of His Word by superintending the process through His Spirit.
The Bible is not accurate because of the character of the men who wrote it but because of the Holy Spirit who supervised it. It is the Holy Spirit that guarantees its accuracy as He was moving the individuals to write it. If we looked to the character of these people to write it then it would have been flawed throughout because there is no one who does everything perfectly. As careful as we proofread something there is always some kind of error that remains. I don’t know how many times I have read a book by a well-known publisher and have still found an error or two in it. Did the well-known company not check the work? Of course they did. They didn’t get their reputation for publishing by putting out shoddy work. But their work was not supervised by God to prevent errors. And therefore errors remain in human work but not in the Word of God.
The word variously translated “moved” or “borne along” speaks of the process that God’s Holy Spirit used to bring these men to write the Scripture. The word is sometimes used to describe a sailing ship being blown along by the wind. But it doesn’t mean that the authors of Scripture were in some kind of trance and wrote outside of their own consciousness.
As you read through the Scripture you are confronted with the fact that God used the individuals’ own background and style to pen the truth the Spirit was directing the individual to write. As he writes you can see Paul’s own deep background in Judaism and you find in Luke, as a good doctor, technical medical terms that are not used in the other Gospels. God communicates His Word accurately through His direction but used people to do it.
But God also used various genres or types of literature to communicate His Word. In Proverbs and Ecclesiastes God uses a wisdom kind of literature. In the Psalms and some of the prophets He uses poetry. In the books written by Moses, God uses some genealogical material, some legal material and historical material. In the New Testament we see personal and corporate letters being used to bring us the Word of God.
And while using imperfect people, His directing and supervising role kept the original documents free from error. It was an amazing process by which He certified His Word to us.
Let’s look at the whole verse once more in order to see its truth more clearly. “For no prophecy of Scripture was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” Now in verse 21 the same word “moved” is used twice in the verse. It is not translated the same way so you can see it because its difficult to translate it as such and still have it make sense. But I think that you can get the idea if I read the verse this way. No prophet ever “moved” a prophecy by his own will but the Spirit “moved” the prophet to write it! Can you see what Peter is denoting? No one ever moved God to write Scripture but God moved the individual He wanted to use, to flawlessly record His Word.
So what does this say to us? First, we can trust God’s Word. We can understand that whatever God has recorded He has protected from error. This allows us to be able to fully rely on the message of the Scripture. We can rest in the fact that what God has told us is true. And since this is truly God’s Word to us then we must diligently scour it to know what God has to say to us. It is that important.
Secondly, since the Bible is God’s project, ask Him for help to understand it. The Scripture says the Spirit of God helps us to understand what the Scripture says. Who can help us understand a book better than the author? So as you diligently set out to study the Scriptures daily to see if what I am saying is true ask the Spirit of God to help you understand it. The plumb level of the Word of God is the only thing that will keep you from being deceived. Truth matters and God’s Word is that truth. Don’t neglect it but read it and do it.