2 Peter 1:19 “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.”

Jesus’ coming, his power, his love, and his sacrifice make the words of the prophets more certain. In as much as the prophets were just writers for God himself, none of their words were ever in question. But Jesus is the fulfillment that ends all doubt.

Some people are impressed with the secular prophecies of Sixteenth Century French Astrologer Nostradamus. He is said to have predicted the rise of Napoleon and Hitler, the assassination of President Kennedy, even the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. I won’t take time to repeat what he actually wrote here. You can look it up later for yourself if you like. But his prophecies have all the detail of a typical horoscope. They are vague enough to describe about anything you like.

The Biblical prophet Micah named the city where the promised Savior would be born. From Micah the Jewish rabbis could tell you where it would be before it happened. Isaiah tells you where he would grow up, details about his healing ministry, and together with David and Zechariah these men describes Jesus’ last days and the scene at the cross as though they were standing there themselves.

Well over 450 specific Old Testament prophecies can be identified which Jesus fulfilled. Statistically, the chances of one person fulfilling just eight random predictions made hundreds of years before the fact, like place of birth, betrayal by a friend, gambling for his clothes, and manner of death is about one out of 10 to the 17^th power.

To illustrate what that looks like, that is like burying every inch of the state of Texas under silver dollars two feet deep, and then telling someone there is one particular silver dollar in that pile that you have in mind, and that this person, free to travel the entire length and breadth of the state, could pick the right one. That’s for getting eight prophecies right, not 450 (www.biblebelievers.org.au/radio034.htm). “We have the words of the prophets made more certain.”

What’s the conclusion? “You will do well to pay attention to it,” and not just because the words are so certain, so true. When we give our attention to what is written about Jesus, whether Old Testament or New, something special happens. A light goes on inside. A new day replaces the darkness in our hearts. Faith rises like a star and we live in the happy certainty that Jesus loves and saves us.

2 Peter 1:17 “For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

The Father spoke from heaven. This was well-witnessed. At the very beginning of his ministry John the Baptist heard God say this at Jesus’ baptism. Peter was there with James and John when Jesus let them see a little glimpse of the glory that made him something far higher than themselves. This was not just an “impression” these men had, a “gut-feeling,” like so many people who say “God spoke to me” today. They saw the light. They heard the Voice. This wasn’t last night’s pizza talking.

 “This is my Son,” the voice says. Sometimes people say that we are all God’s children, because he made us all, and that’s right. But that isn’t what the Voice meant. There were six men on that mountain top that day we heard when we read Matthew: Peter, James, John, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. The Voice doesn’t say, “These are my sons.” It says, “This is my Son.” This one is different.

This is God’s Son in the sense we hear it in what may be the most famous of all Bible passages, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,” his only-begotten Son. This isn’t a son he made. This is the Son who is made out of the same stuff his Father in heaven is–an eternal Being, an all-powerful Spirit, perfect Love, absolute Authority.

Does it matter whether you listen to him? Does it matter whether you follow him? There is nothing in your world that matters more! We contradict him, we ignore him, we deny him at our peril!

The Voice has even more to say about the Son. “This is my Son, whom I love.” Well, duh! I love my sons, too. Even when they were naughty I didn’t stop loving them. But the Father is saying something more.

God the Father had special reasons for loving Jesus his Son. “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life–only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father” (John 10:17-18). That’s part of Jesus description of himself as the Good Shepherd. The Father loves his Son because the Son lays down his life for us. He dies to save us. His death forgives us.

More than anything we have heard about Jesus today, this is why he wants us to follow him. He doesn’t want to scare us into listening to him with threats of his power and glory. He wants to love us into listening to him with the sacrifice that brings us forgiveness and life. Trust him and he will give you real life, unending life, fuller and better life than any other you can find. Know him and he will show you God’s love, love that knows no limits, love that infinitely surpasses any other affection you have ever known.

These things you’ve heard about Jesus–his sacrifice, his forgiveness, his love, his gift–these things are certain, too. No one less than God the Father in heaven speaks to it to assure us it is true.

2 Peter1:16 “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.”

Peter, whose version of Jesus’ life is written in the Bible’s gospel of Mark, didn’t preach and teach about a character he made up. He didn’t take a real character of history and make up stories about him, like the story you hear about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. He didn’t even embellish stories of Jesus’ life, like Laura Ingalls Wilder may have done in some of her Little House books. “We were eyewitnesses,” he says. He’s giving testimony. And he’s not the only one.

So why should we trust these witnesses? First of all, they have overwhelming numbers on their side. Four different men wrote four accounts of Jesus’ life–the four gospels. From the first to the last, they were written about 50 years apart. One of the four, Luke’s, is basically a collection of interviews with various people who lived and worked with Jesus. While they choose different details to mention in their accounts, as you would expect from different witnesses, their accounts all agree. Beyond the four writers you have 500 eyewitnesses of Jesus’ greatest act of power and majesty–his resurrection from the dead. That’s a lot of witnesses saying the same thing.

 But what if these witnesses all formed a plot, a pact, to tell a tall-tale? Just look at what their story got them. None of them became rich or powerful. They were thrown into jail. They were whipped and beaten. They died horrible deaths. Peter was crucified upside down. Other apostles were skinned alive, beheaded, or burned to death.

Now if you knew that the story you have been telling was just a story, and there was no advantage in sticking to it, and in fact you were going to be tortured and killed for it, wouldn’t you give it up? Wouldn’t one out of so many witnesses admit to the hoax? But these weren’t “cleverly invented stories.” They were the testimony of eyewitnesses. What Peter tells us, he saw with his own eyes.

Why does it matter? Like us, the people to whom Peter originally wrote these words didn’t know Jesus directly. They had all these amazing stories about Jesus turning water into wine, healing the sick and the blind, controlling the weather, confronting demons, raising the dead, dying and rising himself. That’s a lot to ask people to believe.

Then, like now, there were skeptics questioning everything Peter and the other apostles had to say. They said it wasn’t rational. Water doesn’t instantly turn into other substances. You can’t just tell a storm to stop and it stops. Dead people don’t come back to life. Those aren’t “modern” ideas. They called the people who believed in Jesus gullible. They mocked their faith. They tried to de-convert or un-convert them.

Maybe the bigger challenge comes from the inside. Jesus has a lot to say about how we live our lives, and some of it might not be appealing. His teachings meddle in our sexual lives. He tells us to be self-sacrificing in our relationships with other people, even our enemies. He tells us to deny ourselves, carry our crosses, stop treating our money like our god, stop our worrying. He forgives us when we fail without fail. But he does not compromise on any of this. He won’t meet us half way. Disagree with him, and he tells us to repent.

If we could make ourselves believe that he is a myth, a story, then we wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable with ignoring him. If we could believe that he is a man, just like us, then why should his opinion count any more than our own? But while it’s true that no one can force us to follow him, Peter wants us to know that the things you have heard about him are certain: his coming (he’s real), his power (he’s not just another man). That means his grace and salvation are real, too. Eyewitnesses vouch for it.

1 Corinthians 3:21-23 “So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future–all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.”

Did you have a favorite Sunday School teacher growing up? Something about the way that teacher taught struck a chord with you. He or she opened up the Scriptures in a way you could understand.

But did you get nothing at all from the rest? Weren’t they all God’s gifts to you, feeding your faith, moving you along toward maturity? It is a matter of God’s grace to you that he has given you not just one cook to prepare dinner for your soul, but many teachers and pastors, each with their own flavor, just like God gave Paul, Apollos, and Cephas to the whole congregation in Corinth to serve them all. As long as God’s word is being served in all its truth, there is always some good thing there for us, no matter whose mouth it is coming from, even if it is just a reminder and confirmation of truths we have known for a long, long time. Why boast about just one when the Lord has given us all of them?

Have only the pleasant things and the easy things served you in your life? Haven’t your injuries and your sicknesses, your disappointments and struggles, your losses and your crosses taught you humility, deepened your empathy, and developed your patience? Haven’t they stretched your faith, enabled you to see God’s faithfulness in action, and helped you to look forward to heaven with genuine longing?

Then Paul is right when he says the world, and life, and death, and the present, and the future–in other words, all of our experience, everything that touches us this side of heaven– is “yours.” God has put it all under you. As a believer in Jesus Christ everything is working for you, even when it seems the opposite. That’s not something that happens to members of some closed club of Christians who have attached themselves to some human teacher. Every believer has everything in Christ, so no more boasting about men.

Doesn’t every one of us belong to Jesus by faith? Jesus didn’t purchase some of us with his blood. He purchased all of us. Our sins are equally forgiven. Our souls are equally saved. He isn’t preparing a place in heaven for some of us. He is preparing a place for all of us. “You,” all of you, “are of Christ, and Christ is of God.” You don’t get that by belonging to a clique or dedicating yourself to some favorite teacher, even if that teacher is the Apostle Paul. You belong to Christ, so no more boasting about men.

Do you need something really worth boasting about, something that builds the church instead of tearing it down, something based on God’s wisdom not man’s, something that leaves the politics behind and leaves the spotlight on Christ? Paul has that identified for us too, in the last chapter of one of his other letters (Galatians): “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

1 Corinthians 3:18-19 “Do not deceive yourselves. If anyone of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a ‘fool’ so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.”

Sometimes people who think they are smarter than they really are can be funny. Remember Cliff Claven, the mailman on the old TV series Cheers? He would sit at the bar and share his gems of wisdom, like: the Chinese used cows as guard animals during the Chung King dynasty of emperors; in genetic research, DNA stands for ‘Dames Are Not Aggressive’; 42 % of all deaths in America are caused by accidents in the home; sun tanning became popular thousands of years ago in the Bronze Age; and many other “facts” he seems to have made up on the spot. It’s all kind of harmless, and funny, when no one is taking this stuff seriously.

Pride that styles itself “wise” by the world’s standards, and covets the world’s respect, and wants to be the smartest guy around church isn’t harmless or funny. It’s spiritually dangerous. When we think we are wise in this sense, we don’t tolerate correction very well. A man in the congregation where I once served stormed out of a council meeting because he had set up a game for a church picnic in a place where kids could get hurt. Everyone else on the council could see it. But he could not admit there was anything wrong with his plan. He had one “logical” reason after another for defending what amounted to an accident waiting to happen.

How many times doesn’t Solomon in the proverbs talk about the wise man who receives council and correction, and the fool who won’t. We lack biblical discernment about ourselves when we lack the humility to see that we don’t know everything.

Worse yet, when we are making our judgments or proposing our ideas “by the standards of the wisdom of this age,” the basis for our wisdom is suspect. Such a person may need to “become a fool so that he may become wise.” Paul explains, “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.”

Some of the Corinthian men, being educated, knew their philosophers well and had their favorites. The philosophers weren’t stupid. Some of what they had to say was true, but not everything. Some of the Corinthian men tried to apply the wisdom of the philosophers to church life and church decisions. And some of them thought they saw a kind of similarity between things their favorite philosophers said, and things their favorite apostle taught.

But they lacked the Biblical discernment to sort out the false ideas in the philosophy from God’s truth in Scripture. They failed to discern that while the philosophers often disagreed with each other, the Scriptures and the Apostles always agreed with each other.

As a result, they created these political parties with a mishmash of worldly teaching and Scripture. They attached them to the name of an Apostle, and they ended up fighting with each other. They were dividing the church over non-biblical teachings they had imported.

Maybe this is a warning we can take for ourselves. Not all the scientists, businessmen, and politicians are ignorant. Some of what they have to say is true…but not everything. And not all of it has application in the church. Some of it flatly contradicts the wisdom God gives us in his word. Let’s not tear the church apart over ideas the Bible does not mandate just because they come from our favorite great thinkers in the secular world. And let’s not divide the church by introducing anti-biblical ideas that ought to stay in the secular world.

1 Corinthians 3:16-17 “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.”

Church politics is a destroyer. It attacks the very thing God is trying to build. From time to time some church still uses the word “temple” in their name, but our church buildings are not temples in the biblical sense of the word. The Old Testament temple built by Solomon was a place where God promised to live with his people in a special way at all times. No one imagined that the temple contained God with limits and boundaries he could not escape. They knew God was everywhere. But at the temple God promised to hear their prayers, receive their sacrifices, and give them his grace and blessing. The temple was a place where God could say to his people, “We are a family. I am your Father. You are my children. Here is the place where we can meet together. This is the place where I live with you.”

God doesn’t have a building like that on earth anymore. He doesn’t use a building to be present with his people, not in the way he used Solomon’s temple. He uses our bodies. Every believer is God’s temple, the place he lives with his people, the voice where God can be found with his grace and blessing.

You are God’s temple, and isn’t that a humbling and encouraging expression of God’s grace to us? What does it say about the depth of his love?

When we are hurt, and someone apologizes to us, we may genuinely forgive them. We don’t dwell on the pain or loss we suffered. We don’t live with a more or less constant grumble against that person haunting our inner thoughts. Still, don’t we sometimes end up with a distance between us that wasn’t there before? Maybe we hold them at arm’s length, not because we hate them, but because we have lost some trust and we aren’t eager to get hurt again. It is even better when our forgiveness leads to a friendship completely restored, and we find each other together again on a regular basis.

God’s grace to us goes further still. He doesn’t stop at spending a little time with us now and then. So complete is his forgiveness that he makes our bodies and souls a permanent place to live. He makes us his temple, his home, even though he knows where these bodies have been, what they have done, and the sinful foolishness they are going to do in the future. He is along for the ride through good and bad because “you yourselves are God’s temple, and God’s Spirit lives in you.”

Church politics destroys that temple. It wounds the faith of young believers, sometimes wounds that faith to death. And where faith is gone, the Holy Spirit is missing, too. God’s temple has fallen.

An article on young atheists ten years ago in The Atlantic magazine recalls an interview with a college student named Phil who was president of his church youth group, loved his pastor, and especially loved his youth leader. But during his junior year in high school the church wanted to attract more young people by asking the youth leader to teach less and play more. The youth leader disagreed with this strategy and was dismissed. He was replaced by a younger and much more attractive youth leader who, according to Phil, ‘didn’t know a thing about the Bible.’ But the youth group grew. It also lost Phil, who ended up an atheist.

There are thousands of wounded former Christians whose faith has fallen victim to this sort of thing. “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him,” Paul warns. That’s not to say this sin can’t be repented and forgiven, but like all sin it can destroy our own souls as well as the souls of those we offend.

Acts 13:39 “Through him (Jesus) everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses.”

When God revealed his law to Moses, he never intended it to be some kind of self-help book. Endless lists of things that made people ceremonially unclean, and purification rights to go with them; detailed instructions about some of the most minute details of how they lived and worshiped; this was more than any reasonable person could do. It should have led them to see the futility of working your way into God’s graces. It should have led them, like Paul, to realize “everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses.” It should have led them to seek help, not to self-help. But this is just the way that Moses was misused.

Why? For the same reason we find ourselves doing the same thing today. Rather than coming to grips with sin’s hold on us, we choose to live under the illusion of personal goodness. The name on the laws we are trying to follow to a better life may not be “Moses.” But the law of Osteen, Warren, or Lucado—or Oprah or Dr. Phil, for that matter—will not be able to justify us, either.

Go to your own pastor for counseling, and he may be able to apply God’s word to your situation. He may be able to tell you where you have broken God’s commands. He may help you with applications that improve your lives and make it tolerable to continue. He may have insights into what to do. It may be a good and wholesome thing for you to make those changes.

But all by itself, this will not draw you closer to God. It won’t cancel out your sin. It won’t justify you. I’m not saying, “Don’t try to do your best,” but we find no peace that way.

God has provided a better way. “Through him (Jesus) everyone who believes is justified.” Jesus is superior to Moses, because Jesus actually provides what Moses could only describe–a perfect life.

Justification, and its companion word righteousness, aren’t everyday words for us, at least in the way they are used here. When we think of “justify,” we are defending something or making a case for it. When Jesus justifies us, he is not defending us based our own good behavior. He is defending us based on his good behavior. He isn’t looking for perfect performance (that isn’t there). He is pushing us off the performance treadmill. He is giving us credit for his perfect performance from the stable to the cross. He pronounces us righteous. He declares us free from sin through the forgiveness he has led us to believe.

You see, what Jesus wants more than that you try harder is that you repent and give your sins to him. Lay your burdens down in front of him, stop trying to save yourself, and Jesus will do what all your efforts could never do, what the law of Moses could never do. He will make your very real sins disappear. He will give you relief from all your guilt. He will give rest to your troubled soul.

Jesus is infinitely superior to every other avenue to peace, because his way is the only way that actually works.

Matthew 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

“To be poor,” Jesus says, “is to be blessed.” Note that he does not say the blessed are poor in cash or wealth, though that often goes together with what he means. They are poor in spirit. You won’t catch them bragging about their prayer life, how many people they have converted, how much they have given up to serve God, or how much they have grown and matured in their walk of faith. Whether they can quote Isaiah 64:6, or even know the passage exists, they agree with the prophet: “All our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” Not much of value there.

Imagine a homeless, jobless person millions of dollars in debt. If he dumpster-dived for aluminum cans and had 10 lifetimes to do it, maybe he could scrape enough together to change his situation. But he doesn’t even collect recyclables. All he has gathered together are scraps of cloth, and grimy, smelly ones at that–soiled by ripe, wet garbage, further spoiled by dust and dirt. Would he present those to his creditors at the bank, or send them in to satisfy the Visa bill? Would he show off his pile of rotting rags to impress you with his wealth? Would you?

Now, convert his soiled and spoiled collection to a life of thoughts and attitudes and activities soiled and spoiled by selfish motivations, false pride, deceitful cover-ups, and self-indulgent lusts, and you have a picture of the poor in spirit Jesus calls blessed here.

But how can Jesus call such people blessed? It’s not because their hearts and lives are such a mess. In that they are just like everybody else. No, it is because they are in touch with reality. They don’t mistake their filthy rags for gold bullion. They have come to grips with their true situation and stopped pretending it is better than it is. Once they admit their spiritual poverty, they stop trying to impress God with their garbage. They come to him with their hands empty. Before God, they know that they are only there to receive.

And God does not disappoint. “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” With Jesus they go from penniless beggars to shareholders in Paradise. They own their own piece of heaven, literally. God does not hold their spiritual poverty against them and wait for them to pay. He forgives it, and he pays for it with the blood of Jesus, and he replaces it with his own eternal home of endless pleasures.

All of a sudden it is as if these spiritually bankrupt street people have won the billion-dollar Powerball. This is what it looks like to be blessed. They lack any great spiritual valuables of their own, but God has given them the deed to heavenly real estate. Maybe it’s just a promise now, God’s word on the matter. But he never, ever reneges on a promise, and possession is as certain for the poor in spirit on earth as it is for the saints in glory in heaven.

1 John 2:9-10 “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.”

 You know the number one complaint about Christians. It’s the same complaint people give as the number one reason for not going to church. “They’re all hypocrites.” Just where do people get that idea, anyway?

Sometimes it’s because prominent Christians have fallen into the very vices they condemn. A TV preacher preaches sexual purity but gets caught at a brothel with a prostitute. Another promotes being a teetotaler, but ends up checking himself into rehab.

A retired pastor once told me about serving a Lutheran church in a small town in Texas. There was one liquor store in town, so that is where he picked up the communion wine. After he had lived there a couple years and made several purchases, the store owner told him, “You know, you don’t have to park in front. I have parking spaces and an open door in the back.” My friend gave him a quizzical look, and thanked him, but asked him why he was sharing this information. “Well,” said the man who owned the store, “that is where all the ———– preachers come in.” You can fill in the blank yourselves. They preached against drinking, but didn’t mind having a little themselves sometimes.

Nothing gets people more upset with Christians than when Christians act mean. They talk gossip. They look down on other people. They are stingy and won’t help someone who has a need. Even the Apostle John admits this is a problem, not just for our reputation with others, but for the condition of our hearts, the state of our faith. “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.” A dark heart is not a believing heart.

Love defines the difference here. It’s the change you can see. God’s forgiving grace produces faith. And hearts full of faith produce love. And “whoever loves his brother lives in the light.” You know that God’s love has won in someone’s heart, and the light of truth is shining there, when that love comes spilling back out in acts of love for others.

Then another evidence appears, “…and there is nothing in him to make him (that is, his brother) stumble.” When we love, we aren’t putting roadblocks to faith and life in the way of other people. Instead, love can draw them closer to salvation.

 Our world is dark, and cold, and uncaring. Just watch the evening news. But do you sense in John’s words the rise of hope, hope that makes eager hearts swell as they see the old message become a new force and the light of God’s love pushes back the darkness to win even more hearts for the truth? Love is powerful stuff. It worked on you. Put it to work with those you know.