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Monday 12 December 2016

2 Peter 1:19-21 -Speaking from God

1:19
Having dealt with the personal testimony of the apostles, Peter now turns to the witness of Scripture. ESV describes the prophetic word (referring to the Old Testament) as “more sure”, or in the NIV as “completely reliable”. The Old Testament describes the word of God as a light to our feet. Peter describes the word as a light in a dark place. The world is full of evil, we need to rely upon the word of God if we want our feet to be sure. This is most prominent today in the question of sexual morality and who we are. Those churches that say we should go along with the societies sexual (im)morality are blind guides and only fools follow them.  The word of God is a reliable guide of how we should live. The world tells us that we the product of random chance with no inherent meaning or value. The word tells us that we were created out of love by God, created on purpose and for a purpose. The day dawning and the morning star refer to the return of Christ.

1:20,21

We have here a very strong declaration of the divine inspiration of Scripture. Note that the origin was not the prophet’s own interpretation of things, rather they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. We see here that the divine will and the humanity of the prophets were together, but the Holy Spirit is the origin, He is dominant. We need to pay attention to historical context, social context, the emotional context of a particular section of Scripture, but we must never make these the primary aspect. The dominant aspect of all Scripture is what Is God saying? Scholarship is important and immensely useful, but it must not become an end in its own right. So often scholarship takes its focus off God, if we do this we are blind. “Scripture never had its origin in the human will”. We need to remember this.

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