The Old Testament is Reliable
2 Peter 1v19-21
2nd February 2024
In the first 16 verses of his second letter, Peter set down some of the most important Biblical truths, and wrote of his determination to continue to remind us of these truths until the day he died. In verses 16-18 he gave the first of his reasons for doing so, saying "We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" and wrote about the Transfiguration as an example of the demonstrations of which he was an eyewitness. Because of what he saw and heard, he knew Jesus was the Son of God. He now gives us a second reason why he is convinced of the truth of the Gospel of Christ:
2 Peter 1v19a
We also have the prophetic message made more certain
When Peter writes about the "prophetic message" or "prophetic word" ("logos") he means the Old Testament or, at least, the prophecies it contains. We know this because verse 20 describes "the prophetic word" as "prophecy of Scripture".
We need to be carful with this verse. The Greek word bebaioteron can be translated into English in more than one way, so Peter's meaning is not completely clear to English readers. The new NIV translates it as "completely reliable", the ESV has "more sure" and the old NIV has "made more certain". We can't know which of these meanings was in Peter's mind when he wrote this but, remarkably enough, they're all true:
- If the new NIV has the correct translation, then Peter is saying that the Old Testament is "completely reliable". That's true. As 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us, every word of the Old Testament is "God-breathed". It's inspired, trustworthy, infallible. God does not breathe out untruth.
- If the ESV has the correct translation, then Peter is saying that the Old Testament is "more sure" than his own experience. That is surely true. Nothing is more sure than the words of the Bible.
- If the old NIV has the correct translation, then Peter is saying that, for the apostles and for us, the Old Testament is "made more certain". What does he mean? Well, you may remember that in verse 10, Peter wrote, "make every effort to make your calling and election sure". When we discussed that verse, we acknowledged that our calling and election is something God is perfectly sure about. God knows everything perfectly, and He knows whom He has called and elected. In that verse, Peter was talking about making ourselves more sure of our calling and election. In the same way, he's saying here that his - and the other apostles' - experience of Christ, including the Transfiguration, make them more sure of truth of the Old Testament.
You can say if you like that the apostles ought to have been certain that the Old Testament was infallible anyway. But they were fishermen, tax collectors, working people. They weren't theologians. They didn't have access to the sort of books you can I can easily purchase or read on the internet. And - let's be honest - some of us sometimes have doubts about the absolute trustworthiness of the Old Testament, or even the New. Some of us may doubt some of the miracle stories, like the time the sun stood still for 24 hours (Joshua 10v12-14) or the flood (Genesis 6v11-8v19). Maybe we ought to know better, but we can still have our doubts about Daniel in the lion's den (Daniel 6v16-23) or the three friends in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3v13-27) or the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14v21-31). I should say at this point that I don't. I'm perfectly confident that all these things happened in the way that the Old Testament says they happened. But I'm aware that some of us find it more difficult.
Whichever of these translations we favour, the main point is that the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (verse 16) fulfilled Old Testament prophecy. We can say that Jesus's power and coming confirmed the Old Testament, and we can say that the Old Testament confirmed Jesus's power and coming. The two go together. Of course they do. The God who sent Jesus is the God who breathed every word of the Old Testament into being.
Peter had spoken about the correlation between Jesus and Old Testament prophecy before. During what was probably the second sermon he ever preached, while talking about Jesus and His crucifixion, he said:
Acts 3v18-24
"...this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying
that his Messiah would suffer...
For Moses said, 'The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from
among your own people; you must listen to everything he tells you.'...
Indeed, beginning with Samuel, all the prophets who have spoken have foretold
these days."
In his previous letter, he wrote:
1 Peter 1v10-11
Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to
you, searched intently and with the greatest care,
trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was
pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would
follow.
Concerning the prophetic content of the Old Testament, Peter now writes:
2 Peter 1v19b
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.
At the very least, this means that we will need the Old Testament (and, of course, the New Testament) until the second coming of Jesus. All the Bible is good for us. There is no part of the counsel of God that we can afford to ignore. Again, every word of it is "God-breathed", given to us from God's amazing mercy so we can understand the truth about Him, about ourselves and about life:
Psalm 119v105
Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.
Reading the Bible regularly is an essential part of our Christian lives. We can trust it because it comes from God:
2 Peter 1v20-21
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s
own interpretation of things.
For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but men spoke from God as they were
carried along by the Holy Spirit.
The true prophets of the Bible never made stuff up. They never claimed that God said something when He didn't. They never perverted His words. They never had their own agenda, only God's agenda. Their words never originated in their own hearts but in God's. Modern-day prophets, pastors and teachers must do likewise, or face judgement:
James 3v1
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach
will be judged more strictly.