The Certain Word
2 Peter 1:12–21
We have the word of the prophets made more certain. 2 Peter 1:19 (NIV)
The way we listen to Jesus today is by hearing what he has already said to us in the Bible. “But that is so commonplace, so prosaic,” you might say. “It is not much of a mountaintop experience. I want to see the bright light, be enveloped by the cloud, and hear the rolling thunder of God’s voice. I want a personal revelation.”
Consider, then, Peter’s wise observations on his own experience seeing the transfiguration of Christ. He claimed that he was one of the “eyewitnesses of his majesty” and that he heard the voice that came to Jesus “from the Majestic Glory.” He heard God say, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (vv. 16–17 NIV). But then he adds, “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” (v. 19).
This means that Peter’s experience on the mountain was an important one; he bears testimony to it. But he adds that there is something “more certain” even than this: the testimony of Scripture to which we must pay the most deliberate and rapt attention. He is saying that the Bible is more certain even than a voice from heaven.
We live in an age when people appeal to their experience as the only sure measure of anything, not realizing that our experiences can be wrong or misleading. We hear people justifying all types of unbiblical teaching or behavior by words such as, “God told me this is all right” or “I feel at peace with what I’m doing.” But here is Peter—a prominent apostle of the Lord, a man who had a visual experience of Christ’s transfiguration as well as having heard an audible word of God from heaven, experiences confirmed as true by the other apostles who were with him at the time—speaking of God’s revelation in the Bible as being “more certain” even than his exceptional experience. He does it to remind us that we must evaluate our experiences by the Bible’s teaching, rather than the other way around.
Do you do that? Or are you still longing for experiences that are being reserved for that future day when you are with the Lord in heaven? That day will come. You can be encouraged by it. But for now your duty is to read, mark, learn, and digest the words of God we have been given. If you do so and do so faithfully, carefully obeying what you read and understand, God will teach you all you need to live for him and serve him in this life until you die.
Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865
Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.