Confirmed by reliable witnesses
Certified by God's unerring Word
To be sure, we were not following cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the powerful appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father, when the voice came to him from within the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We heard this voice, which came out of heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. We also have the completely reliable prophetic word. You do well to pay attention to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the Morning Star rises in your hearts, since we know this above all else: No prophecy of Scripture comes about from someone’s own interpretation. In fact, no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were being carried along by the Holy Spirit.
The year is 177 AD. A pagan philosopher named Celsus was attacking the Christian faith. His book, entitled The True Logos, is not preserved for us today, except in the writings of a Christian apologist named Origen, who quoted extensively to make his case for the Christian faith. Celsus considered Jesus nothing more than a circus sorcerer who did magic tricks, but didn’t have any substance to his message. He also said that Jesus was born of a human father, a Roman soldier whose name was Pantera.
Christianity was now target of not only false teachers from the inside of the Church, but also from the outside, from skeptics and philosophers. People of all ages who accuse the Christian faith of being a bunch of myths and fables, usually do so with their own myths and fables. They may call it “scholarly,” but their stories are the ones that are made up.
Celsus attacked the very foundation of our faith: the deity of Jesus Christ, true God who took on our flesh to save us. Last week, CNN had an online post by a modern day philosopher, Jay Parini. In his essay, entitled You Think You Know what Easter Means, he lamented how he was repulsed by the idea of a bloodthirsty God who demanded blood and death (of his own Son!) as a payment for sin. Easter, he said, was not about substitution and atonement (and he badly misused Bible passages to prove his point). Easter teaches Christians this, I believe: to emulate the faith of Jesus in the goodness of the universe-- to rest in God, whatever we mean by that great holy syllable, which seems a stumbling block for so many in our highly secular world. It teaches us about what it means to lose ourselves, our petty little selves, in order to gain something larger: reconciliation with creation itself.
We aren’t here today to try to change the meaning of Good Friday or Easter. We aren’t here to change the nature of Jesus, like Celsus and so many others have tried to do. We aren’t here to debate whether or not the resurrection is a real event (like so many false teachers and unbelieving philosophers have tried to do). We are here because WE HAVE RESURRECTION CERTAINTY. Peter gives us two reasons for it: It’s Confirmed by reliable witnesses and Certified by God's unerring Word.
It’s no secret that we live in a world in which people don’t believe in what we call the inerrancy and inspiration of the Bible. They don’t believe it is without error in all it says, and don’t believe the Holy Spirit poured into the mind and hand of each writer the very words that God wanted written on the page. Satan sowed the seeds of doubt in the Garden when he said to Eve, Did God really say? For them it is not the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes; rather it is just another document, a bunch of myths and fables that have stood the test of time.
Peter deals with this topic head on when he says, we were not following cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the powerful appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
The Bible isn’t a handbook for living a moral life. It is the historical record of God’s love for the world as demonstrated by his living, dying and resurrected Son. When Peter says we he was talking about all those, especially the 11 disciples, who saw the power and majesty of Jesus. They watched Jesus change water into wine; they witnessed miracle after miracle that brought sight to the blind, healing to the leper, and release from demon possession. They ate the food that he blessed and then handed out to a crowd of over 5000. They watched him walk on water. They saw him, talked to him, and ate with him after he was risen from the dead. We were eyewitnesses of his majesty. We are not talking fiction. Our message is historical fact.
What could be more certain than an eye witnesses account? The world view so prevalent today is that if it doesn’t agree with mankind’s evolved reason and scientific discovery, it can’t be believed or trusted. How can the world only be several thousand years old when science has “proven” that it is billions of years old? It’s not long before people say, How can the resurrection of Jesus be real if we’ve never seen anyone rise from the dead, or recreate it in the science lab?
What could be more certain than an eyewitness account? The world says, We’ve come so far in our thinking to be bound by a 2000 year old book. Our morality shouldn’t be bound by cultural norms from the past. It is then that Jesus just becomes a good teacher and role model. There are other ways to be a spiritual person than believing he had to die on a cross for the sins of others (and me) and rise again.
That’s the poison and deception that Satan has put into the death-giving waters of this world, and that has been swallowed by every human being that has ever lived. But Peter tells us that we have received the living water of God’s Son through the gospel in word and sacrament. And Peter, along with James and John, witnessed Jesus in all his glory and majesty at his Transfiguration. They listened as Moses and Elijah talked about his departure from this earth. They cowered in fear as the Father said, This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. They saw him in all his radiance from head to toe.
Then this same Jesus faced the Father’s fury on the cross. They saw him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Then they saw him alive and glorified.
The amazing reality is that these disciples were themselves skeptics. They didn’t believe that he could have risen from the dead, even though he told them he would. They were convinced that someone stole his body and that they were going to be in real trouble with the Romans and the Jewish leaders. But Jesus appeared to them and erased their skepticism. They were eyewitnesses of his power and majesty, of his victory over sin and death.
Despite what other religions teach, in spite of what the critics of the Bible say, Peter testifies that the Bible, including every single miracle, is the eyewitness account of true, undeniable, historical facts – reading and believing this truth is better than seeing it. That’s why we say WE HAVE RESURRECTION CERTAINTY.
That fact alone should make the Bible worthy of our serious and careful attention and study. But Peter goes on: We also have the completely reliable prophetic word. If eyewitness testimony doesn’t do it for you, Peter says, then go back to the Old Testament. Search the words of Moses and the Prophets and you will find that every major event contained in the Gospels was foretold hundreds of years before it took place. Anyone can verify that the Savior would be born in Bethlehem, would preach in Galilee, would be betrayed for precisely 30 pieces of silver, and would be hung on a cursed tree. The New Testament is the result of eyewitness testimony, and this testimony in every case agrees perfectly with God’s Old Testament prophecies.
You do well to pay attention to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the Morning Star rises in your hearts, since we know this above all else: No prophecy of Scripture comes about from someone’s own interpretation. In fact, no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were being carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Why pay attention? Because the age he lived in was no less evil than ours is. The lie of the Jewish leaders, that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body during the night, is still being spread far and wide. Peter lived among people who fancied themselves too intelligent to believe a tale about a crucified and risen Savior. So do we. Peter was a pastor to Christians who, although they accepted the Gospel of Jesus, were beginning to grow impatient for his return. We become complacent about Jesus’ return, too, and our eyes too often shift to things of this world rather than lifting our eyes to the heavens as we await his return. And Peter and his congregation were confronted by false teachers who taught that Jesus wasn’t really alive, but only alive in the hearts of believers and other similar myths. Sound familiar? There were false prophets also among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2 Many will follow their depraved ways, and because of them the way of the truth will be blasphemed. 3 In their greed they will exploit you with fabricated messages.
Do you ever feel like you’re one of only a few who believes that Jesus actually suffered, died, and rose to win you forgiveness of sins? Does the skepticism and criticism of today’s ‘experts’ ever start to undermine the foundation of your faith? Maybe it’s more practical than that, maybe the sins you have committed in the week since Easter have made you question whether a risen Savior has had any impact on your heart and life. Does your faith ever seem less like a blazing fire and more like a dim or dying flame?
Keeping the flame of faith brightly burning, giving us the strength to overcome sin and Satan, and holding firm to the hope that Jesus will return and it could be at any moment, is exactly why God gave us his written Word. He knows that the world has a way of dragging us down and crushing our joy. He knows how Satan works to smother our faith. He knows how important it is to keep feeding our faith and building our hope. God does that through his Word. But we have to be in it, carefully reading it, daily paying attention to it so that its light may brighten our lives. The world today is just as dark as it was in Peter’s day – he calls it “filthy darkness” – but the Bible is God’s million watt halogen flashlight to lead us through the darkness until that glorious day when Jesus, the morning star, returns to light the world with his presence. The Bible is factual, historical, eyewitness testimony, it is God’s light in a dark world – use it, let it strengthen your faith and increase your anticipation for our Lord’s return.
Peter wraps up his defense of Holy Scripture with a powerful closing statement. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. This is the doctrine of verbal inspiration. Not only is the Bible based on eyewitness testimony, not only does every OT prophecy finds its fulfillment in the New, but God himself – in the person of the Holy Spirit – guided the authors of Scripture to write what they did. The picture here is nautical – the Holy Spirit moved the authors like wind moves a sailboat. Because of that you can be sure that every word – from Genesis to Revelation – came from God himself.
That’s important, especially today when truth seems to be such an unsettled, subjective, constantly changing thing. As Christians, we can be sure that our doctrine, our practice, and our lives now and eternally are not based on polling data or majority opinion or simply what “feels right” – but on God’s own truth which never has and never will change. So today, whether we are talking about abortion or absolution, church or child-raising, evolution or evangelism – when we are guided by Scripture we are being led by the holy, unchanging will of God himself.
Would people be convinced that Jesus of Nazareth died and rose again if we could show them video evidence? I doubt it. Even those who did witness Jesus’ empty tomb didn’t believe it immediately. More than that, Peter, an eyewitness and apostle, didn’t tell anyone to blindly trust his word. He tells us to hold to the written Word of God, and that when we do that we have something better than seeing, because the Bible is based on eyewitness testimony, it is inspired by God himself, and it deserves our serious attention. Today and everyday trust this reliable word for it continues to tell you the glorious, incredible truth of Easter: Christ is Risen and your sins are forgiven! Blessed are [you] who have not seen and yet have believed. (John 20:28) Amen.