Tomorrow, in the Anglican calendar, is the celebration of the Feast of the Transfiguration. As we have read, this is the occasion in which Jesus appears before the apostles in the glory He would have after his work on earth was done. God the Father also speaks to the apostles directly, identifying Jesus as His Son – which was synonymous with his being the King of God’s kingdom – and commanding them to “hear him;” to take heed to all that Jesus would say to them.
One of the main purposes for the Church calendar is to help us to remember the basics of the Christian story; the Christian faith. Remembering is a very key ingredient to saving faith throughout the Bible. If we forget what we believe, we certainly cannot live by it, can we. In the Old Testament, the LORD had to frequently reprimand Israel for failing to remember things they had once known. Their failure to remember would lead them to unfaithfulness and idolatry and thus to the loss of their covenant blessings. The apostles in the New Testament also make much of the importance of remembering.
Peter does this at the beginning of his second epistle. He starts the letter by describing how God has abundantly blessed us with all we need for life and godliness through Jesus. He then goes on to tell the Church to diligently keep seeking more and more spiritual blessing in their lives so that they may know Christ better and strengthen their own assurance of their salvation in Him.
He then writes this:
12: Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth.
13: Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance;
14: Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me.
15: Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance.
16: For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
17: For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
18: And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.
19: We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
20: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
21: For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
Peter is a man of duty. He recognizes that, as an apostle, one of the main things he has to do is to keep the Christian faith, the gospel, in the minds of God’s people lest they forget it. He says in these verses that he is going to keep his duty; he is not going to be negligent and fail to remind them of those things they already know. And he is especially concerned about his duty because he knows he will soon be martyred, as Jesus had said he would be. But as he talks about his duty to remind them, he tells us that the reason he reminds them of these things is because of their quality. There is a particular quality to the story of Jesus that Peter points to as the reason remembering these things is so important. And what is that quality? They are real, solid, true historic facts.
Human beings cannot escape being religious. It’s part of their nature. Sadly, being fallen, they will believe just about anything. You may have heard in the news recently the havoc that the environmentalists are making in California, ruining the farming industry there. Charles Krauthammer, Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent for the Washington Post, recently explained that the reason the environmentalists in California do not care about the damage they are doing to our country is because environmentalism is, for them, a religion. While we Christians have much sympathy with environmental concerns, we have to say that certain fundamental beliefs of the environmentalists are not true, but are like the “fables” that Peter talks about people believing in the pagan world of his day. They are fictions, not facts, and therefore they will eventually lead to destructive behaviour, as religions based on fictitious fables have always done.
The story of Jesus is not a fable. It is historic fact and Peter wants us to not forget that. To prove his case, he recounts his experience at the Transfiguration. He says, “I was there! We were there! We saw Jesus, the King, in his kingly, divine, glory! And we heard God command us to accept Jesus’ words with divine authority.” The story of the Transfiguration, then, for us, is a reminder that our faith is founded in fact. And just as Jesus really did do and say those things in history, so he will also come again in history and do all the other things he said he would do as well, and we must be ready for that coming by being diligent in our seeking God’s grace in our lives.
But Peter, interestingly, goes on to say something else about our religion. He says that we have a more sure word of prophecy. What does he mean by that? He is saying that our faith is actually founded on something even more sure than any account that any man may give of what Jesus said or did. God has revealed the truth we are to believe in something more certain, more solid for our faith, than historic accounts. What is that more sure revelation? Peter tells us: it is Holy Scripture.
Please do not misunderstand me or Peter here. Peter is not saying that the apostolic accounts of the life of Jesus are not to be trusted. Indeed, it is his own account that he is expecting them to believe here in this chapter. But we must remember that, at that time, the only Scripture for the apostles was the Old Testament. The New Testament was still being written. He is simply doing what all the apostles did: pointing us to the written, divinely inspired Word of God, for our authority. In our time, that would also include the New Testament as well.
So what are we to learn from this? We are to know and remember that the Christian faith is a faith based upon the Holy Bible. And the reason our faith is based on the Bible is because of the nature of the Bible. It is not a merely human book; it is a book given to us by God. When it was written, God did not leave men up to their own ideas as to what would be written. Elsewhere in the Bible, we are told that God breathed on these men. The Spirit of God, in Scripture, is the breath of God, the “wind of God” (John 3) and God breathed on these men and thus “inspired” them as they wrote so that what was written would have His divine authority.
Peter uses a maritime image of this process in his last verse in this chapter. When he says the prophets were men “moved by the Holy Ghost,” the word in the Greek refers to the sails on ships that catch the wind and make their way across the sea. It was as if the writers of the Bible hoisted the sails of their spirits and minds and God’s Spirit breathed, God’s wind blew upon those sails, and guided them in what was written.
Thus it is, my friends, that you hold in your hands a book unique in all the world. It is a book, but it is a divine book, carrying with it the authority of God himself because of how he guided its composition. And this book tells us from cover to cover that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and it is only in Him that we are to believe in order to have eternal life.
The presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church has recently said that how a person comes into the Church doesn’t matter. That is a flat contradition of God’s inspired Word. As it says in the Bible, there is no other name given among men than the name of Jesus whereby we must be saved.
So, then, friends, let us hear Peter today as we remember the Transfiguration. Don’t forget what you have received from the apostles. Jesus is the King. He is risen from the dead and become the author of eternal life, and if we believe in him, we shall not die, but have everlasting life. And let us remember where we learned this from: the Holy Bible. Let us keep the Scriptures as the foundation for all we believe and do, that, walking in its light, we in turn may be light in this world of darkness, until the dawning of Jesus’ return.
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