Lesson for the Lord’s Day
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. 2 Peter 1:16
During a chat with my grandson, he mentioned some of the things that a couple of his schoolmates believe. Their families are members of a cult, and their ideas differ sharply from ours. As we talked, Robert asked a very important question, a question that our text today answers very well: ‘How do we know that what we believe is right and that what they believe is wrong?’ How would you answer that question if someone were to ask? How do you answer that question when you wonder about it yourself? It’s critical that we know the difference between truth and error; our eternal destiny depends on it.
As Peter notes, we do not follow cunningly devised fables. But the cults do. Like us, they claim to follow what the Bible teaches. But the JWs, for example, wrote their own perversion of the Bible to correspond with their own false doctrines. How deep will be their damnation for deliberately falsifying the Word of God! And the Mormons insist that their books written by Joseph Smith are as valid as the Bible, even though those writings have been proven to be deliberate lies. So have the teachings of Mohammed and the nonsense that he claimed to have revealed to him by an angel in a cave. These and other false doctrines have a common theme despite their differences. They all deny the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The power of the Lord Jesus Christ refers to His deity. The Scriptures clearly teach that He is the eternal Son of the Eternal God, the Alpha and Omega, the Ancient of Days, the Jehovah of the Old Testament. He displayed that power during His life, in his control of the wind and waves of Galilee, of His victory over all the diseases and infirmities that people brought to Him, in His ability to transform a lad’s lunch into a banquet for thousands. The coming of the Lord Jesus Christ refers to His fulfilment of God’s promise of a Messiah, of the fulfilment of everything that God had declared He would do to redeem lost sinners. The four Gospel writers declare unto us how He came into this world, lived a perfect life, and died a vicarious death for us on the cross of Calvary. These things are paramount and precious to us who have trusted in Him as our Lord and Saviour. So, how do we know it is all true?
Peter declares that he and others who have passed on the Gospel to us were eyewitnesses. Peter and the other disciples spent three years in Jesus’ company. Some of them actually beheld His glory and majesty on the Mount of Transfiguration. They saw the miracles, they heard His preaching, they walked and dined and conversed with Him on a daily basis, and they participated in the events leading up to the cross, watched with heavy hearts the events surrounding His crucifixion and death, and rejoiced when the resurrected Christ appeared to them. We believe the evidence of eyewitnesses. We believe the words spoken to us by men who died for what they knew to be the truth.
Our faith is well founded on the truth, passed onto us by truthful men who knew and loved the same Saviour that we know and love today. – Jim MacIntosh