Participants: Tom Shepherd & Deyvy Rodriguez
Series Code: PBOTB
Program Code: PBOTB00020B
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00:01 And we are back with Books of the Book
00:02 Dr. Tom Shepherd is with us. He is helping us with the 00:06 the interpretation of 2 Peter. Dr. Shepherd, verse 19, and we 00:10 are in chapter 1 mentions the day star or morning star here. 00:15 Why don't we just read that verse. 00:17 And so we have the prophetic word confirmed which you do well 00:21 to heed as a light that shines in a dark place until the day 00:25 dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 00:28 Okay. Now if you notice, first of all he talks about the 00:32 scriptures being a lamp shining in a dark place. We said that 00:37 the scriptures were confirmed, the scriptures are sure and he 00:42 goes on to express that by saying it's like a light, you 00:46 know. When I go out on my morning walk it's usually dark 00:49 and I take with me a little flashing light, I wear a 00:52 reflective vest, I have a flashlight and I turn that on. 00:55 It's a shining light, a bright shining light, that helps me to 00:58 be able to see my way. The scriptures are exactly like 01:01 that. The Old Testament tells us they are a lamp to our feet, a 01:05 light to our path. So what is this day star rising? Well the 01:10 term day star or morning star was the term that is used to 01:14 refer to the planet Venus. The planet Venus is always close to 01:19 either the sunrise or the sunset, so when you see it in 01:22 the morning sky you know that the day is about to dawn, is 01:27 about to rise, the sun is about to come up. And so the second 01:31 coming of Jesus, the transfiguration points forward 01:34 almost like the planet Venus, points forward to the coming of 01:38 Christ which is the rising of the sun. You know, that's when 01:41 everything will be complete and closed off and we'll have the 01:47 return of our gracious Lord. But the day star is said to rise in 01:53 your heart. And so some people say it's just like, you know, 01:58 Jesus is coming in your heart. Well it is in your heart in the 02:02 sense that that belief in the second coming of Jesus must 02:06 reside in our hearts for us to be ready to come when he comes. 02:11 So in a sense it's both. It's both in our hearts but it's the 02:14 actual event that is coming. If it's not in our hearts when he 02:18 comes back we'll be deeply disappointed. 02:22 And up until verse 19 things seem to be complete but Peter 02:26 doesn't stop there. He adds an additional two verses. Of course 02:29 we know that he didn't have the chapters but there are two 02:32 verses remaining in chapter 1. Why does he do that? 02:35 Well let's read the verses and then we'll kind of get a 02:39 perspective on exactly what was involved. 02:41 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any 02:45 private interpretation for prophecy never came by the will 02:49 of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the 02:53 Holy Spirit. Okay, very good. 02:58 He includes this here because he's building a wall against the 03:03 false teachers. The false teachers have been attacking him 03:08 They have been attacking the belief in the second coming and 03:13 they've probably been misinterpreting the scriptures, 03:15 twisting them to fit their own perspectives you see. And so 03:20 Peter has to walk his members back through the real truths 03:26 about the Bible so they won't be misled by these false teachers. 03:30 So he adds these two last verses of chapter 1 in order to 03:36 do that to talk about a secure understanding of the holy 03:42 scriptures that we have in the Bible before us. 03:45 So interpretation of the prophecies is confirming that it 03:48 doesn't come from the will of man but from God. Now speaking 03:52 of interpretation, you're a professor of New Testament 03:55 interpretation and what does Peter mean by interpretation? 04:00 Yeah. Now his interpretation, the meaning of the word for what 04:03 he uses here is probably a little different from, and I'll 04:07 explain why, from the meaning of the title that I have, Professor 04:11 of New Testament Interpretation. First of all, Peter is likely 04:15 saying that this word interpretation is referring to 04:19 something that the prophets wrote, all right, not just 04:22 taking their writings and explaining their writings. 04:26 I'm a professor of New Testament interpretation and what I help 04:30 do is exactly what we're doing in the program. It's to explain 04:34 the scriptures. The fancy term for that is exegesis, to bring 04:38 out the meaning that's in the text. What Peter uses this term 04:44 interpretation to refer to is probably in the ancient text 04:49 like in the book of Daniel. Daniel will have a vision, he 04:54 has a dream or he has a vision and then an angel comes and the 05:00 angel explains the vision to him. You'll see this in things 05:05 like Daniel chapter 7, Daniel chapter 8, Daniel chapter 9. 05:10 The angel will come and say understand what the vision means 05:15 okay. What Peter is referring to here is that the prophet doesn't 05:19 make these things up himself, the interpretation of the dream, 05:23 the angel comes and shows him all right. It's not private 05:28 interpretation, it's not just the prophet himself saying, Oh 05:31 I had this dream and here's what it means. I'll show you what it 05:35 means. Rather it is God both showing the dream, the vision, 05:40 and also explaining the vision. So as I said, he's building a 05:46 barrier against the false teachers. The false teachers 05:49 maybe want to take the vision and explain it with their own 05:53 interpretation, their own way of saying it. And he says, Now wait 05:57 He says there is the dream or the vision that God gave him and 06:01 there's the interpretation. God gave that too; gave it through 06:05 the angel. So if it's not the prophets own 06:07 interpretive stamp on prophecy then whose stamp of authority 06:13 is it? Aw! And that is what brings us 06:17 to verses 20 and 21. And we have to look a these carefully. If we 06:25 read these again, it says, Knowing this first of all that 06:27 no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own 06:30 interpretation for no prophecy was ever produced by the will 06:33 of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by 06:37 the Holy Spirit. Now we have a graphic here that illustrates 06:41 with maybe a little more literal kind of translation what verse 06:46 20 and 21 look like and we'll see here that the structure of 06:52 the end of verse 20 and the beginning of verse 21, you'll 06:56 notice we're going to have a chiastic structure. We have to 06:59 put it onto two slides to put it together, but you'll notice 07:02 there's an A because every prophecy of scripture and then 07:06 we have the word is not, the not 07:09 emphasized, is not of it's own 07:11 interpretation, that's the B part, then we go onto the second 07:13 part for NOT by the human will 07:17 was the prophecy carried 07:19 formerly. So the structure of the passage in a chiastic 07:24 structure illustrates for us the idea that it's not human nature 07:31 that brings this. At the center of this negation of human input 07:38 into the expression of interpretation of scripture 07:40 is at the heart of this chiastic structure, this ABBA structure. 07:45 So the human action of the prophet is not, is not, at the 07:50 heart of explaining the visions that God has given. 07:53 So the prophets were inspired by the Holy Spirit, is that right? 07:58 How did the Holy Spirit inspire the prophets anyway? 08:00 You know this is a wonderful passage. It's one of the key 08:05 passages that theologians turn to explain how the Bible was 08:10 given and how God inspired the prophets. Now the word 08:14 inspiration, inspiration (breathes in) exhalation 08:18 (breathes out). Inspiration is breathing in and the Apostle 08:21 Paul tells us that all scripture is inspired, it is God-breathed. 08:25 It's like God (blows) blows into the prophet. Now how does this 08:29 work? We have another visual that helps us to recognize how 08:33 the structure of verse 21 goes. It says, For it's not by human 08:38 will, we saw that before, was 08:40 the prophecy carried, actually 08:42 the word in Greek is carried, 08:45 pharo, the prophecy carried 08:47 formerly, but by the Holy Spirit 08:50 carried, people spoke from God. 08:52 Somebody says that is a very strange translation, 08:54 Dr. Shepherd. Yes. We've made it kind of literal here so you can 08:57 see the structures. It's not chiastic this time, it's ABAB. 09:03 Now look at the A part. The A part is not by human will and 09:08 the other A part is but by the Holy Spirit. And the B part is 09:12 prophecy is carried formerly and the B part below is carried, 09:17 people were carried, they spoke from God. Okay now we kind of 09:21 have to unpack this a little bit so that we can understand 09:25 exactly what we're trying to say by this. 09:28 The Holy Spirit carrying the people. My version says that 09:33 they were moved by the Holy Spirit. How were they carried or 09:37 moved? How were they carried or how 09:39 were they moved? And why does he use the word carry. Actually it 09:42 is very interesting. If you go through the whole passage we've 09:47 been studying, verses 16-21, he uses this word carry four times, 09:51 and if you don't read Greek you could miss it because it gets 09:55 translated different ways sometimes. We study Greek's 09:58 intimacy with the word of God like we said before. So in verse 10:02 17 we have this word. It says, For when he received glory and 10:05 honor from God when such a voice was CARRIED to him by 10:09 the Excellent Glory, This is my beloved son in whom I am well 10:12 pleased. The voice was carried, the voice was brought, okay, the 10:16 voice came. In verse 18 it says, We heard this voice CARRIED from 10:19 heaven when we were with him in the holy mountain. All right. 10:23 Two things stand out in the way that Peter uses this verb both 10:27 here and at the last part. First the action is always something 10:31 done by God and secondly, most often it's some kind of 10:35 revelation from God that is being stressed, okay. 10:39 What is the role of the people in this case? 10:43 Aw, so God is revealing things. We have two terms we speak of, 10:46 revelation and inspiration. Revelation is him showing. 10:50 Inspiration is now how he enables the prophet to be able 10:54 to explain things to other people and he is carrying them. 10:57 That's the inspiration, he is carrying them. Now what do we 11:00 mean by that. Well, it's very interesting when you read this 11:03 very last verse, No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man 11:10 but men spoke from God. Who did the speaking? The men. Where did 11:16 the message come from? God. And they were carried along by 11:21 the Holy Spirit. That is the Holy Spirit enabled them to be 11:26 able to share the powerful revelation that God gave them. 11:29 If they had just trusted in themselves and how to put this 11:33 out, you know, they would be unable to put it into human 11:37 words. But God carries them along. God gives them the 11:40 thoughts and he helps them to understand. It's their words, 11:44 men spoke, but they spoke from God. Their own personal 11:49 qualities were linked together very similar we might say in the 11:54 same way that Jesus became a human being. He was the divine 11:58 God but he became a human being, the incarnation. He was linking 12:03 together the human and divine. So in the Bible we have the 12:06 linking together of the human and the divine but it is 12:09 completely trustworthy, the trustworthy expression of the 12:12 will of God so that we can understand his will for us today 12:16 and this is how Peter builds things up to counter the false 12:20 teachers. He lays stones in each place to stop these false ideas 12:25 that they're presenting. As we continue we're going to see him 12:30 unmask these evil people and show just where their ideas are 12:34 leading and then he's going to give instruction so the people 12:38 can see exactly how the message of God leads and keeps them in 12:42 that holy Christian character that will keep them ready for 12:46 the Lord Jesus when he's going to return. 12:48 Well Dr. Shepherd, I'm looking forward to that study. I also 12:52 hope that our viewers are looking forward to this 12:55 continuing study of 2 Peter. God is still speaking to us 12:58 through his Holy Spirit in the scriptures. Pick up a Bible, ask 13:03 prayerfully the Lord to give you this Holy Spirit so that he can 13:07 be able to share with you the thought, the message, that God 13:11 wants to give you. He is speaking to us each and every 13:13 day of our lives. God bless you friends. We'll see you next 13:16 time. We hope that you continue joining us in this very 13:19 important, interesting Bible study of 1 and 2 Peter. 13:22 Till next time God bless you. |
Revised 2014-12-17