Transcript

Let’s open our Bibles to Matthew chapter 1, and as you turn there, I’d like you in your minds to think through how we’re using the events of the Christmas story. We’re looking at Joseph and Mary. But when you think of Joseph and Mary, you think of angelic dreams and angelic visions. You think of God’s voice, shepherds being directed and orchestrated, and Joseph being told where he should live and where he shouldn’t live, and what direction the shepherd should take home.

Now, having that degree of guidance in life from God is an amazing way to live. For us to look at this, we sit back and we think that is astounding, and then we step back and think, is that still what I should seek? Can you imagine being able to ask God where you should buy your house? I mean, with the fluctuating markets? Can you imagine Joseph was headed towards Judea, and God says, nope, don’t buy one in Judea. Go to Galilee. Wouldn’t that be the best way to live? You’re going on a trip, and the Lord said to the Wisemen, don’t go that road. There’s danger. Go on this road. That’s safe. Having that clear, close, divine personal guidance in life? Isn’t that exciting? But is that what we should seek? Is that what the Bible says is what we should think is normal? If we’re more spiritual or seek the Lord extra, we’ll get that? Is that what’s presented in the Bible?

So, this morning from the Christmas story, we’re going to look at Joseph and Mary. We’re going to look at God’s communication methods, not just in their life. By the way, the Christmas story has 10 divine interruptions, 10 divine insertions of God coming in in a marvelous way, personal, direct, 10 of them. Is that normal? And the continuing thought is, how does God lead us today? Should I want that level of guidance? Should I seek that level of guidance? Wait until God talks to me. Wait until I hear a voice. Wait until I have a vision or a dream, or do not go until an angel shows me. Oh no, that’s silly. I wouldn’t do that. But think of the climate we live in. Think of Christendom today. How far Christianity is slowly drifting from being tied to the Word of God. It’s almost like a boat adrift from a dock, and it can go almost anywhere. Once people detach their Christian experience, their Christian life, their ministry, once they detach it from the Scriptures, they get adrift, and God clearly warns about that.

So, have you ever noticed how clearly God personally communicated with the characters of Christmas? God explained things to them. God shows them when, where they’re supposed to go. God warns them of dangers. God arranges for them amazing meetings. What a wonderful way to live. That’s the first thing I would think about the Christmas story, but from that story, we can pause and extract some truths. Is that how God has always presented He’s going to guide us? Is that how God wants us to wait and look and seek His guidance?

The story opens that nearly 2,000 years ago, God literally spoke to a young teenage couple. They had been engaged, actually betrothed for marriage by their parents. Mary was probably between 14 and 16. Joseph was somewhere between 18 and up. He could have been a little older, some commentators say, since he died young, but probably 18 to 20. But here’s what happened. We’re going to start in chapter 1 in verse 18 of Matthew. If you just glance down, you can see what’s happening. God frequently, personally, and clearly communicated with both Joseph and Mary. That’s probably one of the most amazing elements of the Christmas story besides Christ incarnate, but the surrounding frame, it’s unbelievable all the direction that’s going on.

God Almighty instructs them, commands them, guides them, warns them, and leads them, and He does it not just briefly; the documented period between Matthew 1 and 2 and Luke 1 and 2 is 12 years long. We have a close-up view of this event. The Lord uses angel visits, dreams, as well as the Scriptures. He calls, He protects, He guides and directs them, but what are we supposed to get from that other than it’s a wonderful Christmas story? What lessons? If all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, what doctrine are we supposed to get?

Do you see why in Christendom today there are churches meeting today in the name of Jesus Christ where people are getting up and saying, I am a prophet, or I’m an apostle, and God told me to tell you that you should quit your job or you should give your money, or you should stop doing this or that, and none of what they’re saying is in the Bible. What is that? Is that from God? Is that how God operates? People have dreams, and they dream stuff, and they come and announce it to people. In fact, one of them said that God told them 88 reasons that Jesus was going to return in 1988. Hope you didn’t buy that book. Did you know the same author came back and said God told him it was actually 89 reasons that Jesus would come in 1989? Do you understand this idea? We even went through that in the recent history of a man who bought billboards all over and scared everybody to death, and all of his followers sold everything and gave the money to him. I always wondered why he needed the money. Jesus did not come back like he told him he would.

So what’s the lesson? Number one, the Christmas story opens for us in the Scripture when the silence is ended again. When the Christmas story opens, there have been six successive recorded events of God jumping into humanity, talking, walking, meeting, showing Himself, and then He is silent for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 700 hundred plus years. Then he’s back talking, meeting, directing, and then silence. Six times that cycle has gone through the Scriptures. It’s again, this is the final one, and the silence ends, and God speaks. When the Christmas story opens, and you can look in verse 20, God breaks another period of recorded silence. The last time God had spoken was 435 years before this event. In Malachi, God spoke. He told the people what God said and that they must obey, and God blacked out all communication for 435 years of recorded by God history. That’s what we need to realize that God does not constantly send dreams and visions and angels and messengers and have all this supernatural stuff. It’s not the norm for the Word of God and the presentation.

But what does God do? Look at chapter 1, verse 20. God sends an angel of the Lord to Joseph, Matthew 1:20, in a dream. If you go on to chapter 2, just down about an inch in my Bible, God personally guides the Wisemen, in verse 2, from the East with a star, and again in verse 9. God personally guides them in an unmistakable way for them to find an exact geographic location. Now look at chapter 2, verse 12 of Matthew’s Gospel. God warns the Wiseman now in a dream, he’s gone from stars to a dream, and tells them in 2:12, look at verse 13. God sends an angel of the Lord to Joseph in a dream. Look at verse 19. God sends an angel of the Lord to Joseph in a dream. Look on at chapter 2, verse 22. God Himself warns Joseph in a dream.

That, by the way, is the sixth if you’re counting. The first was the angel of the Lord to Joseph in a dream, then the star dream, then another dream, and then we get to God Himself warning Joseph.

So, we’re six through a series of 10. The angel of the Lord, go to Luke chapter 1. Matthew, Mark, Luke, let me, because there are only four chapters recording all of the Christmas events. If you go over to Luke chapter 1, look what happens starting in verse 11, God sends the angel of the Lord, He names him. We know who it is. It’s one of those that always stands and faces God, one of the seven mighty angelic spirits that stand like flames of fire in front, always facing God. He sends Gabriel, who says I always stand in the face, in the presence of God. He comes and talks to Zacharias at the Temple. By the way, chronologically, that’s the very first event of Christmas. That is about 6, 6 or 7 B.C., and this is the first time God has spoken since Malachi boomed out the final message to Israel. The silence is broken right there.

Look at chapter 2. In chapter 1, I’m sorry, verse 26. In the sixth month, it’s Luke 1:2, God sends the angel of the Lord again. It’s Gabriel talking to Mary. Chapter 2 in verse 9, if you turn over the page, the angel of the Lord comes and talks to the shepherds, and then a whole group of the hosts, just like a legion of Angels, comes in verses 9 to 15 of chapter 2. Then, look at verse 26 of chapter 2. I touched on it a little bit at the dedication. It says in 2:26, and it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit, and in verse 27, he came by the Spirit. So, God’s Spirit reveals directly just to Simeon an event and then leads him to the event. There they are, 10 spectacular, supernatural, divine revelations that are amazing.

Then what? That’s what any, in fact, any serious student knowing God and studying His Word would ask after this blizzard of back-to-back events: what is God’s normal pattern of communication? Is this normal? Is this what I should want? Is this what I should seek? Is this what God offers? See, these are honest questions that we need to talk about because what happens is we just don’t say anything, and we watch people, and they come up to us. Have you ever had anybody come up to you and say, the Lord told me to tell you this. Then they just look you right in the eye and say, God told me to tell you to do this or not to do this. I have to say, it’s a little uncomfortable. You smile, you listen to them, and then you say, but God hasn’t told me that. There are no more prophets and apostles who speak on the level of the Word of God. So, I appreciate your concern, but God. God said if a prophet comes to you, check. Did you know that when Paul preached Acts 17:11, the entire church in Berea took notes and went home and checked the Bible to see if it was accurate? When Paul, the Apostle who wrote half the New Testament when he was just preaching, they checked everything he said against the Bible.

Now think about that. There are some today who claim angelic visits. There are some today in Christendom who claim visions, who claim God’s voice speaking aloud to them, and supernatural messages are delivered to them that they feel need to be proclaimed to others as directions directly from God. So a perfectly timed question at Christmas is, does God picture that His guiding dreams, His visions, His angel visits, His supernaturally guided shepherd and Wisemen visits, does God say this is supposed to continue? Is this operative today? The answer is no. This type of direct revelation is part of a pattern that you will see if you study the Word of God.

By the way, if I had, if this were a longer, like a classroom setting, I would’ve shown you that each time the angel came, it was to fulfill the Word of the Lord. Each time the angel spoke and there was something. If you notice, if you keep reading around the text, it says to fulfill what the Lord had already promised in His Word, in Isaiah, and this and this. God was supernaturally getting people to fulfill what He’d already written in His written Word. That correspondence shows that the normal pattern of God, as we’ll see in a moment, is His written Word.

Notice what I said. There were no recorded angel dreams and visits for any of these people. Now, some of you might say, wait a minute. How do we know that there are no more angel visits to Simeon or Joseph or Mary, or anything else? Because I said, no more recorded. The Scriptures were supernaturally engineered by God. He sees the end from the beginning. He knows every event going on. He knows every thought, every word, every intention. He even knows what we could do and don’t, and what we would’ve done if something had changed. He knows every potential outcome, plus the one that He has ordained. But what’s written in this book is what He wants us to know.

What for? For doctrine, what’s right, for reproof, what isn’t right, for correction, how we are to get right, and for instruction and righteousness, how we stay right. God wrote down what He wants and left out what He doesn’t want us to know. See, the Bible was supernaturally engineered. It wasn’t just a collection of people saying, hey, let’s write a bestseller and we’ll live off of it on the Riviera or something. God orchestrated every word that’s in this book. God inspired the Scriptures. God said the Scriptures were all that we needed for doctrine, correction, instruction, and for us to be completely equipped to serve Him through life. Then the recorded history, with no more recorded angel visits and dreams, and voices, is what God wants us to learn. God’s Word gives us the frame. The facts God gives us frame how we’re to look at life. God burst into the scene, led those in those 10 events, and then there were no more. That’s what He wants us to know. There are no more events that matter for our understanding of how He deals with us.

Most people like the white spaces, what isn’t written down, and they just love to speculate. God says, what I’ve written was written for your understanding that you, through the patience and understanding of Scripture, might know how you’re to live. God wrote down our doctrine. God has given us our framework. God has set the pattern that we’re to follow for everyday life. God shows us that in all of divinely recorded history. By the way, this Bible is divinely recorded history. Is it everything that happened? No. Is it everything that God says is important to know to understand what’s going on? Yes. Do we need anything else to understand God’s plan, His purposes, His direction, His desire for us? No. There’s nothing missing. There’s no more coming. This is it. We already know the ending. It’s just that people don’t like it.

It’s kind of like Mark Twain, the sage American, unbelieving sage, who said it’s not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me. It’s the parts I do. Those bother me. See, what we should do is not worry about what we don’t know. We should concentrate on what God has revealed to us. In a clear and very powerful way, God has jumped in special periods of time, but He stops and then redirects people to the norm. The norm is what He’s already stated and written down in His Word.

So, what’s the third truth? Number three is that God wants to communicate clearly with us, His people. Look at Matthew 1. Let’s go back to Matthew 1, and then we’ll trudge through all four chapters, or tread through them very quickly, I should say, not trudge. We’ll go fast. Look at verse 18. Basically, God wants to communicate clearly with us, and God uses Joseph as an illustration because Joseph experiences both. Joseph experiences these divine manifestations, but Joseph operates the majority of the time. This Christmas story covers over 12 years of time. Joseph gets, in 12 years, four visits directly from God, but he does a lot of other things, and it says, and I’ll show you, he does them according to the Scriptures.

What was normal for Joseph? He obeyed the Scriptures, and then, when God did something supernatural, he responded and obeyed. But his normal setting was not to wait for a dream, not to wait for an angel, not to wait for a voice or someone else to have it, his normal operating mode, we’ll see by the time we get to Luke, was just to obey the Scriptures. But look real quickly, verse 20. While he thought about those things, that Mary was expecting and they had not had any physical sexual relations, behold, while he was all troubled about that, verse 20 says, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him what’s going on. So, look at verse 24. Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel commanded him.

But what was it that the angel revealed to him? It’s the part I skipped over, that it might be fulfilled, verse 22, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. God tied everything in all of these visions and dreams back to the fulfillment of the Word of God. That’s an amazing reminder that God primarily is watching over His Word to fulfill it, and He, from time to time, intervenes and jumps in to enhance that. But the norm is He’s fulfilling His Word.

Well, so God wants to communicate clearly. Now, look at the pattern here with me. God loves to show us the pathway. So, look at the pattern we’re going to see. The angel talks in verse 20 of chapter 1 of Matthew to Joseph in his dream. Look at verse 24. Joseph responds. God loves that He shows us what to do, and we respond. The Lord says that He’s pleased when we hear His voice and respond to Him. So, Joseph not only shows how much God loves to communicate, Joseph shows how much God loves what Jesus said. Do you remember what Jesus said in John 14? If you have what I tell you to do and you do it, you love Me. See, our response to what God asks us to do is such a blessing. He loves to show us a pathway of life.

But look at chapter 2, and I want to show you something starting in verse 13. Joseph also, fifthly, portrays what it looks like to seek the Lord, and there’s this back and forth. God sends the angel of the Lord in chapter 2, verse 13, to Joseph in a dream. Look at verse 14. What does Joseph do? He responds. So, God sends the angel of the Lord to Joseph in a dream. Verse 19, what does Joseph do? Look at verse 21. He responds. Now look at verse 22. God warns Joseph in a dream at the beginning of the verse. Look at the end of the verse, Joseph responds. Now, have you noticed a pattern there? Do you see what God likes? God speaks, Joseph listens. God leads Joseph follows. God wants us to see something wonderful about Joseph. Joseph listens for God’s plan, and when he hears it, he follows it. And if the Scriptures are all we need for life, for our godly life and practice of following and knowing and seeking the Lord, then we should learn a lesson from this: that God communicates and God loves to communicate and God loves for us to hear and respond.

So what does Joseph do? Look at Luke now, I want to show you something in Luke 2, because something very interesting happens. We’ve been going through angel, angel, God talking to Joseph. It’s getting better and better. What happens next? The next lesson is starting in Luke 2:27, Joseph follows the Lord’s direction the rest of the time after those four unusual, unique, supernatural events. What’s the standard operating procedure for Joseph? Look at verse 27, right in the middle of the Simeon thing. This is so fascinating. We see both ways that God operates happening at the same moment. How did God get Joseph and Mary to the Temple? Did He send another angel to hold their hand and get them there? That was already mandated in the Scripture. 40 days after the birth of a son, a woman was to come and follow what Leviticus said, right down to the offering she was to bring for the purification and the presentation of this child that we talked about this morning.

Now, look what happened in verse 27. So he, that’s Simeon, came by the Spirit into the Temple. This is the supernatural work that the Lord is doing. And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law. Did you know if you were a Bible reader, you could have, if you would’ve been a family member and would’ve known the exact day that Jesus was born, you could have marked on your calendar when Joseph and Mary would’ve showed up in the Temple because it was on the 40th day afterward because that was mandated. Joseph followed the Lord’s directions in the Word. He didn’t need an angel to tell him to do what it said in Leviticus. He knew that Leviticus said what he was supposed to do as a father, married to this woman, and had a child, and that’s what he did.

You see the normal operating, Joseph was following the written Word, the law of Moses, but Simeon was following the special supernatural guidance of the Spirit. He came by the Spirit, and those two collide in the midst of God’s plan. Isn’t it neat? Follow God’s will and the divine supernatural revelation, and boom. That is how God accomplished another of these great events. But Joseph didn’t need to have an angelic vision or voices to go to the Temple. He just obeyed what was already written down. That happens to be the normal way that God, throughout all of divinely recorded history in the Bible and throughout all of recorded church history, has done to this day. Normal for the Bible and normal for church history is not angels, it’s not voices, it’s not visions, and it’s not codes. Every time someone comes out with a new Bible code, everyone buys the books. God doesn’t work in these mysterious ways to make people sell more books. He’s already written down the clear plan that even a child can understand, and that’s the normal operating system.

In fact, look at verse 41. Normal for Joseph in Luke 2:41 is not angels and voices, and visions. Normal is the written, settled, inspired Word. His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of Passover in Luke 2:41. What’s that? God had laid down a plan, and they just obeyed and followed it. God said that they were to go to the Passover Feast as part of the three times a year, and they did it. They didn’t need an angel. He didn’t have to have a dream. He didn’t have to have God say, go and take someone with you and tell them they should go. He already said that. He wrote it down. God laid down the plans we’re just to obey and follow. We are to find God’s directions for us as sons, as men, as daughters, as women, as mothers and wives, as fathers and husbands. God has written his desire down for each of us in His Word, and Joseph was a leader for God because He followed God’s directions.

So, what’s the conclusion? Here’s the last of seven points. God primarily speaks to us through the Scriptures. Now, let me show you something.

It says in Hebrews 1, verses 1 and 2, that God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past, has spoken unto the fathers by the prophets, and it talks about all the dreams and visions. Has in these last days spoken unto us by His Son. So, the first thing we know from Hebrews, which was written in the mid-60s, near the end of the New Testament canon, the only thing that follows are Paul’s and Peter’s, and Jude’s epistles, then we have Revelation. God says we’re entering a new phase here. God, in time past, has spoken to us in a lot of different ways.

Here they are, period one from the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3 and 4, God talked and walked with Adam, Eve, and face-to-face talked with Cain. The Bible says that. Then God did not talk again. How do you know? He doesn’t want us to know that He talked to a single person. He gave us a supernatural, divinely recorded history from His supernatural omniscient standpoint and wrote down everything we need to know, and God doesn’t say a word for seven generations until period two.

He starts talking to Enoch, and He talks to him and walks with him for 300 years. It says that Enoch walked with God after the birth of his son. He was 65 when his son was born, and the Lord took him, translated him to Heaven, raptured him to Heaven as an Old Testament picture of the Church, actually. I won’t get into prophecy right here, but Noah went through the flood, and the lost perished through the flood. They were killed by the flood, but Enoch went before the flood. So, it’s a picture almost of Israel and the Church and the world.

But after Enoch, God does not talk to anyone. How do I know? Because I’m reading the divinely recorded…what God wants me to know is He doesn’t want me to wonder and worry about what He was doing in between. He didn’t talk to anybody until 700 years later, Noah. Noah, it’s fascinating if you read. God talks to Noah in chapter 6, it says, build an ark, and he built an ark, and a hundred and some years go by, and all of a sudden he hears the voice of God again. It says, get into the ark. He says, okay. God shut the door. And there’s a whole year of storm and wind and sloshing around and animal smells and sounds. No talking till chapter 8. After that year, Noah heard the voice of God. He didn’t have his iPod on, and he was listening to God all the time. It was mostly speak, obey, and wait till you hear any more. Keep doing what I told you to do. I’ll talk when needed. Boom. Did you know that after Noah, those very few times God talked to Noah, another 200 silent years?

The fourth period, Job. From Job 38 to 42, God talked a lot to Job, a lot more than is recorded that he talked to Noah. God reveals an amazing amount of truth to Job, who lived somewhere most Bible chronologers believe that he lived between the flood and Abraham, because it was still tribal and not a city, like Er. So, it was somewhere in the midpoint. So, for 200 years after the flood, then Job, four chapters of talking, and then nothing. How do you know? We know everything God wants us to know. We’re supposed to build our doctrine on what He tells us, not on what we wonder and speculate about. He told us He didn’t talk to anyone else that matters to us for 200 years until He talks in period five to the patriarchs, and then it’s another one of those blizzards.

He talks to Abraham, He talks to Isaac, He talks to Jacob. Jacob sees visions that Jesus talks about in John chapter 1. Unbelievable. Nothing. Nothing after the patriarchs. Nothing for over 300 silent years until the biggest period, Moses. Moses is the very first time God starts writing. He’s speaking up until this time, but now it’s time for us to get our Bibles, and now it’s time for God to say, I am giving you my once and for all settled in Heaven book. So, the very first words of the book, God wrote with His finger. He writes the 10 Commandments, Exodus 20, on two tablets of stone.

By the way, you know what? I hear people talk about how there has to be some problem with the genealogies. We have to get millions and billions of years in here so we can match up the theories that people who don’t believe in God have propounded. We have to match the Bible, which is God, with the theories of the people who don’t believe in God, and we have to work this out. Do you know what? There might be one misspelling in the genealogies. There’s not one mistake in the chronology. God gave us a chronology. You know what He said? He wrote it with His finger. He said to 3 million slaves, He said I’m setting up your work schedule. I would like you to work the same number of days that I worked creating the universe, and then I want you to rest the same amount I rested. I worked six sun-ups to sundowns and rested the seventh. You work six days, rest the seventh, and that’s in Exodus, for slaves. They knew what He said. They believed because He wrote it with His own finger. Then He says, Moses, you finish this book. He wrote the first five books.

Then it’s unbroken for a thousand years of prophets from 14 something B.C. through 400 something B.C. A thousand years of unbroken Bible writing, prophet speaking, and all this. Then, when Malachi finished, nothing. Blackout. Did God talk? It was one of the most tumultuous periods in history. It was the time of Alexander. It was the time of the four successors to Alexander. It’s a time when the Greeks came in and defiled the Temple. It’s a time when they slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Jews. No prophecies. They could have sure used some help. Nothing.

Then the final period, the birth of Christ and His Church. It’s unbelievable the amount of revelation going on. The Big 10 events that I just told you about were just the start. Jesus’ ministry; He spoke like no one spoke. The Gospel writers recorded His words, and they became the first four books of the New Testament. Then the Book of Acts contains an unbelievable display of the Holy Spirit coming with cloven tongues of fire, and the miracles, and the birth of the Church, and Peter’s miracles, and the work of Paul all across the ancient world. But did you know the last recorded miracle the Bible wants us to know about was in A.D. 58? No more supernatural, apostle-touching, shadow, handkerchief, healing people things ever again.

You say, how do you know no more happened? I know many more happened, but none of them are important for us to know about. God says, I want you to see that I speak and I come in these special periods, and then the normative is this. See, what’s normal?

For the last 2,000 years, we’ve had God speaking through His Scriptures. That’s what He wants the emphasis on. He doesn’t want someone dying on an operating table and writing down what they saw. He says, you don’t need that. You can interpret that any way you want, but you can’t interpret this any way you want. I wrote it down. It’s not private interpretation, it’s My Word. Everything needful for us to know about God is contained in His Word. The Scriptures are not an exhaustive record of everything about God, but they’re everything God wants to reveal as truth about Himself for us.

Now, just before we go, I want you to turn to Peter. Remember, I told you Peter is amazing. Look at 2 Peter 1, and you don’t have to go anywhere else. This is the last one, and I want you to see something fascinating that Peter tells us, because God’s Word is sufficient and complete, it’s not missing any part, it’s not wanting for completion. Paul said the Scriptures were all we need, so we lack nothing. And because God has given all things that pertain to life and godliness, God’s Word is perfect, but people weren’t content with that even in the Early Church. There were people claiming God told them something. The Apostles had to start shutting down false teachers and false prophets. In fact, that’s what 2 Peter’s all about. He’s shutting down all these false, not from God, speakers. He wrote this book. If you read 2 Peter, it is a very sobering book. It’s parallel with Jude. It’s very sobering, the condition of the Early Church, of people wanting more than just the Scriptures.

Now, look what Peter says starting in verse 12 of 2 Peter 1. For this reason, I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things so you know them and are established in the present truth. He says, what you’ve heard from me is from God. It’s truth. Yes, I think it’s right as long as I’m in this tent to stir you up by reminding you. So, Peter was, verse 13 of chapter 1, he says I am repeating myself. He says, verse 14, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent. He says, I’m not going to be with you always, just as Jesus Christ showed me. Remember, Jesus said they’re going to take you somewhere where you don’t want to go and all that in John 21. So, he knew that he was going to be martyred.

Now, look what he says in verse 15. Moreover, I will be careful to ensure you always have a reminder of these things after my decease. So, he says I’m going to write down as an Apostle, as a messenger. Remember John 14? Jesus told the disciples, he breathed the Spirit upon them, and he says, you are going to remember everything you need to remember, and you’re going to get that all for Me written down. The Holy Spirit is going to use you to speak of Me. So, that was the commission. They were going to write the Scriptures. Then Paul says in 2 Corinthians or 2 Timothy 3 that God breathed out through them, and Peter says right here that the Spirit of God moved them to write down.

Now, look what Peter says, verse 16. Now he’s starting to hit at these false teachers. He says, we don’t follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of the Lord Jesus, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. What Peter’s saying is, I’ve got something up on all these false teachers. How many of them have seen what I have seen? Verse 17, for he received from God the Father honor – he’s talking about Christ – and glory when a voice came to him. A voice came to Jesus from the excellent glory, this is My beloved Son. Verse 18, and we heard this voice, which came from Heaven, when we were with Him on the Holy Mountain. Where are we now? We’re in John, or Matthew 17, the Mount of the Transfiguration. You know what Peter’s saying? He’s saying, were any of the rest of you claiming to have a revelation, were any of you there? Peter, James, John. Mount of Transfiguration.

Jesus, do you remember Jesus? Jesus was so ordinary looking that the only way you could pick Him out of a crowd was to have someone run up and throw their arms around Him and kiss Him. That’s how you knew it was Him. He would not have made it in the movies, in the television industry. He was not striking, where people just couldn’t ever forget how unbelievable He looked. How he talked, nobody else talked like Him. He looked unremarkable until the Mount of Transfiguration. Matthew 17 says for just a moment, as Peter and James, and John watched, Jesus just let out a tiny glimmer of the fullness of God bodily dwelling in Him, His deity. Peter said that it was a blinding light, and look what he says. He says it was a glory and a voice in Majesty, verse 16, when we were with him on the holy mountain. He said and have you guys ever seen that? My experience is greater than any of yours?

Now, look what he says. Verse 19. We have a more sure Word; we have the prophetic Word confirmed. If you carefully, and this is fascinating, the word order that Peter wrote down and God’s Spirit inspired says this, the Mount of Transfiguration was unbelievably great, and none of you were there, but you have something more sure that you’re holding than any mountaintop experience. That’s what he says. We have the prophetic Word confirmed, and you do well to heed. He’s talking about the Bible. It’s a light that shines in a dark place. When the day dawns, the morning star rises in your heart, knowing first that no prophecy of Scripture is a private interpretation. He says people are going to have all kinds of experiences and they’re going to interpret them any way they want, but you have something more sure. You have God’s Word, and Jesus Christ validated the Old Testament. He called it Scriptures in John 5:39. Then He says, the rest that I’m going to reveal is going to come through these Apostles, and they’re going to verify it. By the time we get to Revelation 22, the last living Apostle, John, was writing along, and God says, one last thing I want you to write. Don’t add anything to this book. It’s done. No more revelations. Don’t take anything out of it. It’s complete. Boom.

What did Peter say? This is what he said. God’s Word trumps anyone’s experience. Even mine, Peter said. You weren’t up on the mountain. I was, but you have a more sure prophetic Word. It’s God’s Word. The written Word of God trumps all other manifestations of God from the writing of the New Testament onward. Why? Jesus said because of deception. No matter what anyone says God told them, each of us can know exactly what God has told all of His children. God does not reveal His will for us by speaking or giving signs to someone else. Just because someone says they know something the Lord says test it against the Word.

Joseph heard angels. Joseph saw dreams. But we have something even more sure than anyone’s experience. We have all of God’s Word. We have all that He wants us to have. We have every event He wants us to know about. We have every promise that He wants us to cling to. We don’t need any other experiences. We have what God wants us to have, and we have it for all of our lives, and we have it in our hands, and we can choose each day to write a little bit more of it on our heart. So, what’s God’s normal operating system? He speaks through His Word, and that is His pattern. When He finished that last period of His presence to write His Word, and for the last 2,000 years, His Church has heard Him speak through His Word.

Let’s stand for a word of prayer. As you stand this morning, this Christmas week, know that as you open that book and study it each day, as you read the Christmas story, that you’re reading everything that God wants us to know about Him. And through this, we can experience Him more every day. Let’s bow. Father, I thank You that we don’t have to work ourselves up and try and get a little more excited or try harder so we can get to some greater level of spirituality so that You will talk to us or show us a vision or a dream. Even though You can and You do those things, Your Word trumps every other experience. It’s a more sure testimony because it’s the one You gave to all of us to measure everything else against. I pray we would know it. I pray we would believe it, and I pray that we would adhere to it and not seek other experiences that Your Word does not say validate anything more than Your written Word ever could. Thank You, today, that we know the truth and the truth has brought us light for our souls, peace, and endless assurance of Your once and for all finished work on the cross. So we worship You, oh Christ. In Your precious name, we pray, and all of God’s people said Amen. God bless you as you go.

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