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Colin Smith: In a world of opinion, God has given us revelation. In a world full of religion and philosophy and psychology, there is no other book like this book. In all the history of the world and all the continents of the world, there never has been anything like it, never will be anything like it. God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ through the apostles and the prophets.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. And Colin, it sounds like today we're going to be looking at what it means for the Bible to be inspired by God.

Colin Smith: Yeah, and this is a really important subject for a Christian believer to come to a settled conviction that the Bible really is the word of God and what I read in the Bible is what God himself is actually saying to me. And here's why it's so important.

If I'm going to make a decision of conscience that is going to be really costly for me, financially, emotionally, and I'm going to do it on the basis that my conscience is captive to the word of God, I need to be settled in my mind if I'm going to pay a price that this really is the word of God and it's not just the opinion of Paul or Peter or whoever.

And so settling what we believe about the Bible is really foundational to being able to live a devoted, faithful, and obedient Christian life. And that's why it's such an important subject for all of us.

Steve Hiller: All right, so with an introduction like that, I can't wait to get into the message. Let's do that. We're in 2 Peter chapter one, as we continue "Everything You Need for Faith." Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Everything we need for life is in the knowledge of Jesus. But how do we have the knowledge of Jesus? Answer: through the Bible. Well, then how do we know that the Bible is reliable? How can we be sure that we have a true knowledge of Jesus? If everything we need for life lies in knowing him, how do we know that we know him truly? Can we, in other words, trust the source of that knowledge, which is through the word of God, through the Bible?

And you'll see then that that is why very naturally Peter comes in verses 12 to 21 to address this whole issue of Scripture. And this is one of the most important passages in the New Testament with regards to what we believe about the Bible. Now, just to give it a quick frame in our minds by way of overview, Dr. Wayne Grudem, who taught for many years at Trinity University, has identified four things that we need to know about the Bible and that the Bible claims in regards to itself. This is a good little overview that might be worth keeping in mind for you.

First, there's the authority of Scripture. And it's interesting that right here Peter speaks about how men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The authority of Scripture is that it is the word not simply of men, but it is the word of God. And Peter states that clearly here.

Secondly, the sufficiency of Scripture. That is, Scripture has all that we need for knowing Christ, who has all that we need for living life. That is the whole point that Peter is making here in this first chapter. God has given us everything we need for life in knowing Jesus, and he has given us everything we need for knowing Jesus in the Bible. These two things obviously must go together.

Third, the clarity of Scripture. In other words, God has spoken in the Bible in a way that we can understand. Notice how in verse 19 Peter picks up this theme when he says that the Scripture is like a light shining in a dark place. In other words, you must never think of the Bible as an obscure kind of book that only scholars or priests could understand.

And then the fourth thing is the necessity of Scripture. What would we know about God if we didn't have the Bible? So the necessity of the Scripture reminds us that God has given us this revelation so that we may know Christ, in whom we find everything we need for life and godliness, because apart from the Bible, you simply would not have a knowledge of Jesus Christ. What would you know if it was not from the Scriptures?

Therefore, our confidence in the Bible and in the reliability of the Scripture is a very important issue for us, and that's what is before us today. And what Peter wants us to know, and you will see it very clearly in this passage today, is that you can trust both the witness of the apostles to our Lord Jesus, that is the essence of the New Testament, and he speaks about that in verses 16 to 18.

And you can trust the word of the prophets, which was about the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the subject of verses 19 through 21. The witness of the apostles and the word of the prophets, put these two together and you really have the whole Bible. Apostles and prophets is a shorthand way of referring to the whole Bible.

You find that, for example, in Ephesians chapter two and verse 20, where the apostle Paul speaks of how the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. So prophets, Old Testament, point forward to Jesus. Apostles, New Testament, bear witness to Jesus. These two together being the sum of all the Scripture.

In a world of opinion, God has given us revelation. In a world full of religion and philosophy and psychology, there is no other book like this book. In all the history of the world and all the continents of the world, there never has been anything like it, never will be anything like it. God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ through the apostles and the prophets.

Apostles saw, prophets spoke. Now, here is the last thing today. We remember. Now, if you think that sounds like an anticlimax, which it may sound like, hang on. We need to know what the Bible means by remember, and probably this is the most important thing for us to grasp. It is life-changing for us today.

Steve Hiller: We're going to have to pause for just a moment before we answer that question. You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called "Everything You Need for Faith." We're going to get back to this in just a moment, so hope you'll stay with us.

If you ever join us late, have to leave early, or want to go back and listen to a broadcast that you missed, you can do that at our website. Come to openthebible.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. You can also listen if you have the Open the Bible app. You'll find the app for free at your app store, and it's a great way to listen to Pastor Colin's teaching on-demand as it fits your schedule.

Well, if you did join us a little bit later, we're in the book of 2 Peter chapter one, looking at verses 12 to 21. Back to the message. Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: What does it mean to remember? That is the issue. And if you can grasp this today, you have grasped something very important. Remembering in the Bible is more than being able to recall something that happened. Remembering in the Bible is about what happened becoming real and fresh and alive and present. Now, let me give you just two illustrations, and then we are through.

If you look back to verse nine, you will see that Peter speaks there about a person who professes faith but has forgotten, the opposite of remembering obviously, he has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. So here is a guy in church-world, but he is not a growing, prospering Christian. He is just kind of stuck in his Christian life. But there he is in the church, in the group of people to whom Peter is writing.

Now, you go up to that guy on a Sunday morning and you say to him, "Do you know, I just want to tell you something. Jesus Christ died to cleanse you from your sins." That guy has been in the church for a while. He is going to say, "I know that." The problem for this guy is not that he is unable to recall the death of Jesus for the forgiveness of his sins. The problem for this guy is that his forgiveness doesn't mean much to him anymore.

It is no longer a reality that is shaping his life. It is no longer for him something that is real and fresh and alive and present. He has forgotten. He doesn't know what it means to remember. The greatest use, of course, of remembering in the Bible is what? The Lord's Supper.

Remember when Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper? He took bread and wine and he said what? "Do this in remembrance of me." Now, let me ask you a question. If you never went to another communion service in all of your life, do you think that you would, when you were old, have forgotten that Jesus died on the cross, be unable to recall that fact? Of course not. You are never going to be unable to recall that Jesus died on the cross.

If you never went to another communion service, you would always know that. You would always be able to recall that. So what does Jesus mean when he says you're to do this in remembrance of me? See, Jesus wants his death and his resurrection to be something more to you than an event you can recall. He wants you to savor its blessing. He wants you to taste his goodness. He wants you to taste the power that flows from his death and resurrection. He wants it to be real and alive and fresh and present. That is what the Bible means by remember.

I learned this in a most moving meeting that I attended years ago. It will be forever imprinted on my mind. Back in London, there was a group of ministers from different denominations, and we met probably four times a year to discuss various topics. There was a Methodist minister, a Baptist pastor, a Church of England vicar, a charismatic lay leader, a Catholic priest, and myself.

Sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn't it? But we actually had some wonderful meetings and discussions together. And on one occasion, the subject that was set for us was: What makes a valid communion service? Now, you can understand in that context there were very, very different ideas about what makes a valid communion service.

Do you have to have an ordained priest present? Can it be a valid communion service if it's just students on a campus and not a church? Do you have to use real wine? Does it have to be unleavened bread? And so forth. There was all this kind of discussion. There was an Anglican priest in the group, an old man by the name of Canon Harry Wittenbach. Canon is a title they give in the Church of England, quite an extraordinary one.

Harry was a soft-spoken man, didn't contribute much to the discussion at all. But after it had gone on for some time, he spoke. He said, "You know, when I think of what makes a valid communion, I think about when I was in prison in China." Oh, you can imagine the room went very, very quiet indeed at that point.

We all knew that Harry had been in prison for some time in China, but like many folks who have gone through an ordeal of that sort, he very, very rarely spoke about it. "It was Christmas Day," he said. "There were three of us who were believers. We didn't have any wine, and none of us were ordained priests at the time. We had kept a few crusts of bread, and we'd kept a little water in a cup. And on Christmas Day, we remembered the Lord."

And his eyes filled with tears and his voice faltered. I'll never forget it. He said, "I've never known a communion service like it." He said, "The Lord was there. The Lord was there." Now, you see, that is what the Bible means by remembering. It is more than knowing about Jesus dying and rising in your head. It is savoring this Christ crucified and risen in your heart.

And Harry Wittenbach had found that he had everything he needed for life, even life in prison in China, in the knowledge of this Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And Peter had proved that, of course, in his own life too, being in prison many times as well. And that's why, you see, he's saying here, "Folks, this is why my ministry is going to be about one thing and one thing only."

I'm never going to move away from this. I want you to be able to lay hold of Christ, to savor Christ, to feed on Christ, to live on Christ, and I'm never going to stop reminding you, therefore, about him. I'm going to do it as long as I live in this body. And after I have died, I will make every effort to see that the church continues to be focused and centered on him because it is in him that we find everything that we need for life and for godliness.

Folks, that is the purpose of communion. That with faith you draw near to the Savior and feed on the richness of what he has accomplished for you. That is the purpose of preaching. If you think preaching is about imparting a bunch of information, you haven't understood what preaching is. It is to bring the reality of Christ freshly to impress upon the soul that we may live in the good of this.

And when you read the Bible, I hope you read the Bible every day. When you open the Bible tomorrow and you read something from the Bible, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? Why is this going to nourish your life? No, if you've understood what this is about, you open the Scriptures in order that you may feed on Christ, that you may draw near to Christ, that you may be strengthened by Christ, that you may find Jesus Christ.

That you may, in one simple word, remember, that you may live in the fresh reality of all that he is, of all that he has done, and of all that he has to give and holds in his hand for you even now. I think one of the reasons that we get stuck in the Christian life is that we persuade ourselves that we know what in biblical terms we don't really know at all.

When a girl says, "I know that God loves me, but I really hate myself," if Peter was her pastor, he'd come and he'd put her arm around her shoulder and he'd say something like this. He'd say, "You know, you say you know that God loves you, and you think you know that God loves you, but really you don't know that God loves you, because if right now you were savoring the love of God for you, you would never say that you hate yourself. How could you?"

And in that ministry, he would seek to show her the love of Christ that she thinks she knows but she really doesn't. And there she would find the healing of her soul. Everything you need in him. And when a guy says, "I know the gospel, but I cannot overcome a compulsive temptation in my life," if Peter was your pastor, he'd put his arms around you and he'd say, "Brother, you say you know the gospel, you think you know the gospel, but the truth is you really don't know the gospel."

Because when you give way to that temptation, at that moment at least, you have lost sight of the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life. And if that was fresh and real and alive and present to you, if you remembered, if you knew that, you wouldn't have fallen as you did. An effective and productive Christian life hangs on the great truths of the gospel being real, alive, fresh, and present for you every day of your life.

That is the purpose of communion, that is the purpose of preaching, and that is the purpose of reading the Bible. That is why God has given us his word. There is an old song that puts it like this. It is really a prayer. Some of you will know it. "Make the book live to me, O Lord. Show me yourself within your word. Show me myself and show me my Savior, and make the book live to me."

That's an expression of faith. Now, if you will seek after Jesus Christ in his word like that every day, and if you will come to church to receive the ministry of the word preached like that every week, it will change your life. You will not be the same. You will no longer be stuck. And you will discover, as Harry Wittenbach discovered, as Peter discovered, and as Christians through the ages have discovered, that God has given us everything that we need for life in the knowledge of his Son, Jesus Christ.

Steve Hiller: What a great truth in today's message from Pastor Colin Smith. You know, if you're a man or a woman who says that you just can't stop that compulsive sin in your life, as Peter would say, you need to remember the gospel. When you're tempted to give way to temptation, you need to remember that sin is not your master. We can't lose sight of the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Well, our message is entitled "Everything You Need for Faith," and it's part of a series taken from the book of 2 Peter called "Everything You Need for Life." And if you want to get a copy of the series for yourself, call us at 1-877-OPEN-365. That is 1-877-673-6365. Or you will find ordering information online at openthebible.org.

Open the Bible is able to be on the station, make the podcast, the app, and all the ministry tools available because of your financial generosity. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we'd love to say thank you for your gift by sending you a copy of Pastor Colin's brand new 30-day devotional book called *Grow in Love*. And Colin, why did you write this book?

Colin Smith: Well, this is the third in a series on faith, hope, and love. And of course, the Bible says that these are the three things that are going to remain. It's very striking. Paul says everything else is going to pass away, but faith, hope, and love, they're going to abide, and the greatest of these is love.

So I'm absolutely convinced that the greatest need of the Christian church today is a fresh outpouring of faith and of hope and of love. I mean, think about it. Everybody is looking for love, everybody wants to find hope, everyone needs someone to believe in. And God has given us these things in Jesus Christ, and the more we grow in faith, the more we grow in hope, and the more we grow in love, the more effective we're going to be in the world and the more we're going to be like our Savior.

Steve Hiller: Well, we'd love to send you, as our way of saying thank you for your financial support this month, a copy of Colin's new book, *Grow in Love*. If you want to find out more or give a gift right now, you can visit our website, just come to openthebible.org or call 1-877-673-6365. That might be easier to remember as 1-877-OPEN-365. And again, the website is openthebible.org.

For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

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