A Message From God - Reading PlanSample

Start with prayer, asking God to meet and speak to you. Then watch the film clip.

Read 2 Peter 1:12-21, stopping to think and pray about anything that strikes you.

This is a passage which explores the messages of both Old and New Testaments. Peter starts with his own message and relationship with Jesus. He talks of how Jesus has spoken to him (v14) and then emphasises that his message was not based on ‘cleverly devised stories’ (v16), but rather his eye-witness testimony (v16 and 18).

He then turns to the Old Testament to reinforce what he’s said. As he does, he explains more about how and why we can trust it. ‘Above all’ (v20) he emphasises that it is not just human ideas. Instead, each prophet “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (v21).

Part of the beauty of scripture is that each human author’s context and personality does come through in it. God spoke to Moses “face to face as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11), Ezekiel had ecstatic visions (Ezekiel 1-3), and the Psalmist speaks of how “my heart is stirred…”(Psalm 45:1). What Peter is telling us though, is that the key thing they all have in common is being led by God’s Holy Spirit. He is then the main author of what we read and hear.

While Peter doesn’t expand as much about what he is writing, what he’s already said suggests the same is true for his message. Interestingly later in this letter he also explicitly refers to Paul’s letters as “scripture” (3:16), showing how he saw the writings of the New and Old Testaments as essentially the same.

That means that we can read the Bible as a whole, expecting it to speak with one voice. That is very different to how most secular readers and scholars approach the Bible though, because they understand the Bible differently – as primarily the work of lots of different human authors. In that case, clearly, we could not expect to cross-read in the same way.

Finally, Peter touches on some implications of this. It means scripture is “completely reliable” (v21) and we “will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place” (v19). If you’re reading this, you are trying to do exactly that – so well done and keep up the good work!