J.D. Greear - You Will Do Well to Pay Attention - 2 Peter 1:12-21

we live in unusual times isn't that true this is a first for me i've spoken here at southeastern a number of times but never here on the lawn but what a beautiful night what incredible testimonies um that were out there um i uh i even asked when they invited me come speak i'm like surely you're not gonna make me wear a coat and tie and they said no we want you to dress this is literally what they said dress like you would on a mission trip to brazil and i said oh like danny aiken dresses every single day that's kind of what i'm hearing that is that right but man what an amazing uh what amazing evening um and so i hope that uh if i can pay attention i realize when we're outside there's a lot of things going on i heard last week a shirtless jogger with delighted everybody so danny has promised not to do that again this evening and so um hey listen i got um uh by the way just i i i feel like this is a really awkward thing to say but since i have walked onto this um yard area there is a like gnat that has just decided that this area of my face is where he wants to hang out and i it's like a messenger of satan to afflict me in the flesh while i am up here because i keep smacking it and i can't get it so if you just see weird gyrations happening up here you have been warned as it's not not me being crazy um hey if you got well i know i got commercials i got commercials um first of all uh there are a couple things that are back there the north american mission board provided you with a water bottle um and uh in it is along with that comes it's a free study they i have a book coming out here in a few weeks called what are you going to do with your life and it basically is just presenting a question that says hey one of the biggest myths we have in the in the the christian community is that calling is something that a few of us experience in a mystical moment really every believer is called to leverage his or her life for the great commission now the question is no longer if you're called the question is where and how and it just kind of unpacks that well they've um got a uh they've got a study that goes along with that that they're giving out for free um and so they also asked me to tell you again this is from the north american mission board not from um from me personally so i want to give them credit for it but they want to they're willing to give away 300 up to 300 copies of that book to you southeastern students they will only do it for the first 300 all you have to do is text make sure you get this number right 888 123. that's the number 888-123 and just text the word going that's it g-o-i-n-g case you don't spell basic english words um text going to eight eight one two three and for the first three hundred uh they will send you a free copy the very first second that it comes out um so g-o-i-e-i well how are you for now going um eighty-eight one three by the way just um as some of you are doing that i'll kill a little bit more time here um the uh uh you know part of this uh really it's part of something we're doing in the sbc called go to um go to is essentially telling college students and southern baptist churches all across the nation that the first two years after you graduate why not spend those at least those first two years on a church plant somewhere whether you do it through something like the journeyman or isc program through the imb or whether you do it through the north american mission board on a domestic church plant you know we tell all the students at our church where i pastor here in the triangle we tell them you got to get a job somewhere so why not get a job in a place where god is doing something amazing why wouldn't the kingdom of god be the largest factor that determines where you pursue your career i realize that many of you are here because you were called to ministry but i would say that that both the imb and north american mission board are ready to help you get started by having some really strategic places putting you with a team of people either domestically or internationally to start a church and to get some of the most incredible experience you'll ever get because i can tell you having done this between my two graduations at southeastern masters and bhd um serving in southeast asia it was the most formative years of my life taught me more about ministry and the great commission than just about anything else so it's go twoyears.net that's a second commercial and the last one ties into that and that is you know one of the things that the summit church that we love to do is be able to play a part in the role for some of you as you develop and so we have a thing called the summit institute and the summit institute really is essentially an internship program that matches you up with various pastors at our church um kind of gives you both content and character training they match it's designed to match what you're doing here at southeastern to really help you develop in the time that you um are here and so uh in one of the things back there is a little card that just has a some information about how to get a little qr code about how to get that conversation started to see if it it would fit you and really help develop you over the next few years it would be our honor to do that there are also people back there i think they have gray shirts on that say summit church on there somewhere they would love to be able to have that conversation with you just about whether or not that fits by god's grace listen there's a lot of great churches in this the raleigh-durham area five of the ten is six or five it's five of the top 10 sending churches in america in terms of number of people on the mission field are within a 20 mile drive of where you are right now and so there's a lot of great churches summit church is definitely not the only church that that's like that but for some of you um some of what we can do might fit that and give us a good chance to walk with you and partner side by side i would love to get to know you others would as well so you can find that out summit rduinstitute.com okay that's like a full slate of commercials that hadn't even started so uh listen i love this institution i really do uh dr aiken mentioned i am twice a graduate um i i i think it is um one of the finest if i wasn't southern baptist convention president i would say it is the finest institution in the country for teaching you to love jesus to love missions to love the bible and to teach it in whatever capacity god has given you and so that's actually what i get a privilege of talking to you about tonight because you were working your way through the book of second peter and i was assigned the passage second peter chapter 1 verses 12 through 21. i i think that's what i was assigned but at this point that's what i'm preaching okay this is one of the most important passages in the bible about the bible if you're going to memorize a handful of scriptures that are going to tell you what the bible says about itself this is going to be one of the top two or three peter in the book of second peter is defending his testimony and the testimony of the other apostles against the charge that their their stories that they are telling are just part of the larger jewish collection of stories about messiahs and miracles and hey this thing comes along every 60 70 years and there's a new flurry and these are just like the others and really you guys are kind of beefing up these stories which they did back then from time to time not the apostles but other other other jewish leaders to accentuate their own authority you know that right like you know if you nothing that gives you a little bit more street cred than being able to have some miracles that you have done and so um that's the charge that's been given against peter is that this is all just kind of made up in order for you to accentuate your authority so peter explains in this passage that there are as i count them four things that make the new testament or might we say the writings of the apostolic community not every book of the new testament was written by one of the apostles but all under the supervision of the apostles he said there are four reasons that set what we are saying apart from all these other things and i would say these are the same four reasons that you and i are to be devoted devoted to it here they are i give them to you all for at the beginning and walk you through one by one number one he's going to explain that the new testament was written by eyewitnesses of jesus it was written in the company of eyewitnesses of jesus number two ultimately he says it's the word of god not of man number three it's about jesus and then number four it's about uh it's a matter of life and death those are our four things here we are second peter chapter one peter says so i will always remind you of these things verse 13. i think it is right to refresh your memory as long as i live in fact for those of us who are living now peter's dead that's what i'm going to do i'm going to refresh your memory about what peter is saying to you and i will make every effort verse 15 to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things thank you peter and apostles for writing these things down so we have them in a book and can memorize them verse 16 for you see we did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our lord jesus christ no but see we were eyewitnesses of his majesty verse 17 for he received honor and glory from god the father when the voice came to him from the majestic glory by the way he's talking here about the transfiguration and the voice that he heard um where god said this is my son whom i love with him i am well pleased we ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain there of transfiguration let's just put a little bookmark right there and and talk about our first couple of of of observations number one in the new testament was written according to peter by eyewitnesses of jesus you see there verse 16 we do not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our lord jesus christ we were eyewitnesses the word in greek there by the way for cleverly invented stories is the word mythos where we get our word myth from of course and he's saying these are not myths not exaggerations or made up stories interestingly the primary challenge today to the authenticity of our new testament is that it's filled with stories that were not direct lies but are stories that just sort of grew up over time you've all heard c.s lewis you know lord lunatic liar he's got to be one of those three well in more recent years the more popular objection is that he was not lord or not lunatic or liar it's just these things were innocently exaggerated over the years what started out as jesus teaching people to share their their their lunch one afternoon and to be selfless turned into he multiplied five loaves and two fish and what started with him being calm during a time where they were out in a storm turned into uh you know that turned into him walking on the water and etc and oh he never really claimed to be god yeah he exercised a lot of authority and ultimately they decided to be best if he was god and so these things grew up over time jesus never really said these things the real jesus would let me give you four reasons okay the new testament could not be myths that peter is alluding to here and by the way these are not original with me nothing i ever say is original with me you know originally ability ability to forget where you got it from and i can do that look with the best of them okay so um but these all come from usual suspects tim keller c.s lewis hodgepodge of new testament scholars um here they are give you four abcd eight the timing of the writing is just too early for the gospels to be a legend the books of the new testament are written entirely too close to the events for legends like that to have sprung up because the new testament was written while the apostles and people who knew the apostles were still alive it's relatively undisputed that most of the books of your new testament were written about 30 or so years after the death of jesus some of the main ones being as early as 20 years and the last one the gospel of john written about 60 years after jesus's death that's simply too early for a legend to spring up because when there is a legend and there are people alive who know the truth they can't really take off if this had been two or three hundred years later there's nobody around but when somebody says well this is what happened somebody else says well that's not what actually happened and the apostolic community was united no this is what happened we saw it peter williams who is over at cambridge and is spoken right here at southeastern says you can tell that these writings are early in fact it was brilliant because he found a little thing that all the scholars had overlooked he said you can tell by the way they spell the names in the new testament manuscripts because you know you can tell a lot about certain things like if you see savior spelled s-a-v-i-o-u-r what does that tell you about the person who used the word they're from great britain right because that's not how we don't spell it save the hour um here you know dumb ways that british people spell we spell it you know the way it sounds and that's tells you it's from america or if you were reading an account and it said golly that swell you know you would know that's not written anytime recently that's going to be from somewhere back in the 50s and he says you can just tell by the spelling of the names and the ways they write things you can tell exactly when it was written and he said it's all within 20 or 30 years there he said whereas all the other spurious gospels gospel of judah's gospel of thomas those language and names show a later writer period or even places outside of palestine we also know that the most spectacular doctrines of christianity are are in the undisputed earliest records of christianity there's a set of books in your new testament called the impregnable quartet first and second corinthians romans and galatians and impregnable means there's really no serious scholar christian or not who doubts that these were not written just a few years after jesus's supposed resurrection and ascension and in those that impregnable quartet first second corinthians romans and galatians you're going to find the core truth of christianity the most spectacular doctrine that god came to earth and died on the cross and raised from the dead in addition to that scholars will tell you we know that the earliest christians from the very first time they're out there they're celebrating communion together like i can tell you this firsthand because um i got to take a trip my wife and i were taking a trip to israel and they diverted our plane we had to land in italy um in rome we landed at eight o'clock in the morning it's on you know an unplanned layover and we didn't leave until like 12 o'clock that night and i was like i mean that's if you're gonna do an unexpected layover that's the way to do it in rome for an entire day so i was like look i got three things i want to do here um one i want to go see the coliseum because the movie gladiator was awesome and russell crowe in that movie reminded me a lot of myself and so i thought it'd be a great way to go just kind of tour that i wanted to go um and see the sistine chapel and then i wanted to um be able to see the catacombs where the earliest christians were you get on the catacombs and what the tour guide will tell you is um they said you know from the very earliest days you see one of the symbols wasn't even the cross it was a picture of the communion elements and it's like the earliest christians what we are sure of is they celebrated the death of jesus which raises the question why would they celebrate the death of jesus if it wasn't accompanied by a resurrection that wouldn't you don't if you're into you know if you're when you're celebrating the civil rights you don't celebrate the death of martin luther king that's something to be lamented they celebrated the death because they believed in the resurrection and that was something the earliest christians did let her be here the content is far too counterproductive to be a legend the content of the new testament is far too counterproductive to be a legend and this one actually is from keller but there's a lot of stuff in there you just wouldn't make up if you were writing a legend to beef up your authority for example if you've read the new testament you realize that on nearly every page the apostles are a bunch of buffoons i mean reading you know the stories of the apostles it's like reading an episode of the three stooges or watching it they're always getting stuff wrong they're they're mean to little kids right i mean seriously right they're bragging about who's the greatest if there were puppies running around they would kick them or stomp on them matthew records a story in which jesus calls peter peter by the way who became the leader of the church and who would have been the leader when matthew wrote these things he records a story where jesus calls him satan get behind me is that the kind of story you would include if you were making up a legend right if you were trying to convince people that uh i can't remember her name girl got up here and talked about the new church they started i don't know who the pastor is but if she were trying to convince you to come there you would be like hey you got to come jesus called our pastor satan one time right that was awesome you got to come here you wouldn't do that right he's just they put that in there because it's it's true um the gospels record that women were the first ones to see jesus after his resurrection a woman's testimony in those days was not accepted in court so if you were making up stories to establish the truthfulness of a claim you would never put women first in your account the gospel writers did that though because that's what happened it's just too counterproductive to do to be a legend letter c the literary form of the gospels is too detailed to be alleged this one's one of my favorites people think that maybe these are written up as fictitious parables that had true moral meaning but were never intended to be taken literally all right here's the problem with that um these the stories have all these random details that don't have anything to do with the overarching moral meaning of the story right i promise you what i'm about to say you've never heard this preached on mark 4 36 jesus was sitting in a ship and there were a bunch of other little ships there what is the significance of him telling you that there was a bunch of other little ships there there is no significance at all no commentators ever said here's what he's trying to say with that it's just a guy writing from memory man he's sitting there and there's some other things there and you know he's just he's just writing for it reads like an eyewitness account mark chapter 14. this is another good one in the midst of a really serious reflection on the garden of gethsemane one of the most sacred moments in all of jesus's life mark records a detail about one guy fleeing naked y'all that's got nothing to do with the plot you don't know where it comes from where he's going why is that in there because if you're telling any story and a guy runs through it naked you put that in the story right i mean if we're standing up here tonight and all of a sudden god runs back through naked when you tell your mom and dad about what happened to chapel you're like oh jd and then this guy ran right through naked it's just a guy recounting what how he's writing from memory these things read like eyewitness not like legends you say well well today we've got this whole genre of literature called historical fiction where authors do that they put in details to make it sound realistic maybe that's what they did yeah that's a good theory except that genre of literature hadn't been invented yet c.s lewis who before he became an apologist was just a literature professor at oxford said that to say those who wrote these things down did so as historical fiction is to suppose that they invented a brand new genre of literature all right which they then employed and nobody else used again for 1700 years he's like that's just not good that's not good literary analysis they're either willfully lying or their eyewitness accounts letter d last one here the message was itself too costly to be a legend as we saw this message that jesus was lord and arisen from the dead it didn't gain these apostles any power or prestige now you know that throughout history people have made up religious messages but it was always to gain something power prestige to mobilize or militarize people for conquest the message these apostles preach gave them nothing in fact it cost them their lives we know that from the the very beginning those preaching the gospel were a highly persecuted group right church history tells us that all these apostles would die a very unnatural death james good example james you know was the half brother of jesus the secular jewish historian joseph says that james became the leader of the jewish segment of the church and he was stoned according to josephus for his belief that jesus was lord and died and rose again now this is jesus's half brother real quick show a hand tell me if you have an older brother what would it take to convince you that he was god i mean that's that's a hard case to make isn't it like satan maybe i get that but not god and we know that james at the beginning of his life didn't believe it you see where he says even his brothers didn't believe in him something happened that convinced james that his older brother was god in the flesh and it was the resurrection it was the resurrection and ultimately james paid for that with his life right what would be their motivation to lie if you're going to make a story up that's not one to make up like blaise pascal said he said i believe witnesses who have their throats cut to verify what they said and that's what we have here there's really no logical reason to doubt that the bible is what it claims to be and that is eyewitness testimony so when peter says that he's got skin in the game he's like look this is eyewitness testimony and that verifies that here here's the second reason he says it's different he says because the ultimate author of the bible is god not men look again verse 19. we've heard the word of the prophets made more certain and you will do well to pay attention to it as a light shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts above all you must understand that no word no prophecy of scripture ever came about by the prophet's own interpretation prophecy never had its origin in the will of man but men spoke from god as they were carried along by the holy spirit a lot of times i'll hear people say college students will say well wait well the bible was obviously written by men men are fallible so how can you say the words that are written down or the words of god and infallible or inerrant it's interesting peter answers that question for you right here the answer is in the word he uses verse 21 the word is carried along in in greek it's pharaoh it's the word you would use for how a ship sailed right when they put up the sail the wind would pharaoh the ship as as as men wrote god was pharaohine i know that's not really how you conjugate the greek word there but men god was pharaohing their words to their destination when my when my daughters were little right my oldest one's 17 now so that's not doesn't happen but um when she was you know a little toddler two or three if i needed to get her across the street especially when she just learned to walk grab her hand then i'd i'd walk with her right like you know kind of now she's doing her you know the legs are she's actually taking the steps but i'm the one determining where she gets and how fast she gets there where she ends up is all she's the one her legs are doing it but i'm the one that is farrowing her to where i need her to be when i need her to be there that's the concept he's using there he's like this is what the the god did with these writers the bible is written by both men and god like jesus was 100 man 100 god the bible is a 100 the word of man and 100 the word of god right in that it is of man it has the distinct aspects of each man's personality and perspective and writing style if i've been chosen to write a bible book and be filled with all kinds of snarky humor and sports analogy and nicholas cage references right if your president was chosen to write one god help us but there'd be georgia football in there and there'd be all kinds of you know what it just it would sound like our personality so peter sounds like peter and paul sounds like paul but each word was pharaoh by god and because of that peter says it's infallible it's inerrant number three he says because the bible is a divine announcement about jesus that's going to set it apart from every other religious writing because it's not really going to be about rules for you to obey or what you're supposed to do it's it's pointing you to someone notice how peter summarizes the whole bible message verse 16. we told you about the power and the coming of our lord jesus christ it's an announcement about jesus when i was growing up in church and i grew up in a very traditional baptist church and three to thrive sunday morning sunday night wednesday night and awanas and we dressed up a little pair of military uniforms and memorized the bible we were all about the bible okay but i always thought of the bible as basically a book of heroes that i was supposed to emulate and be a man after god's own heart like david and dare to be a daniel and trust like a timothy and move like moses and believe like barnabas and persevere like paul and smack him like samson and we had i could do this all day but right or that's what i thought it's like heroes and you should be like these guys or i thought of it as a book of rules to obey 663 commands i think is the total number in the bible 613 in the old testament and um 1050 in the new and i thought christian life was basically you know the more spiritual yeah the more those you kept and so being at church was like that whack-a-mole game you play at the fair where you get a couple down and then while you're looking at them the other two pop-ups you switch over there and that's what church experience was like for me i'm always trying to learn new things and like what we're going to feel guilty about this week got new laws that i got to obey and i got to focus on that i'd say a lot of contemporary teachers of god's word approach the bible like it's primarily a book of practical advice i'll look what it says about leadership and parenting and happiness and money peter would say yeah the bible's got some good advice and it's definitely got some commands to obey but the primal is not primarily about any of those things it's not a collection of heroes for you to emulate in fact they're kind of disappointing there's a lot of things about david you should not emulate a lot of things about abraham all right don't ever offer to a you know egyptian pharaoh that your wife is your sister and she said mary there's a lot of things about that you shouldn't emulate they're all written to give you a savior that you're supposed to hope in and to adore the bible is an announcement that you have broken all the rules and so is every other religious leader including peter who got called satan and peter's like the last thing i want you to do is point you to me and say be like me this is all written to give you a savior to hope in so that when you when you fail at the examples and when you just fall face down when it comes to obeying the rules then you'll see that there's a god who came to earth who did it for you who then died for you not doing it and rose again so that he could do it through you and ultimately what the bible is trying to put before you is is is something to worship because that's the great commandment to love god with all your heart soul and mind and if you do that then all the rest of the law and the prophets just start to come naturally right d martin lloyd jones if you haven't heard his name then seminary you'll hear about him till you're sick of it but demar lord jones is the pastor of the 1950s it's interesting he said that the preaching controversy in his day how prescient is this he said the preaching controversy is on whether sermons ought to lean more on the doctrinal or more on the like practical i feel like what seven years later still have the exact same argument so is it the you know is it the john mcarthur types or that is that where it says that what preaching is just you know it's like get your pen out and let's take a commentary or is it more the you know kind of practical the rick warren types or whatever you know whoever it is now and andy stanley or somebody that's really going to show you how your life changes with it it's interesting lloyd jones said well there's some truth in both of them bible certainly is doctrine's very important bible is also a book of life change and so application is important he says but the bible preaching the bible listen to this he said preaching the bible is neither a lecture nor motivational speech the goal of a lecture is that you leave with a page full of notes the goal of a motivational speech is that you leave with a page full of action steps he said the goal of a truly preached bible passage is that you leave worshipping there is a time he said in every message from the bible where the pen should go down and the eyes should go up and you stop saying oh my god look at what all i've got to do for you and you start saying oh my god look at what you have done for me because when that begins to happen and your heart begins to worship then behavior begins to change naturally it's like paul tripp says if you worship your way into sin you're gonna have to worship your way out and that's why me standing up giving you a very eloquent exposition of all sixteen hundred and sixty three rules and telling you what eras tense they're in is not going to change your life what changes your life is being enraptured with a vision of who jesus is and peter said that'll show you that this is different than all these other things because these are not practical ways of living it's all about a hero that is the sufficiency and righteousness for all of us and that's different than every other thing you're gonna find out there it's about jesus he says number four last one knowing this bible he says it's going to be a matter of life and death look at verse 19 you will do well to pay attention to it you need to think of it like a light that's shining in a dark place you got to pay attention to it because because this is light to a group of people that are trapped in darkness and who stumble around in darkness i never understand i'll tell you this i never understand people who say that they believe the bible is the word of god and don't devote themselves to it it just doesn't make sense there's a guy you're here named bar ehrman it's the name family he's one of the most famous new testament skeptics i don't know what direction i'm pointing because i'm very directionally oriented i guess that would have to be west over there so chapel hill is which way is chapel hill is that west okay so it's over there bart ehrman lives that direction um he's like he's like a very very popular very winston what the moody bible institute lost his faith now he's whatever so um anyway he so a lot of the students come to our church chapel hill students go through his class and it wrecks a lot of their faith he starts out every class this way he'll look at the class and he'll say how many of you believe the bible is the inerrant word of god it's usually about half the two-thirds will raise their hand people say okay he holds up a harry potter book how many of you have read this book at least one of them covered a cover use the same thing about two-thirds go up then holds up the bible he says how many of you have read this cover to cover um i've heard him say this he says usually in the entire place he says at most one maybe two so he says i look at them and i say you say you believe this is the word of god you've never actually read it i don't believe it i don't believe you believe it and i'm just gonna spend the rest of the semester showing you that you don't believe it because if you actually did believe it you would devote yourself to it as a light shining out of darkness paul says it's the only effective weapon there is against the lies of satan the only one if you knew that there was a lion that was roaming through your dorm or your apartment or wherever you live are you going to carry around a weapon of course you are if you knew that you were subject to a disease that was corroding you inside and out would you devote yourself to whatever antidote was there of course you would peter says we devote ourselves to it because it is the light in a world of darkness it is by you know this the word of god that god accomplishes everything in the world how did god create the world from nothing it was by his word by the word he spoke that john repeats that in john 1 in the beginning was the word the word was with god the word was itself god there is intentionally something mystical in that saying that when the bible is preached there is the presence of god in it it was a word that raised jesus from the dead it was jesus's word that gave sight to the blind it is his word that multiplied the five loaves and two fish it is his word that cast out demons by the way you read revelation it's by a word that jesus brings satan and all of his foes to an end you you get to the end of revelation can i just say this i'll say it all right i've earned the right to say this it's kind of anti-climatic and all the they're all raid in all their battle play and i'm like all right it's about to go down and jesus stands up and just says enough now everything's done one word that's intentional trying to show you the word has the power for everything it is by the word of god that the sinful soul is born again it is redeemed it is set free it releases you from the power of sin and guilt and shame the word is light and life and salvation by the word god redeems and reconciles and restores and renews so i just do not understand people who say it is the word of god and don't read it maybe even more so i don't understand pastors who say it's the word of god and don't devote themselves to know we didn't end up preaching it it's not uncle jd's leadership lessons that really are going to help you it's not my life lessons it's the word of god because if it were just that you needed if it's just if you were ignorant and needed some good advice and maybe one of us could help you with it but you are dead even after you've been born again this flesh is just it's always there corrode i told you that in my opinion the greatest actor of our generation is nicholas cage and most underrated okay i'll just go ahead knowing that right now one of his greatest movies is uh i i i can't really officially recommend it so i'm just going to tell you that it it's there okay i'm not saying anything so don't write me any angry letters it's called the rock and um basically the gist of the movie is um i'm i'm totally about to ruin it if you were thinking no you know what if you're like oh you spoiled it for us it's been out for 25 years if you hadn't watched it yet don't blame me about it okay so that's your fault but um so basically um there's some crazy people that uh there's a little um weapon that's been formed that looks like a baseball and it's green nuclear gas and if you explode it and you're in the presence of the green nuclear gas that eats your face off that's the basic just of the movie and so if you get in the presence of the green nuclear gas the only hope you got is you is like an antidote that you got to get right into the ventricles of your heart and it's like a needle that's like that long and so at the you know climax of the movie nicholas cage is fighting the bad guy and in a truly awesome scene he takes one of the green balls of nuclear gas he shoves it into the mouth of the bad guy and he punches him in the face and so the green ball breaks open and it eats the guy's face off and he melts into a puddle and nicolas cage you think it's the moment of triumph but then nicholas cage because he's really smart he thinks oh no i am also in the presence of the green nuclear gas i've got to get away so he turns and he begins to run and the green nuclear gas starts to follow it and he comes to the end of the room and here comes the green nuclear so he turns it he runs down the hall and the green nuclear gas comes and he comes to a place where there's no windows in their doors and it's just him and here comes the green nuclear gas and you think that's it he's a tragic hero he's gonna die when all the sudden out of his backpack comes the needle and he unsheaths that needle and i'm telling you what it's like and you're like you know i should like no don't do it it just get eaten this is better to die and uh he takes it and he shoves it in at the last second he puts in the antidote and he's fine and the movie basically ends so um when i saw that i thought that's a really good example what peter's talking about with the word of god because what he's talking about is he's talking about corruption and darkness that comes from inside and outside and he said really the only way that you are going to escape this is by that living breathing word coming into you to give life where there's only darkness the people that you serve or serve one day are going to be dependent on how accurately how well and how faithfully you implant the word into their hearts and in these next few years you've got a very special season of life it's not the only season but it's a very special season for you to know this book forwards and backwards for you to know every single part for you to understand the nuances for you to get the big picture for you to read books in the old testament you've never read before you need to know habakkuk and haggai here's a good reason you're going to be haggai in heaven and one day he's going to come up to you and be like hey how'd you like my book and if you didn't read it you're gonna be embarrassed i would make sure you read it when you get there you need to devote yourself to it and just become a master at a common expert like luther said he said if the bible were a fruit tree he said i would have climbed to the edge of every branch and shaking it off until every piece of fruit had fallen off every branch because i want all of it charles spurgeon said he said i want the myself and the people that i preach to when life cuts them i want them to bleed bibline which just meant bleed god's word i just want it overflowing and coming out of them so that they think scripture so that when they're thinking about the world or about problems or about turmoil or conflict what comes into their heart and mind is scripture for luther he experienced that because he was taken captive kidnapped and he said was the most miserable i'm just being real here most miserable time in my life it's also the most blessed because that's where i really came to know the scriptures for you there's going to be some parts of seminary that are hard and it's going to feel again i love seminary but there's times they're going to feel miserable but in those times of quietness when your friends got a date and you don't have a date that's a evening you can spend with martin luther and haggai and you can just spend that time going deep in the word of god don't waste this season it will pay off infinitely in my green room that's the last thing in my green room the backstage where i preach i've got two on the wall two pages of very old bibles one is from a thing called the chain bible and it was um in the old old english translation so old you couldn't even like you couldn't understand it it's like that kind of english i think they say it's from like 12 or 1300 and uh they call the chain bible because it was chained to the pulpit and the reason was changed because they didn't want people taking it home and they wanted to make sure that the priest reserved the right to teach it and only the priest so the priest controlled the word of god right next to it is one from the geneva bible which was one of the first you could say the first popular english translation of the bible that william tyndall tried to put into the tongue of the common person and today there's a press named for him the tyndall tindall house right and so i got a copy of the first edition of his bible as it came out there william tyndale was taken captive by the king of england and uh make a long story really short he was tried sentenced burned at the stake there's a very famous statement that he made as the flames begin to engulf him and grow up around him he said i pray i pray and i prophesy that one day the average common in england or in the english-speaking world will know more about the bible than every priest that's gathered around watching this you're here because you have a chance to be an answer to that prayer and the hero is jesus but there's a lot of people that have made a lot of sacrifices to give you the privilege that you have right here right now don't waste don't waste your don't waste your moment we still have six thousand plus unreached people groups that have no copy of this you know it devote yourself to it and then go all throughout the world carrying it everywhere that you go and a great way for you to apply that is to spend your first two years after you graduate on a church planning team why don't you buy your heads let me pray for you our worship team will come god i thank you for your word i thank you for how precious and living and alive it is i thank you god for this institution for its devotion to your word for its professors men and women that teach so faithfully here god i pray for these students that you would prepare not only their minds but their hearts to hear and to believe and this really would be the greatest generation that we've ever seen of preachers with power and authority who are devoted to taking the gospel to places it's never been we pray in jesus name amen

Channel: Southeastern Seminary

Views: 8,798

Rating: 4.3280001 out of 5

Keywords: Southeastern, Baptist, Theological, Seminary, Chapel, Message, Jesus, Preaching, God, North Carolina, Wake Forest, Gospel, Danny, Great Commission, Training, Education, Southern, Boyce, SBTS, Al, Mohler, MWBTS, NOBTS, Gateway, Universtiy, ERLC, Matt, Chandler, B21, IMB, NAMB, SBC, SBC20, NCSU, ECU, UNC, Duke, Divinity, School, Platt, Greear, JD, David, Whos, Your, One, Midwestern, Akin, RDU, Conversations, That, Matter, New Orleans, Critical, Race, Theory, Orlando, Florida, Coronavirus, COVID-19

Id: PDFOoXIcel4

Length: 40min 21sec (2421 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 04 2020