Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? This weekend I'm in 2 Peter 1:18-20. It's going to take us a while to get there and just for your information, I'm going to be using the NASB translation because of a particular word phrase that we'll get to just in a moment. If you're watching, or wherever you're watching, on one of our campuses online around the world, At One and All, we're experiencing quite a revival right now. And what we mean by that is we're seeing things that we haven't seen in a while. People are picking up the Bible and reading it, that haven't read it in a long time. There's this kind of Catalystic force working in the lives of people to inspire them to do things they've not done in a very long time and that's part of revival suddenly Passions that had faded now become a present reality and you find yourself wanting and desiring the things of God more than you had Previously in any other time of your life Well as we get into this revival one of the things that we are saying that we want to do is position ourselves live in a posture of life where we hear the voice of God and Oftentimes in our church, we've talked about what we're all ultimately after is not a perfect life. That's impossible. But what we're after, what our souls are after, whether we realize it or not, is that we want somehow to obtain the centralized joy where no matter what's going on around us, there's a deep-seated joy within us. And where sorrow occurs, of course it does in the human experience, but it's always on the peripheral.

So we may experience times of sadness, and there's a time to weep and a time to mourn, as the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us. But ultimately, even in the midst of those times of sorrow, it is possible that you can live with an overarching sense of joy. And that comes when you've answered the biggest questions of life. So...

One of the pursuits, probably the primary pursuit of the Christ follower, other than being conformed to the image of Jesus, is that we somehow gain this overarching sense of joy so that no matter what's happening in our lives, there's a real peace that comes with knowing Christ. Now the question is, if it's the centralized joy that we're after, how does it come?

And in this series, how is it connected? Because it is inextricably tied together with hearing the voice of God. Centralized joy and listening and hearing the voice of God. In order to gain this kind of joy, the first thing you have to realize is that we are indeed emotional creatures.

You know, when somebody tells me don't be so emotional, I want to say, hey, that's who God made us to be. God experiences emotion. Go read Genesis 1 through 6, and you will read where God is happy, where God is grieved, where God is relenting, where there's something he had done that now he's taking a second look at. That's an entirely different theological conversation. But for now, we are created in the image of God, and God is emotional. Therefore, we are. In fact...

I got a call from my daughter who's in Kazakhstan and she's working on a study guide for my book, Dinner with Skeptics, and for the new one that's coming out very soon. And she said, dad, I gotta tell you something. We were FaceTiming, the beautiful thing about FaceTime, "Dad, I gotta tell you something. I did all this work. It took me probably three months to really find the sources, to make sure everything was documented, to come up with good questions and to write it in a way that would inspire and compel. But then I went on a website that was artificial intelligence and I just took a shot in the dark and I asked it to write a devotional based on a Jeff Bein sermon." And she said, "Dad, it wrote it in about three minutes." And she said, "What's the world coming to?" And I said, "Well, wait a minute, my sermons aren't online as far as printed." She said, "Doesn't matter, they probably pulled it from YouTube or just pulled it from the World Wide Web and within three minutes had written a devotion." She said, "Dad, do you realize we could write 365 day devotional in probably one day with artificial intelligence." I said, "Well, did you read it?" She said, "Yeah." I said, "Did it sound like me?" She said, "Yeah, but I did notice something was missing." And I said, "What's that?" And she said, "The heart." The words were there, fact, they were my words, but it didn't have the emotion, the feeling. I've mentioned this example quite a few times. I'm not a chess player and I've really never had the desire to play chess, but I'm interested in reading about famous chess matches. And one that I've always had an interest in that I've read about time and time again is when Deep Blue, a 1.4 ton computer, Faced off against Garry Kasparov, the world champion chess player. Before the big match, they were going to pit man against computer. And the best analysis of our time kept trying to make an attempt to describe the difference between man and computer. But they could not avoid using words like feeling and soul and emotion, even the word God.

The news reports kept using personhood imagery to describe the computer until finally David Gleitner, who's professor of computer science at Yale, came out with this. And it's rather lengthy, but it's important. He says, friends...

It's a machine. The computer's name, Deep Blue, is a machine. The idea that Deep Blue has a mind is absurd. How can an object that wants nothing, fears nothing, enjoys nothing, needs nothing, and cares about nothing have a mind? It can win a chess, but not because it wants to. It isn't happy when it wins or sad when it loses.

And I love this line. What are its aftermatch plans if it beats Kasparov? Is it hoping to take Deep Pink out for a night on the town?

It doesn't care about chess or anything else. He goes on to say, no matter what amazing feats they perform, inside they will always be the same, absolute zero. No computer can achieve artificial thought without achieving artificial emotion as well. In the long run, I doubt if there's any kind of human behavior computers can't fake, any kind of performance they can't put on. It is conceivable, he says, that one day computers will be better than humans at almost everything.

I can imagine, he says, that a person might one day have a computer for a best friend. That will be sad, like having a dog for your best friend, but even sadder. Now, obviously, he's never had a dog.

But the gap he finishes between the human and the surrogate is permanent and will never be closed. Machines will continue to make life easier, healthier, richer, and more puzzling, and human beings will continue to care about the same things they always have, about themselves, about one another, and many of them about God. What a unique capacity God has placed within humanity, the capacity to feel God.

That's as real as it gets, folks. We're not just cerebral. We are creatures that experience, that feel deeply. Now, that's the first thing you have to realize if you ever hope to gain this centralized joy and understand the connection between that joy and the words and the voice of God. Second thing is nothing makes us feel more intensely than words aptly spoken.

If you've ever heard a wife say to her husband, "You never tell me you love me." And he might respond by saying, "But I show you, but ask any wife and she'll tell you it's not enough." We are driven by words. They catalyze our feelings. The wounds of men whose fathers never told them that they loved them run deep. Musicians don't settle just for melodies. They insist on putting words to express themselves, emotions.

and words are inextricably tied together. In fact, God himself, the ultimate father, spoke words to his own son when he said, this is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased. You are my son. I love you. I'm proud of you. And we too are emotional, rational beings who need words. Having been created in the image of God, God knows that. We're wired like that. That comes from God. And so As you go through the Bible, you recognize God spoke, he speaks, and in fact, is still speaking, is always speaking. Now, here's the problem. I'm out in the parking lot a few weekends ago, and I met a person, and I could tell they were distraught, and I said, hey, how are you doing? And they said, not good. And I said, well, what's wrong? And the person said, I feel left out. You keep talking about how God speaks to you. Honestly, pastor, do you know what I hear from God? Nothing. Seriously? Nothing.

Do you know what God says to me, pastor? Absolutely nothing. And then the person said, I think it's all psychosomatic. Now, you know what that word means, right? It comes from two Greek words, psyche, the mind, and somaticos, the body.

Psychologists and psychiatrists use this same terminology to express that when someone does something mentally, cerebrally, even if it's false, it can still impact the body. So if you are worried and you're constantly afraid of something that is never going to eventuate, even though it isn't real, those emotions bring about real impact on the body, heart attack, anxiety, stress. Spiritually speaking, You truly believe that God is speaking to you. This is what the person was saying. So important, stay with me. You Christians believe that God is speaking to you and you desperately want to hear from God and you work yourself up into an emotional frenzy where you actually do start hearing voices, but it's not the voice of God, it's your own word. Now, as we had a longer conversation that I can't go into, it is very true that Christians are capable of doing some mind-boggling things.

I love it when a person says, God has told me that this Bible passage, which has been studied by some of the greatest minds for over 2000 years, actually means this. So suddenly God gave them a revelation of what the Bible means. And it's opposed to what people have said for the last 2000 years. Scholars who have great wisdom and language and the conclusion they came to is different from the conclusion that we've had for thousands of years.

Or somebody might say, "The devil is attacking me. The city came today and turned off my water and gas." Well, let me give you some news. The reason the city came and turned off your water and gas is because you didn't pay your bill. It had nothing to do with the devil. And now I've heard people say, "God told me to leave my wife and marry another woman because he wants me to be happy." And of course, my question is, does he not want your wife to be happy too? So yes, We do some rather illogical things. However, expecting to hear the voice of God is not at all illogical. And the reason is because the Bible tells us 15 times in Genesis chapter 1 alone, God speaks. In Hebrews chapter 1, the Hebrew writer says that in the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many various times in various ways. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.

whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom also he made the universe. The son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. So the point is we serve a God who is constantly talking to his people. He wired us with receptors to hear the voice of God. We're the sons and daughters of God and a God who wants relationship with his people. Well, good fathers talk to their children.

We are the bride of Christ, we're told. Good husbands talk to their wives. So going back to the person in the parking lot, if you are a Christ follower and you are having trouble hearing the voice of God, I want to deal with that and then take us home to a place that I think we'll all appreciate.

If you cannot hear the voice of God, knowing that God wants to speak, knowing that we are emotional creatures and knowing that our emotions never run deeper than when we hear words that are aptly spoken at the right time and right place. What's the problem then? When you say, please, a little bit psychology here. We're going to get to the passage. It's all related. We're just going to approach it through the back door. What's the problem then? If you're having trouble hearing from God, You have to ask yourself at least three questions, and here's what they are. The first one is this. What prejudices and insecurities did I bring into my relationship with God? Here's the thing. When you become a Christ follower, it's not like everything melts away that's a problem in your life. Those things that happen to you when you're young are deep-seated, and they go with you, and sometimes it's a lifelong journey.

My mentor told me about an Olympian runner with whom he had developed a really personal relationship. And this Olympian was going to run in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. He had trained all of his life for this moment. He was heavily favored because he had won all the preliminary heats with ease. But he told my mentor that just seconds, when they're on their mark, just seconds before the gun went off, He froze and the thought entered his mind, I wonder if my father is watching. Because his father had told him that he would never amount to anything. And hearing that in his own mind, he froze for just half a second. But half a second is an eternity in the 100 meters. It cost him so much.

And that reminded me that deep are the marks and the wounds that we carry with us through the rest of our lives. Unfortunately, our view of God has much to do with the environment in which we were raised. And when we become a Christ follower, those influences don't magically disappear. I mean, you can example, my father and my mother were extremely religious.

We went to church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. I had a strong sense of religious duty, but I misunderstood and misused it in the early days of my walk with Jesus. For years, I carried that over into my relationship and I would do things and I would say to God, look, God, did you see what I just did? Did you see how I helped that homeless person? Did you see how I just resisted temptation? Did you see how I read my Bible and went to church three times this week?

Now, if that's your approach to God, seriously, what happens in a relationship like that? I can tell you, you begin over time to resent God. Why? Because you serve the God of perpetual responsibility. And you know in your mind down deep inside that you can never do enough, pray enough, or be good enough. Now, who wants to be around a God that you know in his presence you never measure up? Who actually wants to communicate with somebody that every time you go into their presence reminds you of how bad you are?

Our prejudices and insecurities often prevent us from hearing the voice of God or even desiring to hear the voice of God. A quick illustration, we were in London when Delaney, my son, was about 13 years old, and I'd ask him to type out the address on our GPS. Now, if you know, getting around London is not easy. I don't know why I rented a car. Never do it again. You don't need a car.

but we're trying to get from the airport to the hotel. And it felt like, and we were all tired. We've been on a plane all night that we were going around in circles. And I got a little harsh with Delaney, something that I regretted. And immediately he put on his headphones and started listening to music. And I was telling him to remove his headphones. And his mother said to me, don't you realize every time you're hard on him, he just disconnects.

If your God is the God that every time you come into his presence, you view that God as somebody who's going to bring up all your faults. I'm going to tell you, you're going to have a hard time hearing the voice of God. And the reason you look at God that way is because that's the environment in which you've been raised. Somehow that's your view of God. We had a prayer meeting this past Monday. And for those of you who have attended those, you know, they're pretty special. And I don't want to use any names and I don't want to use any identifying markers, but We were going through a prayer time. It was intense. And I was on the stage and I looked down and I saw a young lady. And at first I thought maybe she was going through chemo. And I could hear the voice of God tell me, go down and pray. I want you to go and pray with her. So we had situations where men were praying with men, women with women. So I went down and I spoke with her and I walked her over to three of the women that I have a lot of respect for when it comes to their prayer life. And I asked them to pray. As I listened to their prayers, Here is a young girl who has become so addicted to a drug that it is actually killing her. The problem is that her view of God is that because of this addiction, God has abandoned her and she cannot come in the presence of God and ask for help. After all, she's a sinner. I prayed that God would open her eyes to the fatherhood of God.

How does a good father see a child who is suffering? You think about that for a moment. If my child is making decisions and they're suffering, tell me something. Do I want to abandon the child or does my heart weigh heavy? Is there a wound because this is a child I love?

And I think in God's economy that if his children could really and truly understand the gospel, how that when we are walking away, even when we're in the process of self-destruction, he is still a father who loves us and who wants to compel us and draw us into relationship so that the healing might come.

The problem is a lot of people come into the relationship with God with deep wounds, emotional baggage from the people in their past who've let them down and they've projected that kind of attitude on God, their heavenly father. So they see God as some kind of authoritative taskmaster who watches your every move ready to pounce. There's a great play, one of my favorite plays ever written, it's called Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. I believe it was on Broadway for many, many years.

It's about an African-American family in Harlem. The father dies and leaves the family $10,000. It's a very poor family. And the mother says, finally, at least with this money, now this is going back a long time ago, this will allow us to fulfill our dreams of having a little house in North Jersey.

The son comes to the mother and begs for the money. Please give me the money. I've never had a break. I've never been able to get a job. And I can take this money and go into business with a friend. And he assures me that if I give him the $10,000, we'll start this new business and it will generate more and more income. And we'll have purpose. We'll have significance. We'll achieve something. The mother, of course, doesn't want to do it. She doesn't want to give all the money. But the son keeps begging and pleading. This is my chance, mother, to do something, to make something with my life.

And she thinks to herself, how can I deny my son? And if you know the play, you know what happens. She gives him the money and his friend takes the money and leaves town. And the son is battered and beaten and destroyed. And when he comes home, his sister, Beritha, tears into him, rips him apart in great disdain and contempt, says, how could you have been so stupid?

And I love the lines of the mother to the daughter. She says, "I thought I taught you to love him." Love him, there's nothing left to love. There's always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, then you ain't learned nothing. Have you cried out for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for your family because we lost the money. I mean for him and what he's been through and what it's done to him. "Child," she says, "when do you think it's time to love somebody the most?" When they've done good and made things easy for everybody, then you ain't through learning because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in himself because the world's done whipped him so. When you start measuring somebody, child, measure him right. Be sure you know what hills and valley he's been through, valleys that he's been through to get to wherever he is. You know what the Bible calls that? Calls that agape, unconditional love. And when you make Jesus...

the most important person in your life, and you understand the very core of the gospel, then you know that you have a loving father who sees your struggles, a loving savior who empathizes with your pain, and a loving friend who sticks closer than a brother. Until you allow the truth of God's acceptance to overwhelm all your past insecurities, you will have great difficulty hearing the voice of God.

And for those of you who fit into that category, I encourage you to pray as best you can for a Jesus revelation that your eyes may be open to the depth and the width of the power of God's love for you. Now, here's the second question. If you're having a hard time hearing the voice of God, You have to ask yourself, what wrong ideas about God have you brought into your relationship with God? Now, this is different than the first. The first has to do with insecurities and environment and the way you look at authority. The second has to do with the way you actually see God. And this is so important because not everything that glitters is gold and not every teacher of God's word is purely motivated. Be careful of teachers and preachers who are more interested in making you laugh and and are more entertaining than giving you something to hold on to that will sustain you throughout the course of your life. And so I've got my friend, Brett Mullen, that I've mentioned many times. And Brett was a championship golfer. He won the 1975 US Junior Amateur. But as he got a little older, his father that taught him the game that was often his caddy passed away. And my friend Brett turned to alcoholism.

and he was just about to the end of his life, ready to commit suicide when he says in his own words that he experienced a Jesus revelation, that God reached out to him and reminded him of his grace. After Brett had this salvation experience, he would go to many people who were also hurting or who had physical ailment or some kind of even psychological disease, and he would present to them the Jesus that he had met.

And Brett walked around quite confidently and he would say to people, I know that God can and will heal you. There was great confidence in his visitations. And all that was going well until a few years later, my friend was diagnosed with Parkinson's and he kept praying that God would heal him and the healing was not coming. And then I saw him go through phases. And with each phase, he told me the voice of God grew faint.

Suddenly he started thinking maybe I'm wrong about God. Maybe God can't be trusted Maybe God is punishing me for sins that I committed years ago. Maybe I've been wrong about God all along God has abandoned me Jeff. I no longer feel God. I think I'm paying for past sins notice The relationship with God was severed because of a simple misconception. And the misconception of my friend, as much as I love him, and he would admit to this now, was that God always heals those he loves right here, right now. And that's just not true. I had a professor in seminary. We called him Moses because white beard, he just looked holy. You know, you want to take off your shoes when you came into his class because you're walking on holy ground.

And everybody loved this man. He was gentle, he was peaceful, never an unkind word, a pleasant smile. He just emulated Jesus. And then my last year, my professor's granddaughter was diagnosed with leukemia. And my professor went around campus saying, "Don't worry, God is going to heal her, I'm absolutely sure." And he said that week after week, a month after month, and he began to sink lower and lower into despair because week and week went by and she was not healed. And then she passed away. And his demeanor totally changed. Didn't want to be around students. Didn't want to talk to anyone. Constant depression, which I can understand to a degree having children and grandchildren of my own. But ultimately, he surprised us when he walked away from God.

Listen, this is just one area of life where many Christ followers enter into a relationship with God who has been misunderstood. And those misconceptions about God often lead to disappointment, which leads to severing their relationship with God and catalyzes an inability to hear the voice of God. Listen, nothing, closely, nothing silences the voice of God more than bad theology and unrealistic expectations.

And unfortunately, each of us have learned unfortunate things through the course of our lives, and we projected those onto God. For some of us, our parents gave us everything so that we think God is a magic genie. So as long as God gives us what we want, we love him. But if we hit a difficult season in our lives, a difficult path, suddenly we believe God is not real and he doesn't love us because our parents gave us everything. What's wrong with God? Some of us look at God as if he's a Conan the Destroyer.

God is omnipotent and he wants to drop the hammer on all of us. And you understand the fear of God to mean that he can swoop down at any time and any moment and drop the hammer on you. You see God as an angry God just waiting on you to make a mistake. And if that's the God you see, you're never going to get close to him and you're definitely not going to hear his voice.

God, you think, is like a warden who constantly watches you so that he can put you in the hole when you violate the rules. Others of you, you were raised with a father who was your pal, your best friend, but there was no authority, there was no requirement, there was no obedience. Your father thought that being a good father meant that he was just your buddy, your pal, and never required anything from you, so that's how you see God. God is just your friend, your pal, but there's no real reverence or true respect or obedience.

And the reason you've lost your ability to feel or to hear from God is because you've lost your willingness to obey him. Some of you say, wait a minute, Pastor Jeff, you just told me that God's love for me is unconditional. I love that Raisin in the Sun story. Yes, but remember, your ability to feel and experience and hear the voice of God comes most powerfully when you obey a hard word.

Why did we hear the voice of God speaking to Jesus, this is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased, at his baptism? Jesus was not baptized for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus' baptism.

was his agreement to the Father to go to the cross. He was dying to himself, being raised to a new person. Not a new person with Christ or deity or omniscience, just the fact that this was his inauguration. Yes, I received the role of Messiahship. I received the role of dying on the cross for the sins of the world. And at that moment is when he heard the voice of God and was probably closer to God than any other time, relatively speaking.

So first, what prejudices and insecurities have we brought into our relationship with God? Two, what wrong ideas about God have we brought into our relationship with Him? Now here's the catch. Stay with me as we bring this home. How does one discover who God is? If I need to know who God is and these misconceptions have stifled my ability to communicate or hear the voice of God, how can I discover who God is? The answer is by listening to His voice. But Jeff, that's the problem. I don't hear His voice.

I don't hear it. So you've put me in a kind of a catch-22. This seems like a circular argument. Yes, but at least now you're thinking about it and we can go to the third point. Three, what indisciplines have you brought into your relationship with Jesus? Now we get there. What indisciplines? It's not that God is not speaking to you. It's that you and I often move out of proximity to his voice. The problem with affluence is is that far too many things come too easy to us. You think about what I just told you about artificial intelligence. Do you know artificial intelligence, it's quite possible the day will come when none of us need to work because we'll be obsolete. And if we do that, first of all, we'll be really stupid. Think about it. If we're not researching, study, discipline, if we're not learning things and we're just given and fed the information, then we're not going through the process of learning and the tension that creates.

And then more importantly, the powers that be will able to completely control us. We'll be like sheep because whatever information they want us to hear, they'll feed to us. If you're not going through the process of learning and study, and you're just being fed information and you're taking it all on board, then you're easily manipulated. Achieving anything worthwhile requires incredible discipline. Listen, preaching requires discipline. Hour upon hour of study and research And perfecting, leading requires discipline. Ask any great athlete or Olympian or anyone that's achieved a high level or degree of success and you will find someone who has incredible discipline. Michael Phelps is the example I always like to use because he's the most decorated Olympian of all time. 22 Olympic medals over three Olympics. His workout routine, six hours a day, six days a week without fail, even if Christmas day falls on a training day.

He swims approximately 50 miles, 80 kilometers each week, which is over eight miles in the pool every day. That's remarkable. And in the same way an Olympian understands the disciplines that catalyze victory, a Christian understands the disciplines that open up the line of communication and makes the voice of God discernible and remarkable. But what is the language of God? How does God speak? What discipline does opens those lines of communication. How can we hear him? Remember what we said earlier, we are emotional creatures. We need words. And somebody might say, yeah, Pastor Jeff, but actions speak louder than words. Yes, but with God, we need words to explain his actions because they're quite difficult to fathom. Where do we find those words? Now, before we unveil this, isn't it true that in the midst of deep emotional trauma, That's the time we need to hear the voice of God most when we've just been told we have a disease when there's we've suffered a loss when there's confusion about life and the way our life's turning out Do you remember the book? Where's Waldo? You remember how in the early pages you could find Waldo so easy because he had the striped shirt and the big thick glasses But as you move through the book Waldo's harder and harder to find and And for a lot of people, God is the os abscontinus, the God who hides. We can't find him. And during the emotional times, that's when we need to hear the voice of God so that God can speak truth into our emotions so that we can drag our emotions by the scruff of the neck and lead them to what is true and what is real. So how do we do that? Okay, now it took us almost two-thirds of the sermon to get here. I want to describe this wonderful text to you.

2 Peter 1, 18 through 20 says this. Let's read it word for word here. This is Peter talking, but he's older now, okay? So he's in the final phase of his life, and here's what he writes. For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses to his majesty.

For when we received honoring glory from God the Father, such a declaration as this was made to him by the majestic glory. This is my beloved Son with whom I'm well pleased. And we ourselves heard this declaration made from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. And so we have a prophetic word made more sure to which you will do well to pay attention as a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.

But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture becomes a matter of someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. Men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. Now that's 2 Peter 1.18.

But the bigger question is, what is the context of this passage? He talks about the majesty on the mountain and they didn't follow cleverly devised tales. They were eyewitnesses to this majestic glory. What is he talking about? Well, he's talking about Matthew 17.

In Matthew 17, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up to the mountain of transfiguration. And something very special and unique happens there. And Moses and Elijah appear, representing the law and the prophets, the way that God had spoken in the past.

And then the Shekinah glory of God is unveiled as they began to see the deity, the omnipotence, the omniscience of Jesus Christ himself. We don't know exactly, I mean, a bright light, the Shekinah glory, but it would have been overwhelming. It was so overwhelming, stay with me, to a young Peter that young Peter saw what was going on and he said, man, We just need to stay here for the rest of our lives. Let's just make three tents and we'll just live here. And Jesus, you can do that cool thing every day. Why would we want to go back to the mundane when we're having this mountaintop experience when what we see is so amazing? Now that's young Peter. Old Peter says this. Let me read it to you again.

He says, "But now we have the prophetic word made more certain to which you will do well to pay attention as a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts." What's he saying? Peter's saying my confidence is not placed in that mountain experience. The emotional experience of the momentary glow of the transfiguration. That's not where ultimately my confidence is.

Originally, when you're young, Peter says, I'm looking for perpetual delight. I want mountaintop all the time. I don't want to return to monotony. But as Peter got older, he began to see his mountaintop experience and the feelings associated with it as secondary to the certainty of God's spoken and written word. Do you hear that?

Peter says, I'll tell you what I have more certain than that. That transfiguration thing, it was cool, but I'm still not sure what happened. It was mesmerizing, but to tell you the truth, mind boggling. But I have something more certain than some experience, even though that was real. And that is the spoken and written word of God, the graphe, that which is written down, because it didn't come from any prophet and his own interpretation. It was given to him, passed down by God through the Holy Spirit to us.

God's word is constant, it's eternal, and personally applied. And that's how joy becomes central. When the one you value the most is constantly speaking to you. Think about that.

Think about the person you value the most. What if that person was with you all the time, always speaking words of encouragement? That's exactly what you have in Jesus Christ. And if you value him the most because the Spirit of God lives in you, you have the Word and the Spirit working together to communicate to you the words of God. That's why in John 1.1, John said, "...in the beginning was the Word, the Word was God, the Word was with God." Listen carefully now. Jesus and the spoken word, written word, are inextricably tied together. A good way to look at it, we've never been able to do this, but a good way to look at this is if you take hydrocarbon and oxygen, you get what is called heat energy or combustion. So gasoline meets oxygen, explosion, combustion, energy.

The same thing can be said when the Word of God meets the Holy Spirit in you. Jesus in you, the Word spoken meets the Holy Spirit. It's not combustion, it's transformation. There is a spiritual reaction that no one knows for sure how it happens, but it occurs when Jesus in you, the Holy Spirit, meets the Word of God delivered to you. There's a type of spiritual combustion.

So when somebody says, talk to me, God, come on. God says, open the word and listen to my voice. Let the two come together. You have the word of the Lord made more certain than any experience you could ever have. Emotions are real. Feelings are real. Experiences are real, but they're changing. The word of God remains forever. I met a lady out in the parking lot of our church a few weeks ago, a great story. She said, Pastor Jeff, I don't know what's going on here. We must be having revival around this place because I've had my Bible on my coffee table at home for 20 years and I've never picked it up. Suddenly I felt this urge and passion to pick it up and start reading and I did. And I thought, wow, this is really good stuff. And then I started watching The Chosen to watch the life and times of Jesus and the disciples. And I just found myself, I can't wait to get home every night so that I can watch Chosen so that I can read my Bible.

The truth of God, this world, and the enduring hope come alive when Jesus meets the word in your life. See, what I'm saying is that the word is able to kick your emotions to the curb. Sometimes you wake up ready. Sometimes you wake up with a cloud hanging over you. Sometimes you don't want to wake up at all. Sometimes you wake up cranky and hopeless, pessimistic.

but other times you're ready to take on the world. And we don't know what changed. We are emotional creatures, but God speaks the words that force your unhealthy moods to flee. Folks, do you know the power of this book? It's amazing what it has done throughout the centuries.

While American institutions are disparaging the Bible, many public intellectuals all around the world, including post-Christian Europe, are recognizing that the Bible contains a deep well of psychological, practical, and spiritual wisdom that has positively shaped humanity.

Atheism is dying. The new atheism is dying because it's not working and people once again are turning to the Bible. Do you know, again, the Bible is the best selling most published book of human history. It even dwarfs J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books that have in print I think 500 million. Now compare that to the Bible over five to seven billion in print. And you know, most of the world's Bibles today are printed, guess where?

Would you have a guess? Where are most of the world's Bibles printed today? In an atheistic country, China, at the Amity Printing Company. They print 70 Bibles per minute, and in 2019, they celebrated their 200 millionth copy. My friend Justin Briley has written a book called The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, and he goes through the book and shows you how there's a renewed interest and confidence in the Old Testament, the story of how God uses people to convey his message to the world, the New Testament, where the story of redemption enters into humanity, and where Christians today feel themselves to be part of that story that's ongoing until the hope and the reality of what is to come. The power of this book is amazing. Just quickly, Fyodor Dostoevsky, considered the world's greatest novelist. As he lay dying in February 1881, his daughter said that the last thing he asked for was the story of the prodigal son to be read to him.

It was that story which changed his life in his 10-year prison term in Siberia. That's one example of many of where the Bible has enabled men and women to endure the worst of tragedies and come out on the other end victorious. And the reason is, is that somehow in the Bible, God speaks to us and all the hopes and dreams of mankind find their meeting place in his pages.

J.T. Fisher said, "For nearly 2,000 years, the Christian world has been holding in its hands the complete answer to its restless and fruitless yearnings. Here in the Bible rests the blueprint for successful human life with optimum mental health and contentment." Everything you're looking for is right here. Why? Because this is where you discover the truth that sustains you, makes joy central, and drags your emotions to what is real.

healing the brokenhearted. Truth is discovered by listening to the voice of God. The voice of God is heard through the pages of scripture. And my advice to you is don't be left behind. Pick it up and read. Father, thank you for this weekend. Thank you for the truth of your word and the power that rests on it and in it and its ability to transform our lives. I pray that somehow through this series, that this would be a time when we would once again be motivated to go to the objective word of God and allow it to teach us, to bring us to truth that will sustain us, that will give us a centralized joy and will remind us that God's kingdom will win in the end when it becomes a reality and all the desires of the human heart will be fulfilled as once again your word has proven to be faithful and true.

In Christ's name, amen.