Peter challenges us tonight to look at how God is the God of History so that we can have confidence in how he has acted in history. Join Pastor Tim as we dig into 2 Peter 1:12-18.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Peter emphasizes that Jesus is a historical reality, not just an idea or principle. How does knowing Jesus as a person who actually lived, died, and rose again—rather than merely a nice spiritual concept—change the way you approach following him in daily life?
Peter intentionally recorded his experience through Mark’s Gospel, knowing he wouldn’t always be there to remind people. Why do you think he felt it was so important to leave written testimony behind? What role does Scripture play in anchoring your faith when you’re uncertain or afraid?
The Gospel of Mark is notably harder on the disciples than any other Gospel—showing them as foolish and broken. Why might Peter have chosen to tell the story this way rather than making himself look better? What does that tell us about his transformation by Jesus?
The sermon identifies a pattern in human nature: we tend to reshape Jesus into a version that makes us feel important or validates what we already believe. In what specific ways are you tempted to reshape Jesus according to your own desires, priorities, or assumptions—in your own life or in the culture around you?
Where are you currently trying to be the hero instead of trusting Jesus to rescue and sustain you? How does remembering God’s faithfulness in history—both in Scripture and in your own life—help you let go of that and hold on to him when facing uncertainty or fear?
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Good evening and welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be with you again tonight as we dig into God’s Word again, we get into growing once again, and we see what Peter has to tell us in 2 Peter. And tonight is so important, I think, because what Peter calls us to reflect on tonight is to reflect on how God is the God of history. God is the God who has actually come into our world and done mighty and wonderful things to save us. And he says it’s more than an idea that we’re talking about here, we are talking about the God who dwells with us.
So let’s go ahead and come before that God in prayer, and then we’ll dig right in. Father, we thank you for your goodness and your love tonight. We thank you that we can come before you, for you are the God who is there. You are the God who loves us. You are the God who is with us. And Lord, would you help us to focus all the more on how you have worked throughout history to be encouraged by that, and then to be enabled to do the things you’ve called us to do through that confidence that you give us. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
This week has sort of felt to me like the unofficial start to the hurricane season. I know hurricane season actually started several months ago now, but it sort of felt like it because we’ve had the hurricane that went up through Texas and we see the devastation and the force that a hurricane has. We had the one that nearly hit Hawaii, and it’s just almost mind-boggling that some wind and rain can do the things that we see a hurricane do. We want to actually see it to believe it, and I believe that’s why we see all the news networks and especially perhaps most definitely the Weather Channel send someone there to be an eyewitness. And inevitably the Weather Channel will go to its reporting and there’s a guy and he has his rain jacket on and he’s hanging on as the wind’s blowing and he’s getting all wet and tossed around and barely able to stand up. And it’s all to say, I was there. I’ve seen the power of this hurricane. It really happened. You can have confidence in that.
And we see that throughout our lives. Perhaps it’s with COVID this spring and it feels like an abstract threat until someone in your family or your network of friends comes down with it and suddenly it feels much more concrete. Maybe it’s a job loss in an uncertain economy and when it actually comes to you or to your family then suddenly it feels very real. It’s suddenly we know it’s real and yet it feels real. And Peter knows that we need history and he says it’s important that that feeling of realness when something happens to us, you need to have that about Jesus. And that’s what he talks about starting in verse 16 tonight. So let’s go ahead and turn there. Peter writes, “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the majestic glory, ‘This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.”
Peter says you’ve heard all kinds of wonderful things. I’ve been talking about how you partake of the divine nature. I’ve been talking about these fruits of the Spirit that should be coming out in your life. And yet you need to go a step further. It isn’t good enough to have an abstract idea and hang on to that. It’s going to fail you. What you need to know is that the Jesus I’m telling you about, the Jesus that allows you to partake of the divine nature, the Jesus who calls you to do these things, he’s the Jesus of history. He has actually dwelt on this earth and I spent time with him and I can tell you about that. I have told you about that. I’m going to tell you again about that because that is essential. Jesus is real. Jesus isn’t just an idea. Jesus is the one who actually dwelt here amongst us, who made us and then came to be with us.
And the danger that Peter knows that we want to fall into is one where we lose sight of that. Where Jesus starts to become more and more distant, like that hurricane that we hear about. We see the little picture of the hurricane going on the map spinning but we don’t actually think about its impact to a real person or to real people.
And in fact, here Peter is dealing with that. He sees these teachers that are going to places where he has taught to the very people he’s writing to and they’ve offered these cleverly designed myths, he says. These false Jesuses. They’ve shaped Jesus into their own image to promote the ideas that they want to promote, to make themselves important. And in that, have lost the historical Jesus, the one who dwelt with us and who has saved us. So Peter says, you’re going to encounter more of these people and so before I go, you need to hear again my experience. Because I have actually been with Jesus and you’ve been with me. So you can have confidence in who Jesus is.
And to do that, he refers to the transfiguration. He talks about hearing this voice from heaven speaking of his pleasure in Jesus. And in that, the reader of this letter would remember the times that Peter had recounted his experience on the mountaintop with Jesus. Let’s go ahead and turn to Mark chapter 9 where we read about that experience, starting in verse 2. Mark writes, “And after six days, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them. And his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. And Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah. For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified. And a cloud overshadowed them. And a voice came out of the cloud, ‘This is my beloved son, listen to him.’ And suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them, but Jesus only.”
It’s not hard to imagine how terrified they would be in this experience, just seeing Jesus radiating the glory of heaven before them, to see the heroes of the faith, Elijah and Moses, standing there talking to Jesus. It’s not hard to imagine how Peter would, in the moment, want to fill the conversation. “Let’s put up some tents.” It’s not hard to imagine, as Peter reflects back on his life, he thinks of that moment. This would be the sort of literal mountaintop experience that would stick in your life. Vividly, you could feel like it was just yesterday, even decades later. And he says here, I’m telling you about the real Jesus, the historical Jesus, who really was. And let me tell you about an experience that was so unimaginably vivid in my life, that I can tell you about it now, just as if it was yesterday.
Now, I went to the Gospel of Mark intentionally, because we see Peter is trying to convey this history to these people, and to us later on, before he dies. And tradition says that Peter actually was the source for Mark’s Gospel. If we look at verse 15 in our current chapter, 2 Peter chapter 1, here’s what Peter says. “And I will make every effort so that after my departure, you may be able at any time to recall these things.” Now, we don’t know for sure what Peter is referring to there. He could be referring specifically to what he’s doing right now in this letter. But from very early in church tradition, commentators have looked at this and thought that Peter may have been pointing to his work with Mark on the Gospel of Mark.
Tradition very, very early on refers to Peter as the source, as the one who taught Mark what he knew about Jesus and the life of the disciples following Jesus. So when Peter here refers to the transfiguration, he may very well have in mind that he’s been working with Mark, perhaps even that same day he’s writing this letter, dictating the things that happen so that Mark can write them down and that there’ll be a record that people can turn to and say, here is a credible eyewitness testimony of who Jesus is for years to come, decades to come, millennia to come.
Peter wants to make sure that we know who Jesus is. We actually have a very interesting case where a fragment of this letter that Peter wrote, this particular verse talking about him making every effort to record what happened so it could be a reminder, that was found with a fragment of the Gospel of Mark in a cave as archaeologists have searched for additional manuscripts and details about the scriptures. And it seems quite reasonable to think that this almost serves as a preface to what Mark was writing down. It all comes together and we see an effort from an apostle who wants to make sure that those clever teachers who, very much like modern day spiritual gurus that come up with wonderful abstract ideas about how we reach higher consciousness or have a happier life, that those could never dominate and take away from a Jesus who was real, who was flesh and blood, who saves us.
He wants to make sure that we know who Jesus is. And one of the remarkable things about that is that as we read through the Gospel of Mark, we see a very Peter’s eye view of what happened. I believe that one of the things that Peter wants us to be thinking about is to just look in our own lives and as we’re struggling to follow God’s calling for us to ask the question, am I looking to God’s faithfulness in history? Why do the Gospels record the details of Jesus’ life? Why do the scriptures in general record the history of God’s work with his people? It’s because as we look to that we can have confidence. It’s a post that we can hold on to when the hurricanes of life come through that holds us in place. Because we look and we say, I don’t know how God’s going to work at this moment, but I know that God has worked through all the ages past with his people. And so I can have confidence he’s going to work in this too.
When we lose sight of that, when we start to think of the Bible as more a set of abstract principles we can hold on to, even great rules for life, and we lose the history of it, we start to lose that confidence. Because the problem with great rules for life that aren’t tied to history is that we don’t know if they’re really going to work out. We start to doubt. And Peter says here, you’re going to hear all kinds of people competing for your minds and for your hearts. Hold on to the history of who God is. Hold on to that in those storms so you can have confidence to do what God has called you to do. That’s so crucial at that level, and it’s crucial to another level, which is that we start to reshape who Jesus is.
Our hearts want to pull us to make Jesus a little bit more about who we think he should be, the things that our sinful hearts say are important, the things that capture our attention. And that’s what Peter is dealing with with these false teachers. They’re presumably, as they’re telling these quote-unquote clever myths, they’re coming up with ways to make Jesus seem exactly how they want so they can be important, or their followers can be important. Maybe they can become wealthy by taking money from other followers. They’re taking the Jesus of history and they’re building walls around him and reshaping him and trying to mold that until people are looking at this abstract picture of Jesus rather than the actual Jesus.
We’re always going to struggle with that. Our hearts are going to wrestle with that. That’s why it’s so important to remember who Jesus really is in history. Jesus wasn’t about earthly power for us. He was about letting us into his heavenly kingdom, the glory of the power of the universe, but not what our world always says is important.
In our world, we’re used to trying to shape and arrange history. We’re used to seeing people do that. Perhaps if you’ve ever watched, say, a PBS program and you hear about all the foundations that made it possible, or you go to a really neat monument and you see this foundation paid for, what are we seeing there? We’re seeing often very, very wealthy people of the past, people like, say, Carnegie, who look back on life and maybe started to realize that they hadn’t really been the nicest of people. And they look at their lives and they think, I’ll just give a bunch of money. And then when people hear my name, they’re not going to look at the things I did that weren’t ideal. They’re going to look at what I did with that money. And it’s all about reshaping a story so that people think that they’re great, that they are the hero, that even if they weren’t very heroic because they were purely trying to advance themselves, now they seem heroic to make themselves more appealing.
And we do the same thing in our lives. We often feel the call to want to be the hero. And it’s often little things we tell people day-to-day life and what we’re going through. And it’s just that inclination to make ourselves seem a little more important. Peter could have done that as he dictated stories to Mark, as he described what happened in the life of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark. He could have tried to make himself a little more important and said, well, here’s a time that I made sure to save the day and everything was ready for Jesus. And I was really important. Look at how I followed him early on. And I kept following him. And here I am today. And listen to all these wonderful things I did.
But what do we actually find? And to me, this is the most profound reason to follow that very good tradition that Peter was the source of the Gospel of Mark. There is absolutely nowhere we find in the Gospels that’s more negative to the disciples than what we find in the Gospel of Mark. The stories of the various encounters with Jesus’s miracles and the crowds and everything else that we read there. They’re often shown to be foolish, to be, well, broken, sinful human beings like us.
And looking at what Peter says here, it fits exactly Peter’s experience. Peter looks back at his life and thinks about the days when he wanted to be the hero. He wanted to be important. And after being transformed for a lifetime by the Holy Spirit, after encountering the risen Jesus and how Jesus forgave him for turning away from him and denying him, he looks back at all these things. And he wants to say, I know you’d be tempted because I know your love for me. You want to make me the hero. And yet I’m not. Jesus is the hero. And I want you to know about the real hero.
And that’s what we find here in 2 Peter is Peter recounts this. He doesn’t talk about what he’s done that’s amazing and why you should listen to him because of that. He talks about getting to see the glory and the majesty of Jesus. He says, that’s your hero. That’s who you should follow. Don’t let anything else pull you away from the Jesus I’ve told you about because you can’t improve on him. He’s real and he loves you.
This is so hard for us to do. We need reminders. And that’s what we see if we jump back just a little bit starting at verse 12. Peter says this. “Therefore, I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it is right as long as I am in this body to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me.” As he looks at the end of his life and knows it’s coming, he says to them, I’m going to remind you until my last day. I’m going to remind you of who Jesus is because you need to hold on to that. That is where your hope is located in the real Jesus and the God who loves you and acts in history.
He says, you know these things, I’ve told you these things, and you’re probably rolling your eyes thinking, why, Peter, are you wasting your time telling us this again? And yet he knows that their hearts wander. As the old hymn goes, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. It speaks to what each of us is going to struggle with, perhaps in different ways, but each of us is going to have those times where we’re prone to wander, prone to seek after other things, to reshape Jesus, to affirm what we think is important, rather than to allow Jesus to reshape us to what is important.
Peter wants to leave them with certainty, certainty that Jesus existed in history so they can hold on to that in those storms, and certainty also that they can hold on to exactly who Jesus is. He doesn’t need to start a foundation. He doesn’t need to tell a fish story and talk about how much bigger the fish was. He can just tell exactly who Jesus is because you can’t get any more amazing than that because he’s the God of the universe who created us.
He says to them, you need reminders. He says to us, you need reminders. And maybe you’re like me, you try to remember different things. You can come up with all kinds of different ways. You get little sticky notes and you start putting them in different places that say things you need to do. And I often find that I forget to read my sticky notes. So then you just take the sticky note pad or something else and maybe put it on the driver’s seat of your car so that when you sit down, you have to move it. So you’re going to be reminded of what you’ve written down that’s important. What I do, I pick up the thing I think I need to go. I won’t forget. I set it on the passenger seat and I forget.
We do the same thing with who Jesus is. We think, I know who Jesus is, but I’m going to wander a little this way. We’re going to reshape Jesus a little this way. We don’t do that consciously, but we do it. And that’s why throughout scripture, God has said time and again, keep telling the stories of how I worked in history. He says that over and over again in the Old Testament about how he led the people out of Egypt in the Exodus. He reminds them when he calls them to faithfulness, don’t forget. I brought you out of the land of Egypt. I love you.
Why does he do that? Because the people kept forgetting, not because they wanted to, not because they didn’t want to remember God, but because in our sinful state, our hearts wander. So God says, I’m going to remind you again. And here Peter is saying, I’m going to remind you again. I’m going to remind you of who Jesus really is. I’m going to remind you that he’s the real hero.
Sometimes we think of reminders as almost like an insult. I’ve heard people say, don’t go up to a pastor and say after a sermon, pastor, that was a great reminder because somehow you’re insulting him because it wasn’t, you’re not saying it’s something new and innovative. You’re not saying it’s something that you didn’t know before. You’re saying you were reminded. But I think we should actually, as we remind each other in the Christian life, as each of us is called to remind the other of the truth of scripture, we shouldn’t see saying that something is a reminder is in some way an insult or anything less than the best thing we could be doing because what are we called to do? To remind each other of what scripture reminds us, that God loves us and that God is the one who rescues us.
That brings us to our second question tonight. Am I trying to be the hero or am I looking to Jesus as the hero? You see, when we remind each other of who God is and how he’s acted in history and exactly what that history looks like, we can’t help but remember that just as Peter could look back on his life and he was not the hero, he was the one who kept failing, but Jesus kept forgiving him. Jesus kept rescuing him. That likewise for us and for all of humanity, God is the one who rescues us. God is the hero.
That’s why we have to keep asking that question to each other. Why we have to help each other to remember these stories. Because when we do, we’re reminded of who the hero is. Where are we lacking confidence? Because we’ve forgotten that. Where we start to think, I’m going to be the hero, and we let go of these two wonderful columns that are holding us against the winds of life, and we let go of them and think, well, I’m going to stand up, and we just start being blown back by the wind.
Where are those places that we start to doubt that God is going to work because of that? Because we’re thinking, somehow I’m going to be the hero. I’m going to accomplish these things. I’m going to rescue myself. We’re missing out on the wonder of the God who’s already rescued us, who’s already done that for us. And as we struggle on those things, and we let go of those columns, where do we fail to show who the real hero is to others? Because they see us struggling and trying to be the hero, and speaking to them in a way that that might be intended to make ourselves seem heroic. And in that, we’re obscuring the beauty of God’s rescue of us.
Our lives should remind each other. We should remind ourselves and all those around us that there’s only one hero. That’s Jesus. When we remember that, we have the confidence to go forward with what God’s called us to. There’s only one hero. That hero loves you, loves me. Let’s pray.
Lord, what do we really say when we recognize throughout history how you’ve rescued us time and again, that we wander time and again? All we can do is praise you for your goodness and your love. Lord, whether we are in one of those moments right now where we’re holding on to the columns firmly of the truth of historical Jesus who dwelt amongst us and died for us and triumphed over death for us, or we’ve let go at the moment and we’re trying to hold ourselves against the wind, Lord, either way, would you remind us anew tonight that you are the hero. And because of that, we can have confidence in where you’re calling us so that if we are holding on, we’d hold on all the stronger by the power of your Spirit, because we can’t even do that. And if we’ve let go that by your Spirit you would enable us to cling to your promises and to your truth again, or for the first time.
And as we do that, Lord, would you help us that we would show your love to others. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, we’ll continue again next week, and I hope that you’ll join us as we do on Steadfast at 7 p.m. on Monday night. And next week we’re going to be looking at the future hope we have, and what you might say is the future history, because God has already declared it as true. It’s already down as things that have occurred, because God’s will will be done.
And so as we’ve looked this week and seen the confidence we have because of the history of God working, next week we can see the hope and the joy and the confidence we have because of what God will do in the future that we know will happen, because we can see his faithfulness in the past.
I hope that if tonight’s video has been an encouragement to you, that you would like it or share it. You can help us to share this hope with others by doing so. You see, maybe there’s someone that’s on your social media, or someone that you can email it to, or someone you can call up and tell about it, who has been struggling with, is Jesus just an idea, and a really nice idea, but one that who didn’t really exist? Or is Jesus real? My prayer would be if they would listen to this, or maybe this is you tonight, as you reflect on what we’ve talked about tonight, reflect on a God who has faithfully testified through his word. And through that, we all might have the confidence to follow him more fully.
If you would like to stay up to date on the things that we’re doing, please like us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, subscribe on YouTube. By doing that, you can stay up to date. Again, you can share these things, and you can help us to share that hope and that joy with others.
I hope to see you again next week. And in the meantime, as you go through this week, if there are areas where you’re struggling to cling to, and you’re scared, and you’re afraid, and you’re uncertain, feel free to shoot me an email. I’d love to pray with you. Or post it down in the comments if you don’t mind sharing with everyone, and we can all pray for each other. We serve a God who works in history, and not just the history of the past, but right now. And so it’s a joy when we can pray together with the confidence that we have in that God. And I’d love to share that with you tonight.
Also, if you have a question, comment, something that came up that you’d like to wrestle with more about tonight’s passage, or anything else, again, shoot me an email. I’d love to hear from you this week.
I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week. I hope to see you next week. And thank you again for joining me tonight as we dig into God’s Word. Have a wonderful night.