and silent prayer before we begin. Our call to worship today comes from Psalm 29, a Psalm of David. Let's read it together. Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of the Almighty, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord glory due to his name. Worship the Lord in holy array. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters. The glory of God thunders. The Lord is over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. Yes, the voice of the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf and Sarion like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord hews out the flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer to calve. and strips the forest bare and in his temple everything says glory. The Lord sat as king at the flood. The Lord sits as king forever. The Lord will give strength to his people. The Lord will bless his people with peace. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time together now to gather as your people and to worship you. Father God, indeed, you are powerful. Your voice is powerful. Father, your voice is like thunder. So terrifying that the children of Israel didn't want to hear your voice, they wanted Moses to go and bring back the message. And you speak with such power, you can turn the desert to a flood by your voice, or the sea to a desert by your voice. Your voice commands and it happens. And Father though your voice is so powerful, so strong, yet you Lord are gentle and kind with us. And not only can you speak with that powerful voice, that the earth itself would flee from your presence. But you speak with a still, small voice that testifies to our soul, Lord, to our heart, to the centre of our being. It testifies to your goodness. to your love to your grace to your mercy it testifies to our hearts Lord what is true about you and of you so father as we lift our voices to you today we want to hear your still small voice speaking to our hearts we want to hear from you Lord we want to know you that we might be like Christ so that father we can praise you in spirit and in truth as you deserve to be praised please lord draw near to us now speak to our hearts as we praise you and worship you together we ask and pray in jesus name amen Let's sing our first hymn, Come People of the Risen King. I love you, I love you so so Am I back on? Yes, got it. All right let's come to a time of confession as we confess our sin before the Lord. Father we come before you now and we just want to acknowledge that we are sinners. Lord we look at this world and we see such suffering and pain Such evil and wickedness, such terrible things, great injustices, great evils done. There's plenty of food in this earth for everyone and yet people starve. There's plenty of land for everyone to have a home and yet we invade and kill in war one another to possess more land. There's plenty of everything for everyone, but we are greedy. We are selfish. Lord, we covet. We look at what others have, our neighbor, and we desire what they have. Lord, we think ill of one another. We grieve your Holy Spirit. all this trouble, all this strife, all this turmoil it's because Lord we have dishonoured you we have not given you your rightful place as God, as King We have not worshipped you as we should. We've not allowed you to dominate our hearts and lead our ways. We've rebelled against you Lord. We've done what's right in our own eyes. We've sought our own ways. We've wanted to be our own God. We've worshipped idols. Father, people travel all over the world to see the mountains and the hills and the lakes and to look at the wonders that you've created and they worship the creation and not the Creator. Lord, we ask your forgiveness. We ask your forgiveness for all of this sin. We acknowledge that all of the trouble of this world is from us. Departing from you, walking away from you, abandoning you and seeking our own desires. Forgive us, Lord. Forgive us and bring us back to you. Help us, Lord, to know you as we should. That we would praise and worship you as we should. Help us this day, Lord, to know your forgiveness. And we thank you, Father, that because of the Lord Jesus, we are forgiven. That all of that evil, all of those things that we just mentioned, Lord, you have made it right. You have made a way that that debt is cancelled and that we can be right with You. So we praise You and we thank You for that. May we know Your forgiveness today and may we be set free in our hearts to worship You as we should. I ask and pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Our assurance of forgiveness comes from Colossians 2, verses 13-15. When you were dead in your transgressions, in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive, together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions. Having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us which was hostile to us and he has taken it out of the way having nailed it to the cross. When he had disarmed the rulers and the authorities he made a public display of them and triumphed over them through him. Let's sing together now, Man of Sorrows. you You just want to do a very quick one. Good, okay. The reading today is from Matthew 17. Matthew 17, verses one to nine on the Transfiguration. Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, his brother, and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them. And his face shone like the sun, and his garments became as white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with him. Peter said to Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground and were terrified. And Jesus came to them and touched them and said, get up and do not be afraid. And lifting up their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man has risen from the dead. This is the word of the Lord. And our next hymn will be, Come Holy Ghost. Good morning, everyone. You've been inundated with Andrews today. My name is Andrew as well, thank you. Great, I've got it here, thanks. Alright, and we're going to read from the Bible again another passage from 2 Peter. You may recall that we've been going through 2 Peter. If you've been here over the last few weeks, I'll find it here. All right, 1 Peter 1, and we're going to read from verse 12. We got 12 there? Yep, good. Let's read this together. Peter writes, Therefore I will always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them and have been established in the truth which is present with you. I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder. knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent, as also our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. And I will also be diligent that at any time after my departure you will be able to call these things to mind. For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was, made to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. And we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. So we have the prophetic word made more sure to which you do well to pay attention as to 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 is a matter of one'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." This is Peter's letter, but this is the Word of God to us, isn't it? Please pray with me. Father, we thank you for this passage and we ask that you will guide us through this passage. We pray that you will fulfill all the good pleasure of your will in us in these coming moments as we carefully consider your word. And we pray that you will help us to heed it until the day dawns brighter and the morning star arises even more in our hearts. Father, we know your word is perfect. but my tongue is very flawed and this mouthpiece is very flawed and we pray that you will help me to speak and that you will help us all to hear not my words but your word that you will speak to us today we thank you that this is your will we know this is your will and that you have given us your spirit we pray that you'll be stirring our hearts for Jesus sake amen Now, you might, if you were here last week, some of you might remember hopefully what last week we were looking at verses 12 to 15, and there were two points, which was, I require, regular reminder, yes, and anyone, and they require, regular reminder. We were looking at how Peter, why Peter was really hitting that home. There were a few, four reasons that I could see because of what was at stake. That's 10 to 11. And from verse 16, we saw that it's true, it's not a fairy tale. The prophetic word is confirmed. And fourthly, because there are many false teachers who would lead us astray. And so we need to regularly remind each other. I hope you've been doing that this week and that you continue to seek to do that. We're up to verse 16 today, and Lord willing, we'll tackle verses 16 to 21, and the day dawning in our hearts. While Peter does address this letter to believers, verse 1, he says he clearly addresses believers, he's writing it to believers, and in verse 12, He knows he's writing to people who know the truth, he's writing to people who are established in the truth, and yet we still have verse 19 where he says, he still directs them and us to pay attention to the word and to approach it as a lamp that shines in a dark place for the aim of the day dawning in our hearts. So he doesn't say, he's not writing just to unbelievers, he's writing this to believers and he's saying you need to keep coming to the word until the day keeps dawning in your heart. So he's making it clear that we have an ongoing need for our hearts to be illuminated by the good news of Jesus which the prophets foresaw and here the apostles saw. So that's, I just start with that because that's the aim today. That's my aim. That's fed my prayers this week as I've been pondering this passage. Praying that the day will dawn brighter in our hearts as we ponder this passage. So I'd like to draw your attention to verse 16, where we're going to start. And I've called this the ray of reality. A ray of reality. Often when you learn history, and I seem to bring history up a lot, don't I? But you learn about it from a kind of bird's eye narrative, as in a sequence of events, this happened, and this happened, and this happened. So, for example, there's a naval battle that happened in the First World War. It was called the Battle of Jutland. The British Navy and the German Navy were both in the North Sea and they weren't aware that the other was there. And so there's all this sequence of events. They go this way, they go that way. And eventually the German navy ends up steaming right into the British, the British navy's broad, like the British navy managed to cross their tea. So you got the British navy here and the Germans were sailing right into them. So the British can have this broadside line of fire and the Germans are like, well, we better get out of here. So they hightailed it out of there, do a U-turn. Now that's interesting sequence of events. I've narrowed it down very quickly. But when you hear it from the lived experience of some of the German sailors, it takes on a whole other level. Here are the first-hand accounts from some of the German sailors about the moment they realized they had sailed into the British Navy. They said, we suddenly found ourselves facing the massed firepower of the entire Grand Fleet. which we didn't even know was at sea. It was dusk and we saw the whole horizon, because in those times the distance, the distance of firepower so far, we saw the whole horizon light up from the British naval guns. Wow, I think that wouldn't have been a fun place to be. The German admiral wrote, the entire arc stretching from north to east was a sea of fire, the flash from all the British, from the muzzles of the British guns. It was seen distinctly through the mist and smoke on the horizon, although the ships themselves weren't distinguishable. Now those are first-hand accounts of the events, and they really, to me, they really bring home the reality of what happened, of that event. And I don't know about you, but I love reading the first-hand accounts of events, historical events. My nana was a child during World War II in Holland. And I loved hearing her tell stories of her memories as a six-year-old of what she went through. Something else, on YouTube did you know you can watch a recording of a TV show that was recorded in the 50s and they had on that TV show a contestant who talks about witnessing Abraham Lincoln's assassination. I think, whoa, that's in 1860. Anyway, that may not get your blood running, but I find that amazing. It's a first-hand witness account. And I'm saying all this just to try to bring home that when it comes to the arrival and the power of Christ, we can read the first-hand eyewitness accounts. Not only in the Gospels, but Peter is talking about it here, here in 2 Peter's second letter, from first-hand eyewitness accounts. It's not a second-hand account, so Peter's not hearing it from a buddy. A buddy told him, no, he saw it with his own eyes. And it's not an oral legend that he's saying, oh look, I think this is reliable and reasonable, you should believe this. No, he saw it with his own eyes. Verse 16, we didn't follow cleverly devised tales when we told you about Jesus coming in power. We were eyewitnesses of his majesty. We read in Matthew about the event that Peter is referring to when Jesus was transfigured on the mountain in front of Peter and James and John, where they witnessed a display of Christ's radiant glory. We were eyewitnesses of Christ's majesty. Just let that sink in. The guy who's writing this letter to us saw the majesty of Christ with his own eyes. They say it's beneficial to ponder your own existence every now and then. I do that. I have a sequence of things that I do just to ponder that I exist. It's quite incredible. And then when you're sitting around a campfire and you look up and you see the starry night sky, you can't help but ponder the existence of the universe. But I'd say it's even better. It's not just me saying it. I'm pointing out that it is better. to read verse 16 and ponder the existence of Christ, the reality of his coming. Ponder the reality of his power and his majesty. Is this a reality that's dawning in your heart? I think it's really good to be reminded of this because we are susceptible to what I've called a heart's twilight, Christian twilight. We're very susceptible to this kind of twilight in our hearts where the reality of the power and the coming of Christ dims. We do still believe, we do still follow the pattern of faith, but the sheer potent reality of Christ's coming and power becomes confined to the safe boundaries of our minds. So, I understand this is a bit risky here for me because I struggle with words to explain this, so hopefully I'm going to try to explain it with an illustration. When I was growing up, in my school years, I was very shy. Very shy. Especially shy of girls that I liked. And even though I was homeschooled, we would catch up with other homeschoolers regularly, usually on a monthly basis. And for all of my high school years, there was this particular girl that I had this huge crush on. And I couldn't, for the life of me, go up to her and talk to her. Maybe some of you know what that's like. I certainly struggled with that. Whenever I psyched myself up enough and talked to her, I would often freeze or say something silly or just blush and blush till I was too embarrassed and I'd walk away. I think if I saw her down the street, I would blush still from all those times that I embarrassed myself. But when I was home and not around her, when I wasn't around her, the real deal, her, I got along fine with her in my mind. It might sound crazy, but I got along fine with her in my mind's imagined interactions with her. I had an accurate understanding of who she was, what she would say or think in any particular situation. But when I interacted with her in the safe confines of my mind, it was conveniently comfortable. Nice, she would speak and listen when I wanted her to. She would, yeah, just on cue. But when I approached the girl in the flesh, in reality it was very different. It was risky. It was out of the control and comfort of my own mind. She was actually someone. a real, independent person, not just someone who spoke and listened when I imagined she would. I'm saying that we can easily fall into doing that with Christ, where we might have an accurate view of who He is, what He would say, and what He would do in any particular situation, and that's good, but it's still within the safe controls of our mind, where Christ speaks, listens, rebukes, right on cue, only when we are ready for it. It can look like this, following a Jesus that the people around you are following, but where your own heart isn't currently being brightly illuminated by the reality of Christ's coming, His power, His majesty. This twilight can also show itself when someone is enticed by sin and they easily dismiss Christ. Listen to Peter in verse 16. These aren't cleverly devised tales. We were eyewitnesses of His Majesty. Christ is a real, independent being, not just someone who speaks and listens when we imagine he does in our minds. Christ is not limited to the confines of our minds, and he's not limited to our imagination, and that's a good thing because he far surpasses our imagination of glory, of love, and of goodness. Peter saw his majesty on the mountain, Furthermore, this Christ died on the cross for us. He was raised to life. He really ascended into heaven at the Father's right hand, and He lives forever to make intercession for us. So that just like the playfoots aren't here, they're in the States, Christ isn't here physically. They're in the States, the playfoots are, and Christ is at the Father's right hand. The Playfoots are going to come back in a few weeks. Christ is going to come back. There's no difference there. Not much difference there anyway. My prayer is that the reality, this reality will continually dawn in our hearts that we will really tremble, rejoice, and marvel at the news that Peter is giving us. It seems that every year that passes... Yes, there we go. It seems that every year that passes, the older I get, I become more aware of how humans can so easily misread things or misinterpret things. And Peter is a human. He's just a human, right? So someone might say to Peter, look, I don't doubt your sincerity, Peter. I don't doubt that you are convinced about what you saw, but even Satan can transform himself into an angel of light. How do you know that that wasn't what happened? Peter, I think you've been fooled. You've been fooled by cunning trickery. But no, that's not possible. Because God the Father himself explicitly confirmed who this Jesus was. And to put it bluntly, there's no more authoritative word than that. If someone questions Peter's opinion, they're questioning God the Father himself as well. Peter says that Christ received honor and glory from God the Father. He says what he heard. We heard this utterance that was made from heaven. Notice the senses that Peter is using. We saw. We heard. So we have the eyewitness accounts. and the ear witness accounts of God the Father confirming it. And we will do well to ponder this ray of reality, that it will fill our hearts. Now, secondly we have from verse 17, the ray of Christ's glory. That ray will dawn in our hearts as we ponder what God the Father said about Jesus. Again, I just said it before, Peter is only a human, right? So Peter interprets what he saw as the glory of Christ, but how can we rely on Peter's claim about Christ's glory? He's only human. But interestingly, not even Peter relies on his own interpretation. Christ's glory is affirmed and given by the Father. Peter is using God the Father's interpretation, which is the correct one. You can't argue with that. So don't take Peter's word for it. Take God the Father's word for it. Don't place your confidence in Peter to perceive the glory of Christ, but listen to what the Father sees in Jesus. Because there's nothing hidden from God's sight. God sees everything. He sees everything about us. And God sees through Jesus. He saw through Jesus. His gaze pierces right, pierced right through His innermost being. And God the Father wants us to know that Jesus is the real deal. Jesus is indeed His Son. And when God the Father sees Jesus, He sees all of Christ's complete goodness, purity, truth, and excellence. in detail. And when he sees Jesus, he says, there's my 100% of my delight. And so he's flagging that for us, for our sakes. He's flagging the glory of Christ for our sakes. He also gives the glory of Christ to Jesus. So it says that Christ received Where were we? Verse 17. He received honor and glory. So the Father gives Christ honor. This is a big question, but I'm going to give a short answer. When you ask, where does honor and glory come from? Where does majesty come from? The short answer is God the Father, ultimately. God the Father. And by God the Father saying what He said, He's giving Christ honor and glory. The Father is endorsing Christ. That's where true glory comes from. And he doesn't just admit that Jesus is his Son. He declares it. He declares it. He doesn't just express adequate pleasure in his Son. He expresses his utmost pleasure in his Son. He explicitly declared it. Not for Jesus to see. Jesus already knew it. For us to take note. to give us this ray of Christ's glory. And you might be asking this question, why? What does this mean for me? What does that have to do with me? Seriously, what am I meant to do with it? Again, I'll try to answer that question with an illustration. Picture this with me. You've got a young child, right? They haven't grown up yet. They haven't grown very tall yet. They're quite short. And they can't see over things like fences or hedges. And so this child's walking along, and there's the child's father there as well. When the father looks over the fence and goes, wow, Look at that! Or just, wow! He expresses some utter delight and pleasure. What does the child do? Well, he says, Father, what do you see? What do you see? Let me see! Let me see! And then in this picture, the father lifts the child up and shows. That's the response. That's our response. of any child is like the child. What did my father see that so compelled him to echo his pleasure in Jesus? And then our plea becomes, Father let me see, let me see that I might share in your delight and pleasure as well. That I might share that same pleasure that you expressed in your son. The Father signals us to see it as well. The ray of Christ's goodness and glory. See, this is the life that is worth living. One that is spent seeking, discovering, and reveling in the glory and the goodness of Christ, which the Father saw, declared in Peter's own hearing, and signals us to look at as well. So again, with this Christian twilight, you see Christians are very prone and susceptible to the twilight of aimless living. It leads to what I've called Ichabod moments. Has anyone heard the name Ichabod? Yep, it's a Hebrew name. It's a name of hopelessness. It literally means, where's the glory? Where's the glory? At times when nothing seems to present itself as worthwhile, well, can I direct you in those moments to ponder the Father's words, signaling us, signaling to us His utmost delight in His Son. The Father here is aiming our lives. He's aiming and directing us to where there is a glory that's worth pursuing. Ever since I was in my late teens, mostly when I was in my teens, but regularly since, I've often asked myself, what is worth investing time and energy in? What is worthwhile? And I would think about other people that I see and watch, even present and past, and think, okay, were their lives worthwhile? Were they seeking something that's worthwhile? Is it a pattern worth following? And then I realized that the first question should actually be different. It should actually be, who would know what was truly worth aiming at? Maybe I should actually consider God the Father's words. This is my son. I am well pleased with him. He's expressing that utter delight in his son. And so I think we are being called to ponder the Father's expression of delight in His Son. And if your life is spent in the discovery and admiration of what the Father saw, then your life has found its ultimate purpose. And Christ, the morning star, will rise in your hearts. The third ray, the ray of the prophetic word. These three points, the ray is there, but that will do. The apostles saw with their own eyes the majesty, power, and coming of Christ. With their own eyes! And what the apostles saw, the prophets foresaw. So if they were here today, they would be saying, see? See? See? What the apostles witnessed didn't alter or change anything of what the prophets had written in the Old Testament. And from the first to the last, from Moses to Malachi, their witness throughout all of history is being confirmed with the coming of Jesus. That also means that the promises that God gave in the Old Testament were not changed, they were not abandoned, they were not made irrelevant, they were confirmed with the coming of Christ, and they were fulfilled with the work of Christ. And most of you probably know this well, it's nothing you haven't heard before, but don't turn off, because this is to drive us to pay all the more careful attention to the prophetic word, because it hasn't become irrelevant, it's become more relevant. For anyone seeking and admiring Christ's glory, the prophetic word is a great source of delight and insight into Christ. So it's not a matter of listening less, it's actually a matter of listening more to the prophetic word. In 2008, a guy named Michael Burry, whether you've heard of him, I don't know, he was a hedge fund manager and he was one of the few who predicted the 2008 financial crisis. He was proven right. He had all his skeptics, but he was proven right. And now, post-2008, so many people in the industry, they go to him to see what he thinks, because he was proven right. They seek his opinion out. It's a basic logic here. The logic applies here, that the prophets foresaw and described to us about the coming and the power and the glory of Christ. It's a word worth listening to all the more, Peter is saying, because it's being confirmed. And in verse 20 to 21, Peter makes sure to clarify, wait, we aren't receiving the prophet's interpretation. This isn't personal human flawed interpretation either. No, the Scriptures are not an act of human will. They are the Father's declaration communicated by His Holy Spirit through those who wrote the Scriptures. And so Peter says that we will do well to heed the prophetic word. which foresaw the power and coming and glory of Christ. And he says, verse 19, to our central verse, that heating it will lead to the morning star, probably a reference to Christ himself, rising in our hearts. Do you have this? Would you say that Christ has dawned in your heart? This dawn isn't reserved for preachers, or pastors, or apostles, or Christian authors, or Christians who might seem to be exceptional. No, it's for you and me. We need Christ, the morning star rising in our own hearts. This isn't a call to unbelievers, this is a call to believers. Heed it. Listen to the first-hand eyewitness accounts of the apostles. the foresight of the prophets that's been confirmed. And Peter says, and the morning star will rise in your hearts. The day will dawn in your hearts. Sorry, ponder the reality of Christ from what the apostles saw. Just sit and ponder the existence of Christ. He's coming in his power. Search out the glory of Christ which the Father saw and signaled for us to see as well. And heed the witness of the prophets whose foresight concerning Christ was confirmed by the sight of the apostles. May God dawn, may the day dawn in our hearts. Please pray with me. Our Heavenly Father, we praise you with great joy because since the beginning of time you've spoken about the coming of Christ to us through the prophets and the glory that you gave him. You've spoken to us about the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. And we pray that the reality of this will not be confined to our minds, but that it will really dawn in our hearts. Father, lift us up and help us to see clearly the goodness and the glory of Christ. Lord Jesus, our King, our Savior, we pray that you'll forgive us for when we've treated you like a puppet in our minds. We know that you, in all your holiness, far surpasses even our wildest imagination. We thank you for your patience with us and your unfailing love for us. Lord, we're growing in admiration for you. We're seeing more of what the Father saw when he said, when he expressed his delight in you. Lord, we're really looking forward to meeting you in person. Even though we haven't seen you with our eyes, we know the apostles have. And even though we haven't, Lord, we love you. And we rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory. Amen.