I've been away for a couple of weeks attending the Grace Evangelical Society annual conference and officiating at my granddaughters wedding.
Time to get back to work.  The next Post:

The gospel of John starts with a profound statement about the beginning of space and time. 

John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

At the commencement of this reality in which we live, the universe, the Word was already present.  Interestingly, John says the Word was both with God and was God.  The word God is a singular noun, so I believe this to be a preliminary introduction to the concept to a triune God.  A single deity who exists as 3 separate yet equal persons.  One of those Persons is the Word.  Later in the book John will introduce the Father and Holy Spirit, but for now he is interested in the Word who he identifies as Jesus Christ in 1:17-18.

Jesus Christ is the one who created everything that was made.  That would be the entire realm of reality.  The universe we see and the metaphysical world we cannot see.  That would include time.  Time did not exist before there was a 3-dimensional material universe.  If you have questions on that, take them up with Einstein and Stephen Hawkins. They explain it better than I can.  I only bring it up because according to the Bible, God and therefore the Word, existed before anything was made. 

John 4:24 quotes Jesus Christ saying, “God is Spirit.”  He didn’t say a Spirit but just He is Spirit. If Jesus had said “a Spirit” it would suggest a boundary, that God occupies space.  That would be contrary to the Bible’s consistent portrayal of God as being infinite in all His attributes.  Those include His knowledge, presence, power, transcendence and moral qualities.  There is no developmental progression in His person or attributes.  In other words, God is who He has always been.  He doesn’t change. 

Note this from the Apostle John:
1 John 1:5 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
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John wanted to highlight the absolute purity of God’s character.  There are no boundaries to His moral attributes.  At no point does His goodness end and any shadow of evil appears.  His love and kindness are everlasting.  His grace, mercy and truth are unending.  But so is His Justice and Righteousness.  The perfect world God Created has been corrupted by evil and He will not let that stand.  And that is really what the Bible is all about.  How God has worked to repair what has been ruined and do it in a way that allows Him to remain just while justifying those who will turn back to Him.   

  

Some of you reading this might be thinking I’m making too much to much of what is nothing more than insignificant issues of grammar or use of certain words.  To which I would reply that Jesus Christ made such distinctions.  He thought things like use of specific words, verb tenses and such were very important.    So, did people like Moses.  He reminded the nation of Israel their wandering for 38 years longer than God intended was because they didn’t believe what God had said. 
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Deuteronomy 8:3 So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.

You might recognize the underlined part as Jesus Christ used it to counter Satan’s challenge to turn stones into bread, Matthew 4:4.  There is another significant statement by Jesus Christ that shows even the verb tenses are inspired. 

Matthew 22:31-32 But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” 

Jesus Christ defended the truth of resurrection on the basis of God using the present tense when identifying Himself to Moses.  He said “I am” not I was.  God is precise in His use of language and therefore we must be precise in how we read and interpret what He had recorded in the Bible. God commands all believers to read and study His word.  That means He knows all of us can understand it, He used every day language in writing it.

If you fear it is too hard for you then turn to what James wrote in his epistle.   James 1:5-6 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.

God will give you the wisdom you need.  But you need to get into you Bible and read it.  As I tell the folks at Trego Community reading just 4 chapters a day will get you through the entire Bible in under 10 months.  If you’re a first-time reader then then I’d suggest you start with the Gospel of John then go to Genesis.  But no matter where you begin, the important thing is to get into the habit of reading your Bible daily.                          

Peter warns us of the inevitability that false teachers will infiltrate the Church.  2 Peter 2:1 But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction.

These false teachers will come in under the radar saying things that sound good and reasonable but which actually distort the meaning of God’s word.  It is the same tactic Satan used with Eve in the Garden.  They may say salvation is by believing in Jesus Christ, but then use terms like really belief or truly believe.  I’ve even heard things like you must believe in your heart vs. just believing in your head.  Some call that the 18” rule of faith. 
Anyway, those who say such things are implying there is more than one way to believe.   And that doesn’t make sense.  Something is either true or it is not.  You either believe something or you don’t, there is no such thing as almost believing.  I do not know of a single place in the Bible where the word believe is modified by an adverb.  Jesus Christ simply said believe. 

The Lord did sometimes remark about the disciples having little faith.  But faith is a noun. It is not a verb like the word believe.  Being a noun, it referring to what is believed not the action of believing.  And the volume of what we believe can change from person to person or over time.  Here is an example of what I mean.  Read Matthew 8:18 & 23-27 for the context in which Jesus said “O you of little faith.” 
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The Lord said to the disciples let’s go to the other side of the Lake.  The same Lord they had witnessed healing Peter’s Mother-in-Law, the Centurion's servant and the leper.  The same lord who had delivered the sermon on the mount.  As they crossed the lake it got rough, big waves and wind were tossing the boat round.  The disciples got scared woke Jesus up and urged Him to save them.  They believed Jesus Christ could save them.  So, what was wrong with their faith?  The issue was they had not believed everything Jesus had said.  The focus of their faith was too small.  They had forgotten it was Jesus who said let’s cross to the other side.  And if Jesus said we’re going to the other side, then they were going to reach the other side even if He, Jesus, was a sleep.   

Their faith was deficit in content; it was too small.  It does not mean their belief was weak.   

I want to explain an important aspect about the structure and content of the Bible.  You would expect that God, being the creator of language, would be precise in His use of it.  We also need to take in to account that He is the all-knowing, powerful and wise sovereign owner of the creation.  Therefore, it is only natural we should expect He is able to accurately reveal truth to us through human agents even down to in the choice of words and grammar.  That is exactly how the Jesus Christ had explained it to the Apostles.  So, Peter in warning his readers about the danger of false teaching wrote the following.    

2 Peter 1:20-21 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, 21 for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. (NKJV)

What did Peter mean by private interpretation?  If you read this in other English translations, they generally render the phrase in the sense of either the reader or the prophets personal understanding.  So, we are not free to interpretate the Bible by what it means to us.  While that is true, I don’t believe that is what Peter meant.  The Greek word being translated as ‘private’ is idias.  That is a legitimate rendering, but the author’s intended meaning is drawn from the context. 

idias is used 5 other times in 2 Peter so we can check to see if there is a pattern to how Peter used this word.  What we find is that he consistently used idias to tie the noun it describes to the subject of the sentence.  2 examples are 2 Peter 2:22 “A dog returns to his own vomit,” and 3:3 “scoffers will come…walking according to their own lusts.”  The other 3 uses are 2 Peter 2:16, 3:16 & 17; so, check them out for yourself.

The subject of v. 20 is Scripture so contextually the interpretation of prophecy is owned by the whole of Scripture.  No particular prophecy in the Bible is to be interpreted in isolation from the rest of Scripture.  Because the Bible covers a lot of different topics, we have to interpret what we read in light of the context in which it is found.  By context I mean the “who, what, when and where” that is being discussed.  A common error made today is the assumption that saved (Grk. Sozo) always refers to deliverance from eternal damnation.  Actually, only about 1/3 of the 111 times it occurs in the N.T. is it used that way.  It is also used to mean being healed from a disease, spared from physical death or deliverance from a bad situation or harm.   
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Peter was addressing the danger of false teachers.  They do take things out of context and end up confusing people.  They rob Christians of the peace and rest that comes by faith in God’s promises.  This is why we have 2 Timothy 2:15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Correctly organizing the varies topics of Scripture by their subject matter. That is how we can grow our experience of God’s grace and peace (2 Peter 1:2-4).