The objective of this lesson: to stress the spiritual importance of remembering.
As we age, our "forgetter" works with increasing effectiveness, and our "rememberer" works with decreasing effectiveness! How often do you encounter a subject only to be reminded, "I knew much more about that a few years ago!" How often do you encounter a matter with an emphatic, "I never knew anything about that" only to recall later you knew about the matter sometime in the past. Unfortunately, forgetting gets easier and remembering gets harder.
Discuss how easy it is to forget as we get older.
Spiritually (and in other matters), an important part of wisdom is perspective. An essential part of perspective is remembering. Having experience contributes powerfully to life's lessons if the person remembers. Extreme forgetfulness curses one's life with ignorance. It is as though there were no experiences so there can be no wisdom.
If a person forgets the lessons he or she learned from past experiences, it is impossible for him or her to learn the lessons necessary to develop wisdom. Wisdom is a condition created by learning from the past.
A part of leading people in spiritual development must include reminding. The responsibility of reminding can be quite frustrating to the person leading. There always will need to be a good, effective balance between discovery and recall.
In the American culture, learning increasingly occurs by means other than hearing and recalling. In teaching in the churches of Christ, we rely primarily (especially on the adult level) on hearing and recalling. In our context, it has been said a speaker should never underestimate the ignorance of his audience. When we have so few times to learn and so little time devoted to teaching (four hours maximum in public assembly for most devout people), it is easy for a speaker to devote all of his or her time to discovery and none to remembering.
In today's text, Peter did not resent the need to remind his readers. With his previous emphasis, he reminded them of the privileges God gave them in Christ and their responsibility to spiritually develop. He knew they knew the things he said. As long as he lived, he was determined to remind them in motivating ways. Peter knew he would die soon. That was far more than a personal opinion. It was a revelation from none other than Jesus Christ. He considered stimulating their memory an important thing to do with his limited time.
To many it comes as a shock to realize that an apostle devoted what we consider to be life's most important time to challenging Christians to remember. There is a close bond between spiritual development and remembering.
Why? When he died, he wanted them to remember the matters that he stressed to them. It would be impossible for them to remember Peter and fail to remember the matters that he stressed. Bottom line, what did he want them to remember? He wanted them to remember the foundation of their faith was not build on fantasy, but on reality.
After he died, he wanted his readers to associate memory of him with the spiritual things that he stressed. He wanted them to know that their faith in Jesus was based on reality, not fantasy. They had confidence in solid truth, not the imagined.
Jesus' identity was confirmed to Peter (with James and John) on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-8; Mark 9:2-8; Luke 9:28-36). In the transfiguration, Jesus spoke to Moses and Elijah. Moses represented the law which Israel followed. That law served as the core of the Jews' personal and national behavior. Elijah represented the prophets. The prophets commonly made ethical application of the law to people who misinterpreted and misapplied the law. The point: if one wanted to know God's will, listen to Jesus. Jesus was superior to Moses or Elijah (an incredible statement when it was made!) or to what each person represented (an equally incredible statement!). This was not the declaration that Moses or Elijah were without divine authority or were false witnesses. It was the affirmation that Jesus was superior to law or to the past prophetic voice.
Jesus' transformation actually occurred. God actually confirmed his identity. He actually is the fulfillment of the law and of the prophetic emphasis. One can understand God's ethics by understanding Jesus. Jesus truly is the way, the truth, and the life.
Peter's point was simple: This actually happened! God actually affirmed who Jesus was and His pleasure in what Jesus did! This was not some imaginative tale they created to support their message. God actually spoke! They actually understood what God said! God Himself affirmed Jesus' majestic glory! "We heard the voice!"
This was not "preacher talk" or "apostolic imagination." It was fact! Jesus actually is God's son!
It was God affirming the prophetic voice! There could be no doubt concerning Jesus' identity--he was God's son! God himself confirmed that truth! [In the last half of the first century, there was much discussion of Jesus' nature/identity. If Jesus were divine, how did that truth affect his humanity while he was on earth? With their concept of divinity {the physical is evil and the divine is good, the two cannot associate}, many had real difficulty accepting as fact that the divine could be incarnated as the actual physical.] Note in context here, the prophetic voice is associated with God's utterance.
In the late first century there was tremendous disagreement concerning the physical existence of Jesus. Some taught that he appeared to be physical and was not. This was an attempt to separate the "divine" Jesus from the "evil" physical. Have you noted the gospel of John's emphasis on the physical conditions of Jesus--such as John 4:4-8? The gospel of John was likely written in the late first century, perhaps in the early 70s.
God's utterance was not to be confined to God speaking on the Mount of Transfiguration. God spoke through scripture. People (we) do well to heed scripture. Scripture is compared to light shining in our hearts in the darkness occurring just before dawn.
Pay special attention to the "light/darkness" contrast. It was a common contrast with light representing God's certain guidance and darkness representing evil's uncertainty. Read Psalms 119:105-112. The concept is an old one. They had a better grasp than we on the fact that light is essential to life, productivity, and certainty. We are accustomed to turning on a convenient light switch. They depended on the sunrise and used every minute of daylight.
Peter then pointed to a problem occurring in every age. The problem: An individual human saying that God's word means ... Since scripture contains God's voice, the challenge is to listen to God instead of assigning scripture a human meaning. When people wrote scripture, the Holy Spirit was at work in them speaking from God. Since scripture is God speaking, scripture draws its meaning from God, not from a human. It is challenging to study to listen to God rather than making scripture say what we as humans wish so scripture follows or confirms our human agenda.
Too often we hastily speak for God instead of allowing God to speak for Himself. The scripture of the early church was what we know as the Old Testament. It verified the identity of Jesus as the Christ and stressed the importance of living a godly life. What we know as the New Testament was in the process of being written. It was not collected into a single volume for over a hundred years after the close of the first century.
God values humans so much that He (a) sent us His son, (b) confirmed the identify of His son, and (c) continues to speak to us through scripture.
End with an emphasis on God's great love for people.
For Thought and Discussion
Forgetting works with increasing effectiveness; remembering works with decreasing effectiveness.
An important part of wisdom is perspective.
Remembering is an essential part of perspective.
The curse of extreme forgetfulness is ignorance.
The responsibility to remind can be quite frustrating.
He did not resent reminding his readers.
He was determined to remind his readers.
He knew he would die soon.
He wanted them to remember their faith was built on reality, not fantasy.
Jesus spoke to Moses and Elijah.
He was superior to the two men and to what they represented--the law and prophecy.
His point: the transfiguration actually happened, confirming Jesus' majestic glory by God's voice.
There could be no doubt concerning Jesus' identity
God also spoke through scripture.
An individual human says what scripture means instead of allowing God to say what he meant.
Link to Student Guide
Lesson 10