Ah-ha Moments - The Bible Is True

Tom Shrader establishes the Bible as the final authority for Christian living, using prophecy fulfillment as evidence of Scripture's reliability. Drawing from 2 Timothy 3:16-17, he teaches that the Bible is profitable for teaching what's right, reproof of what's wrong, correction for how to get right, and training for how to stay right. In a morally confused world, believers need God's timeless word as their compass for radical living.

“In our life, there has to be some absolute authority.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Ah-ha Moments (2016)

Recorded: 2016 at Cannon Beach Conference Center

Duration: 44 min

Themes: authority, truth, scripture, prophecy, guidance, transformation, conviction, foundation, new believer, questioning faith, seeking direction, moral confusion, biblical skeptic, young adult, struggling with doubt, needing guidance

Scripture: 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Ephesians 2, Isaiah 55:8-9, Psalm 119:1-4

Theological Themes: biblical authority, scripture reliability, biblical inerrancy, prophecy fulfillment, sanctification, becoming holy, biblical hermeneutics, spiritual formation

Full Transcript

It is great to be with you this morning. It is a great day. Here's how I know. I don't wear jewelry. I've never worn rings or a watch, but I'm in the middle of dealing with this aging and health thing, so part of what I do is I have this Garmin, like a Fitbit. It syncs up every night along with an app that I have and inputs all of my data into a website that my medical manager can log on to and he can monitor my activity for the day.

All that to say, it measures how many steps I take. What I just discovered this morning is clapping is the same as walking. I didn't know that until right there. So I walked a third of a mile, so I'm hoping, I haven't seen the music, I'm hoping happy clappy are all of our songs. I just looked down and I thought, what a good God.

I love that music. Mark and I did not coordinate between messages and music, then those songs and the words of those songs are a perfect connection to what we talked about last night and today, emphasizing God's awesome and amazing love.

Catching Up from Last Night

To those of you from the area who dropped in this morning, I'm going to get you caught up real quickly. Last night was 101. Last night was come to Christ in repentance and faith. That salvation is through grace based on God's amazing love for us. That His son died. That God loved us in spite, this was the line of the night, that God loves us in spite of ourselves, not because of us. While we were helpless and sinners and enemies, while we were looking for our own gods, if a God at all, the creator God of the universe sent His son Jesus who died so that we can have eternal life.

The App and Notes

Jeff mentioned, let me do two things. One, let me emphasize that app. This is the first week, so anytime you launch an app, at least my experience has been, there's always some hiccups. So if you get them, hang in with that. Sandy yesterday, when we got here, went to the Apple store on the phone, the app, and downloaded the app and it worked perfectly. There's all the program information and then they loaded the kids information and there are the notes for all of the seven sessions. There's also a section at the bottom where you can type in your own notes, which is really handy. Then you can download this, send it an email, put it in a folder, whatever it is.

One of the things, one of the plans was to have a hard copy of the notes for you. As Jeff mentioned, we just didn't get that done today. Now I'm going to refer to them because it's going to be important to you. I want to get this as we head into the second part. This wasn't in the notes.

Our Big Picture Goal

Here's the big thought now for the rest of our time together. What we're looking for, we talked about yesterday, is a transformed heart, three steps here, and then an informed mind, which leads to a radical life. So that's what we're all about. We're about a heart that's transformed. We're about genuine conversion, coming to know Christ in repentance and faith. And then the reasoning behind it, an informed mind, which leads to a radically different life than the world.

Every time I'm here, come on Sunday to watch that movie. I love the movie. Jeff mentioned the book a few years ago when the book was first available. I bought a copy on the first day we were here, which would have been a Saturday. It's a very easy read because it's a simple story, but don't think because it's simple, it's not profound. That book is a wonderful read of what God did in the heart and mind and the life of Mr. and Mrs. McNeil, and to see that legacy. It's a reminder to me, my fear is we get so complex and so concerned.

The Power of Basics

A few years ago, I play golf. I've only played 12 holes in five years, but the other day I hit 60 balls and I think I'm back. That's not true. I swung at 60 balls, but I think I'm back. My goal is to play in July. I'm literally physically training for this, which sounds weird.

I'm watching an interview a couple of years ago with Arnold Palmer, and he was talking about teaching his grandson to play golf. The kid is asking all these questions. Palmer just simply said, and it's Jack Nicklaus too, 90% of the shot is determined before you swing the club. So if I grip that club right, and I set up square, I used to play, my dad taught me to play golf. My dad might have one of the worst golf swings on the planet. If he's aiming at you, this is literally how he'll set up. He'll set up like this, and he swings in a convoluted way, and he gets it here, and then he brings it back. He can't understand why he doesn't have much power, and he's hitting this huge slice.

What Palmer would say, what Nicklaus would say, whatever a good player would say, is your only contact with the club is your grip. If your grip is right, and you're set up square, then all you have to do is swing it. I mean, really, I know it's more complicated than that, but not much more. It's that basics with everything.

We are coming in to the greatest time of the calendar year, college football season. This is best. It's the old Vince Lombardi, when he'd get the Packers together, remember? He'd get them together every year, and he would say, gentlemen, what would he say? This is a football. He did it every year. So predictable was that, that one year, Max McGee was ready for it, and Lombardi said, gentlemen, this is a football, and Max McGee shouted, not so fast, coach.

I'm a basics guy. I don't want to make things more difficult than they are. The Christian life at its core, I believe, is very simple. It's sometimes hard to do because of our sin and our laziness, and sometimes our quest to have the newest, the latest, the coolest.

Here's what we are. Last night and tonight, or this morning, are really basics. So I want a transformed heart. I want to come to Christ in repentance and faith. Remember what we looked at last night.

In Ephesians 2, you were dead, and now you're alive. There's only one thing a dead person needs, and that's life. The first dead person I ever saw was my grandfather. I was 11, at Beardsley Funeral Home in Sheraton, Iowa. It was, pardon the pun here, a converted house that was now a mortuary. It was a huge house with little rooms and bigger rooms, and my grandfather was in one of these rooms.

He died of a heart attack. I went in there with my mom and her sister, the three of us, and I went up to the front, and there was my grandfather laid out. Never seen a dead guy before. We went out on the porch, and my aunt said to my mom, "Didn't Dad look good?" I thought, I better go back in there and check this out.

I remember going in, and he had on a suit and tie. He worked in a warehouse His whole life. I'd never seen Him in a suit and tie. They put a little smile on Him, which I'd never seen. He had His glasses, and I had to admit, He really looked good, but He had one overriding problem. He was dead.

That's how we were. We were physically alive, but spiritually dead. But through that amazing love that you sang about, and God's mercy, He brought you to life.

God Has More Than Heaven for You

But He has much more for you than getting you to heaven. If that's all it was about, at that moment of conversion, He would have taken you to heaven right there. But He left you here for a reason. And now it's how do I live? And it's to live in a world that's very confusing.

Years ago, I was at Knott's Berry Farm, and they had a human maze. On top of it was a walkway, and you could go up and look down at these people walking through this maze in total confusion. I'm there next to a lady, and we're watching, and there's this little kid, and He's frustrated. He's running into walls, and He's all boxed in, and now He's crying.

Well, I did not realize it, but this was His mother next to me. She said, "Bobby, Bobby, go to the left. Now go to the right, go to the right. Make another right real fast. Now make a left, make a right," and Bobby's out of there just like that.

I thought of Isaiah 55, verse 8 and 9. God says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways not my ways, declares the Lord. So as my ways are higher than your ways, my thoughts are higher than your thoughts." As I try to figure out life, I need God's perspective on this.

A World Without Moral Compass

The very story we read last night is counterintuitive. We were dead, now we're alive. We were sinners, and now we're saints. We live in a world that's lost its moral compass. We don't even know what bathroom to go into anymore.

We're lost in terms of so many ideas of different directions. I made a list: in politics, business, athletics, academics, celebrities. You can pick any industry. Many, many, many of these role models have simply abdicated their role.

I looked at athletics. I love Tim Tebow. I mean, the only way you can't like Him is if you're playing against Him or you don't like good things. He's an amazing guy. Tim Tebow one day was playing, and what Tebow would do at every game is He would have a family there that He was hosting them. He'd meet them before the game, and then after the games, if they were home games, He would take this family or kids to dinner.

They're playing in Denver, they lose a game, and so they're on their way out and He said, "I'm sorry, I've got to meet these people for dinner. It's a game. It's not the end of the world." They buried Him for that comment. About two weeks later, there was a guy who had a child and the child died, and what the guy said after the game was, "It's only a game." Same thing.

The Confusion of Modern Life

We live in this world where anytime there's competition, anytime they start keeping score, we start to fudge the rules a little bit. I hate to do politics because I'm always afraid that you'll read something into it, and I don't want you to do that, but I saw a yard sign the other day, very official looking, red, white, and blue, election 2016, and it said "We're screwed." That's what it said.

There was a poll done the other day. 42% favored Mrs. Clinton, 39% Mr. Trump, 6% undecided, 13% preferred the earth be hit by a giant meteor. It feels that way.

This goes back, and I semi-hesitate because you don't know me and my fear is you read too much into it, and it's always risky, but the illustration is so perfect. When President Clinton left office, He had some things to tidy up, and one of them was He had to negotiate His departure without being prosecuted for lying to a grand jury. He accepted a five-year suspension of His law license and a $25,000 fine, and the disbarment suits then were dismissed.

So He writes, explaining, and this is quite something. He says, and I quote, "I tried to walk a line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, and I now recognize that I did not accomplish this goal." This was His goal. Let me read it again: "I walked a line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, and I recognize..."

I did not accomplish this goal. Again, I'm not being judgmental—I'm just reading it to you. This is a leader of the free world. He has the bully pulpit.

Here's how he closes this out: "I apologize for my conduct, and I've done my best to atone for it with my family, my administration, the American people. I've paid a high price for it, which I accept because it caused so much pain to so many people."

No—because it was wrong. Because it was wrong. And then the minute you say "wrong," then you get into the question: well, who defines wrong? In our life, there has to be some absolute authority.

The Need for Absolute Authority

This will date me, but it's such a perfect illustration. This was from the Chandler, Arizona Tribune, Thursday, March 23rd, 1989, and it's an old Ann Landers column. Many of you know Ann Landers. Some of you younger ones wouldn't. She and her sister, Dear Abby, had daily columns. They made millions and millions and millions of dollars as millions and millions of people would read them and write to them every day for advice.

This is one that I clipped out because it sets up this lesson perfectly. "Dear Ann Landers, I'm a 23-year-old business graduate. I don't presume to speak for my generation, but I know what I feel." So this is 1989. Whatever this person's writing is true fifteen times over today.

"People wonder about our generation. They say we're materialistic, out for ourselves. They say we're apathetic. It must go deeper than that. Teens are committing suicide at record numbers—higher numbers now. What's wrong with us? Just look around." And then it's one, two, three, four paragraphs of just what's wrong with the world. "It sounds hopeless, but I love this country. I think there's hope. I don't believe my generation is apathetic. We just don't know where to start. Signed, Waiting for Guidance in California"—which is representative of the whole state.

But Ann Landers goes to the Wisdom Bank, discovers she's overdrawn, and fires back this answer: "Dear Waiting in California, I see no sign of apathy or resignation in your letter. In fact, I sense that you're deeply concerned. I too refuse to accept the fact that we are doomed." Now listen, this is the lady that the whole country's listening to. She asked two questions: "But what is going to save us? Any answers out there?"

The Bible Is the Final Authority

Here is session two. And it's this: that the Bible—this book, this book—some you have on your lap, some you have on your app. I could almost wrap that right there. Some you have on your lap, some you have on your app. This book is the final authority. This is God's Word.

In its simplest sense, if God says do it, do it. If God says avoid it, avoid it. He spoke. Remember in 2000, we had that crazy election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. And remember hanging chads and all that. We had all those different things. If you remember, it all boiled down to about 436 votes in Broward County in Florida.

So they did a recount. And then the appeal of that went to the local court, and it was still all in turmoil. Then a state court—it was in turmoil. Then the state Supreme Court—it was in turmoil. Then the Court of Appeals—it was in turmoil. Then it went to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court validated the results from Florida. And that was it.

In our life, that Bible is the final authority. So you might hear somebody who says, "I believe the Bible contains the Word of God." Not enough. We believe the Bible is the Word of God. If it contains it, I have to get my whole Ronco Bible detector out to figure out what's true and what isn't. The Bible is the Word of God.

We Love to Edit God's Word

We love to edit it. Thomas Jefferson wrote his own Bible. I don't know if you knew that. You can go probably to a larger bookstore—I doubt it here in town, but a larger bookstore—and you can go to the spiritual section and find the Jefferson Bible.

What Thomas Jefferson did is he took the Bible down—would have been a lot easier today—and he literally took the New Testament and took out the parts he didn't like. Cut them. Anything supernatural is gone. And he wrote an introduction in which he said, "I've taken out the supernatural. And what I have is the moral teaching of Jesus."

Well, I need much more than Jesus' moral teaching. I need His death and resurrection. The Jefferson Bible ends with, "They placed Him in the tomb and rolled the stone over the tomb. The end." And no, our hope is not that He died. And I need to say this—not even that the tomb was empty, but that He was risen and He's alive today. That's our hope.

True Biblical Hope

And it's not hope like—as I said—Iowa football starting. I'm hoping they have a good year. When we use hope that way, what we're saying is maybe it will, maybe it won't. That's the outcome I'd like to have, but it might not happen. When we talk about hope in the Bible, we talk about anticipation of something we know is true and we know will take place.

I was at Cannon Beach right here about ten years ago, and I was making this point casually. It wasn't part of the lesson—it was an off-the-cuff comment. There was a lady who was attending who had three earned PhDs. She'd written a book on evolution and creation, several other issues, and made a point to get ahold of me and say, "I don't think you're right on this."

I got no shot of arguing with her, nor intention. She has more degrees than a thermometer. I got no chance of winning this discussion. She's smarter than I am, but she's Thomas Jefferson. John Kennedy, when he moved into the White House, was sitting one day in the cabinet room with all the best and brightest gathered. And he said, "There have not been so many great minds gathered together in this room since Thomas Jefferson dined here alone."

Well, Thomas Jefferson might have been a great mind, but with all due respect, he was dumb as a brick when it came to spiritual things. You don't have to have a 150 IQ to be able to see that the Bible is true.

External and Internal Evidence

Now we see this externally and internally. There's a guy by the name of Dr. Hugh Ross.

Are any of you familiar with that name, Dr. Ross? Few of you. I have a friend, Bob Shank. And one day Bob called and said, "Schrade, a friend of mine is going to be in Phoenix, and I think you should use him in your study."

Well, I don't just bring in anybody, and I value Bob. And I said, "I'll trust you on this. Tell me about him." He said, "Just have him in." So this guy shows up and he's a little odd.

He comes in and I said, "Hi, I'm Tom." And he said, "I'm Hugh." So it's right on time. I introduced him and said, "I don't know Dr. Ross very well. I'll let him introduce himself. He was recommended by our buddy, Bob."

This is exactly how it went. I sit down now next to my best friend. He gets up and he said, "Since I was seven, I wanted to be an astrophysicist." So I said to my buddy, "What's an astrophysicist?" And he said, "I think this guy invented AstroTurf." I said, "Really, that's it."

An Encounter with Science and Faith

So Dr. Ross goes on. And this guy is really, really, really smart. When he was done, I said, "You guys want to do a Q&A?" and everybody did. It's eight, quarter to eight in the morning. I'd say two thirds of the guys sat there until 10:30 when they threw us out of the room.

They were asking him questions like "How did Jesus move through a wall?" And he said, "Well, Jesus operates in the 11th dimension." And I have no idea what that means. So I said to him, "It's my deal and we have to stop. Can I ask you two questions? If you were going to drive to Yuma, what would you think about and what don't you know?" And he said, "I don't know."

Well, he left behind some books and pamphlets. And one of the pamphlets was "Fulfilled Prophecy: Evidence for the Reliability of the Bible." And I grabbed the pamphlet because it looked like I had a shot at it. It was, I don't know, 10 pages.

The Mathematical Proof of Prophecy

Let me read you the opening and the closing of this. And what we're trying to do is establish reliability of scripture. Dr. Ross writes, "Among all books ever written, the Bible's accuracy foretells specific events in detail many years, sometimes centuries before they occur. Approximately 2,500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2,000 of which have already been fulfilled to the letter—no errors. The remaining 500 or so reach into the future and may be seen unfolding as days go by." And we might argue being unfolded right now.

Since the probability—here's where we go now—since the probability of any one of these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance averages less than one in 10, conservatively speaking, and since the prophecies are for the most part independent of one another, the odds of all these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance without error are less than one in 10 to the 2,000th power. That's one with 2,000 zeros after it.

So then he goes on to talk about 13 prophecies. Here's what he writes: "Since these 13 prophecies cover mostly separate and independent events, the probability of chance occurrence of all 13 is about one in 10 to the 138th power. 138 equals the sum of all the exponents of 10 in the probable estimates above."

Putting the Numbers in Perspective

"For sake of putting this figure into perspective, this probability can be compared to the statistical chance that the second law of thermodynamics will reverse during a given situation. For example, that a gasoline engine will refrigerate itself during its combustion cycle, or that heat would flow from a cold body to a hot body. That chance is one in 10 to the 80th power."

Now, here's a cool phrase: "Stating it simply"—that's what I'm looking for—"Based on these 13 prophecies alone, the Bible record may be said to be vastly more reliable than the second law of thermodynamics." Now, if you've got a sense of humor, he writes, "Each reader should feel free to make his own reasonable estimate of probability of chance fulfillment of these prophecies, cited herein."

Here's what I got out of that: The Bible's true. It's not that I want it to be true, it's true. Prophecy is a powerful argument for me.

My Aha Moment

Remember we said last night, we're going to talk about aha moments. This was an aha moment for me. All of a sudden, I realized that the creator God of the universe spoke to us in three ways.

Through creation, so you walk out and you go, "Wow." And you go, "Really, this was all a chance? This all just"—the old phrase, "first it was goo and then to the zoo and now it's you." Did it just happen that way? It just demands a creator. That's not putting any definition to it. It just, there's a creator.

And He reveals Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ. And then He reveals Himself to us through that word. I can know God in a personal, intimate way. He speaks to us through His word.

The Authority of Scripture

And it's not that that word contains His word. That word is His truth. And do I have answers for everything? Of course not. But He gives us answers to everything He thinks we need to know. A timeless God does not produce dated material. He tells us what we need to know. Life becomes an open book test.

I have two daughters. The oldest one is, I would say, unfortunately, very much like me. The youngest one is not. And I loved in the winter time, at night, to go for a walk. And it sounds weird to say in Phoenix, but people have their fireplaces going and you can smell the wood burning and it would be cold enough you needed a jacket. And in those days, I was a pipe smoker and I loved the smell of a pipe.

And so Haley was my daughter. And I went down one night and I said to her, "Haley, let's go for a walk." And she said, "I can't, I've got to do homework." And I said, "What is it?" She said, "Well, it's math. You can't help." And I said, "Come on, just let it go. Your mom will do it while we're gone or whatever. Let's go for a walk." She said, "Get away." I was not a good influence on her educationally. She said, "Get away."

So I said, "All right." So I went down, I'm sitting in my chair and I remembered something.

I went back and said, "Haley, when I had math, they had all the answers in the back of the book. Remember?" She said, "Yeah." I said, "Go back there and get the answers and fill them in." She said, "You gotta know how to get to the answer." My mind was just blown. I said, "That's what the Bible is. Life's an open book test."

How should I handle my finances? How should I handle my marriage? How should I handle my kids? How do I handle interpersonal relationships? How do I live? So externally, we have all sorts of data, but internally we have the claims.

The Bible's Four-Fold Purpose

2 Timothy 3:16-17 says: "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable" - that means beneficial, productive, sufficient for four things. The Bible is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.

The Bible is profitable for teaching - that speaks of content, not the process. The content of what we need. Reproof means rebuking, correcting behavior or correcting someone's doctrine. Correction is the only time that word appears in the New Testament in Greek. It means to restore to its proper condition.

Imagine you come over and this guitar has broken strings, the strap's gone, the cords are not hooked up correctly. I correct it, restring it, tune it. That's the word in Greek for correction - to put in its proper condition. And for training, it's literally discipline.

So the Bible is teaching - what's right. Reproof - what's not right. Correction - how to get right. Training - how to stay right. That's how I remember what the Bible does. It tells me what's right, what's not right, how to get right, how to stay right. That's the power that God has as He communicates to me through this amazing book, written by men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

A Treasure Trove of Teaching

About ten years ago, I was here and there's a room you can't go in - the inner sanctum, the holy of holies. I'm back there one day by myself, which is dangerous. Around the corner were volumes of cassette tapes and CDs dating back decades of men who have spoken here and women. So I would cherry pick them and the tech guys would make me CDs.

Joe Aldridge always stood out to me. Joe wrote a book years ago called "Lifestyle Evangelism." Joe used to come here as a kid, then brought kids here as a youth leader, then became president of Multnomah College of the Bible, and Joe would speak here. There's a giant audio catalog on the Cannon Beach Conference website that you ought to wear out. All these people - Stuart Briscoe, who's back this fall, and Swindoll, J. Vernon McGee. Heather told me one time J. Vernon McGee was the first pastor she ever saw in shorts - he had on shorts, high black socks and black wingtips.

I'm listening to Howie Hendricks, who's one of my all-time favorites. He was doing a series on studying the Bible. Howie was a street kid in Philly and God saved him and somebody gave him a Bible. In the front of the Bible, the guy wrote this - and you ought to write it in the front of yours: "This book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book."

The Mind of God in Written Form

If what we're talking about is a transformed heart and an informed mind, it needs to be filled with all sorts of good stuff. There's data and knowledge and information in the world that we want to know, but nothing is going to replace that book.

J.C. Ryle writes: "This book contains the mind of God, the state of men, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners, the happiness of believers. Its doctrine is holy, its precepts are binding, its stories and histories are true. Read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, practice it to be holy. It contains light to direct you, food to support you, and comfort to cheer you. It's the traveler's map, the pilgrim's staff, the pilot's compass, the soldier's sword, the Christian's character. Christ is its great subject, our good its great design, the glory of God its end."

Psalm 119, the longest of the Psalms, is filled with references to the word of God. "Happy are the people of integrity who follow the law of the Lord" - that's Psalm 119:1. Verse 2: "Happy are those who obey its decrees." Verse 3: "They do not compromise with evil." Verse 4: "You have charged us to keep your commands." This goes on and on.

The Expanding Word

In those aha moments, if I want to understand how to live, I have to be a student of that word. I have to read it, and I read it over and over again. Because I change, and it's amazing - as I grow in my knowledge and love of God, as I expand, that book expands beyond me. We're going to look at one of the most familiar passages of scripture there is, and I taught it eight or nine years ago, and it was an aha moment, transformational for me.

So that's the point today. We can't get more basic. We're at grip and setup, and gentlemen, this is a football. R.C. Sproul writes: "If you wish to know God, you must know His word. If you wish to perceive His power, you must see how He works through His word. If you wish to know His purpose before it comes to pass, you can only discover it in His word."

I titled session two - it sounds so silly - "The Bible Is True." It's our final authority. There's no conversation. If the Bible...

says do it, we do it. It's as simple as that. And in a world that's changing and updating and things are happening so fast, and we're looking for new, fresh, there's nothing new. Here you go, this is better than new, it's timeless. It's the timeless word of God.

So now I've got the transformed heart and the informed mind, I'm ready for the radical life. I'm ready to go out into the world. Now, let me tell you what you already know, that's tough duty. There's a lot of hurt, there's a lot of pain, there's a lot of anguish.

Looking Ahead: The Reality of Suffering

We're going to talk about suffering. Here you go, this ought to put a smile on your face, this ought to get you ready to come back. We're going to talk about suffering and stress and pain and hardship and how you deal with that because that's the normal part, get this now, of the Christian life. But tonight, we're going to tee up one of the most familiar passages in our whole Bible.

We need to pray and then you pick up those kids, that's what I know they want me to say. I've got to keep clapping all day, this is great. We've got to keep clapping all day, but let's close.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank you for this amazing and awesome truth. Thank you for this day and this place. It seems almost unnecessary, which is how I know it's necessary, in a place like this to talk about the truth of the word. Because literally, this campground was built around your word.

But Father, for those of us who come, we sometimes think we might know better. That worked in 1947, but not 2016. God, remind us every day that you, a timeless God, did not produce dated material. Thank you for that, we pray in Christ's name, amen.