Is the Bible Reliable? (FAQ)

How do you know that you can trust your Bible? Because your parents told you? Or your Sunday school teacher? Because you told me I could. Well, we are going to be considering that question this morning: the reliability of the Bible. In order to do this, I love the format this morning. Because as many of you know, René and his wife Lori were over in Israel for the last two weeks or so with a group from Twin Lakes Church. This week, René recorded a segment in today's sermon, actually two, from one of the most significant archaeological spots in the history of the church. And you're going to be hearing about that as René comes kind of via video from Israel.

But Lori, being able to get here a little bit earlier than him, is here today to also, they're going to ping-pong back and forth as husband and wife. And it's going to be informative, and you're just going to love this. Let me tell you a little bit about Lori. Truly, I can say this without being mean, she's really the better half of the Schlepper couple. And she is a theologian par excellence. She started her academic career getting her bachelor's in Biblical studies, went on to get her master's in theology. She's an adjunct professor of world religions at Western Seminary, one of the most knowledgeable people I know on world religions. And also, she teaches classes at UCSC and Cabrillo College. It is just a pleasure and an honor to have her here. Twin Lakes Church, let's give a very warm welcome to Lori Schlepper. She kicks things off this morning.

Good morning. So this is what it's like. This is great. We've been in a series called FAQ, frequently asked questions. Questions about God and faith in the Bible. And although I missed the last two weeks, I've heard that they were excellent. Would you agree? Really good, yes. So before we get into today's topic, I just want to remind you that 90% of communication is how you say it. If you question that, think about your own family relationships. And I realize that in full well that you've been given lots of info, lots of, shall we say, ammunition the last few weeks to answer people's questions about faith. But we may have created a monster. Whatever you do, don't go out there like this. Presenting, real Christians of genius. Real Christians of genius. Today we salute you, Mr. Christian-y speaking person. Mr. Christian-y speaking person. When conventional wisdom said no one can understand what you're communicating, you dared to prove them wrong.

You knew your neighbor didn't know words like trinity, salvation, and eschatology, but you overused them anyway. We can't stop it now. When people told you what they believed, you had the guts to laugh in their face and wish them luck in everlasting retribution. So stand proud, chosen one, yea, though your words confuse the mass, thou knoweth what thy meaneth. Alright, so whatever you do, don't go out there and be a real Christian of genius, please. You know, we don't need guerilla evangelists. What does the Bible actually say about how we communicate? Let's look at this verse. It's not in your notes, but it's on the screen. And you can read along with me. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reasons for the hope you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience.

Now there are some key words here. The first one is be prepared, and that's what we've been doing in this FAQ series. And that's great, but also these key words of gentleness and respect and a clear conscience. That just means to be courteous, to be respectful of other people, and to be gentle. As René likes to say, when you're abrasive, what, you're never persuasive. And so that's just sort of an overarching word of advice about this series. Now, I want you to imagine that as we move into our topic for today because people have emailed us a lot of questions like this. You keep quoting the Bible, but how do you know the Bible's true? I mean, even if it was originally God's word, it's been translated so many times, there's no way we can be sure that what we're reading is really the original Bible.

Someone said, I read that it was substantially changed by priests and monks that wrote into the Bible their own little prejudices and doctrines. And another email said, well, I heard that it's full of unreliable history, that it's full of myths. Have you ever heard questions like that? Have you ever had questions like that? Yeah, I certainly have had questions like that. So how do we answer this question? Well, let's talk about is the Bible reliable? I want to give you three reasons to trust the Bible. I'm going to give it to you in an acronym, M-A-P, map. A map showing the Bible's reliability. So first, the M, which stands for manuscripts. Manuscripts, the evidence of ancient manuscripts.

And today we're going to do this thing that's a little bit different. I did get back from Israel on Tuesday, and oh my goodness, what an amazing trip that was for me. It was just amazing. René only got back yesterday, so that's why he's on video and watch this. How can I really trust the Bible? Well, an amazing discovery made right at the spot where I am now standing helps to answer that question. We just got back from Israel with our church group, and we journeyed here to Qumran. These are the ruins of an ancient settlement that was totally obliterated by the Romans in 70 A.D. It's a few miles south of Jerusalem on the shores of the Dead Sea in the Judean wilderness. This is desert area, and behind me, as you can see, are canyons that are pockmarked with caves. And what was discovered in those caves really helped to answer that question. How can I trust the Bible?

Here's the story. Right here in 1947, an Arab shepherd boy was looking for his lost goats when he just sort of idly picked up a rock like this rock, and he tossed it into one of these caves, and instead of hearing the rock go, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, he heard a crashing sound. And I don't think he was the first little boy whose blood ran cold hearing that kind of sound when he had just thrown something. And he clambers up into the cave, and he makes the discovery of the millennium, when it concerns archaeology at least. He discovers all kinds of ancient clay jars that contain ancient scrolls, ancient manuscripts. Those were the first Dead Sea scrolls. This young Arab shepherd boy takes those scrolls back to his Bedouin tribe. They don't know what to do with them. They take them into Jerusalem, and they sell them to an antiquities dealer and part-time shoemaker named Kondo.

Kondo sells them to somebody here in Jerusalem who puts them up for sale in the classified section of the Wall Street Journal. Well, thankfully, an Israeli archaeologist sees this ad for Dead Sea Scrolls for sale in the Wall Street Journal. He buys them and realizes they are a rich treasure trove. Word gets out to other archaeologists. They just manage to save the scrolls from being cut up into tiny pieces and sold as souvenirs by the Bedouin tribe. Can you imagine that? And they have discovered since those days nearly 1,000 ancient manuscripts of the Bible in these scrolls. Now, what's incredible about this is these scrolls found here predate the previously most ancient existing manuscripts of the Bible by at least 1,000 years. By 1,000 to 1,250 years, we suddenly had manuscripts that were that much older than the manuscripts we had before.

Every single book of the Old Testament was found here in the Dead Sea Scrolls except for the book of Esther. And so the big question was, what would we discover? Did the biblical manuscripts discovered here at Qumran, at the Dead Sea Scrolls caves, did they even resemble the Bibles that we read today when we open up our Bible and we read the Old Testament? I mean, a lot of people thought, hey, what if the Dead Sea Scrolls turn out to be completely different from our Bible? You know, that telephone game where you whisper a phrase to somebody and then they whisper it to somebody else, and by the time you get to the end of the circle, the phrase is completely mutated from what it originally was? Well, people wondered, what if that turns out to be the case with the Old Testament? What if it says, "Thou shalt commit adultery"? What could be different in the Bible?

Well, here is what they discovered. Eugene Ulrich, Notre Dame professor and chief editor of the Dead Sea Texts for Oxford University, so this is no intellectual lightweight, says, "The scrolls have shown that our traditional Bible has been amazingly well preserved for over 2,000 years." Many more manuscripts have been discovered since then, especially for the New Testament, and here's Lori live with that information. So, René talked about the Old Testament and the amazing discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I want to talk about how we got the New Testament. I'm going to need some audience participation. Would you be willing to help me this morning to sort of illustrate how we got the New Testament? Yes, shake your heads like this. Okay, if you're over in venue, by the way, Caitlin's going to help you do this over there as well because we want everyone to participate.

So, first you need to know that the 27 books of the New Testament were originally written in Greek, starting soon after the death of Christ, so we're talking the first century, a little less than 2,000 years ago, the original books of the New Testament were written. So, I want the first person in each row on the left-hand side of the auditorium, I want you to stand up. Don't be shy. Come on, stand up. First person in each row, that's not you. Excellent. Okay, you guys, you are the original documents. So, I want you to stand very tall, very proud. You're the real deal. You're no copy. You're the original, handwritten by Paul, Peter, Luke, etc. Okay, you're the originals.

Now, for a couple of hundred years, these documents were copied onto papyrus, and we have papyrus manuscripts that come along next. So, I want all the rest of you folks in these sections over here on the left-hand side, come on, stand up. You are going to be my papyrus manuscripts. Now, papyrus turns out to be a fairly brittle, pretty fragile material. It doesn't last a long time, so I need you to look kind of brittle, kind of fragile. Okay, good, good. Now, you guys know you're the originals. You are staying out, but you're a little fragile. Okay, after a few hundred years, they came up with a new material to write on called parchment or vellum. And so, these documents that began to be copied are called unseals. So, I want all the rest of you people in this middle section, I want you to stand up, and you're going to be the unseal copies.

Now, the unseals were not fragile because they were written on thick paper, thick, actually, animal skins, and they were written in very large capital letters, very precise writing, so I need you to look large and precise and very capital, okay? You're looking capital, that's great. Okay, so after many hundreds of years of copying on unseals, we have a new kind of writing that comes along, and I need the rest of all of you over here, you're going to stand up, and you're going to be my minuscule. Minuscule, now, don't stand too tall because minuscule, you're right, are kind of minuscule, right? Because the handwriting, they actually began to use more of a cursive handwriting, very small because paper was expensive, so they wanted to get a lot of words onto each page, and so you're very small, you're the minuscule copies.

And then finally, around the 1500s, what was invented, the printing press, and so now instead of all these hand copies, we now have printed Bibles, so I want the rest of you to all stand up, and you're going to be the printed Bibles. So, you're looking great, very printed, very no hand copying here. Okay, so the printed Bibles were based on the minuscules, which were based on the unseals, which were based on the papyrus, which were based on the originals, okay? You kind of get that little story. Now, here's the problem. No more minuscules. Well, actually, we're going to take about half of you minuscules, and we're going to put them down. So this whole section here, you sit down, you guys can stay standing. Okay, no more unseals, all of you down. No more papyrus, not one. Everyone sit. No more originals.

Okay, now, Houston, we have a problem, because look at the distance now. These late minuscule manuscripts dating from the 12th, 13th, 14th century are printed Bibles. Look at the gap all the way over to the originals. So any thinking person would say, "Wait a minute. That is a really big gap. How do I know that the New Testament we're reading today is any resemblance to the one they were reading 2,000 years ago?" That is a problem. You can sit down for now. This was a very common thing to say in the 1800s, that there's no way that our New Testament could be accurate. It would be very corrupt after all those years of copying. But in the 1800s, the field of archaeology revealed some ancient manuscripts, and there's some great stories of these discoveries that come with this.

One of the great early archaeologist adventurers was a man named Count Konstantin von Tischendorf, which is sort of like Schlepper, right? A little bit. Born in 1815. This guy would be a great subject for an Indiana Jones-type adventure movie because he was just an amazing guy. He was a German Count who lived in Russia. Since he was rich, he spent all his time on his hobbies. He loved chemistry, and he loved archaeology. Now, because the scholars were saying these things about the Bible in the 1800s, that we can't possibly know what the original said, it's been corrupted so much, Count Tischendorf, who was a very devout Christian, made it a life goal. He said, "I'm going to make it my life goal to find ancient manuscripts of the New Testament."

So one day in 1844, he decides to go to this ancient monastery called St. Catharines. It's at the base of Mount Sinai in the Sinai Desert of Egypt, and it's the oldest continually occupied monastery in the world. It was built in the sixth century. It was very isolated. In fact, at the time, very few people in the Western world even knew that this monastery was there, that it even existed. But Tischendorf found out about it. He had to ride a camel for two weeks to get to this monastery. And when he gets there, the monks led him in, and he begins to search the libraries, and he searches and searches and searches, and he basically doesn't come up with anything. However, there was a spectacular find that was just waiting for him.

As he's about to leave, not having found what he thought he might find, one of the monks came up to him, actually one of the custodians, and said, "I know you're looking for old books. Well, I have one if you want to look at it." And so he looks at this book, and it's the Codex Sinaiticus. This manuscript dates from 325 A.D. Now, remember at that point, the oldest manuscripts dated around, you know, the 11th century, 12th century. Now we have one many hundreds of years earlier. It had been in the monastery for years and years. So he's ready to leave. He needs to take this manuscript. He wants to take it back to Russia to study it. And of course, the monks stop him at the door and say, "Where do you think you're going with that?"

And so he writes to his friend, the Tsar of Russia, and, you know, there's a little controversy over what exactly took place. Let's just say that Tsar Alexander got involved, and eventually that Codex ended up in St. Petersburg, Russia, and they were able to study it. It stayed in St. Petersburg until the Bolshevik Revolution. And in the early 1930s, the Soviets, who had no interest at all in Christianity, in fact, a disdain for it, and they also needed money, they decided to offer it to whoever would like to have it for 100,000 pounds. They sent out the word to the world, "If you've got 100,000 pounds, you can have this worthless manuscript." Well, the British Museum wanted it, but this was in the middle of the Depression, and they didn't have the money.

And British newspapers actually got word of this, and they started running ads in the paper saying, "Please send in your money. We need to buy this manuscript from the Russians." And people did. They sent in their money, and eventually the British Museum came up with the 100,000 pounds, and in 1933, on Christmas Day, the Codex Sinaiticus arrived at the British Museum, and it's been there until this day. I've actually seen it. If you've been to the British Museum and Library, it's still there for everyone to see. An amazing discovery. Now, this was one of the unseals, one of the unseal manuscripts. And once people realized that these unseals were still in existence, the hunt was on.

For example, a used book dealer in France found what is known as the Codex Ephraimae Rescriptus, and it looked like a book of sermons written by a monk named Ephraim. But its owner noticed that there were some faint words underneath the sermons, so he brought it to none other than Count Tischendorf because Count Tischendorf, being a chemist, had invented this chemical process where he could strip off newer ink to reveal old ink underneath. And sure enough, it turned out that this 12th-century priest had scraped off the page as the writing of the Bible in order to write his own sermons. There's a little bit of an illustration there, right, where he goes, "Well, the Bible's good, but my sermons, oh, yeah, you know, I can just see that." But anyway, this turned out to be the third most ancient copy of the New Testament that had been found.

So again, an amazing discovery, and it doesn't even stop there. Someone was cataloging the Vatican Library and came across a very ancient copy of the New Testament, the Codex Vaticanus, and this dates also to the very early 300s. And for years, it was kept under lock and key. Why was it kept under lock and key? Well, apparently, the Vatican was very afraid of what it might contain because in the 1800s, that was the thing to say, that the early manuscripts did not resemble at all these late manuscripts that we had, but eventually they did release the Codex Vaticanus, and it was studied, and there was, again, an amazing resemblance between these early unseals and the late minuscule, just remarkable resemblance, not the big changes that had been expected.

So many of these unseals have been found. To this date, there have been 266 unseal manuscripts that have been found, and that's just since the 1800s, and they continue to be found, but it gets better than that even, because remarkably, remember, papyrus is a very fragile material, but regardless, the papyrus manuscripts also began to be discovered. In the late 1800s, there were two archaeologists named Hunt and Grenfell from Britain, and they got the rights to excavate a dump outside a city in Egypt, Oxyrhynchus, and they say--it's interesting in their diary-- they say the day before they started their dig, they said, "I don't know. This is probably not going to be a good idea to dig through the garbage dump of this city. I don't think we're going to find anything." The next day, on the very first day of the dig, they found the first papyrus manuscript ever discovered, and I think it's fitting that it was Matthew, chapter one. Isn't that amazing? Matthew, chapter one, that's called P1, papyrus number one.

So then, suddenly, all these papyrus manuscripts came to light, a lot of them in Egypt, because the climate is drier, and the papyrus lasted longer down there, and the most--the oldest manuscript that has been found to date--it's a fragment of a manuscript-- was found in 1934. It's a little portion of the Gospel of John. It dates to about 125 A.D. Now, remember, John was written in the first century, late in the first century, and so this little copy is within decades of when John actually wrote. Now, you go, "Well, that's just a little fragment. What's the big deal about that?" Well, the big deal about that is that scholars had been saying, up until this point, that John was not even written until 160, maybe even 200 A.D. But now there's this little copy from 125 A.D. and, in fact, no more do scholars even-- even the most liberal scholars acknowledge that all of the New Testament was written in the first century. They don't give it those late dates anymore, so it's just amazing.

135 papyrus manuscripts have been discovered so far, and they continue to be discovered. I just was reading about one. There's going to be a book coming out in March with a really spectacular discovery. So they just continue to be discovered. So let's have this group over here. We're going to stand up again. You're the printed Bibles, okay? And remember, we had those miniscules, the late miniscules. In addition to the unseals and the papyrus, they've also discovered in monasteries all over the place a lot of the earlier miniscules. So you guys stand up, alright? And then about--let's have about, you know, most of you unseals, you stand up. Okay, come on, unseals. Come on, you're strong. Come on. Okay, and then I want about half, you know, from about here over of the papyrus manuscripts to stand up. Now look at the change from what was the story in the early 1800s, the gap that has been bridged. The gap is getting smaller every day. So we're discovering that we can really trust the New Testament.

Okay, you guys can sit down. What's the conclusion based on all of this evidence? It's true we don't have the originals, but we have 5,800 New Testament Greek manuscripts, which means that the New Testament has better manuscript evidence than any other book in ancient history. It's really just an embarrassment of riches, the number of manuscripts we have. And because of being able to compare all the manuscripts, only about a half of a percent of the New Testament text is endowed where there's any question about how it reads exactly. There are a lot of variations. Anytime you hand copy, there's going to be mistakes and so forth. But because there's so many copies, the scholars are able to compare them and figure out where the mistakes are. And most of the variations, the vast majority of variations are variations in spelling or other kinds of minor variations. No central doctrine of the Christian faith is affected by any variations. That's so important to know. No central doctrine is affected.

And Sir Frederick Kenyon, who's the former director of the British Museum and Library said, "The remaining interval between the date of writing and the earliest manuscript evidence is so small as to be negligible. The last foundation for any doubt that the scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed." Isn't that exciting? I just think that's awesome. But there's more. Because some of you also asked, "Well, some people say the Bible's historically inaccurate. It's kind of like fairy tales. You know, it's great entertainment. The stories have a moral. It's sort of a part of our culture. But you know, the Bible's not historically true." So we're going to look at the A in our MAP acronym, and that stands for archaeology. So just like the discoveries in the textual world, in recent years there's just been startling archaeological discoveries which have come to light.

And according to a U.S. News and World Report journalist named Jeffrey Schuler, it shows that the Bible is historically reliable. And here's René with more on that. You know, not too many years ago, scholars used to voice their doubts about three of the most famous personalities in the Bible, whether or not they ever even existed, because there was no evidence for their existence outside the Bible, where they really just fairy tales or invented people or maybe even just symbols of something. I'm talking about David and Solomon, and in the New Testament Pontius Pilate. Well, recent archaeological discoveries have completely changed the picture as far as whether or not those figures are historical. And our group here in Israel did some journeying of our own to the sites where those amazing discoveries were made.

We journeyed all the way to the north of Israel and was at the ruins of a fortress that stood on top of a mountain. This was the city of Dan mentioned in the Bible. Just a few years ago, explorers found the ruins of an altar on that site, and an incredible discovery was made right here. What happened was this. The archaeologists ran out of money for the dig here. And so on July 21st, 1993, they were literally bulldozing dirt over this site so it would be preserved for another day. And one of the volunteer archaeologists on the dig, a woman named Heela Cook, an artist from America, was kind of sadly watching the bulldozers when she saw a piece of flat pottery. The bulldozer had overturned, and her heart stopped when she saw writing on it. She yelled, "Stop, stop!" and ran over to the tractor, and what they found was the first reference outside the Bible to the Kingdom of David.

Professor of Archaeology James K. Hoffmeyer calls this a tremendously important find that will certainly cause anxiety for skeptics. So David existed, but what about his son Solomon? After all, the Bible says that he was a great king who built monumental structures and was immensely wealthy and instituted huge building projects all over Israel, and yet no remnant of him had ever been found, no remnant of one of his monuments. And scholars used to scoff at that description in the Bible of Solomon's reign. And then they began discovering massive cities that Solomon built hidden just underground. Our group journeyed to one, the hill city of Megiddo, one of the largest ancient cities yet discovered. Megiddo was an ancient city that the Bible says Solomon restored and made into a fortress. This is all in a hill overlooking the literal Valley of Armageddon that the Book of Revelation refers to.

And this is really one of the most important discoveries in Israel, archaeologically. They found huge fortifications dating to precisely Solomon's time with a fort and a gate and storerooms exactly like the Bible describes them. William Deaver, a very famous professor of archaeology, says, "Here is a dramatic instance of archaeology turning up actual structures mentioned specifically in the Bible." I could literally give you hundreds of examples like this, but let's take one last adventure. Our group journeyed to the seaside here in Israel, to the city of Caesarea. Many scholars said Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who sentenced Jesus to death, must have been a myth, an invention, since there was no mention of Pilate outside the Bible. And then they made an amazing discovery.

Caesarea was a huge seaside city built by Herod the Great, where just a few years ago they found a cornerstone of the theater here with the name of the benefactor who paid for this theater to be built, his name, Pontius Pilate. And amazingly, the plaque even had his title and the years of his reign, and they were exactly what the Bible says they were. Starting to see a pattern? One by one, one after another, gaps are being filled. Now that's not to say they aren't still questions, but listen to this. Nelson Gluck is a famous archaeologist. How famous? Well, I don't know any other archaeologist who's gotten his picture on the cover of Time magazine. And he says this, quote, "Can be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference." And now from here in Israel, back to Santa Cruz and Lori live.

So can I reasonably trust the Bible? We've seen manuscript evidence, archaeological evidence, but some people might say, okay, I'll grant you all of that. But the Bible as sort of a supernatural book, I don't buy it. And that's where we get to the P in our acronym, prophecies fulfilled. The Bible makes prophecies about the future that have come true against huge odds. I'm just going to give you a couple of examples here because we could spend the whole morning talking about nothing other than prophecies that have been fulfilled. But in Ezekiel 26, for instance, Ezekiel makes a prophecy about the powerful city of Tyre, a very powerful city in his day. And he says that the city will be number one destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, that many nations will attack, that it will be made like a bare rock, that fishermen will spread their nets there, and that debris will be thrown into the water. And all of this was exactly fulfilled over the next couple centuries after Ezekiel wrote these prophecies.

You see a similar prophecy about Nineveh that's there in your notes. There's so many more examples of this, but my favorite are the prophecies about Jesus. You know, there are over 300 references to the Messiah in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew scriptures that have been fulfilled in Jesus. Some of them are very specific about where he would be born and where he would grow up, and that those would not be the same place. I mean, really amazing prophecies. Mathematician Pete Stoner, he said that we find that the chance that any man might have fulfilled just 48 prophecies is one in ten to the 157th power. Now, I'm really no good at math, but I think there's a lot of zeros in that number, is that correct? A lot of zeros. That says to me that this book is, you know, there's a super human, or I would say, super human power behind the words that are given.

And you might be saying, "So what?" Well, let me tell you the "so what." The Bible is more than just an accurate and interesting ancient book with a lot of historical information in it. The Bible leads me to Jesus. The Messiah who was prophesied thousands of years ago, Jesus is real. Jesus changes you. The most important thing is Jesus said, "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." You know, it's not the Bible that gives us life. It's Jesus. When you come to Jesus, that's when you get the life that you need.

I love what John Stott says. There's no magic in the mechanical reading of the Bible. The written word points us to the living word. It says to us, "Go to Jesus." And if we do not go to the Jesus to whom it points, we miss the whole purpose of Bible reading. We do not worship the Bible. We worship the Christ of the Bible. We love it only because we love Him of whom it speaks. Don't you love that? We've talked about the Bible, and it's an amazing book. But let's go to the Jesus to whom it points. You know, we've talked about FAQs for the last three weeks since Easter. We want to show you that there's a reasonable basis for faith. You don't have to throw your brains out the door, out the window to be a believer, right? Believing it's true, there is a leap of faith that has to be made, but it's less a leap than you might think it is.

Maybe today is your day, maybe today is your day to take that leap and say, "Yes, Lord, I believe. I believe." And maybe you're thinking, "Well, I sort of believe, but I also have, I still have some doubts." There was a young woman in Europe who told her pastor, "I want to believe, but I still have doubts, and frankly, I still have sins." And her pastor told her, "That's okay. Come to Jesus with all your doubts. Come to Jesus with all your sins. Come just as you are." And she did. That night at two o'clock in the morning, that woman, Charlotte Elliott, could not sleep. And she got down on her knees and she prayed to receive Christ as her Savior. And early that same morning, she wrote a song about her prayer of faith called, "Just As I Am." And that's what I want to invite you to do today, to come with your doubts, to come with your questions, even come with your tears, because Jesus can handle them. Just as you are, Jesus loves you.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. It is a lamp unto my feet, a light for my path. And it's a light that leads us straight to you. Lord, we're so grateful for the message that we hear in the Word of God, this message of profound love, that you came not just to teach us, not just to show us how to live a moral life. You came out of pure love to redeem us. Lord, we're so thankful for your just powerful, forceful love. And we give our hearts to you in gratitude. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.