It happened in reverse a week ago in a band rehearsal with some of my friends. We were talking about songs that we like. A song was mentioned. There was quick agreement that it was a great song. “I’ve never heard it before,” I blurted out. Heads turned revealing incredulous faces. In a gracious attempt to jog my memory, one friend said the name of the band that made the song a hit. “Never heard of them,” I replied sheepishly, then shrugged it off saying, “I was living under a rock at that time.”
Years ago, I was involved in the leadership of a local chapter of a national Christian men’s group. The format for our weekly gatherings often included a book study on some Christian subject. One semester, the book I chose for our study was “The Measure of a Man,” by Dr. Gene Getz. It had been a beneficial read for me decades earlier and I thought it would benefit the men in this group. Dr. Getz walks the reader through 1 Timothy 3 and what are commonly called the biblical qualifications for a church elder. He wisely asserts that they are the qualities every Christian man should pursue.
At our first discussion session, one man expressed to the group, “The things this guy talks about in this book are outdated.” Interestingly, he was an older man.
“They may have fallen out of use,” I replied carefully, “but they will never be outdated. They are truths from God’s Word.”
The Bible is an old book, an ancient book, but it is a timeless book, because God, its author, is eternal. Yes, the human instruments through whom God wrote his Word were from another time and culture as are the incidents they describe, but the truths God’s Word espouses remain true. That claim is hard to swallow in our day and culture where truth is a boutique commodity, and songs and television shows quickly fade, ever eclipsed by something new. Newer is better, is it not? That is not a reliable analogy. The new is inexorably dependent on enduring foundations from of old.
“Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens,” the psalmist writes, “Your faithfulness endures to all generations; you have established the earth, and it stands fast.”
