Why do People Want More than the Bible?

Welcome to The Wrap Report. I'm your host Andrew Rapoport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member. We are here on this episode going to be looking at the conference, the Rise Up Conference that was done up in Upper State, New York.

And this episode will be my message on our responsibility to Scripture. We're answering the question, why do people want more than just the Bible? Sufficiency of Scripture is the topic here. This is an important one for us to realize our responsibility to Scripture.

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And on all your other purchases, remember to go to strivingforeternity .org to make your order so that they know you heard about them here. And now, your responsibility to Scripture on The Wrap Report.

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well, thank you very much. You know, Aaron said that if you got up before he did at four, then you're allowed to fall asleep. If he does, this is a farming community. Most people get up before four. What was he thinking?

So I'll do it different. If you got less sleep than I normally do. So who gets less than three hours of sleep a night? Okay. I have to get three hours of sleep because I promised my bride when we got married that I would sleep every night.

Because I didn't used to. I'd sleep every two to three nights. And she found that out and was like, what is wrong with you? And everyone else said, we've been warning you. So let me introduce myself just briefly in case you don't know me, which you probably don't.

My name is Andrew Rappaport. I come from a little small little communist country known as New Jersey. It was ruined by the same city that you guys have moved far enough away from, but stayed in the same state.

So you understand. I could come up here and I could talk bad about New York City and you guys all feel my pain. All right. Not everywhere in the country understands that. They think New York's a good thing.

And they only think of the city when you say New York. You guys really understand that, right? Everyone, when they say you're from Jersey, they're like, oh, New Jersey? No, I'm not from New York City.

Okay. We don't talk like that. But I grew up in a Jewish home. That seems to intrigue some people. But I got saved the same way everyone else did. There's nothing special about a Jewish person getting saved.

Okay. So I am the present executive director of Striving for Eternity Ministries. We're a discipleship ministry. We travel around and try to help. We actually are really weird. We try to help and target small churches.

That's not a good business model for Parachurch Ministries. Yeah, that's why we do it. Because while all the other Parachurch Ministries are targeting the big churches with lots of money and lots of people, that's not the majority of churches, and the majority of churches are hurting.

And so we try to go in to areas where there's not a lot of people so that we can help smaller churches. Strange business model. That's because it's not a business. All right. So we talked about our responsibility to God.

That was the last session. In this session, what we're going to talk about is our responsibility to Scripture. And just so that you know, I am a street evangelist. You just heard Aaron talk bad about street evangelists.

Yeah, I hate the guys with the sandwich boards as well. But I go to New York City. I do evangelism there. And so I know for a fact, because I actually have video, that I can keep an audience for three and a half hours without them leaving.

So I hope that you're ready. I hope you went to the bathrooms and you found them by now. Because we plan to go through all of Psalm 119 in this session. Yes, all 176 verses. So I hope you're ready. You got a good sleep.

All right. If not, go get a MyPillow. Use our promo code, SFE, and you get a discount. No. They do sponsor our podcast. So we are going to go through all of Psalm 119. So you could open there to start.

But before we get there, what I want to do is address a major problem that we see within Christianity. And this is what it is. There are a lot of people that don't ask this directly, but they do ask this indirectly.

Why do people want more than just the Bible? There's a book that came out some years ago that really started a movement within Christianity. If you read it and you like it, I'm sorry. I'll just say it up front.

Forgive me. But it's called Experiencing God. So here's the problem that I find with that book. It talks about our experience. And a lot of people took that, and from there, there became a whole lot of this view of Christianity where we have to view it as how I experience it.

This is actually very common within some circles within Christianity where their whole worship service is about experience. And what we end up seeing is that many of these people, they're looking for something more than the Bible.

The Bible just is not enough. Why do we do that? Why is it that we feel like we need something more? I need to have a direct revelation. I need God to be able to speak directly to me. He has in the Bible.

I have a friend of mine, Justin Peters. He says this, if you would like to hear God speak to you, read the Bible. If you'd like to hear Him speak to you audibly, read it out loud. But we have so many Christians that they're trying to figure out, make decisions for their life.

I remember someone that came to me. They were trying to struggle with two jobs. One was north and one was south. And they came to me for counseling to try to figure out which would be a good job to take.

And I really, in evaluating them, I knew their heart was kind of set on the one in the north. It was making more money. It was a little bit easier. There were different advantages to the one in the south that they just didn't kind of think about.

But in the end, they said God spoke to them. And God told him to take the job up north. I said, God doesn't speak outside the Bible. He goes, oh, no, no. I got it from the Bible. Because he read a verse that said, go north.

Now, I was telling that story to a friend of mine, Greg Hochul. And he told me that he was actually in a church that he spoke at. And they told this story about a choir director that was single. And he ended up opening God's Word and realized who he should marry.

Because he was reading there as he's praying, who should I marry? And he read, grace be unto you. And one of the ladies in the choir's name was? Grace. This is how people read their Bible. This is what we end up seeing.

Where people want something more than just the Bible. I need a feeling. I need God to speak to me. I need some nudging or a dream or a vision or some way of God speaking to me. I had a guy, he ended up working for our ministry many years later.

So I'm glad that we recovered from our first experience. I'm in New York City. I'm standing on a street corner. I'm evangelizing. He had been saved about three months. And he was in the Word of Faith movement.

And if you don't know what that is, good. Congratulations. You get to avoid a lot of bad things. But it's basically the people that think that they name it and claim it. They just say, well, if you want something, God's kind of obligated to give it to you.

And he was in that movement. And so he came up. They went food shopping. And they go to the food shopping and they heard me doing open air. So I stood there, listened for a while. And when I got done, he comes up to me and says, you know, God just, God just, I felt within me.

God telling me to just come and listen to you. And I don't remember saying this, but I believe that I would say something like this when he told me I said it. I said, it was probably just the intergestion.

You probably just had heartburn. He was so bothered by that. Because he was saying the right language that he was taught, like that God speaks to him. And God moves him from within. And I, in his opinion, looked light on that.

And so he'd come week after week. The one thing I never understood is that he didn't learn for several weeks. It took a whole summer for him to realize that he should listen to me and then go food shopping.

I mean, ice cream melts in the heat of the August summer. I mean, he's sitting there. There was one time where we heard a pop. And it was his can of whatever, the biscuits that just popped from the heat.

Right? But he'd listen to me on the street as I would talk. And people would ask me questions and challenge me. And they'd say, what do you think about this verse? And I would just back up a few verses and let's read it in context.

And by the time I get to the verse that they're saying says something that they think I'm not going to like. And I go, oh, yeah, that's what it means. Well, he started doing that in church and ended up leaving the Word of Faith, getting into a good church.

And then ended up working for our ministry for some years. So I'm glad that he did survive that first initial thing. But what was he talking? He was taught that we should have some experience. I think this is a problem for Christianity.

I'll recommend a good book that I don't have on the back table, but we do usually resell it. I just didn't have a lot of copies. It's called God Doesn't Whisper by Jim Osmond. I recommend you get that if you have people that say they hear from God, they hear the voice of God.

He goes through all the passages that people try to use to argue for that and says, nope, that's out of context. So when we think about this, what is our responsibility to God's Word? Is our responsibility to God's Word to take this book that God has given us to see what it means for me?

Is that the purpose of it? You know, unfortunately, many people's favorite verse these days, John 3 .16 has been replaced. And again, I'm going to apologize. If this is on your refrigerator, if this is maybe hanging up in a picture on your wall, I know you're going to want to take it down now.

And I'm sorry. You know, I know that this upsets a lot of people. But the most quoted verse for people today, their favorite life verse is Jeremiah 29 .11. Let me read it for you. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord's plans of welfare and not calamity, to give you a future and a hope.

That sounds great, doesn't it? I want that to be for me. I just wonder why no one goes seven verses later and says this. For thus says the Lord, behold, I'm sending upon them a sword, famine, and pestilence, and I will make them like split-open figs that cannot be eaten because they're rotten.

I will pursue them with sword and famine and pestilence, and I will make them a terror of the kingdoms and of the earth to be a curse and a horror and a hissing and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them.

Why is that on no one's refrigerator? Because the first one just sounds so good, right? And the second not. So we just take the thing that we like and go, well, this is for me. That other one I don't like, that's not for me.

And some of you are saying, well, Andrew, then how can we know who Jeremiah 29 .11 is for? I'm so glad you asked that question. Let's back up one verse. Jeremiah 29 .10, it says this, thus says the Lord, when 70 years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word to you and bring you back to this place.

So if you are one of the Israelites that lived through the 70-year Babylonian captivity, that's for you. I know I look like I'm old enough to have lived through it, but I didn't. The reality is that that passage is very specific to a specific group of people that God made a promise to.

I will put you in captivity for 70 years. After 70 years, I will bring you back into the promised land. You say, that's who that's for. And some of you are now asking yourself, but Andrew, then are you saying that Jeremiah 29 .11 has nothing for me?

Oh, I didn't say that at all. You see, what we could do is look at what we see in Jeremiah 10 all the way through 18. Don't just stop at 11. Don't just stop at the ones that we like. And what do we do?

We look at the context and say, you know what? God made a promise to the nation of Israel. He was going to put them into a captivity for 70 years. Anyone know how long they stayed in that captivity? Yeah, 70 years.

It's amazing how that happens. Something like God was in control of it. And they were in captivity for 70 years. And even Daniel reading back at Jeremiah is praying and going, hey, I've been in captivity for about 70 years now.

Time must be getting close. And an angel comes and says, yep, it's close. So 70-year captivity. Daniel lived through that whole 70 years. Which means he wasn't a young child in the lion's den, if you do the math.

Because it was 70 years later. So here's the thing, though. What can we learn from it? Well, if God was faithful to take Israel and say, I'm going to put you under this judgment because of your sin of idolatry, I will then, after 70 years, bring you back to this nation.

And you will be back in the land. And if you obey, you'll be blessed. And if you don't, you'll be cursed. The very thing they heard back on Mount Sinai. Well, guess what? That God was faithful to Israel.

Guess what that also means? God will be faithful to us. It doesn't mean that Jeremiah 11 specifically applies to us. It means that God's faithfulness is always true. We can learn how he's faithful to Israel and know he'll be faithful to us.

So I'm sorry if I just ruined your life first. So with that, I want to look at Psalm 119. Now, I know that many of you know where Psalms is. It's when you start the January, you start doing your yearly reading, you get committed, you're going to read the Bible.

And it's Genesis, Exodus, Psalms. So just go right there. Open the book kind of halfway. So as we're going to go through this, obviously, I'm not going to. I was half tempted to just read the entire psalm and sit down because it really is that.

And I encourage you tonight to do that. It doesn't take all that long. But when you see this psalm, there is one thing that is in almost every verse. By the way, the verses are not inspired, okay? That wasn't in the originals.

Verse numbers didn't show up for about 600, 700, 800 years. So when we look at this, though, out of 176 verses, a reference to the Word of God is in almost every verse. Now, I'm going to give you a little bit of a clue how to read any of the psalms.

But to read Psalm 119, because I want you to go home and read the whole thing, this is called Hebrew poetry. Hebrew poetry is not based off of rhyme, right? That's how we think of poetry. Roses are red, violets are blue, and then you think of something that rhymes with you.

Okay, that's the way we think of poetry. But Hebrew poetry is based on a thing called parallelism. So you'll have one line and another line. And there's going to be some connection between those that make them parallel.

Sometimes it's something they have in common. Sometimes it's a contrast. So what he's doing in this particular psalm is very interesting. If you look in your Bible, some of you may have, in the very beginning you have a title.

You have Psalm 119. Maybe you have it say, Meditations and Prayers Related to the Lord God. But then you have something called Aleph. Anyone know what the Aleph was? Any of you ever curious why that says Aleph there?

And then after a couple of verses it says Beth? You know what it is? Alphabet. That's the Hebrew alphabet. Now do you know why they put the Aleph there? Because what you see here is eight verses. And the first verses, it's going to start with the letter Aleph.

And then you have another eight that start with Beth. So this is really amazing in the Hebrew. It's amazing work because what he did was he went through the entire Hebrew alphabet starting with the phrases with each letter of the alphabet.

You try writing something that's poetic that way. It's not easy. So what he does is he goes through this, but the whole thing of this, the whole driving force of Psalm 119 is one singular focus, that the Scriptures are sufficient for you and I.

There is nothing more that you and I need in our life from God outside His Word. We do not need some special revelation. We do not need to hear a voice from God. We don't need a feeling or a nudging. We have God-spoken words written down by men that we can look through that have stood the test of time, that is a foundation for all of our faith and practice.

So what is our responsibility as Scripture? Quite simply, it is to bow down and realize it has the answers we need. How do you know who God is? The Scriptures. Oh yes, we can look at creation, Romans 1, Psalm 19.

You can look at creation and know something of the Creator, but you can only know a little bit. You won't know about salvation. That you know from Scripture. We can look at the stars and see that God is a great God of design, that He is powerful, but that's limited.

But when we look to Scripture, the Scripture is the self-disclosure of God to His people. It is Him revealing Himself to us. You want to know God? Study the Scriptures. You want to know yourself? Study the Scriptures.

Aaron just talked about things he knows about you. I get on the streets, and I'll sit in New York, and I'll say, I know something about everybody in this room. I know something about everyone in the street.

You all know God. And I do that on the street, and somebody says, no I don't. Oh yes, you do. God says so. He just says you suppress that in unrighteousness. I am not. Really? Let me ask you a question.

Every December, you go to the mall and yell at someone when kids are taking pictures and say, Santa Claus doesn't exist. I don't know anyone that does that. And I say, why don't you do that? And they go, because we know He doesn't exist.

So tell me why you keep trying to tell people God doesn't exist? Because you know He does, and you're suppressing that in unrighteousness. Thank you very much. See, they know God exists. How do I know that?

Because God, who knows everything, told me so. Where? Romans chapter 1. That's how I know. How do I know about you? How do I know about me? Because I read it in Scripture. If God wanted you to know specifically, you are going to marry this person, you're going to meet them on this date, He would have written it in Scripture.

We don't necessarily have all the answers that we might like in Scripture. In fact, most of the times, we have the answers we wish that weren't in the Scriptures. I mean, there are some people, Thomas Jefferson, who just said, you know, I'm going to cut this out, I'll cut that out, I don't really like this, I don't like that, we'll just, you know.

There's a slaver's Bible, if you've ever seen that. In the slaver's Bible, what they did was they cut out anything about kidnapping people. They didn't like that. They had everything about slaves' obedience to their masters.

But they somehow removed all the parts about the master's responsibility to the slaves. So they just, well, take out the parts we don't like. Well, what is our responsibility to Scripture? Our responsibility to Scripture is not to tell the Scripture what we wish it would say, but we come to Scripture and ask, what does it say?

You see, we do not interpret Scripture by looking at our life and saying, I think the Scripture means this to me. Quite frankly, I could care less what you think the Scripture means to you. And you should care less what I think the Scripture means to me.

And the only question we should ask is, what does the Scripture mean? This is why I hate these Bible studies where they're really not Bible studies. People get together. My one pastor used to call them a show-your-ignorance study.

No one actually read the text. No one actually prepared. But they just open up and go, what do you think this means to you? Well, I don't know, but I think if you didn't do the study, then maybe you should just keep your mouth shut.

So what we have to realize is the psalmist here is laying this out. And I'm just going to go over. I want you to just see. Obviously, I'm not reading everything. But I want you to see some of the ways that we see him talk about.

And he's got many different names that refer to Scripture. First one, walk in the law of the Lord. What's the law of the Lord? The Scripture. That's actually what the Old Testament was called. We would call the Bible basically the Torah, those first five books.

You have the prophets, and you have the writings. Okay? And so sometimes you'd see the whole Old Testament referred to as the law and the prophets. That's what it means. So he says, walk in the law of the Lord.

Verse 2, observe his testimonies, referring to the Bible. Verse 4, ordain your precepts. Verse 5, keep your statutes. Verse 6, I will look upon all your commandments. Verse 7, I learn your righteous judgments.

That's, again, referring to the Bible. I will keep your statutes. Verse 9, how can a young man keep his eye pure? Good question. What's the answer? By keeping it according to your word. Verse 10, do not let me wander from your commandments.

Your word I have treasured in my heart. Verse 12, teach me your statutes. Verse 13, with my lips I have told of all the ordinances of your mouth. Verse 14, I have rejoiced in all the way of your testimonies.

Verse 15, I will meditate on your precepts. Verse 16, I shall delight in your statutes, not forget your word. 17, live and keep your word. Verse 18, behold wonderful things from your law. Verse 19, do not hide your commandments from me.

My soul is crushed with longing after your ordinances all the time. You rebuke the arrogant, the cursed, who wander from your commandments. Verse 22 says, observe your testimonies, meaning God's word.

Verse 23, he mentions to meditate on God's statutes. Verse 24, he says, God's testimonies also are my delight. They are my counselors. You just heard Aaron talk about being a counselor. Where does he get his wisdom to give people counsel?

Well, according to the psalmist, his testimonies were a delight, and God's word is what gives him counsel. Verse 25, he says, revive me according to your word. Next verse, he says, teach me your statutes.

Understand the way of your precepts. Meditate on your wonders. Strengthen me according to your word. Graciously grant me your law. I have been placed in your ordinances before me. I cling to your testimonies.

I shall run the way of your commandments. You're seeing this repeated throughout. What is the psalmist's focus? Is he looking to the world for answers? No. Does the world have answers? Well, we'll get to that tomorrow.

We'll get to our responsibility to culture. But the short answer, and some of you already said it, no. We're not going to find the answers in the world. No, no, the psalmist is saying, teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes.

Give me understanding that I may observe your law and keep it with all my heart. Verse 35, make me walk in the path of your commandments. Incline my heart to your testimonies. Verse 37 and 38, revive me in your ways.

Establish your word. Verse 39, your ordinances are good. Long for your precepts. You see, what we end up seeing is he's making it crystal clear. Almost every single verse here, he is focusing on God's word.

The amazing thing is that he has a different style the way he does it within each one of these groups. Sometimes he does it where he's calling out the person who is against him or against God. He says in verse 42, so I have an answer for him who reproaches me, for I trust your word.

Is that what we say when people reproach us? When they slander us, do we just look at it and say, I have the word of God? Or do we want to defend ourselves? Don't answer. He says the psalmist will seek God's precepts, verse 45.

He will speak of God's testimonies, 46. I shall delight in your commandments, 47. I shall lift up my hands in your commandments and I will meditate on your statutes, 48. You see, our responsibility in Scripture is not to get the Scripture to bow to our will.

It is to get our will to bow to it. That is what the psalmist is saying throughout the psalm, that we are to bow ourself to what Scripture says and submit to it. This means that sometimes it says things we don't like too bad.

Job had that problem, right? Job had some things go bad, he thought. Basically, to summarize, Job is basically saying, when I see God, I got some questions he's going to have to answer for me. He's got a whole bunch of questions God's got to answer to him.

What happened when God showed up? Yeah, Job's mouth was shut. Let me throw some more ashes on my head. Sorry, was I opening my mouth, Lord? I'm sorry. God, where were you when I set the foundations of the earth?

I put the channels in the water. I make the wind go where it goes. Where were you? Where were you when I set the stars in place? Did Job actually get an answer to any of his questions? No. It's actually the exact same thing that Paul says in Romans 9.

What are you, oh man? Can the potter do what he wants with the clay? Yeah. Who are you to answer back to God? We have God's Word. We have something that is an absolute, universal authority for every human being.

Now, some could deny it, but they're going to have to answer for that. They can walk away and just, hey, I'm going to live in sin and just ignore what God says. But this is the standard by which when we face God, he's going to say, you're without excuse.

He gave enough of creation for everyone to know God exists. He put within each one of us a conscience so we know right from wrong, so that we know when we break God's law we have that thing called guilt.

And most people think guilt is a bad thing. No, it's a good thing. It helps us to realize when we are going against God's will, God's Word, but more specifically God's nature. We can feel that guilt and know that lying is wrong because God's not a liar.

We're created in the image of God, so because of that, God gave us this conscience, and we know when we lie we're doing something against God's nature. How do we know this? Scripture. You see, our conscience can inform us a little bit, but Scripture is the one that gives us the detail.

Titus 1, 2, God cannot lie. So when people say, is there anything God cannot do? Yes, God can't lie. God can't sin. It's kind of impossible for God to sin, because sin is something that is in opposition to the nature of God.

So it's impossible for God to do outside of his own nature. So when we look at the Scripture, we look at what the psalmist says, let me drop down to verse 57, the Lord is my portion, I have promised to keep your words.

Many of us have said that, haven't we? We've made that promise. How many of us have kept that? Let's not show a raise of hands on that one either. I sought you, your favor with all my heart, be gracious to me according to your word.

Now we understand why he said the second part, right? We need that same graciousness. How do we know about the graciousness of God, though? Where are we going to find out about that? In this what? In the Word, in Scripture.

Verse 61, he says, the cords of the wicked have encircled me, but I have not forgotten your law. That's a good thing to remember. My church right now on Wednesday nights, we're teaching through 1 Peter.

The pastor and I are co-teaching it, and we're basically saying, hey, persecution's coming, are you ready? Because that's what 1 Peter's about. How are you going to be prepared for persecution? Know the Word of God.

In fact, it's even better to memorize it, because if you memorize it when they take the Bible away, you still have it in your heart. Well, that's what the psalmist is going to say. He says he's going to keep his precepts.

He's going to hide it in his heart. He's going to believe in God's commandments, the light in his law. What we end up seeing here throughout this psalm is the fact, in many different ways, he is giving us ways of understanding not only our responsibility to Scripture, that we are to hide it in our heart, that we are to keep it on our mouth, that we are to learn the commandments, verse 73, that we are to wait for your Word in 74, that we are to delight in the Word, verse 77, to meditate upon it in 78, to know it in 79, that my heart may be blameless in your statutes, verse 80.

We are to be longing for the Word in verse 82, not forget it in verse 83. Why? Well, verse 86 says all your commandments are faithful. Verse 87 says do not forsake God's precepts. Verse 88 is to keep his testimony.

This entire psalm is teaching us what our responsibility is to Scripture. This is why we can't read the whole thing. I'd love to just read it and sit down because there's nothing I could say better than this.

But I do want you to engage with this passage tonight. Go home and read it. It will only take you about 20 minutes. Okay? Even if you're a slow reader, maybe 25. Why? Why should we do this? Verse 97. Oh, how I love your law.

It is my meditation all the day. Can we say that? I can't. Maybe some of you can. Your commandments make me wiser. Your testimonies are my meditation. I will observe your precepts and keep your word. He keeps saying that.

Why do you think he keeps repeating that part? Is it hard for any of you? Maybe it's just me. Is it hard for any of you other people? Is it hard for you to keep the Word of God? Am I alone in that? No?

Okay. Good, because sometimes I feel alone in that. Verse 104. Your precepts I get understanding. 105, he says, your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Many people know that one because it's a song, right?

That's just one part of an entire psalm that's focused on the Word of God. You see, what the psalmist wants people to do, and this is why I think the psalm that is the longest, okay, now remember, in case you didn't know, psalms were the songs of the day.

By the way, most of our theology can be found in the book of Psalms. You know why? For a very simple reason. If I was to ask you to sing a song that you haven't heard for maybe 40 years, but you grew up hearing it, I bet you'd remember all the lyrics.

Right? Why? Because you sang it to a song. And whether you realized it or not, you memorized it. What the psalmist is doing here is he wanted to drive the people of Israel to know their responsibility to Scripture by giving them the longest psalm that they would have to sing and over and over and over and over and over and over again see what our responsibility is to Scripture.

That it revive me, O Lord, according to your word. Verse 107. Teach me your ordinances. 108. Yet I do not forget your law. 109. I have inherited your testimonies forever, for they are the joy of my heart.

111. Incline my heart to perform your statutes. 112. But I love your law. 113. I wait for your word. 114. That I may observe the commandments of my God. Sustain me according to your word that I may live.

The psalmist is making it pretty clear, I think. Our responsibility to Scripture is not to take the word of God and say, what does it mean to me? You all got a little booklet in your handout when you came in here.

And if you look at that, the title of the book, one of the bloggers at Striving Fraternity wrote it, it says, what does it mean to me? What's crossed out there? To me. The question is not, what does it mean to me?

The question is, what does it mean? And that little booklet, as short as it is, will give you some very simple tips on how to interpret the Bible. There's nothing more important that we could do than know how to rightly interpret God's word and to study it.

So let me ask you a question. If you were to get a gold invitation, I've actually seen one, to go to the prince's palace to be invited to a dinner with the king. Would you hold on to that gold invitation?

Well, the guy that I know who has one has kept it. Even some people might frame it. You have an invitation to go to the king. Is that something that you might talk to your friends about? Share with others?

You might want to really make sure you know some things about the king better so you don't embarrass yourself at dinner, right? It's going to be a big event for you. I have news for every one of us. Those of us who know Christ have been invited to a dinner far greater than one that comes with a golden invitation and a private jet to fly you over to Abu Dhabi.