Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 14:1-24
out and find Luke chapter 14. You can find the outline in your bulletin while you turn there. I want to say thanks to Ron for filling in last week. Got several texts during the week that said, "You should just stay in Reodosa. Take another week off. Take two weeks off." I'm a little bit jealous that Ron got to preach the passage just the way it fell with timing. He got to preach the passage where Jesus called somebody a fox. Reminded me of one of my seminary professors who used to remind us he's a church history professor who used to remind us there is a time and a place for cursing. It's not all of the times and places you think it is, but there is a time and a place for that. So Ron got to talk about that passage last week. The passage we're going to look at is Luke 14 1 to 24. And there's lots of different things we're going to talk about this morning talking about the kingdom and the king and different things. But as I studied this passage, Luke 14 1 to 24, the thing that kept coming into my mind and you may say, "You're just weird, that's strange. You have a weird sense of humor." This is the kind of thing I wish I could go back and see. I wish I could be at this party. And some people say, "Oh, I would have loved to see Jesus in Peter walking on the water. I'd love to see Jesus feed the 5,000 with a few loaves. I'd love to maybe been at the crucifixion or seen the resurrection." Yeah, all of those things would have been great. But in my dry sort of irony-based sense of humor, this passage, I would just love to have been there, to sat at the party and to watch Jesus systematically one by one offend every single person in the room. The only reason I wouldn't want to be there is because I would have been on the list. He would have eventually gotten around to me and he would have gotten into my business. But this is a great, great passage. It's really simple. We're going to read it in a second. It's a simple story. Jesus goes to a party. And Luke says he goes to a party at the home of, this is in verse 1, a ruler of the Pharisees. He's at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees. And to make it even more interesting, it's a Sabbath. Now, we just sort of read over that real carefully, just sort of read through that and we sort of get to the real point of the story. But think about the setting that Luke just painted for you and think about how odd it is. The Pharisees, no less a ruler of the Pharisees, invites Jesus over for dinner. They hate Jesus. They hate Him. They've already decided we're going to kill Him. And now they invite Him over for dinner. And it's a Sabbath. Think about what you know about the Pharisees and all of their little rules about what they could or couldn't do on the Sabbath. All of the days of the week, they could have invited Jesus over. And for some reason, they say, how about the Sabbath? Let's have a big party on the Sabbath. Now, I don't know about you, but when I invite people over to my house and we're having some sort of party, you usually feel like we need to provide some sort of food for this party. People like to eat at a party. Well, it's a Sabbath. You can't cook on the Sabbath. It means you're eating yesterday's food. So at the ruler of the Pharisees' home, they hate Jesus. It's on the Sabbath. And then Luke, Dr. Luke, drops this note in and he says, there's a man at the party and this man is sick. Luke says in the ESV, it's, he has dropsy, meaning his body is swollen. He's retaining fluid, possibly, maybe even probably because his organs are failing. Do you see the scene? The Pharisees hate Jesus and they invite him over for dinner. Of all the days they could pick, they picked the Sabbath day, the one day where they have all sorts of rules and restrictions about what they could do and they couldn't do. They invite Jesus over and they're at the party is a sick man, possibly a dying man. Someone who was certainly spiritually and richly unclean, which would be an issue for the Pharisees, they wouldn't want to be around this man, especially on the Sabbath. But not only do they invite Jesus, their enemy, but they invite this sick man to a party who's probably dying. What a party. You look at that and you say, it's not a party, it's a trap. There's no party about it. The whole thing's a setup from beginning to end. They're just trying to catch Jesus doing something that falls under their category of quote unquote work on the Sabbaths so that they then have reason to accuse him of breaking God's law and they have one more piece in the puzzle in trying to murder Jesus. So when Luke says he goes to a party, you and I sort of know Luke is winking at us. It's on the Sabbath and they're at the home of the ruler of the Pharisees and there's a sick man there in the middle of the party. It's no party. It's a death trap. And then right in the middle of the passage, we're going to get to how awkward this statement actually is in a minute. But look at Luke 1415 right in the middle. It says, "One of those who reclined at the table with him heard these things and he said to him, 'Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God.'" In other words, everything that happened in Luke 14, 1 to verse 14, all of that made this man think about of all things the kingdom of God. And then what Jesus says following this verse is in response to this man bringing up the kingdom of God, meaning what happened before and what happened after are both connected to this idea that there is a kingdom, that God has a kingdom. And the big idea of this passage, I hope to just or I hate to just run a rerun at you, but it's exactly what we saw a couple of weeks ago. Jesus is the king and he has a kingdom. The Son of Man is the king of the kingdom of God. Everything leading up to verse 15 teaches us something about this kingdom and everything Jesus says after verse 15 teaches us something about this kingdom. And so that's the big idea, very, very simple. The Son of Man is the king of the kingdom of God. You read with me or you follow along as I read beginning in Luke 14, verse 1. One Sabbath when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. And Jesus responded to the lawyers in the Pharisees saying, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?" They remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sin him away. And he said to them, "Which of you having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day will not immediately pull him out?" And they could not reply to these things. Now he told a parable to those who were invited. When he noticed how they chose the places of honor saying to them, "When you're invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him. And he who invited you both will come and say to you, 'Give your place to this person and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place.' But when you're invited, go and sit in the lowest place so that when your host comes he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher.' Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted." He said also to the man who had invited him, "When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast and invite the poor, the cripple, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they can't repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just." When one of those who reclined at the table with him heard these things, he said to him, "Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God, that he, Jesus, said to him, 'This man, a man once gave a great banquet and he invited many. And at the time for the banquet, he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, 'Come, for everything is now ready.' But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, 'I bought a field and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.' And another said, 'I bought five yoke of oxen and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.' And another said, 'I've married a wife and therefore I can't come.' So the servant came and reported these things to his master and the master of the house became angry and said to the servant, 'Go out quickly to the streets and the lanes of the city and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.' And the servant said, 'Sir, what you have commanded has been done and still there is room.' And the master said to the servant, 'Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in that my house may be filled.' For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet. Let's pray. Father, we believe that this is your word and we're grateful to listen in to this brief episode in the life of Jesus. And as we hear the things that he had to say and as we think about the people he said them to give us ears to hear, even as Jesus might be speaking to us this morning. Convict us where we need to be convicted, encourage us and strengthen us where we need that. We pray it in Jesus' name, Amen. Very simply, we want to break this passage down into chunks and think about what Jesus is telling us, what he's teaching us about the kingdom. And so the first idea is this. It's very simple. As a member of the kingdom, I need an accurate view of myself. If you're going to be part of the kingdom, you need to have an accurate view, an accurate, right, correct understanding of who you are. And at least in this passage, that involves a couple of things. Number one, I need to be aware of hypocrisy. Not only to be aware of it, but to beware, to be on guard against it. We're looking at the Pharisees here. And there's a lot of irony in this passage when you think about hypocrisy. Pharisees had all sorts of rules. You know about what could or could not be done on the Sabbath. And a lot of those rules related to cooking. And just to be very blunt, I could list you out all these rules you couldn't cook on the Sabbath. There's no cooking at all. So if you're going to throw a party on the Sabbath on Saturday, that means you're going to be doing a lot of cooking on Friday because you're going to have to cook Friday's food and you're going to have to cook Saturday's food. So Friday, you're getting all of these things prepared for your guests. Now, how many of you would be really excited to go to a party and eat cold food? Not me. They had no microwaves. If they had microwaves, there would probably be a pharisaical rule about you can't use a microwave on the Sabbath. We know that because they did have rules that said you couldn't even heat up food you cooked on Friday. You couldn't heat it up. In fact, they had rules about how you could or how you could not keep food warm for the hours between Friday night. And then here comes the Sabbath and you want to eat at this big party. The gist of the pharisa's rules was this. You can do whatever you need to do to keep that food at the exact same temperature. Okay? It's Friday. It's at this temperature. If Saturday comes and it gets any hotter, you just cooked. You can't cook because cooking is working. So you've got to be very careful. You want to maintain this food at this temperature. You cooked it on Friday. You want to keep it warm for the party. Here's some things you can do to keep it warm. Don't let it get any hotter. I know you don't want it to get cooler but you just got to keep it the same right here. And if it gets any warmer, you just cooked and you're guilty of working on the Sabbath. So you can picture these pharases. This is a ruler of the pharases in his home. You know he's keeping all of those rules and he's talking to the servants. Don't let the brisket get too hot. Don't let the potatoes get too warm. Just keep it level here. We don't want to be guilty. And the entire time, what are they doing? They're trying to entrap a man so they can murder him. That's hypocrisy. You're all worried and you're all focused about small, insignificant, stupid, man-made rules while all the while you flagrantly break God's rules and you don't care a thing about it. Can I tell you something about hypocrisy? It's really easy to read Luke 14 and to look at the pharases and say, "You guys are a bunch of hypocrites." It's easy to think about the person sitting down the pew from you and to say, "Man, I hope they filled that blank in hypocrisy." Do you need? Look, did you get that one? Make sure you fill that in. It's a lot harder to look at yourself and to see it in your own life. But Jesus says, "If you're going to be part of my kingdom, you need to be aware of hypocrisy." He also says you need to be aware of pride. Watch out for hypocrisy and watch out number two for pride. Again, the pharases are the guys in focus here. They're trying to spring a trap in Jesus. Luke says this in verse 14-1, that they are watching him carefully. They're watching him carefully. And as they're watching him carefully, what do they see him do? They see him talk to this man that they invited, this plant, this sick man with dropsy whose body is swelled up because his organs are shutting down. He's a dying man. And they look at Jesus, they're watching him carefully. And Jesus heals the man. How do you heal someone of that? It's sort of like Jesus healing people of blindness. This is not somebody saying, "Well, I have a neck pain. Can you please bend a hinge, slap me on the forehead, and pop my neck into shape and heal it, and I'll feel better." This is a man who is dying. His organs are failing. His body is swelling up. And in the middle of the party, they're watching Jesus carefully. He heals the man. Are they convinced? They've been asking Jesus for a sign. Give us a sign. Show us a sign. Prove it. Prove it. He just proved it. They're not at all convinced. Their hearts are so hard that they don't see it. Jesus heals him. You can look at Luke 14-7-11, and you can read it again later. After Jesus heals the man, he starts talking. And Luke says that he's telling the parable to those who were invited, to those who were watching him carefully. And he basically tells this parable. It just seems kind of random. And Jesus is saying, "Look, when you go to a party, sit here, don't sit there, and you'll get embarrassed if you do that. I don't want you to be embarrassed." And you say, "What does that... These guys are trying to kill you, and you're talking about what musical chairs. What are you talking about?" Scholars debate this. I don't think for a second that Jesus is talking about party etiquette. I think Jesus is looking at these people who are hypocrites and who are prideful, and he's saying to them, "You've got major issues in your life. You care more about a donkey and a hole than this man who's dying. And even though I just healed him, you're so prideful and so arrogant, and your heart is so hard, you don't see it." You guys think, and he's talking to those invited to the party, and he says to them, I'm using the parable of where to see it. He's saying, "You think you've earned a seat at the table, don't you? You think your silly rules about the food and how hot it can get or cold and not working and all this other... You think you have earned your way into the kingdom, don't you? You think you deserve a seat of honor." Jesus says, "That's not how it works in this kingdom. No one deserves a seat of honor. Nobody works their way in." Luke 19, 10, "The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. The Son of Man didn't come to give you a bunch of rules to show you how to earn a place. He came to bring you into the kingdom. He came to seek you, and he came to save you." Jesus sums it up like this. He's talking about pride. Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted. You can't earn your way. You can't work your way into the kingdom. You don't deserve a seat at this table. Sometimes people come and they talk to me and they're struggling with something in their life, and they say something to the effect of, "I don't even feel worthy to come to church. I don't even feel worthy to walk in the door." Do you know what I say to them? That's a great thing. You're finally ready to come to church. All these years you thought you were worthy to be here. You weren't ready to be here, but now that you understand you're not worthy, now you're ready to come. You can finally start really singing the songs. You can finally really listen to the sermon. You've humbled yourself. Now you're ready. And Jesus says, "If you're going to be part of my kingdom, here's some things you need to be aware of. You need to be aware of hypocrisy. You need to be aware of pride." Here's the second thing in this passage is a member of the kingdom. I need right motives in my obedience. Right motives in my obedience. Look at Luke 14, 12. Jesus said also to the man who had invited him. So the last parable, he directs to everyone there. This one, he looks specifically at the host. Everyone can hear, but he's talking specifically to the host, and he says to the host, "Hey, next time you throw a party, don't invite all your friends. Don't invite your rich neighbor. Who do you think was at this party, his friends and his rich neighbor and all of his buddies?" And Jesus says, "Don't do it like that." Jesus says, "Invite the poor." He might make a note of this, "Invite the poor and the crippled and the lame and the blind." You do wonder if the host was tempted to say, "Yeah, I did that. The guy with the dropsy. He was here." I invited that guy. Check that one off the list. Glad I brought him to the party. Jesus really isn't talking here about who to invite and who not to invite. I'll let you off the hook when you leave and there's somebody on the corner. Jesus is not saying ditch your family and you have to take that person out to eat. Jesus is not saying you can't have a dinner with your best friends or with your neighbor. What he's saying is you guys need to check your heart for the motive of your obedience. Externally, you may do the right thing from time to time, but what's the motive on the inside? Why are you doing it? That's what really matters. And he says to them, "Look, you just invite your buddies for what you can get out of it. It's really not about your buddies coming over to your house. It's not about doing something good for them. It's really about you and what you can get out of it at the end." Jesus says, "Look, love people selflessly. Love them not for what they can do for you. Love them like I loved you." I came, Luke 19, 10, to seek you and to save you. It's not because you earned it or deserved it. It's not because you'll ever be able to pay me back. I'm not asking for payback. It's just selfless. It's grace. Of course, you didn't deserve it. And of course, the other person doesn't deserve it. But that ought to be your motive, doing for others what Jesus has already done for you. So you check your motives. Number three, as a member of the kingdom, I need appropriate priorities. I need appropriate priorities. Can we just think about the setting and think about the tension at the room at this point? Let's have a party. Let's invite Jesus, our enemy, the man we want to kill. Let's invite this sick man that we don't want to be around, but we're going to use him to try to trap Jesus. And let's do it on the Sabbath to make it all worse. Jesus comes over. He's willing to dine with sinners of all varieties, prostitutes and tax collectors and Pharisees. He's an equal opportunity eater. Let's go. So he goes to the party and he sits down and Luke says this, they put the man before him, the man who had dropsy. Verse three, Jesus responded to the lawyers. Well, they hadn't said anything yet. They just put the man there, but Jesus knew they were saying something. So he responds to him and he just lays into him. This is a party, remember. And Jesus just starts talking about your bunch of hypocrites, your prideful and your arrogant. And then he's offended everyone in the room. Then he lays her beams in on the host, the rudest thing you could do in an Eastern culture. He looks square at the host and he says, you know, you shouldn't throw a party the way you just threw it. This party stinks. This party is all about you. This party has nothing to do with anybody else that was invited. You're selfish. You're motives. What a party? You're there at the party. They want to murder this man. They're trying to use the sick man. Jesus is calling people hypocrites. He's calling them prideful. He's this and that and the other. He's telling, your motives are wrong. You're doing the right thing externally, but inside, you're all off track. And at that point, it just sort of gets awkwardly quiet. Now I'm just sort of imagining parties I've been to. Just sort of awkwardly quiet. And maybe the host, who's fuming, right? He's mad. His party got messed up. Their plan got foiled. Maybe the host is about to say, well, it's been fun, y'all. Thanks for stopping by and we'll see you tomorrow. I hope you have a good morning, Sunday morning. Thanks for coming by. And he's just sort of going to flick the lights or something. Time to go. Time to go home. Glad you stopped by. Don't rush off, but see you later. And then there's that one guy at every party. The guy who doesn't notice the awkward situation. The guy who doesn't realize it's very tense in the room. And that guy, I think, pipes up in verse 15, right? Jesus has been insulting everybody. Insult, insult, hypocrite, pride, wrong motives. And then this guy just pipes up. "Blessed is everyone who will eat in the kingdom of God." It's going to be great when we all get to heaven. Apparently none of us are going there. But man is going to be great. Awesome. I'm excited. And then Luke says, verse 16, Jesus said to him, to the awkward guy, let me tell you about the kingdom. And he starts to tell another story about this kingdom. And he talks about this man, this rich man, he's throwing a banquet. Look at verse 16, he invited many people. Verse 17, he sends his servants out to gather the guests. In verse 18, they all made excuses. One had to go see land. He apparently bought a piece of land before he saw it. Never a good idea. Hope it wasn't beachfront property. The next guy says, I bought a bunch of cattle. Haven't seen them, but I paid for them, so I'm going to go check them out. That's a good way to go out of business if you're a rancher. Last guy says, I just got married. No indication that you could just bring your wife with you to the party. I can't come. What they're all saying is politely as they can is, I'm really not interested in coming to your party. I have other things. Notice none of them says, I would love to come, but I'm going to go stand out on the corner and sling crystal meth to kids. I have some drugs. I got to unload so I can pay my dealer. Nobody says that. Nobody says to the master, you know what? I'd love to come, but I'm meeting a woman who's not my wife later this evening, and I've been looking forward to this rendezvous for a long time. Sorry, I have something else. No one comes up with this evil, wicked excuse of what they're doing to miss the party. They all have what they think of as decent excuses. I got to go see my land. I got to go check out the cattle. I got to spend time with my family. What Jesus is saying is their priorities are out of whack. Jesus tells the story. He makes the story up. He chooses these things for a reason, and he's saying, look, there's lots of good things you can be concerned about in life. Business, money, land, relationships, family, they're all good things. But if those things become more important than the kingdom, your priorities are totally out of whack. And if you're going to be a member of the kingdom, you've got to get your priorities lined up. What does that look like for you and me? I think we need to think about three things. Number one, how do we spend our money? That's going to reveal a lot of your priorities. How do you spend it? Do you save it? How much of it do you give away? How much of it do you think of as yours? And how much of it do you think of as gods? Do you think of it as yours and you're giving some to God? Or do you think of it as gods and he's letting you keep some? How do you think about money? How do you think about your relationships? Maybe the biggest mistake that people in our culture make when it comes to this idea of relationships is they put their hopes and their dreams and another person as the key to their happiness. A boyfriend, a girlfriend, a husband, a wife, this person is going to make me happy. And Jesus is saying, no, they won't. You can stay home with your wife all day long. And you may have a great marriage and a great relationship. She's not more important than the kingdom. And if you put her in place of what should be most important, you're putting her or him or whoever in a position they'll never be able to succeed. Check your relationships, maybe with your children. You can imagine somebody saying to Jesus today, I'll be there right after the football game. My kid's playing. I'll be there. Well, and then after the football game, we have a hockey game. And then after the hockey game, we're going to run by this. And then we have basketball trial. Yeah. Maybe kids. It's a great thing to have children, for children to be involved in activities and sports and different things. But if your children and their activities are the most important thing in your life, the driving thing in your life, the controlling thing in your life, Jesus is saying, look, you're going to miss the kingdom for a football game. Your priorities are out of whack or your time. You can't just look at raw hours because if you're like me, you spend a lot of time sitting at a desk working, maybe you're out in the field working. You spend a lot of time sleeping, but you look at what's left over and you say, what do you do with it? How do you use it? How do you spend it? Check your money, check your relationships, check your time. You need appropriate priorities as a member of the kingdom. Lastly, number four, as a member of the kingdom, I need a biblical view of grace, biblical view of grace. Lots of excuses. Finally in verse 21, look what the master says. Go get the poor and the crippled and the blind and the lame. Does that sound familiar? Remember what Jesus said up in verse 13, when you give a feast, invite the poor and the crippled and the lame and the blind. And now the master in this story is going out and those are the people that he's inviting, he's bringing these people in. Go out to the highways and the hedges and compel them to come in that my house may be filled. I hope you see there's a wideness to grace. And by wideness, I mean none of these people, these blind, these lame, these crippled, these poor, none of these people were looking for a party. They're just down on their luck folks. And in the story, they're the ones who get brought in. People who aren't even looking to get in, get brought in. I love talking to people who have just met Jesus. And usually if somebody is a little bit older, not a child, but a little bit older, they'll say something like this, man, it's like I wasn't even, it's like he got just backed me into a corner, he found me, he came and I couldn't get away and he took out every support underneath me. Yeah, that's what Jesus is talking about. He goes for those people and he brings them in, he compels them to come into the party. There's a wideness to God's grace and there's also an end to it. And Jesus describes the end in verse 24. None of those who were invited will taste my banquet. They wanted to go do other things, so I'll let them do other things. I'll give them what they want. It's clearly not my kingdom. It's all yours. They're not coming in. We'll end with this. Everything in Luke 14, one to 24, points us to a passage at the end of the Bible, Revelation 19. It reminds us of the worship and the banquet and the kingdom and the king of Revelation 19. Think with me just for a second about Luke 14 and what we've read. Where does the story take place? It takes place at a banquet, a party, a dinner. And Jesus opens up and he starts talking about a couple of stories. He's talking about where should you sit when you go to a party and he's talking about who should you invite when you throw a party. So he's at a banquet, a party. He's talking about parties. And then the last story, he tells the third story, he's also about a banquet. And this man's throwing this big dinner and he's inviting people. Banquet, banquet, banquet, dinner, dinner, dinner, party, party, party. All these people gather together to eat and to celebrate. And right in the middle of it, this seemingly random comment, blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. And you read this and you say, you know, it's almost like Jesus is talking about what we read in Revelation 19. And you can read it this afternoon. It's a short chapter. It won't take you long. But here's some of the things you see in Revelation 19. You see people gathered together and their priorities are all lined up because the most important thing to them is acknowledging Jesus as their Savior and as their King. They're worshiping. In a loud voice, they're worshiping Jesus' priorities are all lined up. And you see these people come to a table and they eat bread in this kingdom. Jesus the King is serving them and they're having a feast and they're celebrating. And then you keep reading and there's judgment because Jesus says there are some people who will not be here at the banquet. They won't be part of the kingdom. They didn't want to come. So they're not coming. Other things were more important. So they're going to miss out. And then you read about Jesus, riding on a horse, conquering his enemies, destroying evil. And he's given this title, "The Lord of Lords in the King of all Kings." And you say, Luke 14. It's Revelation 19. It's a preview. It's what's coming at the end. There is a kingdom. There is a king. There will be a banquet at the end. But not everyone's going to be there. And there's also going to be judgment and there's going to be an end to this invitation. You can look at Luke 14 and you can look at Revelation 19. Here's my prayer for you. I hope you know the king. And more importantly, as we talked about a few weeks ago, I hope the king knows you. I hope you have a place in this kingdom. And I hope you understand that you don't get a place in the kingdom by working your way in, by earning it, by proving your worth or your deserving of it. No, you get in by humbling yourself. And Jesus says those who are humbled will be exalted. They will find a place in the kingdom. You don't get in because of who you are. You get in because of what Jesus has done. Luke 19, 10, "The Son of Man came to seek you and to save you and to bring you into His kingdom." Let me pray for you. Father, we're grateful for Jesus. We're grateful for His life. We're grateful for His death. We're grateful for His resurrection. And Father, we're grateful that He teaches us truth, that He says things that are hard to hear, that He makes us uncomfortable, that He exposes us in our sins and our shortcomings. Father, I pray for those of us in the room. And my prayer this morning very simply is that we would understand to the depths of who we are, that we are completely unworthy of having a place in your kingdom. And that our hope would not be in any good thing that we can bring to you, but that it would rest solely on Jesus, our King, who came to seek us and to save us, who died for us. And Father, I pray for those who are in the room, maybe whose priorities are not what they ought to be. We pray for conviction. We pray for wisdom. We pray for resolve. Father, I pray for those in the room who struggle and who need to deal with issues of hypocrisy or maybe with issues of pride. And again, we pray for conviction from your spirit. Father, we long for the day where we're with you, where Jesus is King overall, and where we eat bread in your kingdom. Father, until that day, we want to acknowledge you as our Lord. We want to acknowledge you as our Savior. We want to worship you faithfully. And so we pray that you would help us to do that even this morning. We love you. We're grateful for the Bible. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.