God’s Word Above All

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God’s Word Above All

If you have a Bible in your language, and I hope you or somebody around you do that you can look on with, let me invite you to open with me to Romans chapter one. Give it up for Romans.

We’re actually going to be in a couple of other places before Romans, but those verses will be on the screen and it’ll be really helpful in a few minutes if you or somebody around you that you can look on with has Romans chapter one in front of you. So I think the first verse we’ll have on the screen is the verse that has been the theme of the passion movement from the start.

Isaiah chapter 26, verse eight. Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your truth. Can we just say this together? Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your truth, we wait eagerly for you for your name and your renown are the desire of our souls. The passion of our souls is your name and your renown.

That’s what this movement has been and is all about. In the next few minutes, I want to couple that verse with Psalm 1:38, which I believe speaks a word into this arena. So Psalm 1:38 is a prayer to God and it says, we’ll put it on the screen.

Let’s say this one together Also, I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word. Did you see that? Just keep that on there for a minute.

God Has Exalted His Name and His Word

God has exalted above all things his name and his word, which means that to have a passion for God’s name necessitates a passion for God’s word. They go together because they’re both exalted above everything. And in the next few minutes, I want to challenge you to live with a passion for the name and the word of Jesus above everything in your life and above everything in this world.

Passion for his name and his word. You see, there was a time when God’s people were passionate about God’s word above all. One other place I’ll show you on the screen is Nehemiah eight.

So set the context. This is a worship service similar to the one we’re in right now. Thousands of people gathered together and watched what happened. So just imagine being a part of this scene.

Nehemiah chapter eight verse one, and all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Watergate. So they’re not at the Dickies arena in Fort Worth, Texas. They’re at the Watergate in Jerusalem.

No rodeos there, just water. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel. So they tell the guy who’s leading the event, Ezra, we want the book.

We want God’s word. So Ezra, the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard on the first day of the seventh month. Now watch this.

Following Ezra’s Example

He read from it facing the square before the Watergate, from early morning until midday, and the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. Did you catch that from early morning until midday?

Maybe six, or eight hours? All Ezra did was read from the book. He didn’t preach a sermon with stories and illustrations. He just read it and all the people were attentive for hours and not just listening to God’s word.

Watch this. In verse four, Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose, and beside him stood a bunch of guys, we can’t pronounce their names. So let’s go to verse five.

And Ezra, watch this, opened the book in the sight of all the people where he was above all the people and as he opened it, all the people stood and Ezra blessed the Lord the great God, and all the people answered, amen. Amen.

Lifting up their hands they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Whoa. Can you imagine that all Ezra did was open the book? He doesn’t even say anything,

He just Opens it and immediately all the people stand up. They start lifting their hands, they start shouting, amen. Amen. Then they bow down and worship the Lord with their faces to the ground.

What Should Worship Services Look Like?

All he did was open the book. So here’s the deal. Fast forward 2,500 or so years to today and just ask the question, what do we normally associate these sorts of actions within our worship, standing, raising hands, shouting out?

This is what we do today in musical worship, right? As soon as a band comes out, we are on our feet. We start raising our hands, we shout, jump up and down for really extreme. Maybe we fall on our knees, which to be clear is biblically right to do in musical worship.

You turn over to Nehemiah chapter 12, you see a musical worship service that involves all those things and more. And I praise God for how this plays out at passion. It was clear from the start last night that you were ready to worship and the scene across this arena last night, this morning, at every moment has been nothing short of awesome at the same time.

I can’t help but wonder what would it look like if all it took was God’s word to cause us to respond like that. What if all it took was just hearing the word of our gods to God to raise us to our feet in awe? What if all it took was God’s word to cause us to shout? Amen. Amen.

Lift our hands. What if God’s word alone caused our hands to shoot in the air, jump up and down, and maybe even fall on our knees with our faces to the ground because we are so exalting the name and the word of our God? And you read the rest of this passage in Nehemiah eight, people start weeping in conviction over sin.

They start weeping in celebration over God’s grace in their lives. Emotions are high as people come face to face with God just through his word. So passion. What if it didn’t just take music to do this among us?

Which again, to be clear is great and awesome and biblical. But what if all it took was the simple, plain powerful word of God to ignite our emotions? Bring us to our feet, cause us to shout, throw our hands in the air, and fall on our faces to the ground.

Exalt God’s Word

What if we exalted God’s word like that? So that leads to something that is best, as I can tell I feel led to do. And I haven’t done something like this in a long time. Never heard of passion.

I’m honestly nervous and uncomfortable doing this for a variety of reasons, but I so long were the leaders of this movement to see a generation ignited for the name and the word of Jesus above all. So I want to invite you to turn me to Romans chapter one.

Again, hopefully, you have a Bible, one that you can look at. Look on, and I know there are different translations, but just as the same across all of them, and for the next few minutes, I just want to invite us in this arena to let God’s word alone lead us in worship, but just the word music that’s just pure word and for you to feel the freedom based on the word to worship.

Being Led by the Holy Spirit in Worship

However, the Holy Spirit leads, whether that’s staying in your seat or standing on the floor or standing on your seat in awe, whether that’s shouting, raising your hands, maybe bowing down at your seat or in the aisle, your face to the ground. However, God by his spirit leads in the next few moments.

Let’s worship God with passion for his word above all. Romans chapter one verse one, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God.

Paul’s Letter to the Romans

The gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in his holy scriptures regarding his son, who as to his human nature was the descendant of David and who through the spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the son of God by his resurrection from the dead Jesus Christ, our Lord, through him for his name’s sake, we have received grace and apostleship to call people from all the gentiles to the obedience, to comes from faith.

And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all who are in Rome, loved by God called to be saints, grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

First I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world, God whom I serve my whole heart and preach in the gospel of his son is my witness. How constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times and I pray that now at last by God’s will, the way they are open for me to come to you.

I long to see you. So I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong. That is you and I have even been mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.

I do not want you to be unaware brothers that I’ve planned many times to come to you but have been prevented from doing so until now in order that I might have a harvest among you. Just as I’ve had among the other Gentiles, I’m obligated to both the Greeks and non-Greeks both to the wise and the foolish.

That’s why I’m so eager to preach the gospel to you who are Rome because I am not ashamed of the gospel it’s the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel, a righteousness from God has been revealed a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as is written, the righteous will live by faith.

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the Godly sisters and wickedness of men who suppress the truth of God by their wickedness since. So if you know about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them for since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power, and his divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse for although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to them.

But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. In exchange the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their heart to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served, created things rather than the creator who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lust. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones in the same way, men and men and natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another, men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind. It ought not to be done. They’ve become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity.

They’re full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They’re gossips, slanders, God hitters insulate, arrogant and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil. They disobey their parents. They’re senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. You therefore have no excuse you who pass judgment on them.

For whatever point you judge the other, you’re condemning yourself because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.

So when you a mere man pass judgment on them and yet you do the same things, do you think you’ll escape God’s judgment or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance, and patience? Now realizing God’s kindness leads you to repentance, but because of your stubbornness of your unrepented heart, you’re storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath.

When his righteous judgment is revealed, God will give to each person according to what he has done to those of you by persistence and doing good. See glory, honor, and immortality.

He will give eternal life or for those who are self-seeking, who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for everyone who does evil. First for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

But glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, because God does not show favoritism. All who sin apart from the law will be judged apart from the law.

But all who said under the law will be judged by the law for it’s not those who hear the law, who are righteous on God’s side, but it’s those who obey the law, who be declared righteous. Indeed.

When Gentiles who do not have the law do by nature things required by the law, there is a law for themselves. As they show the requirements of the law written on their hearts, their conscious also bear witness to their thoughts now accusing now even defending them, this will take place on the day when God will judge men’s secrets as my gospel declares.

Now, if you call yourself it, if rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God, if you know he’s willing to prove what a superior because you’ve been instructed by the law. If you’re convinced that you’re a guide for the blind, a light for the dark, those in the dark and instructed the foolish a teacher of infants because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth, you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself?

You preach against stealing. Do you not steal you? Who says that people should not commit adultery? Do you commit adultery? You have our idols. You brag about the law.

Do you dishonor God by breaking the law as it is written? God’s name is blaspheming among the Gentiles because your circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you’ve become as though you have not been circumcised.

The one who’s not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you. Who even though you have the written code and circumcision are a lawbreaker, not a Jew, the one who’s not circumcised.

I tell you the truth, the one who’s not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you. Who even though you have the law are outwardly a Jew, nor is a man hourly, a physical nor a man is a Jew if he’s one inwardly circumcision and circumcision of the heart by the spirit, not by the written code.

Such a man’s praise is not from men but from God. What advantage then is there being a Jew? What value is there in circumcision? Much in every way. First of all, they’ve been entrusted with the very words of God.

But what if some do not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all. Let God be true in every man. A liar just as is written. So you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge, but if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness for clearly, what should we say then?

That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us. I’m using a human argument, certainly not if that were so how could God judge the world? But someone might argue, if my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, then why am I still to the sinner?

Why not say that we are being slandered when reported is saying, and some claim that we say let’s do evil, that good may result their condemnation is deserved. What should we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all.

We’ve already made the charge. The Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin as it is written. There is no one righteous, not even one. No one understands. No one who seeks God has turned away.

They’ve together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves, their tongues crack to the seed. The poison of S is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery mark their ways, the way of peace. They do not know, therefore no one. We know that. We know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world will be held accountable to God.

No one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law. Rather through the law, we become conscious of sin. But now a righteousness from God has been made known.

This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe there is no difference for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and don’t just memorize the bad news, they are justified freely by his grace to the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God has presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood.

He did this to demonstrate his justice because in his forbearance he left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his justice in the present time so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus where then is boasting, it’s excluded.

What principle That observing the law? No, but that of faith, if we maintain their man is justified by faith. Apart from observing the law, is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles?

Two, yes. If Gentiles two, since there is only one God who will judge the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith, do we then nullify the law by this faith? Not at all. Rather we uphold the law.

What then shall we say that Abraham our forefather discovered in this matter? If in fact Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God. What does the scripture say?

Abraham believed in God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift but as an obligation. However, the man does not work, but who trusts God who justifies the wicked.

His faith is credited as righteousness. David says the same thing when he speaks to the blessedness and the man to whom God will credit righteousness apart from works. Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man who sinned. The Lord will not count against him. So is this blessedness only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised? We’ve been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited as righteousness under what circumstances was accredited?

Was it after he was circumcised or before? It was not after, but before. Abraham received the sign of circumcision of sealed the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

So then he’s the father of all who believed but have not been circumcised in order that righteousness might be credited to them and is the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be the heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes from faith. For those who live by law, heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless because law brings wrath.

And where there is no law, there is no transgression. Therefore the promise comes by faith, by grace, and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring. He’s the father of all. As it is written, I’ve made you a father of many nations.

He’s our father on the side of God in whom he believed the God who gives life to the dead and who calls things that are not as though they were. Check this out against all hope Abraham and hope believed and so became the father of many nations just has been said to him socially, your offspring be without weakening.

In his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old and that Sarah’s room was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God. He was strengthened in his faith and he gave glory to God being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he had promised.

That is why it was credited to him as righteousness and the words it is credited to him are not written just for him but also for us to whom God will credit righteousness for us who believe in him who raised Jesus, our Lord from the dead. He was delivered to death for our sins.

He was raised to life for our justification. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we’ve gained access by faith and in this grace in which we now stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

Not only so we rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance and perseverance. Character and character hope and hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us.

You see at just the right time while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his love for us in this while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more so will be saved from God’s wrath through him For if when we were God’s enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more having been reconciled shall we be saved through his life?

Not only is this so, but we rejoicing God through our Lord Jesus Christ and we have now gained reconciliation, therefore just the sin into the world through one man and death through sin. In this way, death came to all men because all sin from before the law was given.

Sin was in the world, but sin is not taken into account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who had not sinned by breaking of command as an Adam who was the pattern of the one to come, but the gift is not like the trespass. For the trespass followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification for if by the trespass of one man death reigned through that one man.

How much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of one man Jesus Christ overflow to the many consequently just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men? So also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men for justice.

Through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners. So also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous. The law was added so the trespass might increase, but where sin increased grace increased all the more so that just as sin reigned in death, grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning? So the Grace May increase by no means we died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? Don’t you know that all of us were baptized in Christ Jesus, were baptized into his death?

We were therefore buried with him through baptism in order that justice Christ was raised from the dead. We too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will be united with him in his resurrection

For we know our old self was crucified with him. So the body of sin might be done away with that we should no longer be slaves to sin Now if we die with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all the life he lives. He lives to God in the same way.

Then count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so you obey its evil desires. Don’t offer the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness for sin shall not be your master.

You are not under the law, you are under grace. What shall we say then? Shall we sin? Because we’re not under law but under grace, no, don’t you know that when you offer yourself to someone to obey as a slave, you’re a slave is the one whom you obey?

Whether you’re slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obey the form of teaching to which you’re entrusted.

You have been set free from sin. You’ve become slaves to righteousness. I put this in human terms because you’re weak in your natural self. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and ever-increasing wickedness, now offer them in slavery to righteousness, leading to holiness.

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you’re now ashamed of? Those things result in death.

But now that you’ve been set free to righteousness, to benefit, you replay to holiness, the result is eternal life. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Do you not know brothers speaking to men of the law? That the law has the authority of a man only as long as he lives. For example, by law, a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he’s alive.

But if her husband’s dies, she’s released from the law of marriage. So then if she marries another man while her husband’s still alive, she’s an adulterer. But if her husband dies, she’s not an adulterer even though she marries another man.

So also you my brothers die to the law through the body of Christ that you might belong to another to him who is raised from the dead that you might bear fruit to God for when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions, arousal, the law are working our bodies so that we bore fruit for death. But now by dying to what once bound us, we’ve been released from the law.

So we serve the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code. What should we say then? Is the law a sin? Certainly not indeed. I would not have known what sin was except through the law.

I would not have known what co really was. If the law had not said do not covet but sin seizing the opportunity to afford by the commandment produced to me every kind of covetous desire for apart from law sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law.

But when the commandment came sin sprang to life and I died, I found that the very commandment that tends to bring life actually brought death for sin, seizing the opportunity to afford by the commandment, deceive me and through the commandment, put me to death, did that which is good then become death to me by no means, but in order that sin might be recognized as sin and produce death in me through what was good. So that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

We know that the law is spiritual, but I’m unspiritual. The soul is a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do for what I want to do is not what I do with the evil. I do not want to do this. I do. I keep on doing it.

And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree the law is good. I know that nothing good lives in me. That is my sinful nature. I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out for what I do is not the good I want to do.

No the evil I do not want to do. This I keep on doing as it is. It’s no longer I who does it, but it’s sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work and when I want to do good, evil is right there with me in my inner being.

I delight in God’s law, but I see another law at work within the members of my body waging war against the law of my mind at work, my members. What a wretched man I am who will rescue me from this body of death. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So then I myself, I’m a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature, a slave to the law of sin, there therefore. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because the law of the spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death which the law was powerless to do and there was weakened by the sinful nature God did by sending his own son and the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.

And so he condemned sin and sinful man in order that the righteous requirements of the law may be filled fully met in us who do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to the spirit, those who live according to the sinful nature have their mind settled on what that nature desires. Those who live according to the spirit have their mind settled on what the spirit desires.

The mind is sinful. Man is death. The mind controlled by the spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by sinful nature cannot please God.

You however are controlled not by the simple nature, but by the Spirit. If the spirit of Christ lives in you, and if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you,

Then he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who lives in you. Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation and it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to Ed, for if you live according to sinful nature, you’ll die.

But if by the Spirit you put the death, the misdeeds of the body, you will live because those who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God. And you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear.

You received the spirit of sonship. And by him, we cry. Alva Father, the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. And if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs with God, co-heirs with Christ.

If indeed we may share in his sufferings knowing we will share in his glory, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation weights an eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed for the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it in the hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its present bondage to the key and brought under the glorious freedom of the children of God.

And we know the whole creation has been groaning as in the pain of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only, but we ourselves. We have the first fruits of the spirit groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption and sons, the redemption of our bodies for endless hope we were saved.

But hope that is seen as no hope at all, who hopes for what he already has. But if we hope we do not yet have we wait for it patiently in the same way the spirit helps us in our weakness. We don’t even know what to pray for.

But the spirit intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.

And we know that in all things, God works together for the good of those who love him and have been called according to his purpose. For those God for knew he predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and those he predestined, he also called those.

He called he also justified. Those he justified. He also glorified. What then shall we say to this, if God is for us? Yes, you did not spare his own son. He gave him up for us all.

Well, he not also along with him graciously gave us all things. Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It’s God who justifies Christ, Jesus who died. More than that, the right ascendant is the right hand of God right now.

He is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No. As it’s written for your sake, we face death all day long.

We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No. In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I’m convinced that they have no death nor life.

Neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither hype nor depth nor anything else in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that’s in Christ Jesus.

Oh Lord, this word is exalted above all things because it is better than all things.

Treasure God’s Word

So before I walk off the stage, I just want to plead with you to treasure this word like your life depends on it because it does. Isaiah, Isaiah 55, 3. God says, listen to my word that you may live.

Do you want to live? Then listen to the only one who’s able to give life and listen to read it and study it and meditate on it day and night and memorize it. And before you think it’s any big deal, memorize a few chapters of scripture.

I mean, let’s point out the obvious. I’m not Fannie Crosby and then go to Afghanistan with me. Where’s Muslim teenagers who by the time they’re 18 have memorized the entire Korean, they’ve memorized the whole thing.

They have far more reverence for the words of a false God than we do for the words of the one and only true God. So memorize, in fact, stay in Afghanistan with me for a minute. Some of our radical workers there, get together late at night after everybody’s going to sleep in this house, a little candle in the middle.

One of ’em goes out a couple of miles outside this remote region, crawls into a cave, uncovers a couple of rocks, and pulls out the Bible only one they have. Knowing that they’re caught with it, they’ll immediately die.

He puts it into the jacket and he brings it back and they sit around candlelight and they whisper it to each other. They just read it to each other. They treasure this word like their lives depend on it.

That’s treasure. God’s word is like that. Treasure it, trust it, believe it. Believe it. Bank your life on it cuts through the world of lies you’re living in. Don’t believe what the world is saying to you about you telling you you’re not enough.

You’re not smart enough, you’re not gifted enough, you’re not talented enough, you’re not attractive enough, you’re not athletic enough telling you you’re not right. You don’t have the right personality, you don’t have the right gender.

You don’t have the right mind leaving you like we saw last night, depressed and anxious and alone. And the world is saying, the way to cure all that is to believe in yourself and become like the world.

And I’m pleading with you, don’t buy it. Don’t buy it. Don’t believe what the world says about you. And don’t even believe about what you say about you. Believe what God says about you in his word.

Believe it. He says, you right where you’re standing right now are fearfully and wonderfully made by me. And I love you. I cherish you. Don’t let this world tell you you are less than you are more than a conqueror.

Don’t let this world tell you you are rejected. You are redeemed. You are not defiled. You have been delivered. You are not a slave to fear. You’re a son or daughter of God. Anxiety.

Anxiety is not Lord over your life. The alpha and the omega, He’s Lord over your life. Depression is not Lord over your life. The one who defeated death is Lord over your life.

And you always, always, always have hope because the king of heaven is on your side. Believe this word, trust this word, treasure it, and then spread it like others’ lives. Depend on it because they do.

And the people on your campus, their lives for eternity depend on hearing this word from your mouth and your apartment. Your dorm and the people of the world depend on hearing this word.

There are 3 billion people who have little to no access to the gospel in this world. And we have more opportunities today than ever before in history to change that. So I’m pleading with you.

Let’s not keep this word to ourselves. It’s too good to keep to ourselves. Let’s make it known among all the peoples of the world.

God, raise up a generation that lives to treasure your word and dies to spread your word because they are exalting above all things. Your name and your word. May it be so.