When I was preaching in Southern California there was a soap opera star for the daytime show

General Hospital* who went to our church. His name was Réal Andrews. He was coming to church

every weekend and really growing as a Christian. One day he approached me about

coming to an upcoming General Hospital “fan day.” He explained that he wanted to have a Gospel

Hour for his fans. Even though I’m not really into soap operas, unless Saved by the Bell counts,

and I tend to avoid gatherings that would be called “Gospel Hour,” I said he could count me in.

For the General Hospital fan day, he rented out this big ballroom at a Hollywood hotel,

and he had me preach to these fans of the soap opera from all around the country. It was very

surreal, to say the least. I walked in and there were hundreds of fans of Réal. To me, he was just

my friend at church. But to these fans, he was an incredible star on a legendary soap opera. When I

came in they were playing a trivia game in which fans competed to show who knew the most about Réal

Andrews. And they knew everything about him. They certainly knew a lot more than I knew. They knew

where he was born, which high school he went to, the ages of his kids — even his

food allergies. So I’m sitting there, a little amazed and a little weirded out by the whole thing.

I was struck by the fact that all these fans seemed to know him

better than I did.

But if you think about it, that’s not really accurate. Those fans didn’t really know

Réal. They just knew about him. They knew the facts and the trivia, but I knew what his

journey to Christ was like. They knew how many episodes he’d been in and they could tell you about

the various struggles his character had been through on the show, but I knew what his character was

like off-camera. I knew Réal as a real person and was friends with him. The fans just knew about

Réal.

In the Bible, we read about a group of religious leaders known as the Pharisees. The

Pharisees knew a lot about God. When someone wanted to play “Bible Trivial Pursuit,”*

“God-opoly,” or “Bible Baseball” they would dominate. They knew about God, but what we discover is

they really didn’t know him.