Let's pray together.

Father, I pray that the few minutes we have together would be a means of magnifying your son and clarifying his supremacy.

And I pray that you would guard me from error and greatest strength and energy to listen.

And I pray, Father, that you would help these thoughts

to come together in a way that would hit home

and help us to be the kind of witness to your power and your grace in this nation

and around the world that you call us to be.

Father, purify our minds and our hearts I pray.

Grandest the hand. and our hearts I pray. Grant us the help we need through Christ I ask it. Amen.

I'd like to begin with two paragraphs from the Financial Times that are the jumping off place for where I want to go.

And I'm probably going to get louder so whoever's doing the sound will want to be on top of it.

Worship is an aspect of religion that I always found difficult to understand.

This is by Michael Proust.

Suppose we postulated omnipotent being who for reasons inscrutable to us decide to create something other than himself.

Why should he forgive the anthropomorphism, he says?

Expect us to worship him.

We didn't ask to be created. Our lives are often troubled. We know that human tyrants puffed up with pride, crave adulation and homage, but a morally perfect God would surely have no character defects.

So why are all those people on their knees every Sunday?

I have two theses to draw out of my response to this article that I'd like to develop with you.

The first is that the supremacy of God is an increasingly public issue.

And the second is that getting it right makes all the difference in the world. And God's self-exaltation in demanding worship from his creatures is not a

character defect.

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