Thank you so much and thank you all for coming. I'd like to pray and ask God's help before I talk about these important things.

So Father, I need your help now because we're talking about you and what people think about you and what we think about you and feel about you,

which is the most important thing in our lives.

And so these are really high stakes.

And so I want to be faithful to your word, and I don't want to get anything wrong,

and I don't want to insert myself inappropriately.

So remove every possibility, I pray, guard me from error and from pride and from

fear and grant that everyone here would be discerning concerning concerning what I say as to its truth.

I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. So my title that I asked to speak on is, is Jesus an egomaniac.

And it's not a catchy title designed to get you here to hear something else. It's born out of

encountering that objection over and over again.

I'm going to give you maybe five illustrations of real live people, two of which you'll know about,

three probably, who have stumbled over the apparent egot mania in the words of Jesus and in the

word of God, if you believe he inspired the Psalms, say.

For example, Eric Reese, writer in residence at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, teaches environmental

journalism and writing and literature.

Published a book in 2009 called an American Gospel on Family, History, and the Kingdom

of God.

The only reason I know about this is because he did an

interview on NPR and that's kind of my default station in Minneapolis and

Terry Gross, you may remember the name, has a program on that station called

what's it called? Fresh Air, thank you. My wife listened to it also.

...