The following message is by pastor John Piper.

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Would you pray with me?

Father in heaven, I ask for your help now as I attempt to speak out of your word, if you don't come and by your Holy Spirit empower what I say, it won't have any eternal effect,

and that's the only kind I really care about. You said to us Jesus, without me you can do nothing.

And that's the way I feel as I begin now. Nothing of any significance will happen in this moment unless you come.

And so I ask in the name of Jesus that you would come and that you would move from person to person and open the eyes of the

blind so that they might see the infinite value of Jesus Christ

and embrace him as the supreme treasure of their lives.

In his name I pray, amen.

My plan is to try to remove two obstacles from your embracing Christ and his understanding of the world. One this morning and one later this afternoon.

I'll tell you right off the bat what the one is this morning and then later I'll tell you what the one is that I'll try to remove this afternoon because

the obstacle that I want to remove later today is created by the way I remove the one this morning.

The one this morning that I want to remove is one I have felt in my own heart and I've seen it hinder CS Lewis from coming to

faith and then he got over the obstacle and then I've seen it hinder another man in London from coming to the

faith and he hasn't gotten over it.

And it goes like this.

One of the clear obvious truths about the Christian faith is that God is majestic and glorious and powerful and wise and just and holy and good and he made the world, he made you and everything else in order to put all of that

majesty on display for you to praise and magnify. And that strikes a lot of people as a very unattractive case of megalomania. Let me read a quote from the London Financial Times by this fellow that I mentioned.

Michael Proust is his name.

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