Thank you so much for being here. It's very encouraging to us at Desiring God that you care enough to join us here and think about important things under the banner, what Jesus demands from the world.

Even though Pat just let us deeply into fellowship of the Lord and closed in prayer,

I would like to just say one more word of prayer

asking for the Lord's help for me and for you in this moment of worshiping over the word.

So Father, we want to ascribe to your son right now all authority in heaven and on earth,

just like he said.

We just recognize it and we lift it up in the face of the devil who would love to undo this

and make me sin and us together have a meaningless time together that would work all the wrong things

so he's lifting up the authority of Jesus Christ just like he said there in

Matthew 28.

And we ask that his promise, behold I will be with you to the end of the age would be especially

even palpably true in this room.

I will be with you.

I'm standing right here by you, John Piper,

to protect you, to guard you, to correct you, to help you, and I'm all over

this room with my people.

So those two things, Lord, we acknowledge the authority of Jesus.

We claim the promise of his abiding presence,

and we now enter this word with him.

Thank you for those promises in Jesus great name.

Amen. This is built around this book and just say a word about the

way this book came into being. It's a thick book and we only have two talks and I'm

...