I invite you to turn with me to the Bible, first of all to Isaiah chapter 45 and then to Philippians 2. And we’re going to read from verse 20. God speaks through his prophet, God, gather together and come, assemble, you fugitives from the nations. Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save.

Declare what is to be. Present it. Let them take counsel together. Who foretold this long ago who declared it from the distant past? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no God apart from me, a righteous God and a Savior. There is none but me. Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth.

For I am God and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked. And here comes the word. Before me every knee will bow. By me every tongue will swear. They will say of me in the Lord alone are righteousness and strength. All who have raged against him will come to him and be put to shame.

But in the Lord, all the descendants of Israel will be found righteous and will exalt. And then in Philippians 2:9, therefore God exalted him, that is Jesus, to the highest place, and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Amen. Gracious God, with our Bibles open before us, we pray for your help that we may be true to the scriptures in our thinking and speaking and listening, believing and obeying, trusting, and we depend entirely upon you for this. And we pray in Christ’s name. Amen. Well, I don’t imagine that many of you will remember the first Sunday of the new millennium, except for the fact that many of you were embarrassed at how many toilet roads you had purchased in prospect of a great collapse or how viciferous you had been in letting me