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Sola Gratia - Part 1 of 2

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• Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9, two verses that everyone in here probably can quote. The message I'll begin today, I will finish next week, Lord willing. Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9, the scripture says, "For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast." I'm going to do something much like the Apostle Paul did when he wrote. Paul would always do the doctrinal first and the practical second. So if you were to study the book of Romans, you'll find chapters 1 through 11 are doctrinal, and then 12 through 16 practical applications of that doctrine. Likewise with the book of Galatians you would find that Galatians 1 through 3 is doctrinal and 4 through 6 would be practical. So you're going to have to listen very closely today because I'm probably going to throw some terms on you that you've never heard before. But let me begin by telling you the title of the message is Sola Gratia, which is Latin for grace alone.

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• The Reformation of the 16th century was nothing less than a recovery of the gospel. It was men like Martin Luther in Germany, John Calvin in France, and Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland who were used by God to bring forth both a reformation and revival by emphasizing once again the centrality of the scriptures alone and that brought forth a gospel by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, so that God alone received all of the glory. Thus there are five phrases that are very prominent in theological circles, and especially when you study the Reformation. They are sola scriptura, the scriptures alone; sola fide, faith alone; sola gratia, grace alone; solus Christus, Christ alone; and soli Deo gloria, which is to God alone be the glory.

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• And I would be hard pressed to try to pick what I would consider the most important of those five truths. However, I understand that they all stand or fall together, but if we did not believe sola scriptura, that is the scriptures alone for our full faith and practice, then we would not know anything about the other four solas. So it's the scriptures, of course, that reveal these other truths as well.

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• Now, there's so much in the Bible concerning grace. The very first time the word grace occurs in the Bible is Genesis 6 and verse 8: "But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." The very last time the word grace occurs in the Bible is Revelation 22 and verse 21: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." And then from Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is just simply full of absolute grace.

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• So the term sola gratia is important, not just because it is a distinguishing point of the Reformation, but also because it is a truth that separates the true gospel from all the false gospels. And therefore, the term sola gratia is just as important today as it was back when the Reformation began. The Latin word sola literally means alone or only. So when you hear sola scriptura, it is only the scriptures or the scriptures alone. Sola fide, faith alone. Sola gratia, grace alone. Solus Christus, Christ alone.

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• And all of these are closely tied together. And deviation from any one of these points is always going to lead to doctrinal error, and it will lead to a gospel that will not save. It will be a gospel that is perverted and one that is powerless to save. So we just read Ephesians 2:8-9. Ephesians 2:8-9 is simply acknowledging that the Bible teaches that the totality of our salvation is by grace alone. "For by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast." As one author stated, and I like this, he said, "Sola gratia means grace at the start, grace to the end, grace in the middle, grace without fail, grace without mixture, grace without addition, grace that allows no boasting, grace that precludes all glorying except that which is in the Lord."

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• And that certainly is true. And it is the little word "alone" that makes the difference between truth and error. Most Christians will tell you that they believe in grace, that we're saved by grace. But when you get them to explain exactly what they mean by that, they actually end up meaning that they believe in grace plus something. So it's either grace and the will of man or grace and the works of man.

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• Thus we come to this point where you have to understand two theological terms. Those two terms are monergism and synergism. Monergism and synergism are two terms, theological concepts, that have reference to the doctrine of soteriology or the doctrine of salvation. And the truth of the matter is this: one either believes in monergism or synergism. There is no in-between, and there's no third alternative. So you are either a monergist or a synergist. You say, "Well, I can't be one. I don't even understand those words." Well, just remember this: every 50-cent word can be broken down into nickel words where we can understand them. The word mono, monergism. Mono means one or alone. The Greek verb is ergo, which means I work. The noun is ergon. So monergism is from mono-ergon, which means God alone works in salvation. In other words, regeneration is an act of God alone. Theologically speaking, synergism is that doctrine that says that the human will cooperates with the divine grace in the work of regeneration. In other words, synergism says that God and man work together.

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• So the Greek word syn means together, and ergon, to work. So actually, synergism means a working together. It means that God and man must work together. When you stop and think about this, synergism destroys sola gratia. Sola gratia is grace alone. If man has to cooperate, if man has to do something, if man has to use his will, then it is not grace alone, it is grace plus something. So synergism not only destroys sola gratia, it also destroys sola fide, faith alone. It also destroys solus Christus, Christ alone. And it also destroys soli Deo gloria, to God alone belongs the glory, because now God's glory has to be divided between himself and man. So Isaiah 42 and verse 8, where God said very clearly, "I am the Lord. That is my name.

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• My glory will I not share with another, nor give my praise to graven images." God would have to share his glory if synergism was true, because it is man cooperating with God. So in synergism, God cannot save without the help, or without the work, or without the will of the individual. Hence, he would have to share his glory with man in order for salvation to be accomplished. So synergism is apparently false and contrary to the clear teaching of the scripture. So mark this down: monergism and synergism are opposites, because monergism says that salvation is the work of God alone, where synergism turns around and says no, salvation is the work of God and the work of man.

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• Now stop and think about this. The only alternatives you have are these. Number one, salvation is either of God alone and by grace alone or it is partly of God and partly of man and therefore partly of grace and partly of man's will or man's work. Anything that man adds or anything that man has to perform in order to be saved would constitute works. Okay? Let me show you.

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• I want you to look in your Bibles, Acts chapter 15 and verse 5. Here you're going to find these Judaizing Pharisees wanted to add something to God's grace. Acts chapter 15 is the council at Jerusalem. And here's what the Bible said in Acts 15 in verse 5: "But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed, so these were professing Christians, professing Christians. There rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying that it was needful to circumcise them, that is the Gentiles, and to command them to keep the laws of Moses."

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• Now the interesting thing is this. The word "needful" is from the little Greek word dei. D-E-I is how we would spell it. Delta, Epsilon, Iota. And that little word dei is translated as "must" 59 times in the Bible. So actually you could read this, "But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying that they must be circumcised and be commanded to keep the law of Moses." In other words, what they were saying is this: it's all right to believe in Jesus Christ. It's all right to trust in Christ. But if you really want to be saved, you have to be circumcised and you have to keep the law of Moses.

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• So their synergism then was faith plus circumcision or faith plus works or God plus man. Monergism teaches that God is the necessary and sufficient cause for our salvation. Synergism will agree that God is the necessary cause and condition, but synergism will deny his sufficiency. Because what synergism teaches is it must be God plus the will or the works of man. In other words, according to synergism, God actually doesn't save anyone. God only makes salvation possible. It is man that ends up saving himself. Wow.

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• So a good question to ask would be this. Have you ever thought if salvation is really and truly dependent upon the will of man, there's a possibility that no one would ever be saved? Because God does not actually save anyone according to synergism. So, if synergism is true, which it is not, salvation could not be by grace alone. It would have to be grace plus the work of man. So you have to ask this question: Who initiates salvation? And who guides the individual to salvation? Is it God or is it God and man? Does the human will cooperate with God in the work of regeneration? So was Jonah correct when Jonah said in Jonah 2:9 that "salvation is of the Lord"?

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• So here's what I want you to see. The issue is really quite simple. Does man's faith depend upon the regeneration by God alone, or does regeneration depend upon man's faith? To ask the question another way, is it possible for a dead man to believe or to do anything that is necessary to salvation? Well, I'm going to show you that next week in detail and answer that for you.

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• But John Hendricks said this concerning monergism. He said, "Monergism simply means that it is God who gives ears to hear and eyes to see. It is God alone who gives illumination and understanding of his word that we might believe. It is God who raises us up from the dead, who circumcises the heart, who unplugs our ears. It is God alone who gives us a new sense that we may at last have the moral capacity to behold his beauty and unsurpassed excellency." So he said it's the work of God alone. John Owen was a Puritan.

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• He's been referred to many times as the prince of preachers. He said this, "To suppose that whatsoever God requires of us that we have the power of ourselves to do is to make the cross and the grace of Jesus Christ of none effect." So stop and think about that. If God requires something of us, and he does, faith and repentance, but if you say that that is in man and then man can do that, in essence it makes the cross of Jesus Christ and the grace of God of none effect. The apostle Paul said it similarly in Galatians 2 and verse 21 when he said, "I do not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." So if man can be saved in any other way other than pure, undiluted grace, then Christ died in vain. So anything then that man would add to grace or endeavors to add to grace frustrates pure, undiluted grace. The problem is we do not understand the term grace.

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• And we do not understand the term free grace. You hear people say, "I was saved by the free grace of God." And when you hear that term, most people will explain grace like this: it didn't cost anything. I didn't earn it. I didn't merit it. It was a free gift.

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• Now I want to show you something. I want you to turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 3 and then to John 15. Romans chapter 3 and then we're going to go to John 15. I want to show you this, how that you and I usually pervert the phrase free grace. We do not understand it. So if I said, "David took me out and bought my supper. Therefore, I got a free supper."

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• By that, I would mean it didn't cost me anything. David paid for it. And that's usually what we think of when we think of grace. It just didn't cost us anything. But look at this in Romans 3, verse 23. And the Bible says, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God."

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• Now watch verse 24, "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God had set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God, to declare, I say at this time, his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of him that believeth on Jesus." Now, go back, if you would please, to verse 24. The Bible tells us very plainly being justified freely by His grace. Okay? That's free grace.

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• But what does that mean? Well, if you look back in John 15 and verse 25, here's what our Lord said concerning those Jews. Watch carefully. He said in John 15 verse 25, "But this cometh to pass that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law. They hated me without a cause." Now, the little phrase "without a cause" is exactly the same Greek word that is translated as "freely" in Romans chapter 3. They hated me freely. What did our Lord mean when He said, "They hated me without a cause"? Well, what He meant was He was the sinless, holy Son of God, and there was nothing in Him that merited, earned, or drew forth their hatred, their anger, their wrath. They hated Him freely. There was nothing inside Him that drew or merited that.

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• Now, when the Bible says being justified freely by His grace, it doesn't just simply mean it didn't cost us something. It means that there was absolutely nothing in us that drew forth or caused God to save us. He did not save us simply because we needed saving. He did not save us because He looked down and foresaw, "Oh, he's going to believe on me one day, so I'll..." No, no, no, no. There was nothing in us that caused God to give His pure grace.

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• He was under no coercion. He was under no compulsion. The fact that he did so, he did so freely. That's free grace. Nothing in us drew it, earned it, merited it, nothing. When God saw us, he saw us as wicked rebels, not someone who might believe on him in the future sometime in our own work, in our own power. Now, the Westminster Confession of Faith says it like this. Listen carefully. "Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, have chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory, out of His free grace and love alone, without any foresight of faith, or

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• good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature as conditions or causes moving him thereunto, and all to the praise of his glorious grace." So, nothing, absolutely nothing in man drew forth the grace of God.

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• Now, James Pettigrew Boyce, who was born in 1827 and died in 1888, he was the founder and the first president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He was also the president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1872 to 1879 and in 1888. And James Pettigrew Boyce is regarded as one of the outstanding Baptist theologians of the 19th century. He also was a Confederate chaplain, by the way.

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• I want you to listen to what he said. And of course, it might be a little difficult to follow me because what he says in this, he's going to give the positive and he's going to give the negative together. And I hope you understand that originally, all Southern Baptists held to and believed the doctrines of grace. Originally, James Pettigrew Boyce said this as to election: "...is that God, not man, of his own purpose in accordance with his will, and not from any obligation to man, nor because of any will of man, has from eternity the period of God's action, not in time in which man acts, determined to save, not as actually saved, but simply determined so to

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• do, and to save, not merely to confer gospel or church privileges, upon a definite number of mankind, not the whole race, nor indefinitely merely some of them, nor indefinitely a certain proportionate part, but a definite number as individuals, not the whole or part of the race, nor of a nation, nor of a church, nor of a class, as of believers or the pious, but individuals, not for or merit or work of theirs, nor of any value to him of them, not because of any for their good works or their holiness, or excellence, or their faith, or their spiritual sanctification, although the choice is to a salvation attained through faith and sanctification, not for their value to Him, though their salvation tends greatly to be manifested to the glory of His grace, was but of His good pleasure that is simply because He pleased to do so."

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• So there's James Pettigrew Boyce. And he's talking about God's free grace. So here's the question. How do we understand free grace? How do we perceive it? How do we comprehend it? What does it take for you and I to see that it is grace and grace alone? Well, let me answer that question first of all, very quickly and with a scripture. Here's what it takes for you and I to see grace and grace alone. It takes the grace, power and illumination of God to open our eyes and to see the beauty of his grace and his mercy, that he alone can save us. And here is the absolute truth: if God does not sovereignly and powerfully open our eyes, we will never see. Okay. Now, let me give you the scripture. I want you to turn in your Bibles if you would very quickly to 2 Timothy chapter 2 and look at verse 7. 2 Timothy chapter 2 in verse 7. Here's what the Apostle Paul told Timothy, having given that brief answer. Here's a principle in scripture that we need to apply not only to this truth, but to every truth from the word of God.

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• In 2 Timothy chapter 2 in verse 7, the Apostle Paul tells Timothy, "Consider what I say and the Lord give thee understanding in all things." Now when Paul told Timothy, "Consider what I say," the Greek word there is noeo, which means literally to consider, to ponder, to think upon, to heed, to understand. When you think about the words consider, ponder, you think about meditate. You think about cows chewing the cud, how they just chew it over and over. They'll swallow it, burp it back up, chew it some more. That's exactly what this word means. Paul told Timothy, "Consider what I say in the words." You have a responsibility to study, to think, to meditate. And then he says, "And the Lord give thee understanding." So in other words, God's gift is the gift of understanding. But I want you to know God does not give his gift willy-nilly.

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• We do not go to bed dumb and wake up smart. We don't go to bed stupid and wake up knowing everything. No. God does not just say, "Hey, I'm going to open his brain and pour some truth in it." No, no, no, no. God said, "Consider what I say." That's our duty, our responsibility. But as we consider, we have a responsibility to seek God to give us his gift of understanding, because we know that unless he opens our eyes, we will never see and we will never understand. So when it comes to understanding any doctrine, we must consider it and we must seek God to open our eyes and to give us light and to give us illumination. OK, now. Having said that. I'm going to cover one point today.

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• And Lord willing, next Sunday, two more points. So to try to answer this question: What will it take for you and I to see that salvation is by grace alone? Well, there are several truths that we must grasp. The first one is this: we must consider the freedom, sovereignty, and independence of God if we want to understand Sola Gratia, grace alone. Now, what do I mean by the freedom, sovereignty, and independence of God? Well, let me explain that and let me begin with this statement.

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• This is an eye-opener. Are you ready? Got your seatbelts on? Here it is. God doesn't need you. God doesn't need you. He doesn't need me. He doesn't need anything. He is God. And it is nothing more than pure humanism and pure garbage when you hear preachers and other people say, "Well, the reason God created the world and the reason God made man and the reason God saved us is because God was lonely and He wanted us there." That is just pure trash. When you say that God has a need, you have just denied God. God does not need anything. If God has needs, he is dependent. He is not independent. And when you try to say that God needs me, you're denying the person, the power, and the perfection of God.

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• I heard one preacher say many years ago, "If you want to live a long life, make yourself indispensable to God." Really? The cemeteries are filled with indispensable men. God doesn't need anybody. Robert Shaw, in his exposition of the Westminster Confession, says this. I want you to listen. I'm going to stop and explain one thing. But he says this: "God is self-existent and independent. He has all life, glory, and blessedness in and of Himself."

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• "His existence is necessary and underived. For his name is I am that I am. His glory and blessedness are likewise underived. His glory necessarily results from, or rather consist in, the absolute perfection of his own nature. And his blessedness is all summed up in the possession and enjoyment of his own infinite excellencies. Being thus all sufficient in and unto himself He must be independent of any other being. He stands not in need of any creatures which He has made, nor can He derive any glory from them."

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• Now let me just stop right there. When Robert Shaw says, "He stands not in need of any creatures which he has made, nor can he derive any glory from them," you have to distinguish between what is known as God's essential glory and God's external glory or God's manifestative glory. And what Robert Shaw is talking about here is his essential glory, that is what God is in and of himself. It is true that God has an external glory in the heavens, in his creation. And it is true that God has manifested that glory, and it is true that we can honor or dishonor His manifested or external glory, but we add nothing to His essential glory, and that's what He's talking about. Listen carefully. "He stands not in need of any creatures which He has made, nor can He derive any glory from them."

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• "Every other being receives its all from Him, but He receives no advantage from any. For his pleasure all things are and were created, but none can be profitable to God, as he that is wise may be profitable to himself, nor is it any gain to him that they make their way perfect." So he's saying God didn't have need of anything. And by the way, the Philadelphia Baptist Confession and the Westminster Confession are almost word for word exactly alike, except when it comes to ecclesiology and baptism. So here's what the Philadelphia Baptist Confession says in Chapter 2, Paragraph 2, and the Westminster Confession, Chapter 2, Paragraph 2, says exactly the same thing. Here it is: "God, having all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself, is alone in and to himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creature which he has made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things.

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• And he hath most sovereign dominion over all creatures, to do by them, for them, and upon them, whatsoever himself pleaseth. In his sight all things are open and manifest. His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain. He is most holy in all his counsels, in all his works, in all his commands. To him is due from angels and men whatsoever worship, service, or obedience as creatures they owe unto the Creator, and whatsoever he is further pleased to require of them."

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• So what is he saying? What's the Philadelphia Confession of Faith say? What's the Westminster say? God is the most free and independent being without any need. Stop and think about this. God is absolutely perfect. Nothing can be added to him. Nothing can be taken from him. He is not in need of anyone or anything. He's absolutely free and independent. If you have needs, you are not free and you are not independent.

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• I want you to look in your Bibles to Psalm 50 first. Look in Psalm 50. I love this passage. God is reproving the children of Israel in one sense of the word. Look what He said as He testifies against them. Psalm 50 verse 7. I love this passage. He says here, "Hear, O my people, and I will speak. O Israel, and I will testify against thee. I am God, even thy God." Now watch verse 8. "I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings to have been continually before me."

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• You were supposed to do it, but you didn't. He says, verse 9, "I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds." Why? Why will God not do that? He says in verse 10, "For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountain, and the wild beasts of the field are mine." Watch, "If I were hungry, I would not tell thee, for the world is mine in the fullness thereof." Let me just tell you what God said in good South Georgia lingo: I don't need you. I don't need anything from you. I am God. I am self-existent. I am independent. I own everything.

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• Now, I want you to turn to Psalm 16. I want to show you something that may be amazing. And you're going to hear this stated again just shortly. But let me just point this out. We read earlier in Romans chapter 3 where God sent forth and set forth His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. We know that Jesus Christ is the sinless Son of God. And we know that Jesus Christ obeyed perfectly the Father. Let me say this, the person and work of Jesus Christ added absolutely nothing to God the Father. In Psalm 16, which is a Messianic psalm, and this is quoted in the New Testament concerning Christ. But notice in Psalm 16, verse 1, "Preserve me, O God, for in thee do I put my trust."

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• "O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, My Lord, here it is, my goodness extendeth not to thee." Nothing that Jesus Christ did added one thing to the essential being of God. He said, "My goodness extendeth not to thee," watch, "but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent in whom is all my delight." So all the personal work of God the Son did was extend to us. It did not extend to the Father.

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• If you pick up any systematic theology book, and you begin to look under the doctrine of God, you're going to find this little word, aseity. A-S-E-I-T-Y, aseity. And you read the aseity of God, and all that means is that God is absolutely independent. He is so independent, He needs nothing. If you look in your Bibles, Acts 17. The Apostle Paul is preaching on Mars Hill. In Acts 17, verses 24 and 25. Look what he said. Acts 17, verse 24.

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• "God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life, breath, and all things." What did Paul just say? God doesn't need anything. We need Him, but He does not need us. That is the aseity of God. God is free and independent and sovereign.

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• Now, you're going to ask me this question. How does this help me to understand salvation by grace alone? Well, I want you to listen very carefully because I'm going to read four or five paragraphs written by A.W. Pink on the solitariness of God. Then I'm going to show you scripture and ask you a whole lot of questions. OK, so I want you to listen carefully. This explains it so clearly. Pink wrote: "In the beginning God. There was a time, if time it could be called, when God in the unity of his nature, though subsisting in three persons that his father, son and Holy Ghost, dwelt all alone. In the beginning, God."

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• "There was no heaven where His glory is now particularly manifested. There was no earth to engage His attention. There were no angels to sing His praises. There was no universe to be upheld by the word of His power. There was nothing. No one but God. And that not for a day or a year or an age, but from everlasting. During a past eternity, God was alone, self-contained, self-sufficient, in need of nothing. Had a universe or angels or human beings been necessary to Him in any way, they also would have been called into existence from all eternity. Creating them when He did added nothing to God essentially. He changes not. Therefore, His essential glory can neither be added to or diminished. God was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to create."

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• "That he chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on his part, caused by nothing outside of himself, determined by nothing but his own good pleasure, for he worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. That he did create was simply for his manifestative glory or external glory. Do some of our readers imagine that we've gone beyond what scripture warrants? Then we'll appeal to the law and to the testimony."

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• "Stand up and bless the Lord your God forever and ever and blessed be thy glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise." Nehemiah 9:5.

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• Now, listen, God is no gainer even from our worship. He was in no need of that external glory of his grace, which arises from his redeemed, for he is glorious enough in and of himself without that. What was it that moved him to predestinate his elect to the praise of the glory of his grace? It was according to the good pleasure of his will, Ephesians 1:5.

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• We're well aware that the high ground we tread upon here is new and strange to almost all of our readers. So it is well to move slowly. Let us appeal again to the scriptures. As the apostle brings to a close a long argument on salvation by sovereign grace, he asks, "For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counselor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?"

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• The force of this is that it is impossible to bring the Almighty under obligation to the creature. God gains nothing from us. "If thou be righteous, what givest thou him? Or what receiveth he of thine hand? Thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art, and thy righteousness may profit the Son of man," Job 35:7-8. But it certainly cannot affect God, who is all blessed in and of himself.

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• "When you shall have done all these things which you were commanded, you say we are unprofitable servants." Our obedience has profited nothing. We go farther. Our Lord Jesus Christ added nothing to God in his essential being in glory, either by what he did or suffered. True, gloriously true. He manifested that glory of God to us, but he added nothing to God. He himself expressly declares so, and there is no appeal from his words.

  #54 | 43:11 to 43:41 | cleaned

• "My goodness extendeth not unto thee," Psalm 16:2. The whole of that psalm is the psalm of Christ. Christ's goodness or righteousness reached to his saints in the earth, but God was high above and beyond it all. It is true that God is both honored and dishonored by men, not in his essential being, but in his official character. It is equally true that God has been glorified by creation, by providence, and by redemption.

  #55 | 43:41 to 44:09 | cleaned

• We dare not dispute this for a moment. But all of this has to do with this manifestative or external glory and the recognition of it by us. Yet had God so pleased, he might have continued alone for all eternity without making known his glory unto his creatures. Whether he should do so or not he determined solely by his own will. He was perfectly blessed in himself before the first creature was called into being. And what are all the creatures of his hands unto him even now? The scripture answers.

  #56 | 44:10 to 44:48 | cleaned

• "Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as a small dust of the balance. Behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing, and Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before him are as nothing, and they are counted to him less than nothing in vanity. To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness will you compare him unto?" Isaiah 40. That is the God of Scripture. But alas, he is still the unknown God to heedless multitudes. "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers, that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them as a tent to dwell in, who bringeth the princes to nothing, he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity," Isaiah 40. How vastly different is the God of Scripture from the God of the average pulpit. When you stop and think about this, in eternity, there was nothing and no one but God.

  #57 | 44:49 to 45:55 | cleaned

• Who was alone, self-sufficient, self-existent, independent, sovereign, in need of nothing and no one. He did not need the world. He did not need angels. He did not need men. He did not need anything. The fact that he created and the fact that he sent Christ and the fact that he saves has to be nothing but pure grace because He did not need us. If you have grasped anything that I've said today, even a small portion of it, you may be now able to answer some questions. Here they are. Why did God create the world? Why did God create you? Why did God allow you to be born? And why did God allow you not only to be born but to live and have an intellect and abilities, when so many are born without an intellect and without any abilities whatsoever? Why were you born when you were born? Why were you born in America? Why were you born when the gospel was being preached? Why did God allow you to hear the gospel?

  #58 | 45:57 to 47:42 | cleaned

• Why did God give you repentance and faith? Why did God draw you to himself? Why did God quicken you by the Holy Spirit? Why did God regenerate you? Why did God open your eyes so that you could understand biblical truth? Why did God allow you to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved? The answer to every one of those questions is grace. Pure, undiluted, sovereign grace alone.

  #59 | 47:43 to 48:19 | cleaned

• I want you to turn to your Bibles, to 1 Corinthians chapter 4. Here's the question the Apostle Paul asked. 1 Corinthians chapter 4, look in verse 7. Actually, there are three questions here. Watch them carefully. "For who maketh thee to differ from another?" So here's my question. Why is it that you are saved and many of your family members are unsaved? Or why are you saved when you have friends that are unsaved? Why?

  #60 | 48:20 to 49:09 | cleaned

• Do you believe the scripture when countless multitudes do not believe the scripture? Why did you get to hear the gospel when millions never hear? Who made you to differ from another? The second question, "And what hast thou that thou didst not receive?" What do you have that God did not give you? The answer is nothing. Everything that we are, everything that we have, God gave us. Now, what's the next question? "Now, if thou didst receive it, why didst thou glory?" Or why didst thou boast as if thou hadst not received it?

  #61 | 49:10 to 50:01 | cleaned

• In other words, you better understand it was grace and grace alone. It was not your will. It was not your works. It was not your smartness. It was not your abilities. It was not your intellect. It was pure, absolute, undiluted, unadulterated grace. God did not need us. He was and is perfectly blessed in and of himself. He sent his only begotten son for our salvation. What is that? Grace alone, free, unmerited, undeserved, uncaused grace. God was not obligated to do anything. So it has to be by grace alone. If you understand that God is free, sovereign, and independent, the mere fact that he creates, the mere fact that he saves, the mere fact that he sent his son, is nothing but pure, undiluted grace. Sola gratia, grace alone. And that is how we are saved, by faith alone, through grace alone, and Christ alone, so that God alone receives all the honor and all the glory. Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we bow to thee.

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• We thank you for your word. We thank you for your truth. And we ask, Lord, that you would help us and teach us. Build us up in the most holy faith, and may we perceive and understand your grace. In the name of Jesus Christ, we do pray. Amen.

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deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | clean_readable_transcript | 2026-06-04T18:06:23Z