The Five Sola—Soli Deo Gloria

Text: Isaiah 45:20-25; Isaiah 6:1-8; Hebrews 13:15-16

Theme: To God be the glory ... in our salvation, in our thoughts and in our behavior, and ultimately in our death and resurrection.

Date: 11/24/2019 File name: SolaDeoGloria-2.wpd ID Number

This morning is the last Sunday in our emphasis on the 'five solas' of the Protestant Reformation. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 bullet-points of protest to the doors of the church in Wittenberg, Germany, he sparked a Reformation that recovered the central truths of the Gospel. In our own day—an era where each of us has our own bible in our own language; an era where we worship in a denominational tradition that has zealously preached that men are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the Scriptures alone, it's hard for us to imagine that this was not always the case. For a thousand years the preaching of that Gospel had all but been lost by the church—especially by the Church of Mediaeval Europe. In it's place developed a hollow gospel, a manmade religion, full of unbiblical, mystical practices, invented doctrines, and superstitions. As we approach our last “sola” we must be fair to the Medieval Catholic Church. They did not deny the importance of Scripture, or faith, or grace, or the merit of Christ. Church theologians spoke of them often and would have eagerly affirmed that there is no salvation without them. So what is the issue? Why did the Church need reformation? The disagreement centered on the word sola ... alone. It still does. As much as we love our Catholic neighbors and friends and family ... as much as we’ll stand in solidarity with the Catholic Church on the great moral issues of our day ... as much as we’ll come together as a community from time-to-time in worship and fellowship, there remains a theological gulf that separates us, and it continues to revolve around that word Sola.

The last of the alone statements that comes out of the Reformation is Sola Deo Gloria— That all things done are to the glory of God alone. This is the theological glue that binds the other four Solas together. If ... IF a sinner is not saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as the Scriptures alone teach, then the sinner’s salvation does not fully rest in God’s hands. If the first four Solas are not true then God cannot take sole credit for a man’s redemption since some part of it was outside of God’s control.

But if ... IF salvation is all of God and has been accomplished by God from beginning to end, (or as Paul writes, “from faith to faith), then God gets all the glory. The result is that a sinner’s salvation gives glory alone to God.

I. A GOD OF GLORY

“I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.” (Isaiah 42:8, NIV84)

1. Sola Deo Gloria—to the glory of God alone—is the motivation that ought to guide every area of the believer’s life

2. God is worthy of our honor, and our praise, and our worship, and our reverence, and our veneration, and our awe, and our adoration because he is a glorious God as revealed in His attributes, and His actions

"Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his majesty is above earth and heaven," (Psalm 148:13, ESV)

"to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen." (Romans 16:27, ESV)

"to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen." (Jude 25, ESV)

"Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed." (Revelation 15:4, ESV)

3. Sola Deo Gloria means that the sovereign God of the universe alone gets glory

a. God is clear about this: I will not give my glory to another

A. GOD WILL BE GLORIFIED BY ALL MEN

"By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear." (Isaiah 45:23, NIV84)

1. it is so certain that men—all men—will bow their knee before a Sovereign God that the Lord has sworn by Himself that it will happen

a. God says, By myself I have sworn ...

1) literally the phrase in Hebrew is As I live and it is an oath

2) who else can God swear by since there is no one greater than He?

b. God is about to utter a truth that cannot be revoked—it will absolutely come to pass

2. what has God spoken that will absolutely come to pass here in this passage?

a. God declares that Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear

1) all men will sooner or later be in complete submission to the Lord God

b. the day will come when all men will bow the knee, and give glory to the Father

1) some will do so in joy

2) many will do so under compulsion

3) but all men shall give glory to the God

“Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:9–11, ESV)

4) indeed, every living creature in the cosmos will glorify the Godhead

“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb." All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: "Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!" (Revelation 7:9–12, NIV84)

3. God is going to be glorified

II. THE GOD OF GLORY REVEALS HIS GLORY IN HIS SOVEREIGNTY

" ... for I am God and there is no other." v. 22

1. you will never experience the full blessings of God until you recognize that Jehovah is God and you ain't!

a. He is supremely sovereign over all the created order

b. He is supremely sovereign over you life

2. unfortunately the average American no longer has a reverence for or a holy fear of an awesome God

a. for many, God ranks right up there with Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Ferry, or Father Time

1) characters of sentimentality who pass out blessings when we are "good" and who leniently wink at the "indiscretions" of our life as if they were insignificant

b. others see God as a cosmic Charlie Brown

1) wishy-washy to the core

2) inept and never willing to carry through with what he says

3) never meaning what He says and never doing what he plans

3. the lost man looks at himself and thinks, "God can't be much different than I am."

a. this is what Israel thought and God condemned them for it

"These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you." (Psalm 50:21, ESV)

ILLUS. A.W. Pink, in his book The Attributes of God, writes, "The 'god' of this ... century no more resembles the Supreme Sovereign of Holy Scripture than does the dim flickering of a candle the glory of the midday sun. The 'god' who is now talked about in the average pulpit, spoken of in the ordinary Sunday School, mentioned in much of the religious literature of the day, and preached in most of the so-called Bible Conferences is the figment of human imagination, an invention of maudlin sentimentality."

b. what's even more amazing is that A.W. Pink wrote that in 1930! —can you imagine what he would say in 2019?

4. no where is God's sovereignty and glory more clearly understood than in the infinite distance that separates God in His Holiness and man in his sinfulness

a. in his vision of Christ on his throne, Isaiah cries out ...

"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty." (Isaiah 6:5, NIV84)

ILLUS. The Gospel Hymn—At Calvary—tells us, "Oh, the love that drew salvation's plan! Oh, the grace that bro't it down to man! Oh, the mighty gulf that God did span At Calvary."

b. there is a great gulf between God and man

5. God is absolutely sovereign, and holy and glorious

a. He is absolutely sovereign over the universe

b. He is absolutely sovereign over the affairs of nations

c. He is absolutely sovereign over the lives and will of men

"Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all." (1 Chronicles 29:11-12, ESV)

6. the God of Glory Reveals His Glory in His Sovereignty

III. THE GOD OF GLORY REVEALS HIS GLORY IN HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS

"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." (Isaiah 45:24, NIV84)

1. there is none other like our God

a. He is perfect in all of His ways

b. the Apostle John said it this way . ..

"This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." (1 John 1:5, ESV)

2. when the Scriptures speak of God's righteousness they are referring God's adherence to His own moral standards

a. the bible says that we are to praise God for who He is

1) that means that we must know who He is, and the only way to know who He is to dig into the Scriptures and discover the attributes that are the core of God's personality

2) A. W. Tozer lists 18 attributes that describe God's character (and no, I'm not going to get into all of them)

3) I will say, that of all of God's attributes, His righteousness is one of His supreme character traits

b. God is completely pure, undefiled and unsullied by even the shadow of sin

3. because God is righteous, He loves everything which is in conformity to His glory

4. because God is righteous, He loathes everything which is contrary to His glory

a. this is why God hates sin

1) sin is contrary to His righteousness and denies Him His glory

"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," (Romans 3:23, ESV)

b. all of Israel's religious rituals were a reminder that God is holy

1) the ceremonial washings ...

2) the divisions of the tabernacle ...

3) the divisions of the people into ordinary Israelites, Levites, Priests and High Priests who were permitted different degrees of approach to God under strictly defined conditions ...

4) the Holiness Codes in Leviticus ...

5) the insistence upon sacrifice as a necessary medium of approaching God ...

c. all of these things reminded the Hebrews that God is unapproachably holy

5. man needs to experience the glory of God because it forces him to his knees in confession

6. The God of Glory Reveals His Glory in His Righteousness

IV. THE GOD OF GLORY REVEALS HIS GLORY IN HIS SALVATION

v. 22 "Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth ... "

1. the Scriptures teach us of man's total inability to turn to God

a. this was the flash point of the Reformation—the Reformation was a controversy with the Catholic Church over how absolutely spiritually dead we are in trespasses and sin

b. the Catholic Church taught that, even in our fallen sinful state, that there remained a divine spark within us that could respond to God’s grace in the sacraments

c. the Reformers asked What does the Bible say? and the Bible says we are spirituall dead in trespasses and sin

"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind." (Ephesians 2:1-3, ESV)

d. when the disciples asked Jesus who can be saved, Jesus looked at them and said,

"... "With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God." (Mark 10:27, ESV)

2. if a sinner is going to be saved it's only because of God's loving and merciful intervention

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, Seven when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast." (Ephesians 2:4-9, ESV)

a. God's rich mercy and His great love and the immeasurable riches of his grace where all applied through the prescription of Jesus' substitutionary atonement on the Cross

b. Christ went to the alter of sacrifice that our sins might be purged

"For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed." (1 Peter 2:21-24, ESV)

3. this salvation, while an eternal blessing to us, brings eternal glory to God

"His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire." (2 Peter 1:3-4, ESV)

4. The God of Glory Reveals His Glory in His Salvation

V. APPLICATION

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” 35 “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:33–36, ESV)

A. GOD IS JEALOUS FOR HIS GLORY

Question #1: “Why Is God’s Glory His Goal in All Things?”

1. the simple answer is that God wants it that way

a. in his doxology in Romans 11:33-36—and that’s what it is; a doxology—Paul declares that glory is the Father’s express decree concerning Himself

1) the One by Whom everything that exists proceeds from ...

2) the One by Whom everything that exists is sustained by ...

3) the One by Whom everything will return to ...

b. to him be glory forever. Amen

2. this was the plan from eternity ... that everything would be to the glory of God

a. it began with creation itself

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” (Psalm 19:1, ESV)

b. God creates, God sustains, God governs, God redeems in such a way so as to reveal the majesty of His glory

3. that’s what the entire universe was created for

a. God’s glory is the reason for our existence, indeed for the existence of all things

b. the profound sadness is that the world of men is blind, and so utterly dead to what is so manifestly obvious—that the heavens declare the glory of God

c. everything in the universe screams that God exists

4. therefore we bow, we worship, we enjoy, we give glory to God

B. HUMANS ARE REBELLIOUS GLORY HOGS

Question #2: “How Is God Glorified Most Fully By His Redeemed People?

1. the temptation for humans to steal glory from something or someone is not a new thing

a. we long to be known, to be championed and glorified

b. we battle to be thieves of everyone's glory, including God's ... we want recognition ... we want honor ... we want praise

2. Christian understand that God has made us to both reflect His glory, and to give Him all the glory

ILLUS. Some of you have probably seen the movie Chariots of Fire. It’s the story of two British men who win Gold Medals in the 1924 Olympics in Paris, France. One is Harold Abrahams. While an extremely talented athlete he was also an extremely arrogant man, and by his own admission ran to justify himself, and for the glory that might be his through winning. The other man was Eric Liddell, known as “the flying Scotsman,” a devout Scottish Christian who runs for the glory of God. At one point in the movie we hear Eric tell his sister, "I believe that God made me for a purpose. But He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure."

3. how is god glorified most fully by his redeemed people?

ILLUS. Question number one of the Westminster Catechism asks, "What is the chief end of man?” To which the answer is, "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”

a. listen to what Paul the Apostle writes to the Christians at Philippi

"I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death." (Philippians 1:20, NIV84)

b. in that passage the apostle understands that God is most magnified and glorified when Christ is exalted in his life either by the life he is living or by the death he suffers

4. our happiness is not the supreme value of the universe

a. do you understand how that grates against everything we are taught in Western culture?

1) Western culture says you and your needs gratified, your happiness, your self confidence, your autonomy are the most important things in all the world

2) the Scriptures come back and say "no" your chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, and in that you will find true happiness and fulfillment — when you discover it is not all about you, but all about God

b. God, becomes the supreme treasure of your life, when He becomes the supreme pleasure of your life

ILLUS. Jonathan Edwards wrote, "God is glorified not only by his glories being seen, but by their being rejoiced in. When those who see his glories delight in them God is more glorified than if they only see them."

C. OUR GOD IS INFINITELY GLORIOUS

Question #3: If God Alone Gets the Glory Why Does He Glorify Us?

1. unglorified creatures cannot come into the presence of the glory of God

a. the Old Testament is clear ... mortal man cannot come into the presence of God and live

b. God’s holiness is so supreme, so majestic, so unfathomable that sinful man would instantly die in His presence ... there can be no fellowship between absolute light and absolute darkness ... light will always swallow up and consume darkness

2. and so God changes us, and at our redemption starts us down the path of glorification that is finally and perfectly completed in our resurrection

“So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.” (1 Corinthians 15:42–44, ESV)

“Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Corinthians 15:49, ESV)

3. the Bible is stunningly clear that the justified will be glorified with the glory of God

"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3:18, NIV84).

"Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (1 John 3:2, NIV84).

"And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified." (Romans 8:30, NIV84).

4. our glorification is as good as done

ILLUS. “To God be the glory, great things He hath done:” written in 1872 Fanny Crosby, calls for the earth to hear His voice, and those people who hear must rejoice. What’s the great thing God has done that brings Him the glory? God, “So loved He the world that He gave us His Son, Who yielded His life an atonement for sin, And opened the life gate that all may go in.” It is a perfect redemption that was purchased of blood. It is a redemption that is available to the vilest offender who truly believes.

Our God is a glorious God who has worked a glorious redemption that all those who come to Him by faith alone in Christ alone bring to Him alone glorious praise.

A word to the believer; Paul wrote, "Whatever you do...do it all for God's glory!" (I Cor. 10:31). What are you going to do tomorrow? Will you do it to the glory of God? If whatever you plan to do, can't be done for the glory of God, will you abandon it?