Continuing this series in the solas, or the olis, we look at holy scripture. These are like a summary of some of the basic ideas we return to when the Protestant churches were formed during the Reformation, starting in the early 1500s. And these five solas, or five olis, So it encapsulates some of those ideas. So only scripture was the basis, only scripture for what we believe and what we do. Only grace, only by grace, through only faith, and faith only in Christ. So saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. And the fifth point is only God's glory, not man's glory. Let's have a word of prayer. Gracious Heavenly Father, may we see even better today your great glory in salvation that you provide so wondrously, so freely, so powerfully. And that we'll see your glory. And we ask in Jesus' name, amen. So it's only God's glory because of the fact that God's the one who saves by his grace. through faith in Christ, not by words, not by things we do, but rather He gives us the faith and we believe in Jesus and what He's done for us and we are forgiven, we are justified by faith, through faith. So look at this first verse that we're looking at, Isaiah 42 verse 8, it says, I am Yahweh, or Jehovah. And of course you see Lord there, but they put Lord there because the Jews quit using God's name at a certain point in history. And so wherever his name was in the Bible, they wrote the Lord, okay? And they would say the Lord. They left the consonants. But then the vowel markings, sometimes they put the markings from Adonai, and sometimes they put the markings from another word, and so different words might be there. The original has no vowels. The original Hebrew has no vowels. But so Jehovah or Yahweh, depending on how you pronounce it, those are both ways of reading that word, whether you read it as Jehovah or Yahweh. And it's four letters in the Hebrew. YHWH, if you transliterate it into English letters. Okay, it's not English letters, YHWH, but that's how we would transliterate it into our Roman letters. And so we read that Yahweh. If it's all caps in your Old Testament, it's Yahweh. So I'm Yahweh, that is my name. I will not give my glory to another nor my praise to idols. That's Isaiah 42. I'm Yahweh. When Moses, which is in our next verses here, encountered God. God said you are going to understand me in a way that the people before you did not. I'm Yahweh and this means I am the I'm the existent one forever in the past and the future eternal and all-powerful. I'm Yahweh. I'm I'm the one that is. The I am. Okay. The the name Yahweh looks like the verb to be, the verb that means I am. And he says, I'm the I am. I'm Yahweh. And there's no one like me at all, because before all existed, I was there. Everything else is different for me. That's what it means for me to be holy, is that I'm completely separate from everything. Because that's all what I made. I'm here, that's what I made. But I'm in the things that I made also. It's not devoid of me. But it's completely different for me. Because it's created and I'm existent. I didn't start. I'm different. I'm Yahweh. So all these idols, they're just part of what was created. They're not any gods. Okay? So, I am Yahweh, that is my name. I will not give my glory to another, nor my praise to idols. And the point I'm making here is that God, you know, he's a jealous God. And he says, you're supposed to worship me and me alone. And you think, well, that sounds really self-centered of you. But see, God would be unrighteous to say, go ahead and worship somebody else, because it's okay. Because he's the one that deserves it. It's righteous for God to expect to be worshiped. It's not righteous for us to do that kind of thing. But it's righteous for God. And so God is righteous in that. So, So when we bring glory to God for salvation, that's appropriate because He is the one that saves. So this verse here in Jonah 2.9, which is not listed here on our in our bulletin, but Jonah 2.9 is what Jonah said at the end of his prayer in the belly of the great fish. Jonah was running away from God. God said, I want you to send a message of judgment to Nineveh. Jonah's a prophet, right? And God said, you're the prophet. You go tell them what I would tell you. So Jonah went the other way. He didn't want to go tell them anything because he figured God might just save these people and they're enemies of the Jews. So I don't want them saved. I hate these people. But God said, you go. He didn't go. He got in a boat and went the other way. So eventually, as you know, he ended up in the Great Bish. And then he finally repented enough that he got out of that fish. So his prayers in Jonah chapter two, and at the end he says, salvation is from Yahweh. Salvation's from Yahweh. It's not from anything else, it's from Yahweh. So let me read what Spurgeon says in his sermon, salvation is of Yahweh, or salvation is of the Lord. This is Spurgeon on Jonah 2.9. And I'm skipping through his sermon. OK, I'm going to read portions of his sermon. It's a beautiful sermon. I'm leaving out some great stuff. You can look up Spurgeon on Jonah 2.9, Salvation is of the Lord. You can Google that. But he says here that in this sermon, Spurgeon does, back in the 1800s when he preached this, in England. He says, most of the truths of life, he didn't say of life, but most of the truths have to be learned by trouble. So Jonah learned through the trouble of what he faced that salvation is of the Lord. He had to go into the belly of the fish to learn it. Maybe we can learn it. without quite so much trouble. We're learning from his trouble today as we read about it and read what Spurgeon explains to us about it. So Spurgeon states that the original Hebrew indicates Jonah is talking about eternal salvation, not a rescue from a great fish. Okay? Based on the Hebrew there. Next Spurgeon explains the meaning of the entire expression that salvation is of the Lord. So he's going to explain what this means. So I'm quoting from him now. We are to understand by this that the whole of the work whereby men are saved from their natural state of sin and ruin and are translated into the kingdom of God and made heirs of eternal happiness is of God. The whole of it, all of that work is of God and of Him only. Salvation is of the Lord. Spurgeon goes on to say that the plan of salvation is entirely of God. The plan of salvation was devised before the existence of angels. They could not have dictated the plan. It would have surpassed angelic intellect to have conceived the way whereby righteousness and peace should meet together and judgment and mercy should kiss each other. Spurgeon's explaining there that He would say to the angels, God, if he were gonna consult with them, okay, I'm definitely punishing this sin that's coming. I haven't made man yet, but when they sin, I'm punishing it. Now, how do I show them mercy? I don't know. They would just throw up their hands. I don't know. You have to punish sin. I don't know how to do it, God. You tell us. You tell us. So he did not consult with the angels. Spurgeon next says, that no one has helped to provide the salvation. So God was, he was the only architect of it. No one has helped to provide the salvation either. God has done it all himself. No blood of martyrs mingled with that stream of blood from Jesus. It's not the blood of martyrs that paid for your sin. Atonement is the unaided work of Jesus. Next Spurgeon says, salvation of the Lord, rather salvation is of the Lord in the application of it. Okay, we say, okay, the planning, salvation's planning is of the Lord. Salvation's, let's say the payment is of the Lord, Jesus' blood. Now he says, the application of it is of the Lord. No, says the Arminian, it is not. Salvation is of the Lord inasmuch as he does all for man that he can do, God does, but there is something that man must do, which if he does not do, he must perish. That is the Arminian way of salvation, says Spurgeon. Is not the sinner by nature dead in sin? And if God requires him to make himself alive, and then afterward God will do the rest for him, then verily, my friends, we are not so much obliged to God as we had thought for. For if he requires so much as that of us, to actually raise ourselves from the dead, okay, and we can do it, then we can do the rest without his assistance. The Armenian says, well, we have to start the process. Well, if we can start the process, we can do the rest. The hardest step is the first one. Raising yourself from the dead. The dead in sin. I didn't write this down, but he goes on to talk about how there's a the story of a saint or some some person in the catholic church something happened his head got cut off or something he picked his head up and walked a thousand miles with his head okay and and you said wow he walked a thousand miles with his head no no no That's easy if you can get cut off and pick it up. That's the hard part. You see what we're saying here? The first part's the amazing part. The rest is just more of the same. See? And so it's the same with salvation. You say, yeah, you, the Armenian says, you have to start it. No, no, that's the amazing part. The starting of it that God does, that he gives you, he regenerates you. That's the amazing part. See? Yeah, if you could do that, you could do the rest, too. You could walk 1,000 miles with your head in your hands. If you could pick it up off the ground, OK. I had to leave some stuff out, but then I couldn't. That's just funny. So a great example, illustration. And now on the next point, we shall a little disagree again. Salvation is of the Lord as to the sustaining of the work in any man's heart. So Spurgeon has said the planning entirely of God, the payment entirely of Jesus' blood of God, the application of it, entirely of God, where God regenerates the soul, and now the continuation of it, entirely of God. Salvation is of the Lord as to the sustaining of the work in any man's or woman's heart. As a man does not make himself spiritually alive, so neither can he keep himself so. No man of himself, even when converted, hath any power, except as that power is daily, constantly, and perpetually infused into him by the Spirit. Salvation is of the Lord. But lastly, upon this point, the ultimate perfection of salvation is of the Lord. You knew that was coming. You know it's all of the Lord, okay? So yes, the ultimate destination, the perfection of salvation, the completion of it, is of the Lord. Soon, soon the saints of earth will be saints in light. Their follies, their burdens, their griefs, their woes are soon to be over. Sin is to be slain. Corruption is to be removed. And a heaven of spotless purity and of unmingled peace is to be theirs forever, but it must still be by grace. There may be Arminians here, but they will not be Arminians there. They may here say it is of the will of the flesh, but in heaven they shall not think so." Still quoting Spurgeon here. except when I interject. Okay, you understand? Having covered it positively, next Spurgeon answers some objections. Some have said salvation in some cases is the result of natural temperament. Well, sir, well, God has effectually answered your argument. God has unanswerably met your objection. For strange to say, the great number of these who are saved are just the most unlikely people in the world to have been saved. While a great number of those who perish were once just the very people whom, if natural disposition had anything to do with it, we should have expected to see them in heaven. Well, but some say, it is the minister whom they hear who converts men. Ah, that is a grand idea. Fool, sure. No man but a fool would entertain it. If I could convert you all, Anyone else might unconvert you. If I converted you, someone else would come along and unconvert you. What any man can do, another man can undo. It is only what God does that is abiding. And now, What is, should be, what should be, what should be the influence of this doctrine, this teaching that salvation is of the Lord? What is the result in us of this teaching? Why, first, with sinners, this doctrine is a great battering ram against their pride. If any man say he can save himself, it haveth, this doctrine haveth, cuts in half. pride at once and if another man say he cannot be saved because he's too evil or unwilling it dasheth his despair to the earth for it affirms that he can be saved seeing that salvation is of the Lord So don't say, oh, I can't be saved. Salvation is of the Lord, not of you. It's not dependent on you. That is the effect this doctrine has upon the sinner. May it have that effect on you. But what influence, if you are a sinner, but what influence has it upon the saint? asks Spurgeon, why it is the keystone of all divinity. In other words, of all godliness, okay, in the believer. You must be sound. You must be sound. You must be correct in the faith. If you have learned to spell this sentence, salvation is of the Lord. Amen. And now in concluding, let me, and I say me, this is Spurgeon speaking, let me just tell you, what is the obverse? It says observe, but it's a typo in this sermon. What's the obverse of this truth? The other side, okay? You've got, you've got coin and you have the, Head and tails. The tail is called the obverse side also, okay? What's the tail side of this? The head side? Okay, what's the tail side? The obverse. I forget what the top's called. Huh? Well, we call it head, yeah, but then the tail. But there's a longer name for the front. I can't remember what it was. But here's the obverse. Salvation is of God, then damnation is of man. If any of you are damned, you will have no one to blame but yourselves. If any of you perish, the blame will not lie at God's door. If you are lost and cast away, you will have to bear all the blame and all the tortures of conscience yourself. You will lie forever in perdition and reflect, I have destroyed myself. I have made a suicide of my soul. I have been my own destroyer. I can lay no blame to God. May ye now fly to Christ and be accepted in the beloved. But I'm not done yet. Although I must be done. But there are so many verses to look at. So maybe we'll do that next week. We've got a ton of great verses in reference to this, but I'm going to just read one exciting verse. And, you know, we didn't even go through the text, but I'll read one verse, James 1.8. James 1.8 says, that's not it. Okay, 118, okay, James 118. James 118 says, in the exertion, I'm sorry, in the, I didn't read it right, I'll start over. In the exercise of his will, he brought us forth by the word of truth. so that we would be a kind of first fruits among his creatures. Now, you might be looking at those and it's just a bunch of words to you, but what it's saying is that it was because of God's will and intent and his implementation of what he wanted to get done, okay? It's because of his exertion, his exercise of his will that you got saved. It says that we were brought forth by the Word of Truth. That just means that the reason we believed in the message was because of God's will, is what James is saying. The exercise of God's will is how we became regenerated and believed. It's all the glory goes to God. That's our point here in the five solas. All the glory, number five. It's all God's glory. We'll look at these other verses. Lots of verses like that. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, thanks Lord for doing the things you've done. and that you planned it, you implemented it, you applied it, you continued it, and ultimately, until we leave, you will continue it, and then we will be with you because you will complete it. Every phase, salvation is of you, Yahweh. We thank you, in Jesus' name, amen.