Well, good evening. If you would, go with me to Isaiah chapter 45. Go with me to the book of Isaiah the prophet chapter 45. And we will land in this text tonight. Starting in verse 14. Isaiah chapter 45, starting in verse 14. Thus says the Lord, the wealth of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush and the Sabians, men of stature, shall come over to you and be yours. They shall follow you. They shall come over in chains and bow down to you. They will plead with you, saying, Surely God is in you and there is no other, no God besides Him. Truly, you are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, the Savior, all of them, are put to shame and confounded. The makers of idols go in their confusion together. But Israel is saved by the Lord with everlasting salvation. You shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity. For thus says the Lord who created the heavens, He is God who formed the earth and made it. He established it. He did not create it empty. He formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord and there is no other. I did not speak in secret in a land of darkness. I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, seek me in vain. I, the Lord, speak the truth. I declare what is right. Assemble yourselves and come draw near together, you survivors of the nations. They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden idols. and keep on praying to a God that cannot save. Declare and present your case. Let them take counsel together. Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides Me. A righteous God and a Savior. There is none besides Me. Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other. By Myself I have sworn, from My mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return. To Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance. Only in the Lord it shall be said of Me, our righteousness and strength. To Him shall come and be ashamed all who are incensed against Him. In the Lord, all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory. Let's pray. Father, what an incredible text. Lord, our response should be to fall on our faces and humble ourselves before the Lord. And so help us to do that as we study this text. Speak Your Word to us that we might be a church who is about the glory of God alone. And I ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. Well, this is week two of a five week sermon series on the foundations of the Reformation. So we're studying the five solas of the Reformation. And last week we looked at what is known as Sola Scriptura and sought to understand what the Bible claims about itself in terms of its inspiration, its inerrancy, its authority and its sufficiency. pertaining to all things concerning life and godliness. And this evening, we are going to look at another primary focal point of the Protestant Reformation, and therefore a primary focal point of the Reformed tradition today, namely that of soli deo gloria, or as we say in English, to the glory of God alone. Now, I trust that you all understand that there is no way that we can comprehensively deal with this subject in one sermon. As a matter of fact, it's really hard to pick a passage to land in and to exposit to teach this because there are so many passages in the Bible that are loaded with this concept. You know, though the Bible was written by many different authors over thousands of years, The pages one after another, book after book, chapter after chapter, are dripping with this same theme. That the God, the same God, who created the universe and everything in it, is sovereignly wise, and all powerful, and perfectly good, and that He is the source of all things. He is the Creator. He does what He wants to do and whatever He wants to do is good because He wants to do it. Good is by His very nature. He is holy by His very nature and He is always consistent with His own perfections. Every motive, every thought, every desire, every word, every action, they're always perfectly consistent with His perfectly holy nature. He alone, therefore, deserves all the worship and all the allegiance from humanity. He alone created man. Therefore, He gets to tell man how to live and how to believe. He interprets us as His creation, and because He is matchless in all His perfections, and because He is infinitely more majestic than all His creation, He must be jealous for His own glory. He must be. Because again, He is the source of all that is good. He must demand His glory, and He will get His glory. It's not optional. He will get His glory. Psalm 4610, this is one of the most striking lines of Scripture in all of the Bible. It's a direct quote from the Lord. He says, Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. God's glory in the earth is not optional, brothers and sisters. Therefore, the right response of man is to receive that, to agree with that, not to fight that, but to submit to it and to place ourselves in his narrative. You see in the reformers and the Puritans this zeal to reestablish the God centeredness of all of life and especially in the church. You know, the four other solas are a means to this end. Right? To stand on the doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone to defend the authenticity of scripture over against liberalism is to this end. It's to guard the church from man exaltation and to be a God centered church whose aim is solely Deo Gloria. As the Westminster Larger Catechism famously says in question one, what is the chief and highest end of man? Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God and fully to enjoy Him forever. That's why you exist. That's why I exist. That's why this church exists to bring maximum glory to God. Amen. And if you're going to pray for anything for this church. Pray that this church would be a God centered church. That our preaching would be God centered, that our ministry would be God centered, that everything about us would be God focused. Now, someone may object to what I'm saying and they may say, well, that sounds good. But the problem is, is when you're solely focused on God and you're God focused, then you're not focused on humans. And therefore, you're only heavenly minded and you're not doing earthly good. And so while being focused on God is important, we should also be serving people. We should be meeting needs. We should be fighting injustice. We should be speaking out. We should be loving our neighbor. And I would argue that a church that is God centered in all its ways will do far more good for humanity than a church that is man centered. far more good. Now, we might not do as many events. Right, we might not have as many plans and programs and events with our cameras and our social media is to prop everything we're doing up for the world to see. We might not do as much of that. But when we're God centered, what is happening? Our brothers and sisters are going out to the workforce and they're working with integrity. They're blessing those around them. They're producing good in the earth. They're caring for people. They're raising up godly and Christian businesses that are that are done to the glory of God. They're politically informed, they're serving people in their neighborhoods and their communities, they're preaching the gospel, which is how men are freed from their sin and made right with God. They do speak out against injustice, they do fight sin, they do promote good in the earth because they are God centered people. I heard R.C. Sproul say once while preaching, you matter because God says you matter. Because having a God-centered theology says that humans are dignified and have value because God creates them with dignity and value. God inherently creates us in His image. That's why we speak out against injustice. That's why we fight oppression. That's why we should care for the widow and the orphan. Because injustice against people who bear the image of God is sin against God. But it's not man-centered. That's why we abominate abortion the way that we do. Some people just don't understand this. They say, I don't understand why the church just gets so up in arms about the issue of abortion. And they treat it so much more seriously than all these other issues. And the reason is that abortion is an assault, an utter assault on the glory of God. God created people male and female in his own image so that they might bear his image in the earth and fill the earth with his image. And murder. And therefore, abortion is removing that image from the earth. It's an assault on the glory of God, it's keeping the creation mandate from being fulfilled that the whole world would be full of image bearers. Horizontal sin, brothers and sisters, is always vertical. David committed murder and adultery, and he lied, and he wasn't doing what he was supposed to do as king. Yet in Psalm 51, what do we hear him say? Against you and you only have I sinned, O God. Because he understood that sinning against others is only sin because it's sin against God. Husbands, wives. This is why it's so important how we speak to one another. in front of our children, right? It's not just that we can, so that we can model being nice. It's not just so that we are just good people. It's because you're speaking to an image bearer. Someone who carries the image of God in them. That's why we make hitting one of those non-negotiables in our home. And I encourage all of you with small children to do this. Hitting is one of those one or two or three things that we come down really hard on. And it's not just because we want our children to get along and to be nice. It's because we have no right to put our hands on another image bearer with no authority and to harm them just because they're not doing what we want them to do. That is a great evil and an injustice against God. Do you see how practical this gets? This is not some lofty theological doctrine that we just affirm on paper. It's not just something that we read books about, read Sproul and Piper and these guys about. Every facet of our lives, every thing that we do, every belief that we believe should be soli Deo gloria. To the glory of God alone. And so again, we can't exhaust this in one sermon, but what I want to do is I want to draw out three key truths about God's glory from this passage. and then bounce around to a few others. So number one, these will be on the screen. God's glory alone is ultimate. God's glory alone is ultimate. Look at verse 18. For thus says the Lord who created the heavens. He is God who formed the earth and made it. He established it. He did not create it empty. He formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord and there is no Other. And then again in 21 later on, he says, and there is no other God besides me. Six times in Isaiah 45. In this chapter alone, we hear that language. I am the Lord and there is no other besides me. There is no God besides me. Yahweh will get his glory over and above all gods. I had no idea that Jeff was going to mention that in missions time. I think God wants to speak to us about something. He will get His glory over the gods of the world. Scholars agree that this is a primary theme of the Old Testament. That God sovereignly ordains history to show that He is glorious over the gods and over the kings and over the nations of the earth to exalt Himself You know, you think of Exodus 14 where God says, I will harden Pharaoh's heart so that the Egyptians will pursue you as you cross over the sea. And he says, I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his hosts, his chariots and his horsemen. And the Egyptians shall know that I am Yahweh when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen. And you think about Elijah, the prophet, on Mount Carmel with the prophets of Bel. Do you remember the story? The 400 prophets of Bel are cutting themselves. And they're for hours crying out to Bel to bring fire down from heaven to consume a sacrifice. And Bel doesn't answer them. And then Elijah steps up and he mocks them. And he says, drench the sacrifice with water. And he calls on the name of the Lord and Yahweh sends fire to the sacrifice immediately and consumes it. When he gets glory over Baal, verse 16, all of them are put to shame and confounded, the makers of idols go in confusion together. God's glory is ultimate because His Word is ultimate. Over in verse 21, He says, Declare and present your case. Let them take counsel together. Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the Lord? So one of the themes of Isaiah that distinguishes Yahweh from the other gods of the nations is that God speaks. Yahweh speaks and what He speaks comes to pass. He speaks hundreds of years before something happens and it takes place just as it was spoken. And even this chapter in the beginning, we didn't read this, but the context of the chapter is that God will raise up Cyrus the Great. Hundreds of years before Persia was even a nation. Prophesying to Cyrus saying, I will raise you up to deliver my people out of exile. And this happened. And Cyrus commissioned the people of Israel to leave Babylon and to go back into the land to build a temple for themselves. And so the context for Isaiah 45 is interesting. There's political turmoil. The nations are tottering. Assyria has taken the northern kingdom Israel captive. Egypt is down here and Judah is tempted to trust in Egypt to protect them from Assyria. And there's all the other nations around them and their sways of power. Yet Isaiah is hearing about this country far to the north that God will raise up to take Judah into captivity. And he's prophesying this and there's fear. There's temptation to trust in other nations and in other gods, and there's turmoil. And Yahweh is saying, look to me, Jerusalem, trust in me, come to me. Don't go down to Egypt. Don't go to Assyria. Trust in Yahweh. Put away your gods. I am the one who raised up the king of Assyria to take Israel into captivity. because of her sins. I am the one who will bring judgment. I am causing famine. I am causing pestilence. I am causing the sword to wreak havoc upon you. Repent. Turn back to me. Trust in me. I am the only one who can save you, Jerusalem. And unless I relent my anger, it doesn't matter what God you go to. It doesn't matter what nation you trust in. If I'm against you, you will be judged. Turn back to me. Sounds a lot like the situation we find ourselves in today, doesn't it? You know, there's political uproars every time you turn on the news. There's massive division. There's turmoil. The nations are tottering. There's shifts of power. Kings are being removed and new kings are being raised up. There's a virus. Whatever you think about the virus, you have to agree that a virus that we can't even see shut the world down. Sent the world into panic. Into turmoil. There's rumors of war. There's moral decay. I couldn't even watch the Olympics this year. Because every commercial is celebrating abominations. I mean, we're not talking about this person was dressed inappropriately or a commercial about Coors Light. I'm talking about abominations that bring the judgment of God being celebrated one after another. We're watching our Nations, morality decay quickly. There's protests in the streets. There's buildings being burned down. And then there's the church. And you say, what is the church's response to all this? And I really think that we will look back and we will regret how we responded. to a lot of things. The church has a responsibility to speak the truth. Trust me, I know that we must we must direct people to think rightly. But I think we found ourselves just immediately jumping into all these conversations and trying to referee all these political conversations and immediately posts and immediately videos and immediately podcasts and YouTube channels and and all this is happening. And did we ever just stop and ask, what are you doing? How are you exalting yourself among the nations? What are you doing? How do you want your church to respond? How are you exalting yourself in the nations as the kingdoms of this world totter as they rouse themselves against you and your Christ and you laugh at them? How do you want your church to respond? Did we ever be still and know that He is God? Isaiah 42 verse 8 says, I am Yahweh, that is my name, my glory, I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. Church, we should stand for truth. We should stand for truth. We should speak truth. We should take ideologies and thoughts captive to obey Christ. We should speak with our mouths. But let me encourage you, it doesn't matter how bad it gets, or how bad it looks, it doesn't matter how much it seems that God is being dishonored, He will be glorified in the earth. He will not give His glory to any other. He is jealous for it, and He will get it. And that leads me to point number two. Not only is God's glory ultimate, But God's glory alone is Trinitarian. God's glory is Trinitarian. Look at verse 23. By Myself I have sworn, from My mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return. To Me every knee shall bow. Every tongue shall swear allegiance. The Septuagint says every tongue shall confess. That sounds familiar, doesn't it? Over in Philippians chapter two, you don't have to turn there. Think about what we just read and then listen to this. Paul says, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. Now listen, so 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. How is this so? Has Yahweh retracted on His word? Because He says, it will not return to me. This word that every knee will bow and every tongue will swear allegiance, it won't return. Has He retracted? Is He sharing His glory with another? The answer is no. Jesus Christ is God. Jesus Christ is Yahweh in the flesh. God is not sharing His glory with another. It would be blasphemous for Paul to attribute Isaiah 45, one of the most God-exalting passages in all of the Old Testament, to attribute that to Jesus unless he believed that Jesus was God. This is what other false religions that say that Jesus is not God, this is what they don't understand. They don't understand how to read back into the Old Testament. Because they may say, well, Jesus never says I am God. I think He does a lot. But Paul here is attributing a passage where Yahweh is saying, by myself I have sworn. To me every knee will bow. To me every tongue will confess. Paul is saying to Jesus, Every knee will bow to Jesus. Every tongue will confess. And he says that will be to the glory of God the Father. The same Christ through whom the world was spoken, the same Christ who has existed with God the Father from the beginning is the same Christ praised in the hymn of Philippians 2 for coming to the earth. For inhabiting a body like ours. For emptying Himself. Living a perfect life under the law. And it says that He became obedient to the point of death. Dying on a cross. Dying for you and for me. And because of that, God has exalted Him to His right hand. And bestowed on Him the name that is above every name. It's amazing. God the Son has shared in glory with God the Father from all eternity. We're going to get into John 17 in a few weeks. I imagine we'll be there for a long time, so I won't say much about it. But Jesus prays and He says, Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You. since you have given all authority over to Him to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him. Jesus would not speak like this, brothers and sisters, unless He believed He was God. Glorify your Son. Glorify your Son as I have glorified you. Colossians 1.18 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Hebrews 1. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature. And He upholds the universe by the word of His power. So the same Christ who has existed with the Father is the same Christ that we put our faith in and receive forgiveness of sins in. What about the Holy Spirit? He is the expression of the love that God the Father and God the Son have for one another. And God the Holy Spirit's role, His desire, is to exalt and glorify the Son so that the Father may be glorified as the Son is glorified. And the Trinity has a perfect unity and harmony in love with one another. Jesus says about him in John 16, he the Holy Spirit will glorify me for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the father has is mine. Therefore, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All this work, this Trinitarian work. is God-centered. It is solely Deo Gloria. To the glory of God alone. However, God in His infinite wisdom and love does not keep His love only among the Trinity. He could. God could exist perfectly within Himself and never need us. But He chooses in His love, in His wisdom, to share this love with people, with us. And this leads to my last point. God's glory alone is salvific. God's glory alone is salvific. Look at verse 17. But Israel is saved by the Lord with everlasting salvation. And then in 20, down at the bottom half of 20, it says the people of Israel keep on praying to a God who cannot save. But then he says, and there is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a Savior. There is none besides Me." God's glory is not lessened in His salvation of people. It's not lessened. Rather, God's glory is seen most fully as He redeems His people. As He judges the iniquity of those who reject Him, yet redeems His people out of iniquity. And a lot of scholars talk about God's glory and salvation through judgment, that this is a primary theme that runs throughout Scripture. And I agree with them, that God's righteous judgment from beginning to end against sin is seen all throughout the Bible. That God is showing that I will not tolerate inconsistency with my holiness. Yet, at the same time, through that judgment, He is saving for Himself a people. You see this in Noah's ark, that through the floodwaters of judgment, God destroyed the whole world, but saved eight people in the ark through the judgment waters. They pass through the judgment. You see this in the Red Sea, that God opened up the Red Sea and Pharaoh and his army went into the sea and God delivered his people through the sea and then made the waters come over Pharaoh and his horsemen. He saved his people through judgment. And you see this fully climaxed in the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ, where God's mercy and grace collide with his fury and his wrath. where God lays upon the sin and the iniquity of us, of humans, who deserve His wrath onto His Son, because He loves us. But yet, He shows Himself fully just in crucifying His own Son for sin. He shows the seriousness of which He takes sin, but also the seriousness with which He loves His people. And we by union with Him get attributed to Christ. We have union with Christ and we are judged. Our sin is judged with Christ, killed with Christ, put into the ground with Christ, and then raised with Christ. God saves us through judgment. That's what baptism represents. We go into the waters of judgment, buried with Christ in baptism, and we're raised up with Him in the newness of life. That's why we believe in immersion around here. Because of what it metaphors. Dying to sin, being judged in Christ, in His body, in His death, and raised to life with Him. And this works to show, as Paul said, that God is both the just and the justifier of those who have faith in sin. God has chosen for himself, according to his own wisdom and knowledge, a people to lavish with mercy and grace before the foundation of the world so that They would be glorified? No. So that He would be glorified. So that His grace would be exalted. And we see this perhaps most clearly in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 3. He says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Listen to this. Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ. Listen, according to the purpose of His will. Not yours. His will. He chose you according to His will. Why? To the praise of His glorious grace. You know, the Puritans and the Reformers and the Reform tradition today, we love the doctrine of predestination. I love the doctrine of predestination. Not because I think it's this awesome, lofty doctrine that I can boast in and be arrogant because I believe it. No, it's because it allows for sinful, wicked sinners to confess that we have no spiritual worth. I am nothing. before God. I deserve nothing but hell and judgment before a holy God. Yet in His love, He has chosen to lavish me with mercy and grace. Not because I'm good. Not because I chose Him. Not because He looked into eternity's future and saw that I would chose Him. No, but because before the foundation of the world in love, He predestined us for adoption. so that He would get the praise for His glorious grace. The doctrine of predestination is a God-centered doctrine. God performs the work of salvation. We are just merely recipients. We are merely recipients and we are responders. And we should respond by praising His glorious grace. Are there difficult things to wrestle with? Absolutely. There are. There are difficult things to grapple with. There are things I don't understand. But I would rather trust God with those things that I don't understand and that are hard for me to believe. I would rather put that in His court than to take a step off the ladder and to believe a doctrine that allows just a little bit of man's boasting. Even if it's just a little bit. I would rather my belief to be solely Deo Gloria. To the glory of God alone. Now, some may be saying, yeah, but. Especially if you've come from a background, maybe where salvation is more, it's more man centered and more focused on you and what you do, you may be saying, but if salvation is for my good, if it's ultimately for my good, then I feel like it's taking away from the glory of God because it's about me. You've got to kill that type of thinking. You have got to crucify that line of reasoning because the Bible from beginning to end bids us. It commands us. It demands. us to confess that there are no other gods. That there is no other way of salvation. That there is no other hope for us. It commands that we believe that. That there are no other saviors. God says look for salvation in no other. Look in verse 21 at the latter half of that. He says, and there is no other God besides Me, a righteous God and a Savior. There is none besides Me. So what do we do? Verse 22, he says, turn to Me and be saved. All the ends of the earth. There are no other gods. There's no other refuge. the wrathful God against sin. No one can spare you from my judgment on sin except for me. Turn to me, be saved, run to me. I will lavish you with grace. I will lavish you with mercy. I'll bring you into my family so that you can enjoy the love that me and my son and my spirit have for one another. I will bring you into that love, not because you're good, not because you're wise, not because there's anything of any good in you, but because I am love and I am good and I bid you to come to me. Would you come to Him? Peter says, there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved. And we see Jesus Himself all throughout the Gospels bidding people to come to Him. We read it again. I did not know you were going to read this, brother. Come to Me. All who labor and are heavy laden. This is the call of the lowly, humble servant. Come to Me. If you are wore out by works, if you are burdened by sin, if the guilt of condemnation is weighing on your soul, come to me, come to me and I will give you rest. He says, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Anyone. If you are not satisfied with the gods of this world, if you are not satisfied with sin, and you shouldn't be, come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Brother or sister, your salvation does not detract from the glory of God. Your salvation is the primary way. that God shows His glory in the earth. You know, later on in that prayer, in John 17, Jesus says, Father, I desire that they be with Me to see the glory that You have given Me because You have loved Me. I desire that they be there, that they see that, that they rejoice in that, that they enjoy that forever. And because He desires that, He comes down. He empties Himself. He dies in your place. And He gives you eternal life so that you can witness the love that the Father and the Son have for one another. And that you can be brought into that love and enjoy that love. Because Jesus teaches that by union with Him, God the Father sees any who come to Jesus the same way He sees His Son. And if you are in Christ, God the Father loves you the same way He loves His Son. That's the power of the Lord Jesus' death for you. None of us would have chosen this story. No one would have made this story up. Only and always God. God the Father. God the Son. In God the Spirit all worked the work of salvation so that, as he says in verse 25, in the Lord all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory. In Galatians 37, Paul says those who are of faith our children of Abraham, the true Israel, the true offspring of Jacob, are those that God has brought out of exile, out of sin, out of darkness, and into marvelous light through belief in His Son. And He has laid up an inheritance for them, for their good. Yet, it is all solely Deo Gloria. So let me just conclude with putting before you two ways that we can respond to all of this. Allow these truths to crucify anything in you that wants to boast. Fall on your face and worship Him. Bend your knee willfully to the King. Get in line with what He is doing. Get in line with His story. Acknowledge His mercy and grace and praise Him for it. Fear Him. Fear Him that, God, You should crush me. I am nothing before You. Yet You bring me near to You in love. That should not cause us to sin, brothers and sisters. That should not give us license to sin. Grace should not permit sin. Grace should kill sin. Because we say a God that is so holy, so righteous, so angry against sin, has poured out His wrath on His own Son to bring us near. That should cause us to crucify sin. And to walk in holiness. To fear Him. Let the Spirit rot humility in your hearts. God did not save you for you. He saved you for Him. And you're the recipient of all the good gifts of His mercy and His grace. And number two, lastly, receive this salvation with joy. Receive it with joy. The Bible gives you permission as a child of God to rejoice in your salvation. We as Christians, we walk around so beat down, so burdened, so discouraged. And I'm not telling us to be chipper. I'm not telling us to turn a blind eye to all the evils and all the sufferings. We do suffer. We do mourn. We do long for the new heaven and the new earth. I know that. But we walk around so beat down when we shouldn't. Our King is on the throne. And we are in Him. And we will rejoice with Him forever. You, brother and sister, you are a joint heir with Christ and a child of the Most High God. Live like it. Believe it. Live consistently with who He has made you to be. And go from this place and shine. as lights in a dark world. Let the light of Christ, not the pride of religion, not the pride of theological knowledge, not thinking that you're better than people because you don't do this or do that. No, no, no, no. But the joy of knowing that you have been redeemed out of darkness and into light by His mercy, by His grace alone, for the glory of God alone. Go into the world and shine. and preach this truth to others and bid them to come and to receive this everlasting water that many would stand around the throne of the Lamb and sing His praises forever. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we are just We cannot comprehend Your glory fully. But You have given us Your Word and You've given us Your Spirit. And so I pray for all the brothers and sisters in this room that they could receive the truth of Scripture and that they would delight in it. and that they would respond to it rightly, and that they would go from this place with joy and with gratitude, and that they would live as little lights in this world. And Father, if there are any in this room who do not know You, they are in opposition to You. You are their enemy. We pray that they could hear the voice of the Son of God calling, and receive me. We pray for the miracle of the rebirth and for conversion. And Lord, I ask that this church, that every individual and corporately, that we would exist for the glory of God alone. We ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen.