Thank you, Brother Art. Let's
turn in our Bibles to Psalm 115. Now again, this first verse,
just grab me and I'm going to just try to preach to you from
this first verse. This is the cry of everybody
who God has made to see that we are a vile, God-hating sinner
by nature. And yet God has saved us by Christ,
made us righteous and accepted. This is our cry right here, verse
one. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto
us, but unto thy name give glory for thy mercy and for thy truth's
sake. When you come to a verse that
speaks of God's glory, it's good to camp out there. Because this
is really the difference right here. This is really the difference.
This is the difference between the true gospel that our Lord
sends and that, those many other false gospels that are not a
gospel at all. This is the difference right
here. With the false gospel, man gets some glory. Man has
something to glory in somewhere in salvation. Something he's
done. But in the true gospel, only
God gets the glory. He gets all the honor and the
praise because salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the
Lord. This is the new heart God gives
in those born again of God. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto
us, but unto thy name give glory for thy mercy and for thy truth's
sake. I want to just divide this into
three parts. We see what the child of God does not want. We
see what the child of God does want, and we see why the child
of God wants this. First of all, those that are
born of the Spirit of God do not want the glory that belongs
to God. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto
us. We don't want the glory that
belongs to God. Now, as we came into this world, every sinner
that comes into this world wants the glory that belongs to God,
and we did too. Every sinner that's born of Adam,
the nature's conceived in corruption, and man comes forth wanting the
glory that belongs to God. He wants to be praised for something.
He wants to be honored for something. He wants to say he did some little
part in his salvation. We wanted glory in spiritual
things, but we also wanted glory in natural things. mainly natural
things as we came into this world because we wanted to be praised
for our ambitious moves that we so wisely made in the world
and how we made this happen and that happen and all those things. Just wanting glory for how we
built up our state, what we've done, how well we've managed
our affair. And we couldn't take the next
breath without God. We couldn't bat our eye one more
time without God. But in a new man that's born
of God and taught of God, we don't want the glory because
we do not have anything to glory
in. And we see that now. We just
don't have anything to glory in. We did the sinning. We can take credit for that.
We can take all the credit for our sin. That's what we can take
credit for. God did the saving. When it comes
to the saving, we have to give God all the glory. We can't boast
in being born again. That's entirely of God the Holy
Spirit. We had as much to do with our new birth as we did
a first birth. You can't make yourself be born again. Our nature
before the new birth was sin. We were dead, spiritually dead
in sin. We were guilty in trespasses
because we sinned in Adam. We came forth guilty and spiritually
dead. What can a dead man do? Nothing. Nothing. We didn't do anything
to make ourselves be born again. You could preach how to be born
again all you want to. It ain't gonna help a dead man. The Lord has to do the work,
and the Lord does the work. And this is the difference. And
the Lord makes you see, when he's given you life, he makes
you see in yourself and in your sin nature, there's no difference
in you and the worst reprobate in the world. Not a bit. Everything
you see other sinners do in this world, you're capable of doing.
Everything that you see them do. It's in you. It's in you. And God's the only reason you
don't do it. God birthed us, and he granted us repentance,
and he gave us faith to believe Christ, and our conversion's
all of God, and he's preserving us to this day. We just don't
have anything to glory in. The fact that new birth is all
of God and that every spiritual gift is of God shows us that
God's election was all of grace. Think about it. The fact He gives
you life and gives you faith and gives you repentance and
gives you the fruit of the Spirit shows you God didn't look down
through time and see if you'd believe. He gave you everything
to make you believe. God's election is of grace, free
grace, by God's grace. We can't glory in our justification.
We didn't do anything to justify ourselves. We had to die. We had to die. And we couldn't
die and satisfy justice and live. We couldn't do that. So we didn't
do anything to justify ourselves. It wasn't by our works that we
justified ourselves. That's not so. It was all of
our Lord who sent his Son who put away our sins justly before
God and accomplished redemption of his people for God our Father
and for his people. That's what he did. We can't
boast in our sanctification. and cannot boast in our sanctification.
The Pharisees are called separate ones because they separated themselves.
And as I said to you Thursday night, it's the spirit that's
different. The spirit is different. The spirit in spite of separates
themselves and the spirit in spite of it's been separated
by God is entirely different. A person that's separated themselves
is haughty and arrogant, and if they find a sinner that's
sinned, they ain't gonna let it go, because it makes them
feel good about themselves. But if you've been separated
by God... You know what a vile wretch you are. You know what
a puddle of puke you are. And you know that anything you
have in you that's good, that's working in you, is God. He did it. He separated you. He made you holy. By His Holy
Spirit, by His Holy Word, by His Holy Presence, He entered
into the tabernacle and glorified the whole place. That's who God
is. And right now your sin nature is so sinful that he still has
to be holding this to the Lord for you so that your iniquity-laden
gifts come up to God wholly because everything we do has evil mixed
with it. Everything. We can't glory in
our sanctification. And the Lord's people don't want
to. Every good work is of God, where His workmanship. He ordained
the good works His people are going to walk in, and we're going
to walk in them, because they're going to be worked in you by
God, and you're going to do the good works God ordained for you
to do. And this is the thing about it. When you do anything
that's good, tell me this doesn't happen with you. As soon as you
do anything that's good, do you not have an old man of sin in
you patting you on the back? Do you not have an old man of
sin in you saying, you've got something to glory in now? That's
a foul God-hating sinner that's in you still. And you've got
to be safe from him. You've got to be safe from him.
He's in me too. With every good work, we don't
have a reason to boast in anything. He did it all. He did it all. We can't even boast in the daily
things we have in this life. Everything we have in this life
came from the hand of God. Everything. We don't ask God,
when we're praying to God and we're asking God to bless us
and provide for us in this life, we don't ask God to bless us
based on any merit in us. If he blesses us, it's going
to be pure grace. We can't come to God and say,
well, I did this and that and the other, now bless me. No,
no, not God's child. You want him to have the glory.
ever provisions of his free and sovereign grace. Now listen to
this from Romans 11, 34. Can I back all this up from scripture?
I got one verse for you that back the whole thing up. You
ready? Who hath known the mind of the Lord? Who hath been his
counselor? Who is first given to him? Now listen now. Who in the history
of mankind, who's ever been the first to give to him? and it'll be recompensed to him
again. God said, if you find me one sinner in this world that
ever gave, was the first to give me anything, I'll give it back
to him. Everything we have was given
to us. For of him and through him and to him are all things. To whom be glory forever. He gets the glory. He gets the
glory. He gets the glory. If thou be
righteous, let's say you did what was right, what have you
given to God? Job 35.7, if thou be righteous,
what givest thou to him? What's he receiving of your hand? You just did what you should
have done. You didn't give God anything. He's God. He's the
self-sufficient, self-contained, I am. What are we going to give
to him? He said, every beast of the forest is mine. He said,
the cattle up on a thousand hills, I know all the fowls of the mountains.
The wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I
wouldn't tell you. That's what God said. For the
world's mine in the fullness thereof. So who maketh he to differ from
another? What do you have that you did not receive? You see
what receive means? What do you have that wasn't
given to you first? God gave it to you first. It's
of him, through him, to him. And if we received it and we
know this, then why do we glory as if we didn't receive it? God's
gonna keep his child. We have plenty of that self-glory
creeping up in us, don't we? God's gonna keep his child from
glorying himself. He's gonna make us see we just
ain't that important. He gonna get the glory. All right,
secondly, back there in our text, Psalm 115, one, those regenerated
and taught of God want God to have all the glory. Not unto
us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory. God's taught his child his name.
That's how we're saved. We're saved by his name, by his
name. And our desire is unto thy name
give glory. That is really the heart of everybody
born of God. That's our heart. You want him
to have the glory. You want him to have the glory.
His name. Because his name's who he is.
God's name is who he is. The Lord of hosts is his name. The Lord of Sabaoth, He made
everything, He rules everything, and everything's coming to pass
by His sovereign hand exactly as He would have it come to pass.
He's the Lord of Hosts. Everything is ruled by Him. Everything. Inanimate and animate. All of
it ruled by Him. Everything. If a leaf falls off
a tree out there, He did it. If a sparrow falls to the ground,
He did it. If a hair fell out of your head this morning, He
did it. He numbers him. He knows how many there are.
This is him. And he said, as I said to you
this morning, his name's Wisdom and Judgment. He purposed to
end from the beginning. That's why he tells us the things
he'll do beforehand. He said in Isaiah, I can't remember
exactly where it's at, but he told them, he said, I'm telling
you all this beforehand, and so when I bring it to pass, you'll
know I brought it to pass, and you won't attribute it to one
of your dumb idols. That's what he told them. He said, In Isaiah
42, 9, Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things
do I declare. Before they spring forth, I tell
you of them. God saves sinners for His namesake,
and true believers ask God to save us for His namesake. Everything
we petition God for, we're asking Him for His namesake. His namesake
is Christ. Christ is where His names manifest.
That's why we pray in His name. We come to God in no other name.
There's no other name under heaven whereby we must be saved. He
alone. All His name manifests in the
Lord Jesus. So we pray, help us, O God of
our salvation, for the glory of Thy name. And deliver us and
purge away our sins for Thy name's sake. Well, that's what you prayed.
when he was made to know you as a sinner in the beginning.
No, no. Today. Today. Deliver us. Purge away our sins for thy name's
sake. Well, let me make an illustration
here. The nation of Israel, all the
children of Israel, they were similar to everybody who claims
in this world to believe Christ. Everybody that The visible church
that goes under the banner of Christ, the whole nation of Israel
was similar to that. That was the visible church in
the wilderness. But you know Romans 9 tells us
plainly that not all in Israel were God's Israel. The children
of the flesh were not Israel, only those born of the Spirit,
created by the miraculous birth of God the Holy Spirit just like
Isaac was. That's who the true Israel was. And all were under the name of
Israel, just like everybody that claims to be Christ is going
under the name of Christ. So many take that name in vain.
Why did God not destroy that whole nation? Now, do you realize
this, that when they were in Egypt, Ezekiel will tell you
this, when they was in Egypt, God sent Moses to them, they're
slaves in Egypt. And he sent Moses to them, they
were serving the idols of Egypt. This is Jacob's children who
knew about Isaac and knew about Abraham, knew about their father
and the true God that they were made to worship. And now they're
down in Egypt and they're worshiping idols. And God sent Moses to
them and he said, cast ye away every man the abominations of
his eyes. And defile not yourself with
the idols of Egypt, and I'm the Lord your God." Now, there was
some in there that was his people, that he made hear that in the
heart. But there was a bunch of folks in there that wasn't
his people. They didn't hear it, and they kept right on worshiping
their idols. And God said, God said, I thought to pour out my
fury and my wrath on them and destroy them. You know why he
didn't? Here's why I didn't. I wrought for my name's sake,
that it should not be polluted, that my name should not be polluted
before the heathen among whom they were and whose sight I made
myself known unto them in bringing them forth of the land of Egypt.
That happened in Egypt. Then they came out in the wilderness. He brought them out in the wilderness.
They saw all those judgments. They saw God split the Red Sea.
Mighty works they saw. Just on a natural level, don't
you think of, I said on a natural level, you'd think you'd fall
down and say, Lord, I believe you, but it's not so. We can't
do that. Our nature is not, it won't bow
to God. And he brought them out in that
wilderness and they kept on and God said, I'll pour out my fury
upon them in the wilderness to consume them, but I wrought for
my namesake. That my name should not be polluted
before the heathen in whose sight I brought them out. That's Ezekiel
20. That's what God said. Then in
Canaan, he carries them into Canaan. Tells them again, worship
me. Keep my commandments. And they
went to every high hill. They had the tabernacle where
God said I'll make my presence known, where the offerings were
made. They went to every high hill. God said they went to the
grove where the shade trees was just because there was shade
there. and worshiped idols. And God said, I'm going to scatter
them among the nations. And when he did scatter them
among the nations, you know what they did? They just picked up
the idolatry of the nations. Over and over, God said, I destroyed
them not for one reason, for my name's sake. That's why. You apply this to the world as
a whole. Since the whole world fell in Adam, every sinner naturally
is religious. I don't care if men say they
don't worship. Every man has some kind of idea
of a God in his mind. And every man, most everybody,
has some form of worship, no matter what name it goes under.
And everybody that has their idol calls it worshiping God. And then you have folks who are
in the visible church that go by the name of Christ that are
worshipping their will and their works. Why hasn't God destroyed it all? There's a multitude. The Jews
require a sign. And you look at religion. That's
mostly what it is. It's trying to give a sign to
people. All our humanitarian deeds and
all our ministries we have and advertising alms deeds that Christ
said, don't do that to be seen of men. But that's what they're
marketing to try to get people to join them. Why hadn't God
destroyed it? Natural men got to have something
they can see. They got to have something they can see with their
eye because they ain't got the Spirit of God speaking to their
heart. So what is it? Why hadn't God destroyed it?
For my name's sake. That's why. That's the only reason.
For my name's sake. That's the only reason. It's
for the glory of God's name. God the Father chose to save
a people in Christ by His grace to manifest His great name. And it's in Christ that He gonna
manifest His name. That's where His name's manifest.
Christ is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. You wanna see
God's holiness? Look to Christ. What's required? What's God required to receive
us? Look to Christ crucified. We've got to die. We've got to
come out of the grave. We've got to be made new. It
requires perfect righteousness. That's who God is. It requires
sinless perfection. We've got to be born of God.
A new man's got to be created. We've got to be robed in the
righteousness of Christ or God can't have a thing to do with
us. This is who God is. How long-suffering
is God? Look from the foundation of the
world to this day right now. Why hasn't God destroyed it?
Why has He suffered so long? He's long-suffering to us. He's
long-suffering to His people. He's going to call His people
out. That's why He's long-suffering. Why? For the sake of His name,
for Christ's sake. That's why He's doing it. The
Spirit of God is going to get His glory too. God the Father
entered a covenant with the Son. to save a people and give them
to the Son. The Son entered covenant with
the Father to lay down His life for His people and bring them
to the Father spotless, without blame, by everything He's done,
who He is. The Spirit of God entered that
covenant. He's a person in the Godhead. He entered that covenant
to be the one that quickens them and calls them and keeps them
and teaches them. And the triune God is going to
get all the glory in Christ. This is for the glory of His
great name. He told Abraham, he said this
to the children of Israel, he said, I lifted my hand to Abraham.
Well, before the foundation of the world, he did the same when
he entered covenant, when God entered covenant with God. He
lifted his hand, he's going to save his people. Well, when he
saved Abraham, he made that covenant with Abraham. He didn't give
Abraham things to do. He told Abraham, believe me,
Abraham, walk before me and be perfect. Because in Christ he
was perfect. That's the only way he could
walk before God. That's the only way God could receive him. And
he said, you believe me, Abraham, I'm your shield. I'm your exceeding
great reward. And it was by God that he kept
walking in faith and looking to God. But he raised up his
hand to Abraham and said, you're going to have a spiritual seed.
He promised Abraham that. Ishmael wasn't, he wasn't a spiritual
seed of Abraham. That was his own doing. Who's
his spiritual seed? Paul said, if you're Christ,
then are you Abraham's seed. It's those he births again in
the heart makes new. He raised his hand to Israel.
He's elected in Israel and told them, you're going to have a
spiritual seed. You're going to have spiritual sons and daughters.
And God's making good on his promise because that's his name.
He's going to do it for His name's sake. Salvation of chosen sinners
is for the glory of God's name. Redemption was for the glory
of God's name. God calling us and saving us
and preserving us is for the glory of His name. And He promised this. He said,
from holy Mount Zion. And that's what He's talking
about in the height of His mountain. That's what He's talking about.
Read Hebrews 12. You've not come to Mount Sinai
that quaked and trembled. You've come to Mount Zion. You
come to the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You come
to Christ, the mediator, to God the judge, to the spirits of
just men made perfect, and Christ promised from His holy mountain.
And it's a gospel age we've been living in since He came. He said,
I'm going to send forth my gospel from my holy mountain, and I'm
calling my people. And He said, in that day, listen
to this. This is from Ezekiel 20, 43.
He said, this is what's going to happen when He calls His people.
Ezekiel 20, 43, he said, There shall you remember your ways
and all your doings wherein you've been defiled, and you shall loathe
yourselves in your own sight for all your evils that you have
committed. And you shall know that I am
the Lord when I have wrought with you for my name's sake. Not according to your wicked
ways, not according to your corrupt doings, O you house of Israel,
saith the Lord God. He told him through Isaiah, for
my own sake, even for my own sake will I do it. For how shall
my name be polluted? I will not give my glory to another.
He said, I the Lord build the ruined. There's an italicized
word after the word ruin. But the translators put it there.
But Ezekiel 36, 32, the Lord says, I, the Lord, build the
ruined. That's me and you who he saved.
We're the ruined. I, the Lord, build the ruined
and plant that that was desolate. I, the Lord, have spoken. I will
do it. God's people know his name, and
we know something about that. We know this salvation is according
to his name, it's for the glory of his name, and so God's people
say, not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give
the glory. And then lastly, go back now
to Psalm 115. Here's why we want God to have
all the glory, right here. because we see God's glory in
Christ crucified. Look here at the last part. Unto
thy name give glory for, because of thy mercy and for thy truth's
sake. God makes his people behold his
glory in Christ, in Christ crucified. He makes us behold God's glory.
It says unto thy name give glory for thy mercy and for thy truth's
sake. The whole purpose of Christ crucified
was to declare God's glory. That's what it was for. It was
to declare God's glory. It was to show that God is a
just God. That's His truth sake. He's a
just God. Everything He does is true. More
true than me and you can ever even fathom. He's a just God. And He's a merciful God. He's
a Savior. He's a just God and a Savior.
That's what you see in Christ on the cross. He's a just God
and a Savior. He's going to slay the guilty
in justice and have mercy on the same ones He slays. And there
ain't a man that could figure that out. That's His wisdom.
That's His power. That's how, that makes Him God
above everybody else. Old Darius, or Darius, however
you want to pronounce it, he was a king there. You know, he
made that decree. They tricked him into signing
that law. Any man caught praying to any other god, he'd be executed. Daniel prayed to the Lord. They
brought him before him and said, he's guilty. And to rise to labor
all night long, trying to figure out the laws of the meetings
and the persons had to be upheld. He couldn't figure out, how am
I going to kill this man and save this man? He couldn't figure
it out. And no man could figure it out.
And so what did he end up doing? He threw him in the lion's den.
He said, I trust you, God. And God saved him. God saved
him. Well, that's what happened on
the cross. That's what was taking place on the cross. Christ is
the one in whom God could be just and justifies people. He's
the one in whom God could be merciful, in whom God could be
true and save his people. And that's the very purpose he
sent his son into this world, is to manifest this glory of
God. This is what he said in Romans 3.25. God set Christ forth
to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to declare
his righteousness. That's the purpose. For the remission
of sins that are past to the forbearance of God. That's just
my past sin. When he died, all your sins was
past sin. All your sins was. They say that's
not my future sin. When he died, all your sins was
future sin. He put them all away. That's
what righteousness is. That's what justification is.
He made his people justified. No record, past, present, or
future. of ever sinning at all. It's hard for us to grasp that,
isn't it? It's hard for us to grasp that. Because you sit here
right now and have sinned since you've been sitting here. It's
hard for us to grasp that God says before him, before his holy
august seat of judgment, we have no sin. That's how thoroughly
Christ put away the sin of his people. This is everything to
the believer. This is why we cry and want him
to have the glory. Men say, you can't preach that
or make people sin. Everybody that's out trying to
do good works to come to God by those works are sinning because
they're not giving God all the glory. The only way you're going
to give God the glory is to hear this message that gives Him all
the glory and Him bless it to your heart so that you don't
want any of the glory. Good works are not good works
just for the sake of because they did somebody good. It's
a wicked work if it's a man trying to come to God by it. God's going to get the glory.
And if He ain't getting the glory, if we don't have what we do,
we're not doing it by faith in Christ alone, trusting Him alone. If we're doing it for a mercenary
reason because we're trying to get God to give us something
in this life or in the life to come, then He's not going to
have it. We got a reward in heaven. You
know what it is? It's the Lord Jesus Christ. Tell
me what you want more than Him. Is there anything you want more
than Christ? You want to live on the rich
side of heaven while others live on the poor side? What kind of
righteous place would that be? There won't be such a thing.
He makes his people equally righteous and equally holy and equally
accepted before him and he says come inherit the kingdom prepared
for you from before the foundation of the world by my father. And
he's going to give it to his people and he's going to get
the glory. His justice, his mercy, his wisdom,
his faithfulness, his long-suffering, everything we know about God
can be summed up in Christ crucified. This is why God's preachers are
taken up with preaching Christ and Him crucified. This is like
I tried to show you the other day. This is the engine. This
is the power that makes you want to obey Him. This is the power
that makes you want to honor Him in your life. This is the
power that makes you get up off your face when you failed in
everything and have sinned against Him. It's knowing I'm His and
He's mine and He's keeping me and I want Him to have the glory.
He keeps you going. Keeps you walking and following
Him and trusting Him. He keeps reminding you, you're
not your own, you're bought with a price, so glorify God in your
body and in your spirit. That's the only way we mortify
this flesh, is Him making you see Him and making you see His
power and making you see His glory in what He's done for you.
That's when you want to serve Him. It's when we start looking
at ourselves and trying to see what we've done for God and start
thinking we've done something for God and thinking we're important
and we're needed and the church can't survive without us. God,
I'll put you on your face in a minute and show you I don't
need you. I'm giving you the privilege of using you. But I don't have to. That's the
God we serve. He's going to get the glory.
And we're going to gladly, willingly give it to him because we want
him to have it. You say, how could he chase somebody so sorely
like that and they come out of that wanting him to have the
glory? Because he don't fail. He makes you see what a loving,
how loving it was to not let you be condemned with the rest
of this world. How loving it was for him to turn you again
and show you, give me the glory that's mine. And by turning you,
and by bringing you back to Him, and making you see Him, and making
you continue walking, following Christ, that's what makes you
know the glory belongs to Him. Because if He'd have let you
go on, where would you be? If He'd have let you keep going,
where would you be? The Lord, I've seen it time and time again,
you've heard it said, the Lord uses a lot of scaffolding to
build His church. He'll bring men in, and they'll be big contributors
to the work, and they'll be doing a lot of work, and look like
they're doing a lot of work, and he's just doing it to provide
for his church. When he gets it built, he'll
just pull the scaffolding away. He don't need me and you. You
know that. You know that. It's not that
somebody else know it. Do you know it? That's what matters.
Do you know it? You get along with God and find
out if you know it. It ain't what your mama believed, it ain't
what your daddy believed, it ain't what your sister, your
brother, anybody else, it ain't what your preacher believes,
it ain't what this group or that group believes. What do you think
of Christ? Every creature, this is what
we're going to spend eternity doing, brethren. Revelation 5
13 said every creature which is in heaven and on the earth
and under the earth Such as are in the sea and all that are in
them heard I saying is what he heard I'm saying right here Blessing
and honor and glory and power be unto him that sitteth upon
the throne and unto the lamb forever and ever Amen, can you
say amen to that? Amen All right, brother