What we need in the church, what we need in our Christian understanding is an understanding of the graciousness of grace.

Even the preacher who says that your salvation is 99% of God and 1% of man has stolen from the glory of God.

Maybe you don't like predestination.

Ask yourself, do you like predestination?

If you don't, let me ask you this question.

How do you feel about praising God? And how do you feel about the

grace of God? See, God's word does not see predestination as putting a shadow over God's greatness,

but rather dispelling the shadows from God's greatness, because we see the praise

of the glory of God's grace. Isn't that an interesting conjunction of concepts? That we are praising

the glory of God. Well, of course the glory of God is worthy of praise

and is worthy of adoration and is worthy of exultation. And all Christians know that we should

praise the glory of God. But what specific glory is in view here is the glory of His grace.

That's what we need in the church. That's what we need in our Christian understanding

is an understanding of the graciousness of grace. That we don't discount it, that we do not

borrow from it and rob from it, and say that our

salvation is partly of grace and partly of human endeavor and human merit or human achieving

or human striving or human accomplishment. Even the preacher who says that your salvation is 99% of God and

one percent of man has stolen from the glory of God and has discounted not only by the one percent

percent. It's not just taken away 1% of the glory of God's grace, but it's the

decisive percent that we hold out for, the pivotal 1%, the 1%, the 1% that makes the difference

between eternity in hell or in heaven.

Now, we come together as Christians to express our gratitude and our praise for the glory

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