The promise of blessing or curse
Deuteronomy 11 sets before Old Covenant Israel a stark choice: obedience leading to blessing in the land, or disobedience leading to curse and exile. The sermon traces three sections of the chapter — the works of God in Israel's history, the requirement of obedience, and the promise of blessing or curse — showing how the covenant of works that Israel repeatedly broke is fulfilled by Christ, the true Israel of God, who bore the covenant curse on the cross. The Apostle Paul's argument in Galatians 3 is brought to bear: all who trust in works of law are under the curse, but Christ has redeemed his people from that curse by becoming a curse for them, so that the blessing of Abraham comes upon the Gentiles through faith alone.
The Psalmist's Cry in an Age of Deceit
Psalm 12 confronts the believer with a world of flattering lips, double hearts, and lying tongues — both outside and inside the professing church — and asks how the righteous can persevere when the foundations are being destroyed. The sermon argues that the psalm is preeminently the prayer of Christ in his earthly ministry, who faced this same godless opposition and who, as the incarnate covenant head, is the definitive fulfilment of verse 5's divine promise to arise and set the oppressed in safety. The contrast between the corrupt words of the wicked (verses 1–4) and the pure, tried word of God (verses 5–8) teaches that theology, prayer, and dependence upon Scripture are the appointed means by which the pilgrim church endures in a present evil age. Unbelievers are warned that the autonomy expressed in verse 4 — 'our lips are our own, who is Lord over us?' — leads to the judgment of God, and are called to kiss the Son before his wrath is kindled.
The Apostle's Charge to Timothy
Paul's charge to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:3–7 exposes a crisis in the Ephesian church: false teachers devoted to fables and endless genealogies were generating disputes rather than the godly edification that flows from sound doctrine. The sermon traces two movements in the passage — the apostolic charge to silence the heterodox and the anatomy of the false teachers' departure from the law — demonstrating that gospel ministry is driven by love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. The application presses churches to hold elders to the qualifications of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, to refuse a pulpit to the unqualified, and to guard the congregation against any teaching that diverts attention from the truth as it is in Jesus.
2LCF Chap. 22 Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day
The regulative principle of worship — that God alone prescribes acceptable worship through his revealed Word — is the governing claim of 2LCF Chapter 22, paragraphs 1 and 2. The confession grounds this in natural theology: the light of nature declares that God exists and deserves worship, but general revelation cannot instruct the creature in how that worship is to be conducted. Scripture alone, from Deuteronomy 12 through 1 Timothy 3 and Hebrews 12, maintains that God's people are neither to add to nor take away from what he has commanded in public worship. The sermon calls hearers to reject the normative principle of worship and instead color strictly within the lines God has drawn, worshiping with reverence and godly fear rather than with entertainment, felt-need satisfaction, or cultural innovation.
Ask FGBC #64: Who Should Catechize Your Children?
The Central Demand of the Covenant
Deuteronomy 10 confronts Israel — and every subsequent reader — with the central demand of the covenant: to fear God, love Him, walk in all His ways, and serve Him with undivided heart and soul. The first eleven verses narrate the renewal of the Sinaitic covenant after the golden calf catastrophe of Exodus 32, demonstrating that Israel's continuation rested entirely on divine long-suffering and the intercession of Moses, not on any righteousness of their own. Verses 12–22 then press the covenantal demand that runs from Genesis 18 through Micah 6:8 and into Matthew 23, showing that the people always knew what God required but consistently failed to live accordingly. The passage finally anticipates what only the new covenant can accomplish: the circumcision of the heart wrought by the Spirit through the gospel of the true Israel, Jesus Christ, apart from any merit in the creature.
The Courage of the Righteous One
The Introduction to First Timothy
Paul's apostolic authority and his commission 'by the commandment of God our Savior' stand at the center of 1 Timothy 1:1–2, establishing both the legitimacy of Paul's office and the delegated authority of Timothy in Ephesus. This introductory sermon traces Paul's missionary journeys, his post-imprisonment ministry, and his relationship with Timothy to locate the Pastoral Epistles within the apostle's life and the history of the early church. The epistle's overarching purpose — directing ministers and churches in conduct, refuting false teaching, and declaring sound doctrine — is shown to be as binding on congregations today as it was on the church at Ephesus. The sermon closes with a call to unbelievers to receive the Christ whom God, the Savior, sent into the world to save sinners.
Ask FGBC #63: What is Baxterianism?
Review Of Israel's Rebellion
Church Reports
Pastoral reports from seven Reformed Baptist churches and church plants across western Canada and one international context form the substance of this Lord's Day gathering. Congregations in Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario — ranging from newly constituted works to established churches of over a hundred attendees — report on membership growth, expository preaching programs, confessional development, and the ordinary means of grace sustaining church life. A detailed report from a pastor in Guadalajara, Mexico describes a three-pillar theological education ministry (seminary, publishing house, and bookstore) aimed at raising up the next generation of confessionally Reformed pastors and theologians for Latin America. The gathering is framed by Psalm 133, prayer, and a closing doxology, expressing the covenantal vision of churches dwelling together in associational unity for the glory of God.
The Danger of Neglecting the Means of Grace
CTF 2026: Dr "Rich Beeke" - books you need to buy!
Being Strengthened
Confessing The Faith - Conference
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Confessing The Faith - Conference
CTF 2026 - Dr Richard Barcellos Book Presentation - A Faithful Steward
CTF 2026: Q&A Panel Discussion
A conference Q&A panel explores difficult questions arising from the doctrine of God's exhaustive decree, including federal headship and the fall, the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, the authorship of sin, the infralapsarian and supralapsarian debate, and the legitimacy of the free offer of the gospel. The panelists frankly acknowledge the limits of creaturely knowledge before the secret things of God, grounding their answers in Scripture, the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, and the tradition of Reformed orthodoxy. Practical counsel closes the session: those newly awakened to Reformed theology are urged to slow down, submit to the ordinary means of grace, read widely before entering debates, and avoid unaccountable online discourse.
CTF 2026 - Session 1: God's Decree in the Puritan Confessions
The doctrine of God's eternal decree, far from being confined to a single chapter, runs as a unifying thread through the entire fabric of the three major Puritan confessions — the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Savoy Declaration, and the Second London Baptist Confession of 1677/1689. Drawing on Isaiah 46:8–11, this lecture traces how the divine decree undergirds Scripture's authority, creation, providence, the fall, the covenant of grace, the person and work of Christ, the ordo salutis, and the final judgment. Because the decree is simply God decreeing — an expression of His eternal, immutable, and holy will — the doctrine is inseparable from the classical Christian doctrine of God in His simplicity, sovereignty, and self-sufficiency. Believers are called to receive this doctrine humbly, to resist both the error of making God the author of sin and the error of bare permission, and to respond with worship as they watch the eternal decree unfold in history.
CTF 2026 - Session 3: Is God the Author of Sin?
The comprehensive decree of God—that he has ordained whatsoever comes to pass—immediately raises two pressing questions: Is God therefore the author of sin, and do a believer's own sins somehow work for their good? Drawing on 1689 LBCF 3.1, Acts 2:23, Acts 17:28, and Romans 8:28, this session argues that God cannot be the author of sin because sin is a privation of good rather than a positive entity, and God, being essentially and immutably good, cannot be the deformed agent that authoring sin would require. The doctrine of concurrence—God acting as the divine first cause while creaturely second causes act according to their own natures—resolves how God upholds sinners in their sinning without being morally implicated in that sin. Believers are called to receive even their falls as instruments in the hand of a sovereign God who overrules the effects of sin to produce humility, dependence, and ultimately a glorified state exceeding even Adam's original condition.
CTF 2026 - Session 2: Introducing “Of God’s Decree”
God's decree, as confessed in Chapter Three of the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, is a revealed mystery demanding both theological precision and creaturely humility. The scope of that decree is comprehensive — God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass — and yet it must be carefully distinguished from God's will of precept, from any necessity of nature, and from any conferral of actual being through the decree itself. Three guiding principles govern the study: the decree is not our moral duty, it remains largely veiled despite scriptural revelation, and any engagement with it requires a robust Creator-creature distinction throughout. The pressing question raised by so radical a scope — whether God is therefore the author of sin — is the burden taken up in the subsequent lecture.
CTF 2026 - Session 4: Pastoral Sermon
Hebrews 2:10 frames the whole of redemptive history as God bringing many sons to glory through the sufferings of Christ, and this sermon traces that theme from the eternal decree of predestination through the means of grace in the present assembly to the consummation awaiting the saints. Drawing on John Owen's exposition of Hebrews, the 1689 London Baptist Confession's chapters on God and election, and John Calvin's theology of creation as a theater of divine glory, the sermon argues that God's eternal purpose is both ultimate — his own glory — and penultimate — the saints' participation in that glory. The congregation is urged to receive the Word, baptism, and the Lord's Supper as present foretastes of the glory to come, and to read creation itself as a stepping stone toward knowing and enjoying God rather than a terminus for the affections.
Ask FGBC Batch 7: Anabaptists, Calvinism, the Well-Meant Offer & More
Ask FGBC #65: Are Reformed Baptists Really Just Anabaptists?
The question of whether Reformed Baptists share roots with the Anabaptists is answered historically and from primary sources: the Particular Baptists arose from English Reformation Congregationalism, not from Anabaptist streams. Scholars such as Matthew Bingham and Jim Renahan have demonstrated from extant 17th-century writings that no traceable literary connection exists between the two movements. The discussion clarifies that surface similarities—believers' membership, rejection of Roman Catholic ecclesiology—do not constitute a common origin, and that the Anabaptists themselves were not a monolithic group. Listeners are encouraged to engage careful historical scholarship rather than repeating unchallenged secondary or tertiary claims.
Ask FGBC 68: Are Reformed Baptists More Baptist or More Reformed?
Ask FGBC 67: Are Piper and MacArthur Reformed Baptists?
Ask FGBC 69: Is the Threefold Division of the Law Biblical?
Baptism in the Old Testament
Why do Old Testament washings, not circumcision, provide the proper framework for understanding Christian baptism? This seminar challenges the common Reformed assumption that circumcision serves as the typological foundation for baptism, arguing instead that the Mosaic washings—particularly priestly consecration and ritual cleansing—point forward to New Testament baptism. The presentation traces how Jesus fulfilled the priestly washing requirement and how believers, as priests under the New Covenant, participate in this symbolic cleansing to approach God's presence. Rather than defending baptism reactively, this approach reclaims the biblical-theological initiative by demonstrating baptism's rich Old Testament foundations.
A Trinitarian Blessing
Why does Paul conclude his most difficult letter with the New Testament's fullest Trinitarian blessing? This benediction reveals how genuine Christian love responds to conflict—not with bitterness or recrimination, but with a prayer that invokes the grace of Christ, the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit upon even the most troublesome believers. Paul's final words demonstrate that the doctrine of the Trinity forms the foundation of all our communion with God, and that grace, love, and fellowship are not rewards for good behavior but the very source from which repentance and obedience flow. The apostle urges us to find hope in this blessing whatever our struggles may be, teaching us to receive Christ's grace in temptation, meditate on God's love in difficulty, and remember the Spirit's presence in weakness.
