Bond or Free
Galatians 4:21–31 presents the contrast between Hagar and Sarah as Paul's climactic illustration of the two mutually exclusive ways of standing before God: righteousness by law-keeping and righteousness by faith. Working through the passage under three headings — the illustration described, explained, and applied — the sermon argues that the Judaizers' demand for circumcision and law-observance is a return to the bondage of Mount Sinai, while all who believe in Christ belong to the Jerusalem above, the free woman, born of promise through the Spirit. Listeners are warned against the perpetual temptation to add anything to justification by faith alone, and are called to stand fast in the liberty Christ has secured for his people.
Everlasting Mercy
Psalm 118, the climax of the Egyptian Hallel (Psalms 113–118), is a song of thanksgiving for God's enduring covenant mercy (hesed), sung at Passover to celebrate divine deliverance. The sermon traces three movements in the psalm — God's enduring mercy, God's enduring faithfulness, and God's enduring praise — reading the whole through the lens of its New Testament fulfillment in Jesus Christ, who is the rejected stone become chief cornerstone. The exposition draws out how Christ accomplishes the true Exodus, delivering his people from bondage to sin, and calls hearers to trust in him as the only foundation of salvation, anticipating his second coming with praise rather than judgment.
Free Grace Baptist Church - November 18, 2018 PM
The crucifixion account in Luke 23:26-43 sets the stage for an examination of Christ's words to the dying thief — 'assuredly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise' — as a declaration rich with covenant theology and gospel certainty. The sermon traces Christ's kingship both by his eternal deity and by his mediatorial office, showing that the inscription he bore on the cross corresponds to the handwriting of requirements he cancelled for sinners (Colossians 2:13-14). The assurance spoken to the thief rests on three grounds: the immutable divine promise of the new covenant, the inviolable grip of God's electing love, and the perfection of Christ's blood and righteousness — all of which belong equally to every believer.
The Thief on the Cross
The salvation of the dying thief in Luke 23 is examined as one of the most concentrated demonstrations of vital theology in all the gospel narratives, showing that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone and that the sufficiency of Christ's atoning work requires no supplementary priesthood or sacrifice. The sermon moves through the sobering inscription over Christ's cross, the unrepentant blasphemy of the cursed robber as a window into total depravity, and the remarkable conversion of the penitent thief — a reviler turned praiser — as evidence of sovereign, effectual grace. The thief's confession is shown to be theologically substantive: he acknowledges the fear of God, owns the justice of his condemnation, confesses Christ's innocence, and calls upon Christ as Lord and King. Hearers are called to remember their former state of spiritual bondage, to glory in the amazing grace that has brought them from reviling to worshiping, and to rest in Christ's word to the thief — 'today you will be with me in paradise' — as a word addressed to all who trust in Him.
The Dying Thief and the Prince of Life
The crucifixion scene of Luke 23:38–43 presents three voices: the cursed robber who reviles Christ to his last breath, the dying thief who exercises remarkable faith in a bloodied and apparently defeated king, and the Prince of Life who responds with sovereign assurance. This sermon exposition focuses on Christ's words to the thief — 'Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise' — unpacking the divine promise, immutable love, and perfection of Christ's blood and righteousness that undergird that assurance. The confession of faith's teaching on the perseverance and assurance of the saints illuminates why the thief's salvation is certain, and the same certainty belongs to all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Free Grace Baptist Church - November 11, 2018 PM
What is the most important question ever asked, and what hangs on the answer? This sermon expounds Matthew 16:13–20 as a launching point for a seven-point study in the importance of the knowledge of Christ — Christology as the highest of all sciences. Christ is shown to be the scope of all Scripture, the one on whom eternal life hinges, the substance of the gospel, the only way of salvation, the location of every redemptive benefit, the ground of the church's commission, and the present and future hope of every believer. The practical import moves hearers toward Christ-informed worship, humility, beneficence, and steadfast confession.
The Benefactions of the Ascended Christ
The ascended Christ does not cease his mediatorial activity after the resurrection — he pours out benefactions upon his church. Preaching through Acts 2:22–43, this sermon examines two of three categories of those gifts: his charismatic benefactions (the gift of preachers, the act of preaching, and the Spirit's empowerment for proclamation) and his soteriological benefactions (effectual calling and the forgiveness of sins). Believers are urged to pray for their preachers, to come eager to hear the Word preached, and to give thanks daily for the grace by which God raises dead sinners to life in Christ.
The Importance of the Knowledge of Christ
The most important question ever asked — 'Who do you say that I am?' — exposes a crisis in the contemporary church: a Ligonier survey found that 78% of polled evangelical Christians answered that Jesus Christ is the highest creature of God, effectively the ancient Arian heresy. This sermon works through Matthew 16:13–20 as a launching point, pressing seven reasons why the knowledge of Christ is of supreme importance: He is the scope of Scripture, eternal life hinges on a right knowledge of His person, the gospel is about Him, He is the exclusive way of salvation, all redemptive benefits are found in Him, the church's commission is given by and about Him, and our present and future hope rests in Him alone. The practical import of Christology — rightly defined as the dignity of Christ's person and the virtue of His office — is shown to bear on worship, humility, beneficence, good works, and steadfast confession.
The Imprisonment and Release of the Apostles
Acts 5:17–26 records the arrest, miraculous release, and re-arrest of the apostles at the hands of a Sanhedrin dominated by Sadducees — the very men who denied the existence of angels. The angel who opens the prison doors and the apostles who immediately return to temple preaching together demonstrate that no earthly authority can silence the gospel of Jesus Christ. This passage is treated as a paradigm for the church's experience throughout history: faithful proclamation will always draw persecution, yet Christ is building His church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The sermon calls hearers to remember the globally persecuted church, to pursue the boldness of the apostles, and to believe the words of this life — the gospel of forgiveness and imputed righteousness in Christ.
Free Grace Baptist Church - November 4, 2018 AM
Acts 5:17–26 records the arrest, miraculous release, and re-arrest of the apostles by the Sanhedrin — a body conspicuously heavy with Sadducees who denied the existence of angels, yet found their prisoners freed by an angel of the Lord. The sermon argues that the opposition of governing powers, religious authorities, and persecutors throughout history has never been able to suppress the advance of the gospel, because Christ himself is building his church. Hearers are called to remember the globally persecuted church, to preach the 'words of this life' with apostolic boldness, and to trust that the same gospel that turned the ancient world upside down is still the power of God unto salvation.
The Divine Provision of Eternal Life
Isaiah 55 presents God's gracious and urgent invitation to sinners to receive the fullness of salvation — the refreshment, gladness, and nourishment of the gospel — entirely without cost, because the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 has already satisfied the purchase price. The sermon expounds the chapter in two movements: the invitation to come (vv. 1–5), grounded in the new covenant and secured by the Davidic king, and the call to faith and repentance (vv. 6–13), sustained by the sovereign power of God's Word. Believers are urged to treasure the abundance of every spiritual blessing already given in Christ, and unbelievers are warned not to squander their lives on what cannot satisfy while the Lord may yet be found.
Genesis 9:8-28
Genesis 9:8–28 divides into two sections: God's establishment of the Noahic Covenant with its sign of the rainbow, and the sin of Ham with the subsequent prophetic curse upon Canaan and blessing upon Shem and Japheth. The Noahic Covenant is identified as a common grace covenant securing the stability of the created order so that the covenant of grace may be proclaimed. Noah's prophetic pronouncement in verses 25–27 is treated as programmatic for redemptive history, tracing the two seeds of Genesis 3:15 through the flood into the post-diluvian world, culminating in the Gentile inclusion foreshadowed by 'Japheth dwelling in the tents of Shem' and confirmed at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.
The Continuing Growth of the Church
Acts 5:12–16 presents the continuing growth of the early church through signs and wonders performed by the apostles, the addition of believers to the Lord, and the healing of multitudes from Jerusalem and surrounding cities. The passage raises a sharp question about the nature and purpose of miraculous signs: were they a permanent feature of church life, or did they serve the specific redemptive-historical function of authenticating the apostolic word? This sermon argues that signs and wonders accompanied Moses, the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles precisely to confirm that God was speaking through them, and that the completed canon renders such confirming signs unnecessary — while the power of God continues in the gospel through the Spirit-wrought conversion of sinners. Believers are called to trust the sufficiency of Scripture, gather in unified worship, fear God genuinely, and rest their hope for salvation in faith in Christ alone.
Genesis 9:1-17
The Noahic covenant establishes not only capital punishment but a comprehensive framework for criminal justice that the civil magistrate is bound to apply. Drawing from Genesis 9, Ecclesiastes 8, and the Mosaic civil law, this sermon traces three lesser forms of punishment — restitution, indentured servitude, and corporal punishment — demonstrating that each is governed by due process, proportionality, and a concern for the dignity of the offender as an image-bearer of God. The modern prison system is evaluated against these biblical categories and found to undermine restitution, rehabilitation, and human dignity alike. Hearers are called to think carefully about what Scripture actually teaches concerning crime and punishment rather than dismissing it as barbaric.
Free Grace Baptist Church - October 21, 2018 PM
What does faithful service to God look like when the visible results are devastating and the prophet prays for death? Expounding 1 Kings 19, this sermon argues that Elijah's flight to Horeb and his prayer to die are not evidences of a crisis of faith, self-pity, or ego-driven collapse, but the legitimate grief of a man consumed with jealousy for the glory of Yahweh in a nation that refused to repent even after the most spectacular display of divine power. God's response — rest, food, a theophany, a covenant lawsuit, and the disclosure of seven thousand who had not bowed to Baal — reveals that the backdrop of a servant's depression becomes the showcase for the mercy, sovereignty, and persevering grace of God.
The Judgment of God in the Early Church
Acts 5:1–11 records the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, struck down by God for lying to the Holy Spirit. This sermon works through the passage under two headings: the deceitfulness of the couple (vv. 1–4) and the death they suffered by God's direct judgment (vv. 5–11). The preacher grounds the episode in a high doctrine of God — holy, just, and a consuming fire — and insists that the primary practical lesson is the fear of God, not merely ethical instruction about honesty. The sermon closes with the gospel: no one can stand before this holy Lord God except Christ alone, and all who are savingly united to Him by faith stand in Him.
The Prophet Under the Broom Tree
What was Elijah actually doing under the broom tree — fleeing in faithless self-pity, or acting out of zealous grief for the glory of God? Working through 1 Kings 19:1–18, this sermon challenges the dominant commentatorial tradition that reads Elijah's flight and depression as a crisis of faith, arguing instead that his despondency was provoked by legitimate covenantal grief over Israel's continued apostasy after the contest at Carmel. God's response — rest, food, a journey to Horeb, and a formal covenant lawsuit — vindicates the prophet and reveals the divine program of justice and grace through Hazael, Jehu, Elisha, and a reserved remnant of 7,000. The pastoral application is direct: faithful people suffer depression, and those who minister to them must respond with the same patience, kindness, and provision that Yahweh himself showed to Elijah.
Genesis 9:1-7
Genesis 9:1–7 establishes the Noahic Covenant, which mandates capital punishment as a universal and perpetual ordinance rooted in the image of God — not merely an Old Covenant provision for Israel. This study addresses common biblical objections (Exodus 20:13, Matthew 5:38–42, John 8) and pragmatic objections (deterrence, innocence, forgiveness), arguing that none successfully overthrow the divine mandate of Genesis 9:6, which is confirmed and not abrogated by the New Testament. The session urges listeners to think carefully from Scripture rather than from cultural sentiment, trusting that God's law concerning criminal justice reflects his character and serves the stability of the created order.
Free Grace Baptist Church - October 14, 2018 PM
Depression — what Scripture calls a broken spirit or heavy heart — is a real affliction that has touched the lives of Elijah, Jeremiah, the Apostle Paul, and the Lord Jesus himself. Drawing from repeated passages in the book of Proverbs, alongside First Kings 19, Psalm 88, and Psalm 102, this exposition surveys both the presence of melancholy among the people of God and a range of strategies — physical, psychological, and spiritual — for those who suffer and for those who walk alongside them. The central application is that the sorrowful saint must not abandon the corporate means of grace — the Word, prayer, and the gathered church — which are God's appointed instruments for sustaining the broken spirit.
The Unity and Charity in the Church
Acts 4:32–37 presents Luke's summary portrait of the early Jerusalem church under three headings: its unity, its apostolic instruction, and its generosity. The sermon argues that the voluntary, cheerful sharing of material resources among the believers was not a social programme but the fruit of gospel preaching — the apostles' witness to the resurrection of Christ produced the grace that moved God's people to give. Crucially, the passage grounds charity in justification: the people of God are not charitable in order to be saved, but because they have been saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. Hearers are called to examine whether their own generosity reflects the one-heartedness that true faith produces, and to resist any reduction of Christian giving to state-coerced redistribution or voluntary moralism divorced from the gospel.
Genesis 9:1-17
Genesis 9:1–17 records the establishment of the Noahic covenant, a common grace covenant God makes with all flesh — universal in scope and perpetual in duration — to preserve the created order as the stage for the proclamation of the gospel. The passage divides into the covenant's stipulations (vv. 1–7) and its sign (vv. 8–17), with the stipulations covering the propagation of life, provision through diet, and the protection of life via capital punishment. The theological ground of the death penalty is the image of God: to murder a man is to assault the divine image, and the only commensurate response is execution by the civil magistrate. Romans 13:1–4 confirms that this mandate is not confined to the Mosaic economy but continues wherever civil government wields the sword as God's appointed avenger.
The Prayer of the Church
Acts 4:23–31 records the first corporate prayer meeting of the apostolic church, gathered under threat from the Sanhedrin. The sermon traces three movements in the prayer — invocation of God as Creator and sovereign, exposition of Psalm 2 as prophetic preparation for the rage of nations against Christ and His people, and supplication not for the removal of threats but for boldness to preach the Word. The central argument is that a robust theology of creation, scriptural authority, and divine sovereignty is the necessary foundation of faithful prayer, and that the church's primary calling — confirmed by what the early church actually asked of God — is the bold proclamation of the gospel.
Free Grace Baptist Church - October 7, 2018 AM
The corporate prayer of Acts 4 reveals the theological convictions and missional priorities of the early church under threat. Working through the structure of invocation, exposition, and supplication, this sermon argues that the church's primary calling is the bold proclamation of God's Word — not social programming, entertainment, or the removal of opposition. The apostolic church did not pray for safety or the destruction of enemies but for courage to preach in the midst of hostility, a pattern that exposes and corrects the consumer-driven drift of contemporary evangelicalism.
Free Grace Baptist Church - October 7, 2018 AM
Acts 4:23–31 records the prayer of the apostolic church immediately after Peter and John were threatened by the Sanhedrin and commanded to stop preaching in the name of Jesus Christ. The sermon examines the structure of that prayer — its invocation of God as sovereign Creator, its exposition of Psalm 2 as prophetic warrant for the opposition Christ and his people face, and its petition for boldness in proclamation — showing how the church's confidence rested not on political calculation but on the certainty that God's decree governs even the rage of rulers against his anointed. The congregation is called to pray Scripture back to God, to find stability in the doctrines of creation and divine sovereignty, and to expect and endure opposition to the gospel without retreating from the duty of proclamation.
Reasons to Thank God
Psalm 103 summons the soul to deliberate, comprehensive praise — not as a once-yearly exercise but as the daily discipline of the redeemed. Working through David's three-part structure (the reminder to bless God, the reasons to bless God, and the exhortation to bless God), this exposition traces the spiritual and temporal gifts catalogued in the psalm, dwelling especially on the infinite, thorough, tender, sympathetic, and enduring character of divine mercy. The sermon warns that forgetfulness of God's benefits — as Deuteronomy repeatedly demonstrates — is the seedbed of apostasy, and it closes with a call to find in the cross of Christ the only sure foundation for a life of grateful blessing.
Genesis 8:1-22
Genesis 8 records the abatement of the flood, the exit of Noah's family from the ark, and God's covenantal promise never again to destroy every living creature by water. The chapter is structured as a mirror image of chapter 7: everything that came upon the earth in judgment now reverses in restoration. Noah's first act upon leaving the ark is not to secure food or shelter but to build an altar and offer burnt offerings — the response of a man who walks with God by grace through faith. God's promise in verses 21–22 establishes what will be developed in chapter 9 as the Noahic Covenant, a common-grace covenant that stabilises the created order so that God's redemptive purposes may unfold until Christ comes to deal definitively with sin.
Free Grace Baptist Church - September 30, 2018 PM
Psalm 143 confronts the fundamental problem of human unrighteousness: in God's sight no one living is righteous, and David's only refuge is not his own covenant faithfulness but God's righteousness, faithfulness, and hesed. The sermon traces David's two movements — his appeal to God's righteousness in the face of a crushed soul (vv. 1–6) and his petitions for God's guidance as a troubled servant (vv. 7–12) — showing that both sections keep the focus relentlessly on who God is rather than on the psalmist's circumstances. Luther's description of Psalm 143 as a Pauline psalm is vindicated by Paul's verbal allusion in Romans 3:20, where the same confession that no flesh is justified by works of the law becomes the pivot to the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ. The sermon calls believers to let their prayers be preoccupied with God's character and Christ's imputed righteousness rather than their own merit, and invites the unbeliever to look to Christ for a righteousness entirely outside themselves.
The Deliberation of the Council
Acts 4:13–22 records the Sanhedrin's deliberation over Peter and John following the healing of a lame man and the apostolic proclamation of Christ's resurrection. The council faces an insoluble dilemma: the miracle is undeniable and publicly known, yet to leave the apostles unchallenged is to permit the gospel to spread unchecked. This sermon traces two broad movements — the deliberation of the council (vv. 13–17) and the attempt to silence the apostles (vv. 18–22) — and draws out the benefits of being with Jesus as seen in the apostles' boldness and wisdom, alongside the liabilities that attend any attempt to suppress the word of God. The application presses believers to pray for men of gospel courage and to resist every pressure, civil or ecclesiastical, to silence the name of Christ.
Genesis 7:1-24
Genesis 7 records the command to enter the ark and the arrival of the floodwaters — a worldwide, catastrophic judgment of God upon all flesh outside the ark, and a sovereign act of divine preservation for Noah and his household. The flood is not myth or moral fable but datable history, rooted in the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15: God preserves the seed of the woman so that Messiah may come. Noah's righteousness did not merit God's grace; rather, grace preceded and produced the faith that issued in obedience, with justification preceding sanctification — a pattern consistent throughout both Testaments. The ark stands as a type of Christ, the refuge for all of God's Noahs, and the passage calls believers to the same costly, faithful obedience Noah displayed in a faithless world.
The Blessedness of Belonging to Our Shepherd
Psalm 23 is among the most familiar passages in Scripture, yet its very familiarity can breed inattention to the depth of its claims. This exposition works through the psalm under four heads — God's provision, God's protection, God's consolation, and God's presence — showing that these blessings belong specifically and personally to all who belong to the Lord as his sheep, not to the world at large. The sermon presses the hearer to be consciously and consistently aware of this blessedness in the light of Christ, the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep, and closes with a direct call to the unconverted to hear his voice and believe.