2,744 sermons

Jul 15, 2018

The Woman Who Was a Sinner

Jim ButlerLuke 7:36–50

Luke 7:36–50 presents three parties — a repentant woman, a judgmental Pharisee, and the Lord Jesus Christ — whose interactions disclose the theology of justification by grace alone through faith alone. The woman's extravagant acts of devotion at Christ's feet are not the ground of her forgiveness but its fruit: she loves much because she has been forgiven much. The Pharisee's self-righteousness exposes the danger of confusing surface morality with saving grace, and of imagining any sinner to be beyond the reach of Christ. The sermon calls believers to examine the warmth of their love for Christ as the chief evidence of genuine justifying faith, and invites the unconverted to come to the Savior whose mercy is wider than any sinner's guilt.

Jul 11, 2018

Genesis 4:1-8

Jim ButlerGenesis 4:1–8

Genesis 4:1–8 records the first brothers, the first offerings, and the first murder — and the passage exposes the difference between formal religious observance and genuine faith. The divine acceptance of Abel and rejection of Cain is explained not by vocation, bloodshed, or agricultural produce, but by Hebrews 11:4: by faith Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice, bearing witness that he was righteous before God. Cain's anger, falling countenance, and ultimate fratricide demonstrate that heartless, faithless worship produces not repentance but escalating sin. The study closes with the warning that sin is never dormant or manageable — its desire is always to rule over those who refuse to come to God in faith through Christ.

Jul 8, 2018

The Seven Things God Hates

Jim ButlerProverbs 6:16–19

Proverbs 6:16–19 presents a numerical proverb identifying seven things Yahweh hates and calls an abomination. The sermon works through each item in two groupings — five abominable members (proud eyes, lying tongue, murdering hands, cunning heart, swift feet) and two abominable actions (false witness and sowing discord among brethren) — showing how these vices characterise the man of Belial described in verses 12–15 and how they correspond to sins God condemns throughout the canon. The exposition draws extensively from the wider book of Proverbs to show the cumulative weight of each vice, applies the prohibition against shedding innocent blood to abortion and euthanasia, and closes with a call to pursue the corresponding virtues — humility, truthfulness, the protection of life, a guarded heart, and the pursuit of peace — as evidence of a heart transformed by the gospel of Christ.

Jul 8, 2018

The Response to Peter's Sermon, Part 2

Jim ButlerActs 2:43–47

Acts 2:43–47 describes the ordinary but Spirit-wrought practice of the early Jerusalem church, and this exposition presses that description as a prescription for church life today. The sermon examines steadfastness in apostolic doctrine, fellowship, the Lord's Supper, and prayer; the fear of God that attends his presence; the voluntary charity of believers toward one another; and the public and private conduct of a congregation living under sovereign grace. Against both charismatic enthusiasm and worldly accommodation, the sermon argues that faithfulness in ordinary, Word-regulated worship and mutual edification — not signs, programs, or radical individualism — is the enduring mark of a church built by Christ.

Jul 4, 2018

Genesis 3:17-24

Jim ButlerGenesis 3:17–24

Genesis 3:17–24 confronts the reader with the full weight of the curse upon Adam and the ground, but the passage is finally a text of hope. The consequences imposed upon Adam — the ground cursed, toil unrelenting, and death certain — do not obliterate God's redemptive purpose announced in verse 15; they preserve the race through which the promised seed will come. Adam's faith-filled naming of Eve, God's provision of animal-skin tunics foreshadowing blood atonement, and the merciful expulsion from the tree of life are all acts of divine grace that anticipate the whole subsequent history of redemption, culminating in the Lord Jesus Christ's decisive conquest of the devil.

Jul 1, 2018

July 01, 2018 - AM

Cameron Porter

1 Peter 1:18–20 presents the redemption accomplished by Christ as grounded in the infinite value of his sinless sacrifice, the eternal decree of the triune God, and the certainty of its historical occurrence. This sermon expounds three dimensions of the 'precious blood of Christ': its surpassing worth measured against corruptible earthly things; its origin in the determined counsel of God before the foundation of the world; and its singular reality as a manifest historical event attested by eyewitnesses. The Lord's Supper, observed the same evening, provides the pastoral occasion for calling both believers to joyful reflection on the blood that cleanses from all iniquity and unbelievers to repentance and faith in the one Lamb without blemish and without spot.

Jul 1, 2018

July 01, 2018 - PM

Cameron Porter

What is the gospel, and why does its content matter for the Lord's Supper? Expounding 1 Corinthians 15:1–20 with focused attention on verses 3–4, this sermon argues that the gospel is defined by three inseparable historical and theological events: the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Each event carries precise atoning weight — the death is substitutionary, propitiatory, and expiatory; the burial confirms the reality of that death and sets the stage for resurrection; the resurrection vindicates Christ's saving work, bears witness to the justification of his people, and establishes him as judge of the living and the dead. Delivered in the context of the Lord's Supper, the sermon calls believers to a wonder-filled, theologically informed observance of the ordinance, and warns unbelievers that the risen Christ who died for sinners will also be their judge.

Jun 24, 2018

The Response to Peter's Sermon

Jim ButlerActs 2:41–47

Acts 2:41–47 records the immediate fruit of Peter's Pentecost sermon: three thousand souls baptized and a church marked by steadfast doctrine, fellowship, the Lord's Supper, and prayer. This exposition argues that the passage is both descriptive and prescriptive — what the early church did defines what the church in every age must be. Along the way, believers' baptism is defended against paedo-baptist readings of verse 39, and the growth of the church is traced not to programs or techniques but to the sovereign calling of God through the faithful preaching of Christ crucified.

Jun 24, 2018

The Importance of Keeping the Heart

Jim ButlerProverbs 4:23–27

Proverbs 4:23–27 commands God's people to keep their hearts with all diligence, because the heart is the source from which all conduct flows — mouth, eyes, and feet are merely its outlets. Drawing on the warnings of Jeremiah 17:9, the illustrations of Proverbs 7, and Christ's own teaching in Matthew 15, this exposition argues that total depravity makes diligent heart-keeping not optional but urgent. The sermon closes by pressing that this command can only be obeyed through constant dependence on God's Word and Spirit, and that apart from Christ we can do nothing.

Jun 20, 2018

Genesis 3:14-24

Jim ButlerGenesis 3:14–24

Genesis 3:14–24 records the consequences of the fall, and the heart of this study is the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15 — the first gospel promise in Scripture. God's curse upon the serpent contains within it an announcement of the Messiah: the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head, accomplishing total victory through suffering and death. The sermon traces this skull-crushing seed through the biblical narrative — from the typological head-wounds of Judges and David's defeat of Goliath, to New Testament fulfillment in Colossians, Hebrews, 1 John, and Revelation 12 — demonstrating that the cross of Christ is the decisive blow against the devil foreshadowed in Eden. The study closes by examining the consequences for the woman and the man in verses 16–19, situating the tensions of marriage and labor in a post-lapsarian world that Christ's redemptive work is already beginning to address.

Jun 17, 2018

The State of Man after Death and the Resurrection (2LBCF31)

Jim Butler

What happens to a person at death, and what does the future hold for both body and soul? This session works through 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith chapter 31, tracing the confession's teaching on the intermediate state, the rejection of Roman Catholic doctrines of purgatory and limbo, and the final bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust. The soul's immortality, its immediate departure either to paradise or to hell at death, and the inseparability of the body from God's redemptive purpose are shown to rest squarely on Scripture. The session closes with a deliberately simple amillennial eschatology drawn from 1 Corinthians 15:20–28, urging believers to let the hope of bodily resurrection purify present conduct and comfort one another in grief.

Jun 17, 2018

The Call to Repentance

Jim ButlerActs 2:37–30

Acts 2:37–40 records the crowd's response to Peter's Pentecost sermon and his command to repent and be baptized. This exposition examines the nature of genuine conviction of sin, the inseparable relationship between repentance and faith, the proper place of baptism as an outward sign of inward grace rather than a means of salvation, and the comprehensive scope of God's electing call that reaches Jerusalem sinners, their children, and Gentiles afar off. The sermon presses the hearer to embrace conviction of sin as a mercy, to understand that repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin, and to respond by believing the gospel and submitting to baptism without delay.

Jun 14, 2018

Free Grace Baptist Church - June 13, 2018 Bible Study

Unknown

Genesis 3:1–13 records the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve, events that form the theological foundation for the whole of redemptive history. The sermon traces three movements: the serpent's subtle assault on the veracity, goodness, and security of God in verses 1–5; the fall itself and its immediate consequences in verses 6–7; and God's gracious interrogation of the guilty pair in verses 8–13. The anatomy of temptation displayed in Eden — doubt cast on God's word, denial of divine sanctions, and the lure of autonomous wisdom — is the same pattern by which sin operates in every generation, making a firm grip on Scripture the believer's only sufficient defense.

Jun 11, 2018

Free Grace Baptist Church - June 10, 2018 PM

Unknown

Proverbs 3:5–6 sets before the believer a threefold structure: a command to trust in Yahweh with the whole heart, a prohibition against leaning on one's own understanding, and an exhortation to acknowledge God in every area of life. The sermon traces total depravity and remaining corruption as the root of self-reliance, exposes three concrete forms of that self-reliance — outright reliance on self, rejection of godly parental counsel, and reception of ungodly influence — and grounds the call to entire, exclusive, and exhaustive trust in the immutability, impassibility, and covenant faithfulness of God. The closing movement draws on Jeremiah 32 and the divine simplicity formulated in the 1689 confession to show that God's commitment to his people is itself entire, exclusive, and exhaustive — making the demands of Proverbs 3:5–6 not burdensome but reasonable in light of the gospel.

Jun 10, 2018

The Believer's Commitment to the Lord

Jim ButlerProverbs 3:5–6

Proverbs 3:5–6 commands an entire, exclusive, and exhaustive commitment to Yahweh — a trust that spans salvation and all of ordinary life. The sermon works through three structural elements of the text: the command to trust in the Lord with all the heart, the prohibition against leaning on one's own understanding, and the exhortation to acknowledge God in all one's ways with the promise that He will direct the believer's paths. The doctrine of remaining corruption in the regenerate explains why this command is needed, while the perfections of God — His impassability, immutability, and divine simplicity — ground the assurance that His commitment to His people is equally entire, exclusive, and exhaustive. Hearers are called to search Scripture for explicit texts, implicit applications, and general principles, and to cultivate lives of prayer as a concrete expression of dependence upon God.

Jun 10, 2018

The Exaltation of Christ

Jim ButlerActs 2:33–36

Peter's Pentecost sermon in Acts 2:33–36 reaches its climax in the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of the Father. This exposition works through three movements: the supreme dignity conferred on Christ at his ascension, the fulfillment of Psalm 110:1 as ancient prophecy now openly vindicated, and the unavoidable implication for guilty hearers that this Jesus whom they crucified is both Lord and Christ. The current session of Christ — his ongoing reign, intercession, gathering of the church, and conquest of every enemy — is pressed as the ground of the believer's confidence and the urgent call for the unconverted to repent and call upon the name of the Lord.

Jun 3, 2018

The Problem of Sin and the Mercy of God

Jim ButlerProverbs 28:13

Proverbs 28:13 sets the problem of sin and the mercy of God in sharpest relief: the one who covers his sin will not prosper, while the one who confesses and forsakes it will have mercy. Working through biblical examples — Adam, Achan, Saul, David, Aaron, Ananias and Sapphira — the sermon exposes the instinctive human strategies for concealing sin: outright denial, minimizing its gravity, blame-shifting, religious compensation, and abandonment of moral categories altogether. The solution is not Roman Catholic penance but genuine confession that sides with God's indictment and genuine forsaking that constitutes the inseparable twin of saving faith — what Christian theologians call conversion — received only through Christ, the surety upon whose head the confessing sinner lays his hand by faith.

Jun 3, 2018

The Application of Psalm 16 to Jesus Christ

Jim ButlerActs 2:24–32

Peter's sermon at Pentecost in Acts 2:24–32 hinges on a single exegetical claim: Psalm 16 is not about David but about the Messiah, and the Messiah is Jesus of Nazareth. The sermon works through Peter's two-part argument — the declaration of the resurrection in verse 24 and the prophetic proof from Psalm 16 in verses 25–32 — showing that it was impossible for death to hold Christ because the Father had sworn otherwise in the Davidic covenant. Believers are urged to pray Psalm 16 as their own, trusting that the same God who raised Christ from the grave is their preserver, their joy, and their confident hope through death and into resurrection.

Jun 3, 2018

Of the Lord's Supper (2LBCF30)

Jim Butler

The Lord's Supper is a divinely instituted ordinance of the new covenant, commanded by Christ and belonging to the gathered church until His return. Walking through 2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith chapter 30, this study examines the purpose, nature, celebration, elements, and recipients of the Supper — contrasting the Reformed understanding with the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. The Supper is neither a sacrifice of atonement nor a reward for obedience, but a means of grace through which God confirms and nourishes the faith of believers, binds them to Christ and to one another, and stirs them toward renewed obedience and praise.

May 30, 2018

Genesis 2:18-25

Jim ButlerGenesis 2:18–25

Genesis 2:18–25 narrates the provision of a wife for Adam as the divinely ordained solution to man's aloneness — the one instance in the creation account where God declares something 'not good.' The text establishes marriage as a pre-civil, pre-fall institution: one man and one woman, joined in an indissoluble one-flesh union, with the woman made neither to dominate nor to be dominated, but to be a comparable helper. The exposition draws out four implications for marriage today: its inherent goodness, its precise biblical definition against contemporary redefinition, its three purposes (companionship, procreation, and the prevention of uncleanness), and the creational distinction between male and female that undergirds both the home and the church. Hearers are called to prize their marriages as a reflection of Christ and the church, to approach marriage with sobriety and biblical discernment, and to stand firm against every cultural assault on God's design.

May 27, 2018

The Purpose of the Proverbs

Jim ButlerProverbs 1:2–7

Proverbs 1:2–7 sets out both the purpose and the prerequisite of the entire book of Proverbs. The purpose is comprehensive — to impart wisdom, instruction, and just judgment to the simple, the young, the wise, and every condition of man — while the prerequisite is singular: the fear of the Lord, which is not a natural attainment but a gracious work of God in the soul. The fear of God is shown to be the epistemological foundation of all true knowledge, the animator of righteous conduct, and the preserver of the soul — available only through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one greater than Solomon in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.

May 23, 2018

Genesis 2:15-17

Jim ButlerGenesis 2:15–17

Genesis 2:15–17 presents Adam not merely as a gardener but as a priest-guardian of a garden-temple, placed under a divine probation that Reformed theology identifies as the Covenant of Works. The study defends the presence of a genuine covenant in this passage despite the absence of the word 'covenant,' marshalling the elements of covenant structure, the covenantal name Yahweh Elohim, and later biblical commentary in Hosea 6:7, Isaiah 24, and Romans 5. The argument presses to a pointed soteriological conclusion: a deficient understanding of the Covenant of Works predictably produces a deficient understanding of the Covenant of Grace, opening the door to the error of faith plus works in justification. The remedy is to see the Covenant of Grace as the Covenant of Works kept for sinners by the Lord Jesus Christ, whose active and passive obedience is imputed to all who believe.

May 21, 2018

Free Grace Baptist Church - May 20, 2018 PM

Unknown

First Kings 3 opens a new series through the book of Proverbs by establishing the credentials of Solomon as its primary teacher. The sermon examines Solomon's prayer for wisdom at Gibeon and its immediate proof in the judgment of the two harlots, showing that true wisdom is God-given, others-oriented, and marked by equity toward all people regardless of station. The generosity of God — who bids his people to ask boldly — is presented as the very foundation of prayer, and the sovereignty of God is answered as the reason to pray, not the reason to abstain from it. Hearers are urged to adopt Solomon's pattern of prayer, to seek wisdom for the benefit of others, and to enter the school of Proverbs expecting God to supply what is lacking in heart and mind.

May 20, 2018

Of Baptism (2LCF29)

Cameron Porter

Baptism, as confessed in chapter 29 of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (2LCF), is examined here as a divine and mediatorial ordinance instituted by Jesus Christ for the New Testament church. The exposition grounds the doctrine of baptism in a web of interconnected doctrines — Scripture, the covenant of grace, effectual calling, union with Christ, and the regulative principle of worship — demonstrating that believers' baptism by immersion is the necessary conclusion of consistently applied Reformed theology. The confession's fourfold structure is traced: what baptism is, to whom it is properly administered, in what element, and by what mode, with sustained argument from Romans 6, Galatians 3, Mark 16, and Matthew 28 that only professing believers are lawful recipients of the ordinance.

May 20, 2018

The Fulfilment of Joel's Prophecy

Jim ButlerActs 2:14–21

Acts 2:14–21 records Peter's explanation that the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the fulfilment, not a mere pre-fulfilment, of Joel 2:28–32. The sermon addresses three interlocking questions: what 'the last days' means (the entire Messianic age from Christ's first coming to his return, with a specific reference to the covenantal termination of Old Covenant Israel in AD 70), what the abundance of the Spirit's outpouring means for the New Covenant community (every believer, without distinction of gender, age, or class, receives the Spirit as seal and guarantee), and why the sign gifts of tongues and prophecy are no longer in force (the completed canon fulfils Daniel 9:24's sealing of vision and prophecy). The sermon closes with a direct call to sinners to do the one thing Joel and Peter both demand: call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.

May 16, 2018

Genesis 2:4-14

Jim ButlerGenesis 2:4–14

Genesis 2:4–14 introduces the man placed in the garden, and this study draws out two interlocking themes: the creation of Adam from the dust as both image-bearer and creature, and the Garden of Eden as the first temple-sanctuary. The garden is shown to be the original holy mountain of God — the unique place of his presence — with Adam functioning not primarily as a gardener but as a priest called to tend, guard, and expand that sacred space. This priestly vocation, forfeited by the first Adam, is traced through the tabernacle, the Solomonic temple, Mount Zion, and ultimately fulfilled by the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, whose work brings the garden-temple theme to its consummation in the new Jerusalem of Revelation 21–22. The study closes with a call to prize corporate worship as the present Mount Zion and to live as faithful priest-servants of the God who has purposed communion with his people from the beginning.

May 14, 2018

Free Grace Baptist Church - May 13, 2018 PM

Unknown

Philippians 1:27–30 calls the church to conduct worthy of the gospel and to receive suffering for Christ as a divine gift. Expounding these verses under two headings — worthy conduct and worthwhile suffering — the sermon argues that the local church, as a colony of heaven, is called to stand fast in unity against adversaries, and that both the initial grant of faith and the grant of suffering are gracious tokens of God's saving presence with his people. Persecution, far from being a mark of divine abandonment, is shown historically and biblically to be an assurance of salvation, a sign of perdition to those who oppose the gospel, and a means by which God strengthens his church.

May 13, 2018

Free Grace Baptist Church - May 13, 2018 AM

Unknown

Psalm 8 is a hymn of praise situated amid the laments of Book One of the Psalter, offering a glimpse of hope by directing the worshiper to consider the majesty of God displayed in creation. The sermon works through three movements: the majestic name of the Lord proclaimed throughout the earth and demonstrated paradoxically through weakness; the condescension of God in being mindful of frail man within the created order; and the God-given dominion of man over creation, which finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. Drawing on the New Testament quotations of the Psalm in Matthew 21 and Hebrews 2, the preacher shows that Psalm 8 is a 'two-Adams text' — the dominion forfeited by the first Adam is purchased and perfected by Christ through his incarnation, suffering, resurrection, and exaltation. The hearer is called to study the character of God, to offer praise that silences the adversary, and, if an unbeliever, to look in faith to the Christ who has conquered sin and secured the new creation for his people.

May 13, 2018

The Majestic Name

Mike KirkpatrickPsalm 8

Psalm 8 frames the majestic name of God as the beginning and end of all true praise, confronting the reader with the infinite distance between Creator and creature while simultaneously revealing the astonishing condescension of God in both creation and redemption. The sermon works through three movements: God's majestic name proclaimed in creation and defended through weakness (vv. 1–2), God's mindfulness of an infinitesimal humanity (vv. 3–5), and God's appointment of man to vice-regential dominion (vv. 6–9). Each movement is shown to find its ultimate fulfilment in the Lord Jesus Christ — the one who, as the last Adam, was made a little lower than the angels to purchase new creation for his people. The sermon closes with a call to study the attributes of God as the antidote to idolatry, and with a direct appeal to unbelievers to look to Christ, in whom Psalm 8 is fully realised.

May 6, 2018

The Descent of the Spirit

Jim ButlerActs 2:1–13

Acts 2:1–13 records the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, fulfilling Christ's promise and inaugurating the apostolic mission to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. The sermon argues that the tongues given at Pentecost were intelligible human languages — not ecstatic or private utterances — serving as the revelatory and confirmatory word of God to diaspora Jews assembled from every nation, and simultaneously as a sign of judgment against unbelieving Jerusalem, echoing Deuteronomy 28 and Isaiah 28. The three instances of tongue-speaking in Acts (chapters 2, 8, and 10) correspond precisely to the mission parameters of Acts 1:8 and are unrepeatable redemptive-historical events, not a paradigm for individual Christian experience. Believers today possess the Holy Spirit through regenerating faith in Christ, and the filling of the Spirit is evidenced not by tongue-speaking but by love, submission, and corporate worship.