Cited in sermons
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
45 sermons Β· All people cited
What Is Faith? When Should I Be Baptized? & more| Ask FGBC Batch 6
This Q&A episode from a confessional Reformed Baptist church addresses twelve questions spanning baptism, faith, church membership, Scripture interpretation, seminary training, and the heresies of Federal Vision and Baxterianism. Particular attention is given to the definition of saving faith β distinguishing the objective content of the faith from the act of believing, warning against loading faith with feelings, faithfulness, or love as its ground, and insisting that faith is the empty instrument through which God-given grace lays hold of Christ alone. The episode closes with treatments of conviction of sin, catechetical instruction of children, and the importance of an educated ministry.
The Darkness of Depression
Proverbs 15:13 identifies the broken spirit as a genuine human affliction, and the broader witness of Scripture β from Elijah under the broom tree to the weeping prophet Jeremiah to the Saviour himself as a man of sorrows β confirms that depression and melancholy are realities in the lives of God's people, not marks of spiritual failure. This sermon works through the reality of depression, its manifold causes (physical, psychological, circumstantial, spiritual, and diabolical), and practical strategies for those who suffer and those who come alongside sufferers. The controlling remedy throughout is the means of grace: rest, diet, exercise, prayer, Scripture, and the gathered worship of God's people β with the warning that singing songs to a heavy heart, after the manner of Job's friends, is a pastoral failure Scripture explicitly condemns.
The Seventh Commandment, Part 3
Deuteronomy 5:18 forbids adultery, but the scope of the Seventh Commandment extends to every form of sexual disorder β from fornication and homosexuality to the surging contemporary phenomenon of transgenderism. Drawing on the Westminster Larger Catechism questions 138 and 139, this study moves from the commandment's prohibitions to its positive duties: the preservation of chastity, watchfulness over the senses, the practice of temperance, the pursuit of biblical marriage, diligence in one's calling, and the rejection of all occasions of uncleanness. The three uses of the law β civil, pedagogical, and normative β frame the closing application: the law exposes the corruption of the heart, drives the sinner to the imputed righteousness of Christ, and then regulates the redeemed life.
The Seventh Commandment, Part 2
The seventh commandment's prohibition against adultery extends, by the interpretive principle of the Decalogue, to every form of sexual sin Scripture addresses. This study works through homosexuality, bestiality, unlawful divorce, immodesty, polygamy, prostitution, and lust β demonstrating from the Old and New Testaments that each represents a violation of God's creation ordinance for marriage. The study closes with the recognition that the law's exposure of sexual sin drives the believer back to the cross, where the imputed righteousness of Christ and free and sovereign grace provide both forgiveness and the motive for sanctification.
2LCF Chapter 11 - Of Justification
Chapter 11 of the Second London Confession of Faith sets forth the biblical doctrine of justification with precision: sinners are accepted before God not by infused or inherent righteousness, nor by the imputation of faith as an act of obedience, but by the imputation of Christ's active obedience to the whole law and His passive obedience in death, received through faith alone as the instrument of justification. The confession navigates the doctrine through careful negative and positive statements, guarding both the sole ground of acceptance in Christ and the inseparable connection between justification and sanctification. Believers are called to rest their assurance entirely on Christ's active and passive obedience β cleansed in His blood and clothed in His righteousness β rather than on any covenantal faithfulness of their own.
The Priority in the Believer's Life
Jesus commands his disciples not to worry about life, body, or tomorrow in Matthew 6:25β34, grounding the prohibition in three realities: God's providential care demonstrated in birds and lilies, the contrast between Gentile obsession and the believer's knowledge of a knowing Father, and the governing priority of verse 33 β seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. The sermon argues that carnal anxiety is theologically inconsistent for the Reformed believer: one who confesses God's comprehensive sovereignty in salvation yet surrenders to worry about temporal provision has applied Calvinism selectively. The antidote is not mere positive thinking but the cultivation of contentment rooted in the imputed righteousness of Christ, which grants entrance into the very kingdom we are commanded to seek first.
The Priority in the Believer's Life
Jesus prohibits anxiety over material provision in Matthew 6:25β34, grounding that prohibition in the sovereign care of a Father who already knows what His people need. The passage is expounded under two heads: the repeated prohibition against worry concerning life, body, and tomorrow (vv. 25β32), and the governing principle that believers are to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (vv. 33β34). The sermon argues that chronic anxiety about temporal things is functionally Gentile thinking β a failure to translate sound doctrine of divine sovereignty and providence into the ordinary rhythms of daily life. The remedy is not mere willpower but a rightly ordered theology: what a man truly believes about God will determine whether he lives as a kingdom-seeking servant or as one paralyzed by the concerns of this world.
The Riches and Poverty of Christ
2 Corinthians 8:9 presents the Incarnation as the supreme pattern for Christian charity: the eternal Son of God, rich in every divine perfection, took upon himself genuine human poverty without divesting himself of a single divine attribute. This sermon examines the riches of Christ β his eternal divine nature as Creator, Sustainer, and Son by nature β and the poverty of Christ, meaning his true assumption of human nature with all its essential properties and common infirmities, yet without sin. The hypostatic union is defended against kenotic error: Christ's humiliation consisted not in the emptying of divinity but in the addition of humanity to the one person. These riches secured through Christ's impoverishment β justification, sanctification, and glorification β are received through faith alone and visibly proclaimed in Christian baptism.
The Gifts Given by the Ascended Christ, Part 4
Ephesians 4:15β16 concludes Paul's treatment of the gifts given by the ascended Christ by setting out the positive influence those gifts are designed to produce in the church: spiritual maturity through truth spoken in love, and corporate edification flowing from union with Christ the head. The sermon argues that the Christian ministry is not a free-for-all of entertainment or emotional stimulation but is governed by Christ himself, who gave pastor-teachers to equip the body for growth into the fullness of Christ. Against the twin dangers of internal spiritual complacency and external false teachers, the church is called to the use, consistent use, and persevering use of the ordinary means of grace β preaching, prayer, and the gathered assembly β as the God-ordained path to maturity.
A Defense of Self-Defense
Matthew 5:38β42, the fourth antithesis of the Sermon on the Mount, is frequently invoked to condemn self-defense, capital punishment, and military service β yet a careful reading reveals that Jesus is not contradicting the lex talionis of the Mosaic civil code but rather correcting the Pharisaic habit of applying that courtroom principle to personal, day-to-day relationships. The contrast is not Jesus versus Moses but Jesus versus bad hermeneutics: what the civil magistrate is authorized to do with the sword (Romans 13:1β4) stands entirely intact, and Exodus 22:2β3's legitimization of self-defense is nowhere repealed. The sermon works through Jesus' four illustrations β insult, property disputes, conscription, and benevolence β to show that Christ is calling his disciples to a disposition of patience and forbearance in ordinary life, not to a pacifism that would render them incapable of functioning in civil society.
The Prohibition Against Judgmentalism
Matthew 7:1β5 is among the most frequently misapplied texts in Scripture, routinely weaponised to silence any and all Christian judgment. This sermon from the Sermon on the Mount demonstrates that Christ's prohibition targets not judgment as such but the censorious, fault-finding, hypercritical spirit endemic to the Pharisees and to fallen human nature generally. The preacher surveys five legitimate spheres of Christian judgment β identifying false teachers, exercising church discipline, addressing sins of elders, and rendering civil judgments β before expositing the speck-and-plank illustration as Christ's indictment of hypocrisy. The sermon closes with practical counsel for mortifying judgmentalism through dependence on the Holy Spirit, the pursuit of humility, and a right understanding of remaining corruption in oneself and in one's neighbour.
2LCF Chapter 9 - Of Free Will
What does it mean that human beings have 'free will'? This confession-study exposition of 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 9 argues that free will is real but always conditioned by the moral state of the heart β whether man is in original innocency, post-lapsarian sin, the state of grace, or the state of glory. The fourfold framework drawn from the Confession exposes the Pelagian and Arminian error of treating free will as unqualified and neutral, while grounding the sinner's inability and the believer's renewal entirely in sovereign, monergistic grace. The study closes with the pastoral application that even the believer's ongoing corruption is no surprise, and that the state of glory β not the present age β is where the will is at last perfectly and immutably free to good alone.
Sunday School - Biblical view of self-defense, part 2
Matthew 5:38β42 is frequently misread as a blanket prohibition against self-defense, capital punishment, and just war β three instances of justifiable homicide that Scripture plainly upholds. This exposition argues that Jesus is not contradicting the lex talionis (the law of retribution found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy) but is correcting the Pharisaic misapplication of a civil-judicial principle to everyday interpersonal conduct. The passage addresses four specific situations β insult, litigation, conscription, and benevolence β and calls believers to a disposition of forbearance in personal relations, while leaving entirely untouched the legitimacy of lawful self-defense, just war, and capital punishment as administered by the civil magistrate.
The Golden Rule
Matthew 7:12, the Golden Rule, functions as the capstone of the Sermon on the Mount's legal teaching: whatever you wish men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. The sermon distinguishes the positive form of the rule from its weaker negative counterpart, showing that Christ's command demands active, unconditional love toward others β not a quid pro quo conditioned on how others treat us. The Golden Rule is examined as a summary of the Decalogue's second table and the love command of Leviticus 19:18, applied concretely to family, church, and society. Yet because the Sermon on the Mount is law, not gospel, its primary effect is to expose sin and drive the hearer to the cross, where justification by faith alone provides the only ground of hope for those who fall short of its demands.
The First Missionary Journey, Part 8
Acts 14:1 records that Paul and Barnabas 'so spoke' in Iconium that a great multitude of both Jews and Greeks believed β a phrase that raises the question of the relationship between divine sovereignty and the ordained means of gospel preaching. This sermon works through a biblical theology of preaching drawn from Romans 10:14β17, 1 Corinthians 1:21β25, and 2 Timothy 4:1β8, arguing that God has foreordained not only the elect unto glory but also the means of their calling, supremely the faithful public proclamation of Christ crucified. Against moralistic preaching, life-as-gospel sentimentality, and entertainment-driven church culture, the sermon insists that only the verbal declaration of Christ's atoning work can save souls. Hearers are exhorted to pray for the raising up of qualified preachers, to support gospel church-planting, and to attend to the preached Word with the seriousness that faith coming by hearing demands.
The Judgment Seat of Christ
Matthew 7:21β23 is often misread as a warning to believers to produce more good works, but the passage concerns entrance into the kingdom of heaven and exposes the damning error of self-righteousness. The false professors are condemned not because they lacked works but because they rested their hope for acceptance with God on those works rather than on Christ's blood and righteousness β a form of lawlessness that is an assault on the cross. The will of the Father in Matthew 7:21, rightly understood through John 6:28β40, is to believe on the Son whom He sent; justification is by faith alone, received once, and the Sermon on the Mount functions as law to drive sinners to the foot of the cross rather than to self-congratulation.
Stephen's Defense, Part 8
Stephen's defense before the Sanhedrin turns on a single argument: the tabernacle and temple were never ends in themselves but types pointing forward to Jesus Christ, so the Sanhedrin's attachment to the temple above the one the temple signified exposes them as the true anti-temple party. Working through Acts 7:46β50 against the background of the Davidic Covenant in 2 Samuel 7, the sermon traces how David's desire to build a house for God is fulfilled typically in Solomon and ultimately in the Lord Jesus Christ, who as the Son of God builds the church as the true dwelling place of God Most High. The testimony of Isaiah 66:1β2 then seals the point: God who fills heaven and earth cannot be confined to any man-made structure, yet this same transcendent God condescends to dwell with the poor and contrite in spirit β a reality now fully realized in new covenant worship through Christ.
The Inclusion of Wretches in God's Covenant
Ephesians 2:1β10 presents the full arc of redemption β from the total deadness of sinners to their gracious vivification in Christ β and this exposition traces that arc through the origin, objects, and execution of salvation. The sermon grounds the covenant of grace in the prior covenant of redemption (Ephesians 1:3β14), showing that the Father's election, the Son's redemption, and the Spirit's sealing together exclude every contribution of the sinner. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, with faith itself a gift conveyed by God to the spiritually dead β not a human instrument brought to the table that God then rewards. The exposition closes by distinguishing justification from sanctification and warning against both Roman Catholic and Federal Vision distortions of grace, anchoring the believer's final acceptance before God solely in the active and passive obedience of Christ.
The Diligence of the Ant
Proverbs 6:6β11 and 26:13β16 present the ant as a model of self-directed industry and the sluggard as a figure of moral and practical ruin. The sermon traces four marks of the lazy man β excuse-making, love of sleep, inability to complete tasks, and self-congratulating conceit β before turning to the genuine blessings diligence brings: material provision, the dignity of honest labor, and the honor of excellent work. The exposition closes by applying the same categories spiritually: the sinner who makes excuses before Christ and the drowsy saint grown cold in the means of grace are both called to a diligence that flees to the Savior and feeds on the Word.
The Exhortation to Pray, Part 1
James 5:13β15 addresses the full range of Christian experience β suffering, cheerfulness, and sickness β and directs each condition toward God in prayer and praise. This exposition works through three aspects of the passage: the individual at prayer in verse 13, the elders and their ministry in verse 14, and the prayer of faith and its outcome in verse 15. The sermon confronts both the health-and-wealth error that denies sickness a place in the redeemed life and the cessationist question raised by the anointing with oil, arguing for a symbolic interpretation of the oil while insisting that prayer β not any physical element β is the means God honors. The governing application is that every condition of life, whether affliction or ease, calls for the same disciplined, God-directed response: pray, praise, and submit to the sovereign will of God.
Of Good Works (2LCF16.13)
Matthew 7:1, 'Judge not that you be not judged,' is one of the most frequently misapplied verses in Scripture, often weaponized to prohibit every form of ecclesiastical discernment and render church discipline illegitimate. This session from a study of the 1689 London Baptist Confession examines 2LCF 26.13 on the conduct of the offended church member, then exegetes Matthew 7:1β6 to show that Christ forbids a nitpicking, censorious, fault-finding spirit toward fellow believers β not the lawful exercise of judgment required by Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians 5, and 1 Timothy 5. The positive application calls believers to mortify the censorious plank in their own eye, apply biblical law rather than personal preference to matters of judgment, cultivate humility, and look to Christ and his gospel as the continual remedy for self-righteousness.
The Prohibition Against Judgmentalism
Matthew 7:1β5 contains not a universal ban on discernment but a precise prohibition against the censorious, fault-finding spirit that delights in the shortcomings of others. Working through three movements β the prohibition itself, Christ's explanation of its consequence, and the plank-and-speck illustration β the sermon establishes that judgmentalism is a serious sin condemned by Christ on the Mount, one attended by self-righteousness, a lack of charity, and a practical denial of remaining corruption in oneself. The application calls believers to seek the Spirit's influence, apply biblical law evenhandedly, pursue humility, and let the cross be the death knell of self-righteousness.
2LCF Chapter 26 - Of the Church, Part 13
The conduct required of an offended church member, and the proper interpretation of Matthew 7:1β6 in relation to church discipline, stand at the center of this study of 2LCF 26.13. The confession forbids the offended party from absenting themselves from worship or disturbing church order while awaiting the church's further proceeding, and calls them instead to wait upon Christ. Matthew 7:1β6 is not a blanket prohibition against all judgment but a condemnation of the censorious, nitpicking, fault-finding spirit that disregards the law of God and one's own sin. The sermon closes with the exhortation to remove the plank of self-righteous censoriousness before seeking to help a brother with his speck.
The Defection from the Truth
When the apostle Paul commands Timothy to 'preach the Word' in 2 Timothy 4:2, he immediately supplies the reason: a time is coming when professing Christians will not endure sound doctrine. This sermon expounds 2 Timothy 4:3β5, tracing four sequential steps of doctrinal defection β boredom and apathy toward the truth, heaping up teachers who satisfy itching ears, active turning away from the truth, and final embrace of fables β and sets over against that decline the fourfold call to Timothy: be watchful, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, and fulfill your ministry. The church's responsibility is to receive the truth, recognize its proper mission defined by the marks of the church, and rejoice in the means God has ordained rather than demanding a prescription of its own devising.
The Final Charge to Timothy, Part 1
Paul's final formal charge to the church, delivered through Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:1β2, consists of a solemn charge and a specific command: preach the Word. The solemnity of the charge is grounded in the presence of the triune God as divine audience and in the coming judgment of Christ over the living and the dead, which simultaneously weighs on the minister who handles the Word and on the people who will one day stand before God. The command itself, rooted in the image of the herald (Greek kΔryx), demands faithful proclamation of the Word β not creative substitutes, not life-coaching, not entertainment β through conviction, rebuke, exhortation, longsuffering, and teaching. The sermon closes with a call for biblical preachers, biblical preaching, and biblical hearers, arguing that the church's abandonment of the pulpit is the root of her contemporary crisis.
The Usefulness of Scripture
Paul's claim in 2 Timothy 3:16β17 that all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable is examined across four categories of usefulness β doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness β before turning to Scripture's specific function in completing and thoroughly equipping the man of God for every good work. The sermon challenges the anti-doctrinal sentiment prevalent in contemporary evangelicalism, arguing that indifference to biblical doctrine is indifference to God himself. Ministers in particular are shown to be completed not by leadership models or charismatic gifts but by deep saturation in the word of God. The hearer is called to approach Scripture not as a duty to discharge but as a daily feast β mining its treasures with diligence and gratitude.
The Sixth Commandment
The sixth commandment, 'You shall not murder' (Deuteronomy 5:17), prohibits not only the external act of unlawfully taking human life but also the internal dispositions of hatred, unwarranted anger, and character assassination that Christ exposes in the Sermon on the Mount. The prohibition is grounded in the imago Dei: because every human being bears the image of God, to assault a human life is to assault the divine majesty itself. The sermon carefully distinguishes murder from lawful killing, defending the legitimacy of capital punishment, just war, and self-defense, while applying the command's positive obligation β the active promotion of life β to contemporary issues including abortion, euthanasia, and gossip.
The Conduct of God's Servant
Second Timothy 2:20β26 confronts the reality that the visible church always contains both honorable and dishonorable vessels, and calls God's servant to respond not with contentious disputation but with flight from youthful lusts, pursuit of righteousness, and gentle correction of those in error. Paul's metaphor of vessels in a great house is applied to Timothy's pastoral conduct: cleansing oneself from the influence of false teachers issues in sanctification and fitness for the Master's use. The closing verses ground the servant's patient, humble engagement in the doctrine of repentance as a sovereign gift of God β not merely a failure of argument or evidence, but a work of divine grace that alone restores men from the devil's snare to rational, truth-knowing life.
Past, Present, and Future at the Lord's Supper
The Lord's Supper operates across three tenses simultaneously: it is a memorial ordinance calling believers to remember Christ's humiliation, substitutionary suffering, and death as prophesied in Isaiah 53; it is a present means of grace conferring real spiritual communion with the exalted Christ by the Spirit, not merely a conscious recollection; and it is an eschatological anticipation, pointing the church toward the consummation when the ordinance itself will give way to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Against both Roman Catholic transubstantiation and a bare memorialist view, the sermon argues from 1 Corinthians 10β11 that the bread and wine remain unchanged in substance while serving as conduits by which the risen Lord nourishes and confirms the faith of His gathered people.
Hebrews 12:1
Hebrews 12:1 calls believers to run with endurance the race set before them β not to earn salvation, but because they have been saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. The sermon works through the obstacles that must be laid aside (weights and ensnaring sins), the sustained pattern of perseverance found throughout Hebrews, and the parallel athletic imagery in Paul's letters. The great cloud of witnesses in verse 1 functions not as a cheering section but as a courtroom testimony β each witness declaring that God is faithful, that He sustains His people, and that resolute endurance to the end is therefore possible.