Cited in sermons
David Dixon
19 sermons · All people cited
The Deliverance of the Psalmist, Part 3
Psalm 18:31–50 brings the psalm's three-part structure to its close, presenting Christ's resurrection, heavenly session, and sovereign reign over all nations as the fulfilment of what David celebrated in type. The sermon expounds four movements in the text: the divine power equipping the King for battle (vv. 31–42), the submission of peoples to the King (vv. 43–45), the praise due to the God of the King (vv. 46–49), and the covenant promise that undergirds the King's advance (v. 50). Throughout, David's victories serve as historically grounded prefigurations of Christ's definitive triumph over sin, death, and every opposing power. The application presses the congregation to lean on God's strength in spiritual warfare, to guard the church against both internal and external threats, and to rest in the alien righteousness of Christ credited to every believer by faith alone.
The Expectation of the Righteous One
Psalm 17 is approached as primarily the prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ according to his human nature — a perfectly righteous man crying to his Father for vindication, protection, and ultimate glorification. The sermon works through three movements: the psalmist's petition grounded in his righteousness, prayerfulness, and defenselessness (vv. 1–9); the character and violence of his enemies (vv. 10–12); and the psalmist's expectation of judgment on the wicked and resurrection presence with God (vv. 13–15). Because Christ's righteousness is imputed to believers by faith alone, the psalm becomes the church's prayer — a call to earnest, importunate intercession, patient endurance in a hostile age, and fixed hope in the resurrection rather than in temporal prosperity.
The Challenge and Confidence of the Psalmist
Psalm 10 presents a twofold movement: the challenge of the psalmist in verses 1–11, and the confidence of the psalmist in verses 12–18. The sermon argues that this psalm is not primarily about David's historical circumstances but about the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ — his humanity, his experience of apparent divine withdrawal, and his witness to the wickedness of those who conspired against him. The church, as joined to Christ, prays these words as her own, setting the promises of God against the troubled testimony of sense and experience, and resting in the certain reign of the Lord who will one day cause the man of the earth to oppress no more.
The Justice and Mercy of the Lord, Part 2: God's Judgment and Refuge
Psalm 9:13–20 presents two petitions that mirror the psalm's earlier doctrinal foundation: a cry for mercy grounded in God's proven faithfulness, and a cry for judgment grounded in the certainty of divine justice. The preacher traces both petitions through their Christological fulfillment — the man of sorrows who prays from the gates of death and the appointed judge of the world in righteousness — demonstrating that David's psalm finds its true subject in Christ. God's justice toward the wicked and His mercy toward the oppressed are not in tension but are two sides of the same covenantal reality: the overthrow of God's enemies is itself the preservation of God's people. Hearers are called to pray these psalms with theological weight, to assemble corporately as those delivered from the gates of death into the gates of Zion, and to seek the Lord while He may be found.
The Vindication of the Righteous One
Psalm 7 unfolds as a courtroom drama in which the psalmist — and, typologically, the Lord Jesus Christ — appeals to God for vindication against false accusers, refusing personal retaliation and casting the entire matter upon the justice of God. The sermon moves through three phases: the supplication of the righteous one, the assertion of innocence, and the extended vindication that grounds confidence in God's decreed judgment against the wicked. David functions as a type of Christ, whose spotless innocence alone fully satisfies the conditions of verses 3–4, and whose imputed righteousness is the sole ground on which the church may echo his plea. The practical summons is to resist paralysis or retaliation in the face of false accusation and social hostility, and instead to take refuge in the just God who is angry with the wicked every day and who has appointed a day of final judgment.
The Commendation of His Spirit
Psalm 31 is a prophetic psalm of Christ, providing the scriptural background to the seventh saying of the Savior from the cross: 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit' (Luke 23:46). The psalm moves through five sections — petition for deliverance, description of suffering, condemnation of enemies, admiration of the Father, and exhortation to the people — each finding its fullest meaning in the crucified and triumphant Messiah. The sermon draws out three contextual observations from the cross: the sovereign control exercised by the Son in laying down his life willingly, the contrast between the hand of God receiving Christ's spirit and the hand of men seeking to destroy him, and the restoration of communion between the Son and the Father after the cry of dereliction. God's people are called to the same trust and courage that marked the Savior — committing their times and their souls to a faithful Creator in the midst of trial, persecution, and adversity.
Ask FGBC - July 2024 Podcast with Pastors Butler and Kirkpatrick
Two pastors work through a wide-ranging set of questions submitted by listeners, covering the Reformed doctrine of the will, repentance and faith, holy days, Christian political engagement, believers' baptism, the New Covenant, forgiveness of unrepentant offenders, ongoing confession of sin, witnessing to homosexual neighbors, the Sabbath shift from Saturday to Sunday, the day of the Lord, the beatific vision, common grace, saving versus temporary faith, and the holy walk. Throughout, the answers are grounded in the 1689 London Baptist Confession and exposit the relevant biblical texts, consistently distinguishing the Reformed Baptist position from Arminian, dispensationalist, and paedobaptist alternatives. The session serves as accessible catechetical instruction for believers at all stages while modeling how confessional Reformed Baptist theology addresses both doctrinal and practical questions.
The Suffering and Glory of Christ
Psalm 22 presents the suffering and glory of Christ with a precision and detail that exceeds even the Passion narratives of the four Gospels. The psalm's first half expounds the dereliction Christ endured on the cross — not as a breach of the Trinity or a dissolution of the hypostatic union, but as the penal withdrawal of the Father's sensible favor while the Son bore the curse due to his people's lawbreaking. The second half moves from that suffering to the exaltation of the Redeemer, the adoption of his brethren, the extension of his kingdom to all nations, and the generational advance of his church — all grounded in the finished work of the cross. The sermon calls believers to make much of the Psalms in both private devotion and corporate worship, hearing in them the very voice of Christ.
Ask FGBC #17: What does it mean to repent and believe?
Repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin in the gospel call, yet they are not equals: the principal act of conversion is faith, and justification is by faith alone apart from works. Repentance, properly understood, is a change of mind concerning sin — not a moral clean-up prerequisite — and is itself a gracious gift granted by God (Acts 11:18). The elements of the ordo salutis (regeneration, repentance, faith, justification, adoption, the beginning of sanctification) occur simultaneously, not sequentially, and neonomianism is identified as a live danger whenever repentance is turned into a condition the sinner must satisfy before coming to Christ.
2LCF Chapter 1 - Of the Holy Scriptures, Part 2
Paragraphs 5–10 of the Second London Confession's first chapter contain an implicit hermeneutical program that governs all responsible reading of Scripture. This session works through those paragraphs to identify six distinct interpretive principles: the Christocentric scope of all Scripture, the extent and finality of Scripture's sufficiency, the perspicuity of Scripture for salvation, the availability of Scripture through faithful translation, the analogy of Scripture and faith as the rule of interpretation, and the supreme judicial authority of Scripture over all human councils and traditions. The practical thrust is that every reader, learned or unlearned, is equipped by ordinary means and the Spirit's illumination to understand what God has revealed — and that bad presuppositions inevitably produce bad theology.
2LCF Chapter 31 - Of the State of Man After Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead
The doctrine of the intermediate state — the condition of the soul between death and the final resurrection — is examined through 2LCF Chapter 31 and the key Scripture passages that ground it. The confession teaches a sharp dichotomy: at death, the body returns to dust while the immortal soul either goes immediately to be with Christ in paradise or is cast into hell, with no third option such as purgatory or soul sleep. The resurrection of both the just and the unjust on the last day is treated in paragraphs 2 and 3, with 1 Corinthians 15 providing the clearest statement that Christ's coming is followed immediately by the end — a structure that complicates dispensational premillennialism. The lesson closes with a call to find comfort and ethical urgency in the simplicity of biblical eschatology rather than in elaborate prophetic systems.
2LCF Chapter 10 - Of Effectual Calling
Effectual calling is the first step in the application of redemption — the sovereign act by which God, through His Word and Spirit, brings the elect from a state of total spiritual death into union with Christ. This session works through 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 10, situating effectual calling within the broader ordo salutis and showing how it alone accounts for the biblical data on God's absolute sovereignty, the total spiritual inability of fallen man, and the uncoerced freedom of the believer's response. The result guards against both the Arminian error of grounding salvation in the foreseen decisions of the creature and the hyper-Calvinist error of denying man's responsibility to repent and believe, while grounding evangelism in confidence that God can revive the deadest of hearts.
2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689) - Sunday School Study - July 18, 2021
The self-authenticating authority of Scripture cannot be separated from sound principles for reading it. This 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith Sunday school study works through chapter one, paragraphs five through ten, drawing out the hermeneutical principles the divines embedded there: the scope of Scripture (all glory to God through Christ), the sufficiency of Scripture (confined to God's glory, man's salvation, faith, and life), the perspicuity of Scripture (salvation truths are plain even to the unlearned), and the availability of Scripture in translation. The session also addresses textual criticism, the transmission history of the biblical manuscripts, and the distinction between necessary inference and explicit statement as sources of scriptural authority. Hearers are called to come to the biblical text with humility, the illumination of the Spirit, and a due use of ordinary means rather than intellectual pride or lazy avoidance.
2LCF Chapter 31 - Of the State of Man After Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead
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.
2LCF Chapter 23 - Of Lawful Oaths and Vows
Lawful oaths and vows, treated in 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 23, are grounded in the third and ninth commandments and constitute genuine acts of religious worship — invoking God's omniscience, omnipresence, and vindictive justice as witness and judge. The confession distinguishes oaths (promises made to men before God) from vows (promises directed to God himself), insisting both require solemn care and plain sincerity without equivocation or mental reservation. Against Anabaptist denial and Roman Catholic abuse, the sermon defends the legitimacy of lawful oaths in matters of weight and moment, refutes the reading of Matthew 5 as a suspension of oath-taking, and condemns popish monastical vows — perpetual celibacy, professed poverty, and regular obedience — as superstitious snares without scriptural warrant. Hearers are called to prize truth-telling as a reflection of the character of God and to take every solemn oath with a full awareness of its theological gravity.
Of Effectual Calling (2LCF 10)
Effectual calling — the internal, sovereign act by which God draws his elect from death to life by his Word and Spirit — is the focus of 2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith chapter 10. This study works through all four paragraphs of the chapter, tracing the monergistic character of the call: it originates in God's eternal predestination, operates independently of anything foreseen in the creature, and is accomplished by a power no less than that which raised Christ from the dead. The chapter's handling of elect infants, the mentally incapable, the non-elect, and the heathen is examined in turn, with sustained application to evangelical method, the centrality of the cross in preaching, and the believer's dependence upon God in prayer and witness.
Of the Holy Scriptures (2LCF 1.5-10)
The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, paragraphs 5–10, sets out a comprehensive doctrine of Holy Scripture, and this study draws out the hermeneutical principles embedded in each paragraph. The scope of Scripture is theocentric and Christocentric — all of it tends toward the glory of God through the mission of Christ — and every other interpretive concern flows from that governing conviction. The sufficiency of Scripture encompasses both explicit texts and implicit doctrine derived by good and necessary consequence, while the perspicuity of Scripture assures even the unlearned that the things necessary for salvation are clearly propounded. The analogy of Scripture and the analogy of faith together form the infallible rule by which obscure passages are interpreted through clearer ones and through the theological sense of the whole.
2LCF Chapter 27 - Of the Communion of Saints
What does it mean for believers to share communion with one another, and on what foundation does that communion rest? Working through 2LCF Chapter 27, paragraphs 1 and 2, this study establishes that the communion of the saints flows necessarily from the believer's union with Christ: because every saint is vitally joined to the same head, they are thereby joined to one another. The chapter's two qualifications — that union with Christ does not divinize the believer, and that spiritual communion does not abolish private property — guard the doctrine against historic errors ranging from pantheism to Anabaptist collectivism. The practical weight falls on concrete duties: faithful attendance at corporate worship, private mutual edification, material relief of the needy, and a willingness to extend fellowship beyond one's own congregation to all who call on the name of Christ.
The Two Claims
Matthew 7:21–23 presents one of the most sobering scenes in Scripture: a multitude of religious professors standing before Christ on the day of final judgment, presenting their prophesying, exorcisms, and miraculous works as credentials for entrance into the kingdom — only to hear the words, 'I never knew you.' This sermon argues that Jesus is not here calling his people to try harder or obey more, but is exposing and condemning works righteousness as the very lawlessness he will judge. The false professors' error is not a lack of religious activity but a failure to rest in Christ alone, whose perfect obedience is the sole ground of the sinner's acceptance before God. Assurance of salvation is found not in rigorous self-examination of one's works but in extra-spective faith resting on the free promises of God in the person and work of Jesus Christ.