Cited in sermons
Derek Kidner
4 sermons · All people cited
Live Stream - January 08, 2023
Ecclesiastes 8:10–17 confronts the believer with one of the sharpest enigmas of a fallen world: the wicked die unpunished, the righteous suffer unjustly, and God's judgment appears indefinitely delayed. The preacher argues that Solomon's response is not philosophical resignation but two concrete imperatives — fear God and enjoy what God gives — grounded in covenant trust rather than in sight. The sermon closes by pressing the theological significance of God's delayed judgment: without it there is no gospel, no day of grace, and no salvation for elect sinners who would otherwise have perished in their first sin.
Psalm 5
Psalm 5 is David's prayer tutorial, teaching the believer how to approach God in dangerous and difficult circumstances. The sermon works through four movements in the psalm: preparing prayer with ordered intentionality, grounding prayer in a precise knowledge of God's character, making requests on the basis of divine grace rather than personal merit, and declaring a confident assurance in Yahweh's protection of the righteous. Because God abhors not merely evil deeds but evildoers themselves outside of Christ, the believer can pray against oppression with holy boldness, resting in the promise that Yahweh's favor surrounds the righteous as an encompassing shield.
Genesis 12:1-9
Genesis 12:1–9 presents the call of Abram as a programmatic text establishing God's covenantal plan of redemption, standing alongside Genesis 3:15 and Genesis 9:25–27 as a divinely initiated response to the human disaster of the fall and its aftermath. The sermon works through three movements: the grace of God in the call itself, the threefold promise of land, seed, and blessing in verses 2–3, and Abram's faith-driven obedience and worship in verses 4–9. Against dispensationalist readings, the land promise is shown to find its fulfillment not in a reconstituted geopolitical Israel but in Christ as heir of the world, with the seed promise identified in Galatians 3 as Christ himself and all who are united to him by faith. The listener is called to see in Abram's departure from country, family, and father's house a typological pattern for what occurs in every genuine conversion — the forsaking of former allegiances in the embrace of the living God.
The Call of Abraham
Genesis 12:1–8 presents the call of Abram as the sovereign, gracious divine reply to the cascading ruin of Genesis 3–11: the fall, the flood, and the scattering at Babel. God's initiative toward a barren man from an idolatrous household is pure grace — the Old Testament's 'But God' — not anything merited by Abram or his line. The sermon traces four movements: the amazing grace behind the call, the demanding and costly nature of discipleship it inaugurates, the world-changing redemptive program it sets in motion (land, seed, blessing, honor, and protection), and Abram's paradigmatic response of obedience and worship. The Abrahamic covenant finds its fulfilment not merely in ethnic Israel or Canaanite geography but in Christ and all who are united to him by faith, as Paul demonstrates in Galatians 3 and Romans 4.