Cited in sermons
Greg Beale
4 sermons · All people cited
Book introduction: The Mystery of Christ, His Covenant, and His Kingdom
Samuel Renihan introduces his book 'The Mystery of Christ, His Covenant, and His Kingdom,' explaining its origins in his seminary-era dissatisfaction with both pedobaptist and Baptist covenantal literature. He argues that historical particular Baptist covenant theology has been largely forgotten, and that modern Reformed Baptist literature has suffered from poor historical theology, excessive polemicism, and conclusions stated without premises. The book is structured by biblical theology rather than systematic theology, tracing three covenantal kingdoms — creation, Israel, and Christ — and contends that the concept of mystery in Paul is essential to a properly calibrated covenant theology that distinguishes the old covenants from the new covenant without collapsing the progressive development of divine revelation.
The Persistent Problem of Idolatry
Romans 1:18–32 sets the universal guilt of mankind before any presentation of the gospel, and this exposition argues that the root of all social and moral disorder is not first a behavioral problem but a theological one: the suppression of God's self-revelation and the exchange of His glory for creature-worship. Paul's descent from ungodliness to unrighteousness maps directly onto contemporary culture, and the three divine abandonments of verse 24, 26, and 28 are read not as future threat but as present judicial reality. Believers are called to recognize idolatry as a persistent personal danger — of theology, innovation, utilitarianism, Mammon, and self — and to find the only antidote in the cross of Christ.
Idolatry and Its Effects, Part 2
Romans 1:18–32 presents a relentlessly bleak anatomy of human sin flowing from the root of idolatry — the suppression of God's self-revelation, the exchange of his glory for images, and his judicial abandonment of sinners to escalating depravity. This application sermon draws out three lines of response for the believer: sober caution against the idols of false religion, Mammon, and self; genuine concern for a world standing under God's wrath; and wholehearted worship and thanksgiving as those who have been justified by the blood of Christ. The antidote to every form of idolatry — including the most pernicious idol of self — is the cross, where Christ frees his people from self-devotion and calls them to live for him who died and rose again.
The Church at Pergamos
Revelation 2:12–17 presents Christ's letter to the church at Pergamos — a congregation dwelling at the seat of the imperial cult, where Caesar demanded worship as Lord and Savior, and where one of their own, Antipas, had already been martyred for the faith. Christ commends their steadfast confession of his name under lethal pressure, yet condemns without concession their tolerance of the doctrine of the Nicolaitans and its Old Testament type, the doctrine of Balaam — an antinomian infiltration that invited participation in idol feasts and sexual immorality as the price of cultural accommodation. The sermon presses the warning that difficult circumstances never justify doctrinal compromise, that Christ's sword-word will execute judgment on an unrepentant church, and that faithful overcomers receive hidden manna, a white stone, and a new name — the provision and identity that no imperial cult can offer or revoke.