Cited in sermons
Herman Bavinck
57 sermons · All people cited
The Gospel Committed to the Apostle Paul
1 Timothy 1:15–17 contains one of five 'faithful sayings' in the Pastoral Epistles, and Paul deploys it here to contrast the life-giving gospel with the idle speculations of the false teachers troubling the church at Ephesus. The sermon works through three elements: the faithful saying as a standard confession received and guarded by the church; the glorious content of that saying — the incarnation of the Son and his effectual, definite work to save sinners; and the merciful application illustrated in Paul himself, who as the chief of sinners functions as a pattern of Christ's longsuffering for all who will believe. The doxology of verse 17 demonstrates that rightly understood soteriology issues in worship, and believers are called to keep this faithful saying at the centre of their hearts and to press it upon the unconverted.
CTF 2026 - Session 3: Is God the Author of Sin?
Two difficult theological questions frame this conference session: Is God the author of sin, and do a believer's sins work together for good? Drawing on 1689 LBCF 3.1, Acts 2:23, Acts 17:28, and Romans 8:28, the session argues that God's comprehensive, eternal decree encompasses all things — including sin — without making God personally culpable for evil, because sin is a privation of good rooted in the creature's deformed nature rather than in God's infinitely good being. The session closes by showing from Romans 8:28, with support from Robert Haldane and Genesis 50:20, that God's overruling providence turns even the believer's own sins toward their ultimate good and his glory — not as license to sin, but as ground for humility, dependence, and hope.
CTF 2026 - Session 4: Pastoral Sermon
Hebrews 2:10 declares that it was fitting for God — the source and goal of all things — to bring many sons to glory through the sufferings of Christ. This sermon traces the eternal decree of election to glory, showing that the predestined are appointed not only to grace but to the full unveiled sight of God in Christ. Drawing on Hebrews 1–2, 2 Corinthians 4, and Psalm 36, the preacher argues that regenerate eyes now see the glory of God refracted through creation, Scripture, and the means of grace, as a foretaste of the unmediated vision that awaits the saints. The exhortation is to resist stopping at the creature, tracing every creaturely beauty upward to God himself, and to hunger for the glory that outweighs all present suffering.
The Central Confession of Israel's Faith
The Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 — 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one' — is examined as the central confession of Old Covenant Israel's faith, carrying both theological and polemical force for a people about to enter a land saturated with polytheism and syncretism. The sermon traces the purpose of God's commandments (obedience secured tenure in the land), the theological content of the Shema (divine unity of singularity and simplicity, and its compatibility with Trinitarian confession), and the fitting response of wholehearted love toward the one living and true God. The application presses New Covenant believers to the same totality of devotion — presenting themselves as living sacrifices — grounded in the redemption God has accomplished in Christ, the true Israel who kept the covenant His people perpetually broke.
The Third Commandment
The Third Commandment — 'You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain' (Deuteronomy 5:11) — carries far greater weight than mere avoidance of profanity, because the divine name is not an arbitrary label but a revelation of God's very being, perfections, works, and decree. The sermon examines three aspects: the theological significance of God's name, the breadth of the prohibition (spanning blasphemy, frivolous speech, euphemisms, unlawful oaths, magic and sorcery, misapplication of providence, and maintenance of false doctrine), and the positive duty to use God's name reverently in prayer, praise, theological discourse, and the keeping of solemn oaths. The closing application presses hearers toward an 'answerable conversation' — a profession of faith matched by a life that gives no occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.
The Preface to the Ten Commandments
Deuteronomy 5:1–6 opens the Ten Commandments not with a command but with a declaration of divine redemption — 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.' This study works through the summons to covenant obedience, the grace-grounded preface to the Decalogue, and the uniqueness of the moral law as trans-covenantal and abiding. The threefold division of the law — moral, ceremonial, and judicial — is examined through the confession, the prophets, the Gospels, and the epistles, equipping believers to distinguish what abides in the new covenant from what was fulfilled and abrogated in Christ.
CTF 2025 - Session 4 – The Depth of God’s Eternal and Incomprehensible Nature
What does it mean for God to be eternal, and can finite creatures truly know an incomprehensible God? This conference session works through the classical doctrine of divine eternity — arguing from divine simplicity, immutability, and infinity that God's eternity is not endless temporal succession but the timeless, simultaneous, and perfect possession of boundless life — before turning to divine incomprehensibility, which is not a confession of ignorance but the recognition that the knowledge God has revealed of himself in nature and Scripture far surpasses the creature's capacity to measure or contain it. The session draws on Boethius, Augustine, Turretin, Charnock, Owen, and Bavinck to show that the two doctrines are inseparable, and closes with Solomon's prayer in 1 Kings 8 as a doxological meditation: if heaven itself cannot contain God, no created mind can comprehend him, and that inexhaustibility is the very ground of endless worship.
CTF 2025 - Session 3 - Exploring God’s Impassibility
God's immutability and impassibility, confessed in 1689 LBCF 2.1 as foundational divine attributes, are not cold abstractions but the very ground of the gospel's freeness and the perfection of God's love. This session from a Reformed theology conference works through the classical theistic framework: because God is pure act, wholly self-sufficient in being, he cannot undergo change or be moved to new states of affection by creatures. Counterintuitively, this means God's love is not diminished but infinitely surpassed by passionate human love — for an impassible love is uncaused, unbounded, and purely beneficent, making sola gratia coherent and certain.
The Resurrection and Justification
Romans 4:25 binds the death and resurrection of Christ together as twin pillars of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Christ was delivered up because of the offenses of his people — bearing the substitutionary curse that divine justice demanded — and was raised because of their justification, the resurrection serving as the Father's public testimony that satisfaction had been rendered and righteousness secured. The sermon works through four reasons why Paul links the resurrection to justification: the resurrection declared Christ to be the Son of God with power, testified that his sacrifice was accepted, confirmed that satisfaction was rendered, and marked the completion of redemption and the inauguration of Christ's present session. Believers are called to rest their entire confidence for standing before God on this finished work, and the unconverted are urged to confess and believe in the risen Lord Jesus.
2LCF Chapter 1 - Of the Holy Scriptures (Paragraphs 1-3)
The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith opens with the doctrine of Holy Scripture because all subsequent confessional theology stands or falls on this foundation. This session works through paragraphs 1–3 of Chapter 1, establishing first the necessity of Scripture — grounded in the insufficiency of general revelation for saving knowledge and the cessation of direct prophetic revelation — and then the identity of Scripture, treating the question of canon (which books belong) and the exclusion of the Apocrypha. Three criteria for canonicity are examined: the providential exposure of books, the divine attributes Scripture bears, and apostolic origin broadly understood.
2LCF Chapter 32 - Of the Last Judgement
2 London Baptist Confession of Faith Chapter 32 examines the doctrine of the Last Judgment under three heads: the concept of the Day of Judgment (its divine appointment, its agent in Christ, and its comprehensive scope over angels and all humanity), the goal of that day (the manifestation of God's mercy in the eternal salvation of the elect and his justice in the eternal damnation of the reprobate), and its practical relevance (deterring sin, consoling the afflicted people of God, and keeping believers watchful). The session concludes with a survey of the three millennial positions and four interpretive approaches to the book of Revelation, explaining why the Confession deliberately avoids resolving those disputes in order to function as a broad consensus document. The consistent ethical burden throughout is that contemplation of the coming judgment should shape present conduct: purifying the elect, driving evangelism, and giving the suffering saints confidence that divine justice will prevail.
The Dedication of the Temple
Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple in 1 Kings 8:22–53 is grounded not in Israel's merit but in the character of God — his incomparability, faithfulness, and transcendence held together with his immanence. The petitions that follow address every covenant curse Moses had warned of: civil injustice, military defeat, drought, famine, and exile, each met with Solomon's recurring plea that God hear from heaven and forgive. The prayer reaches beyond Israel to encompass the nations, anticipating the Gentile inclusion Paul expounds in Ephesians 3 and finding its ultimate fulfilment in the Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God who builds the eternal house of God. Believers are exhorted to imitate Solomon's theology-saturated prayer, to receive affliction as God's appointed means of conformity to Christ, and to rest in the faithfulness of a God who has always kept his covenant promises.
2LCF Chapter 20 - Of the Gospel and of the Extent of the Grace Thereof
The gospel was not discovered by human reason but revealed by divine initiative — beginning with the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15 and unfolding through progressive special revelation. This session works through Chapter 20 of the Second London Confession of Faith (1689 LBCF), examining the promise of the gospel, the insufficiency of general revelation for salvation, the sovereign freedom of God in spreading the gospel, and the absolute necessity of the Holy Spirit's effectual work upon sinners dead in trespasses. The doctrinal stakes are practical: a right understanding of general and special revelation is the indispensable foundation for evangelical and missionary enterprise.
The Ministry in Lystra
Acts 14:8–18 presents Paul and Barnabas in Lystra, where the healing of a man crippled from birth provokes the surrounding pagans to identify the apostles as Zeus and Hermes come in human form. Paul's corrective address to the Lystrans teaches the non-divinity of creatures and, by implication, the sharp ontological distinction between the living God and all that he has made. The study moves from the healing account into a substantial exposition of divine impassibility and simplicity, grounding those doctrines in the phrase 'of like passions' and tracing them through the confession, Scripture, and the Reformed theological tradition.
2LCF Chapter 17 - Of the Perseverance of the Saints, Part 1
The 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 17 on the perseverance of the saints is examined through its first two paragraphs, grounding the doctrine in the preserving power of the triune God rather than in the free will of the believer. The Confession is shown to be both rigorously doctrinal and remarkably practical, acknowledging the storms, unbelief, and apparent withdrawal of God that saints genuinely experience while insisting that these cannot sever the elect from grace. The foundation of perseverance is traced through the immutability of the decree of election, the merit and intercession of Christ, the abiding of the Spirit, and the nature of the covenant of grace — directly opposing both Roman Catholic and Arminian accounts that make final salvation contingent on human cooperation. Believers are exhorted to feed their souls on the promises of the covenant of grace precisely because perseverance is secured by God's unchangeable love, not by their performance.
The Penalty for Blasphemy
Leviticus 24 addresses both the daily obligations of tabernacle worship and the capital penalty for blasphemy, grounding each in the direct speech of God to Moses. The chapter's narrative pivot — an incident in which a man of mixed Israelite and Egyptian descent blasphemes the name of Yahweh — becomes the occasion for case-law application of the third commandment, surrounded by reminders of the lex talionis and the equal accountability of stranger and native-born alike. The typological furniture of the holy place (lampstand and showbread) points forward to Christ as the true light and bread of life, while the blasphemy legislation, with its witness requirements and retributive principle, reveals a God who guards his own honour and structures justice with both severity and safeguard. The sermon exhorts hearers to put away every profane use of the divine name and to cultivate a reverent, wholehearted employment of it in thought, word, and worship.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 2
The deity of Jesus Christ is not a late ecclesiastical imposition but the irreducible confession of Scripture, the early church, and the Reformed confessional tradition. This lesson, the second in a series through 2LCF Chapter 8, opens by reading paragraphs 1–2 of the confession before working through both what the orthodox doctrine of Christ's deity does NOT mean — rejecting polytheism, social trinitarianism, homoiousian subordinationism, modalism, and kenoticism — and what it positively asserts: that Christ is very and eternal God, of one substance with Father and Spirit, equal to the Father, personally distinct within the Godhead, and unchanging in deity through the incarnation. The biblical witness is then marshalled under five categories — explicit statements, Christ's self-witness, NT application of OT divine texts, divine perfections predicated of Christ, and divine works ascribed to Him — to demonstrate that the deity of Christ is axiomatic rather than argued in Scripture itself.
2LCF Chapter 7 - Of God's Covenant
The doctrine of God's covenant is not merely one column in the architecture of systematic theology — it is the architecture itself, the organizing and unifying principle of the entire Bible. This session works through 2LCF Chapter 7, examining the ground of covenant necessity in the creator-creature distinction, the nature of God's voluntary and revelatory condescension, the occasion and provisions of the covenant of grace, and the progressive revelation of that covenant from the protevangelium to its formal ratification in the New Testament. The distinctively Baptist formulation — using 'revelation' rather than 'administration' — reflects the conviction that the covenant of grace was not formally and properly a covenant until Christ ratified it in his blood, a distinction with direct bearing on the doctrine of baptism and the composition of the church.
Sunday School Confession Study - 2LCF 2.2
God's external relations to the created order — his independence, omniscience, holiness, and the creature's obligation to him — are the subject of 2LCF Chapter 2, Paragraph 2. The confession's insistence that God is entirely self-sufficient and derives no glory from creatures corrects any notion that God created the world out of need or incompleteness. The omniscience of God is infinite, infallible, and independent of the creature, so that nothing is contingent or uncertain to him. The study closes by grounding the creature's obligation of worship, service, and obedience in what God is — holy in all his counsels, works, and commands.
2LCF Chapter 2 - Of God and of the Holy Trinity, Part 2
What does it mean that God is one, infinite, simple, invisible, incorporeal, and without passions? This Sunday school session works through paragraph 1 of 2LCF Chapter 2, tracing the classical attributes — or perfections — of God through their biblical foundations and the theological vocabulary refined by the church across centuries. Divine simplicity, aseity, incomprehensibility, and impassibility are each examined with care, showing how these doctrines are not abstract curiosities but guard the God of Scripture from distortion and secure the stability of his love, justice, and grace toward his people. The session closes by connecting the doctrine of divine impassibility to the assurance of salvation: because God does not move from one state to another, his love for his people is always most.
The Resurrection and Justification
Romans 4:25 encapsulates the whole gospel in a single verse: Christ was delivered up because of our offenses and raised because of our justification. This sermon expounds the redemptive purpose behind both the death and the resurrection of Christ, showing that the cross satisfies divine justice through substitutionary atonement while the empty tomb confirms that satisfaction was accepted and justification accomplished. The doctrine of justification by faith alone — the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of Christ's righteousness — rests inseparably on the historical and theological reality of the resurrection. Believers are called to live daily in light of the finished work of the Son, and those without Christ are urged to look to Him in faith for everlasting life.
The Renewal of God's Covenant, Part 1
Exodus 34:1–9 records the renewal of the Mosaic covenant following Israel's catastrophic idolatry with the golden calf, and the chapter's theological heart is God's self-proclamation of His own glory to Moses on Sinai. The sermon works through three movements in verses 1–9: the command to cut new tablets as a covenant-renewal symbol, the descent of God in the cloud, and God's proclamation of His own name — a compendium of divine perfections stretching from mercy and grace through long-suffering, goodness, truth, and covenant faithfulness to justice and righteousness. These attributes are traced across the canon from the Psalms and the prophets to their fulfillment in the high-priestly work of Christ, who makes definite propitiation for the sins of His people. Moses' response — immediate worship followed by intercessory prayer grounded in the very perfections God had just declared — is held out as the model for the believer's own approach to God.
November 19, 2022 - Wedding Stream
A wedding homily grounding the institution of marriage in the creation account of Genesis 2 and the redemptive promise of Genesis 3:15. The sermon traces God's good gift of companionship in creation, the disruption of the fall, and the protoevangelium as the first announcement of the gospel — that Christ, born of a woman, would crush the serpent's head through substitutionary suffering and resurrection. The couple is charged to embody in their Christian marriage the relationship between Christ and his church as depicted in Ephesians 5, and all hearers are called to trust in Christ's righteousness received by faith alone.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 1
Chapter 8 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession opens with the pre-temporal appointment of Christ as mediator in the covenant of redemption, then moves to the historical stages of that mediatorial work, beginning with the incarnation. The confession affirms that the Son of God, consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father, took on true human nature — with all its essential properties and common infirmities, yet without sin — so that two whole and distinct natures are inseparably united in one person: the hypostatic union. Drawing on John 1, Hebrews 2, 4, and 7, Galatians 4, and the Chalcedonian Definition of 451, the study traces the biblical and creedal foundations of Reformed Christology, and shows how the confession's language connects the Reformed Baptist tradition to the settled Christological consensus of the ancient church.
December 15, 2021 - Wednesday Night Bible Study - Exodus 20:7 & 3rd Commandment
The third commandment — 'You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain' — is examined through its prohibition, its rationale, and its positive demands. The names of God in Scripture are not arbitrary labels but revelatory vehicles disclosing his being, perfections, and covenant faithfulness; to misuse them is therefore to assault God himself. The sermon surveys specific violations — blasphemy, unlawful oaths, the manipulation of God's name for personal ends, misapplication of providence, and doctrinal heresy — before turning to the positive uses Scripture requires: reverent prayer, lawful oaths, proper worship, and a life of sincere profession that does not give occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.
Introduction to the Decalogue
Exodus 20:1–2, the preface to the Decalogue, reveals God as the sovereign Lawgiver who redeems before He commands — a pattern in which grace precedes obligation that runs from Sinai through the new covenant. The sermon examines three classical uses of the Ten Commandments (civil, pedagogical, and normative) and the threefold division of the law (moral, ceremonial, judicial), demonstrating that the moral law alone abides in its full binding force for all people and all ages. Believers are not justified by the law but are directed by it as the objective standard of sanctification, so that love for God and neighbor is never left undefined or sentimental.
Exodus 15 - Song of Moses
Exodus 15 records the Song of Moses, a celebration of divine redemption and righteous judgment sung by Israel after the destruction of Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea. The sermon expounds the threefold structure of the song — the triumph of the Lord, the defeat of the Egyptians, and the majesty and incomparability of God — before tracing its prophetic reach into the nations' fear of Yahweh and the ultimate goal of covenant dwelling. The bitter waters of Marah complete the chapter, exposing Israel's reflexive grumbling as a failure to trust the God who had already done the greater work of redemption. Hearers are called to praise God for both his saving mercy and his just judgment, and to pass that doxological heritage to the next generation.
2LCF Chapter 2 - Of God and of the Holy Trinity
What does Scripture reveal about God's relationship to his creation, and how does that shape the creature's obligation to the Creator? Working through paragraphs two and three of Chapter 2 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, this study expounds three perfections of God in his external relations: his aseity (independence and self-sufficiency), his omniscience, and his holiness. From Acts 17, 1 Kings 8, Psalm 113, Psalm 115, Daniel 4, Ephesians 1, and Romans 9, the instructor demonstrates that God is the sole fountain of all being, exercises most sovereign dominion over all creatures, and is morally pure in all his counsels, works, and commands — and that these perfections ground the creature's comprehensive obligation of worship, service, and obedience to the Creator.
2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689) - Sunday School Study - August 29, 2021
What does it mean that God is 'without body, parts, or passions'? This study works through Chapter 2, Paragraph 1 of the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, examining the perfections of God under three classical categories: divine incorporeality (God has no body), divine simplicity (God is not composed of parts), and divine impassability (God does not undergo emotional change). By grounding each doctrine in Scripture and the church's historic theological grammar — including the distinction between proper and improper predication, accommodation, and anthropomorphism — the exposition argues that God's transcendence over every creaturely category is not a cold abstraction but the very foundation of confident worship and unshakeable assurance for his people.
Live Stream - July 11, 2021
John 1:18 presents two inseparable doctrines: the invisibility and incomprehensibility of God, and the revelation of that invisible God through the incarnate Word. The sermon works through the prologue of John's Gospel to show that while no creature has ever perceived the essential glory of God — not Abraham, not Moses, not Isaiah — the only begotten Son, who exists eternally in the bosom of the Father as a distinct yet consubstantial person of the Trinity, has exegeted the Father to us. The practical burden is that saving knowledge of God is not merely knowledge about the economy of redemption but knowledge of the Redeemer himself — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and that the chief end of man is to glorify and enjoy this triune God forever.