Cited in sermons
J. C. Ryle
316 sermons · All people cited
The Crucifixion of Jesus, Part 4
Matthew 27:47–50 records the final moments before Christ's death on the cross — the mockery of bystanders who misheard his cry of dereliction as a call for Elijah, the offering of sour wine, and his loud, voluntary yielding of his spirit. The sermon examines what the cry of dereliction does and does not teach: it does not indicate a division within the Trinity, a dissolution of the hypostatic union, or patripassianism, but it does express the qualified, temporary withholding of the Father's favour from the Son as he bore the punishment due to his people. Christ's loud cry at the moment of death demonstrates that he laid down his life sovereignly and willingly, not as a victim overcome by suffering but as a priest offering himself as substitute. The only fitting response to this substitutionary sacrifice is not moral self-improvement but worship, gratitude, and faith in the one who was forsaken so that his people would never be forsaken.
Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day (2LCF22)
The Sabbath commandment is a moral, positive, and perpetual law binding all men in all ages — not a distinctively Jewish institution abolished with the Mosaic economy, but a creation ordinance blessed and sanctified by God from the beginning and carried forward into the New Covenant era. Working through 2LCF chapter 22, paragraphs 7 and 8, this session traces a biblical theology of the Sabbath from Genesis 2 through Isaiah and Jeremiah, establishing both the moral principle (one day in seven) and its positive element (the particular day). The shift from Saturday to Sunday is grounded in creation and redemption as the twin rationales for the commandment, anticipating the resurrection of Christ as the basis for Lord's Day worship. Hearers are called to receive the Sabbath not as a burden but as a gift given by God for the good of His creatures.
The Crucifixion of Jesus, Part 2
Matthew 27:39–44 records three distinct groups — passing bystanders, the chief priests and elders, and the two crucified robbers — each heaping mockery and blasphemy upon the Son of God while he hangs on the cross. The preacher demonstrates that in every taunt, the mockers unwittingly speak truth: he is the temple builder, the Savior of others, the King of Israel, and the Son of God — and it is precisely because he is all of these things that he must stay on the cross to satisfy divine justice for his people's sins. The irony Matthew constructs reaches its apex in the dying thief, who looks past the gore of the crucifixion and confesses Christ as Lord, while the religious leaders who possessed the very scriptures that prophesied this scene remain utterly blind to it. The sermon calls both unbelievers and believers to look to the crucified Christ by faith, to receive salvation as a gift rather than bargaining with God, and to find in this scene the unsurpassed measure of the Savior's love.
Free Grace Baptist Church - October 22, 2017 AM
Matthew 27 records the layered mockery poured upon Christ at Calvary — by the chief priests, scribes, and elders, and even by the revolutionaries crucified alongside him. The sermon exposes three lines of their reproach: his supposed inability to save, the illegitimacy of his kingship, and the apparent abandonment by his Father. Throughout, the mockers speak more truth than they know, for it is precisely because Christ will not come down from the cross that sinners are saved, and the dying thief stands as the living proof of that saving power exercised in the midst of agony and derision.
The Trial before Pontius Pilate, Part 2
Matthew 27:15–23 presents Pontius Pilate's attempt to grant amnesty to Jesus through the Passover custom of releasing a prisoner — an attempt that collapses under the pressure of crowd manipulation and Pilate's own moral cowardice. The passage exposes the envy driving the religious leaders, the warning of Pilate's wife confessing Christ's righteousness, and the moral depravity of a multitude persuaded to choose a violent insurrectionist over the sinless Son of God. The repeated declarations of Christ's innocence — by Judas, Pilate's wife, and Pilate himself — are Matthew's design: the just stands for the unjust, and every voice proclaiming 'he has done no evil' opens the door to the gospel of substitutionary atonement. Hearers are called to see their own capacity for the crowd's guilt, to recognize total depravity in themselves, and to flee to the holy, harmless, undefiled Christ for forgiveness and righteousness.
The Trial before Pontius Pilate, Part 1
Why does Jesus stand silent before Pontius Pilate, refusing to answer a single charge? Matthew 27:11–14 records the interrogation of Christ by the Roman governor, in which Jesus affirms his kingship with a qualified 'it is as you say' and then offers no defense against the accusations of the chief priests and elders. That silence is not weakness but resolute, covenantal determination — the fulfillment of Isaiah 53:7, the refusal to retard the death that alone can save sinners from the wrath of a holy God. The sermon calls both believer and unbeliever to marvel at the silence of Christ, recognizing in it the ground of every sinner's boldness before God on the day of judgment.
The Rebellion of Moab
Matthew 27:1–5 exposes two devastating portraits set in immediate sequence: the murderous resolution of the Sanhedrin and the miserable end of Judas Iscariot. The sermon presses a distinction the text itself demands — that remorse, however acute, is not repentance, because genuine repentance moves God-ward and Christ-ward, apprehending the mercy of God in Christ, whereas Judas's guilt drove him only to self-destruction. Listeners are urged to see in Judas the bitter end of undealt-with sin, and to flee instead to the one who is altogether lovely and chief among ten thousand, trusting that saving faith and repentance are themselves gifts granted by sovereign grace.
The Denial of Christ by Peter
Peter's threefold denial of Christ in Matthew 26:69–75 exposes both the anatomy of a disciple's fall and the magnitude of divine grace that restores the fallen. The sermon traces Peter's descent from evasive mumbling to sworn denial, showing how self-confidence, prayerlessness, and neglect of the Word prepared him for catastrophic failure before a servant girl. The contrasting thread throughout is the mercy of Christ — his look of 'sorrow, pity, love, and forgiveness' — which, together with the remembered word, brought Peter to godly repentance and eventual restoration. Hearers are exhorted to watch and pray, to hide the Word in their hearts, and to flee to the Christ who does not cast out those who come to him.
2LCF Chapter 18 - Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation
The doctrine of assurance of grace and salvation is grounded not in subjective experience or extraordinary revelation, but in the blood and righteousness of Christ revealed in the gospel, confirmed by the inward witness of the Holy Spirit and the objective evidences of saving grace. Working through chapter 18 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, this study distinguishes genuine assurance from carnal presumption, refutes the Roman Catholic and Arminian denials of assurance, and addresses why true believers may wait long before attaining it. Assurance is not of the essence of faith — a believer may possess saving faith without yet possessing settled assurance — yet the ordinary means of grace are the appointed path by which the Spirit revives it. The study closes with the sobering reality that assurance may be shaken by negligence, special sin, or vehement temptation, while insisting that the seed of God in the elect ensures they are never left in utter despair.
The Hearing before the Sanhedrin, Part 2
At the trial before the Sanhedrin, two false witnesses twist Christ's words about destroying the temple, and the high priest demands to know whether Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Christ's answer — 'it is as you said' — is an unambiguous messianic confession, immediately amplified by his identification of himself as the Son of Man of Daniel 7 enthroned at the right hand of the Father (Psalm 110:1), a claim that converges multiple streams of Old Testament prophecy. The sermon sets this confession against the backdrop of human sinfulness — visible in the kangaroo court's predetermined verdict and willingness to suborn perjury — and calls hearers to see in Christ the true temple-builder of the Davidic covenant, the substitutionary curse-bearer of Isaiah 53, and the only Savior in whom God and sinners dwell together.
The Hearing before the Sanhedrin, Part 1
Matthew 26:57–61 places Jesus before the Sanhedrin in what the preacher demonstrates was not an impartial criminal trial but a predetermined hearing whose guilty verdict had been settled before any witnesses were called. The sermon maps the political and ecclesiastical machinery of the Sanhedrin — its composition, its lack of authority to execute, its violations of due process, and its need to construct a charge sufficient to deliver Jesus to Pilate — and addresses the charge that the gospel accounts of these events are colored by anti-Semitism. Against that background, the contrast between the faithful witness of Christ and the fearful, distanced discipleship of Peter issues a direct call to close, unashamed allegiance to the Savior, and an invitation to unbelievers to come to the One who restores even those who deny him.
The Lord's Arrest in the Garden
Matthew 26:50-56 records the arrest of Christ in Gethsemane — an event the speaker expounds as the voluntary, scripturally determined surrender of the sinless Son of God, not a defeat. Working through four structural movements (betrayal, defense, assertion, and desertion), the sermon treats Peter's sword-stroke as a case study in zeal without knowledge, unpacks the legitimate and illegitimate uses of the sword in biblical ethics, and shows that Christ's willing submission to arrest was the necessary means by which He bore the wrath of God as the scapegoat for His people. The closing application summons hearers to the Psalm 2:12 command — 'Kiss the Son' — contrasting Judas's kiss of treachery with the saving trust that finds all shame removed in the One who went alone into the wilderness bearing sin.
2LCF Chapter 16 - Of Good Works
1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 16, 'Of Good Works,' teaches that good works are defined exclusively by God's revealed word, flow necessarily from justification and sanctification, and are enabled entirely by Christ as the believer's vine. The chapter distinguishes scriptural good works — requiring the right matter, root, manner, and end — from both the meritorious works Rome supposes possible and the common-grace works of the unregenerate, which, lacking a heart purified by faith and the goal of God's glory, cannot please God. Believers are exhorted to pursue good works not as the ground of their acceptance before God, but as the fruit of a living faith, performed in Christ's strength and received by God through Christ despite their imperfection.
Free Grace Baptist Church - July 9, 2017 PM
Humility is not merely an outward posture of social deference but an inward disposition that every believer must cultivate, grounded in a right knowledge of self, of God, and of the gospel of Christ. Expounding 1 Peter 5:5–7, this sermon traces three movements: the command to humble ourselves toward one another and toward God, the means of doing so by casting all anxiety upon him in prayer and through the means of grace, and the reason to do so — namely that the God of heaven and earth, who proved his care at the cross and sustains his people through trial, will exalt the humble in due time. Pride is shown to be not merely loudness or arrogance but any self-trust that withholds dependence on God, and the remedy is the gospel itself: the one who humbled himself to the death of the cross is the ground and pattern of true humility.
The Lord's Betrayal in the Garden
Matthew 26:47–50 records the betrayal of Christ in Gethsemane, and this expository sermon works through three dimensions of that event: its significance as the arrival of the cup of God's wrath that Christ had prayed over, the plan behind the betrayal as Judas and the religious leaders converge under God's sovereignty, and the execution of the betrayal through a hypocritical kiss. Woven throughout is the parallel account in John 18, where Christ's absolute declaration of 'I Am' causes the arresting mob to draw back and fall to the ground — a manifestation of divine glory that underscores both his power to resist and his voluntary surrender to the Father's will. The sermon calls hearers to see in Christ's resolve the willingness of the Savior to save sinners, and to flee to him rather than trust in external proximity to Christ or religious position.
Free Grace Baptist Church - July 2, 2017 AM
This expository sermon on Matthew 26:40–46 examines the sluggishness of the disciples in Gethsemane against the backdrop of Christ's resolute, prayerful obedience to the Father. The disciples' repeated failure to watch and pray — despite explicit warning and their own loud protestations of loyalty — exposes the persistent pride and creaturely weakness of even regenerate believers. Christ's threefold prayer, his endurance of the cup of divine wrath by imputation, and his gracious invitation to the sleeping disciples ('let us be going') together constitute the ground for the sermon's central exhortation: the ordained means of victory over temptation and spiritual lethargy is watchfulness and prayer, practiced in both private devotion and the corporate worship of God.
The Lord's Prayer in the Garden, Part 1
Matthew 26:36–39 sets the scene of Christ's agony in Gethsemane, and this sermon works through three observations: the setting of the Savior's agony, the sorrow of the Savior, and the supplication of the Savior. The preacher grounds the soul-distress of Christ firmly in His true humanity, engaging the Council of Chalcedon's two-natures Christology and the condemnation of monothelitism to show that Christ's two wills are both affirmed and required by this text. The cup Christ prays to have pass is identified as the cup of divine wrath, which differentiates His anguish from that of any martyr and establishes the necessity of substitutionary atonement. The sermon's primary application is worship and adoration in response to the lengths the incarnate Son went to in order to secure the salvation of His people.
Of Sanctification (2LCF 13)
What does it mean to be sanctified, and how does that work itself out in the Christian life? Working from 2LCF Chapter 13 and Ephesians 4:17–24 as a core text, this teaching distinguishes definitive sanctification — the once-for-all, irreversible breach with the dominion of sin that occurs at union with Christ — from the progressive sanctification that follows as the Spirit applies Christ's death and resurrection to the believer's daily conflict with the flesh, the world, and the devil. The confession's three paragraphs frame the exposition: the inception and source of sanctification in Christ's virtue, the imperfect yet real struggle with indwelling sin, and the certain progress of grace toward evangelical obedience. Believers are called to reckon themselves dead to sin, take up the means of grace daily, and press on toward holiness as those who are already God's special possession.
Of Justification (2LCF 11)
Justification — the forensic declaration by which God accounts and accepts sinners as righteous — is examined through the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter 11. The confession distinguishes justification sharply from sanctification: it is not an infused or imparted righteousness but an imputed one, grounded entirely in Christ's active obedience to the law and passive obedience in His death. Faith, itself a gift of God and not a human contribution, is the sole instrument by which the justified receive and rest on Christ's righteousness. The sermon closes by tracing the ongoing practical realities of the justified life — including fatherly displeasure, confession, and the impossibility of falling from the state of justification — and by drawing on J.C. Ryle to clarify precisely how justification and sanctification are alike yet distinct.
The Confession of Thomas
John 20:24–31 presents Thomas's movement from emphatic unbelief to the confession 'My Lord and my God' — the confession that frames the entire fourth gospel, answering John 1:1 at its close. Thomas's refusal to believe is shown to be not mere doubt but a willful rejection of Old Testament testimony, the word and works of Christ, and apostolic witness — making Christ's gracious condescension to meet him all the more striking. The sermon expounds John's stated purpose in verses 30–31: that the gospel was written to produce saving faith, defined in the confession's terms as accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life. Hearers are called to forsake the folly of placing conditions upon God and to confess with Thomas, 'My Lord and my God.'
The Betrayal of Christ by Judas
Judas Iscariot's betrayal of Christ for thirty pieces of silver exposes the deadly convergence of unrepented sin, satanic opportunism, and the utter insufficiency of religious privilege as a ground of salvation. Working through Matthew 26:14–16 in its narrative context, this sermon examines both the identity of the betrayer — his position, character, and the devil's capitalizing on his covetousness — and the mechanics of his conspiracy with the chief priests. The central application is that unconverted hearts, however outwardly privileged, will be seized upon by Satan through their ruling sin; the only remedy is sovereign grace received through faith in Christ alone.
The Prohibition Against Partiality
James 2:1–4 issues a direct prohibition against partiality — the sin of showing favoritism based on economic status, ethnicity, or social rank within the gathered assembly of Christ's body. The sermon works through the command of verse 1 and its illustrative example in verses 2–4, while devoting substantial attention to demonstrating that James's soteriology is fully consistent with Paul's: salvation is by sovereign grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, with works serving as the necessary evidence of genuine saving faith rather than its ground. The persistent tendency to judge by externals and to divide the body of Christ into cliques and factions is exposed as a form of sinful judgmentalism that usurps God's own prerogative as judge.
The Anointing at Bethany
Matthew 26:6–13 records the anointing of Jesus at Bethany by Mary, sister of Lazarus, who poured a flask of costly spikenard worth a year's wages upon his head. Matthew places this account between the conspiracy of the chief priests and the betrayal by Judas for deliberate theological reasons: where the cross is associated with treachery on every side, it must also be associated with wholehearted worship and adoration. The disciples' indignant charge of 'waste' is exposed as both a direct insult to Mary and an indirect slight upon the dignity of Christ himself, while Jesus' fourfold response vindicates her act as a beautiful thing, a prophetic preparation for his burial, and a deed to be proclaimed wherever the gospel is preached. The sermon calls believers to imitate Mary's extravagant, undivided devotion to Christ, resisting the tendency to reduce Christian faithfulness to either social concern or piety alone.
The Prologue to the Passion Narrative
Matthew 26:1–5 opens the Passion Narrative with two structurally parallel statements placed side by side: Christ's sovereign prophecy of His own crucifixion and the chief priests' conspiracy to accomplish it. The sermon argues that the word 'delivered up' (paradidōmi) carries far greater theological weight than a simple 'betrayed,' pointing ultimately to the Father as the primary agent who delivered His Son according to the eternal covenant of redemption. The Passover timing is no coincidence but the deliberate fulfillment of Old Testament typology — Christ is the new Moses leading a new exodus — and the only fitting response to such grace is worship, adoration, and the resolve to point children and neighbors to the cross.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 16
Matthew 25:41–46 presents the judgment of the unrighteous as the precise structural mirror of the judgment of the righteous: those who depart into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels are distinguished from those who inherit the kingdom not by degree of works but by the presence or absence of saving faith. The sermon defends, through nine arguments drawn from the text and from Galatians 2:21, that this passage does not teach justification by works — the sheep and goats are already determined, the kingdom is inherited not merited, and the good works function as evidence of faith rather than its ground. The 'least of these my brethren' is shown, through Matthew 10 and 12, to refer specifically to Christ's disciples, so that reception or rejection of them constitutes reception or rejection of Christ himself. The passage concludes by calling all hearers to be found in Christ — clothed not in their own righteousness but in the righteousness of God through faith — as the only preparation for the certain judgment to come.
The Bridled Tongue
James 1:26 confronts professing Christians with a concrete test of genuine faith: the bridling of the tongue. The sermon expounds the passage within its context of James's call to be doers of the Word, arguing that an unbridled tongue is not a minor failing but a symptom of self-deception — a religion James pronounces useless. Drawing on the Decalogue, the Proverbs, Romans 1, and James 3–4, the preacher demonstrates that Scripture condemns sins of speech — gossip, slander, backbiting, hypocrisy — with the same severity as the grosser immoralities the church is quick to discipline. The sermon closes by grounding the believer's hope not in perfected speech but in Christ, who alone fulfilled the law of the tongue in his sinless life, and calls hearers to pursue tongue-discipline as a fruit of sovereign grace and dependence on God.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 15
Matthew 25:31–46, the conclusion of the Olivet Discourse, presents the final judgment of the Son of Man — not as a basis for works-righteousness, but as the definitive revelation of what saving faith produces. The sermon argues that the sheep and goats are already distinguished before the throne, exposing the error of Roman Catholic and moralistic readings that treat the acts of charity as the ground of salvation. Christ's declaration 'come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world' is the language of election and inheritance, not merit. The application is twofold: look to Christ alone in faith for justification, and let that faith show itself — as the confession states — 'no dead faith but worketh by love,' particularly toward the brethren in the local congregation.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 14
The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14–30) is Christ's definition of watchfulness: not passive waiting for the Son of Man's return, but diligent, faithful stewardship of whatever the Master has entrusted. The sermon expounds the three servants in turn, establishing that talents are distributed according to God's sovereign wisdom rather than merit, that faithfulness rather than quantity of output determines commendation, and that the one-talent servant's condemnation flows directly from a defective doctrine of God. The central application is that justification by faith alone is never a license for inactivity — those truly justified will evidence it by serving the Master's interests in light of His coming.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 13
Matthew 25:1–13, the Parable of the Ten Virgins, confronts every professing Christian with a single urgent question: are you genuinely prepared to meet the returning bridegroom, or merely carrying a torch with no oil? The sermon works through the parable's three movements — the expectation, the delay, and the arrival of the bridegroom — arguing that wise and foolish in Matthew's Gospel denote real versus nominal faith, not intellectual capacity. Preparedness for Christ's return cannot be borrowed from another person's faith, transferred through family religion, or deferred to a more convenient season; it is a matter of personal possession of Christ by grace through faith. Hearers are called to examine whether their profession is backed by genuine, persevering possession of the Lord Jesus, and to flee to the bridegroom before the door is shut.
The Governing Principle of Kingdom Life
Matthew 6:31–34 contains Christ's governing principle for kingdom life: seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and the necessities of life will be added. The sermon works through the contrast Christ draws between the Gentiles, whose obsessive anxiety over food, drink, and clothing flows from their exclusion of God, and the children of God, whose heavenly Father already knows their needs. Worry is exposed as a sin that betrays the sovereignty of God, divides the believer's attention, and paralyzes kingdom advance. The remedy is not passivity but a reordered priority — the Lord's Prayer models the same sequence — combined with a cultivated contentment grounded in the goodness and providence of God.