Cited in sermons
J. C. Ryle
316 sermons · All people cited
The One Thing Needful
Luke 10:38–42 presents two sisters whose contrasting responses to Christ's presence expose a perennial danger for every believer: allowing lawful, even godly, activity to crowd out the one thing needful. The sermon works through the difference between Martha's distracted service and Mary's devoted hearing, establishing that Christ's commendation of Mary is not a commendation of monasticism but of right priority — the kingdom of God and communion with Christ must govern the believer's ordering of life. Drawn from the parallel teaching of Matthew 6 and Luke 12, five consequences of carnal anxiety are identified, and the congregation is exhorted to repent of marginalizing Christ from the daily calendar and to attend faithfully to both the corporate preaching and the private reading of God's Word.
The Preeminence of Christ
John 3:22–30 records John the Baptist's final official testimony concerning Christ, and in it the preeminent greatness of a man whose greatness lay entirely in his humility. Confronted by disciples troubled that Jesus was drawing larger crowds, John offers four responses grounded in God's sovereignty: the origin of his ministry was from heaven, its purpose was always to announce the Messiah, his joy was fulfilled precisely when the bridegroom's voice was heard, and Christ must increase while he must decrease. The sermon applies this pattern to every believer, arguing that humility is not directly cultivated but is the byproduct of being increasingly occupied with Christ, and that the cross is the only path to that self-forgetful life.
2LCF Chapter 5 - Of Divine Providence
Divine providence — God's upholding, directing, disposing, and governing of all creatures and things — is the subject of 2nd London Baptist Confession chapter 5, here expounded in a single-session overview. The chapter is read in full, then traced through its seven paragraphs: the definition and scope of providence, the relationship of God's sovereign first cause to secondary causes, the place of sin within providence (both for believers and unbelievers), and the special providential care God exercises toward his church. The session presses toward pastoral comfort: because the God of chapter 2 — infinitely wise, holy, and good — is the God of chapter 5, whatever befalls the elect is by divine appointment for God's glory and their good.
The Cross as the Demonstration of God's Love
John 3:16, which Martin Luther called 'the Bible in miniature,' is examined through four observations concerning the cross: the immeasurable love of God toward an unworthy world, the gracious gift of the only begotten Son delivered up as a sacrifice, the object of saving faith as Christ alone, and the promised blessing of not perishing but having everlasting life. The sermon defends particular redemption by noting that 'world' in John 3:16 denotes men without distinction — Jew and Gentile elect — rather than every individual without exception, and grounds this in the parallel logic of Deuteronomy 7 and Romans 5. Believers are exhorted to contemplate the unchanging love of God displayed at the cross as a weapon in their ongoing warfare against remaining corruption, and those without faith are called to look to Christ alone, in whom the principal acts of saving faith find their immediate object.
Free Grace Baptist Church - December 18, 2016 AM
Luke 7:36–50 presents three parties whose interaction discloses the nature of saving grace: the notorious sinner whose transformed devotion exposes the bankruptcy of self-righteousness, the Pharisee whose surface-level hospitality masks a judgmental contempt for God's mercy, and the Savior who receives worship, pronounces forgiveness, and vindicates faith as the sole instrument of justification. The parable of the two debtors (vv. 41–43) governs the entire passage: the woman's extravagant love is the effect of prior forgiveness freely granted, not its cause or condition — a point the sermon drives against both Roman Catholic and Protestant moralistic misreadings. Believers are called to examine whether the depth of their love for Christ reflects a genuine reckoning with the magnitude of what has been forgiven.
The Prohibition Against Judgmentalism
Matthew 7:1–5 contains not a universal ban on discernment but a precise prohibition against the censorious, fault-finding spirit that delights in the shortcomings of others. Working through three movements — the prohibition itself, Christ's explanation of its consequence, and the plank-and-speck illustration — the sermon establishes that judgmentalism is a serious sin condemned by Christ on the Mount, one attended by self-righteousness, a lack of charity, and a practical denial of remaining corruption in oneself. The application calls believers to seek the Spirit's influence, apply biblical law evenhandedly, pursue humility, and let the cross be the death knell of self-righteousness.
Free Grace Baptist Church - December 4, 2016 AM
Philippians 2:8–11 presents the obedience of Christ as the crux of the gospel: the Son of God, fully God and fully man, humbled himself unto the cross death in substitutionary obedience to the law of God in the place of all who believe. This sermon works through three movements — the reality, the crux, and the result of Christ's obedience — grounding each in the theology of the two Adams: as Adam's disobedience plunged mankind into sin and condemnation, so Christ's perfect obedience as the second Adam restores and surpasses all that was lost. The obedience of Christ is not merely a doctrinal category but a free gift of righteousness received by faith alone, the very lifeblood of the gospel, received with joy and answered in humble service to others after the pattern of the Lord.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 10
Matthew 24:32–35 presents the parable of the fig tree and Christ's solemn declaration that 'this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.' This sermon argues the preterist interpretation: the parable is not a prophecy about the 1948 rebirth of Israel but a sign given to first-century disciples that the judgment on Jerusalem in AD 70 was near, confirming that Christ is presently enthroned at the Father's right hand. The phrase 'this generation' carries the same lexical and contextual meaning it holds throughout Matthew's Gospel — the contemporaries of Jesus — and Christ staked His prophetic integrity on the fulfilment of every detail within that generation. Hearers are urged to let the text drive their eschatology, and ultimately to flee not to the mountains of Judea but to Christ, the only refuge from divine judgment.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 6
Matthew 24:21–22 describes a 'great tribulation' and its sovereign limitation — but what event does this language describe? Working through a preterist reading of the Olivet Discourse, this sermon argues that verse 21's unparalleled tribulation language refers to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, not to a future global event. Drawing on parallel idioms in Exodus 11, Ezekiel 5, Ezekiel 7, and Daniel 9, the sermon demonstrates that such hyperbolic judgment language is standard biblical speech for covenantal catastrophe, and that the AD 70 destruction constituted the decisive covenantal transformation by which the kingdom was taken from old covenant Israel and given to the church. The sermon closes with a direct call to sinners to flee to Christ, whose promise in John 6:37 and 1 John 3:23 provides the warrant for faith.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 5
Matthew 24:15–20 presents Christ's command to flee Jerusalem when the abomination of desolation appears — a command the preterist interpretation locates in the first-century siege and destruction of the city by Rome in AD 70, not in a distant eschatological future. Working through the prophetic background in Daniel 9 and 12, the parallel account in Luke 21, and the covenant-curse framework of Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26, this exposition argues that every detail in the passage — the reference to Judea, the architectural urgency, the concern for pregnant women, the prayer about winter and the Sabbath — is intelligible only as instruction addressed to first-century disciples facing a localized, historical judgment. The AD 70 destruction functions typologically, however, pressing every hearer to flee now to Christ, the only refuge when he comes in glory to judge the living and the dead.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 2
Jesus' Olivet Discourse opens not with a timetable for the end of all things but with two commanding exhortations: 'Take heed that no one deceives you' and 'See that you are not troubled.' Expounding Matthew 24:4–8 within a preterist framework, this sermon argues that Christ's description of false messiahs, wars, famines, pestilences, and earthquakes depicts the conditions preceding the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 — the covenant curses of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 falling at last upon an apostate people who rejected their Messiah. The practical burden is twofold: guard theological sanity by submitting to the Word rather than to prophecy speculators, and guard emotional stability by resting in God's sovereign governance of history rather than panicking at world events.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 1
The Olivet Discourse opens with a decisive act: Jesus departs the temple he has just pronounced desolate, and his disciples — grasping the covenantal weight of that moment — point to its magnificence even as he foretells its total destruction. This sermon establishes the interpretive framework for Matthew 24–25, arguing from the immediate context of chapters 21–23, the parallel witness of the Old Testament prophets (Ezekiel, Micah, Jeremiah), and the time-texts of the discourse itself that Jesus addresses first-century Israel, not a distant eschatological future. The Preterist reading on offer holds that AD 70 was the exhaustion of the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28 upon apostate Old Covenant Israel, that the church — not ethnic Israel — is now the covenant people of God, and that this understanding guards against both anti-Semitism and Christian Zionism.
The Pharisee and the Publican
Luke 18:9–14 presents two men at prayer whose contrasting postures before God expose the heart of the doctrine of justification. The Pharisee's self-congratulatory prayer — cataloguing what he is not and what he does — illustrates the fatal error of self-righteousness: banking one's standing with God upon personal merit, which inevitably produces contempt for others. The tax collector's wordless self-renunciation — 'God be propitious to me, the sinner' — is the only posture that receives the verdict 'justified,' because justification is an act of God's free grace wherein the righteousness of Christ alone, received by faith, is the ground of the sinner's acceptance. The parable calls every hearer to kill pride, renounce all self-congratulatory religion, and cast himself entirely upon the mercy of God in Christ.
The Salvation of Zacchaeus
Luke 19:1–10 presents Zacchaeus — a wealthy, corrupt chief tax collector — as a demonstration of the divine power described just verses earlier in Luke 18, where Christ declared it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. The salvation of Zacchaeus is therefore not merely a warm story of hospitality but a proof of omnipotent, sovereign grace: the effectual call goes forth, the dead sinner descends from the tree, confesses Christ as Lord, and manifests genuine repentance in the only currency that could prove a rich man's heart-change. The sermon closes with the mission statement of Luke 19:10 — 'the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost' — as the ground for evangelical confidence, joyful worship, and hope for any who have not yet come down from their own sycamore tree.
The Impending Judgment of Israel
Matthew 23:34–36 records Christ's announcement of impending divine judgment upon the generation of Israel that would reject him and murder his sent messengers. The sermon traces three interlocking movements: the rejection of the prophets Christ sends in the new covenant era, the accumulation of blood-guilt from Abel to Zechariah spanning the entire Hebrew canon, and the prophetic assurance — sealed with Christ's own 'amen' — that all these things would fall upon that first-century generation in the destruction of AD 70. The exposition situates Matthew 23 within a consistent covenantal pattern running from the Mosaic curses through the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities to AD 70, and closes with a direct call to flee to the Righteous One whose shed blood is the only escape from the condemnation of hell.
The Condemnation of the Religious Leaders, Part 5
Matthew 23:29–33 records the eighth and final woe Jesus pronounces against the scribes and Pharisees, and this sermon works through the passage under three headings: their professed allegiance to the prophets, their protested dissociation from their fathers' murders, and Christ's prophetic assertion of their guilt. The hypocrisy at the centre of the woe is that these men honoured dead prophets with tombs and monuments while plotting the murder of the greatest prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. The sermon draws sustained parallels from Ezra 9, Daniel 9, 2 Kings 17, and 2 Chronicles 36 to show that Israel's rejection of the prophets had always preceded covenantal judgment, and that Matthew 23 sets the ground for the destruction of Jerusalem prophesied in Matthew 24. Hearers are pressed by Christ's own question — 'How can you escape the condemnation of hell?' — and directed to faith in Christ alone as the only answer.
The Condemnation of the Religious Leaders, Part 4
Matthew 23:25–28 presents Jesus' sixth and seventh woes against the scribes and Pharisees, condemning their emphasis on outward religious compliance while their hearts remain filled with extortion, self-indulgence, hypocrisy, and lawlessness. The cup and the whitewashed tomb function as related analogies: both expose the fatal gap between external religiosity and inward moral corruption, with the tomb analogy adding that such teachers actively defile those who come under their influence. The sermon draws the contrast through the Old Testament's consistent demand for heart religion — from the Shema to the prophets — and presses the application that the only cleansing of the inward cup comes through faith in the blood of Christ. Believers are warned equally against the twin errors of antinomianism and mere externalism, since justification produces progressive sanctification that reforms the outside as well as the inside.
2LCF Chapter 26 - Of the Church, Part 13
The conduct required of an offended church member, and the proper interpretation of Matthew 7:1–6 in relation to church discipline, stand at the center of this study of 2LCF 26.13. The confession forbids the offended party from absenting themselves from worship or disturbing church order while awaiting the church's further proceeding, and calls them instead to wait upon Christ. Matthew 7:1–6 is not a blanket prohibition against all judgment but a condemnation of the censorious, nitpicking, fault-finding spirit that disregards the law of God and one's own sin. The sermon closes with the exhortation to remove the plank of self-righteous censoriousness before seeking to help a brother with his speck.
The Warning Concerning the Religious Leaders
Matthew 23:1–12 presents Jesus' warning to the crowds and disciples concerning the scribes and Pharisees, exposing the pride that drives hypocrisy, legalism, religious show, and self-exaltation. Jesus affirms the scribes' and Pharisees' office insofar as they teach the law of Moses accurately, yet condemns their practice as utterly contrary to that law. He then calls his disciples to a thoroughgoing humility, grounding it in the sole authority and teachership of Christ and the brotherhood of all believers. The sermon applies this to every form of spiritual performance — from social media piety to celebrity pastor culture — and summons the unconverted to the easy yoke of Christ.
The Lawyer and the Great Commandment
Matthew 22:34–40 records a Pharisaic lawyer testing Jesus with the question of which commandment is greatest — a live dispute in rabbinic Judaism with deadly intent behind it. Jesus answers by citing the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4–5) as the first and great commandment and Leviticus 19:18 as its inseparable companion, demonstrating that the whole Decalogue hangs on love to God and love to neighbor. The sermon argues that these two commandments expose every person's total failure to render the perfect, personal obedience God demands, driving the hearer to the only One whose obedience is reckoned to all who trust Him. Believers are exhorted to examine whether their love to God is genuine and whole-hearted, expressed in Sabbath observance, rejection of idolatry, and tangible love for the brethren.
The Defection from the Truth
When the apostle Paul commands Timothy to 'preach the Word' in 2 Timothy 4:2, he immediately supplies the reason: a time is coming when professing Christians will not endure sound doctrine. This sermon expounds 2 Timothy 4:3–5, tracing four sequential steps of doctrinal defection — boredom and apathy toward the truth, heaping up teachers who satisfy itching ears, active turning away from the truth, and final embrace of fables — and sets over against that decline the fourfold call to Timothy: be watchful, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, and fulfill your ministry. The church's responsibility is to receive the truth, recognize its proper mission defined by the marks of the church, and rejoice in the means God has ordained rather than demanding a prescription of its own devising.
The Sadducees and the Resurrection
Matthew 22:23–33 records the Sadducees' attempt to discredit the doctrine of the resurrection by posing an elaborate riddle drawn from the Mosaic Levirate law, only to be silenced by Christ's twofold demonstration that they were ignorant both of the Scriptures and of the power of God. Jesus first exposes the false premise of the riddle by revealing a genuine discontinuity between this age and the age to come — in the resurrection there is no marriage, no procreation, and believers will be like the angels in their service to God. He then validates the resurrection from the Sadducees' own canon, the Torah, showing from Exodus 3:6 that God's present-tense covenant relation with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob proves they were still living. Hearers are called not merely to marvel at Christ's wisdom but to forsake every rationalised objection to Christianity and believe on the Lord Jesus, in whom the covenant of life stands too strong to be terminated by death.
The Parable of the Wedding Feast
Matthew 22:1–14 presents the parable of the wedding feast as a sobering account of divine invitation, human rebellion, and eschatological judgment. The parable unfolds three responses to God's sovereign call — unwillingness, indifference, and violent opposition — each met by the king's patient re-invitation and, ultimately, his righteous wrath. The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is identified as a visible, covenantal judgment prefiguring the final day when every mouth will be stopped before God. The sermon closes by pressing the imputed righteousness of Christ as the only wedding garment that makes a sinner fit for the feast, and by urging the church to pursue gospel mission with urgency.
The Final Charge to Timothy, Part 1
Paul's final formal charge to the church, delivered through Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:1–2, consists of a solemn charge and a specific command: preach the Word. The solemnity of the charge is grounded in the presence of the triune God as divine audience and in the coming judgment of Christ over the living and the dead, which simultaneously weighs on the minister who handles the Word and on the people who will one day stand before God. The command itself, rooted in the image of the herald (Greek kēryx), demands faithful proclamation of the Word — not creative substitutes, not life-coaching, not entertainment — through conviction, rebuke, exhortation, longsuffering, and teaching. The sermon closes with a call for biblical preachers, biblical preaching, and biblical hearers, arguing that the church's abandonment of the pulpit is the root of her contemporary crisis.
A Sure and Proven Creed
First Timothy 1:15 presents what Charles Spurgeon called 'the whole gospel in one verse' — a faithful saying worthy of all acceptance. This sermon expounds the verse under three headings: the introduction to the creed (its truthfulness and trustworthiness), the creed itself (Christ Jesus as champion, his incarnational coming, and his consummate saving work), and the demonstrable confirmation of the creed in the conversion of the Apostle Paul, the self-declared chief of sinners. Believers are exhorted to ground assurance not in inward experience but solely in the person and finished work of Christ Jesus, the Lord.
2LCF Chapter 25 - Of Marriage
What does Scripture teach about the nature, purposes, and lawful boundaries of marriage? Working through 2LCF Chapter 25, paragraphs 1–4, this study defends the confessional definition of marriage as a monogamous, heterosexual, lifelong covenant between one man and one woman, instituted by God at creation before the fall. The three divine purposes of marriage — companionship, procreation, and conjugal relations — are grounded in Genesis 1–2, and the lawful parties are examined with particular attention to the duty of Christians to marry only in the Lord. The session closes with practical counsel on the dignity of marriage, the responsibility it entails, and the discriminating wisdom required of those who would pursue it.
The Christocentric Gospel
John 20:30–31 gives the purpose statement for the entire Gospel of John: that readers would believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing they would have life in His name. This sermon examines, first, the deliberate divine design behind gospel revelation — that God superintended the inscripturation of Scripture not to disclose all things, but to set forth with clarity the saving knowledge of Christ — and, second, the Christocentric character of that revelation, tracing how the whole of Scripture, from Moses through John, has Christ as its intended terminus. The sermon closes with a direct call to believe on Christ, warning that rejection of such a glorious Savior issues in eternal condemnation, while faith issues in spiritual life now and eternal life in the age to come.
The Incarnation and True Humanity of Christ
Philippians 2:5–11 anchors a study of the incarnation and true humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Drawing on the Nicene, Constantinopolitan, Chalcedonian, and Athanasian creeds together with the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, the study traces three aspects of the incarnation — assumption of human nature, the virgin birth, and the union of two natures in one person — before marshalling seven biblical proofs of Christ's full humanity. The central argument throughout is soteriological: the Son of God must be truly and perfectly man, body and soul, yet without sin, because only such a mediator can make propitiation for guilty sinners and be their faithful high priest.
A Tomb for a Testimony
Why was Jesus buried? The burial of Christ, recorded by all four evangelists and confessed in the Apostles' Creed, is far more than narrative filler between the cross and the empty tomb. This exposition of Luke 23:50–56 argues that the burial of Jesus is a historic apologetic for the Christian faith: it proves the reality of the incarnation, illustrates the full depth of his humiliation, certifies that his atoning death was genuine, and serves as the necessary prerequisite for the bodily resurrection. Because Christ sanctified the grave by lying in it, believers may face death and burial without fear, assured that the penalty for sin has been discharged and that bodily resurrection awaits them as it awaited him.
The Parable of the Vineyard, Part 2
Matthew 21:40–46 brings the Parable of the Vineyard to its sobering conclusion: Jesus draws three implications from the parable — the witness of the Old Testament (Psalm 118), the transfer of the kingdom from ethnic Israel to the church composed of Jew and Gentile, and the promise of crushing judgment on all who reject the Messiah. The sermon argues that this transfer of the kingdom is not replacement theology but fulfillment in Christ, the true Israel, in whom all the promises of God find their terminus. The patience of God that runs through the parable is not inexhaustible, and the only refuge from the coming judgment is faith in the Christ who was rejected, crucified, and vindicated as the chief cornerstone.