Cited in sermons
J. Gresham Machen
191 sermons · All people cited
The Gracious Purpose of the Father, Part 2
Ephesians 1:5–6 presents predestination not as cold metaphysical fate but as an act of divine love, wherein God in love predetermined his elect unto adoption as sons by Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his own will and not any foreseen merit in the creature. The sermon works through the motive of predestination (the love of God), the means (adoption as sons by Christ, grounded in the covenant of redemption), and the goal (the praise of the glory of God's grace), drawing extensively on parallel Pauline and Johannine texts. Against both Arminian and Pelagian objections, the preacher demonstrates that predestination to adoption is precisely what makes Christian praise coherent — the creature contributes nothing, and God receives all glory. Believers are called to live out their adopted status by walking in love, light, and wisdom as members of the household of God.
The 6th Command, Part 2
The sixth commandment's prohibition against murder extends far beyond the physical act of killing to encompass the internal disposition of the heart — unwarranted anger, bitterness, and character assassination. Drawing from Exodus 20:13, Matthew 5:21-26, Leviticus 19:17-18, and the Westminster Larger Catechism, this study traces the biblical distinctions between murder and lawful homicide (capital punishment, just war, and self-defense), demonstrates that all human beings at every stage of life bear the image of God and therefore possess inviolable dignity, and applies the commandment's positive duty to preserve life. Hearers are called to deal faithfully with relational sin rather than harbor grudges, to resist the culture of abortion and euthanasia as violations of the image of God, and to understand the civil use, pedagogical use, and normative use of this commandment.
The Prophet's Faith in a Time of Distress
Habakkuk 3 presents the prophet's response to the announced Babylonian invasion of Judah: not despair, but a structured movement from fearful petition through deliberate theological remembrance to confident refuge in God. The sermon traces three movements in the psalm — petition, remembrance of God's acts in redemptive history, and refuge — arguing that a perplexed faith steadies itself not by self-reflection but by rehearsing who God is and what He has done. The doctrine of justification by faith (Habakkuk 2:4), appropriated in the New Testament, is shown here in its practical dimension: the just do not merely begin by faith but continue to live and persevere by it through every extremity. The congregation is called to imitate the prophet by building their own 'collage' of God's mighty works in Scripture, thereby finding rest, joy, and stability in God alone when earthly supports fail.
The Healing at Bethesda
John 5:1–15 presents the healing of a paralyzed man at Bethesda as a display of Christ's sovereign initiative, mercy, and power. The man's 38-year infirmity — physical, helpless, and rooted in personal sin — mirrors the spiritual condition of every sinner apart from grace: unable to save himself and without recourse. Christ seeks the man out from a great multitude, issues a word of command that effects immediate and complete healing, and then addresses the deeper need by calling him to repentance. Against this glory, the opposition of the Jewish leaders — fixating on Sabbath casuistry while ignoring a manifest work of God — warns against a religion so narrowly fastidious that it cannot acknowledge divine mercy.
The Judgment Throne of Christ
Matthew 25:31–46 presents not a parable but a prophecy: the Son of Man, identified as Daniel's divine king, will sit on the throne of glory and separate all nations into the righteous and the wicked. The passage is examined to show that it does not overturn justification by faith alone, but rather demonstrates that those justified by grace will inevitably produce the good works that serve as fruits and evidences of saving faith. The sermon sets the evidentiary nature of works — care for Christ's brethren — against any works-righteousness reading, drawing on Galatians 5:6, Ephesians 2:8–10, James 2, and the 1689 London Baptist Confession to ground the argument. Hearers are called to confess Christ now, since the same Lord who bids 'come' in his earthly ministry will bid 'come' or 'depart' on the day of judgment.
Sanctity of Life
The Sixth Commandment — 'You shall not murder' (Exodus 20:13) — extends its protection to the pre-born, grounding the prohibition against abortion in the doctrine of man as image-bearer of God. This sermon works through three lines of argument: the precise meaning of the Hebrew word for murder, the consistent biblical testimony to the sanctity of human life at every stage from conception to old age, and the specific case law of Exodus 21:22–23, which affords the pre-born equal legal protection under the lex talionis. The sermon closes with a call to press the law upon a culture that celebrates abortion, while proclaiming that the blood of Christ is sufficient to forgive all who have participated in this sin.
2LCF Chapter 7 - Of God's Covenant, Part 2
1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 7, paragraph 3 sets out three theological covenants — the covenant of grace, the covenant of redemption (pactum salutis), and the covenant of works — as the structural architecture of all Scripture. This sermon expounds each in turn, demonstrating from texts in Genesis, Isaiah, Hosea, Galatians, and Romans that the covenant of grace is founded on an eternal transaction between the Father and the Son, and that it is God's provision for sinners rendered incapable of acceptance with God since Adam's fall. The covenant of works is shown to be indispensable to a right understanding of justification: without it, the imputed righteousness of Christ collapses into either moralism or antinomianism, and the distinction between forgiveness and imputation is lost. Covenant theology is pressed not as academic machinery but as the very ground of the believer's comfort, assurance, and stability before God.
The Conversion of the Philippian Jailer
Acts 16:16–34 presents the arrest and imprisonment of Paul and Silas as the God-ordained means by which a Roman jailer was brought to saving faith in Jesus Christ. The sermon traces two movements: the exorcism of a python spirit that provoked false charges and a severe beating, and the subsequent earthquake and gospel conversation that issued in the jailer's conversion and household baptism. Paul and Silas's midnight prayers and hymns amid unjust suffering demonstrate that Christ is worth all suffering, while the jailer's question — 'What must I do to be saved?' — receives the apostolic answer: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. The sermon closes with three baptisms that embody the same gospel the Philippian jailer heard, illustrating that believers' baptism by immersion is the fitting public sign of union with Christ in His death and resurrection.
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.
The Conduct of a Faithful Minister
What does faithfulness look like in the life and ministry of a gospel minister? Expounding 1 Timothy 4:12–16 as a capstone to a study of elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3:1–7, this sermon examines four dimensions of ministerial conduct: the minister's example before the congregation, his public ministry of reading, exhortation, and doctrine, his personal growth through sustained meditation on the Word, and his perseverance in both personal piety and sound teaching. The closing application extends these same marks to the congregation, calling the saints to receive the Word with joy, reject heresy with discernment, pursue Christian virtue, and prize the public means of grace.
The Discourse on God's Salvation, Part 1
Jesus answers Nicodemus's question — 'How can these things be?' — by pointing to three realities: his own incarnation as the one who descended from heaven, the Old Testament typology of the bronze serpent in Numbers 21, and the necessity of his crucifixion as the antitype to whom sinners must look in faith. The sermon works through John 3:11–15, examining Christ's authority to speak of heavenly things, the doctrine of the hypostatic union and the communication of idioms, and the parallel between Israel's look-and-live prescription in the wilderness and saving faith in the crucified Son of Man. The application is direct: the antidote to sin is not moral reformation but faith in the lifted-up Christ, who alone secures justification and eternal life for believing sinners.
The Pharisee and the Publican
This exposition of Luke 18:9–14 examines the parable of the Pharisee and the publican as a penetrating diagnosis of self-righteousness and a declaration of justification by faith alone. The sermon works through the occasion of the parable, the contrasted characters of the two men, and Christ's concluding verdict that the tax collector — not the Pharisee — went home justified. The central contention is that acceptance before God rests entirely on the imputed righteousness of Christ received through faith, not on any moral performance or religious accomplishment, and that those who understand this will be marked by humility rather than contempt toward others.
The Defense of the Faith
Jude 3 commands every believer — not merely pastors or theologians — to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. This sermon examines the exhortation itself, the internal threat posed by sneaky, ungodly apostates who pervert grace and deny Christ, and the practical preparedness Jude prescribes: remembering apostolic warning, building up on the most holy faith through Scripture and prayer, and resting in the assurance that God himself preserves his people. The defense of the faith is not pessimistic trench-holding but confident advance grounded in Christ's promise to build his church against which the gates of Hades shall not prevail.
The Trial before Pilate, Part 1
Matthew 27:11–14 records the first stage of Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate — his interrogation by the Roman governor. The passage unfolds in three movements: Pilate's opening question and Christ's guarded affirmation that he is indeed King of the Jews, the formal accusations brought by the chief priests and elders against which Jesus remains silent, and Pilate's astonished second question met again with silence. Christ's silence before Pilate is not passivity but purposeful obedience — fulfilling the fourth servant song of Isaiah 53 and accomplishing the active righteousness that is imputed to his people in justification. The sermon drives toward the twin realities of forgiveness and positive imputation: Christ's silence secured not only the remission of sins but the righteousness that avails with God, so that his people stand before the Father clothed in another's merit rather than their own.
The Lord's Prayer in Gethsemane
What does the agony of Christ in Gethsemane reveal about who He is and what He accomplishes? Expounding Matthew 26:36–46, this sermon traces the Savior's three prayers against the disciples' repeated failure to watch, showing that Christ's soul-sorrow is perfectly consistent with His true humanity, while His unwavering resolve to drink the cup of divine wrath flows from His eternal commitment as covenant mediator. The cup is not metaphor for mere suffering but the concentrated fury of God upon a sinless substitute — which explains both why martyrs die differently than Christ and why the imputation of His active obedience is as necessary as the forgiveness of sins. Believers are called to marvel at His sufficiency, to watch and pray with sobriety about their own weakness, and to rest entirely on the righteousness of Another.
The Second Missionary Journey, Part 6
Acts 17:16–21 presents the Apostle Paul in Athens, a city saturated with idolatry and celebrated for its philosophical culture. The sermon traces three movements in this brief passage: Paul's provocation of spirit at the sight of rampant idolatry, his deliberate response of preaching Christ in both the synagogue and the public marketplace, and his engagement with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers who summon him to the Areopagus. Paul's example establishes that righteous anger at the transgression of the First and Second Commandments, mingled with grief and compassion, is a mark of God's people — and that the fitting response to such provocation is not silence but the proclamation of Jesus and the resurrection.
The Second Missionary Journey, Part 3
Acts 16:16–34 traces two episodes in Philippi: the exorcism of a slave girl's python spirit and the midnight conversion of the Philippian jailer. The passage confronts the reader with the hostility that faithful gospel ministry provokes — illegal imprisonment, beating without due process, and the solidarity of civil and commercial interests against the missionaries — while demonstrating that neither chains nor stocks can suppress the prayer and praise of those conquered by grace. The climax turns on the jailer's question, 'What must I do to be saved?', and the apostolic answer cuts through every form of salvation-by-works or salvation-by-experience: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. The sermon presses hearers to distinguish justification from sanctification, to receive the gospel offer without complicating it, and to rejoice as those delivered from sin, damnation, and the righteous wrath of God.
The Golden Rule
Matthew 7:12, the Golden Rule, functions as the capstone of the Sermon on the Mount's legal teaching: whatever you wish men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. The sermon distinguishes the positive form of the rule from its weaker negative counterpart, showing that Christ's command demands active, unconditional love toward others — not a quid pro quo conditioned on how others treat us. The Golden Rule is examined as a summary of the Decalogue's second table and the love command of Leviticus 19:18, applied concretely to family, church, and society. Yet because the Sermon on the Mount is law, not gospel, its primary effect is to expose sin and drive the hearer to the cross, where justification by faith alone provides the only ground of hope for those who fall short of its demands.
The Sixth Commandment
The sixth commandment, 'You shall not murder,' forbids not only the external act of taking innocent life but also the internal dispositions of hatred, unwarranted anger, and character assassination that flow from the same malicious heart. The sermon distinguishes murder from three lawful forms of killing — capital punishment, just war, and self-defense — grounding each in the abiding authority of Scripture from the Noahic Covenant through the New Testament. The image of God in every human being is the theological foundation for the commandment's reach across abortion, euthanasia, and the neglect of capital punishment. Hearers are called to clarity on the law's three uses, to renounce internal murder within the church, and to find in the gospel the only remedy for sinners who have violated this commandment in heart or deed.
The First Missionary Journey, Part 8
Acts 14:1 records that Paul and Barnabas 'so spoke' in Iconium that a great multitude of both Jews and Greeks believed — a phrase that raises the question of the relationship between divine sovereignty and the ordained means of gospel preaching. This sermon works through a biblical theology of preaching drawn from Romans 10:14–17, 1 Corinthians 1:21–25, and 2 Timothy 4:1–8, arguing that God has foreordained not only the elect unto glory but also the means of their calling, supremely the faithful public proclamation of Christ crucified. Against moralistic preaching, life-as-gospel sentimentality, and entertainment-driven church culture, the sermon insists that only the verbal declaration of Christ's atoning work can save souls. Hearers are exhorted to pray for the raising up of qualified preachers, to support gospel church-planting, and to attend to the preached Word with the seriousness that faith coming by hearing demands.
The Bible and Abortion
Abortion is not a political issue but a theological and ethical one — a violation of the Sixth Commandment against murder and a direct assault on the image of God borne by every human being from conception. This sermon works through Exodus 21:22–25 to demonstrate that the Mosaic case law governing accidental injury to a pregnant woman treats the pre-born child as a full person, applying the lex talionis — life for life — when the child is killed. Supporting passages from Genesis, Job, Psalms, Jeremiah, Luke, and Paul establish the biblical case for the personhood and sanctity of the pre-born. The sermon closes by calling the church to preach the whole counsel of God on this subject, to pursue sexual fidelity, to pray for the end of abortion, and to proclaim the gospel's mercy to all who have sinned in this way.
The First Missionary Journey, Part 6
Paul's sermon in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch reaches its practical climax in Acts 13:38–43, where he preaches forgiveness of sins and justification by faith alone — two distinct yet inseparable blessings secured by Christ's active and passive obedience. The law of Moses cannot justify; it can only expose the sinner's inability and drive him to Christ, in whom every believer is declared righteous by the imputation of Christ's righteousness received through faith alone. Paul's warning from Habakkuk 1:5 presses the point home: to despise this gospel is to invite a judgment more severe than the Babylonian captivity. The sermon closes by tracing the same doctrine of justification through the vision of Joshua the high priest in Zechariah 3, and exhorts believers to continue in the grace of God as the only ground of perseverance.
The Only Redeemer of God's Elect
Galatians 3:10–14 sets law and gospel in sharp contrast, demonstrating that justification before God is entirely excluded from the domain of law-keeping. Paul's threefold appeal to Deuteronomy 27, Habakkuk 2:4, and Leviticus 18:5 establishes that the law demands perfect, perpetual, and entire obedience — an impossibility for sinners in Adam. The only hope lies in Christ's substitutionary, curse-bearing work: he bore the imputed sin of his people, exhausted the wrath of God in their place, and secured for them both the blessing of Abraham and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The sermon calls hearers to abandon every form of faith-plus-works supplementation and to rest wholly in the particular redemption accomplished by Christ alone.
The Gracious Invitation of Christ
Matthew 11:25–30 sets before the reader three interlocking realities that ground Christian thanksgiving: the sovereign will of the Father who hides gospel truth from the self-sufficient and reveals it to the humbled, the mediatorial office of the Son who alone has authority and power to reveal the Father to sinners, and the gracious invitation of Christ who calls the weary and sin-laden to come, receive rest, take His yoke, and learn from Him. The sermon works through six observations on verses 28–30 — the exhortation to come, the persons addressed, the promise of rest, the call to submit, the invitation to learn, and the light burden of discipleship — demonstrating that justification precedes sanctification and that the gospel call is issued indiscriminately to all. Hearers are urged to study the law until the weight of sin is felt, to flee to Christ rather than away from Him, and to respond to sovereign grace with daily, unreserved thanksgiving.
The Nature of the Gospel
Galatians 1:1–5 is not merely a conventional greeting but a compressed summary of the gospel itself. Working through each clause of verses 4–5, this exposition identifies five defining features of Christ's death: it was voluntary, it consisted in penal substitution, it secured deliverance from this present evil age, it was determined by the Father according to His eternal will, and it promotes the glory of God alone. The sermon presses toward the Lord's Supper, calling each hearer to examine whether they can say with Paul in Galatians 2:20, 'He loved me and gave Himself for me,' and to receive the bread and cup only on that ground.
The Baptism of Saul of Tarsus
Acts 9:17–25 records the baptism and initial preaching of Saul of Tarsus following his encounter with the risen Christ on the Damascus road. Ananias addresses the former persecutor as 'brother Saul,' and Saul is immediately baptized — a pattern the sermon presses as normative: conversion precedes and grounds baptism, which is the public confession of a forgiven sinner, not a converting ordinance. The sermon then traces the character of Saul's early preaching: immediate, Christocentric, apologetic, and persuasive — proving from the Old Testament that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God — while showing that the same mission statement of Acts 9:15–16 (preach and suffer) begins its fulfilment within hours of his conversion. Hearers are urged to confess Christ openly, to submit to baptism without delay, and to recover a persuasive, Scripture-grounded proclamation of the gospel rather than the entertainment-driven substitute that fills contemporary pulpits.
The Judgment Seat of Christ
Matthew 7:21–23 is often misread as a warning to believers to produce more good works, but the passage concerns entrance into the kingdom of heaven and exposes the damning error of self-righteousness. The false professors are condemned not because they lacked works but because they rested their hope for acceptance with God on those works rather than on Christ's blood and righteousness — a form of lawlessness that is an assault on the cross. The will of the Father in Matthew 7:21, rightly understood through John 6:28–40, is to believe on the Son whom He sent; justification is by faith alone, received once, and the Sermon on the Mount functions as law to drive sinners to the foot of the cross rather than to self-congratulation.
The Justice of God and the Gospel
Proverbs 17:15 declares that justifying the wicked and condemning the just are alike an abomination to God — yet the gospel does precisely both: God condemned the sinless Christ and justifies ungodly sinners. This sermon works through the theological architecture that vindicates God from any charge of self-contradiction in the gospel, tracing the doctrines of covenant representation and imputation from Genesis through the Prophets and into Paul's argument in Romans 3–5. The three acts of imputation — Adam's sin to all mankind, the elect's sin to Christ, and Christ's righteousness to the elect — are shown to be the biblical answer to the problem Proverbs 17:15 raises, grounding assurance in an alien righteousness received by faith alone.
The Priority of the Moral Law
Proverbs 21:3 states that to do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice — a declaration that exposes the perennial human tendency to substitute external religious performance for genuine moral obedience. This sermon traces that priority through Abraham, Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms before examining Christ's fifth woe against the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23, where he condemns the same imbalance of tithing mint, anise, and cumin while neglecting the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith. The threefold division of the law underlies the exposition: the ceremonial law has been fulfilled in Christ and abolished as a covenant obligation, but the moral law — comprehending both tables, duty to God and duty to man — retains its binding claim on the people of God. The sermon closes with the gospel ground of that obedience: because our righteousness before God falls short on the best of days, the imputed active obedience of Christ, received by faith alone, is the only hope — and the motivation for the wholehearted, balanced compliance Solomon demands.
The Joy of Keeping God's Law
Proverbs 29:18 sets before us two contrasting conditions: the lawlessness that follows the absence of God's revealed word, and the happiness that accompanies obedience to that word. This sermon works through the classic Reformed threefold use of the law — civil/political, pedagogical, and normative — applying the first two uses to the unbeliever and the third to the justified believer. The practical conclusion is that keeping God's law is simultaneously a consequence of justifying faith, a means of promoting assurance of salvation, and an expression of gratitude to God for sovereign grace.