Cited in sermons
John Calvin
990 sermons · All people cited
The Practice of the Early Church
Acts 2:41–47 describes the irreducible practices of the early church — the apostles' doctrine, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer — and this sermon argues that those practices are not merely historical description but prescription for the church in every age. The gospel that created the church (sovereign grace working through proclamation to bring dead sinners to faith and repentance) also defines what the church does when it gathers. The sermon presses both the unconverted (to seek the Lord Jesus Christ in whom alone there is forgiveness and an imputed righteousness) and the congregation (to continue steadfastly in the ordained means of grace rather than chasing experience, ecstasy, or entertainment).
The Triumph of the Lamb
Revelation 12 presents a cosmic drama in three acts — the incarnation of the Son, the defeat of the dragon in heaven, and the persecution of the woman — that together constitute a behind-the-scenes theological account of what Christ accomplished at His first advent. The serpent of old, identified as the devil and Satan of Genesis 3:15, suffers four successive and total failures: he cannot stop the birth of the male child, he is cast from heaven, he cannot destroy the woman in the wilderness, and his rage against the rest of her offspring only confirms that the decisive battle has already been lost. Christ's ascension to God's throne, not His second coming, marks the moment Satan is ejected from heaven and universal kingship is secured. The church, still militant on earth, overcomes not by health, wealth, or worldly ease but by the blood of the Lamb and the word of its testimony, persevering under persecution as the sign of Satan's defeat rather than his victory.
The Promise of God's Provision
Genesis 22:1–19 presents the binding of Isaac as far more than a biographical account of Abraham's obedience — it is a typological promise of God's provision of the Messiah. The sermon works through the test presented to Abraham, his obedience in the three-day journey to Moriah, and God's approval through the substitutionary ram, showing how Abraham, Isaac, and the ram each function as types of the Father, the Son, and the Lamb of God respectively. Abraham's declaration in verse 8 — 'God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering' — is read as genuine messianic anticipation, confirmed by Christ's own words in John 8:56. The passage calls believers to the kind of covenant-anchored faith that perseveres under affliction, catechizes their children in the great truths of God, and rests on the substitutionary atonement accomplished at Calvary.
The Astonishment of the Apostle
Paul's opening salvo in Galatians 1:6–9 registers apostolic astonishment at the speed with which the Galatian churches were deserting the gospel of free grace for a Judaizing supplement of circumcision and Mosaic law-keeping. The sermon expounds why any addition to the finished work of Christ — however small — is not a variation of the gospel but its outright denial, because a man must choose either perfect law-keeping or the wholly sufficient righteousness of Christ received by faith alone. The anathema Paul pronounces in verses 8–9, drawn out through the Hebrew concept of ḥērem and its New Testament cognate anathema, exposes the perverter of the gospel not merely to church discipline but to the judicial wrath of God. The sermon closes with an urgent call to doctrinal vigilance: to resist indifference, imprecision, compromise, and novelty, and to hold fast to justification by faith alone as the very heart of the Christian religion.
The Miscellaneous Laws Concerning Society, Part 2
Exodus 22:21–31 sets out miscellaneous civil laws for Old Covenant Israel that bear directly on how God evaluates any society's treatment of its most vulnerable members. The sermon works through two major divisions: the laws prohibiting the abuse of aliens, widows, orphans, and the poor (vv. 21–27), and the laws preserving the honor of Yahweh through respect for authority and consecrated service (vv. 28–31). God's threatened covenant sanctions — enemy invasion, exile, and the widowing of the oppressor's own family — reveal that abuse of the powerless is not a private moral failing but a covenantal crime that invites divine judgment upon an entire nation. Hearers are called to embody "pure and undefiled religion" (James 1:27) by actively rendering aid to the alien, the widow, the orphan, and the poor, while maintaining reverence for lawfully exercised authority in the family, civil, and ecclesiastical spheres.
The Martyrdom of Stephen
The martyrdom of Stephen in Acts 7:54–60 displays the triune God sustaining, comforting, and ultimately receiving His servant in the moment of violent death. The sermon works through three movements: the blessedness of Stephen as he receives a vision of the glorified Christ standing at the right hand of the Father; the murderous rage of the Sanhedrin who stone him outside the city in lawless contempt of Roman authority; and Stephen's dying words — echoing the Savior's own cross-utterances — as he commends his spirit to Christ and intercedes for his killers. The conversion of Saul of Tarsus is set before the congregation as the answer to that dying prayer, a monument to sovereign grace, and the entire passage is pressed home with the comfort of Heidelberg Catechism Question 1: Christ alone is the believer's comfort in life and in death.
The Laws Concerning Property, Part III
Exodus 22:5–15 sets out case laws governing negligence, stolen property, and borrowed goods within the Mosaic Book of the Covenant. The passage is examined under the principle of general equity — the 1689 LBCF's standard for applying Israel's judicial law beyond its original theocratic context — showing that negligence carries a cost, and that responsible stewardship of property is a moral obligation in any body politic. The study moves through three subsections: the wandering grazing animal (v. 5), the uncontrolled fire (v. 6), and the cluster of laws governing entrusted and borrowed property (vv. 7–15), with sustained attention to the role of judges as God's vicegerents and the principle that the punishment must fit the provable offense.
2LCF Chapter 19 - Of the Law of God
The law of God — its origin, divisions, and enduring obligations — is examined through 2LCF Chapter 19, tracing the moral law from its inscription on Adam's heart in the garden through its codification at Sinai and into the life of the justified believer. The confession distinguishes three categories of Mosaic law: the perpetually binding moral law, the abrogated ceremonial law, and the expired judicial law whose general equity retains moral usefulness. A sustained argument from Galatians demonstrates that the law's demand is personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience — a standard no sinner meets — establishing the absolute necessity of justification by faith alone in Christ alone. The session closes with Machen's warning that a low view of the law produces legalism rather than grace, pressing the congregation to preach the Decalogue faithfully so that sinners see their need for the Savior.
The Thief on the Cross
Luke 23:39–43 presents the conversion of the thief on the cross as a concentrated exhibition of sovereign, effectual grace applied to a notorious criminal and insurrectionist in his final hour. The sermon examines the evidences of genuine conversion in the believing thief — fear of God, concern for the honor of Christ, confession of personal guilt, and faith in the Savior's kingdom — then turns to the graciousness and power of Christ's response: 'Today you will be with me in paradise.' The central pastoral burden is twofold: no sinner is beyond the reach of sovereign grace, and no sinner should presume upon a deathbed opportunity for repentance that may never come.
The Promise of Eternal Life
Isaiah 55 presents God's universal, gracious, and free invitation for sinners to come to Christ for life eternal — an invitation that has never changed from Genesis to Revelation. The sermon expounds the chapter in two movements: the invitation to come (vv. 1–5), grounded in covenant promise and secured by the Davidic king, and the exhortation to believe and repent (vv. 6–13), which calls sinners to faith and a change of mind toward sin. God's thoughts are not man's thoughts precisely because He pardons abundantly where man would not, and His word goes forth with certain efficacy to accomplish all He purposes in the salvation of sinners from every nation.
The Prohibition Against Judgmentalism
Matthew 7:1–5 is among the most frequently misapplied texts in Scripture, routinely weaponised to silence any and all Christian judgment. This sermon from the Sermon on the Mount demonstrates that Christ's prohibition targets not judgment as such but the censorious, fault-finding, hypercritical spirit endemic to the Pharisees and to fallen human nature generally. The preacher surveys five legitimate spheres of Christian judgment — identifying false teachers, exercising church discipline, addressing sins of elders, and rendering civil judgments — before expositing the speck-and-plank illustration as Christ's indictment of hypocrisy. The sermon closes with practical counsel for mortifying judgmentalism through dependence on the Holy Spirit, the pursuit of humility, and a right understanding of remaining corruption in oneself and in one's neighbour.
The Conversion of Matthew
Matthew 9:9–13 records the sovereign call of a tax collector — among the most despised and morally compromised figures in first-century Jewish society — to follow Christ and ultimately to author the first Gospel. The sermon works through three movements: Christ's effectual call of Matthew to discipleship, the feast Matthew hosts to honour Christ and evangelize his associates, and the confrontation with the Pharisees in which Jesus declares the nature of his mission — not to call the self-righteous but sinners to repentance. The account is pressed into seven marks of genuine discipleship, closing with an appeal to the unconverted to look to Christ as the great physician of sin-sick souls.
The Conversion of Rahab the Harlot
Joshua 2 presents the conversion of Rahab the harlot as a sovereign interruption of divine mercy within the context of holy war and Israelite conquest. Before Israel kills a single Canaanite, the narrative compels the reader to stand in awe of a God who justifies a pagan prostitute by grace through faith alone — faith that is demonstrated by treason against Jericho and the sheltering of two spies. Rahab's confession that Yahweh is God in heaven above and on earth beneath places her alongside the great confessions of Scripture, and her inclusion in the Messianic genealogy of Matthew 1 reveals that the conquest was always inseparable from the redemptive purposes of God. The sermon calls hearers to resist self-righteous judgmentalism, to trust in a Christ who saves to the uttermost, and to marvel that the ancestress of Jesus was the shady lady of Jericho.
The Commissioning of the Servant of Yahweh
Isaiah 42:1–13 presents the first servant song of Isaiah as Yahweh's formal commissioning of his servant — the Lord Jesus Christ — to bring righteous rule, freedom from spiritual darkness, and universal dominion to the Gentiles. The sermon traces three movements: the presentation of the servant in his humility, compassion, and unfailing determination (vv. 1–4); the mission given to him by Yahweh the Creator, including the gift of an everlasting righteousness and conquest of the kingdom of darkness (vv. 5–9); and the victorious global praise that flows from his completed mission (vv. 10–13). The listener is called either to look to Christ in faith as the one who will not break a bruised reed, or to reckon soberly with the warrior-king who will prevail against every enemy that remains in rebellion.
The Call for Christian Growth
Unrepentant sin and a failure to desire the Word of God are the chief hindrances to Christian growth — and that growth is not merely a personal blessing but a corporate responsibility. Working through 1 Peter 2:1–5, this sermon argues that believers are living stones being built into a spiritual house, and that weak, doctrinally shallow Christians produce a structurally unsound church. The exhortation is concrete: mortify the sins of malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander; cultivate an insatiable hunger for the pure milk of the Word; and do so knowing that justification rests on faith alone while sanctification calls every believer to steady, disciplined growth.
The Conduct of a Faithful Minister
Paul's charge to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:12–16 sets forth the pattern for every faithful gospel minister: exemplary character, diligent public ministry, ongoing personal growth, and tenacious perseverance to the end. Preached at an ordination service for a newly commissioned pastor, this exposition works through each element of the apostle's command — from the six spheres of a minister's example (word, conduct, love, spirit, faith, purity) to the three pillars of public ministry (reading, exhortation, doctrine). The sermon insists that Christian virtue, however admirable, cannot save souls; it is the word of God, proclaimed boldly and accurately, that the Spirit uses as the instrument of salvation. The congregation is charged alongside the minister: receive the word with joy, reject heresy, prize the public means of grace, and honour those who watch for your souls.
The Greatest Commandments
Matthew 22:34–40 records a Pharisaic lawyer testing Jesus with the question of which commandment is greatest. Jesus answers by citing the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4–5 and the neighbor-love command from Leviticus 19:18, thereby summarizing the entire Decalogue under two heads: love to God and love to man. This sermon argues that Christ's endorsement of these two commandments confirms the abiding validity of the moral law for New Covenant believers, who are called to keep it not as a means of justification but as the Spirit-wrought response of those already justified by faith alone. The hearer is pressed to recognize that the law's demand — to love God with the whole self and the neighbor as oneself — drives the believer perpetually to Christ, in whom alone that demand has been perfectly met.
The 9th Commandment, Part 2
James 1:26 places the ninth commandment's prohibition of false witness directly inside the local church: a professing believer who does not bridle his tongue deceives himself, and his religion is exposed as useless — the same Greek word applied to idolatry. The sermon surveys the tongue's destructive power across James 3–4, Matthew 12 and 15, and a wide range of Proverbs texts, arguing that sins of speech are systematically undertriaged in the church compared to sins of action. Ten practical helps are offered, grounded in the conviction that taming the tongue is a fruit of genuine saving faith and requires the enabling power of the Holy Spirit working through the ordinary means of grace.
The Oppression of Israel by Pharaoh
Exodus 1 records the escalating oppression of Israel in Egypt — from the rise of an ignorant pharaoh, through forced labor, to an explicit policy of infanticide targeting Hebrew male infants. This exposition traces the passage in two movements: the connection between Exodus and the Abrahamic promises of Genesis, and the progressive stages of Pharaoh's tyranny, culminating in a national decree of genocide. The Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah are held up as models of God-fearing civil disobedience, and the whole chapter is read typologically, anticipating the greater deliverance wrought through Moses and ultimately through the seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ. The congregation is called to imitate the courage of the faithful — to obey God rather than men in whatever sphere God has placed them.
The 9th Commandment, Part 1
The ninth commandment, 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor' (Exodus 20:16), extends far beyond the courtroom to govern all speech — forbidding perjury, lying, slander, gossip, and talebearing. Drawing on the Mosaic law, the Wisdom literature, the Gospels, and the Epistles, this study traces how Scripture consistently condemns every form of false speech as an assault on the image of God, the stability of society, and the character of God himself, who is truth and cannot lie. The passive reception of gossip is indicted alongside its active propagation, and hearers are called to close their ears to talebearers as firmly as they close their mouths to speaking falsehood.
The Great Commission
The Great Commission in Matthew 28:16–20 is grounded in the absolute authority of the risen Christ, who possesses all power in heaven and on earth and commissions His church to make disciples of all nations. The passage contains four grammatically imperatival commands — going, making disciples, baptizing, and teaching — each examined for its precise theological and ecclesiological force. Believers' baptism by immersion follows upon credible profession of faith, not the reverse, and the Trinitarian formula of baptism grounds the church's confession of one divine essence in three persons. The sermon closes by situating the Great Commission within the full passion narrative: the life, death, and resurrection of Christ are themselves the content the church is sent to proclaim, and Christ's omnipotence and omnipresence are the twin assurances that the commission will not fail.
The 6th Commandment
Exodus 20:13 — 'You shall not murder' — is one of the briefest commands in the Decalogue, yet it carries profound theological and legal weight. This expository Bible study examines the precise Hebrew terminology that distinguishes murder from other forms of killing, establishes the internal disposition (hatred, unrighteous anger, character assassination) as equally condemned by the sixth commandment alongside the external act, and then surveys three exceptions to the prohibition: capital punishment, just war, and self-defense. Each exception is grounded in both Old and New Testament texts, with sustained attention to the Noahic Covenant, Romans 13, and Exodus 22, demonstrating that the civil magistrate's sword is a God-ordained instrument of justice rather than a violation of the commandment.
The Denial of the Resurrection
Matthew 28:11–15 records the fabrication of the lie that Christ's disciples stole his body — the original counter-narrative to the resurrection. This sermon exposes the willful unbelief of the Jewish religious leaders, tracing their conspiracy as one episode in a sustained, devil-driven war against the truth of the gospel. The implausibility of the theft narrative is examined on apologetic grounds, and the sermon closes by contrasting the Counter Great Commission of bribe-funded deception with the Great Commission of Christ's abiding-presence-powered truth.
The 5th Commandment
Exodus 20:12, the fifth commandment to honor father and mother, stands as the first commandment of the second table of the law and governs the entire structure of human authority relations — in the family, the church, the workplace, and the civil commonwealth. The command's scope extends beyond parent-child dynamics to all lawful superior-inferior relationships, a point the Westminster Larger Catechism makes explicit. The sermon traces the commandment's explanation, scope, and sanctions through the Old Testament case laws, the prophets, and the New Testament vice lists, before treating the covenant promise of longevity as a general principle of divine providence rather than an unconditional guarantee. The application presses parents to discipline their children by word and rod, warns of the social consequences of failing to do so, and qualifies submission to authority where superiors command sin.
The Confidence of the Believer
Micah 7 opens with a prophet's anguished cry — 'Woe is me' — over the collapse of covenant faithfulness in Israel: corrupt leadership, broken families, and the absence of godly community. The sermon works through three movements in the chapter: Micah's lamentation over the state of the covenant people (vv. 1–6), his counsel to the faithful remnant to look to God and trust his promises (vv. 7–13), and his petitions and doxology to the God who pardons iniquity, subdues sin, and casts all transgressions into the depths of the sea (vv. 14–20). The central corrective the prophet offers is the same one the just have always lived by: not optimism, not realism, but faith in the sovereign God of the covenant, whose compassions are new each morning and whose purposes for his remnant cannot be frustrated.
The Empty Tomb and the Risen Lord
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the crowning proof that the Father accepted the Son's atoning work as a full satisfaction for sin. Expounding Matthew 28:1–10, this sermon works through the discovery of the empty tomb — the arrival of the women, the descent of the angel, and the commission given to the first witnesses — and then the appearance of the risen Lord to those same women. The resurrection is not myth or fable but attested history, with details such as the folded burial cloth, the terrified guards, and the forthright identification of women as the primary witnesses all serving the integrity of the gospel record. The empty tomb grounds the Christian's confidence in the forgiveness of sins and the imputed righteousness of Christ, and it calls every hearer to seek the risen Lord without fear.
The Consubstantiality of the Son, Part 1
John 5:16–23 records the Jewish charge that Jesus made himself equal with God — and Christ's unequivocal affirmation of that charge. Working through verses 16–23, this sermon demonstrates that Jesus responds not by correcting a misunderstanding but by confirming, through four lines of argument, that he is consubstantial with the Father: sharing the same works, the same love, the same life-giving power, and the same sovereign rule. The stakes are ultimate — to dishonor the Son is to dishonor the Father, and to lack the Son is to lack God entirely.
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.
2LCF Chapter 22 - Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day, Part 1
The fourth commandment, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy' (Exodus 20:8–11), is grounded not in Mosaic legislation alone but in the creational ordinance of Genesis 2:1–3, where God's sabbathing after six days of work establishes the one-in-seven pattern binding upon all his image-bearers. The Deuteronomy 5 parallel adds redemption alongside creation as a second rationale, and these twin foundations carry into the New Covenant. Surveying Genesis 2–4, Exodus 16, Mark 2, Isaiah 56 and 58, and Jeremiah 31, this exposition demonstrates the trans-covenantal utility of the Decalogue and argues that the Sabbath is not a burdensome restriction but a gracious gift through which God's people enter into fellowship with their Creator.
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.