Cited in sermons
John Flavel
42 sermons · All people cited
The Cross and the Crown of Christ, Part 1
Psalm 22 is the suffering Messiah speaking in his own voice — a depth of self-disclosure that the prophet Isaiah 53 approaches but does not match. This sermon works through the first two of three laments in verses 1–11: Christ's desolation under judicial desertion by the Father, and the reproach heaped upon him by his enemies. The cry of dereliction is neither a rupture in the Trinity nor a dissolution of the hypostatic union, but a penal desertion in which the Father withdraws his favorable countenance from the one who has been made sin as mediator. Throughout each lament Christ models the pattern of honest complaint before God followed by confident recourse to the Father's holiness, covenant faithfulness, and sovereign purpose — a pattern the church is called to imitate in its own far lesser sufferings.
Ask FGBC 70: Is Progressive Covenantalism Compatible with the 1689?
Progressive Covenantalism and New Covenant theology are examined against the standard of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, with particular attention to whether either system can consistently affirm the covenant of works, the covenant of redemption, and the law/Sabbath chapters of the Confession. The discussion traces the hermeneutical root of these systems — a tendency toward biblicism that resists theological vocabulary not found verbatim in Scripture — and argues that their own best instincts, illustrated by Gary Long's late work on the Adamic covenant and the creation rest, point toward the fuller confessional expression of covenant theology. The conversation closes by considering the covenant of redemption and whether collapsing it into the eternal decree is adequate, finding devotional and doxological value in the anthropomorphic language of the pactum salutis even where precise metaphysics must be qualified.
Ask FGBC Batch 7: Anabaptists, Calvinism, Sincere Offer & More | Reformed Baptist Theology
This panel discussion brings together three Reformed Baptist pastors to address questions submitted to Free Grace Baptist Church on confessional identity, soteriology, covenant theology, and Lord's Day worship. The conversation distinguishes Particular Baptists from Anabaptists on historical-documentary grounds, examines the relationship between Calvinism and confessional Reformed Baptist identity, and evaluates the free and sincere offer of the gospel against what the panelists regard as the theological liabilities of well-meant-offer language. The discussion also treats the threefold division of the law, prosopological exegesis, and the scriptural rationale for two Lord's Day services, consistently grounding each answer in the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession and the exegetical tradition of the Particular Baptists.
The Conclusion of the Decalogue
Deuteronomy 5:22–33 records Moses rehearsing the original giving of the law at Sinai, and this exposition draws out the divine origin, authority, comprehensiveness, finality, and permanence of the Decalogue as the trans-covenantal moral law of God binding on all men in every age. The threefold use of the law — civil, pedagogical, and normative — is traced through the New Covenant, with the imputed righteousness of Christ received by faith as the only ground of justification. The people's terror at the theophany on Sinai is commended as the proper response to God's majesty, and the sermon presses the distinction between slavish fear that flees from God and filial fear that flees to Him, urging the congregation to recover a robust doctrine of divine transcendence in their worship.
2LCF Chapter 15 - Of Repentance Unto Life and Salvation
Repentance unto life is not a work that precedes salvation but an evangelical grace sovereignly given by God in the covenant of grace, inseparable from faith as two sides of the same coin. Working through 2LCF Chapter 15, this study examines the nature, necessity, and elements of saving repentance, tracing the confession's teaching that remaining corruption and the prevalency of temptation make ongoing repentance a permanent feature of the Christian life, not merely its entry point. The session also challenges the assumption that a crisis conversion is more credible than a non-crisis one, arguing that the same effectual power of God works in the child catechized from infancy as in the most notorious convert. Hearers are urged to hate sin, apprehend the mercy of God in Christ, and avoid both antinomianism and the error of treating repentance as a meritorious condition for acceptance with God.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 2
The incarnation of the Son of God — his taking to himself a true and complete human nature — is the greatest of all gospel mysteries and the life and soul of the church. Working through paragraphs one, two, three, seven, and nine of the Second London Confession chapter eight, this study examines the timing, manner, and extent of the Son's assumption of humanity, arguing that the incarnation was neither a subtraction from deity nor an addition to it, but a terminative assumption by which the eternal Son united human nature to his own divine person in the hypostatic union. The full extent of that assumption — body, reasonable soul, human will, human affections, and the common sinless infirmities of our nature — is not a speculative nicety but a soteriological necessity: what is not assumed is not healed.
The Cry of Dereliction
What does Christ mean when he cries 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' from the cross? This sermon on Matthew 27:45–46 carefully distinguishes what the cry of dereliction does not mean — no ontological division within the Trinity, no dissolution of the hypostatic union, no suffering of all three persons — before arguing that it expresses Christ's true humanity as our surety bearing the punishment of loss: the withdrawal of the Father's smiling favor and consolatory presence as the Son satisfies divine justice for the sins of his people. The sermon draws extensively on Psalm 22 to show that the forsakenness is covenantal and substitutionary, not metaphysical, and closes with a call to believe on the crucified and risen Christ who cried this cry so that his people never will.
The Importance of Spiritual Exercise
Philippians 2:12–13 is not a self-salvation passage but a call to Spirit-enabled perseverance rooted in the sovereign grace of God. The sermon expounds the believer's responsibility to 'work out' a salvation already given — not to attain it, but to live in conscious, fear-driven obedience to the God who both justifies and sanctifies. Against hyper-Calvinist passivity on one side and Arminian self-effort on the other, the text holds together human duty and divine empowerment: God works in believers both to will and to do according to his good pleasure. The practical summons is to pursue sanctification — the whole of it, fear, trembling, cross-contemplation, and dependence on the Spirit — as those destined for glorification.
The First Commandment
Deuteronomy 5:7 — 'You shall have no other gods before me' — is the foundation of covenant loyalty, defining not only who the one true God is but what response He demands from His people. This study works through the prohibition against other gods (atheism, polytheism, syncretism, sorcery, heresy, and creature-worship) before turning to the positive duties the commandment requires: knowing God, loving Him, fearing Him, obeying Him, trusting Him, and worshipping Him on His own terms. The first commandment is not merely theological orthodoxy but a call to total, exclusive, and practical devotion to Yahweh — a devotion made possible only by the grace that plants His fear in the heart.
The Suffering and Glory of Christ
Psalm 22 presents the suffering and glory of Christ with a precision and detail that exceeds even the Passion narratives of the four Gospels. The psalm's first half expounds the dereliction Christ endured on the cross — not as a breach of the Trinity or a dissolution of the hypostatic union, but as the penal withdrawal of the Father's sensible favor while the Son bore the curse due to his people's lawbreaking. The second half moves from that suffering to the exaltation of the Redeemer, the adoption of his brethren, the extension of his kingdom to all nations, and the generational advance of his church — all grounded in the finished work of the cross. The sermon calls believers to make much of the Psalms in both private devotion and corporate worship, hearing in them the very voice of Christ.
The Exceeding Greatness of God's Almighty Power
Paul's prayer in Ephesians 1:19–23 that believers would know the exceeding greatness of God's almighty power raises the question of what that power actually is and what it has accomplished. This sermon works through three interlocking realities: the supremacy of God's omnipotence as a timeless, self-existent, and inexhaustible divine attribute; its decisive demonstration in the resurrection and exaltation of Christ; and the immensity of that exaltation, whereby Christ reigns as head over all creation and over his church. The practical weight falls on believers — the same power that raised Christ from the dead is the power that calls, regenerates, preserves, and will finally resurrect all who are united to him.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 4
The person of the Lord Jesus Christ — his true humanity, sinlessness, and mediatorial office — is examined through paragraphs 2, 3, and 7 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith chapter 8. The session works through the Virgin birth by the power of the Holy Spirit, the essential properties and common infirmities of Christ's assumed human nature, his sinlessness according to that nature, and the role of the Holy Spirit in equipping him for his mediatorial task. Paragraph 7's doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum is then treated, establishing what may and may not properly be said of Christ given the hypostatic union of two natures in one person.
A Psalm of the Cross
Psalm 22 is a psalm of David written under prophetic inspiration, its true subject not David himself but his greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ — who took its opening words upon his lips from the cross. The sermon works through verses 1–21a under three headings: the distress of the Messiah (the cry of dereliction rightly understood), the suffering of the Messiah at the hands of beastly men, and the confidence of the Messiah who never ceases to affirm the holiness, faithfulness, and presence of God even under the weight of divine wrath. The cry 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' signifies not a rupture within the Trinity nor a dissolution of the hypostatic union, but the withdrawal of the Father's favor from the Son as our penal substitute — the Son receiving in himself the punishment due to sinners while continuing to petition the Father who heard him. Believers are exhorted to read the Old Testament through New Covenant eyes, singing the Psalms as words that belong to Christ and reveal dimensions of his suffering that even the Gospel narratives do not supply.
The Preservation of Love and Unity
Ephesians 4:1–3 opens Paul's extended practical section (chapters 4–6) with a call to walk worthy of the effectual calling by which God has saved His people. This sermon expounds the three virtues—lowliness, gentleness, and long-suffering—that must characterize the redeemed, and the two corresponding conducts—bearing with one another in love and zealously keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace—that follow from those virtues. The theological order is insisted upon throughout: justification precedes sanctification, the indicative grounds the imperative, and none of these commands are the basis of salvation but the fruit of it. The practical burden is that disunity, bitterness, and the failure to pursue reconciliation according to Matthew 18 or to let love cover offenses according to 1 Peter 4 grieves the Holy Spirit and undermines the church's witness as the end-time temple of God.
Epilogue to the Decalogue
Deuteronomy 5:22 supplies a concise epilogue to the Decalogue, highlighting the divine origin, absolute authority, comprehensive character, and finality of God's moral law — a law that is trans-covenantal and binding on all men everywhere. Working through Exodus 20:18–26, this exposition examines Israel's terrified response to Sinai's theophany, Moses's distinction between slavish fear and filial fear of God, and the protocols for the altar that bridge the giving of the law to the detailed judicial legislation of chapters 21–23. The threefold division of the law — moral, ceremonial, and judicial — is defended against dispensationalist revision, with the 1689 LBCF chapter 19 paragraph 5 cited as the correct Reformed statement of the moral law's perpetuity. The sermon closes by calling believers to a filial fear of God as the most fundamental restraint against sin, and to gratitude that Christ, as the true Israel, perfectly kept the law his people swore and failed to keep.
2LCF Chapter 15 - Of Repentance Unto Life and Salvation
1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 15 treats repentance not as a meritorious work but as an evangelical grace — a gift sovereignly granted by God through the Holy Spirit, inseparable from saving faith. This study walks through all five paragraphs of the chapter, distinguishing the Greek definition of repentance as a change of mind from its fruits, exposing the danger of collapsing that distinction into a salvation-by-works scheme. The covenant of grace is shown to be the practical ground by which God provides and sustains both faith and repentance for the elect throughout their lives, including ongoing repentance for remaining sin.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 2
Christ the Mediator, as confessed in chapter 8 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, is examined through Hebrews 10 and supporting Scripture, tracing the pre-temporal appointment of the Son in the covenant of redemption, his hypostatic union, his anointing for the mediatorial office, and the execution of his saving work. The confession's account of Christ's perfect obedience, sacrificial death, and resurrection is shown to satisfy divine justice, procure reconciliation, and secure an everlasting inheritance for all the Father has given him. Particular attention is given to the retrospective communication of Christ's redemptive benefit to elect saints under the old covenant, demonstrating that salvation has always been by grace through faith in Christ alone. The study exhorts believers to find stability, comfort, and assurance in a precise knowledge of who Christ is and what he has accomplished.
Redeemed by the Precious Blood of Christ
God is an impartial judge who will call every person to account for every transgression of his law, and no corruptible thing — no silver, gold, religious ritual, or moral effort — can satisfy the demands of that justice. Redemption comes exclusively through the precious blood of Christ, the spotless Lamb foreordained before the foundation of the world, whose death made propitiation for sin and whose perfect obedience is imputed to the believer's account. Drawing from 1 Peter 1:17–21, this sermon expounds the condition, command, reason, and result of the Christian's call to conduct life in reverent fear: not a slavish terror born of misunderstanding God's character, but a reverent awe that flows from knowing the God who is both perfectly just and perfectly merciful. The believer's ongoing faith and hope are to rest continually in God — grounded in Christ's resurrection, confirmed by his ascension to glory, and oriented toward the certain hope of the new heaven and new earth.
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 Crucifixion of Jesus, Part 4
What does it mean that Jesus cried out 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' and then yielded up his spirit with a loud voice? This sermon on Matthew 27:47–50 reviews the cry of dereliction and then expounds the death of Jesus, arguing that Christ died not as a helpless victim but as the willing surety of the covenant of redemption, fulfilling the prophetic Scriptures to the last breath. The mockery of the bystanders — their misidentification of Elijah, their offer of sour wine — is set against the sovereign control of Christ, who lays down his life of himself. The sermon closes by drawing out three responses fitting the crucifixion: sober acknowledgment of human depravity, gratitude grounded in substitutionary atonement, and gospel proclamation that invites sinners to seek the altogether lovely Christ.
The Crucifixion of Jesus, Part 3
Matthew 27:45–46 records the fourth of Christ's seven words from the cross — the cry of dereliction, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' — and its interpretation demands both exegetical precision and doctrinal care. The darkness from the sixth to the ninth hour was not a solar eclipse but a supernatural sign of divine judgment, recapitulating the ninth plague pattern and marking the moment the Passover antitype was slain. The cry itself does not imply any ontological division within the Trinity, any dissolution of the hypostatic union, or the suffering of all three persons; rather, it expresses the withdrawal of divine consolation from the Son according to his true humanity as he bore, in our place as surety, the full weight of penal wrath. Believers are called to ground their assurance not in felt divine presence but in the covenant faithfulness of the God to whom Christ still cried 'my God' even in the depth of his substitutionary suffering.
The First Commandment, Part 2
The First Commandment — 'You shall have no other gods before me' (Deuteronomy 5:7) — carries not only a prohibition but a cluster of positive obligations that define the redeemed creature's relationship to the Creator. This sermon works through five such positive aspects: the love of God, the fear of God, obedience to God, trust in God, and the proper worship of God, showing how each flows necessarily from the sovereign grace by which God conquers the sinner. The sermon concludes with a call to reject idolatry in all its forms — including mental idolatry constructed by false doctrine — and to cultivate a growing, confessional knowledge of the triune God.
The Glory of the Father and the Son
John 17:1–5 opens Christ's high priestly prayer with a petition that the Father glorify the Son so that the Son may glorify the Father — a reciprocal glorification whose goal is the glory of God Most High. The sermon works through three grounds for this petition: the salvation of the elect given to the Son in the covenant of redemption, the accomplishment of Christ's active and passive obedience as the basis of justification, and the restoration of the Son's pre-incarnate glory. The full deity of Christ is defended against subordinationist readings by surveying New Testament texts where the title theos is applied directly to Jesus, and the sermon closes with the call to pursue the knowledge of God and Christ as the very essence of eternal life — through Scripture reading, prayer, and faithful attendance upon the means of grace.
The Importance of Keeping the Heart
Proverbs 4:23–27 commands God's people to keep their hearts with all diligence, because the heart is the source from which all conduct flows — mouth, eyes, and feet are merely its outlets. Drawing on the warnings of Jeremiah 17:9, the illustrations of Proverbs 7, and Christ's own teaching in Matthew 15, this exposition argues that total depravity makes diligent heart-keeping not optional but urgent. The sermon closes by pressing that this command can only be obeyed through constant dependence on God's Word and Spirit, and that apart from Christ we can do nothing.
The Purpose of the Proverbs
Proverbs 1:2–7 sets out both the purpose and the prerequisite of the entire book of Proverbs. The purpose is comprehensive — to impart wisdom, instruction, and just judgment to the simple, the young, the wise, and every condition of man — while the prerequisite is singular: the fear of the Lord, which is not a natural attainment but a gracious work of God in the soul. The fear of God is shown to be the epistemological foundation of all true knowledge, the animator of righteous conduct, and the preserver of the soul — available only through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one greater than Solomon in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.
The Liberality of God and the Believer's Security
Romans 8:31–39 confronts the believer with a single overwhelming argument: because the Father did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for all the elect, He will most certainly freely give them everything else they need. The sermon works through three movements — the declaration of God's liberality in the gift of His Son, the implication that every lesser need is thereby guaranteed, and the application to the believer's unassailable security against accusation, condemnation, and separation. Drawing on the language of propitiation, penal substitution, and the Ordo Salutis, the exposition insists that the believer's confidence rests not on personal virtue or perseverance but on the justifying grace of God and the interceding, unchanging love of Christ.
The Resurrection and Justification by Faith
Romans 4:25 presents what the commentators Matthew Poole and Charles Hodge each called an abridgment or comprehensive statement of the whole gospel: Christ was delivered up because of our offenses and raised because of our justification. The sermon works through both halves of this verse to show that the death of Christ was a substitutionary, propitiatory sacrifice satisfying divine justice on behalf of the elect, and that his bodily resurrection is the Father's public declaration that the sacrifice was accepted and justification secured. Four theological connections between resurrection and justification are drawn out: the resurrection declares Christ to be the Son of God with power, testifies that his sacrifice was accepted, confirms that satisfaction was rendered, and demonstrates that redemption was fully accomplished. The sermon closes at Romans 5:1 with the fruit of the whole discussion — peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ — applied to those who once stood condemned as ungodly offenders.
I Am the Gate of the Sheep
How does a sinner enter into heaven? John 10:7–10 presents Christ's self-declaration 'I am the door of the sheep' as the exclusive answer to that question, set against the backdrop of Israel's false shepherds (Ezekiel 34; Jeremiah 23) and the Pharisees who taught salvation by works. The sermon expounds two contrasting realities: the false entrance into heaven pursued by thieves and imposters who climb in by their own merits, and the right entrance secured by Christ alone — the one gate through whom his elect sheep receive salvation, covenant security, and everlasting pasture. The application presses both the unbeliever to look to Christ as the only narrow way and the believer to rest in the security and nourishment that the Good Shepherd provides for all who enter through him.
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.
The Crucifixion of Jesus, Part 3
Matthew 27:45–46 records the darkest three hours of history and the lone saying of Christ that Matthew preserves from the cross: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' This sermon works through the cry of dereliction with careful attention to what the text does and does not teach, ruling out any ontological division within the Trinity, any dissolution of the hypostatic union, and any notion that all three persons suffered at Calvary. The forsakenness Christ voiced was real — a qualified withdrawal of the Father's consolatory smile and favour, not an abandonment of love — because Christ stood as the covenant surety of his people, bearing the punishment of loss that sinners deserve. The gospel comfort that follows is decisive: because Christ cried 'Why have you forsaken me?' those united to him by faith will never have to.