Cited in sermons
John Gill
1,025 sermons · All people cited
1 Samuel 8
Israel's demand for a king in 1 Samuel 8 is not condemned because monarchy is inherently sinful, but because the motive behind the request was a rejection of God's sovereign rule in favour of earthly security. The people, having witnessed God's deliverance in chapter 7, nonetheless turned from him to seek a human king who could fight their battles — a pattern that mirrors their recurring idolatry from the Exodus onward. The description of the king's oppressive conduct (vv. 10–18) exposes the total depravity of a people who, even after hearing every consequence, still demand the king. The passage drives the hearer toward Christ, the true and perfect King, who executes his office by subduing, ruling, and defending his people in a manner no earthly monarch can.
The Question Concerning Elijah
Matthew 17:9–13 records the disciples' question about the scribal expectation that Elijah must precede Messiah — an expectation derived from Malachi 3–4. Jesus resolves their confusion by identifying John the Baptist as the Elijah-figure who fulfilled Malachi's prophecy, thereby laying unmistakable claim to being Yahweh of hosts, the messenger of the covenant. The sermon moves through three elements: Christ's command to silence until the resurrection, the disciples' question about Elijah, and Christ's authoritative interpretation of Malachi. Throughout, the pattern of cross before crown is pressed upon the congregation as the ordained path to glory for both Christ and his people.
The Ministries of Paul and Timothy
Paul's appointment as preacher, apostle, and teacher of the Gentiles was not self-generated but rooted in the eternal decree of God, who foreordained both the salvation of the elect and every means by which that salvation arrives — including gospel proclamation. Examining 2 Timothy 1:11–14, this sermon traces Paul's God-given role, his suffering in that role, and his unashamed confidence in a sovereign God able to keep what has been committed to Him. Timothy is then charged with two complementary duties: to hold fast the pattern of sound words received from Paul, and to guard that apostolic deposit by the indwelling Holy Spirit — not for his own sake alone, but so that the church across successive generations remains anchored to the truth.
1 Samuel 7
Israel's 20-year lament after the Lord following the return of the ark sets the stage for 1 Samuel 7, a chapter that contrasts the manipulation of God in chapter 4 with genuine covenantal repentance, exclusive worship, and intercessory prayer under Samuel's prophetic and judicial leadership. Three movements structure the passage: the longing for God evidenced in Israel's lament, the preparation for God through tangible repentance and exclusive allegiance to Yahweh, and the presence of God vindicated in miraculous deliverance at Mizpah. Samuel functions typologically as prophet, judge, and intercessor — pointing forward to Christ, who always lives to make intercession for his people. The closing exhortation calls Christians to maintain their own Ebenezers — Scripture, prayer, the Lord's Table — as bulwarks against spiritual amnesia and apostasy.
The Death Penalty
Romans 13:1–4 grounds the civil magistrate's authority to execute criminal offenders not in political theory but in the creational ordinance of Genesis 9:6 and the delegated wrath of God. The sermon traces a biblical theology of capital punishment from the Noahic covenant through the Mosaic economy into the New Testament, demonstrating that the sword Paul assigns to the magistrate in Romans 13 is no metaphor but a mandate. Common objections — drawn from Exodus 20:13, Matthew 5:38–42, and John 8 — are answered exegetically, and pragmatic objections (racial disparity, deterrence, forgiveness) are answered from Scripture and reason. The hearer is called to submit to governing authorities as God's ordained ministers of justice, to renounce private vengeance, and — if an unbeliever — to flee to Christ before facing the ultimate Judge whose assessment of the heart no magistrate can anticipate.
1 Samuel 6
First Samuel 6 records the return of the Ark of the Covenant from Philistine territory to Israel, exposing both the sovereignty of God over pagan nations and the terrifying holiness of God that no sinner can approach unaided. The chapter moves through the Philistines' carefully devised test, the miracle of the lowing milk cows, the judgment on the men of Beth Shemesh who looked into the Ark, and the Ark's final lodging at Kirjath-Jearim — each episode demonstrating that God will not be manipulated, conquered, or treated with casual familiarity. The central question the men of Beth Shemesh cry out — 'Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God?' — is the perennial question of every soul that has truly glimpsed the majesty of God, and the sermon answers it directly: Jesus Christ alone, the mediator of the new covenant, who by his obedience, death, and resurrection brings the elect into the presence of a consuming fire.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 3
What role did the Holy Spirit play in the earthly ministry of Christ, and why does it matter for the doctrine of salvation? Expounding 2LCF Chapter 8, Paragraph 3, this session traces the Spirit's work across every stage of the Mediator's mission: the virginal conception, the public ministry, the cross, and the resurrection. Because Christ executed his mediatorial office in his human nature — not merely by the immediate operation of his divine nature — the Father's gift of the Spirit without measure to the man Christ Jesus is essential to orthodox Christology and to the assurance that a genuinely human Mediator has met every demand of the covenant on behalf of the elect.
Past, Present, and Future at the Lord's Supper
The Lord's Supper operates across three tenses simultaneously: it is a memorial ordinance calling believers to remember Christ's humiliation, substitutionary suffering, and death as prophesied in Isaiah 53; it is a present means of grace conferring real spiritual communion with the exalted Christ by the Spirit, not merely a conscious recollection; and it is an eschatological anticipation, pointing the church toward the consummation when the ordinance itself will give way to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Against both Roman Catholic transubstantiation and a bare memorialist view, the sermon argues from 1 Corinthians 10–11 that the bread and wine remain unchanged in substance while serving as conduits by which the risen Lord nourishes and confirms the faith of His gathered people.
1 Samuel 5
1 Samuel 5 records the Ark of the Covenant's journey through Philistia after its capture at Ebenezer, where the God of Israel systematically humiliates Dagon and devastates every city that receives the Ark. The chapter is structured as a deliberate polemic against idolatry: Dagon is twice found prostrate before Yahweh, then stripped of head and hands, while Yahweh's 'heavy hand' of judgment moves from Ashdod to Gath to Ekron. The passage calls for reverent, humorous recognition that idols must be propped up by their worshippers, whereas the living God carries His people. The sermon draws out the perennial relevance of this account by connecting it to Isaiah 44, Isaiah 46, Psalm 106, and Romans 1, arguing that modern idolatry — whether of self, money, sexuality, or ideology — is the root disease for which the gospel of Christ is the only cure.
The Call of Samuel the Prophet
The call of Samuel in 1 Samuel 3 marks a decisive turning point in redemptive history — the transition from the era of the judges to the era of the monarchy, with Samuel functioning as God's appointed prophet and king-maker. The chapter opens with a judgment: the word of the Lord was rare in Israel, a condition the sermon argues is never accidental but always the fruit of covenant unfaithfulness, as God withdraws the lamp of His word from a people who have despised it. The Eli narrative exposes the consequences of passive, toothless pastoral authority, while Samuel's emergence illustrates the mercy of God who meets the absence of His word with a new voice. The sermon closes by pressing the abundance of available Scripture upon contemporary hearers as an undeserved grace, calling both believers and unbelievers to be where the Bible is preached and to receive Christ's imputed righteousness by faith alone.
The Book of Ruth and the Incarnation, Part 3
Ruth 4 presents the legal resolution of the kinsman-redeemer transaction and the marriage of Boaz and Ruth as the culmination of God's sovereign providence — and as the direct historical platform for the Incarnation. The closer relative's refusal to redeem clears the way for Boaz, who publicly acquires both the land and Ruth according to the Leveret law, typifying Christ's definite and effectual work of salvation. The genealogy of Ruth 4:18–22 is the hermeneutical key to the entire book: it runs directly into Matthew 1, where the Son of David is revealed as the one who will save His people — not make them savable — from their sins. Hearers are called to flee to Christ alone, whose saving work is particular, complete, and irrevocable.
The Book of Ruth and the Incarnation, Part 2
Ruth 3 presents the plan of redemption as Naomi instructs Ruth to appeal to the kinsman-redeemer Boaz, prefiguring the willingness of Christ to secure the salvation of His people at any cost. The institution of the goel — the near kinsman responsible for redeeming distressed relatives — illuminates both the legal and covenantal framework within which Boaz acts and within which the incarnate Son of God acts on behalf of guilty sinners. God's sovereign providence, not circumstance or human ingenuity, orchestrates every detail in the story of Ruth toward the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem. Sinners who recognize their need of redemption are called to look to Christ — the willing Redeemer — who came in the fullness of time to save His people from their sins.
1 Samuel 4
Israel's defeat at the hands of the Philistines and the capture of the Ark of the Covenant in 1 Samuel 4 expose a fundamental corruption in Israel's religion: the attempt to manipulate God through sacred objects rather than seek him through repentance and faith. The elders ask the right theological question — why has the Lord defeated us? — but then reach for the Ark as a kind of holy talisman, treating Yahweh as a means to military victory rather than as the sovereign end of all worship. The sermon presses the contemporary application that the same impulse toward religious technique and formulaic spirituality pervades much of professing Christianity today, and calls hearers to seek God for who he is rather than for what he gives.
The Unashamed Commitment to the Gospel
2 Timothy 1:9–10 sets before the reader the entire arc of God's redemptive plan, from its eternal origin to its historical execution in the appearing of Jesus Christ. The text answers Paul's command to Timothy in verse 8 — to be unashamed of the gospel and to suffer for it — by grounding that command in the glorious nature of the gospel itself. Salvation originates not in human will or works but in God's sovereign purpose and grace, decreed before time began and administered through the effectual calling of the elect. Because Christ has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, the preacher and every Christian has every reason to hold fast to this message without shame and to labor in its proclamation without relenting.
The Book of Ruth and the Incarnation, Part 1
The book of Ruth is not a romance or a tale of feminine courage — it is a chapter in the history of redemption, tracing the providential thread by which God brought forth the Messiah from the line of Judah through Bethlehem. This sermon works through Ruth 1–2, showing that the famine, the deaths, the return to Bethlehem, and Ruth's confession of faith in Yahweh are not accidents of history but the outworking of God's eternal decree in ordinary providence. Ruth's whole-soul allegiance to Naomi's God — sealed by an oath — is presented as a model of saving faith, a prototypical confession that mirrors believer's baptism, and a foreshadowing of Gentile inclusion in the covenant people. The hearer is called either to make Ruth's confession their own or, if already in Christ, to persevere in faithful commitment rather than growing sluggish under the weight of ordinary providence.
1 Samuel 3
The Word of God stands at the center of 1 Samuel 3, framing the entire chapter like bookends — its scarcity in verse 1 and its prevalence in verse 21. This study traces Samuel's official call to the prophetic office through four movements: the rarity of revelation as divine judgment, Samuel's gradual calling as the new preacher of the word, the grave threatened judgment on Eli's house, and the establishment of Samuel's prophetic ministry throughout all Israel. The abiding application is that the presence of the word is God's blessing and its absence is God's judgment, pressing hearers to be diligent students of Scripture while it remains freely available.
The Coming of the Kingdom
Matthew 16:28 records Jesus' promise that some standing with him would not taste death before seeing the Son of Man coming in his kingdom — a promise whose referent has generated significant interpretive disagreement. This sermon argues exegetically and theologically that the event in view is the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, presenting seven lines of evidence: the contextual sense of 'some,' parallel passages in Matthew, other New Testament texts, the connection to Christ's resurrection and ascension, Old Testament covenantal prophecy (especially Deuteronomy 28 and Daniel 9), the theological commentary of Hebrews 8, and the principle that judgment is itself a sign of the kingdom's arrival. The destruction of AD 70 is presented not as a relic of ancient history but as a covenantal and typological event that vindicates Christ's kingship, foreshadows the final judgment, and calls every hearer to take refuge in the Lamb before the great day of his wrath.
The Riches of Christ
2 Corinthians 8:9 declares that Christ, though eternally rich as God the Son, became poor in the incarnation so that sinners might become rich through his poverty. This communion meditation works through the pre-existent glory of Christ, the hypostatic union, and the redemptive riches secured by his humiliation — justification, imputation of righteousness, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. The application presses the church to give liberally to those in need, because those who have received the infinite riches of Christ cannot rightly remain tight-fisted toward brothers and sisters who suffer lack.
4 Aspects of the Incarnation
Galatians 4:4–5 contains one of the most compressed statements of the gospel in all of Scripture, setting forth the incarnation of the eternal Son of God as the decisive corrective to the Galatian error of adding legal works to faith in Christ. This sermon examines four aspects of the incarnation: the timing sovereignly appointed in the eternal covenant between Father and Son, the triune glory visible in the Father's sending of both Son and Spirit, the double humility of Christ being born of a woman and born under the law, and the twofold purpose of redemption and adoption. The application calls hearers to be astonished at God's sovereign plan, to know the Trinity rightly, to rejoice in Christ's condescension, and to rest solely in His finished work — neither adding legal performance nor trusting in one's own standing as a professing Christian.
The Eschatological Incentive for Discipleship
Matthew 16:27–28 presents two eschatological realities — the final judgment at the second coming of Christ and, in verse 28, the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 — as motivating incentives for Christian discipleship. The cross precedes the crown: disciples are called to self-denial, suffering, and allegiance to Christ precisely because a day of reckoning is coming in which the Son of Man will reward each person according to his works. Far from competing with justification by faith alone, that judgment according to works publicly evidences the true and lively faith of those who are hidden in Christ, whose righteousness alone enables the justified to stand before a thrice-holy God. Believers are therefore exhorted to bear the cross daily, fix their hope on the coming glory, and pursue the holiness that eschatological certainty demands.
Hannah's Prayer: A Meditation on God's Attributes
Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 2:1–10 moves from personal thanksgiving for the birth of Samuel to a theologically rich confession of God's holiness, immutability, omniscience, and sovereignty. The prayer parallels Mary's Magnificat in Luke 1 and Psalm 113, demonstrating a consistent biblical pattern of rejoicing in the Giver rather than the gift, grounding praise in the attributes of God, and culminating in prophetic expectation of the Messiah's kingdom. The study draws out six responses the prayer demands of the believer: joy in God's presence, confidence in his rule, admiration of his attributes, humility before his omniscience, security in his immutability, and submission to his government.
1 Samuel 1:1-18
The opening chapter of 1 Samuel presents the birth of Samuel against the backdrop of a dark era at the close of the judges, when Israel's spiritual and political condition was at its lowest. Through the barrenness of Hannah, her cruel provocation by Peninnah, and her husband's well-meaning but inadequate sympathy, the text teaches that God sovereignly works through human weakness and suffering to accomplish his redemptive purposes. Hannah's prayer — earnest, specific, and covenantally grounded — serves as a model of how God's people are to respond to frowning providences: not with complaint against God's sovereignty, but with bold, heartfelt petition at the throne of grace. The study concludes with three applications: God governs dark seasons in redemptive history by his sovereign will; suffering is normal to the Christian life; and affliction is God's appointed means to drive his people to prayer.
The Objection to the Divine Plan
Peter's rebuke of Christ in Matthew 16:22 is not merely a disciple's well-intentioned blunder — it is an alignment with the adversarial agenda that Jesus had already confronted in the wilderness temptation of Matthew 4. This sermon expounds the divine necessity of Christ's suffering and death as grounded in the eternal Covenant of Redemption, and presses the point that to object to a suffering Messiah is to object to the only ground of sinners' salvation. The response to Peter — 'Get behind me, Satan' — exposes the disease-at-the-heart nature of any theology that removes the cross from Christianity's center, and the sermon closes by pressing listeners either to embrace the crucified Christ or to reckon with the inescapable judgment of that same Christ.
Introduction to 1 Samuel
The book of 1 Samuel narrates the transition of Israel from the period of the judges to an established monarchy under Saul and then David — a transition anticipated in Deuteronomy 17 and governed by the question of whether Israel's king would trust Yahweh or his own resources. This introductory study covers the title, authorship, and date of 1 Samuel before examining the principles for kingship given in Deuteronomy 17:14–20, the theological themes of God's sovereignty, providence, and covenant faithfulness running through the book, and a broad outline of its structure. The central lesson of the monarchy, both in its failures and its partial successes, is typological: every king in Israel points forward to the Lord Jesus Christ, the one king who reigns in complete righteousness and justice.
The First Prediction of the Passion
Matthew 16:21 records Christ's first formal prediction of his passion — his necessary suffering, death, and resurrection in Jerusalem. The word 'must' (Greek dei) expresses not mere probability but the absolute necessity of the atonement, grounded in the immutable decree of God, the covenant of redemption, and the prophecies of the Old Testament Scriptures. The sermon traces three observations in verses 21–23: the declaration of the divine plan, its rejection by Peter, and its affirmation by Christ. The application presses the exclusivity of the cross as the sole ground of salvation and calls hearers to look to Christ in faith, trusting not in moral reform but in his perfect obedience, atoning death, and bodily resurrection.
The Place of Good Works
Ephesians 2:10 establishes that good works occupy a precise and necessary place in the Christian life — not as a condition of salvation, but as its inevitable consequence. This sermon traces the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone through Paul's letters to the Romans and the Galatians, exposing the Roman Catholic error of collapsing justification and sanctification into a faith-plus-works scheme and demonstrating why any such admixture invalidates grace entirely. Drawing on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the 1689 Confession, and writers from Machen to Gill, the sermon argues that the predestinating grace of God not only secures the salvation of the elect but also sets them on a course of holy living. Believers are exhorted to neither hide behind sola fide as a license for indolence nor to mistake moral performance for the ground of their acceptance before God.
The Exceeding Riches of God's Grace
Ephesians 2:8–9 presents the doctrine of salvation as originating entirely in the triune God — elected by the Father before the foundation of the world, redeemed through the blood of the Son, and sealed by the Holy Spirit. Preached on Reformation Day, this exposition traces the grace-alone, faith-alone framework of the Five Solas back to their Pauline foundation, demonstrating that the Protestant Reformation was a recovery of plain biblical reading rather than a theological novelty. The sermon confronts the human tendency toward self-credit in salvation by exposing total depravity in Ephesians 2:1–3, so that the 'but God' of verse 4 lands with full force. Hearers are urged to abandon every ground of boasting and to look to Christ alone for salvation.
Ruth 4
Ruth 4 completes the legal, covenantal, and redemptive-historical movement of the book: Boaz fulfills the role of kinsman-redeemer at the city gate, takes Ruth as his wife, and fathers Obed, whose line runs through Jesse to David and ultimately to the Lord Jesus Christ. The chapter is expounded in three movements — the legal proceeding at the gate (vv. 1–12), the marriage and birth of Obed (vv. 13–17), and the genealogy of Perez to David (vv. 18–22) — each shown to be a thread in God's sovereign, providential execution of the redemptive plan. Love in the Old Testament is treated not as mere emotion but as covenant commitment, exemplified in Ruth's hesed toward Naomi. The sermon concludes that the principal design of the Book of Ruth is to establish the genealogy of David, and through David, to point forward to the Messiah who is the aim and scope of all Scripture.
2LCF Chapter 4 - Of Creation
The doctrine of creation, as confessed in chapter four of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, encompasses far more than the sheer scale of the cosmos — it demands precise theological definition on every point from the time and agent of creation to its purpose and result. This study works through three sections of the chapter: the overview of creation (paragraphs on creation ex nihilo, the triune authorship, divine purpose, the full extent of all things visible and invisible, the literal six-day duration, and the verdict 'all very good'), the apex of creation (the constitution, identity, and integrity of man made in God's image in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness), and the fulcrum of creation (the covenant of works in the garden as the hinge upon which God's redemptive purpose to save sinners by Christ Jesus turns). Creation is neither an emanation nor a reshaping of pre-existent matter, but a free act of the triune God out of nothing, ordered ultimately to the manifestation of his glory and the redemption of his elect to the praise of his glorious grace.
The Introduction to 2 Timothy
Second Timothy is Paul's final letter, written from a Roman prison cell where he awaited execution, and its weight cannot be understood apart from that context. This introductory sermon to 2 Timothy surveys the life and missionary ministry of the Apostle Paul, the historical occasion of the letter, its fourfold purpose, and the opening greeting of 2 Timothy 1:1–2. The sermon argues that the letter's authority rests on Paul's apostolic office by divine will, that its content — grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus — is indispensable for faithful ministry, and that its words were written, as Calvin said, not in ink but in Paul's own blood. Believers are called to receive this letter as a solemn charge to faithful, gospel-grounded perseverance in whatever age they find themselves.