Cited in sermons
John Owen
325 sermons · All people cited
The Builder of the Church
Matthew 16:13–18 raises the question Jesus himself poses: 'Who do you say that I am?' This sermon works through three movements in the passage — the question of Christ's identity, Peter's confession and the divine grace that produced it, and the establishment and indestructibility of the church Christ is building. The sermon engages the Roman Catholic and Protestant dispute over the rock on which the church is founded, arguing from John Owen and J.C. Ryle that the rock is the person of Christ whom Peter confessed, not Peter himself. The chief application is that Christ — not human ingenuity, celebrity, or programme — owns, builds, protects, and defines the conduct of his church, and that faithfulness, not fantastical success, is what he requires of his people.
Free Grace Baptist Church - December 24, 2017 PM
Hebrews 10:24–25 sets before Christians a third and final exhortation completing the threefold pattern of corporate Christian duty: a thoughtful diligence in communion with one another that stirs up love and good works. Against the background of Hebrew Christians tempted to abandon gathered worship for the obsolete ceremonies of temple religion, the text demands mutual, outward-directed consideration of fellow believers — not a mere proximity of individuals, but a genuine fellowship that provokes charity and joyful obedience. The sermon draws on John Owen's commentary and Philippians 2:1–4 to show that this corporate ethic requires the active mortification of selfish ambition and the deliberate cultivation of lowliness of mind toward one another.
A Thoughtful Diligence in Fellowship
Hebrews 10:24–25 contains the third of three apostolic exhortations grounded in Christ's blood and high-priestly office: a thoughtful diligence in corporate fellowship that stirs one another to love and good works. The sermon traces the call to mutual consideration — looking away from self and toward brothers and sisters in Christ — and grounds its motivation in the incarnate humility of the Son of God, who made himself of no reputation to serve sinners. Forsaking the assembly is not a private failure but a breach of the covenantal reciprocity that belongs to those who rest on so great a salvation.
OF Christ the Mediator (2LCF 8)
The doctrine of the Incarnation — that the eternal Son of God took to himself a full human nature, body and soul, yet without sin — is one of the two great mysteries of the Christian faith alongside the Trinity. This confession study works through 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith Chapter 8, Paragraph 2, establishing first what the Incarnation does not mean (mutation of the divine nature, mere appearance, assumption of body only, full humanity without exception, addition to divine being) before drawing out five positive theological entailments: it is the Son alone who became incarnate through the undivided work of the triune God; it is the divine Son who assumed flesh; the assumed humanity is full and complete; Christ is sinless in that humanity; and the two natures are united in one person without conversion, composition, or confusion. The whole doctrine is shown to be the necessary foundation of the Christian gospel, since only a mediator who is truly and fully God, truly and fully man, and wholly without sin can accomplish the redemption of fallen humanity.
The Three-Fold Exhortation
Hebrews 10:19–25 sets forth a two-fold foundation and a three-fold exhortation for corporate Christian life. The foundation is Christ's blood-purchased boldness of access into the holiest and His abiding high-priestly intercession — both of which make the old-covenant sacrificial system not merely obsolete but inferior in kind, not degree. From that foundation the apostle issues three commands: draw near with a true heart in full assurance, hold fast the confession of hope without wavering, and (deferred to a subsequent sermon) consider one another to stir up love and good works. The sermon presses hearers to root their weekly confidence not in the quality of their obedience but in the dignity of Christ's person and the virtue of His once-for-all sacrifice.
Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day, Part 2 (2LCF 22)
The Christian Sabbath is not a Puritan invention but a moral, perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, now observed on the first day of the week in light of Christ's resurrection. This session of the 1689 London Baptist Confession study works through the ministry of Christ, the resurrection accounts, the apostolic pattern of first-day gathering, and the typology of Hebrews 4 to establish that a weekly Sabbath rest remains for the people of God in the new covenant era. The change of day from the seventh to the first reflects the inauguration of the new creation by the risen Christ, just as the Father rested on the seventh day of the old creation. Hearers are urged to receive the Lord's Day as a gracious gift — a weekly 'market day of the soul' pointing forward to the consummated rest that has not yet fully come.
Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day (2LCF22)
The Sabbath commandment is a moral, positive, and perpetual law binding all men in all ages — not a distinctively Jewish institution abolished with the Mosaic economy, but a creation ordinance blessed and sanctified by God from the beginning and carried forward into the New Covenant era. Working through 2LCF chapter 22, paragraphs 7 and 8, this session traces a biblical theology of the Sabbath from Genesis 2 through Isaiah and Jeremiah, establishing both the moral principle (one day in seven) and its positive element (the particular day). The shift from Saturday to Sunday is grounded in creation and redemption as the twin rationales for the commandment, anticipating the resurrection of Christ as the basis for Lord's Day worship. Hearers are called to receive the Sabbath not as a burden but as a gift given by God for the good of His creatures.
2LCF Chapter 21 - Of Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience
Christian liberty is grounded not primarily in political or personal freedoms but in the perfect saving work of Christ, who has purchased freedom from the guilt, power, and punishment of sin for all his elect. This study works through 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith chapter 21, paragraphs 1–3, tracing the biblical foundations of liberty of conscience against both Roman Catholic ecclesiastical imposition and antinomian abuse of grace. The New Testament enlarges the freedom already held by Old Testament believers by releasing them from the ceremonial law's yoke, granting bolder access to the throne of grace, and communicating the Spirit more fully. True Christian liberty issues not in licentiousness but in cheerful, childlike obedience to God, freed from slavish fear and self-imposed religious scrupulosity alike.
2LCF Chapter 20 - Of the Gospel and of the Extent of the Grace Thereof
The gospel is necessary, revealed only through special revelation, and made effectual solely by the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit — natural law and general revelation are wholly insufficient for salvation. This session expounds 2LCF Chapter 20, tracing why John Owen and the Congregationalists added this chapter to address both the rise of salvation-through-natural-law teaching and the false charge that Reformed and Baptist churches were anti-missional. The sermon argues that the gospel advances to the ends of the earth through preaching, according to God's sovereign will, as the Spirit regenerates the elect who are dead in trespasses and sins. The practical burden is confidence and perseverance in gospel proclamation, grounded not in human ability or ecclesial authority but in the sovereignty of God.
The Denial of Christ by Peter
Peter's threefold denial of Christ in Matthew 26:69–75 exposes both the anatomy of a disciple's fall and the magnitude of divine grace that restores the fallen. The sermon traces Peter's descent from evasive mumbling to sworn denial, showing how self-confidence, prayerlessness, and neglect of the Word prepared him for catastrophic failure before a servant girl. The contrasting thread throughout is the mercy of Christ — his look of 'sorrow, pity, love, and forgiveness' — which, together with the remembered word, brought Peter to godly repentance and eventual restoration. Hearers are exhorted to watch and pray, to hide the Word in their hearts, and to flee to the Christ who does not cast out those who come to him.
Free Grace Baptist Church - July 2, 2017 AM
This expository sermon on Matthew 26:40–46 examines the sluggishness of the disciples in Gethsemane against the backdrop of Christ's resolute, prayerful obedience to the Father. The disciples' repeated failure to watch and pray — despite explicit warning and their own loud protestations of loyalty — exposes the persistent pride and creaturely weakness of even regenerate believers. Christ's threefold prayer, his endurance of the cup of divine wrath by imputation, and his gracious invitation to the sleeping disciples ('let us be going') together constitute the ground for the sermon's central exhortation: the ordained means of victory over temptation and spiritual lethargy is watchfulness and prayer, practiced in both private devotion and the corporate worship of God.
The Nature of Saving Faith, 2
James 2:18–26 presents an apparent conflict with Paul's doctrine of justification by faith alone, a tension that has troubled interpreters from Martin Luther onward. This sermon resolves the tension exegetically by demonstrating that James and Paul use the word 'justification' in different senses: Paul addresses the sinner's standing before God by grace alone through faith alone, while James addresses the public demonstration and evidential confirmation of that faith before men. The controlling principle throughout is that saving faith is never alone — it is ever accompanied with all other saving graces and necessarily produces good works — while a faith that produces no works is the dead, demonic, counterfeit profession James condemns. The sermon calls hearers to examine whether their profession of faith in Christ is accompanied by the fruit that distinguishes genuine saving faith from empty confessionalism.
The Nature of Saving Faith, Part 1
James 2:14–17 has provoked sharp disagreement in the history of the church, with readers perceiving a direct contradiction between James and Paul on the doctrine of justification. This sermon works through five hermeneutical tools for harmonizing the two apostles — the unity of Scripture, the internal consistency of James's own doctrine of salvation, the immediate context, the different audiences and purposes of each writer, and the statement of 1689 LBCF 11.2 — before turning to the question James poses in verses 14–17 concerning the validity of a particular species of faith. The central distinction is not faith versus works or faith plus works, but false faith versus true faith: genuine saving faith is never alone in the person justified, but is always accompanied with all other saving graces, producing the practical Christianity James demands.
The Confession of Thomas
John 20:24–31 presents Thomas's movement from emphatic unbelief to the confession 'My Lord and my God' — the confession that frames the entire fourth gospel, answering John 1:1 at its close. Thomas's refusal to believe is shown to be not mere doubt but a willful rejection of Old Testament testimony, the word and works of Christ, and apostolic witness — making Christ's gracious condescension to meet him all the more striking. The sermon expounds John's stated purpose in verses 30–31: that the gospel was written to produce saving faith, defined in the confession's terms as accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life. Hearers are called to forsake the folly of placing conditions upon God and to confess with Thomas, 'My Lord and my God.'
Of Christ the Mediator 1 (2LCF 8)
The person and work of Christ as mediator stands at the center of Christian theology, as this study of 2nd London Baptist Confession chapter 8 makes clear. Working through all ten paragraphs of the chapter in overview, the session traces the pre-temporal appointment of Christ as mediator in the covenant of redemption, the historical stages of his mediatorial work, and the necessity of his threefold office as prophet, priest, and king. Particular attention falls on paragraph 2's account of the incarnation — the eternal Son taking true human nature with all its essential properties yet without sin — and paragraph 7's careful rule for reading Scripture passages that attribute what belongs to one nature to the other, guarding against both a divinized humanity (Lutheran ubiquitarianism) and a humanized deity. Hearers are called to hold fast the church's historic confession of Christ as one person in two natures, whole, perfect, and distinct, without conversion, composition, or confusion.
The Idolatry of Solomon
Solomon's reign, celebrated across 1 Kings 3–10 for its wisdom, wealth, and temple-building, collapses in 1 Kings 11 under the weight of multiplied foreign wives, hardened idolatry, and a heart turned away from Yahweh. The sermon exposes the problem, precedent, and practice of Solomon's idolatry in verses 1–8, and then traces the divine response — God's righteous anger and covenantal judgment — in verses 9–13. Solomon's sin is shown to be aggravated by his knowledge of the law, his good example in David, and his twice-repeated experience of God's direct appearing. Drawing out seven practical warnings, the sermon calls believers to vigilance in marriage, obedience, and utter dependence on the Holy Spirit, while pointing to Christ — the greater Solomon — as the only secure ground for salvation and perseverance.
1 Kings 11:1-13
Solomon's fall in 1 Kings 11:1–13 confronts the reader with the most disorienting reversal in the narrative of the monarchy: the wisest man who ever lived, a man who built the temple and prayed for God to incline the hearts of his people, ends his reign bowing before Chemosh, Milcom, and Ashtoreth. The study traces how violations of Deuteronomy's prohibitions on foreign marriages and the principles governing kings — compounded by great privilege, faithful example, and divine warning — render Solomon's idolatry inexcusable and God's threatened judgment just. The divine response in verses 9–13 demonstrates both God's righteous anger at covenant-breaking and his covenant faithfulness to David, as the conditional and unconditional elements of the Davidic covenant together shape the coming division of the kingdom. Eight practical warnings are drawn from Solomon's fall, all converging on the believer's utter dependence upon the Holy Spirit as the only safeguard against apostasy.
The High Priest of the New Covenant
Hebrews 7:20–28 presents Christ's high priesthood as superior to the Levitical order in three respects: His appointment was confirmed by divine oath rather than hereditary succession, His priesthood is permanent because He lives forever, and His personal sinlessness qualifies Him as the perfect once-for-all sacrifice. The passage presses toward a practical conclusion: believers must actively avail themselves of this High Priest — confessing sin through their Advocate, crying out for aid in temptation, and resting in the unchangeable intercession of the One who always lives to make intercession for them.
Of Covenant (2LCF 7)
2 London Baptist Confession of Faith Chapter 7 traces the whole architecture of Scripture through the lens of covenant theology, demonstrating that God's dealings with humanity are covenantal from creation to consummation. The chapter distinguishes three interlocking covenants — the covenant of works, the covenant of redemption, and the covenant of grace — and shows how each is necessary for a right understanding of the others. Particular attention is given to the progressive revelation of the covenant of grace from Genesis 3:15 through the historical covenants (Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic) to its full discovery in the new covenant inaugurated by Christ. The practical stakes are high: a faulty grasp of the covenant of works will inevitably distort one's understanding of Christ's mediatorial obedience, justification by faith alone, and the covenant of grace itself.
The Governing Principle of Kingdom Life
Matthew 6:31–34 contains Christ's governing principle for kingdom life: seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and the necessities of life will be added. The sermon works through the contrast Christ draws between the Gentiles, whose obsessive anxiety over food, drink, and clothing flows from their exclusion of God, and the children of God, whose heavenly Father already knows their needs. Worry is exposed as a sin that betrays the sovereignty of God, divides the believer's attention, and paralyzes kingdom advance. The remedy is not passivity but a reordered priority — the Lord's Prayer models the same sequence — combined with a cultivated contentment grounded in the goodness and providence of God.
The Incarnation and the Victory of Christ
Revelation 12 presents three symbolic figures — the woman (the messianic community and church), the dragon (the devil), and the male child (Christ) — to narrate the decisive victory won at Christ's first advent. The chapter demonstrates that the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Son of God accomplish what was promised in Genesis 3:15: the crushing of the serpent's head. Against prosperity-gospel distortions, the sermon insists that Christ's enthronement does not remove the church's trials but rather explains them, calling believers to resist the devil through the blood of the Lamb and to identify themselves as those who keep the commandments of God.
Free Grace Baptist Church - December 4, 2016 AM
Philippians 2:8–11 presents the obedience of Christ as the crux of the gospel: the Son of God, fully God and fully man, humbled himself unto the cross death in substitutionary obedience to the law of God in the place of all who believe. This sermon works through three movements — the reality, the crux, and the result of Christ's obedience — grounding each in the theology of the two Adams: as Adam's disobedience plunged mankind into sin and condemnation, so Christ's perfect obedience as the second Adam restores and surpasses all that was lost. The obedience of Christ is not merely a doctrinal category but a free gift of righteousness received by faith alone, the very lifeblood of the gospel, received with joy and answered in humble service to others after the pattern of the Lord.
The Hymn to Christ as to God, Part 3
What does it mean that Christ 'emptied himself' in Philippians 2:7? This sermon works through the first clause of Christ's condescension, arguing that the self-emptying was not a divestiture of deity but an addition of humanity — Christ took on what he was not without ceasing to be what he eternally was. The incarnation is treated under two headings: his self-emptying by assuming man's nature, and his self-humiliation in engaging that nature as a bondservant. The sermon closes by drawing out the practical weight of Christ's true humanity for worship, perseverance under suffering, and help in temptation.
The Hope of OT Believers
What did Old Testament believers actually know about the coming Redeemer? This sermon works through six lines of biblical evidence — from the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15 through the prophets and Psalms — to demonstrate that the messianic hope of Israel was not vague or mystical but concrete, objective, and increasingly specific across the covenant history of redemption. Old Testament saints knew that the Deliverer would be a man born of a woman, would accomplish victory through substitutionary death, would be of Davidic lineage, would be both God and man, and that faith in him was the appointed way of salvation. The sermon closes at the Lord's Supper, grounding the ordinance in the fulfillment of all these promises in the person and work of Christ.
Hebrews 13:3
Hebrews 13:3 commands believers to 'remember the prisoners as if chained with them' — not merely to recall that persecuted saints exist, but to remember them with a view to action, prayer, and tangible aid. This study traces the command through its immediate context of brotherly love (Hebrews 13:1-3), the Old and New Testament witness to the normalcy of suffering for the cause of Christ, and the reasons why remembering persecuted believers is both a duty and an expression of the church's solidarity in one body. The practical application presses the congregation to move beyond apathy toward the persecuted church through prayer, correspondence, giving, visitation, and the conscious redirecting of attention away from self toward those who suffer for the name of Christ.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 8
Matthew 24:29 presents one of the most contested verses in the Olivet Discourse: does its cosmic imagery — a darkened sun, a moonless sky, falling stars, and shaken heavens — describe a literal end-of-the-world event, or does it employ a well-established grammar of Old Testament prophetic language? This sermon argues the preterist case that verse 29 deploys figurative apocalyptic language drawn from Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Amos, and others to announce the covenantal destruction of Old Covenant Israel in AD 70, immediately after the tribulation of those days. Five considerations are developed: the two time-markers tethering verse 29 to its context, the figurative meaning of cosmic collapse language, the extensive Old Testament background, the role-reversal of Israel becoming Babylon, and the implications for continuity in the new heavens and new earth. The sermon closes with a direct summons from Amos 5 — that there will be no escape on the final day of judgment, and that faith in Jesus Christ alone is the only refuge.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 6
Matthew 24:21–22 describes a 'great tribulation' and its sovereign limitation — but what event does this language describe? Working through a preterist reading of the Olivet Discourse, this sermon argues that verse 21's unparalleled tribulation language refers to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, not to a future global event. Drawing on parallel idioms in Exodus 11, Ezekiel 5, Ezekiel 7, and Daniel 9, the sermon demonstrates that such hyperbolic judgment language is standard biblical speech for covenantal catastrophe, and that the AD 70 destruction constituted the decisive covenantal transformation by which the kingdom was taken from old covenant Israel and given to the church. The sermon closes with a direct call to sinners to flee to Christ, whose promise in John 6:37 and 1 John 3:23 provides the warrant for faith.
Genesis 3:15
Genesis 3:15, the protevangelium, announces a Redeemer who would be born of a woman, accomplish victory through suffering and death, and crush the serpent's head — not a vague, undefined figure but a precisely identified Messiah. This Bible study traces the progressive covenantal narrowing of that promise from the seed of the woman (Genesis 3) through the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants, the Psalms, and the prophets, demonstrating that Old Testament believers possessed substantial, detailed knowledge of the coming Christ. The study draws on Paul, John Owen, and the 1689 London Baptist Confession to show that salvation has always been by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, with no separate Old Testament economy of law-keeping. The closing application presses hearers toward Simeon-like doxology in response to the Christ who fulfills every promise of the Old Testament.
The Pharisee and the Publican
Luke 18:9–14 presents two men at prayer whose contrasting postures before God expose the heart of the doctrine of justification. The Pharisee's self-congratulatory prayer — cataloguing what he is not and what he does — illustrates the fatal error of self-righteousness: banking one's standing with God upon personal merit, which inevitably produces contempt for others. The tax collector's wordless self-renunciation — 'God be propitious to me, the sinner' — is the only posture that receives the verdict 'justified,' because justification is an act of God's free grace wherein the righteousness of Christ alone, received by faith, is the ground of the sinner's acceptance. The parable calls every hearer to kill pride, renounce all self-congratulatory religion, and cast himself entirely upon the mercy of God in Christ.
The Past as a Present Reminder
Hebrews 10:32–39 calls the people of God to recall their early days of faith — the illumination received, the sufferings endured, the goods joyfully surrendered — not as a memorial to past zeal but as a present summons to perseverance. The passage moves from a reminder of former faithfulness (vv. 32–34) to a direct exhortation not to cast away confidence (vv. 35–39), grounding both in the confession that the just shall live by faith. Trials are not accidental but divinely ordered, and endurance is not a matter of moral bootstrapping but of faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. The sermon calls hearers to shake off spiritual lethargy by drawing near to God, holding fast the confession of their hope, and actively considering one another in the assembly.