Cited in sermons
Matthew Barrett
16 sermons · All people cited
The Use of the 2nd London Confession
A confession of faith is not a human addition to Scripture but a tool the church uses to define, defend, discriminate, discipline, and delimit its doctrine. Drawing on passages from the Pastoral Epistles, Jude, and Ephesians 4, this Sunday School address argues that the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 serves the local church in six concrete ways: it establishes doctrinal boundaries, equips members for apologetics, vets candidates for ministry, grounds church discipline, protects Christian liberty by identifying what lies outside its purview, and anchors the church in the catholicity of the Reformed tradition. The session closes with a call to reject autonomous biblicism in favour of confessional theology understood as the fruit of the Spirit's ongoing work in the teaching ministry of Christ's church.
The Example of the Savior, Part 1
Philippians 2:5–6 presents both a profound Christological confession and a direct ethical demand: the church is to pursue unity and love by imitating the mind of Christ. This sermon expounds the divinity of the Son — his eternal existence in the form of God and his equality with the Father — as the theological foundation for Paul's call to selflessness and others-mindedness in the local church. Christ's equality with God was not seized by usurpation, as Adam and Lucifer attempted, but was his by eternal generation and consubstantiality with the Father. Because the superior condescended to serve the inferior, those who are inferior to one another have every reason to renounce selfish ambition and conceit.
CTF 2025: What Are the Modern Day Issues With the Trinity?
Two ministers survey the modern doctrinal errors threatening a right understanding of the Trinity, contrasting them with the robust trinitarianism of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689 LBCF) Chapter 2. The discussion identifies the eternal subordination of the Son controversy, Arianism, Sabellianism, and social trinitarianism as recurring and contemporary departures from orthodox Trinitarian confession. Particular attention is given to the Confession's insistence on the one will and one operation of God, against models that fracture the divine unity by assigning separate wills or discrete percentages of action to each person.
CTF 2025 10 - Optional Pre-Read Materials
A brief informal exchange offering pre-reading recommendations for a conference on the doctrine of God, focusing on 1689 LBCF Chapter 2. The discussion orients listeners toward classical theism, the historical consensus on the Trinity, and modern departures from that consensus in the 20th century. Recommended works address divine simplicity, the eternal relations of origin among the Trinitarian persons, and divine impassibility, providing theological grounding before the conference sessions begin.
CTF 2025 - What Are the Modern Day Issues With the Trinity?
This preview conversation addresses two recurring categories of Trinitarian error — subordinationism and social Trinitarianism — that the Classical Theism and the Faith 2025 conference will treat. The speakers ground their discussion in 1689 LBCF Chapter 2, particularly paragraph 3, arguing that the eternal Son is fully equal with the Father (contra eternal subordination of the Son), and that the divine persons share one will and one operation (contra social Trinitarianism and tritheism). The practical stakes are high: errors in Trinitarian theology distort both worship and social ethics, and confessional churches must arm their people with the historic biblical formulation.
The Nature of the Holy Spirit, Part 2
Jesus' promise in John 14:17–18 — that the Spirit of truth cannot be received by the world, yet dwells with and will be in his disciples — grounds the church's dependence on sovereign grace for all gospel ministry. The sermon works through the doctrine of inseparable operations and appropriations to protect both the unity of the Godhead and the distinction of persons, before applying the Spirit's indwelling to the perseverance of the saints and the sufficiency of the gospel. The closing exhortation presses both believers and unbelievers: the Spirit abides forever, justification is by faith alone, and the righteousness of Christ is imputed — not merely forgiveness extended — to all who come to him.
The Mission of the Disciples, Part 2
John 14:16–18 presents Christ's promise to send the Holy Spirit as the resource by which the disciples would carry out the greater works of the gospel mission. This sermon works through the foundation of that promise — salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone, the love that flows from justification as the animating power of obedience and mission — before pausing to mount a sustained defense of Trinitarian theology proper. The preacher argues that biblicism without creedal guardrails, anti-intellectualism, and laziness have left the contemporary church vulnerable to the same Trinitarian errors the Nicene and Chalcedonian fathers labored to foreclose, and calls the congregation to pursue the knowledge of the triune God as the very substance of eternal life.
Introduction to the 1677/1789 2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith
The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith — formally composed in 1677 and adopted by particular Baptist churches in 1689 — stands in deliberate continuity with the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration, adapting their language to reflect distinctively Baptist convictions while maintaining solidarity with the broader Reformed tradition. This introductory session traces the Confession's historical origins, its relationship to the First London Confession of 1644–46, and the legal and ecclesiastical context in which particular Baptists operated under the Act of Toleration. Six reasons are then advanced for why a 21st-century church should subscribe to a 17th-century confession: to define, defend, discriminate, discipline, distinguish matters of Christian liberty, and develop an appreciation for the history of the church. The session closes by urging that confessionalism, rightly understood, is not proud biblicism but the humble reception of gifts Christ has given to his church across the ages.
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.
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.
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.
2LCF Chapter 2 - Of God and of the Holy Trinity, Part 3
The Holy Spirit as the third subsistence of the one divine essence is the subject of this study in Chapter 2, Paragraph 3 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. The session traces the Spirit's presence and deity through both Testaments, works through the meaning of eternal procession from the Father and the Son (the filioque), and engages the historical debates at the councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Toledo that shaped confessional Trinitarian language. The practical conclusion drawn from the Confession is that the doctrine of the Trinity is not abstract speculation but the foundation of all communion with God and the believer's comfortable dependence upon Him.
2LCF Chapter 2 - Of God and of the Holy Trinity, Part 3
The doctrine of the Trinity is not a mathematical formula but a carefully defined confession of one divine being eternally subsisting as three distinct persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This session works through 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith chapter 2, paragraph 3, examining the unity and equality of the persons, their distinction by eternal relations of origin, and the contemporary crisis caused by the abandonment of eternal generation. The denial of threeness is as heretical as the denial of oneness, and a recovery of Nicene Trinitarianism is essential not only for theological orthodoxy but for the health of the soul and the vitality of corporate worship.
2LCF Chapter 1 - Of the Holy Scriptures, Part 2
Hermeneutics — the science of biblical interpretation — stands at the center of this study through paragraphs 5 to 10 of Chapter 1 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. The session works through five principles: the scope of Scripture (Christ as its organizing center), the sufficiency of Scripture (including good and necessary consequences), the perspicuity of Scripture, the availability of Scripture through faithful translation, and the two classical interpretive rules — the analogy of Scripture and the analogy of faith. The study closes by defending the proper use of creeds, confessions, and the writings of faithful theologians as gifts Christ has given to his church, while insisting that Holy Scripture alone is the supreme and final judge in all controversies of religion.
The Divinity of the Word, Part 2
John 1:3–5 teaches that the eternal Word is the creator of all things, establishing Christ unmistakably on the divine side of the creator-creature distinction. The sermon works through the Trinitarian doctrines of inseparable operations and appropriations, showing from Genesis 1, Psalm 33, Job 26, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1 that creation is the undivided act of the one God, yet scripture distinctively attributes it to the Son. Because Jesus is creator, sustainer, and enthroned Lord, his people need not be paralyzed by circumstance — and the darkness, however violently it resists the light, cannot overcome it.
The Divinity of the Word
John 1:1–5 opens not in a Bethlehem stable but in eternity, establishing the Word's co-eternality, personal distinction from the Father, and full consubstantiality with the Father before a single creature existed. This sermon works through the first clause of John's prologue under five sub-points drawn from verse 1: the eternity, distinctiveness, and consubstantiality of the Word with the Father, the repetition of that glory in verse 2, and (deferred to the following week) the Word as creator of all things. The doctrine of the Trinity — one in essence, three in subsistence — is shown to be not an academic luxury but the very foundation of all communion with God and the indispensable framework for understanding why the incarnation is the supreme act of grace.