Cited in sermons
Matthew Henry
345 sermons · All people cited
2 Samuel 23:1-7
David's final official words in 2 Samuel 23:1–7 are not a backward glance at his own reign but a forward-looking messianic prophecy concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, identified as 'the anointed of the God of Jacob' and 'the favorite of the songs of Israel.' The passage discloses the Trinitarian agency behind the words, the comprehensive and just nature of Messiah's reign, the everlasting Davidic covenant that grounds the hope of a perfect king despite David's own failures, and the exclusion of the unrepentant from that kingdom. Believers are called to take comfort in Christ's just and universal rule, to proclaim the terror of divine judgment honestly, and to worship the one to whom all the Psalms point.
The Rejection of Saul
Saul's disobedience in 1 Samuel 15 — sparing Agag and the best livestock against the explicit herem command — is not an isolated failure but the culminating point of a progressive apostasy rooted in disregard for the Word of God. The sermon traces the anatomy of that apostasy through Saul's blame-shifting, false piety, self-deception, and counterfeit repentance, setting him in deliberate contrast with David, whose genuine faith expressed itself in confession and flight to the mercy of God. The critical lesson is that great privilege within the covenant community — anointing, early victories, religious activity — does not confirm saving grace, and that obedience to the revealed Word of God, not religiosity, is the mark of the true people of God.
2 Samuel 22
Psalm 18's twin text, 2 Samuel 22 presents David not as a great military king but as a theologian of grace, ascribing every victory to Yahweh alone. The sermon examines the deliverance of God's servant (vv. 1–20), then takes up the harder exegetical question of David's assertion of his own righteousness (vv. 21–31), arguing from Psalms 32, 51, and 65 and from Romans 4 that David's righteousness is the imputed righteousness of Christ, received through faith, not a claim to sinless perfection. The sermon closes by grounding David's confidence in the Davidic covenant of 2 Samuel 7 and calling the congregation to the same exuberant, theologically informed praise.
The Atonement at Gibeah
2 Samuel 21 presents a famine in David's Israel caused by Saul's covenant-breaking slaughter of the Gibeonites, resolved only when seven of Saul's sons are executed as a blood-atoning sacrifice before the Lord. The passage illuminates the costliness of covenant-breaking, the terror of divine wrath, and the nature of substitutionary atonement — themes that point unmistakably to Calvary. David's protection of Mephibosheth in the midst of judgment typifies Christ's covenant-keeping faithfulness toward his own people, while the death of the seven sons at Gibeah typifies the penal substitution of the innocent for the guilty. The sermon presses believers to resist domesticating the atonement into a bloodless abstraction, and to confront afresh the drippy, bloody, smelly reality of what the Son of God endured in the place of sinners.
The Confidence of the Believer
Micah 7 presents one of the most concentrated confessions of faith under duress in all of Scripture: a prophet who surveys moral collapse, political corruption, and the breakdown of domestic trust, yet steadfastly declares, 'I will look to the Lord.' This sermon works consecutively through Micah 7 in three movements — the prophet's lamentation over the state of the covenant community, his counsel to the godly remnant, and his closing doxology — to show what it means in practice for the just to live by faith. The doxology of verses 18–20 grounds that faith not in optimism or circumstance but in the revealed character of God: his pardoning of iniquity, his delight in mercy, his subduing of remaining sin, and his unbreakable covenant faithfulness. The sermon closes with a direct exhortation to feed faith on Scripture and sound theology, because faith cannot lay hold of what it does not know.
The Conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch
Acts 8:26–40 records the Spirit-orchestrated conversion of an Ethiopian eunuch through Philip's proclamation of Christ from Isaiah 53. The passage is set within the fulfillment of Isaiah 56's promise that eunuchs and Gentiles would be brought near to God in the messianic age — a promise Luke deliberately highlights as the risen and exalted Christ builds his kingdom to the uttermost parts of the earth. The sermon expounds the substitutionary suffering of the servant of Yahweh as the content of Philip's evangelism, the great exchange of 2 Corinthians 5:21 as the ground of justification, and the proper order of faith then baptism as the pattern of apostolic practice. Hearers are pressed to ask whether they understand the gospel, to believe it without delay, and — if already believing — to submit to baptism as an act of obedience and a means of grace.
2 Samuel 17
Second Samuel 17 narrates the competing counsel of Ahithophel and Hushai during Absalom's rebellion against David, but the narrator's own theological commentary in verse 14 reveals that the decisive factor is neither military strategy nor political cunning — it is the sovereign purpose of Yahweh. God defeats good counsel to bring disaster on His enemies and preserve His anointed king, and He does so through entirely ordinary, hidden means. The sermon draws out the hiddenness of divine providence, the certainty of judgment upon all who oppose God's kingdom, and the comfort that the kingdom of Christ will never be destroyed.
The Impending Judgment of Israel
Matthew 23:34–36 records Christ's announcement of impending divine judgment upon the generation of Israel that would reject him and murder his sent messengers. The sermon traces three interlocking movements: the rejection of the prophets Christ sends in the new covenant era, the accumulation of blood-guilt from Abel to Zechariah spanning the entire Hebrew canon, and the prophetic assurance — sealed with Christ's own 'amen' — that all these things would fall upon that first-century generation in the destruction of AD 70. The exposition situates Matthew 23 within a consistent covenantal pattern running from the Mosaic curses through the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities to AD 70, and closes with a direct call to flee to the Righteous One whose shed blood is the only escape from the condemnation of hell.
2 Samuel 16
When David flees Jerusalem, he encounters three enemies — Ziba the manipulator, Shimei the curser, and Ahithophel the treacherous counselor — yet his response to each reveals a man who trusts the sovereign hand of God rather than the sword of his own men. This study of 2 Samuel 16 traces how David's suffering under divine chastisement, provoked by his own sin in 2 Samuel 11–12, fulfills Nathan's prophetic word and demonstrates a practical faith in God's comprehensive sovereignty over the wicked acts of men. David's refusal to retaliate against Shimei and his hope that God might 'repay him with good' prefigures Christ, who when reviled did not revile in return but committed himself to him who judges righteously. The study closes by urging believers to read the Psalms in light of their historical background, to embrace God's sovereignty over trials, and to cast themselves upon divine mercy when waves of affliction come together.
2 Samuel 15
Second Samuel 15 records Absalom's carefully orchestrated conspiracy to usurp David's throne and David's subsequent flight from Jerusalem. The chapter is expounded against the backdrop of God's word of judgment through Nathan in 2 Samuel 12, showing how divine sovereignty works through the wickedness of responsible human agents without excusing that wickedness. David's submission to God's sovereign will in sending the Ark back to Jerusalem, his prayer against the counsel of Ahithophel, and his use of Ittai, Zadok, and Hushai as instruments of providence together model a robust, active faith that casts itself entirely upon God rather than upon religious superstition or human cleverness. The passage closes with typological overtones, as David's weeping ascent of the Mount of Olives anticipates his greater Son's own rejected kingship and lament over Jerusalem.
2 Samuel 14
Second Samuel 14 records Joab's scheme to engineer Absalom's return from exile through the parable-like appeal of a wise woman from Tekoa, David's capitulation, and the uneasy non-reconciliation that follows. The chapter exposes David's chronic inactivity as a father and king — his refusal either to punish or fully forgive Absalom producing the very bitterness that will fuel Absalom's usurpation in chapter 15. The narrator's portrait of Absalom's stunning appearance, his family, and his manipulative conduct warns that outward impressiveness without inward submission to God is a recipe for leadership disaster, a theme that runs from Saul through Eliab to Absalom himself. Parents and leaders alike are called to deal decisively with sin rather than tolerate the "no man's land" between justice and mercy.
The Condemnation of the Religious Leaders, Part 3
Matthew 23:23–24 records the fifth of Christ's eight woes against the scribes and Pharisees: they meticulously tithe the smallest garden herbs while neglecting the weightier matters of the law — justice, mercy, and faith. Tracing this indictment through Micah 6:8, Genesis 18, Deuteronomy 10, Hosea 12, and Zechariah 7, the sermon demonstrates that Jesus is functioning as a covenant-lawsuit prophet in a line stretching back to Israel's earliest history, condemning the nation for collapsing piety into external ritual while abandoning love toward God and neighbour. The qualification Christ appends — 'these you ought to have done without leaving the others undone' — forbids both the majoring on minors that marks religious hypocrisy and the neglect of minors by those who camp exclusively on justice and mercy. The sermon closes with a direct gospel summons: neither tithing nor social virtue saves; salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, after which the redeemed are called to obey all of God's law in its proper proportion.
2 Samuel 13:23-39
2 Samuel 13:23–39 narrates the premeditated murder of Amnon by Absalom, the flight of Absalom to Geshur, and David's paralysis as father and king. The passage exposes how unaddressed sin compounds — David's failure to punish Amnon's rape of Tamar creates the conditions for Absalom's vigilante vengeance, fulfilling Nathan's prophetic word that the sword would not depart from David's house. Absalom's two years of nursed hatred illustrate Paul's warning in Ephesians 4 that unresolved anger gives place to the devil, and the passage ends by pointing the faithful forward to the promised Messiah, the son of David who will reign with the righteousness and justice no merely human king can sustain.
The Condemnation of the Religious Leaders, Part 1
Matthew 23:13 introduces the first of eight woes Christ pronounces upon the scribes and Pharisees — men who, rather than opening the kingdom of heaven, slammed its door in the faces of those seeking entrance. The sermon establishes the prophetic precedent for Christ's condemnation by tracing the woe-oracle tradition through Isaiah and Habakkuk, and by grounding Christ's authority in the Deuteronomy 18 promise of the coming prophet. The first woe is shown to encapsulate all the rest: the religious leaders shut out others through hypocrisy, legalism, doctrinal heresy, and above all their rejection of Jesus as the Messiah. The sermon closes with a direct call to believe the gospel — to look to Christ and live, as Israel once looked to the bronze serpent in the wilderness.
2 Samuel 12:15-31
David's sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah bring severe temporal consequences even after divine forgiveness is granted: the infant son dies, and the Davidic household faces ongoing judgment. Yet grace appears most strikingly in the very aftermath of these crimes — God loves Solomon, names him Jedidiah, and advances the Davidic Covenant despite David's catastrophic failure. The sermon draws from 2 Samuel 12:15–31 to show that forgiven sinners still bear temporal chastisement, that sovereign grace is not undone by human wickedness, and that faithful worship — not withdrawal — is the proper response of the suffering saint.
The Warning Concerning the Religious Leaders
Matthew 23:1–12 presents Jesus' warning to the crowds and disciples concerning the scribes and Pharisees, exposing the pride that drives hypocrisy, legalism, religious show, and self-exaltation. Jesus affirms the scribes' and Pharisees' office insofar as they teach the law of Moses accurately, yet condemns their practice as utterly contrary to that law. He then calls his disciples to a thoroughgoing humility, grounding it in the sole authority and teachership of Christ and the brotherhood of all believers. The sermon applies this to every form of spiritual performance — from social media piety to celebrity pastor culture — and summons the unconverted to the easy yoke of Christ.
The Practice of Family Worship
God commands parents to instruct their children in His Word — not occasionally, but diligently, formally and informally, in every setting of daily life. This sermon surveys the biblical warrant for family worship across both Testaments, from God's covenantal purpose for Abraham in Genesis 18 through Paul's charge to fathers in Ephesians 6, establishing that the propagation of biblical religion through the home is not optional but normative for the covenant community. The elements of family worship are then treated in order: commitment to public worship as the irreducible foundation, the sanctification of the Lord's Day, the use of the family altar (including psalm-singing, prayer, Scripture reading, and catechism), and the usefulness of historic creeds and confessions. The sermon closes with a direct charge to recognize the importance of family worship, implement it without delay, and persevere in it as a primary means of evangelism toward one's own children.
The Christian Mother
Proverbs 31:28–30 presents the virtuous woman as one whose fear of Yahweh is the foundation and fountainhead of her entire life and household ministry. This sermon examines the Christian mother under four heads — her spiritual condition, her influence, her authority, and her responsibility — grounding each in the covenantal structure of Scripture from Proverbs, the Pentateuch, and the New Testament. The fear of the Lord is not natural to fallen humanity; it is a gracious work of God that produces practical godliness, and the mother who walks in that fear becomes the most powerful human instrument in the formation and potential salvation of her children. Husbands are called to praise such wives, children to rise up and bless such mothers, and every believer to measure the worth of a woman not by charm or beauty but by her reverent trust in God.
The Question Concerning Taxes
Matthew 22:15–22 records a trap laid by an unlikely coalition of Pharisees and Herodians who sought to impale Jesus on the horns of a political dilemma: endorse the Roman poll tax and alienate the Jewish populace, or reject it and face a capital charge of sedition. Jesus exposes their hypocrisy, turns their own coin against them, and delivers one of the most compressed and consequential ethical statements in all of Scripture: 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.' The sermon works through the parties, the plan, and the particulars of the question before drawing out the doctrine of two distinct but overlapping spheres of authority — civil and divine — showing that Caesar's jurisdiction is real but bounded, while God's claim on his image-bearers is total and is met only through faith in Christ.
A Sure and Proven Creed
First Timothy 1:15 presents what Charles Spurgeon called 'the whole gospel in one verse' — a faithful saying worthy of all acceptance. This sermon expounds the verse under three headings: the introduction to the creed (its truthfulness and trustworthiness), the creed itself (Christ Jesus as champion, his incarnational coming, and his consummate saving work), and the demonstrable confirmation of the creed in the conversion of the Apostle Paul, the self-declared chief of sinners. Believers are exhorted to ground assurance not in inward experience but solely in the person and finished work of Christ Jesus, the Lord.
The Darkness and the Derelict
Mark 15:33–34 presents two interlocked realities at Calvary: the supernatural darkness over the land and the cry of dereliction from the lips of the Son of God. The darkness is both a portent of coming judgment upon the generation that rejected the Lord of glory and a sign of the terrible deprivation the suffering servant endured as God withdrew from Him. The cry — 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' — is examined under four questions: who is crying, why He cries, what He has done, and for whom, establishing that Christ was made the derelict so that all who believe in Him might never themselves be forsaken by God. The sermon closes with exhortations to fear the judgment if you reject Christ, to rest in the assurance that God will never forsake His people, and to never neglect the ordinances — especially the Lord's Supper — through which that assurance is sealed.
2LCF Chapter 22 - Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day, Part 4
The Fourth Commandment's perpetual and universal obligation — rooted in both natural law and the Word of God — binds new covenant believers to Sabbath observance no less than it bound old covenant saints. This session of a consecutive study through the 1689 London Baptist Confession (chapter 22, paragraphs 7–8) examines the twofold testimony to Sabbath necessity (general and special revelation), the positive-moral character of the Fourth Commandment, and the pre-Sinaitic origins of the Sabbath in Genesis 2. The change of the day from the seventh to the first is introduced and will be treated in full in the following session. The governing spirit of Christian Sabbath observance is not legal fear but cheerful compliance, strengthened by the risen Christ and the sweetness of the gospel.
David's Lament over Saul and Jonathan
David's lament over Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1:17–27 is examined as a carefully crafted literary and theological act, not merely an outburst of emotion. The lamentation reveals David's paramount concern for the glory of Yahweh, his unbitter spirit toward a sworn enemy, and his covenantal grief over the loss of Jonathan. The study draws out practical instruction on the role of lament in the Christian life, the ethics of speech about the dead, and the priority of God's honor in prayer.
1 Samuel 28
First Samuel 28 records one of the most devastating episodes in Saul's life: having been abandoned by God and cut off from every legitimate means of divine communication, the king of Israel disguises himself and consults a medium at Endor on the eve of his final battle with the Philistines. This Bible study traces Saul's trajectory from incremental disobedience in 1 Samuel 13 through to full-blown necromancy in chapter 28, demonstrating that his ruin was not sudden but the cumulative fruit of small acts of defection from the living God. The appearance of 'Samuel' is examined with appropriate tentativeness, with the case for a demonic impersonation receiving the most sustained treatment. The study closes with a contrast between Saul's desperation and David's persistent pleading in Psalm 13, calling hearers to cling to the means of grace rather than abandon them when God seems silent.
The Ambitious Request for Position in the Kingdom
Matthew 20:20–23 records the request of Salome and the sons of Zebedee for privileged positions at Christ's right and left hand in the kingdom — a request that exposes the deep-seated pride and spiritual blindness endemic to even the most devoted disciples. The sermon works through two movements: the ambitious nature of the request (vv. 20–21) and the ominous response of Christ concerning the cup of God's wrath and the baptism of suffering that must precede any crown (vv. 22–23). The cross precedes the crown — not as a grudging concession but as the invariable pattern of Christian discipleship — and the seating in the kingdom belongs to the sovereign appointment of the Father alone, not to those who jockey for it by ambition or tenure.
The Sixth Commandment
The sixth commandment, 'You shall not murder' (Deuteronomy 5:17), prohibits not only the external act of unlawfully taking human life but also the internal dispositions of hatred, unwarranted anger, and character assassination that Christ exposes in the Sermon on the Mount. The prohibition is grounded in the imago Dei: because every human being bears the image of God, to assault a human life is to assault the divine majesty itself. The sermon carefully distinguishes murder from lawful killing, defending the legitimacy of capital punishment, just war, and self-defense, while applying the command's positive obligation — the active promotion of life — to contemporary issues including abortion, euthanasia, and gossip.
The Precious Blood of Christ
What is the value of Christ's blood, and why does the New Testament insist that nothing corruptible — no silver, gold, or human religious tradition — can redeem a sinner? Drawing from 1 Peter 1:18–19 in the context of a Lord's Supper meditation, this sermon works through three considerations: the vanity of any bloodless redemption, the aimless sinfulness that necessitated a blood redemption, and the exclusive and infinite worth of Christ's precious blood. The application is direct — because believers have been purchased at such an infinite price, they are to hold Christ alone as precious and to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of that redemption.
The Call to Marvel, Part 1
The imperative 'Behold' in 1 John 3:1 is not a casual glance but a commanded, faith-filled, astonished gaze upon the love of God the Father displayed in adopting guilty sinners as His children. This sermon opens the first of three headings in the verse — the call to marvel, the content of marveling, and the intent behind it — treating in full the call itself and beginning the content (divine love, divine grace, divine fatherhood). The love that is to be beheld is uninfluenced, eternal, sovereign, infinite, immutable, and gracious — attributes rooted not merely in what God does but in what God is, since God does not merely have love but is love. Believers are pressed to behold this love daily, grounding their ongoing pursuit of holiness in the astonishing truth that those who were children of wrath and children of the devil have been sovereignly adopted into the household of God through the perfect work of Christ.
The Deliverance of David by God
1 Samuel 19 records the escalating persecution of David by King Saul and God's sovereign deliverance of his chosen servant through Jonathan, Michal, and the overpowering work of the Holy Spirit at Ramah. The chapter functions typologically: Saul embodies the murderous rage of all who reject God's anointed, while David's preservation foreshadows the Father's protection of the greater David, the Lord Jesus Christ. The sermon traces two broad movements — the defense of David by Jonathan and the deliverance of David by Yahweh — and calls hearers to trust the same God who delivered David through every trial, on the ground that his care for his people does not always mean the removal of affliction but sustaining grace in the midst of it.
The Enthronement of the Priest-King
Psalm 110, the most-quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament, sets forth the Messiah under three aspects: divine king enthroned at the right hand of Yahweh, eternal priest after the order of Melchizedek, and conquering warrior who shatters every enemy of God. The sermon argues that Christ's enthronement at the ascension inaugurates a reign that cannot fail, grounded in the unbreakable oath of the covenant of redemption, and that his priestly office is inseparable from his role as both offerer and offering — the seed of the woman crushed on Golgotha so that he might crush the serpent. The congregation is called to hold this warrior-king vision without embarrassment, to grieve sin without shock at its prevalence, and to press forward as a willing people in the day of his power.