Cited in sermons
Oliver Cromwell
8 sermons · All people cited
The Maintenance of Justice (Higher Court and Monarchy)
Deuteronomy 17:8–20 establishes two institutions for the maintenance of justice in Old Covenant Israel: a higher court to adjudicate cases too complex for local tribunals, and a monarchy governed by the law of God. The higher court — composed of priests, Levites, and judges at the central sanctuary — held binding authority over difficult cases involving degrees of guilt, civil disputes, and punishments, with criminal contempt of that court carrying a capital sanction. The king was not an absolute sovereign but a servant under God's law, prohibited from multiplying horses, wives, and wealth as a guard against misplaced trust, and required to read the law of God daily so that fear of the Lord, not pride or military power, would govern his reign.
Sunday School - Sept 6 - Self-Defense, Part 1/2
What does Scripture teach about the right of individuals to use lethal force in self-defense? Working through Exodus 22:2–3, a range of Old Testament illustrations, and the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels, this study argues that defensive homicide is not murder and is consistent with the whole counsel of God's law. The session also draws on Francis Turretin's four conditions for lawful self-defense and the Westminster Larger Catechism's treatment of the sixth commandment, situating the biblical case within the broader Reformed and historic Christian tradition. The study closes by distinguishing private revenge — which Scripture forbids — from necessary defense of life, family, and property, which Scripture assumes and authorizes.
Genesis 32:1-33:20
Genesis 32–33 traces Jacob's return to Canaan through two defining encounters: his anxious preparation to meet the murderous Esau, and his night-long wrestling match with the angel of the Lord at Peniel. The passage displays the doctrine of providence at its most intimate — God present with his elect patriarch through angelic visitation, theophany, and sovereign orchestration of Esau's heart, all in service of preserving the Messianic seed. Jacob's prayer in 32:9–12, structured around God's command, his own unworthiness, a specific petition, and the covenant promise, models how the saints argue for deliverance on the basis of God's own glory. The Peniel encounter is the turning point in Jacob's life: renamed Israel, he emerges reborn — courage replacing cowardice, humility replacing arrogance — to meet Esau in reconciliation and settle at last in the land of promise.
The Persecution of the Church and the Power of God
Acts 12:1–24 presents the early church under coordinated assault from the civil state: Herod Agrippa I executes James, imprisons Peter, and accepts divine honors from a crowd — yet the chapter closes with Herod dead, Peter free, and the word of God multiplied. The sermon traces three movements in the passage: the persecution of the church, the miraculous deliverance of Peter, and the judicial destruction of Herod, arguing throughout that no civil power can ultimately frustrate the advance of Christ's kingdom. Listeners are called to persistent intercessory prayer for the persecuted church, confident that the same sovereign God who struck down Herod continues to reign over every enemy of his people.
The Conversion of Cornelius, Part 3
Peter's sermon to the household of Cornelius in Acts 10:34–43 marks a watershed moment in redemptive history: the formal, Spirit-ordained inclusion of Gentiles in the covenant of grace, without circumcision or submission to the ceremonial law. The sermon examines the providential convergence of Peter and Cornelius, the content of apostolic gospel preaching — the peace, person, work, and prophetic witness to Christ — and the doctrinal significance of justification by faith alone apart from ethnic or ceremonial identity. The central application is urgent: because Christ is ordained as judge of the living and the dead, sinners of every tribe and nation must believe now and receive remission of sins through His name alone.
The Sovereignty of God
Proverbs 3:19–20 grounds God's sovereignty not merely in creation but in every sphere of existence — the world was founded by divine wisdom, and that same sovereign wisdom governs all of history and secures the redemption of His people. Drawing widely from Proverbs alongside Genesis, the Psalms, Daniel, and Romans, this sermon traces three distinct expressions of God's sovereignty: His free, unconstrained creation of all things; His comprehensive providence over human affairs including civil government; and His eternal purpose in redemption, centred in the pre-existent Christ of Proverbs 8. The practical force of the message is that divine sovereignty — rightly understood — produces neither fatalism nor hyper-Calvinist passivity, but rather deep comfort, stable faith, and the use of appointed means, all to the glory of God.
1 Kings 20
1 Kings 20 presents the beginning of the end for Ahab, Israel's most wretched king, as God delivers him twice from Syrian armies he had no right to expect to defeat — not because Ahab sought God, but because God sovereignly extended unsolicited, unmerited grace to a rebel. The chapter's true climax arrives in the closing parable of the prophet (vv. 35–43), which functions as Ahab's 'thou art the man' moment: having freed Ben-Hadad, whom God had appointed to utter destruction, Ahab pronounces his own condemnation. The study presses the application that defective theology — whether Syrian paganism that compartmentalizes God by geography, or modern versions that shrink His sovereignty — carries serious consequences, and that God's patience with wretches like Ahab must not be mistaken for indifference to rebellion.
The Victory of David over Goliath, Part 2
David's declaration in 1 Samuel 17:45–47 is the theological center of the entire chapter: the defeat of Goliath is not primarily a lesson in personal courage but a proclamation that there is a God in Israel who does not save by sword and spear. The sermon traces David's preparation, his confrontation with Goliath, and his victory, reading the decapitation of Israel's enemies throughout redemptive history as typological of Genesis 3:15 — the skull-crushing seed of the woman who will finally destroy the serpent. The congregation is called to trust the means God has ordained — prayer and preaching — rather than the 'horses and chariots' of human ingenuity, and all hearers are urged to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom this protoevangelium finds its fulfilment.