Cited in sermons
Patrick Fairbairn
3 sermons · All people cited
Waging the Good War
First Timothy 1:18–20 charges Timothy to wage the good warfare of the Christian faith, grounded in faith and a good conscience. This exposition identifies two weapons of the faithful minister—trust in the living God and a conscience calibrated by sound doctrine—set against the backdrop of false teachers who have shipwrecked the faith by rejecting the gospel of free and sovereign grace. The sermon then turns to the solemn consequence of neglecting that warfare, tracing the excommunication of Hymenaeus and Alexander as a case study in church discipline executed for the purity of the church and the potential restoration of the offender. Hearers are pressed to examine whether they possess genuine discernment regarding the gospel and genuine sensitivity toward sin, waging the warfare not to earn salvation but in response to the grace already secured in Christ.
The Reformation of the Church
What does it mean for the church to be 'the pillar and ground of the truth'? Expounding 1 Timothy 3:14–16, this sermon examines the identity and confession of the church through three descriptions Paul gives in verse 15 — the house of God, the church of the living God, and the pillar and ground of the truth — before applying the doctrinal legacy of the sixteenth-century Reformation to the contemporary church. The great Christological confession of verse 16 is shown to be the theological center around which all church conduct, worship, and proclamation must orbit. The sermon calls the church to guard sola scriptura, justification by faith alone, the regulative principle of worship, and a proper Christology against the perpetual drift toward pragmatism, experientialism, and Romanizing errors.
The Identity of the Church
What is the church, and what is she for? Expounding 1 Timothy 3:14–16, this sermon sets out the identity and confession of the church under three descriptions Paul gives: the house of God, the church of the living God, and the pillar and ground of the truth. The church's unique institutional privilege — distinct from family and state — is to proclaim, defend, and propagate the gospel of Christ crucified and risen. The sermon closes with a call to resist pragmatism, hold fast to sound doctrine, and enter the house of God through Christ alone.