Cited in sermons
R. T. France
166 sermons · All people cited
2LCF Chapter 26 - Of the Church, Part 12
Church discipline is not the invention of elders or ecclesiastical tradition but the revealed mind of Christ, set forth in Matthew 18:15-17 and grounded in the covenantal logic of church membership. This session of a confession study on 2LCF Chapter 26 walks through the escalating steps of discipline — private confrontation, the introduction of witnesses, and the appeal to the whole church — demonstrating that each step is designed for the recovery of the offender, not his destruction. The session concludes by addressing the implications of the final step of excommunication: what it means to treat a man as a heathen and tax collector, whether he may still attend worship, and how the confession itself provides redress when church authority is abused.
The Lawyer and the Great Commandment
Matthew 22:34–40 records a Pharisaic lawyer testing Jesus with the question of which commandment is greatest — a live dispute in rabbinic Judaism with deadly intent behind it. Jesus answers by citing the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4–5) as the first and great commandment and Leviticus 19:18 as its inseparable companion, demonstrating that the whole Decalogue hangs on love to God and love to neighbor. The sermon argues that these two commandments expose every person's total failure to render the perfect, personal obedience God demands, driving the hearer to the only One whose obedience is reckoned to all who trust Him. Believers are exhorted to examine whether their love to God is genuine and whole-hearted, expressed in Sabbath observance, rejection of idolatry, and tangible love for the brethren.
The Sadducees and the Resurrection
Matthew 22:23–33 records the Sadducees' attempt to discredit the doctrine of the resurrection by posing an elaborate riddle drawn from the Mosaic Levirate law, only to be silenced by Christ's twofold demonstration that they were ignorant both of the Scriptures and of the power of God. Jesus first exposes the false premise of the riddle by revealing a genuine discontinuity between this age and the age to come — in the resurrection there is no marriage, no procreation, and believers will be like the angels in their service to God. He then validates the resurrection from the Sadducees' own canon, the Torah, showing from Exodus 3:6 that God's present-tense covenant relation with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob proves they were still living. Hearers are called not merely to marvel at Christ's wisdom but to forsake every rationalised objection to Christianity and believe on the Lord Jesus, in whom the covenant of life stands too strong to be terminated by death.
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.
The Parable of the Wedding Feast
Matthew 22:1–14 presents the parable of the wedding feast as a sobering account of divine invitation, human rebellion, and eschatological judgment. The parable unfolds three responses to God's sovereign call — unwillingness, indifference, and violent opposition — each met by the king's patient re-invitation and, ultimately, his righteous wrath. The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is identified as a visible, covenantal judgment prefiguring the final day when every mouth will be stopped before God. The sermon closes by pressing the imputed righteousness of Christ as the only wedding garment that makes a sinner fit for the feast, and by urging the church to pursue gospel mission with urgency.
The Healing of the Blind Men
Matthew 20:29–34 records the last detailed miracle of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel: the healing of two blind men outside Jericho. This expository sermon traces three movements in the passage — the setting, the earnest petition of the blind men, and the gracious response of the Son of David — arguing that the blind men's importunate faith, their address of Jesus as Lord and Son of David in fulfillment of the Davidic covenant and Isaianic prophecy, and Christ's immediate compassion together present the gospel in miniature. The sermon presses unbelievers to cry out to Christ with the persistence of these men and assures them that the same Jesus who stood still for two wretched beggars extends pity joined with power to all who come to Him in faith.
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 Third Announcement of Jesus' Death
Matthew 20:17–19 records Jesus' third and most detailed formal announcement of his coming death, functioning as a table of contents for the remainder of Matthew's Gospel. The passage identifies four prophetic elements: the betrayal of the Son of Man to the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council's condemnation, the delivery to the Gentiles for mocking and scourging, and the triumph of resurrection on the third day. This announcement is grounded in the Covenant of Redemption — the pretemporal compact between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — the fulfillment of Old Testament Scripture, and the necessity of saving God's elect from their sins. The sermon calls the church to receive, embrace, and worship in response to the gospel, and calls the unbeliever to flee the wrath of God by faith in Christ crucified and risen.
The Parable of the Gracious Landowner
The Parable of the Gracious Landowner (Matthew 20:1–16) confronts the deep human instinct to measure God's dealings by commercial fairness, and exposes that instinct as a fundamental misunderstanding of grace, sovereignty, and justice. Jesus places this parable between Peter's question about reward (Matthew 19:27–30) and the sons of Zebedee jockeying for position (Matthew 20:20–28), using it to humble every form of pride that imagines God owes any sinner anything other than hell. The sermon argues that every sinner who enters heaven — whether an early-morning convert or a deathbed convert — arrives solely by sovereign grace through faith in Christ, and that this reality, far from being monstrous, is the supreme display of God's goodness. Believers are warned against the envy that sours at great grace; unbelievers are warned against the presumption that delays repentance until the eleventh hour.
The Conversion of Matthew
What does genuine conversion look like? Expounding Matthew 9:9–13, this sermon traces the call of Matthew the tax collector — one of the most notorious sinners in first-century Jewish society — to show that Christ's power to forgive is precisely suited to the wretched. The three movements of the passage — the call to discipleship, the feast at Matthew's house, and Jesus' confrontation with the Pharisees — together establish that Christ came not for the self-righteous but for sinners, and that His summons produces immediate, costly, and joyful obedience. Five marks of genuine discipleship are drawn out: saving faith, repentance as a consequence (not a condition) of grace, kingdom priority, beholding Christ as altogether lovely, and serious pursuit of sanctification — set alongside an honest account of remaining corruption and the struggles that attend the Christian life.
The Rich Young Ruler
What must a man do to inherit eternal life? This exposition of Matthew 19:16–22 examines the encounter between Christ and the rich young ruler, showing that the young man's question is at once legitimate — every soul must reckon with eternity — and illegitimate, because it proceeds from the assumption that salvation is earned by human merit. Christ answers him on the terms of the covenant of works, pressing the second table of the Decalogue and then the tenth commandment in particular, not to prescribe a new way of salvation by poverty, but to expose the man's covetousness and unmask the bankruptcy of his self-righteousness. The sermon calls hearers to abandon proud self-righteousness, reckon honestly with the spirituality of God's law, and flee by faith to the one who alone kept it perfectly.
The Instruction on Celibacy and Children
Matthew 19:10–15 presents two closely linked teachings: Christ's instruction on celibacy and His reception of little children. Against Rome's doctrine of clerical celibacy and any Protestant tendency to exalt singleness above marriage, the sermon argues that celibacy is a sovereign gift of God given to some, not a spiritual superior state to be mandated or celebrated above the married estate. The blessing of the children exposes the disciples' failure to understand that Christ receives the weak and dependent, and the passage calls fathers to the concrete duty of bringing their children to Christ through prayer, Scripture, and faithful church attendance.
Matthew 6:13
The sixth petition of the Lord's Prayer — 'lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one' (Matthew 6:13) — is a plea for divine protection from the solicitation to sin, distinct from the God-ordained trials that conform believers to Christ. This study examines the meaning of temptation in the petition, its two-part structure (negative and positive), and four reasons the church must pray it: remaining corruption, desire for communion with God, zeal for God's glory, and longing for the eschatological state. The Westminster Larger Catechism Q195 frames the petition's full scope, and Owen's warning — 'he who prays as he ought will endeavor to live as he prays' — issues the closing call to integrity between confession and conduct.
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
Peter's question about the limits of forgiveness — 'up to seven times?' — draws from Christ the parable of a servant forgiven an astronomically unpayable debt who then seizes a fellow servant over a trifling sum. This sermon works through Matthew 18:21–35 in three movements: the setting of Peter's question, the three scenes of the parable itself, and the concluding verdict of verse 35. The central argument is that the forgiven community must be a forgiving community — not by counting to 490, but by forgiving without counting — and that a professing Christian who withholds forgiveness from a repentant brother thereby gives evidence that he himself has never truly received the grace of God.
The Possession of the Church's Authority
Christ's declaration in Matthew 18:18 — 'whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven' — establishes that the local church possesses a real, though delegated, authority to exercise the keys of the kingdom through gospel preaching and church discipline. Drawing on the parallel passage in Matthew 16:19 and the Heidelberg Catechism's definition of the keys, the sermon argues that binding and loosing refer to the church's authority to exclude the unrepentant and restore the repentant, always in accordance with God's word and never by arbitrary preference. Verses 19 and 20 ground this authority in the corporate prayer and the promised presence of Christ himself among his people when they faithfully implement these keys. The sermon closes with a summons to love the church, exercise its authority prayerfully, and pursue its three primary duties — preaching, discipline, and the administration of the sacraments — without addition or subtraction.
The Procedure for Church Discipline, Part 3
Church discipline in Matthew 18:15–17 follows a divinely ordered three-step procedure: private confrontation, the involvement of witnesses, and finally the public action of the gathered church. This sermon works through the second and third steps, examining the Old Testament warrant for the two-or-three-witness requirement (Deuteronomy 19:15) and the nature of the church's decisive judgment to treat the unrepentant as a heathen and tax collector. The goal at every stage remains the recovery of the sinning brother, and excommunication — a corporate act of the whole congregation, not merely the elders — is understood as an expression of love and a means God may use to bring a rebel to repentance. The sermon closes with an evangelistic warning: the church's earthly excommunication is a pale shadow of the final excommunication pronounced by Christ on the last day.
The Healing of a Demon Possessed Boy
Matthew 17:14–23 sets a desperate father's plea for his demon-possessed son against the disciples' failure to cast out the demon, and Christ's authoritative word that immediately effects the cure. The sermon works through four movements: the request for mercy, the Lord's rebuke of faithless Israel and the demon, instruction on the nature and exercise of faith, and the second formal passion announcement of Matthew's Gospel. Throughout, the contrast between Christ's kingdom of mercy and the devil's kingdom of self-destruction frames both the evangelistic and pastoral applications: sinners are called to come to the sovereign Christ who alone delivers, and parents are urged never to despair of the conversion of any soul, pressing the atoning work of the cross upon their children.
The Question Concerning Elijah
Matthew 17:9–13 records the disciples' question about the scribal expectation that Elijah must precede Messiah — an expectation derived from Malachi 3–4. Jesus resolves their confusion by identifying John the Baptist as the Elijah-figure who fulfilled Malachi's prophecy, thereby laying unmistakable claim to being Yahweh of hosts, the messenger of the covenant. The sermon moves through three elements: Christ's command to silence until the resurrection, the disciples' question about Elijah, and Christ's authoritative interpretation of Malachi. Throughout, the pattern of cross before crown is pressed upon the congregation as the ordained path to glory for both Christ and his people.
The Description of Discipleship
Matthew 16:24–26 sets before every professing believer a three-part description of discipleship: self-denial, cross-bearing, and following Christ. This sermon argues that Jesus is not addressing unbelievers with a program for earning salvation, but is describing the necessary shape of a life already transformed by sovereign grace — a life in which self is renounced, suffering for Christ is embraced as a daily reality, and nothing in this world is valued above the soul. The exhortation is direct: examine whether your life is ordered around Christ or around self, repent where it is not, and trust not in your own self-denial but in Christ's perfect obedience and resurrection.
The Objection to the Divine Plan
Peter's rebuke of Christ in Matthew 16:22 is not merely a disciple's well-intentioned blunder — it is an alignment with the adversarial agenda that Jesus had already confronted in the wilderness temptation of Matthew 4. This sermon expounds the divine necessity of Christ's suffering and death as grounded in the eternal Covenant of Redemption, and presses the point that to object to a suffering Messiah is to object to the only ground of sinners' salvation. The response to Peter — 'Get behind me, Satan' — exposes the disease-at-the-heart nature of any theology that removes the cross from Christianity's center, and the sermon closes by pressing listeners either to embrace the crucified Christ or to reckon with the inescapable judgment of that same Christ.
The First Prediction of the Passion
Matthew 16:21 records Christ's first formal prediction of his passion — his necessary suffering, death, and resurrection in Jerusalem. The word 'must' (Greek dei) expresses not mere probability but the absolute necessity of the atonement, grounded in the immutable decree of God, the covenant of redemption, and the prophecies of the Old Testament Scriptures. The sermon traces three observations in verses 21–23: the declaration of the divine plan, its rejection by Peter, and its affirmation by Christ. The application presses the exclusivity of the cross as the sole ground of salvation and calls hearers to look to Christ in faith, trusting not in moral reform but in his perfect obedience, atoning death, and bodily resurrection.
The Establishment of the Church
Matthew 16:18 is, as one commentator notes, the most discussed verse in the most discussed paragraph of Matthew's Gospel — and its controversies are anything but settled. This sermon works through four aspects of Christ's declaration concerning His church: its definition as the catholic or universal assembly of the elect, its foundation in the confession that Jesus is the Christ, its triumph over the gates of Hades, and its builder, who is Christ alone and not any man or institution. The Roman Catholic claim that Peter's person is the rock undergirding a papal succession is examined and rejected on exegetical, historical, and biblical-theological grounds, while the legitimate priority of the apostles in the church's foundation is carefully maintained. Believers are called to hold together the church's certain triumph with the reality of persecution, guarding the deposit committed to them and confessing Christ as Lord.
The Identity of the Son of Man
Matthew 16:13–17 confronts every hearer with the most consequential question ever asked: who is the Son of Man? Working through Christ's question to the disciples, Peter's confession, and the beatitude Jesus pronounces over him, this exposition demonstrates that the title 'Son of Man' points not primarily to Christ's humanity but to Daniel's cosmic ruler given an everlasting dominion, and that Peter's identification of Jesus as 'the Christ, the Son of the living God' is the climax of Matthew's Galilean narrative. The sermon argues that this confession is not the product of human wisdom or religious sensitivity but of the Father's sovereign, gracious act of revelation — and that those who receive it are called to live and die in accordance with it.
The Lord's Prayer, Part 7
Matthew 6:13 presents the sixth and final petition of the Lord's Prayer: 'Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' This study works through the meaning, explanation, reasons, and practical scope of the petition, grounding it in the reality of remaining corruption in the believer's heart as described in Romans 7 and Galatians 5. The petition simultaneously acknowledges God's absolute sovereignty over temptation, confesses the Christian's ongoing weakness, and recognizes the power of the world, the flesh, and the devil as constant enemies. The study closes with the doxology of the Lord's Prayer and the sobering exhortation that he who prays as he ought will endeavor to live as he prays.
The Faith of the Canaanite Woman
A Canaanite woman — an ancestral enemy of Israel — confronts Israel's Messiah in Gentile territory and refuses to accept silence, rebuff, or unfavorable parable as the final word. This exposition of Matthew 15:21–28 traces her persistent petitioning through two encounters with Christ, showing that great need demands great earnestness and that true faith worships even when heaven appears silent. The sermon draws out three lessons: the triumph of faith expressed through dependence, humility, and persistence in prayer; the Christological display of Christ's mercy and sovereign power over demons; and the benefit of affliction, which drove a pagan mother to the Son of David and teaches parents to pray without ceasing for children under the power of sin and Satan.
The Feeding of the Five Thousand
The feeding of the five thousand in Matthew 14:13–21 is not merely a record of physical provision but a visible parable designed to compel a verdict about the identity of Jesus Christ. His compassion toward an interrupting crowd, his sovereign command over the multitudes, and his multiplication of five barley loaves and two fish to satisfy more than five thousand people together demonstrate that he is the greater Moses and the greater Elisha — the Son of God in whom all sufficiency resides. The bread-of-life discourse of John 6 shows that those who received loaves and fish without receiving the Savior had missed the point entirely, and the sermon closes with Peter's confession as the model response: 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.'
The Murder of John the Baptist
Matthew 14:1–12 narrates the imprisonment and beheading of John the Baptist by Herod Antipas, and this exposition argues that the account is ultimately about Jesus Christ — the fate of the forerunner foreshadows the fate of the Coming One. The sermon traces three movements: the imprisonment of John for faithful law-preaching, the morally depraved celebration that occasions his murder, and the execution itself, which Matthew frames as a typological preview of the crucifixion. The characters of Herod and Herodias are examined as New Testament counterparts to Ahab and Jezebel, whose guilt-driven conspiracy to silence God's law illustrates that no sin can be covered except through the death of Christ. Hearers are called to forsake self-made coverings for sin and to believe on the one in whom alone is forgiveness and the gift of righteousness.
The Parables of the Dragnet and Scribe
Matthew 13:47–53 closes the kingdom parables with two final teachings: the dragnet and the scribe. The dragnet parable presses the certainty of coming judgment — at the end of the age, angels will separate the wicked from the just and cast the wicked into the furnace of fire — a reality Jesus repeats deliberately so that no hearer can ignore it. The parable of the scribe then turns to those entrusted with the mysteries of the kingdom: disciples who have understood these truths bear a corresponding responsibility to function as faithful householders, bringing out of the treasure things new and old. The sermon calls every hearer either to flee to Christ as the only refuge from the wrath to come, or, if already a believer, to take seriously the stewardship of gospel knowledge.
The Gospel's Prophetic Prologue
Mark 1:1–4 introduces the gospel not as a literary convention but as the announcement of a real, historical event: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This passage establishes that the gospel's ministerial beginning is rooted in prophetic fulfillment, as both Malachi 3 and Isaiah 40 foresaw a wilderness messenger who would prepare the way of Yahweh himself. The identity of Jesus as the divine Son of God is not incidental to the gospel but is its very foundation — without his deity, there is no sufficient Redeemer. The sermon closes with a call for believers to know and proclaim the gospel precisely, to walk in a manner worthy of it, and for unbelievers to turn from sin and believe on Christ alone.
The Parable of the Tares Explained
Matthew 13:34–43 records Christ's private explanation of the parable of the wheat and tares to His disciples, and the sermon works through that explanation in two movements: the purpose of parabolic teaching and the seven details of the parable itself. The disciples' question falls on the tares, not the wheat, and the sermon follows that emphasis — the final destiny of the wicked, cast into the furnace of fire, stands at the center of the exposition. The identity of the sons of the kingdom and the sons of the wicked one is traced from Genesis 3:15 through the New Testament, establishing that the antithesis between the two seeds runs the entire length of redemptive history. The sermon closes with urgent evangelistic appeal: flee to Christ now, for every person will stand before the Son of Man who is both Savior and Judge.