Cited in sermons
T. David Gordon
3 sermons · All people cited
Sola Scriptura: The Bible Alone
Hebrews 1:1–3 opens with the declaration that God has spoken — a claim the author of Hebrews treats not as background noise but as the controlling fact of redemptive history. This sermon works through six attributes of Scripture drawn from those opening verses: its divine source, its authority, its finality in the Son, its intended beneficiaries, its perspicuity, and its sufficiency for faith and life in the new covenant community. The Reformation's sola scriptura is shown to be not a negative protest but a positive testimony: Scripture alone is God's last, best, and sufficient word, complete in Christ, requiring no supplement from tradition, continuing prophecy, or moralistic self-help.
2LCF Chapter 18 - Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation
What does it mean to be assured of salvation, and is such assurance available to ordinary believers? Walking through 2LCF Chapter 18 paragraph by paragraph, this exposition of the confession's treatment of assurance of grace and salvation establishes that assurance is real, attainable, and grounded not in subjective feeling but in the blood and righteousness of Christ, the inward evidences of the Spirit's graces, and the Spirit's own testimony that we are children of God. The sermon addresses the false assurance of the unregenerate, the foundation and marks of true assurance drawn especially from 1 John, the place of the ordinary means of grace in attaining assurance, and the causes by which assurance may be shaken — including God's sovereign withdrawal of the light of his countenance. Believers are called to diligently pursue assurance through Word, prayer, and preaching, knowing that true assurance produces not looseness but humility, holiness, and cheerfulness in obedience.
The Pattern, Mandate, and Context of Baptism
Believers' baptism by immersion rests not on ecclesiastical tradition but on a conspicuous New Testament pattern, an explicit dominical mandate, and the covenantal logic of Jeremiah 31 as expounded in Hebrews 8. Working through the baptism narratives of Acts, the Great Commission of Matthew 28, and the new covenant promises of Hebrews 8, this sermon argues that the proper subjects of baptism are those who have repented and believed — the new covenant community defined by internalized law, experiential knowledge of God, and the forgiveness of sins. The case for credo-baptism is grounded not in a rejection of covenant theology but in a distinctively Reformed Baptist appropriation of it: the new covenant differs from the old precisely in that all its members know the Lord. Baptism is commended not as optional piety but as a commanded ordinance of positive institution carrying ongoing significance as a means of grace.