35 sermons · All speakers
1 Peter 1:3-5
The believer's hope of glory, grounded in 1 Peter 1:3–5, is not a vague aspiration but a certain inheritance secured by God's sovereign mercy and the resurrection of Christ. Peter's doxology unfolds the doctrine of salvation under three headings: God the Father as its author, the nature of that salvation as a living hope pointing to a new creation, and the certainty of preservation by divine power. Because both the inheritance and the heirs are kept — the one reserved in heaven, the other shielded by omnipotence through faith — believers facing trial are called to reorient every earthly sorrow toward the glory that is to come.
1 Peter 1:6-9
The paradox of simultaneously rejoicing and grieving marks the Christian life as Peter describes it in 1 Peter 1:6–9. Trials are not accidents of providence but a necessary divine instrument: God uses suffering to prove and purify a faith that is more precious to Him than refined gold is to men, and that tested faith will issue in praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The principle for maintaining joy amid suffering is not mere willpower but a growing, knowledge-grounded faith fixed on Christ — His cross, His resurrection, and the inheritance He has secured — so that joy becomes the constant fruit of right focus rather than a fluctuating response to circumstances.
Psalm 24
Psalm 24 asks who may ascend into the hill of the Lord and stand in his holy place — a question that exposes the impossibility of any sinner approaching a holy God on the basis of personal merit. The psalm is expounded in three movements: the sovereign lordship of Yahweh the Creator over all the earth, the covenant conditions of holy hands and a pure heart that no creature can meet in himself, and the triumphal ascension of the King of Glory who alone meets those conditions and leads his redeemed captives into the presence of God. The righteousness required to enter God's presence is not achieved but received by faith, given freely by the God of salvation through the obedient life, atoning death, and victorious resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Pressing On In Christ for Sanctification
Philippians 3:10–21 sets out the doctrine of sanctification as the necessary and purposeful continuation of justification — not its cause. The justified believer, having been conformed to Christ's death by the Spirit's regenerating work (Romans 6), is called to press forward in mortification of the old nature and vivification of the new, never resting in past attainments. Christ's purpose in saving sinners is not merely to deliver them from hell but to conform them to his image for the glory of God — the ordo salutis moving through justification and sanctification toward final glorification. The sermon calls believers to disciplined, Christ-dependent pressing on through Word, prayer, church attendance, and zealous good works, while warning that those who corrupt the gospel by mingling works with grace are enemies of the cross whose end is destruction.
All Of Christ For Justification
Philippians 3:1–9 presents the apostle Paul's radical revaluation of every religious credential he possessed, moving them all from the gain column to the loss column so that Christ alone might occupy the place of righteousness before God. This sermon expounds what it means to have no confidence in the flesh: that justification rests on Christ's perfect active obedience imputed to the believer, not on any combination of works, faith, and sincere effort. The loss column of sin is dealt with equally fully — Christ bearing the certificate of debt and nailing it to the cross, cancelling the debt in its entirety. Hearers are called to count all self-generated merit as rubbish and to rest, passively and completely, in Christ's righteousness received through faith alone.