Theological term
Covenant of Grace
848 sermons · All terms
The First Murder
Genesis 4:1–16 records the first fratricide in human history, and this exposition reads that account as a theological document revealing the rapid escalation of sin from the fall in chapter 3. Cain's rejection is traced not to his vocation as a farmer but to his faithlessness — Abel's offering was accepted because it was offered in faith (Hebrews 11:4), while Cain's externalism and lack of genuine faith made his sacrifice an abomination. God's patient, gracious overtures to Cain before the murder underscore divine long-suffering, while Cain's murder of Abel illustrates the antithesis of Genesis 3:15 — the seed of the serpent attacking the seed of the woman — and the sermon closes by setting the blood of Abel, which cries out for condemnation, against the blood of Jesus, which speaks forgiveness.
The Consequences of the Fall
Genesis 3:14–24 records the divine sentences upon the serpent, the woman, and the man after the fall, but within those judgments God announces the first gospel promise. The Proto-Evangelion of verse 15 — that the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent — is the programmatic nucleus of all subsequent redemptive history, finding its fulfilment in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Headship and labor, often misread as punishments of the fall, are shown to be pre-fall ordinances whose distortion, not existence, is the consequence of sin. The sermon closes with the coats of skin as an enacted prophecy of blood atonement and the expulsion from Eden as a mercy that preserves fallen man until the Second Adam secures permanent access to the tree of life.
Genesis 4:16-26
Genesis 4:16–26 traces two diverging lines from Adam: the ungodly line of Cain, marked by escalating sin, polygamy, and bloodlust, and the godly line of Seth, which ends with men calling on the name of the Lord. The passage raises questions about cultural achievement, common grace, and the preservation of God's people in the midst of rampant wickedness. Eve's naming of Seth reveals genuine covenant faith in the promise of Genesis 3:15, trusting that God would yet raise up the seed of the woman. The sermon calls believers to grow in faith as those who possess not only the promise of the Redeemer but its fulfillment in Christ.
The Woman Who Was a Sinner
Luke 7:36–50 presents three parties — a repentant woman, a judgmental Pharisee, and the Lord Jesus Christ — whose interactions disclose the theology of justification by grace alone through faith alone. The woman's extravagant acts of devotion at Christ's feet are not the ground of her forgiveness but its fruit: she loves much because she has been forgiven much. The Pharisee's self-righteousness exposes the danger of confusing surface morality with saving grace, and of imagining any sinner to be beyond the reach of Christ. The sermon calls believers to examine the warmth of their love for Christ as the chief evidence of genuine justifying faith, and invites the unconverted to come to the Savior whose mercy is wider than any sinner's guilt.
Genesis 4:1-8
Genesis 4:1–8 records the first brothers, the first offerings, and the first murder — and the passage exposes the difference between formal religious observance and genuine faith. The divine acceptance of Abel and rejection of Cain is explained not by vocation, bloodshed, or agricultural produce, but by Hebrews 11:4: by faith Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice, bearing witness that he was righteous before God. Cain's anger, falling countenance, and ultimate fratricide demonstrate that heartless, faithless worship produces not repentance but escalating sin. The study closes with the warning that sin is never dormant or manageable — its desire is always to rule over those who refuse to come to God in faith through Christ.
Genesis 3:17-24
Genesis 3:17–24 confronts the reader with the full weight of the curse upon Adam and the ground, but the passage is finally a text of hope. The consequences imposed upon Adam — the ground cursed, toil unrelenting, and death certain — do not obliterate God's redemptive purpose announced in verse 15; they preserve the race through which the promised seed will come. Adam's faith-filled naming of Eve, God's provision of animal-skin tunics foreshadowing blood atonement, and the merciful expulsion from the tree of life are all acts of divine grace that anticipate the whole subsequent history of redemption, culminating in the Lord Jesus Christ's decisive conquest of the devil.
The Precious Blood of Christ
1 Peter 1:18–20 presents the redemption accomplished by Christ as grounded in the infinite value of his sinless sacrifice, the eternal decree of the triune God, and the certainty of its historical occurrence. This sermon expounds three dimensions of the 'precious blood of Christ': its surpassing worth measured against corruptible earthly things; its origin in the determined counsel of God before the foundation of the world; and its singular reality as a manifest historical event attested by eyewitnesses. The Lord's Supper, observed the same evening, provides the pastoral occasion for calling both believers to joyful reflection on the blood that cleanses from all iniquity and unbelievers to repentance and faith in the one Lamb without blemish and without spot.
The Response to Peter's Sermon
Acts 2:41–47 records the immediate fruit of Peter's Pentecost sermon: three thousand souls baptized and a church marked by steadfast doctrine, fellowship, the Lord's Supper, and prayer. This exposition argues that the passage is both descriptive and prescriptive — what the early church did defines what the church in every age must be. Along the way, believers' baptism is defended against paedo-baptist readings of verse 39, and the growth of the church is traced not to programs or techniques but to the sovereign calling of God through the faithful preaching of Christ crucified.
Genesis 3:14-24
Genesis 3:14–24 records the consequences of the fall, and the heart of this study is the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15 — the first gospel promise in Scripture. God's curse upon the serpent contains within it an announcement of the Messiah: the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head, accomplishing total victory through suffering and death. The sermon traces this skull-crushing seed through the biblical narrative — from the typological head-wounds of Judges and David's defeat of Goliath, to New Testament fulfillment in Colossians, Hebrews, 1 John, and Revelation 12 — demonstrating that the cross of Christ is the decisive blow against the devil foreshadowed in Eden. The study closes by examining the consequences for the woman and the man in verses 16–19, situating the tensions of marriage and labor in a post-lapsarian world that Christ's redemptive work is already beginning to address.
The Call to Repentance
Acts 2:37–40 records the crowd's response to Peter's Pentecost sermon and his command to repent and be baptized. This exposition examines the nature of genuine conviction of sin, the inseparable relationship between repentance and faith, the proper place of baptism as an outward sign of inward grace rather than a means of salvation, and the comprehensive scope of God's electing call that reaches Jerusalem sinners, their children, and Gentiles afar off. The sermon presses the hearer to embrace conviction of sin as a mercy, to understand that repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin, and to respond by believing the gospel and submitting to baptism without delay.
The Believer's Commitment to the Lord
Proverbs 3:5–6 commands an entire, exclusive, and exhaustive commitment to Yahweh — a trust that spans salvation and all of ordinary life. The sermon works through three structural elements of the text: the command to trust in the Lord with all the heart, the prohibition against leaning on one's own understanding, and the exhortation to acknowledge God in all one's ways with the promise that He will direct the believer's paths. The doctrine of remaining corruption in the regenerate explains why this command is needed, while the perfections of God — His impassability, immutability, and divine simplicity — ground the assurance that His commitment to His people is equally entire, exclusive, and exhaustive. Hearers are called to search Scripture for explicit texts, implicit applications, and general principles, and to cultivate lives of prayer as a concrete expression of dependence upon God.
Genesis 2:15-17
Genesis 2:15–17 presents Adam not merely as a gardener but as a priest-guardian of a garden-temple, placed under a divine probation that Reformed theology identifies as the Covenant of Works. The study defends the presence of a genuine covenant in this passage despite the absence of the word 'covenant,' marshalling the elements of covenant structure, the covenantal name Yahweh Elohim, and later biblical commentary in Hosea 6:7, Isaiah 24, and Romans 5. The argument presses to a pointed soteriological conclusion: a deficient understanding of the Covenant of Works predictably produces a deficient understanding of the Covenant of Grace, opening the door to the error of faith plus works in justification. The remedy is to see the Covenant of Grace as the Covenant of Works kept for sinners by the Lord Jesus Christ, whose active and passive obedience is imputed to all who believe.
Of Baptism (2LCF29)
Baptism, as confessed in chapter 29 of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (2LCF), is examined here as a divine and mediatorial ordinance instituted by Jesus Christ for the New Testament church. The exposition grounds the doctrine of baptism in a web of interconnected doctrines — Scripture, the covenant of grace, effectual calling, union with Christ, and the regulative principle of worship — demonstrating that believers' baptism by immersion is the necessary conclusion of consistently applied Reformed theology. The confession's fourfold structure is traced: what baptism is, to whom it is properly administered, in what element, and by what mode, with sustained argument from Romans 6, Galatians 3, Mark 16, and Matthew 28 that only professing believers are lawful recipients of the ordinance.
The Fulfilment of Joel's Prophecy
Acts 2:14–21 records Peter's explanation that the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the fulfilment, not a mere pre-fulfilment, of Joel 2:28–32. The sermon addresses three interlocking questions: what 'the last days' means (the entire Messianic age from Christ's first coming to his return, with a specific reference to the covenantal termination of Old Covenant Israel in AD 70), what the abundance of the Spirit's outpouring means for the New Covenant community (every believer, without distinction of gender, age, or class, receives the Spirit as seal and guarantee), and why the sign gifts of tongues and prophecy are no longer in force (the completed canon fulfils Daniel 9:24's sealing of vision and prophecy). The sermon closes with a direct call to sinners to do the one thing Joel and Peter both demand: call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.
Free Grace Baptist Church - May 13, 2018 PM
Philippians 1:27–30 calls the church to conduct worthy of the gospel and to receive suffering for Christ as a divine gift. Expounding these verses under two headings — worthy conduct and worthwhile suffering — the sermon argues that the local church, as a colony of heaven, is called to stand fast in unity against adversaries, and that both the initial grant of faith and the grant of suffering are gracious tokens of God's saving presence with his people. Persecution, far from being a mark of divine abandonment, is shown historically and biblically to be an assurance of salvation, a sign of perdition to those who oppose the gospel, and a means by which God strengthens his church.
The Doubter Turned Confessor
Thomas's refusal to believe the disciples' eyewitness testimony of the risen Christ is one of the most emphatic denials of the resurrection in the New Testament — not mere doubt, but obstinate, threefold rejection of Scripture, Christ's own words, and apostolic witness. When Jesus appears and meets Thomas's exact conditions, Thomas confesses 'My Lord and my God,' bookending John's Gospel with the same declaration of Christ's deity found in its opening verse. The sermon expounds John 20:24–31 in two movements: the post-resurrection appearance to Thomas and the stated purpose of John's Gospel — that all who read it might believe and have life in Christ's name. Hearers are urged to stop placing conditions on God, to confess with Thomas that Jesus is Lord and God, and to avail themselves of the church's theological resources to grow beyond a superficial grasp of cardinal doctrines such as the Trinity.
Free Grace Baptist Church - March 28, 2018 Bible Study
This Bible study works through the fall of Jerusalem as recorded in 2 Kings 25, tracing the Babylonian conquest, the destruction of the temple, the deportation of the people of Judah, and the provisional governorship under Gedaliah. The session draws out the covenantal significance of the temple's destruction — that the visible symbol of God's presence among his people had been removed — while pressing toward the hope embedded even in judgment, that God's promise to his people and to the line of David was not finally extinguished. Listeners are urged to pray for those in positions of governing authority and to trust that God's redemptive purposes persist beyond catastrophe.
Free Grace Baptist Church - March 25, 2018 PM
Acts 4:23-31 records the early church's corporate prayer in the face of threats from the Jewish authorities, and this sermon expounds four dimensions of that prayer: its occasion, its character, its content, and God's answer to it. The congregation's prayer is marked by a deliberate unity of purpose — a one-accord rooted not in uniformity of voice but in a shared commitment to the faith of the gospel. The content of the prayer moves through invocation and recognition of God as sovereign Creator, rehearsal of his works in creation and revelation, and confidence in his decree and providence — culminating not in a petition for deliverance from danger but for boldness to continue proclaiming Christ in the midst of it. Christians are called to pattern their own prayers on this model: knowing their God, drawing confidence from that knowledge, and asking not for the removal of trials but for the strength and resolution to endure through them.
The Great Commission, Part 4
Matthew 28:20 calls the church to a lifelong, comprehensive teaching ministry — the fourth imperative of the Great Commission. The sermon examines this teaching activity under four headings: its simplicity (Scripture alone, not opinion or entertainment), its scope (all Christ's commands, Old and New Testaments, issuing in obedience), its perpetuity (traceable from Acts through the pastoral epistles to the end of the age), and its comprehensiveness (the whole counsel of God applied to individuals, families, churches, and civil society). The closing appeal summons hearers to the cross — the ransom of Matthew 20:28 and the invitation of Matthew 11:28 — as the indispensable foundation for any biblical obedience.
The Great Commission, Part 3
Matthew 28:19 commands that disciples be baptized into the singular name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — a text that stands as one of Scripture's clearest witnesses to the doctrine of the Trinity. This sermon works through the baptismal formula to establish what the one name and three persons require the Christian to confess: one divine essence, three distinct subsistences, free from the errors of tritheism, modalism, and subordinationism. The active obedience of Christ is exposited as the ground of the righteousness imputed to sinners in justification, showing that the gospel itself is inseparable from a right doctrine of God. The congregation is urged to study the confession's chapters on theology proper and Christology, and to hold the doctrine of the Trinity as a white-knuckle conviction worth dying for.
2LCF Chapter 26 - Of the Church, Part 1
The universal church — its invisibility, its visible expression in the lives of professing saints, its perpetuity, and the exclusive headship of Christ — is the doctrinal territory of 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 26, paragraphs 1 to 4. The confession grounds the church's existence not in voluntary human association but in the electing grace of God and the internal work of the Spirit, defining the church's members as those who profess the gospel and live in conformity with that profession. The distinction between the invisible universal church and visible saints is shown to carry a distinctively Baptist ecclesiological weight: church membership flows from credible profession, not covenant birth. Christ's absolute headship over the church — established by the Father as mediator — provides the foundation for the regulative principle of worship and stands in irreconcilable opposition to any papal claim to vicarship.
2 Kings 20:1-21
Second Kings 20 closes the account of Hezekiah's reign by exposing both the nobility and the inconsistency of one of Judah's best kings. The chapter is examined under three headings: the extension of Hezekiah's life through answered prayer, the folly of his alliance-seeking with Babylon, and the summary of his reign. The central lesson is that even a covenant-faithful king who trusts God in sickness can lapse into walking by sight in prosperity, and this inconsistency of consistency is the common condition of every believer who depends on the grace of Christ rather than on personal perfection.
The Empty Tomb and the Risen Lord
The empty tomb of Matthew 28:1–10 is not merely an absence but a proclamation: Christ was raised bodily from the dead by the Father, vindicating His atoning work and confirming every prophetic word He spoke. The sermon works through the discovery of the empty tomb by the women and the appearance of the risen Lord, attending carefully to the apologetic weight of the narrative details — the guards' terror, the invitation to examine the tomb, the folded graveclothes, and the physical feet of Jesus grasped in worship. The message closes with 1 Corinthians 15, pressing the stakes of the resurrection: without it, faith is futile and sin remains unatoned; because Christ is risen, justification, sanctification, and glorification are secured for all His brethren.
Genesis 11:27 - 12:20
Genesis 11:27–12:20 introduces the call of Abram from pagan Ur of the Chaldeans, setting in motion the Abrahamic covenant through which God promises to bless all the families of the earth. The passage is structured around two covenant themes — seed and land — with every circumstance (a barren wife, nomadic displacement, Canaanites in the promised land, famine, and Abram's own faithlessness in Egypt) designed to magnify divine initiative over human possibility. God's sovereign grace overcomes Abram's unbelief, protecting the holy seed even when Abram endangers Sarai through deception, demonstrating that the covenant rests entirely on God's faithfulness rather than the believer's. The sermon calls God's people to a lifelong posture of trust in Christ, Abram's promised seed, through whom all spiritual descendants of Abraham receive the blessings of the covenant of grace.
The Angelic Word & Song
What did the angels announce to the shepherds on the night of Christ's birth, and why does it matter for sinners today? Expounding Luke 2:10–14, this sermon traces the angelic word and the angelic song under two headings, showing that the announcement is one of greatest significance, greatest joy, universal scope, and divine salvation — a Savior who is Christ the Lord, born in fulfillment of Old Testament promise (2 Samuel 7, Isaiah 9:6, Micah 5:2) and condescending from infinite glory to a feed trough. The sermon calls hearers to hasten their gaze upon this Christ, to hitch the joy of their lives to the triune God and His gospel alone, and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for everlasting life.
A Thoughtful Diligence in Fellowship
Hebrews 10:24–25 contains the third of three apostolic exhortations grounded in Christ's blood and high-priestly office: a thoughtful diligence in corporate fellowship that stirs one another to love and good works. The sermon traces the call to mutual consideration — looking away from self and toward brothers and sisters in Christ — and grounds its motivation in the incarnate humility of the Son of God, who made himself of no reputation to serve sinners. Forsaking the assembly is not a private failure but a breach of the covenantal reciprocity that belongs to those who rest on so great a salvation.
The Three-Fold Exhortation
Hebrews 10:19–25 sets forth a two-fold foundation and a three-fold exhortation for corporate Christian life. The foundation is Christ's blood-purchased boldness of access into the holiest and His abiding high-priestly intercession — both of which make the old-covenant sacrificial system not merely obsolete but inferior in kind, not degree. From that foundation the apostle issues three commands: draw near with a true heart in full assurance, hold fast the confession of hope without wavering, and (deferred to a subsequent sermon) consider one another to stir up love and good works. The sermon presses hearers to root their weekly confidence not in the quality of their obedience but in the dignity of Christ's person and the virtue of His once-for-all sacrifice.
The Sacrifice Remembered
What does it mean to remember the death of Christ at the Lord's Supper? Examining 1 Peter 1:18–20, this sermon traces three dimensions of that remembrance: the incomparable value of Christ's precious blood over all corruptible earthly things, the eternal and love-driven divine purpose behind the atonement foreordained before the foundation of the world, and the singular historical reality of the incarnation and sacrifice. The congregation is called to prize Christ above every earthly attachment and to observe the Lord's Supper with the gravity and joy befitting so great a Savior.
The Healing of Naaman
The healing of Naaman in 2 Kings 5 is exposited as a portrait of sovereign, free, and humbling grace that reaches beyond Israel to a Gentile enemy — a Syrian military commander who is not only cleansed of leprosy but converted from idolatry to the living God. The sermon traces God's providential orchestration through a nameless captive servant girl, Elisha's deliberate absence from the healing, and Naaman's progression through fury, submission, confession, gratitude, and resolution — all paralleled with the offense and power of the New Covenant gospel. The contrast between the converted pagan Naaman and the perverted Israelite Gehazi underscores that Yahweh's grace is free and cannot be bought, bartered, or manipulated. Hearers are called to recognize in Naaman's conversion the marks of genuine saving faith: humble confession, gratitude, and a sensitive conscience toward the one true God.
Free Grace Baptist Church - November 26, 2017 PM
Titus 3:3–7 expounds the full arc of sovereign grace: the grave former state of all believers in foolishness, disobedience, and depravity; the divine condescension by which God's kindness and love appeared in Christ; and the sovereign power of the Holy Spirit in washing and regenerating dead sinners to new life. Salvation is not by works of righteousness which we have done but entirely according to divine mercy, secured through Jesus Christ alone and applied by the Holy Spirit — a triunely accomplished redemption that eliminates all boasting in self and grounds the believer's perseverance in the immutability of God's electing love.