Theological term
Economic Trinity
10 sermons · All terms
The Danger of Rejecting the Son
John 8:21–29 records Jesus warning a hostile religious leadership that they will die in their sins if they do not believe that He is the great I Am — the divine Son eternally generated from the Father, sent into the world in the economy of redemption. The sermon works through the passage in three movements: the announcement of Christ's departure and the condemnation it implies, the question of His identity and the slander levelled against Him, and the reference to His crucifixion as the moment of disclosure. The central doctrinal burden is that a deficient Christology — whether ancient Arianism, Sabellianism, or modern proposals of eternal functional subordination — amounts to the very unbelief Christ condemns, and that the church's primary calling is to preach the triune God with particular weight on who the Son is and what He has done for sinners.
The Testimony Concerning Christ's Supremacy
John 3:31–36 contains John the Baptist's climactic testimony concerning the supremacy and authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. The passage presses two inseparable realities: Christ's origin from above establishes his absolute supremacy over every earthly voice, and the Father's gift of all things into the Son's hand grounds his authority to bestow everlasting life on believers and to execute wrath on those who remain in unbelief. The sermon traces how the Baptist's testimony in these verses is of one piece with the prologue of John's Gospel, the high-priestly prayer of John 17, and the whole drift of Scripture concerning the triune God. Hearers are called to look in faith to Christ, the Lamb of God, understanding that regeneration by the Spirit is the necessary precondition for that faith, and that to reject the Son is not neutrality but the tacit accusation that God is a liar.
The Mission of the Word, Part 1
John 1:6–9 introduces John the Baptist not as an independent figure but as a divinely commissioned witness whose entire ministry exists to point to the Word made flesh. This sermon examines the origin, nature, and function of that witness ministry, demonstrating that the Baptist's testimony belongs to a network of overlapping witnesses — Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Scripture, and signs — that ground saving faith in historical reality rather than a blind existential leap. The function of John's witness is inseparable from its purpose: that sinners would believe on Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, not merely imitate him as a moral example. The sermon closes with a call to keep law and gospel in their proper places, so that sinners driven by the law's killing power may look by grace to the one who is both the true light and the only hope of the world.
The Divinity of the Word
John 1:1–5 opens not in a Bethlehem stable but in eternity, establishing the Word's co-eternality, personal distinction from the Father, and full consubstantiality with the Father before a single creature existed. This sermon works through the first clause of John's prologue under five sub-points drawn from verse 1: the eternity, distinctiveness, and consubstantiality of the Word with the Father, the repetition of that glory in verse 2, and (deferred to the following week) the Word as creator of all things. The doctrine of the Trinity — one in essence, three in subsistence — is shown to be not an academic luxury but the very foundation of all communion with God and the indispensable framework for understanding why the incarnation is the supreme act of grace.
The Ethics of Motherhood
Titus 2:3–5 sets older women in the church as instructors of younger women in the domestic virtues that honor the created order and adorn the doctrine of God. Against a cultural moment that treats the word 'mother' as offensive and obliterates God-wrought gender distinction, the passage calls women to love husbands and children, to exercise discretion, chastity, and diligence in the home, and to submit to their own husbands — not as cultural accommodation but as a reflection of the eternal created order grounded in Genesis and reaffirmed by Christ's redemption. The overarching rationale Paul supplies is theological: the conduct of women in household and church either blasphemes or adorns the Word of God before a watching world. The sermon closes by grounding every duty in grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, warning that no degree of faithful motherhood constitutes grounds for justification.
Nations Rage, God Mocks
Psalm 2 confronts the rage of earthly rulers against God and His anointed with a sober theological question: why do the nations engage in so futile an endeavor? The sermon expounds the psalm under three headings — the rebellion of earthly kings, the reign of the heavenly king, and the recognition of the true king — tracing the Davidic covenant through its fulfillment in the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. The Covenant of Redemption grounds the certainty of Christ's present reign at the right hand of the Father, and that certainty is the sole comfort available to God's people as nations continue to rage and the history of the church runs red with the blood of martyrs. Hearers are called either to kiss the Son in filial fear and find blessing, or to perish in the way of the ungodly.
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 7 - Of God's Covenant, Part 3
The Covenant of Redemption (pactum salutis) is the pre-temporal, intra-Trinitarian agreement between the Father and the Son in which the Father gives a particular people to the Son and the Son willingly undertakes to be their mediator and surety. This teaching examines the definition, parties, stipulations, and promises of the pactum, traces its exegetical foundations across both Testaments, and shows how it grounds the Covenant of Grace and underwrites definite atonement. Understanding the Covenant of Redemption provides believers with firm assurance, because the immutable and impassible God has covenanted in eternity to save the elect in Christ, and that plan cannot fail.
Of God and the Holy Trinity (2LCF 2.3)
What does it mean to confess that God is one being subsisting in three persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? This study of 2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith chapter 2, paragraph 3 works through the classical Trinitarian formulation upheld by the particular Baptists, tracing its foundations in Scripture, its continuity with the ecumenical creeds, and the Baptist Confession's terminological improvement of 'subsistences' over 'persons.' The exposition addresses the unity and equality of the three subsistences, the personal distinctions expressed by eternal generation and procession, and the practical necessity of robust Trinitarian confession in an age of continuing anti-Trinitarian error.
Specific Directions for Corporate Prayer
What does it mean for men to lead in corporate prayer, and what moral conditions must accompany that leadership? Expounding 1 Timothy 2:8, this sermon establishes that Paul's expressed 'desire' carries apostolic authority binding upon all churches, that the word for 'men' (Greek andros) specifies males as those who are to lead in public worship, and that this complementarian order is grounded not in Ephesian circumstance but in the creation order of Genesis. The manner of that prayer — lifting holy hands, free from wrath and disputing — demands horizontal reconciliation before vertical supplication, so that unresolved sin and unreconciled relationships do not hinder the church's prayer to God.