Theological term
Election
149 sermons · All terms
God's Grace Displayed at Jericho
Joshua 2 presents an interlude before the conquest of Canaan — not a call to arms, but a display of sovereign grace toward the most unlikely recipient imaginable: Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute and traitor to Jericho. Working through her contact with the spies, her remarkable confession of Yahweh as the one true God of heaven and earth, and the covenant agreement that secured her household's deliverance, this exposition shows that genuine saving faith moves beyond bare intellectual assent to cast itself entirely upon the mercy of God. Rahab's inclusion in the Messianic genealogy of Matthew 1 seals the argument: the grace of God in the Old Testament is the same grace that saves sinners through Christ in the New.
The Revelation of God's Glory
Exodus 34:6–7 reveals the attributes of God not in the abstract but in the wake of the catastrophic covenant-breaking of the golden calf — making the declaration of divine mercy, grace, long-suffering, and forgiveness all the more staggering. This sermon works through the context of Exodus 32–33 to show that God meets great sin with greater grace, and that sovereign grace is not a theological concession but the very content of the divine name. The same passage that grounds Moses' intercession grounds the call to flee to Christ, who accomplishes what Moses could only typify: atonement for covenant-breakers.
The Trinity and the Death of Christ
The death of Christ on the cross is not the work of the Son alone but of the entire Triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — each acting distinctly yet inseparably in the one work of redemption. Drawing from 1 Peter 1:2 as a launching text, the sermon traces each person's role: the Father in purpose, promise, and punishment; the Son in penal obedience, perfection, and protection; the Spirit in publication, persuasion, and purification. The definite, efficacious nature of Christ's atonement is insisted upon throughout — Christ did not die to make salvation possible but to actually and perfectly save his elect. Observed in the context of the Lord's Supper, the sermon calls believers to reflect on the Triune God as the sole and sufficient author of salvation from beginning to end.
The New Heaven and a New Earth
Revelation 21:1–8 sets before the believer a vision of the new heaven and new earth — blessed not only for what is present (God and the Lamb dwelling with His people) but for what is entirely absent (death, sorrow, pain, and sin). Preached in the context of a young congregation member's death, this expository sermon traces the biblical-theological movement from Adam's failed dominion mandate through Christ's perfect fulfillment as the last Adam, showing that the new creation is the consummation of every covenant promise God made to His people. The text's fourfold structure — the new creation, the bride prepared, the announcement of blessing, and the voice from the throne — culminates in a direct call to believe on Christ and a sober warning that the unbelieving are excluded from the new Jerusalem.
Divine Chastening and the Peaceable Fruit of Righteousness
Hebrews 12:5–11 confronts a perennial misreading of suffering: that the presence of trials signals the absence of God. Drawing on Proverbs 3:11–12, Deuteronomy 8:5, and the analogy of earthly fatherhood, the passage argues the opposite — divine chastening is the proof of divine sonship, not its contradiction. The sermon works through two categories: the presence of paternal discipline (vv. 5–10a) and its purpose (vv. 10b–11), showing that God's fatherly correction is perfectly calibrated to produce holiness and to conform his people to the image of Christ. The exhortation throughout is to run with endurance, refusing both despair under affliction and a false prosperity-gospel ease, trusting that the painful training yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness.
The Covenant of Redemption
The Covenant of Redemption (pactum salutis) is the eternal, intra-trinitarian pact in which the Father gave a definite people to the Son, the Son covenanted to serve as their surety and mediator, and the Spirit proceeds to apply the accomplished redemption — forming the unchanging foundation upon which the Covenant of Grace rests in history. Working through key texts in John, Hebrews, Ephesians, Philippians, and Acts, the sermon demonstrates that Christ's obedience, death, and exaltation were not afterthoughts but the execution of a pre-temporal divine agreement. Because salvation rests on the Father's eternal purpose and the Son's perfect obedience rather than on the believer's performance, the doctrine of the Covenant of Redemption is presented as the primary ground of lasting Christian comfort, peace, and perseverance.
The Gospel and the Supper
What is the gospel, strictly defined? Drawing from 1 Corinthians 15:1–11, this sermon argues that the gospel is not a feeling, a transformed life, or a self-help programme, but the historical record of Christ's death for sin, burial, and bodily resurrection, revealed through Scripture and received by faith alone. Four observations structure the exposition: the gospel is rooted in history, revealed by God through special revelation, centred on the work of Christ, and received by faith — not merit or performance. The sermon closes with direct application to the Lord's Supper, urging believers to understand the ordinance not as a reward for spiritual performance but as a means of grace appointed by Christ to nourish, confirm, and strengthen faith in the very gospel it proclaims.
The Exhortation and the Benediction
2 Thessalonians 2:15–17 closes a condensed apostolic letter with an exhortation and a benediction, and this sermon expounds both in turn. The exhortation — 'stand fast and hold the traditions' — summons believers to a posture of resolute, unified, apologetically vigorous fidelity to revealed apostolic doctrine, grounded in the certainty that the triune God saves from election to glorification. The benediction that follows prays that the same God who has loved his people and given them everlasting consolation by grace would comfort their hearts through believing the truth of Scripture and establish them in every good word and work. Listeners are called to resist the temptation to seek temporal, emotional remedies for troubled hearts, and instead to plant their eyes in the unshakeable promises of Holy Scripture.
Thanksgiving for the Mercy of God
Psalm 103 calls every redeemed soul to deliberate, whole-hearted praise — not as a passive emotion but as a disciplined act of self-address rooted in theological memory. The sermon works through three movements: the reminder to bless God (vv. 1–2), the reasons to bless God both individually and corporately (vv. 3–18), and the universal summons extending that call to angels and all creation (vv. 19–22). Forgiveness of all iniquities stands at the head of the list of benefits, and every temporal and spiritual blessing flows from a God whose mercy is not transient like the grass of the field but everlasting to everlasting. The psalm, rightly applied in the new-covenant believer's life, keeps one near the cross, corrects the tendency toward practical atheism, and transforms ingratitude into genuine thanksgiving.
True Doctrine, Proper Conduct Part 2
Colossians 3:12–14 calls believers to put on the virtues that characterize the new man in Christ — not as a program of moral self-improvement, but as the necessary outflow of sovereign election, regeneration, and union with Christ. This sermon works through three things concerning the new man: his identity as the elect, holy, and beloved of God; his character as defined by five virtues (tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, and longsuffering) expressed in community through forbearance and forgiveness; and his supreme obligation, which is love — the bond that gives luster and coherence to all the other graces. The controlling argument is that conformity to Christ begins not with behavioral resolve but with fixing the mind on Christ seated at the right hand of God, so that mortification of sin and putting on of virtue follow as fruit of knowing him.
Walk in His Ways
Deuteronomy 10:12–22 sets forth the covenant obligations God requires of his people — fear, obedience, love, service, and keeping his commandments — grounded not in Israel's righteousness but solely in the sovereignty and mercy of God. The passage exposes the internal religion God has always demanded: external compliance was never acceptable, and heart circumcision is the necessary prerequisite for covenant fidelity, a work that belongs to God alone. Moses drives home that right doctrine produces right living — a high view of God's transcendent majesty and his compassion toward the fatherless, the widow, and the alien are the twin motivations for the five-fold response. The sermon applies this pattern to the new covenant: the justified believer is called to the same fear, love, service, and obedience, enabled by an imputed righteousness that does not abolish the sanctification these obligations require.
The Plan for the Conquest
Deuteronomy 7:6–16 sets forth the basis and practical implications of Israel's distinction from the Canaanite nations as they prepare to enter the promised land. The passage grounds Israel's identity — as a holy people, a chosen people, and God's special treasure — not in their numbers, righteousness, or achievement, but solely in the sovereign, covenant-keeping love of God. The sermon traces this language of election through Exodus 19, the wider book of Deuteronomy, and into the New Testament, demonstrating one continuous people of God across the covenants and directly challenging the two-peoples framework of classic dispensationalism. The practical implication Moses draws on the plains of Moab is that right theology must precede and fuel right obedience: knowing the faithful, merciful, and just God of the covenant is what equips the people to enter the land, resist idolatry, and inherit the promised blessings.
The 3rd Petition: God's Will, Part 1
The third petition of the Lord's Prayer — 'Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven' (Matthew 6:10) — requires a prior understanding of the two categories of God's will: the decretive (secret) will, by which God sovereignly ordains all things according to the counsel of his own purpose, and the preceptive (revealed) will, which constitutes the duty God has set before his creatures in Scripture. The sermon argues that Christians are primarily praying for conformity to the revealed will — active obedience to God's commands and passive submission to his providence — rather than seeking to align their lives with the secret things that belong to God alone. Four concrete duties follow: recognizing God's absolute right to command, knowing the revealed will through Scripture, obeying it, and submitting with faith, contentedness, and determination to whatever God inflicts by his providence. Throughout, the active and passive obedience of Christ is held forth as the only perfect fulfillment of this petition and the ground of the believer's confidence before God.
The Preface to the Lord's Prayer
What does it mean to address God as 'Our Father in heaven' before a single petition is spoken? This sermon on Matthew 6:9 argues that the preface to the Lord's Prayer is not a formality but a theological foundation: the invocation shapes the entire posture of prayer. Six truths embedded in the two words 'Our Father' are examined — that God is personal, gracious, hearing, caring, loving, and alone to be addressed — followed by two truths in the phrase 'in heaven': that God is transcendent and omnipotent. The sermon closes with a pointed call to examine whether one can honestly pray 'Our Father' at all, since access to the Father comes only through faith in the Son.
The Privileged Status of the Believer
What does it mean that God calls sinners his children? Expositing 1 John 3:1, this sermon calls believers to stop and behold the sovereign, eternal, and demonstrated love of the Father that has brought those who were by nature children of wrath into the family of God through adoption and new birth. Five dimensions of that love are unfolded — its pre-temporal origin, its historical manifestation at the cross, its eternal duration, its concrete demonstration, and its sovereign bestowal by grace alone — drawn together through parallel reflection on Ephesians 3:14-19. The sermon closes by pressing believers to anchor their Christian health not primarily in activity but in knowing and meditating on the love of God revealed in Scripture.
Rejoice in Christ! A Gracious Command
Philippians 3:1–3 opens with what Paul calls a gracious command — 'rejoice in the Lord' — issued to a congregation facing false teachers who demanded physical circumcision as a condition of acceptance before God. The sermon works through three movements: the command to rejoice (v. 1), the apostolic warning against the Judaizers (v. 2), and the defining contrast between the false circumcision and the true (v. 3). The true circumcision is identified not by ethnic descent or ritual observance but by three marks: worshipping God in the Spirit, rejoicing in Christ Jesus, and placing no confidence in the flesh — a threefold description that locates salvation solely in the sovereign, gracious work of the triune God from first to last.
The Plan of Salvation
Two verses in 2 Timothy 1 contain a concentrated summary of the entire plan of salvation, and this sermon unpacks five observations from that text: God alone saves, the effectual call is the means employed, the basis is divine purpose and grace rather than human works, the plan originates before time began in the counsel of the triune God, and it is executed in history through the doing, dying, and rising of Jesus Christ. The sermon sets monergism against every form of synergism, argues that Athanasius's soteriological defense of Christ's deity depends on the incapacity of man to save himself, and traces the pactum salutis through John 17, Romans 16, and Ephesians 1. The hearer is pressed to rest all assurance on the finished work of Christ alone and to give God all praise for a salvation that is his from first to last.
From Alienation to Reconciliation
Colossians 1:21–23 sets before the believer a movement from total alienation to gracious reconciliation, and Paul's logic demands that the Lord's Supper be received as a celebration of divine achievement rather than human performance. The sermon examines three realities in the text: the previous state of the Colossians as alienated enemies engaged in wicked works, their present status as those whom God has reconciled through the physical death of Christ, and the future blessedness to which God is bringing them — holy, blameless, and above reproach in his sight. Because reconciliation flows from sovereign election and not from foreseen faith, all glory belongs to God, and the table is rightly approached with awe and worship rather than self-congratulation.
A Leper Came to Him
Matthew 8:1–4 records a leper approaching Christ and receiving both cleansing and the declaration 'I am willing' — a text that serves as a lens through which to examine what it means to come to Christ in desperate need. The sermon establishes the theological purpose of Christ's miracles: not merely physical restoration, but the authentication of Jesus as Messiah and an illustration of man's spiritual condition as a sinner who is unclean, outcast, and incapable of self-cleansing. The law, like the Levitical regulations for lepers, can diagnose but cannot cure; only the great high priest, Christ Jesus, can accomplish what law, religion, and self-effort cannot. The central application is that sinners must come to Christ just as they are, resting on the warrant of the gospel — 'repent and believe' — assured that He is not only a powerful Savior but a willing one.
The Believer's Inheritance
What does the believer's inheritance consist of, and how is it secured against every threat? Expounding 1 Peter 1:4–5, this sermon examines the three negative descriptions of the believer's heavenly inheritance — incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading — before turning to the divine preservation that guarantees the heir will actually receive it. The inheritance is secured not by the believer's own resolve but by the power of God working through the gift of faith, so that even amid persecution, trial, and the triple enmity of the devil, the world, and the flesh, the Christian presses on in confident, heavenward hope.
Justification
Romans 3:24 stands as the doctrinal heartbeat of the gospel: guilty sinners are declared righteous before a holy God freely, as a gift, on the sole ground of the redemption accomplished by Christ Jesus. The sermon expounds each word of that verse — 'justified,' 'freely,' 'by his grace,' and 'through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus' — to show that justification is a forensic declaration of changed status, not a moral transformation, and that it rests entirely on Christ's atoning blood and imputed righteousness, received through faith alone. A running contrast is drawn between earthly judges who rightly condemn the guilty and the divine Judge who justifies the ungodly without compromising his justice, because the penalty was fully borne by the Son. The sermon closes by tracing the necessary fruit of justification — humility, assurance, and a transformed life bearing the likeness of Christ — while guarding the distinction between justification and sanctification.
Hagar, Sarah, and Covenant Theology
Galatians 4:21–31 presents Paul's allegorical argument from the two sons of Abraham — Ishmael and Isaac, Hagar and Sarah — to demonstrate that faith and law-keeping are mutually exclusive systems of approach to God. Paul maps Hagar onto the Mosaic covenant, first-century apostate Jerusalem, and the bondage of those who seek acceptance with God through legal works; he maps Sarah onto the covenant of grace, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the freedom of those who are justified by faith alone in Christ alone. New covenant membership belongs not to ethnic Israel as such, but to all — Jew and Gentile — who are united to Christ by sovereign grace, making them heirs of the promise given to Abraham. The sermon closes with a call to recognise false teaching as a form of persecution and to exercise church discipline against those who corrupt the gospel of free justification.
Conduct Becoming a New Man
Colossians 3:12–14 calls the new man in Christ not merely to shed sinful habits but to clothe himself with a definite set of Spirit-wrought virtues: tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, forbearance, forgiveness, and above all, love. The passage grounds these graces in the threefold identity of the elect — chosen, holy, and beloved — an identity that derives from God's sovereign election and not from any prior human worthiness. These virtues are not a program of moral self-improvement but the fruit of union with Christ, whose own character they mirror, and the sermon applies them concretely to marriage, the local church, and the workplace. The closing appeal presses the unconverted to flee to Christ alone, since niceness apart from grace saves no one, while calling the church to celebrate the gospel of free and sovereign grace as the only foundation on which any of this obedience stands.
Proclaiming, Recollecting, Redeemed, Satisfied
Psalm 107:1–9, 43 calls the redeemed to give thanks to God whose mercy endures forever, and this sermon expounds that call under three overlapping movements: proclamation, recollection, and satisfaction. Christians are a verbal people who declare the praises of their Redeemer (1 Pet. 2:9), a recollecting people who survey redemptive history with 'historical retrospect,' and a people whose every hunger and thirst is wholly and finally satisfied in Christ alone. The sermon is preached in the context of the Lord's Supper, whose dual function — proclaiming Christ's death and remembering his atoning work — runs as a thread through each point. The closing summons addresses the unconverted directly: wisdom is found not in the passing pleasures of sin but in believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Questions to Live By
Matthew 22:34–40 records a lawyer's question to Jesus — which commandment is the greatest? — and Jesus answers by binding together love for God and love for neighbour as the sum of all the law and the prophets. The sermon traces the theme of questioning throughout the Gospels to show that Christ himself answers every fundamental question about who he is and what he requires. From that foundation, two implicit questions are drawn from the text and pressed upon hearers: who are you living for (vertical love toward God), and how are you living (horizontal love toward neighbour)? The conclusion calls those outside Christ to submit to him and those within to pursue him with wholehearted passion.
The Sovereignty of God in the Salvation of Sinners
Matthew 11:25–30 presents the sovereignty of God in salvation not as a theological puzzle to be argued but as a doxology to be prayed. Jesus praises the Father for hiding gospel truth from the self-sufficient wise and revealing it to those whom the Spirit reduces to babes — an act that is not injustice but divine judgment upon rebels who have no excuse. The passage then sets forth Christ's mediatorial authority as the sole ground upon which any sinner may know the Father, and issues three commands — come, take the yoke, learn — backed by the power of the one who commanded a dead man out of a tomb. The sermon calls hearers to abandon both hyper-Calvinist fatalism and Arminian manipulation, resting instead in the sovereign grace that humbles pride and fuels genuine gospel proclamation.
The Book of Jude
The epistle of Jude issues an urgent call to God's people to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, in the face of ungodly men who have crept unnoticed into the church and are turning the grace of God into a license for immorality. Working through all twenty-five verses, this exposition traces the letter's anatomy — salutation, statement of purpose, denunciation and doom of the heretics, positive exhortations to believers, and closing doxology — showing that Jude's 'sandwich' structure encloses a hard confrontation with false teaching within the glorious realities of calling, sanctification, and preservation in Christ. The sermon argues that the body of objective doctrinal truth committed to the church must be held with zeal, not limp-wristedly accommodated to include those who deny the sovereign lordship of Christ. Believers are to rejoice in their preservation, know troublemakers for what they are, and deal pastorally but distinctly with those in danger of or already ensnared by heresy.
Brethren Beloved by the Lord
Paul's contrast in 2 Thessalonians 2:13–15 between those who perish in unrighteousness and those who are 'brethren beloved by the Lord' opens onto the full architecture of sovereign grace: election grounded not in foreseen merit but in the eternal love of God the Father, salvation worked out through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, and the whole chain sealed unto glorification. The sermon presses the doctrines of unconditional election and the effectual call into pastoral and doxological form, refusing cold dogmatism in favour of wonder that God would set his love upon sinners dead in trespasses. Hearers are exhorted to stand fast in apostolic tradition, to abound in love toward one another, and to grow in sanctification through the word — and unbelievers are warned that the same Christ who comforts the beloved will consume with the breath of his mouth those who had pleasure in unrighteousness.
The Basis of Christian Joy
Jesus' command in Luke 10:20 — 'rejoice because your names are written in heaven' — reveals that the proper basis of Christian joy is not ministerial performance but sovereign grace in salvation. The sermon works through four reasons why performance-based joy is defective (it breeds pride, is no certain indicator of grace, does not abide, and fails in the valleys) and five reasons why salvation-based joy is superior (it belongs equally to all the saints, centers on Christ rather than self, flows from God's sovereign election, can be cultivated through the Word, and abides in all circumstances). The practical summons is to ground joy not in what one has done for God, but in what the triune God has done in electing, redeeming, and keeping His people.