Theological term
Fatherly Displeasure
5 sermons · All terms
Psalm 13
Psalm 13 gives voice to the experience of God's apparent absence — the prolonged, disorienting silence when His face seems hidden and the enemy seems to be winning. This expository treatment of David's lament psalm traces two movements: the fourfold 'how long' of questions arising from the Lord's seeming absence (vv. 1–4), and the sudden turn to trust in His mercy and salvation (vv. 5–6). The sermon argues that faith is not a feeling but a tenacious clinging to the promises of a covenant-keeping God, and calls believers to keep praying, keep coming to the house of the Lord, and direct their attention away from their plight and toward God's unchanging goodness — even when, especially when, they must cry out 'how long.'
Free Grace Baptist Church - December 29, 2019 PM
Hosea 11:1–11 sets before us the indictment of Israel as a wicked, ungrateful son who responded to the Father's covenant love with relentless idolatry, earning the just sentence of Assyrian exile. Yet the passage turns on the sovereign mercy of God, whose holy love — not Israel's repentance — is the sole ground of restoration. The sermon traces the typological arc from the Exodus through the exile to Matthew 2:15, arguing that Jesus Christ is the true Israel, the obedient Son called out of Egypt, who absorbs the exile his people deserve and so secures their passage through the final judgment. The application is that false worship earns the displeasure of a holy God, while those who cling to Christ alone — justified by his merits, not their own — shall never be handed over.
Of Justification (2LCF 11)
Justification — the forensic declaration by which God accounts and accepts sinners as righteous — is examined through the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter 11. The confession distinguishes justification sharply from sanctification: it is not an infused or imparted righteousness but an imputed one, grounded entirely in Christ's active obedience to the law and passive obedience in His death. Faith, itself a gift of God and not a human contribution, is the sole instrument by which the justified receive and rest on Christ's righteousness. The sermon closes by tracing the ongoing practical realities of the justified life — including fatherly displeasure, confession, and the impossibility of falling from the state of justification — and by drawing on J.C. Ryle to clarify precisely how justification and sanctification are alike yet distinct.
The Blind, the Possessed, and Division over Christ
Matthew 9:27–34 closes the extended miracle section of Matthew 8–9 with two final healings — two blind men receiving sight and a mute, demon-possessed man restored to speech — followed by the starkest division yet between those who marvel and those who blaspheme. The blind men's cry of 'Son of David' identifies Jesus as the Davidic Messiah promised in the covenant of 2 Samuel 7 and foretold in Isaiah 35, while their faith — persistent, humble, and cast entirely on Christ's mercy — provides a concrete portrait of what saving trust looks like. The Pharisees, unable to deny the miracles, attribute them to Beelzebub, a wickedness that anticipates the unpardonable sin of Matthew 12 and the intensifying opposition that will carry Jesus to the cross. The sermon calls every hearer to reckon with the unavoidable division: there is no neutrality before Christ — one either marvels and believes, or blasphemes and rejects.
Walk in the Spirit
Galatians 5:16–18 presents both a command and a doctrine: walk in the Spirit, and understand why that walk is a struggle. The sermon defines walking in the Spirit not as a mystical or charismatic experience but as Spirit-directed conduct expressed in love, light, and wisdom — drawing on Ephesians 5 to fill out what Paul means. The second half of the sermon treats the doctrine of remaining corruption, distinguishing it carefully from reigning sin, and shows from Romans 7 and the 1689 London Baptist Confession that the ongoing flesh-Spirit conflict in the believer is both inevitable and, rightly understood, an evidence of genuine faith. Hearers are called to mortify remaining sin by the Spirit's power, to cast themselves afresh on Christ's blood when they fall, and to examine honestly whether their sin is remaining corruption or the reigning corruption of an unbeliever.