Theological term
Federal Headship
929 sermons · All terms
The Cross and the Crown of Christ, Part 1
Psalm 22 is the suffering Messiah speaking in his own voice — a depth of self-disclosure that the prophet Isaiah 53 approaches but does not match. This sermon works through the first two of three laments in verses 1–11: Christ's desolation under judicial desertion by the Father, and the reproach heaped upon him by his enemies. The cry of dereliction is neither a rupture in the Trinity nor a dissolution of the hypostatic union, but a penal desertion in which the Father withdraws his favorable countenance from the one who has been made sin as mediator. Throughout each lament Christ models the pattern of honest complaint before God followed by confident recourse to the Father's holiness, covenant faithfulness, and sovereign purpose — a pattern the church is called to imitate in its own far lesser sufferings.
The Misc. Laws and Laws of Sexual Immorality
Deuteronomy 22 presents a body of Mosaic legislation covering miscellaneous civil duties and laws governing sexual morality, each rooted in the moral law summarized in the Ten Commandments. The first half of the chapter (verses 1–12) addresses property rights, gender distinction, ecological stewardship, safety precautions, and ceremonial mixtures — all concrete applications of the love command and the Decalogue to life in covenant community. The second half (verses 13–30) addresses premarital unchastity, adultery, and the critical distinction between the rape of a betrothed woman and the seduction of a consenting single woman, a distinction obscured by some English translations but essential to a fair reading of the text. Throughout, the threefold division of the law — moral, ceremonial, and judicial — provides the lens for identifying what carries permanent moral weight, what was fulfilled in Christ, and what expired with the Israelite commonwealth while leaving principles of general equity for civil application.
The Qualifications for Elders, Part 4
The qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy 3:2 include a single gift amid a catalog of virtues: the ability to teach. This sermon examines what that aptness to teach requires — a thorough knowledge of Scripture, sound theology, and historical doctrine — and then surveys the apostolic theology of preaching from Romans 10, 1 Corinthians 1, and 2 Timothy 4, demonstrating that faithful preaching is the ordained means by which Christ Himself speaks to His people and faith is produced. The sermon concludes by calling the church to pray for, examine, and install biblically qualified men who will convince, rebuke, and exhort with longsuffering, unashamed before God rather than men.
The Qualifications for Elders, Part 3
What qualifies a man to oversee the household of God? Expositing 1 Timothy 3:4–7, this sermon works through three remaining qualifications for elders: domestic faithfulness (vv. 4–5), maturity in the faith (v. 6), and a good testimony among unbelievers (v. 7). The lesser-to-greater argument of verse 5 — that a man who cannot govern his own home has no business governing the church of God — anchors the domestic section, while the warning against novice elders grounds the call to spiritual maturity in the sobering parallel of the devil's own fall through pride. The sermon closes by insisting that imperfect ministers are not a failure of God's plan but its instrument, so that all excellence of power is seen to be of God and not of men.
The King's Exaltation and Future Triumph, Part 2
Psalm 21:8–13 presents the church's confident expectation of Christ's return in final triumph over all who hate God. The sermon expounds two movements: the certainty and finality of the judgment of the wicked (vv. 8–12), grounded in the sovereign righteousness of God and fulfilled in the mediatorial office of the enthroned Christ, and the church's doxological response in verse 13. The sermon traces verse 10's destruction of the enemies' seed back to the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15, arguing that Christ's second advent is the consummation of the skull-crushing conquest promised there. Believers are called to know the terror of the Lord, to persuade the unconverted, and to praise God for the justice that the cross has satisfied on their behalf.
The King's Exaltation and Future Triumph
Psalm 21 celebrates the exaltation of the true David, the Lord Jesus Christ, whose resurrection, ascension, and session at the right hand of the Father fulfill what the church prayed for in Psalm 20. The psalm moves from a declaration of the king's joy and the Father's bestowal of blessing, crown, and eternal reign upon the Son as mediator of the new covenant, to a prophetic anticipation of his final triumph over all remaining enemies at the second advent. What is true of the exalted head belongs to the body: the church's permanence, blessing, and ultimate glory are secured in Christ's own immovability and intercession. The sermon closes with a call for sinners to flee to the triumphant king and for the church to recover the militant confidence that comes from feasting on the Psalms of the true David.
The Saving Grace of God
Ephesians 2:8–10 presents the saving grace of God as entirely sovereign, with man described in verses 1–3 as dead in trespasses and sins — not merely wounded or hindered — and therefore incapable of initiating his own salvation. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, where faith itself is the gift of God and not a human contribution, excluding all boasting and rendering works irrelevant to justification. Verse 10 confirms rather than supplements verses 8–9: the good works believers walk in were prepared beforehand by God, demonstrating that even sanctified living flows from divine grace rather than native human capacity. The sermon concludes with an application to believers' baptism, which testifies outwardly to God's inward work of regeneration and justification, identifies the baptized with the triune God, and marks entry into Christ's church-building project.
2LCF Chapter 31 - Of the State of Man After Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead
The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 31, addresses individual eschatology under two heads: the state of man at death and the resurrection of the dead at the last day. The chapter grounds its teaching in the biblical constitution of man as body and soul, affirming that at death the body returns to dust while the immortal soul immediately returns to God — the souls of the righteous received into paradise with Christ, made perfect in holiness, and the souls of the wicked cast into hell awaiting the judgment of the great day. Against soul sleep, purgatory, limbo, and Socinian denials of bodily resurrection, the confession insists that all the dead will be raised with the self-same bodies, the just by the Spirit unto honor conformed to Christ's glorious body, and the unjust by the power of Christ unto dishonor.
The Qualifications for Elders, Part 1
What qualifies a man to lead Christ's church as an elder, and how is a genuine call to ministry recognized? Expounding 1 Timothy 3:1, this sermon works through four elements of a man's call to eldership drawn from Albert N. Martin's Pastoral Theology: the desire of the man, the graces of the man, the gifts of the man, and the opportunity for the man. The internal, subjective desire for ministry must be checked by external, objective criteria — the qualifications of verses 2–7 and the common suffrage of the local church as confessed in the Second London Baptist Confession, chapter 26. The sermon closes with exhortations to the congregation to pray for gospel laborers and to take the qualification process seriously, and with a call to unbelievers to trust the Christ whom these ambassadors proclaim.
The Psalmist's Contemplation on the Revelation of God, Part 2
Psalm 19:7–11 presents four attributes of Scripture — perfect, sure, right, and pure — and traces the effects each produces in the souls of those the Spirit converts. The sermon argues that 'law' in this psalm comprehends the entirety of God's Word, including the gospel, and that the attributes ascribed to Scripture are inseparable from the perfections of its divine Author. Against a merely convicting or condemning view of the law, the preacher demonstrates that the same Word that exposes sin is the instrument through which the Holy Spirit effectually converts, enlightens, and rejoices the heart of the sinner. Hearers are pressed to receive the Word with joy rather than religious duty, and any who are yet dead in sin are called to cast themselves upon the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom a willing and rejoicing Savior stands ready to save.
The Conduct of Women in Corporate Worship (Authority)
First Timothy 2:11–15 contains one of the New Testament's clearest directives on the role of women in corporate worship, and this exposition works through the passage in three movements: the duty of women to receive the Word in silence and submission (v. 11), the apostolic prohibition against women teaching or exercising authority over men (vv. 12–14), and the blessing held out to women in the childbearing (v. 15). The prohibition is grounded not in the culture of first-century Ephesus but in creation order and the fall, the same foundations the apostles consistently invoke across Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, 1 Corinthians 11 and 14, and 1 Peter 3. The messianic reading of verse 15 is defended: 'she will be saved in the childbearing' points to the incarnation of Christ as the hope for Eve and every believing woman, not to physical childbirth as a condition of salvation. Women are called to embrace their creationally ordered role — silent, submissive reception of the Word and the full range of ministry open to them — as the sphere in which they work out their salvation in faith, love, holiness, and self-control.
Deuteronomy 16:1-17 - The Annual Feasts of Israel
Deuteronomy 16:1–17 presents three annual feasts — Passover and Unleavened Bread, Weeks, and Tabernacles — as divinely ordained memorials calibrated to keep Old Covenant Israel's allegiance fixed on Yahweh. Each feast commemorates a distinct aspect of God's redemptive work: deliverance from Egypt, provision at harvest, and sustenance through wilderness wandering. The Passover's substitutionary logic — where efficacy rested in God's provision rather than the offerer's moral worthiness — typologically prefigures Christ as the Lamb whose blood alone secures the sinner's safety. The sermon draws out the connection between the central sanctuary requirement of Deuteronomy 12 and the New Covenant church as the God-ordained means by which worship is preserved from corruption and believers are hedged against apostasy.
The Psalmist's Contemplation on the Revelation of God, Part 1
Psalm 19:1–6 presents the doctrine of general revelation — God's self-disclosure through the created order — and David's prophetic anticipation of the gospel's universal proclamation. The sermon traces the content, constancy, and comprehensive scope of general revelation, grounding each observation in Paul's parallel argument in Romans 1:18–32. The expositor then argues, against Calvin's merely comparative reading, that Paul's citation of Psalm 19:4 in Romans 10:18 legitimizes a Christological interpretation of verses 4b–6, in which the sun typifies Christ the Son of Righteousness, the great Bridegroom of his church, whose gospel goes forth conquering to the ends of the earth. Hearers are called to receive the Son whose rays of saving grace cannot be stopped any more than the circuit of the sun.
2LCF Chapter 29 - Of Baptism
The 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 29 sets forth a thoroughgoing Baptist doctrine of baptism: its nature as a New Covenant ordinance ordained by the incarnate mediator, its proper recipients as professing believers alone, its proper element and Trinitarian formula, and its proper mode as immersion. The study presses the case for believers-only baptism across five arguments — from covenant theology, federal headship, the doctrine of salvation, New Testament clarity, and the regulative principle of worship — demonstrating that paedo-baptism is not merely a secondary matter but a violation of Christ's express institution. The session closes with extended Q&A engaging questions about baptismal regeneration, the formula 'in the name of Jesus only,' and the standing of paedobaptist believers.
The Gospel's Precious Liberty Part 2
Paul's warning in Galatians 5:2–6 is stark: to submit to circumcision as necessary for salvation is to forfeit Christ entirely and to incur an obligation to keep the whole law perfectly. This sermon expounds the twofold warning (estrangement from Christ; falling from grace understood not as loss of salvation but as abandonment of the gospel's scheme of grace), the perseverance of the saints confirmed by John 6, John 10, Romans 8, and Hebrews 7, and the exercise of Christian liberty in spirit-wrought confidence and a faith that works through love. True confidence rests not in the flesh or in any obedience of our own, but in the person, blood, sacrifice, and righteousness of Christ received by faith alone.
The Sin of David and the Grace of God
David's adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah the Hittite stand as the gravest sins of Israel's greatest king, yet 2 Samuel 12:1–15 is ultimately a text about the pursuing grace of God. Through Nathan's carefully constructed parable, God exposes David's sin in all its senselessness and treachery — making clear that to despise the commandment of God is to despise God himself. The sermon traces three movements in the passage: God's confrontation through his servant Nathan, the full indictment of David's covenant treachery, and the stunning declaration that the Lord has put away David's sin — a declaration that underlies David's celebration of forgiveness throughout the Psalter and points forward to the atoning work of David's greater Son.
The Arrest of Jesus
John 18:1–12 records the arrest of Jesus, and the passage confronts the reader with a Savior who is not a hapless victim but the sovereign I AM who initiates, controls, and willingly enters every step of His own arrest. The sermon works through three movements: the betrayal by Judas and the convergence of internal, external, and spiritual threats upon Jesus; the glory of Christ displayed in His divine self-declaration that drives His captors to the ground; and the arrest itself, where the cup of divine wrath — not Peter's sword — is shown to be the true focus of the scene. The controlling application is that Christ's covenantal resoluteness in going to the cross for the salvation of His people is the proper ground for approaching the Lord's Supper with joy.
The Deliverance of the Psalmist, Part 4
Psalm 18:46–50 closes with a threefold ascription of praise to the God who delivers His anointed King — a King who is not merely David but David's greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The passage is expounded under four movements: the praise of God as the living Rock (v. 46), God as the God of vengeance and victory (v. 47), God as the God of deliverance and destruction (v. 48), and God as the God of grace and glory (v. 49), all grounded in the Davidic covenant of 2 Samuel 7. The sermon presses the church to find in the invincibility of God's covenant kingdom the steel needed to persevere through present affliction, and to ground all worship in the theological confession that the Lord lives, that Christ's righteousness is imputed to His people, and that God's promises are yea and amen in His Son.
2LCF Chapter 28 - Of Baptism and the Lord's Supper
Chapter 28 of the Second London Confession of Faith introduces baptism and the Lord's Supper as the two ordinances of the New Testament church, distinguishing the particular Baptist position from both Roman Catholic sacramentalism and paedobaptist covenant theology. The Baptists' deliberate use of 'ordinance' rather than 'sacrament,' and their inclusion of 'positive institution,' reflects a credobaptist insistence that only regenerate believers can obey these commands of Christ, the sole lawgiver of his church. The confession grounds both ordinances in Christ's mediatorial work, connects them to the means by which faith is increased and preserved (2LCF 14.1, 17.3), and reserves their administration for those qualified and called according to Christ's commission. Neglecting these ordinances is not a minor failure but a forfeiture of appointed means of grace and a disservice to the covenant community.
The Deliverance of the Psalmist, Part 3
Psalm 18:31–50 brings the psalm's three-part structure to its close, presenting Christ's resurrection, heavenly session, and sovereign reign over all nations as the fulfilment of what David celebrated in type. The sermon expounds four movements in the text: the divine power equipping the King for battle (vv. 31–42), the submission of peoples to the King (vv. 43–45), the praise due to the God of the King (vv. 46–49), and the covenant promise that undergirds the King's advance (v. 50). Throughout, David's victories serve as historically grounded prefigurations of Christ's definitive triumph over sin, death, and every opposing power. The application presses the congregation to lean on God's strength in spiritual warfare, to guard the church against both internal and external threats, and to rest in the alien righteousness of Christ credited to every believer by faith alone.
The Deliverance of the Psalmist, Part 2
Psalm 18:20–30 presents the righteousness of the psalmist not primarily as David's own moral record but as a prophetic description of the Lord Jesus Christ, the last Adam and covenantal representative. David's language of blamelessness and perfect obedience in verses 20–24 transcends anything David himself could claim, pointing forward to the active obedience of Christ, whose spotless life and atoning death constitute the sole ground of justification for all who believe. The sermon argues that the deliverance celebrated in verses 1–19 is grounded in the righteousness declared in verses 20–24 — precisely as Romans 5:18–19 teaches — so that the church reads this psalm not as a moral target to reach but as the righteousness of their surety freely imputed to them by faith. The vivid illustration of Zechariah 3 anchors the application: filthy garments removed, rich robes bestowed — justification by God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
The Gospel's Precious Liberty
Galatians 5:1–6 commands believers to stand fast in the liberty Christ has purchased, refusing any entanglement with a yoke of bondage. This sermon traces the full weight of Paul's argument through Galatians to show that Christian liberty is freedom from the dominion, guilt, and condemnation of sin, from the grip of the devil, and from the yoke of the ceremonial law. The forfeiture of that liberty — by adding circumcision or any other work to the ground of justification — renders Christ of no profit and leaves the soul estranged from grace. Seven means by which believers stand fast in this liberty are set out, all grounded in the Spirit's sustaining work through the means of grace.
The Expectation of the Righteous One
Psalm 17 is approached as primarily the prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ according to his human nature — a perfectly righteous man crying to his Father for vindication, protection, and ultimate glorification. The sermon works through three movements: the psalmist's petition grounded in his righteousness, prayerfulness, and defenselessness (vv. 1–9); the character and violence of his enemies (vv. 10–12); and the psalmist's expectation of judgment on the wicked and resurrection presence with God (vv. 13–15). Because Christ's righteousness is imputed to believers by faith alone, the psalm becomes the church's prayer — a call to earnest, importunate intercession, patient endurance in a hostile age, and fixed hope in the resurrection rather than in temporal prosperity.
The Instructions of Calvary
Luke 23:32–43 presents, in twelve verses, a concentrated display of the doctrines that define the gospel: total depravity, effectual grace, justification by faith alone, the hypostatic union of Christ's two natures, assurance, and immediate conscious glory at death. The sermon traces seven theological loci arising from the conversion of the penitent thief, demonstrating that the entire redemptive narrative of Scripture converges at Calvary. The penitent thief is not an extreme case or a last-minute exception but a paradigm of every sinner who comes to Christ with nothing in hand and receives everything by sovereign, irresistible grace.
Laws Concerning Debt, Slaves, and Firstborn
Deuteronomy 15 sets out three bodies of legislation governing Old Covenant Israel: the sabbatical release of debts, the release and provision for indentured servants, and the sanctification of the firstborn. The sermon traces how each law flows from a divinely ordered reciprocity — God prospers his covenant people so that prosperity rolls downward to the poor and the victim — while insisting that outward compliance must be driven by an internal disposition of genuine covenantal loyalty. The firstborn legislation is read as pointing forward to the unblemished firstborn Son of God, whose sacrifice fulfils what the animal offerings could only foreshadow.
The Resurrection-Hope of the Righteous One
Psalm 16:7–11 presents the steadfast confidence of the righteous sufferer, who is ultimately the Lord Jesus Christ himself — the Holy One whose soul the Father would not abandon to Sheol nor allow to see corruption. Working through the psalm's declaration of praise in verse 7, the stability and hope of the psalmist in verses 8–11, and the apostolic interpretation of these verses in Acts 2 and Acts 13, the sermon argues that Christ's bodily resurrection is the very foundation of the resurrection-hope his people now possess. The practical force is twofold: unbelievers are called to repent and believe on Christ, through whom alone sins are forgiven and justification is received; believers are called to heavenly-minded confidence grounded in the word, power, and promises of God.
2LCF Chapter 25 - Of Marriage
The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith chapter 25 offers a concise yet comprehensive definition of marriage as a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman, established by God in creation for companionship, procreation, and the lawful expression of sexual relations. This study works through each paragraph of the confession's chapter on marriage, examining the monogamous nature of marriage, the major purposes for which it was ordained, and the lawful parties who may enter it. The session also draws on Westminster Confession chapters 24, paragraphs 5 and 6, together with Deuteronomy 24, Matthew 5 and 19, and 1 Corinthians 7, to argue that Scripture authorizes divorce on the grounds of porneia and desertion, and that a lawfully divorced innocent party is free to remarry. The Protestant 'permanence view' of marriage is examined and found to be both exegetically deficient and pastorally harmful to innocent parties whom God's own law was designed to protect.
The Freeness of the Priceless Feast, Part 2
Isaiah 55:3–13 grounds the free gospel summons in the covenant of grace secured by Jesus Christ, the greater David and covenant champion. The sure mercies of David — an everlasting covenant made with Christ and all the elect in him — are fulfilled in the resurrection of the Son, as Paul's sermon in Acts 13 makes plain. The response to that summons is fourfold: seek, call, forsake, and return — not as the price of the feast, but as the fruit of regenerating grace. The passage closes with the guarantee that God's word never returns void, that the redeemed go out in joy and peace, and that Christ the second Adam has reversed the curses of Genesis 3, securing an abundant, priceless feast for all who believe.
The Blood of the Unblemished Lamb
What makes the blood of Christ 'precious'? Expounding 1 Peter 1:18–21, this sermon works through Peter's characteristic rhetorical pattern — negation followed by assertion — to establish that no corruptible thing, whether material wealth or old covenant religious observance, can redeem a soul bound under sin and condemnation. The sermon then unfolds why the blood of Christ is precious: because of the dignity of the God-man who shed it, what it infallibly accomplishes in the redemption of the elect, what it cost the Father to give his own Son, and its eternal appointment in the counsel of the triune God before the foundation of the world. Preached in the context of a Lord's Supper service, the sermon closes by examining the typological significance of the unblemished Passover lamb, showing that the holiness of God, the depth of human sinfulness, and the logic of penal substitution each demand a perfectly spotless sacrifice — which Christ alone is and was.
Deuteronomy 14:1-29 - Laws of Death, Diet, and Tithing
Deuteronomy 14 regulates mourning rites, dietary practices, and tithing for Old Covenant Israel — not as arbitrary impositions but as expressions of a holy people set apart by God from the nations around them. The chapter's controlling logic is covenantal identity: because Israel bore the status of God's firstborn son, every dimension of daily life, from the menu to the method of mourning, was to reflect that consecration. The dietary laws, now abrogated under the New Covenant as ceremonial law fulfilled in Christ, nevertheless carry a permanent New Covenant counterpart: the people of God are still to be distinguished from the world in holiness, presenting their bodies as living sacrifices. The tithing section closes the chapter with a call to generous, joyful giving that cares for the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow — a call that carries into the New Covenant era as well.