Theological term
Federal Headship
929 sermons · All terms
Free Grace Baptist Church - September 22, 2019 AM
Acts 10:9–16 presents Peter's vision of the great sheet as more than a curiosity about dietary law — it is a decisive turning point in redemptive history, signaling the formal inclusion of the Gentiles in the covenant promises of God. The sermon works through three particulars of the vision: its occasion (Peter's noon prayer on the housetop), the vision proper (the sheet with clean and unclean animals), and God's explanation ('What God has cleansed you must not call common'), tracing the contrast with Ezekiel 4 to show that where Ezekiel's unclean diet symbolized Israel's defilement among the Gentiles, Peter's vision announces the Gentiles' purification alongside Israel. The exposition addresses the threefold division of the law — moral, ceremonial, and judicial — demonstrating that the food laws were ceremonial and always purposed by God to be abrogated by Christ's fulfillment, with implications for how new covenant Christians navigate Christian liberty, avoid judgmentalism toward one another, and proclaim a gospel that comes to helpless sinners without additions or conditions.
The Past as a Present Reminder
Hebrews 10:32–39 calls suffering believers to recall God's proven faithfulness in former days as the present ground for ongoing endurance. The apostle first rehearses the Hebrew Christians' early trials — public reproach, solidarity with persecuted brothers, and joyful acceptance of plundered possessions — showing that heavenly-mindedness, not stoic willpower, sustained them then and must sustain them now. He then exhorts them not to cast away their confidence, grounding Christian perseverance not in moral grit but in faith in the Son of God who loved and gave himself for his people. The sermon applies this to every believer: remember what God has done, set your hope on the enduring possession in heaven, and press forward by faith rather than drawing back to perdition.
The Warning Against Apostasy
Hebrews 10:26–31 is one of the most pastorally misread warning passages in the New Testament, and this expository sermon works carefully to distinguish the sin of apostasy from the ordinary, ongoing sin of weak believers. The apostate is not a struggling saint who confesses and seeks mercy; he is one who, having made an outward profession of faith, openly and obstinately repudiates Christ — trampling the Son of God underfoot, counting the blood of the covenant a common thing, and insulting the Spirit of grace. The sermon draws on Owen, Calvin, Gill, and Ursinus to establish that apostasy is a total, willful renunciation of the gospel, not any species of sin for which Christ has made atonement. Believers burdened by remaining corruption are urged to distinguish themselves from apostates by the very instinct that drives them to the throne of grace — and to make full use of the means of grace God has appointed to preserve them from the apostasy the passage warns against.
Judah and Tamar
Genesis 38 interrupts the Joseph narrative to focus on Judah, the man through whom the Messianic line would descend — and the portrait is not flattering. Judah marries a Canaanite, fathers wicked sons, withholds Shelah from Tamar in violation of levirate obligation, and solicits what he believes to be a roadside harlot. Yet God, faithful to His covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, protects the seed through Tamar's act of faith and brings forth Perez, the ancestor of David and of the Lord Jesus Christ. The sermon calls hearers to marvel at a grace that saves wretched sinners — not because of their worthiness, but because God always does what He has promised to do.
The Two Builders
Matthew 7:24–29 closes the Sermon on the Mount with a parable that presses every hearer to examine the foundation of their life before God. Both builders hear the words of Christ, but only the wise builder obeys them — and that obedience, rooted not in moral effort but in faith in Christ alone, is the mark that distinguishes genuine discipleship from hollow profession. The foolish builder is not a pagan but a hearer who pays lip service to the Word without submitting to it, a condition Ezekiel 33 and James 1 both diagnose with sobering precision. The sermon calls every listener to repent, believe the gospel, and rest on Christ as the only foundation that will withstand the final storm of God's holy wrath.
The Judgment Seat of Christ
Matthew 7:21–23 is often misread as a warning to believers to produce more good works, but the passage concerns entrance into the kingdom of heaven and exposes the damning error of self-righteousness. The false professors are condemned not because they lacked works but because they rested their hope for acceptance with God on those works rather than on Christ's blood and righteousness — a form of lawlessness that is an assault on the cross. The will of the Father in Matthew 7:21, rightly understood through John 6:28–40, is to believe on the Son whom He sent; justification is by faith alone, received once, and the Sermon on the Mount functions as law to drive sinners to the foot of the cross rather than to self-congratulation.
The Conversion of Saul of Tarsus
Acts 9:1–9 confronts the reader with one of the most dramatic conversions in redemptive history: the sovereign arrest of Saul of Tarsus, the church's most ruthless persecutor, by the risen Lord Jesus Christ. The sermon traces Saul's murderous hostility toward the disciples before examining the divine initiative, interrogation, identification, and instruction Christ brings to bear on the road to Damascus. That Christ identifies himself with his suffering members ('I am Jesus whom you are persecuting') and overcomes Saul's resistance through effectual grace establishes that no sinner stands beyond the reach of sovereign mercy. The sermon closes with a call to repentance grounded in the certainty that the God who conquered the chief of sinners is able and willing to save all who come to Christ.
The Justice of God and the Gospel
Proverbs 17:15 declares that justifying the wicked and condemning the just are alike an abomination to God — yet the gospel does precisely both: God condemned the sinless Christ and justifies ungodly sinners. This sermon works through the theological architecture that vindicates God from any charge of self-contradiction in the gospel, tracing the doctrines of covenant representation and imputation from Genesis through the Prophets and into Paul's argument in Romans 3–5. The three acts of imputation — Adam's sin to all mankind, the elect's sin to Christ, and Christ's righteousness to the elect — are shown to be the biblical answer to the problem Proverbs 17:15 raises, grounding assurance in an alien righteousness received by faith alone.
The Chastening of the Lord
Proverbs 3:11–12 commands God's people not to despise or detest divine chastening, grounding that prohibition in the father-son love that moves God to correct those He has received into His family. Working through the Proverbs passages on correction and then taking up the New Covenant application in Hebrews 12:5–11, this sermon demonstrates that chastisement is not evidence of divine hostility but of divine fatherhood — a necessary instrument of sanctification flowing from sovereign, covenant love. The presence of chastening confirms a believer's legitimacy as an adopted child of God, while its fruit — conformity to Christ and the peaceable fruit of righteousness — far outweighs its momentary pain. Believers are therefore called to receive God's correcting hand with submissive trust, remembering that all things, including affliction, work together for good to those who are the called according to His purpose.
The Call to Faithfulness in Perilous Times
Paul's warning to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:1–9 identifies the gravest threat facing the church as not external persecution but internal corruption — men with a form of godliness who deny its power. The passage is expounded under four headings: the recognition of danger in the last days, the description of godless men marked by secular humanism, materialistic idolatry, and hedonism, the exhortation to avoid such men entirely, and the encouragement that their folly will be exposed as surely as that of Jannes and Jambres before Moses. The sermon calls believers to know the foundational doctrines of Christianity, to conduct themselves worthy of the gospel, and to discriminate carefully about who is permitted to teach — while resting in the confidence that Christ will build his church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Genesis 22:1-24
Genesis 22 presents the testing of Abraham's faith as the pinnacle of the patriarch's walk with God — a command so severe that it required Abraham to march three days to Mount Moriah to offer up Isaac, the son of promise. The narrative is read as dense with typological significance: Abraham foreshadows the Father who gives his only Son, Isaac prefigures Christ who carries his own wood and submits as a willing victim, and the substitutionary ram points forward to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The obedience of Abraham is shown not to establish his righteousness before God but to manifest the validity of the faith already credited to him as righteousness in Genesis 15, consistent with James 2 rightly read against any Roman Catholic scheme of initial faith sustained by subsequent merit. The sermon closes with a call to faithful perseverance under trial, grounded in the confidence that God provides and that Christ has borne what no angel stayed.
Free Grace Baptist Church - June 9, 2019 AM
The Christological unity of Scripture — the truth that the Old Testament prophets testified to Christ by the Spirit of Christ — grounds the believer's hope under suffering and shapes a properly Christocentric hermeneutic. Drawing from 1 Peter 1:10–12, this sermon argues that the Spirit of Christ was personally present in and through the prophets, disclosing the sufferings of Christ and the glories that follow, so that the Old Testament is not Israel-centric but Christ-centric in its ultimate focus. The sermon calls believers to read Scripture not merely for cognitive information but as a supernatural encounter with Christ himself, whose revealed glory transforms the reader into his likeness and sustains eschatological hope in the face of suffering and persecution.
The Profession of Simon Magus
Acts 8:9–13 presents a direct clash between the gospel of Jesus Christ and the sorcery of Simon Magus, who had captivated the whole population of Samaria with his claim to divine greatness. The sermon expounds two movements in the text: the comprehensive grip of false doctrine under Simon, and the liberating power of divine grace through Philip's proclamation of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ. Salvation comes exclusively through faith in Christ — not through a mixture of truth and magic, not through works — and believers' baptism publicly identifies the convert with the triune God while repudiating every former allegiance. The passage is set forth as a demonstration that Christ, enthroned at the right hand of the Father, must reign until all his enemies are made his footstool, which is ground for courage, prayer, and faithful gospel proclamation in every generation.
The Duties of Christian Women
Titus 2:3–5 sets forth concrete duties for older and younger women within the covenant community, grounded not in cultural expectation but in the doctrine of grace. This exposition works through the instructions Paul gives to older women — reverence in conduct, guarded speech, sobriety, and the charge to teach younger women — before examining the cluster of virtues prescribed for younger women: love for husband and children, discretion, chastity, homemaking, goodness, and submission to their own husbands. The complementarian order is defended exegetically from 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 11 and 14, and 1 Peter 3, with creation and fall established as the theological foundation rather than cultural accommodation. The gospel itself is the undergirding motive: women are not saved by fulfilling these duties, but those redeemed by the grace that appeared in Christ are equipped by that same grace to adorn the doctrine of God their Savior in every sphere of life.
The Ministry of Philip in Samaria
Acts 8:5–8 records Philip's preaching ministry in Samaria — a region despised by Israel as racially and religiously impure — and presents it as the deliberate fulfillment of Christ's commission in Acts 1:8 to carry the gospel to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. The sermon traces the historical background of Samaritan alienation from Israel, the fourfold summary of Philip's ministry (his preaching, the response of the crowds, the authenticating miracles, and the resulting joy), and the theological significance of the Spirit's confirmation through Peter and John. Against contemporary debates over racial justice, the sermon argues that the cross of Christ — preached faithfully in his offices as prophet, priest, and king — is the only power that reconciles divided peoples and extends the kingdom of God across ethnic boundaries.
The Good Soldier's Incentives
What motivates a Christian to endure suffering rather than abandon the faith? Expounding 2 Timothy 2:8–13, this sermon identifies three incentives Paul sets before Timothy: the contemplation of Christ in his incarnation and resurrection, the conduct of the Apostle Paul who endured chains as a self-described evildoer for the sake of the elect, and the believer's present and future communion with Christ — dying with him, living with him, and ultimately reigning with him. The sermon closes with a sober examination of the faithful saying in verses 11–13, distinguishing the warning against apostasy from the assurance belonging to the wavering but genuine believer, and connects the Lord's Supper as a divinely appointed means of grace for sustaining the good soldier's contemplation of Christ.
The Extension of Christ's Kingdom
Christ's sovereignty over persecution is the controlling theme of Acts 8:1b–4, where the martyrdom of Stephen triggers a great dispersion that advances the very mission Christ commissioned in Acts 1:8. The sermon traces the programmatic geography of Acts — Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth — and shows that the scattering of the disciples, far from being a setback, was the means by which Christ extended his kingdom. Particular attention is given to Saul of Tarsus as the chief persecutor whose subsequent conversion illustrates that no human opposition can thwart the sovereign purposes of Christ. Hearers are called to pray earnestly for gospel preachers to be raised up, to commit to biblical churchmanship with perseverance, and to hold fast to the confidence that Christ must reign until all his enemies are made his footstool.
Free Grace Baptist Church - April 24, 2019 Bible Study
Genesis 18:1–15 presents the Lord's appearance to Abraham at Mamre, where the promise of Isaac's birth is reiterated — this time directed toward Sarah, who laughs within herself at what she judges a physical impossibility. The study examines the identity of the three visitors (most likely the angel of the Lord and two attendant angels), the exemplary hospitality of Abraham as a model for Christian brotherly love, and the rebuke issued to Sarah's unbelief. The passage pivots on the question of verse 14 — 'Is anything too hard for the Lord?' — and calls believers to ground their confidence not in circumstantial possibility but in the omnipotence of God, whose covenantal promises are not contingent on human capacity.
Free Grace Baptist Church - April 21, 2019 PM
Ephesians 4:7–16 presents the ascended Christ as the sovereign giver of gifts to his church — gifts that are men appointed to the ministry of the Word. This exposition argues that the purpose of those gifts is not to provide an outlet for individual expression but to bring about corporate maturity, doctrinal stability, and Christlikeness among the people of God. Listeners are pressed to examine whether they genuinely value word-based ministry, hold fast to the unity of the faith, and live as model members of Christ's new-creation temple.
The Antithesis between the Upright and the Wicked
Proverbs 29:27 declares a mutual abomination between the upright and the wicked — a reality rooted not in mere personality conflict but in the God-ordained enmity of Genesis 3:15. This sermon traces that antithesis from its origin in the protoevangelium through its characteristics in Proverbs 30:11–14 (rebelliousness, self-righteousness, arrogance, and oppression), and into its New Testament confirmation in John 15 and 1 John 3. Believers are called to respond to a godless generation not with violence or character assassination, but with righteous indignation tempered by tears, faithful parental discipline, proclamation of God's law, and the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Martyrdom of Stephen
Acts 7:54–60 records the martyrdom of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, whose death exhibits divine sustaining grace amid murderous opposition. This exposition traces three movements in the passage: the blessedness of Stephen as the triune God fills, illumines, and comforts him; the murderous rage of the Sanhedrin, whose violent reaction to his vision of the exalted Christ exposes their guilt and apostasy; and the death of Stephen, whose dying prayers — for Christ to receive his spirit and to forgive his murderers — mirror the death of the Lord Jesus and further corroborate his entire defense. The sermon closes with the conversion of Saul of Tarsus in Acts 9 as God's answer to Stephen's intercessory prayer, and with a call to trust Christ as the one who hears prayer, forgives sin, and grants access to God.
Free Grace Baptist Church - April 10, 2019 Bible Study
Genesis 17:15–27 is examined within the framework of the Abrahamic covenant, with particular attention to the declaration concerning Isaac, the obedience of Abraham, and the theological relationship between circumcision and baptism. The study draws a careful distinction between the covenant of circumcision — which governed membership in Old Covenant Israel by a works principle (Genesis 17:14) — and the covenant of grace, arguing with Nehemiah Coxe that the two must not be conflated. Colossians 2:11–12 is then opened to demonstrate that spiritual circumcision (regeneration) is the antitype of physical circumcision, and that baptism is the retrospective outward sign of that inward grace already received through faith — a sign that presupposes faith and therefore cannot legitimately be administered to infants.
Stephen's Defense, Part 9
Acts 7:51–53 records the climactic conclusion of Stephen's defense before the Sanhedrin, in which he reverses the charge of blasphemy against Moses and the temple by indicting the council itself for idolatry. Each epithet Stephen employs — 'stiff-necked,' 'uncircumcised in heart and ears,' and 'always resisting the Holy Spirit' — is drawn from the Old Testament vocabulary of Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and the Psalms, showing that the council stands in unbroken solidarity with the idolatrous generations before them. The pinnacle of their guilt is the betrayal and murder of the Just One, the Messiah foretold by the prophets, whose coming was the very purpose of the law and the temple they claimed to defend. The sermon calls hearers to recognize that the law of Moses and the temple of God both point inexorably to Christ, and that to reject him is to break the law one professes to uphold.
Free Grace Baptist Church - April 3, 2019 Bible Study
Genesis 17 presents the formal ratification of the covenant of circumcision with Abraham and his descendants, distinguished carefully from the covenant of grace revealed within it. The sermon traces the progressive enhancement of God's promises — seed, fruitfulness, kings, land, and the covenant formula 'I will be their God' — while insisting that the covenant of circumcision operates simultaneously on physical and spiritual levels without the two being conflated. Drawing on Galatians 3–5 and Nehemiah Cox, the exposition argues that to identify the covenant of circumcision with the covenant of grace is an exegetical misstep that yields infant baptism and mingles the law principle with the grace principle in a way the Apostle Paul expressly forbids.
Stephen's Defense, Part 8
Stephen's defense before the Sanhedrin turns on a single argument: the tabernacle and temple were never ends in themselves but types pointing forward to Jesus Christ, so the Sanhedrin's attachment to the temple above the one the temple signified exposes them as the true anti-temple party. Working through Acts 7:46–50 against the background of the Davidic Covenant in 2 Samuel 7, the sermon traces how David's desire to build a house for God is fulfilled typically in Solomon and ultimately in the Lord Jesus Christ, who as the Son of God builds the church as the true dwelling place of God Most High. The testimony of Isaiah 66:1–2 then seals the point: God who fills heaven and earth cannot be confined to any man-made structure, yet this same transcendent God condescends to dwell with the poor and contrite in spirit — a reality now fully realized in new covenant worship through Christ.
Stephen's Defense, Part 7
The tabernacle and temple of Israel were not ends in themselves but types pointing forward to the Lord Jesus Christ as the true dwelling place of God with his people. Expounding Acts 7:44–45, this sermon traces Stephen's defense against the charge of being anti-Temple by surveying the tabernacle in the wilderness (Exodus 25–40), the Levitical sacrificial system as the God-ordained means of approaching a holy God, and the conquest of Canaan under Joshua as the triumph of Yahweh's strength over Israel's enemies. The central application is that sinful men may dwell with God only through the blood of Jesus Christ — the substance to which every tabernacle, temple, sacrifice, and conquest pointed — and that the same sovereign God who drove out the Canaanites is the God who mortifies sin in his people by his Spirit.
Free Grace Baptist Church - March 20, 2019 Bible Study
Genesis 16 exposes the impatience of Sarai and Abram as they resort to human ingenuity — surrogate motherhood through Hagar — to secure the seed God had promised rather than waiting upon him to fulfill it in his own time and means. The passage is set against the backdrop of Genesis 15, where God had already specified that the heir would come supernaturally from Abram's own body, making their scheme not merely socially problematic but a failure of faith in the very word of God. Yet the same chapter that records their faithlessness also records God's faithfulness: the angel of the Lord meets the fleeing Hagar, names her unborn son, and promises a multitude of descendants — a display of divine common grace extended even to the non-elect. The exhortation is to believe the promises of God, use lawful means, and refuse to substitute human engineering for patient trust in divine sovereignty.
Stephen's Defense, Part 6
Acts 7:37–43 records Stephen's appeal to the wilderness generation as the climax of his defense before the Sanhedrin, demonstrating that Israel's persistent idolatry — not Stephen's teaching — represents the true rejection of Moses and of God. Stephen cites Deuteronomy 18:15 to show that Moses himself predicted the coming of Christ, the prophet like Moses, so that the council's rejection of Jesus is simultaneously a rejection of Moses and of the living God who sent him. The sermon traces Israel's descent from refusing Moses' word, to fashioning the golden calf, to God judicially giving them over to worship the host of heaven, drawing a direct line from Exodus 32 through Amos 5 to the very council Stephen addresses. The practical summons is double: flee idolatry in all its forms, whether tangible or inward, and flee to the God who, even in righteous judgment, remains ready to pardon.
The Christian Mother
Proverbs 31:28–30 sets forth the fear of the Lord as the defining virtue of a godly mother — the root from which her influence, authority, and responsibility toward her children flow. The sermon works through four observations: her condition before God (saved by grace and walking in the fear of Yahweh), her God-given influence over her children, her God-given authority over her children (grounded in the fifth commandment), and her responsibility to instruct, set an example, and discipline them. Fathers are called to honor and encourage their wives, children to express gratitude, and mothers to persevere in a calling that is difficult, often thankless, and of the utmost importance.
Stephen's Defense, Part 5
Stephen's defense before the Sanhedrin in Acts 7:30–36 draws on the call and rejection of Moses to demonstrate that the very history Israel appeals to condemns their rejection of Jesus. The sermon expounds six attributes of God revealed in the burning bush — God as revelatory, covenantal, holy, compassionate, delivering, and the self-existent I Am — showing that Moses received a theophany of the pre-incarnate Christ in Gentile territory, dismantling the council's temple-centered objections. Moses functions as a deliberate type of Christ: called by God, rejected by the people, and authenticated by signs and wonders. The sermon closes by applying the typology directly: as Moses was sent to deliver Israel from earthly bondage, Christ is sent to deliver sinners from the bondage of sin, and the call to come to him is extended to all who are weary and heavy laden.