Theological term
New Covenant
344 sermons · All terms
Positive Law vs. Moral Law: Understanding The Sabbath
The fourth commandment contains both a moral element and a positive-law element. The moral element — that one day in seven is owed to God in worship — is binding on all creatures by nature. The positive element — which specific day — is determined by the covenant one stands in: Saturday under the old covenant, Sunday under the new, the latter established by Christ's resurrection on the first day of the week. This distinction answers why the church's day of worship changed without abandoning the creational obligation to Sabbath rest.
Redemption, Restoration, and Righteousness
Isaiah 61 presents the anointed Messiah declaring his own mission of redemption, restoration, and righteousness for his people. The sermon works through all eleven verses, arguing that Christ alone — anointed by the Spirit without measure as prophet, priest, and king — fulfils the role foreshadowed by every Old Covenant anointing and reverses the covenantal curses of Deuteronomy 28. His saving work springs up the church, the true Zion, from the ruins of Old Covenant desolation, and clothes her not in her own merit but in the imputed righteousness of the Mediator. The sermon closes with the church's response of rejoicing and a call to the unbeliever to believe on Christ and receive everlasting life.
The Fourth Commandment, Part 3
Hebrews 4:9's use of the word 'Sabbatismos' — Sabbath-keeping as a practice to be observed — anchors the argument that a weekly Sabbath rest remains binding on the New Covenant people of God. The sermon traces the theological rationale for the day-change from Saturday to Sunday through the resurrection of Christ, arguing that the Son's rest from the work of new creation mirrors the Father's rest from the work of creation. Three alleged anti-Sabbatarian texts — Romans 14, Galatians 4, and Colossians 2 — are examined in turn and shown to address Jewish ceremonial calendar observances, not the moral fourth commandment. The burden of proof, the speaker argues, lies with those who would remove one commandment from the Decalogue, not with those who keep all ten intact.
The Fourth Commandment, Part 2
What does Jesus's ministry teach about the continuing obligation of the Sabbath commandment, and how does the resurrection determine which day Christians must observe? This study works through the Fourth Commandment (Deuteronomy 5:12–15) in its New Covenant application, examining Christ's relation to the law in Matthew 5:17–20, his correction of Pharisaic Sabbath-keeping in Matthew 12, and the testimony of all four Gospel accounts that the resurrection occurred on the first day of the week. The moral principle of one day in seven devoted to God is shown to be trans-covenantal and perpetual, while the positive-law element — which day — shifts from Saturday to Sunday with the resurrection of Christ, establishing what the 1689 London Baptist Confession calls the Christian Sabbath.
2LCF Chapter 22 - Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day, Part 1
The abiding validity of the Fourth Commandment is defended through a biblical theology of the Sabbath that traces the institution from creation through the old covenant. The sermon argues that Sabbath rest is grounded not in the Mosaic economy alone but in the creation ordinance of Genesis 2 and the redemption of Exodus, making it binding upon all humanity — not Jews only — as Christ himself teaches in Mark 2:27. The positive and moral character of the commandment is distinguished from its ceremonial and positive elements, with the day change to the Lord's Day deferred to the following session. Hearers are called to receive the Sabbath as the gift it is declared to be in Isaiah 58, not as a Judaizing imposition.
2LCF Chapter 4 - Of Creation
2LCF Chapter 4 expounds the doctrine of creation across three paragraphs, addressing what creation is, the triune God who creates, the nature and dignity of man as image-bearer, and the covenantal framework that gives creation its redemptive telos. The sermon argues that creation ex nihilo (qualified as God bringing forth all that is not God) and creation ex materia are distinct but complementary categories, and that divine immutability is preserved because no change or new perfection accrues to God through the act of creating. Ultimately, creation serves as the theatre within which God executes His eternal decree of redemption, bringing a multitude of elect sinners to glory through the perfect work of Jesus Christ.
The Hope of the Nations
Psalm 67 is a missionary psalm in which the psalmist first petitions God on behalf of the church — for mercy, blessing, and the communion of God's presence — and then turns those blessings outward, praying that the nations would be saved, become worshipers of the true God, and come under His righteous rule. The Aaronic blessing of Numbers 6 stands behind verse 1, and the 'that' of verse 2 reveals the logic of all divine blessing: the church is enriched by God in order to become a conduit of His saving way to the ends of the earth. The sermon closes by calling the congregation to pray with the confident expectation of verses 6 and 7 — that God shall bless His people and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him — tying the psalm's vision directly to Christ's Great Commission.
The Faithful Christian Mother
Proverbs 31:28–30 grounds this sermon on the faithful Christian mother in four doctrinal categories: her condition before God, her influence over her children, her authority over her children, and her responsibility toward her children. The fear of the Lord that marks the virtuous woman is not a natural disposition but a new-covenant gift of sovereign grace, as Jeremiah 32:40 and Romans 3:18 together demonstrate. Because salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, the mother's instruction, example, discipline, and love flow from a regenerate heart rather than from moralism. Mothers are exhorted to maintain dependence on God, to ground child-rearing in Scripture rather than cultural trends, and to persevere in a calling that is high, demanding, and ultimately accountable to God.
Hope in the Lord - Psalm 131
Psalm 131 sets before the believer a threefold portrait of the soul at rest: what pride refuses to do, what humble trust actively does, and what Israel is therefore commanded to do. David's calm and quieted soul — like a weaned child beside its mother — is not the product of self-will but of covenant hope directed toward Yahweh and his promises, ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the great Son of David. The sermon closes with three warnings against losing that hope: refusing to humble the heart, expecting what God has not promised, and fixing hope on anything other than God through Christ.
Live Stream - April 27, 2025
Psalm 131 is a three-verse psalm of ascent in which David describes three things he did not do — lift up his heart in pride, raise his eyes in defiance, or occupy himself with matters too great and too marvelous — and one thing he did do: calm and quiet his soul like a weaned child beside its mother, in a silence of trust rather than fear. The sermon expounds all three verses, identifying hope in the Lord — grounded in who Yahweh is and in the promises of the new covenant secured by Jesus Christ, the faithful Son of David — as the active disposition that produces that inner calm. Three closing applications warn that we will lose our hope if we refuse to humble ourselves, if we expect what God has not promised, and if we place our hope in anything or anyone other than God through Jesus Christ.
Wilderness Wanderings
Deuteronomy 2–3 records Moses rehearsing the wilderness wanderings for the second generation of Israel, poised on the plains of Moab before the conquest of Canaan. God's multinational sovereignty is on display as He assigns territorial boundaries to Edom, Moab, and Ammon, then delivers Sihon and Og into Israel's hands — demonstrating that the God of Israel governs all nations, not merely His covenant people. The historical review functions both as a warning against repeating the unbelief of the first generation and as an encouragement to trust the same God who preserved Israel through forty years of wilderness trudging. New Covenant believers are called to the same posture: to dwell on the record of God's faithfulness in redemptive history so as to remain steadfast through present trials.
Deuteronomy 1
Deuteronomy 1 opens Moses' first address to the second generation of Israel on the plains of Moab, a historical review designed to prepare the people for the conquest of the promised land. Moses rehearses four episodes: God's command to advance from Horeb, the appointment of judges, the rebellion at Kadesh Barnea rooted in unbelief, and the punishment that fell on the first generation. The central diagnostic is verse 32 — 'you did not believe the Lord your God' — which exposes unbelief as the taproot of Israel's grumbling, refusal, and covenant faithlessness. The sermon calls the New Covenant congregation to dwell on this history so as to be steadfast in the future, trusting the same God whose promises are yes and amen in Christ.
Introduction to Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy is introduced as the second giving of the law — not a new law, but a restatement of the Sinai covenant addressed to the second generation of Israel standing on the plains of Moab, poised to enter the land of promise. The session surveys Mosaic authorship, the book's place in the Pentateuch, its historical context, its broad outline (God's activity, law, covenant, and servants), and its major theological emphases: reminder, transition, exhortation, and instruction in theology proper, the promise of land, and the worship of God. The study concludes with the typological significance of Deuteronomy for the New Testament, tracing how the book prefigures Christ as prophet, priest, king, and true Israel, and how its promise of new covenant in chapter 30 points forward to what Jeremiah 31 and the gospel make explicit.
The Regulations for Life in Canaan
Numbers 32–36 closes the book with regulations governing Israel's entry into Canaan: the Transjordanian tribal allotments, the itinerary of the wilderness journey, the boundaries of the land, Levitical cities, cities of refuge, and the inheritance rights of female heirs. The legislation on cities of refuge anchors a sustained exposition of the distinction between murder and manslaughter, grounded in the Noahic covenant of Genesis 9:6, and carries forward the biblical case for capital punishment as a perpetual civil obligation. The study closes by tracing Christ through Numbers — as the guiding presence, the compassionate shepherd, the greater Joshua, the great high priest, and the brazen serpent lifted up for the life of the world — and applies the wilderness pattern to the new covenant people who must persevere through present affliction toward an eternal Canaan.
The War Against the Midianites
Numbers 31 records God's command to execute vengeance upon the Midianites for their role in seducing Israel into idolatry and apostasy at Baal-peor — a crime instigated by Balaam that caused 24,000 Israelites to perish under divine judgment. The study argues that the severity of Moses' orders upon return from battle is not arbitrary cruelty but the just execution of God's judicial wrath against specific criminal offenders. Three passages from Deuteronomy (chapters 13, 20, and 21) are examined to demonstrate that Israel's normal wartime ethic was governed by humane principles that distinguished her from surrounding nations, underscoring that the Midianite war was a unique act of covenantal vengeance rather than a general template for holy war. The session closes by grounding these difficult texts in the consistency of God's justice, goodness, and faithfulness in bringing his people to the land of promise.
The Conversion of Matthew
Matthew 9:9-13 presents the sovereign call of Christ to Matthew, a tax collector despised in first-century Jewish society as a collaborator with Gentile oppressors and a companion of sinners. The sermon traces three movements in the passage: the authoritative call that produced immediate discipleship, the feast Matthew threw to honor Christ and evangelize his former associates, and Christ's threefold response to the Pharisees' complaint — identifying himself as a physician to the sick, appealing to Hosea 6:6 against mere external religion, and declaring his mission to call sinners to repentance. The central application is that no sinner is too notorious to be received by Christ, and Matthew's immediate rising and following is held up as the pattern for genuine repentance and faith.
The Law Concerning Offerings and Vows
Numbers 28–30 presents the divinely regulated calendar of offerings and the law governing vows in Old Covenant Israel, both of which underscore that Israel was not merely a migrating people but a covenant community ordered by the worship of God. The offerings — daily, Sabbath, monthly, and the seven yearly feasts — served to remind Israel of their redemptive history, promote joy and community, resist idolatry, and ensure rest in God's presence, all of which find their fulfillment in Christ. The law of vows in chapter 30 teaches the sanctity of truth, the binding nature of solemn commitments made before God, and the complementarian order in which a woman's vow was subject to the authority of her father or husband. Together these chapters call the New Covenant believer to faithful, regulated worship, truthful speech, and lives of sanctification that flow from justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
Ask FGBC - July 2024 Podcast with Pastors Butler and Kirkpatrick
Two pastors work through a wide-ranging set of questions submitted by listeners, covering the Reformed doctrine of the will, repentance and faith, holy days, Christian political engagement, believers' baptism, the New Covenant, forgiveness of unrepentant offenders, ongoing confession of sin, witnessing to homosexual neighbors, the Sabbath shift from Saturday to Sunday, the day of the Lord, the beatific vision, common grace, saving versus temporary faith, and the holy walk. Throughout, the answers are grounded in the 1689 London Baptist Confession and exposit the relevant biblical texts, consistently distinguishing the Reformed Baptist position from Arminian, dispensationalist, and paedobaptist alternatives. The session serves as accessible catechetical instruction for believers at all stages while modeling how confessional Reformed Baptist theology addresses both doctrinal and practical questions.
2LCF Chapter 29 - Of Baptism, Part 3 - Paedobaptist Arguments
Believers' baptism rests on the covenant distinction between Israel after the flesh and the spiritual seed of Abraham, and no paedobaptist argument survives the scrutiny of those covenantal boundaries. This third study in the confession's chapter on baptism works through six major paedobaptist arguments — from the Abrahamic covenant, household baptisms, federal holiness, and more — and answers each from Scripture, the 1689 confession, and Nehemiah Cox's seventeenth-century Baptist covenant theology. A question-and-answer period then addresses practical matters: rebaptism after sprinkling or infant immersion, communicating credo-baptist convictions to paedobaptist family and elders, prerequisites for baptism, minimum age, and the necessity of immersion as the sign that answers the thing signified.
2LCF Chapter 29 - Of Baptism, Part 2
Credobaptism rests on five mutually reinforcing theological arguments: covenant theology, federal headship, the doctrine of salvation, the clarity of New Testament revelation, and the regulative principle of worship. This session (Part 2 of a study on 2LCF Chapter 29) works through the final three arguments, demonstrating from Romans 6, Acts 2, Acts 8–9, Galatians 3, and 1 Corinthians 10 that baptism signifies union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, and therefore belongs only to those who actually possess that union. The session closes by showing that infant sprinkling not only lacks any express divine command but positively contradicts the explicit command to baptize believers only — an inconsistency that even notable paedo-baptist writers (Owen, Calvin, Matthew Henry) expose in their own defenses of the regulative principle of worship.
2LCF Chapter 29 - Of Baptism, Part 1
Reformed Baptists administer baptism only to professing believers — but why? This confession study works through 2LCF Chapter 29 on baptism by examining the two foundational theological arguments that undergird credobaptism: covenant theology and federal headship. The covenant of grace and the new covenant are shown to be identical in substance, not merely different administrations of one covenant, meaning that only regenerate, believing covenant members are proper recipients of the covenant sign. The argument from federal headship reinforces this conclusion: since baptism signifies union with Christ as covenant head, it cannot rightly be administered to those still under the federal headship of Adam.
Baptism - Shannon
Baptism is an ordinance of the New Covenant ordained by Jesus Christ, administered by immersion to those who actually profess repentance, faith, and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. Drawing from chapter 29 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, this administration of the ordinance situates believer's baptism within the broader Reformed confessional tradition, noting the Baptists' deliberate alignment with Presbyterian and Congregationalist Brethren on the doctrines of justification, the Trinity, and much else, while differing on the proper subjects and mode of baptism. The outward sign of immersion into water visibly expresses Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, grounded in Romans 6, as the candidate publicly professes faith in Christ alone for salvation.
The Salvation of Sinners on Pentecost
Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:22–42) declares the life, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus Christ as the exclusive ground of salvation, and calls sinners to repentance and faith. The sermon examines what genuine repentance means — a change of mind inseparable from faith, not a prior moral reformation — and argues that baptism is the sign of what God has already accomplished internally, not the instrument of forgiveness. Acts 2:39 is addressed directly against paedobaptist appeals, with the promise of the Spirit shown to belong to all who are effectually called, not to the physical infants of believers. The sermon closes with an exhortation to follow the Pentecost pattern: preach the gospel, baptize disciples, and teach them in the church.
Of the Duties of the Priests and Levites
Numbers 18–19 belongs to a literary unit stretching from chapters 16 through 19, all of which works to vindicate Aaron's God-ordained priesthood in the aftermath of Korah's rebellion. Chapter 18 defines the distinct duties and the provision of both priests and Levites, while chapter 19 supplies the purification rites that answer Israel's terrified cry in chapter 17 — 'shall we all utterly die?' — by providing a lawful way of drawing near to a holy God. The regulative principle of worship stands at the centre of these chapters: God alone determines who may approach Him, by what means, and under what conditions, and the death penalties attached to violations are not capricious but reflect the consuming holiness of the Lord. These Old Covenant arrangements point forward to the Lord Jesus Christ, the great High Priest who is also the Lamb, the one who both provides atonement and promotes and protects true worship under the New Covenant.
Ask FGBC #22: What is the New Covenant in the Reformed Baptist view?
The New Covenant in Reformed Baptist theology is identified as the historical expression of the covenant of grace, ratified in the blood of Christ and offering salvation to God's elect through faith in Jesus Christ. Unlike many Paedo-Baptist positions that locate the covenant of grace in the Abrahamic or Mosaic covenants, the Reformed Baptist view holds that only the New Covenant is that historical expression, with the earlier covenants serving as types and shadows pointing forward to it. Dispensationalism, by contrast, structures redemptive history around distinct divine dealings with Jews and Gentiles, tends to resist the theological covenant framework of redemption, works, and grace as extra-biblical categories, and anchors its New Covenant reading in a literalistic hermeneutic. Jeremiah 31, Hebrews 8 and 10, and the institution of the Lord's Supper together ground the Reformed Baptist insistence that the New Covenant begins with Christ's death and resurrection.
The Requirements for Religious Life
Numbers 15 interrupts the narrative of Israel's rebellion in chapters 11–14 with renewed covenant obligations — laws of offerings, provisions for unintentional sin, and the command to wear tassels. The placement is deliberate: faithfulness to God's ordained means of grace is the proper remedy for the kind of corporate collapse just witnessed. The sermon traces how God's judgment on one generation does not exhaust His covenant mercy, and draws a typological line from Mosaic sacrifice and priesthood through to the once-for-all offering of Christ and the believer's advocate before the Father.
The Requirements for Priesthood and Sacrifice
Leviticus 21–22 sets out strict requirements for both the priests who offer sacrifice and the animals brought to the altar: wholeness, purity, and freedom from defect. These ceremonial regulations are not arbitrary exclusions but typological anticipations of the one perfect High Priest and the one perfect sacrifice that God himself would provide in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The sermon works through the four sections of the passage — practical restrictions on priests, physical requirements for priests, regulations concerning priestly food, and physical requirements for sacrificial animals — before turning to Hebrews 7–10 to show how Christ fulfills and surpasses everything the Levitical system could only shadow. The conclusion calls the congregation to the Lord's Supper with eyes fixed not on themselves but on the one who offered himself once for all and sat down.
The Complaint of the People
Numbers 11 records the complaint of Israel in the wilderness — a sin that provokes divine judgment, exposes the limits of Moses as covenant mediator, and points forward to the burden-bearing Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost. The chapter is not a collection of independent narratives but a unified account of complaint (vv. 1–15), the appointment of seventy elders (vv. 16–30), and the execution of God's judgment (vv. 31–35). Israel's craving for meat is not mere hunger but a rejection of Yahweh as their God — an idolatrous longing for Egypt that God answers with poetic justice. The passage calls the new-covenant people of God to replace grumbling with gratitude, recognizing that God is to be valued for his own sake, not merely for what he provides.
Departure from Sinai
Numbers 10:11–36 records Israel's long-awaited departure from Sinai, the first movement of a covenant community organized around the visible presence of God. The passage is examined under three headings: the ordered departure of the tribes, Moses' invitation to Hobab as an exercise of providential wisdom, and the petitionary prayers at departure and rest that frame the entire march. The sermon draws out a sustained tension between the ideal covenant life depicted in the legislation of Exodus and Leviticus and the realistic failure narrated immediately in Numbers 11–12, pressing the parallel to New Covenant believers who are fickle yet sustained by a faithful God and the advocacy of Jesus Christ.
Ask FGBC #10: Why should only believers be baptized?
This Q&A episode addresses the Reformed Baptist argument that only professing believers are proper subjects of baptism. Drawing on the distinction between moral law and positive law, and grounding baptism firmly in the New Covenant rather than the Abrahamic covenant, the speaker argues that circumcision was an ordinance tied to a specific historical covenant now abrogated, and that its recipient-list cannot be transferred to baptism. The episode also traces the historical development of paedobaptism from pre-Reformation sacerdotalism to the covenantal argument codified in the Westminster Confession.