Theological term
Propitiation
216 sermons · All terms
The LORD's Help in the Day of Trouble
Psalm 20 presents the prayer and confidence of the covenant people on behalf of their king going into battle, but its deeper register is the church's intercession for Christ — the true David — as he undertakes his redemptive mission. The sermon works through two movements: the petitions of verses 1–5 (the presence of trouble, the place of help, the provision of grace, and the response of joy) and the confidence of verses 6–9 (grounded in the Lord's salvation of his anointed, contrasted sharply with those who trust in chariots and horses). The expositor draws out the prophetic significance of the psalm, showing that what the old covenant church prayed for before the first advent is answered in the resurrection, ascension, and session of Christ, and applies the psalm's stark contrast between trusters in earthly strength and trusters in the name of the Lord to every hearer's standing before God on the day of judgment.
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 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.
The Gospel Committed to the Apostle Paul
1 Timothy 1:15–17 contains one of five 'faithful sayings' in the Pastoral Epistles, and Paul deploys it here to contrast the life-giving gospel with the idle speculations of the false teachers troubling the church at Ephesus. The sermon works through three elements: the faithful saying as a standard confession received and guarded by the church; the glorious content of that saying — the incarnation of the Son and his effectual, definite work to save sinners; and the merciful application illustrated in Paul himself, who as the chief of sinners functions as a pattern of Christ's longsuffering for all who will believe. The doxology of verse 17 demonstrates that rightly understood soteriology issues in worship, and believers are called to keep this faithful saying at the centre of their hearts and to press it upon the unconverted.
The Courage of the Righteous One
Psalm 11 presents the righteous man — supremely the Lord Jesus Christ — facing the temptation to abdicate his calling when wicked enemies ready their arrows and the foundations of moral order appear destroyed. The sermon expounds two movements: the temptation to flee (vv. 1–3) and the fortification found in contemplating God's sovereignty, omniscience, and justice (vv. 4–7). Because Christ steadfastly set his face toward Jerusalem and drank the cup of divine wrath to its dregs in the place of his people, believers have every reason to resist the same temptation to cowardice and unbelief, and to stand firm in the Lord.
The Dominion of the Incarnate Son
Psalm 8 is not merely a meditation on creation but a messianic prophecy concerning the dominion of the incarnate Son of God. The sermon traces the psalm's double register — the glory of God manifest in the created order and the glory of God manifest in the incarnation — grounding that interpretation in the two New Testament passages where Jesus and the Apostle Paul explicitly apply Psalm 8 to Christ: Matthew 21 and Hebrews 2. The exaltation of the God-man at the right hand of the Father, his conquest of the devil through death, and his propitiation for the sins of his people are shown to be the true fulfillment of the dominion language of verses 4–8. Believers are exhorted to silence the enemy's accusations against them by invoking the blood and righteousness of Christ, which is the ground of both justification and assurance.
The Ratification of the Old Covenant
Exodus 24:1–8 records the ratification of the Old Covenant at Sinai through blood sacrifice, a mediator, and the sworn fidelity of the people — all of which anticipate and are surpassed by the New Covenant inaugurated in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Old Covenant is identified not as an administration of the covenant of grace but as a covenant of works, in which Israel's standing depended upon their own obedience: 'all that the Lord has commanded we will do.' The New Covenant contrasts sharply: Christ, the true Israel of God, fulfills every covenantal obligation in the place of his people, so that the ground of the believer's standing before God is not their performance but his finished work. The sermon closes with a practical call to live at the foot of Calvary rather than at the foot of Sinai, resisting the legal temptation to ground either justification or sanctification in personal obedience.
The Mission of the Son of God
John 1:29 presents the whole mission of the incarnate Son of God in a single declaration: 'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.' This sermon expounds the Baptist's announcement as a statement loaded with Old Covenant freight — the sacrificial system, the Day of Atonement, and the Servant Songs of Isaiah — all converging on the one unblemished Lamb who bears sin to the cross and removes it through substitutionary atonement. The scope of 'the world' is shown to exclude universalism while affirming that Christ's atoning work reaches every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. The sermon closes with a theological account of believers' baptism as the external sign of the internal grace received through union with Christ in his death and resurrection.
The Appearance of Christ to Mary
John 20:11–18 records the appearance of the risen Christ to Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb — the first resurrection appearance in John's Gospel. The sermon expounds three movements: Mary's examination of the tomb, the presence of the Lord, and the word of the Lord. The positioning of the two angels at the head and feet of where Christ lay is argued to be a deliberate theological echo of the cherubim over the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant, signifying that the tomb itself is the antitype of the place of propitiation — the locus of atonement accomplished by Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. The sermon closes with exhortations to believe in Christ as the sole mercy seat for sinners, to seek Him through His Word and ordinances when His presence seems distant, and to rest in Him as the elder brother who intercedes at the right hand of the Father by the Spirit.
The Confirmation of His Death
John 19:31–37 records the confirmation of Christ's death by Roman soldiers and the apostle John, providing decisive historical and theological testimony against any swoon theory or denial of His true humanity. The soldiers' breaking of the legs of the other condemned men — but not of Jesus, who was already dead — and the piercing of His side with a spear fulfills two strands of Old Testament prophecy: the unbroken bones of the Passover lamb (Exodus 12:46; Numbers 9:12) and the piercing of Israel's Messiah (Zechariah 12:10). John's eyewitness testimony is given with a stated evangelistic purpose — 'that you may believe' — grounding the gospel call in verified historical fact. The sermon closes with an exhortation to confident, prayer-filled gospel proclamation on the basis of Christ's finished, sovereign work of redemption.
The Crucifixion of Christ, Part 4
The sixth saying of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross — 'It is finished' (John 19:30) — is not a cry of defeat but a declaration of completed victory. The single Greek word tetelestai, a perfect tense verb signifying a past completed action with abiding present results, encompasses the fulfillment of all Old Testament Scripture, the completion of Christ's earthly suffering, the full accomplishment of the Father's will, and the definitive salvation of his people. The sermon works through the typological witness of the law (Passover, Day of Atonement, the bronze serpent, the sacrificial system), the prophetic witness of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the Psalms, showing that Christ's cry from the cross brings every shadow and promise to its intended end. The application presses the finished work as the sole ground of justification, assurance, peace with God, and security against every accusation — calling both believer and unbeliever to look to Christ alone and live.
The Crucifixion of Christ, Part 3
John 19:28–29 records the fifth of the seven sayings of Christ from the cross: 'I thirst.' This exposition examines Christ's sovereign knowledge that all things were accomplished, the fulfillment of Old Testament Scripture — particularly Psalm 69 — in his cry, and the significance of the sour wine offered on hyssop. The sermon argues that Christ's thirst demonstrates both his true humanity and the completion of his redemptive mission, and calls both believers and unbelievers to come boldly to the throne of the sympathetic Savior who drained the cup of divine wrath on behalf of his people.
The Crucifixion of Christ, Part 2
The crucifixion scene in John 19:23–27 contains two theologically freighted details: the seamless tunic cast for by lot, and Christ's provision for his mother from the cross. The tunic, described in terms that evoke the high-priestly garments of the Old Covenant, calls the reader to see Christ functioning as the perfect, perpetual high priest whose once-for-all sacrifice accomplishes what Leviticus 16 could only foreshadow. The division of his garments fulfills Psalm 22:18 exactly as God predetermined, underscoring that the cross was never plan B. The sermon concludes by pressing four implications of the gospel: substitutionary atonement, justification by faith alone, the reordering of priorities at the foot of the cross, and the binary demand that every hearer either look to Christ in faith or remain under divine wrath.
The Crucifixion of Christ
How did it come to pass that the only holy, harmless, and undefiled man who ever lived was led out to be crucified between two criminals? John 19:16–24 answers on two levels: on the surface, the wickedness of men — Pilate's cowardice, the Sanhedrin's envy, the multitudes' manipulation — and beneath it, the sovereign, predetermined purpose of God who sent His Son to be the Lamb of God, the substitute for sinners. The sermon traces the location at Golgotha as the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15, the charge written by Pilate as an unwitting confession of Christ's kingship, and the conversion of the dying thief as the paradigm case of saving faith — seeing nothing but a bloodied, dying man on a cross and confessing Him as Lord of a kingdom.
A Vision of the High and Lofty One
Isaiah 6:1–7 presents the prophet's visionary encounter with the enthroned Lord — holy, holy, holy — and his subsequent cleansing by a coal from the altar. This sermon works through five movements in the passage: the introductory contrast between dying earthly kings and the eternal High King of Heaven; the exemplary posture of the seraphim before the divine majesty; the superlative holiness, glorious titles, and unbounded presence of the Lord of hosts; Isaiah's fitting confession of his own uncleanness; and the gracious divine initiative in purification, which anticipates the definite atoning work of Christ. The congregation is called to approach the living God with the humility of Isaiah and the seraphim, confident that the same sovereign who commissioned his prophet will fill the whole earth with his glory through the proclamation of the gospel.
CTF 2025 - Session 8 – Q&A Panel
A Q&A panel from a theology conference on the doctrine of God addresses questions arising from the preceding lectures on classical theism. Three theologians field questions on divine impassibility (including whether God can be grieved), the eternal decree and the covenant of redemption, divine aseity and the Son's relationship to the Father, the nature of time in the eternal state, the role of philosophy and natural theology in arriving at the classical doctrine of God, and whether genuine evil exists within God's sovereign economy. The discussion throughout presses for formulations of doctrine that protect divine simplicity, immutability, and impassibility while preserving the integrity of biblical language and confessional categories.
The Resurrection and Justification
Romans 4:25 binds the death and resurrection of Christ together as twin pillars of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Christ was delivered up because of the offenses of his people — bearing the substitutionary curse that divine justice demanded — and was raised because of their justification, the resurrection serving as the Father's public testimony that satisfaction had been rendered and righteousness secured. The sermon works through four reasons why Paul links the resurrection to justification: the resurrection declared Christ to be the Son of God with power, testified that his sacrifice was accepted, confirmed that satisfaction was rendered, and marked the completion of redemption and the inauguration of Christ's present session. Believers are called to rest their entire confidence for standing before God on this finished work, and the unconverted are urged to confess and believe in the risen Lord Jesus.
The Example of the Savior, Part 2
Philippians 2:7 sets forth Christ's incarnation as the supreme argument against selfish ambition and conceit. This expository sermon works through four statements in the verse — Christ made himself of no reputation, took the form of a bondservant, came in the likeness of men, and was found in appearance as a man — with careful attention to the kenotic controversy, the hypostatic union, and the patristic formulations at Nicaea and Chalcedon. The heresy of kenotic Christology (that Christ emptied himself of his divine attributes) is refuted from 2 Corinthians 8:9, John 1:14, and Hebrews 2, while docetism is equally rejected in favor of Christ's true and complete humanity. The doctrinal weight is carried in service of Paul's pastoral concern: the one who was in the form of God and equal with God voluntarily humbled himself, and that reality demolishes every claim to selfish priority among his people.
The High Priestly Prayer, Part 2
John 17:4–5 records Christ's proleptic and covenantal claim to have glorified the Father and finished the work given him — a claim that opens into the full theology of active obedience and its indispensable place in justification by faith alone. The sermon demonstrates that Jesus was not merely an ethical example but the obedient substitute whose 33 years of perfect law-keeping is imputed to the elect alongside the forgiveness secured by his blood. Verse 5 is examined against the kenosis error: Christ does not pray to recover a lost glory but to be manifested as the glorified God-man and mediator who has accomplished the covenant of redemption. Believers are exhorted to pursue the knowledge of God and Christ as the essence of eternal life; unbelievers are called to look to the only Savior in whom alone there is both forgiveness and a righteousness that avails before God.
2LCF Chapter 30 - Of the Lord's Supper
The Lord's Supper is a perpetual ordinance instituted by Christ on the night of his betrayal, appointed for the corporate observance of the church until his return. This confession study works through all eight paragraphs of 1689 LBCF Chapter 30, surveying the historical positions on Christ's presence in the Supper — transubstantiation, consubstantiation, Eastern Orthodox epiclesis, Anglican via media, exclusive memorialism, and the Reformed spiritual presence held by the Particular Baptists — before examining what the confession affirms and opposes. The Supper is shown to be simultaneously a memorial, a proclamation of the gospel, a means of grace conferring spiritual nourishment, and a bond of communion both with the ascended Christ and with fellow believers. The Roman Catholic Mass is rejected as abominable, injurious to Christ's finished and unrepeatable sacrifice, and productive of gross idolatry and manifold superstitions that flow inevitably from the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Divine Protection for Weary Travelers
Psalm 121, a Song of Ascents, is read against the sweep of redemptive history: from Adam's failure to fulfill his mandate in the garden to the Last Adam, Christ, who descends, redeems, and ascends to bring his people into the presence of God. The sermon traces the 'climbing the mountain' motif through Eden, Israel's temple worship, and the new covenant church to show that every believer is presently on a pilgrimage toward glory. Because Yahweh — the self-existent Creator of heaven and earth — is the keeper of his people, they are promised protection from stumbling, shade from the heat of affliction, and preservation from the very judgment their sins deserve. The practical call is to look to Zion rather than to the surrounding mountains of fear, to value the Lord's Day as a weekly foretaste of that final rest, and to press on in the strength God supplies.
The Riches of God's Grace
Ephesians 1:7 declares that believers possess redemption through Christ's blood and the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of God's grace. This sermon works through the triune shape of salvation in Ephesians 1:3–14, arguing that the redeemed are not a class of morally capable people who needed modest assistance, but guilty sinners who required blood atonement, divine election, and the sealing of the Holy Spirit. The cross is shown to satisfy divine justice as well as display divine love — God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus, as Paul argues in Romans 3:21–26. The sermon closes with a direct application to baptism, presenting the ordinance as an outward declaration of the inward forgiveness and righteousness received through union with Christ.
The Covenant Ceremony With Abraham
Genesis 15 records the covenant ceremony by which God confirmed his promises of seed and land to Abram — not with a bilateral oath, but with a unilateral, self-maledictory act in which God alone passed between the divided animals. The sermon traces Abraham's justification by faith alone in verse 6, examines the ancient covenant-ratification ritual as a type of Christ bearing the covenant curse, and shows that the smoking oven and burning torch passing through the pieces preaches the substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. The application presses believers to rest their assurance not in their own covenant faithfulness but in the faithfulness of the God who swore by himself and sealed that oath in the blood of his Son.
Sons and Daughters of God
What does it mean that sinners dead in trespasses can be called children of God? Expounding 1 John 3:1, this sermon works through five elements of the verse: the imperative weight of 'behold,' the immeasurable and immutable love of God rooted in his own essential being, the unmerited bestowal of that love upon the undeserving, the Christian's status as adopted sons and daughters in union with Christ, and the world's consequent ignorance and enmity toward believers. The sermon grounds adoption in the eternal predestinating love of the Father, the incarnation and obedience of the Son, and the indwelling of the Spirit — and closes with a call to behold these realities with eyes of faith as the only ground of encouragement for a church opposed by the world.
The Vindication of the Aaronic Priesthood
Numbers 16:41–17 records the immediate aftermath of Korah's rebellion: Israel accuses Moses and Aaron of murder, God's wrath breaks out in a plague, and Aaron runs into the congregation with a censer to make atonement, standing between the dead and the living until the plague stops. Chapter 17 then confirms the Aaronic priesthood definitively when Aaron's rod alone buds, blossoms, and produces ripe almonds, functioning as a perpetual sign against any future usurper of the priestly office. The typological weight of Aaron's intercession in verse 48 points forward to Christ, who stands between dead sinners and the wrath of God, propitating that wrath by his blood. The sermon calls hearers to recognize both the sinfulness of Israel's hasty accusation and the glory of the priestly atonement that alone grants the unholy access to a holy God.
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 Atonement at Gibeah
The atonement made at Gibeah — where seven descendants of Saul were executed to satisfy the blood-guilt incurred by Saul's slaughter of the Gibeonites — is expounded as a typological anticipation of penal substitutionary atonement. David's inquiry of God, the Gibeonites' insistence that no silver or gold could ransom a murderer (Numbers 35:33), and the hanging of the seven men before the Lord all illustrate that atonement is the satisfaction of divine justice through blood. The sermon argues that Rizpah's grief beside the bodies of her sons is a solemn, sin-cursed scene designed to strip away abstraction and force the reader to feel the horror of what atonement costs. Only when the gore of Gibeah is taken seriously does Golgotha regain its proper weight: Christ, the greater Son of David, stood in the place of his people to quench the wrath of God and secure the covenant safety of all whom the Father gave him.
Very man: "Now my soul is troubled"
John 12:27–28 records the Son of God incarnate declaring 'Now my soul is troubled' — words that are simultaneously a window into his true humanity and a display of his sinless obedience at the threshold of Calvary. This sermon works through the four clauses of those verses, arguing that Christ's soul-trouble was real and holy, arising not from cowardice before mere bodily suffering but from his contemplation of the divine wrath he would bear as the substitute for sinners. Drawing on Cyril of Alexandria's principle that 'what is not assumed is not healed,' the sermon shows that Christ's sinless experience of grief, agitation, and soul-anguish recapitulates every stage of fallen human experience so that he might procure both the forgiveness of guilt and the positive righteousness his people need in every circumstance of life. The congregation is called to rest its entire confidence — prayer life, grief, daily obedience — in the blood and righteousness of the one who said 'For this purpose I came to this hour.'
The Depths of Sin and the Riches of Grace
Psalm 130 moves from the depths of spiritual distress to the heights of pardoning grace, and this exposition traces that movement through three divisions: the psalmist's cry of distress (vv. 1–2), his recognition of divine justice and divine forgiveness (vv. 3–4), and his patient exhortation to all Israel (vv. 5–8). The sermon establishes that the believer's remaining corruption should drive him not to silence but to earnest prayer, since the only remedy for sin is the grace of God. The justice of God is never mitigated in the gospel: at the cross, strict justice was satisfied upon Christ as substitute and curse-bearer, so that God is simultaneously just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. The sermon closes with an appeal both to the struggling believer — do not make peace with remaining sin, but cry out to God — and to the unconverted, for whom the same abundant redemption is freely available in Christ.
Justification by Faith Alone
What does it mean to be justified before God, and on what ground does that justification rest? Working through Romans 4:23–5:1 against the broader backdrop of Romans 3:19–5:5, this sermon expounds four heads: the nature of justification, the receiving instrument of justification, the perfect ground of justification, and the blessed result. Justification is by an act of imputation — the sins of all who believe are reckoned to Christ and His righteousness is reckoned to them — not by any admixture of human works. The resurrection of Christ stands as the divine vindication that the work of atonement is complete, and the call goes forth to believer and unbeliever alike to rest in Christ alone.