Theological term
Remaining Corruption
93 sermons · All terms
Free Grace Baptist Church - March 18, 2018 PM
James 5:7-12 calls the people of God to cultivate patience — toward one another and under affliction — in light of the imminent return of Christ as judge and deliverer. The sermon traces two obstacles that undermine patience: grumbling against fellow believers, which contradicts the love and long-suffering that Scripture everywhere demands, and careless or rash oath-taking, which reflects a failure to let the tongue conform to truth. The prophets and Job stand as biblical examples of endurance through suffering, with Job's trial yielding not merely restored prosperity but experiential knowledge of God — which James presents as the ultimate end the Lord intends. Believers are exhorted to establish their hearts, pursue direct reconciliation rather than complaint, and find fresh resolve in the gospel of Christ, whose blood cleanses all the impatience, grumbling, and falsehood that the passage exposes.
The Call to Repentance
James 4:7–12 contains ten imperatives calling the people of God to repentance — first toward God and then toward one another. The sermon traces the gracious foundation of this call in verse 6 ('he gives more grace'), showing that compliance with these commands is possible only by divine provision, not by human self-improvement. Repentance toward God encompasses submission, resistance of the devil, drawing near to God, moral purity, mourning over sin, and humility; repentance toward one another requires laying aside evil speech, judgmentalism, and the arrogance of treating personal preferences as law. The conspicuous order — fix the vertical relationship first, then the horizontal — is shown to be the theological logic of both the Decalogue and James' own chiastic structure.
Free Grace Baptist Church - February 11, 2018 PM
James 4:1-6 exposes two devastating fruits of what James calls 'demonic wisdom': conflict with one another (vv. 1-2a) and enmity with God (vv. 2b-6). The source of both is unmortified lust — the unrestrained desire for pleasure, riches, and worldly greatness that breeds wars, fights, covetousness, and wicked prayer among professing believers. The sermon presses the congregation to trace every form of church conflict and spiritual adultery back to pride, and closes with the transitional mercy of verse 6: that despite all this, God gives more grace to the humble.
Free Grace Baptist Church - October 8, 2017 PM
What happens when a believer sins against a holy God? Expounding 1 John 2:1–2 within the broader context of 1 John 1:5–10, this sermon answers that question under two headings: Christ as advocate and Christ as propitiation. The advocate language draws on the high-priestly intercession of Christ at the Father's right hand — distinct from, yet complementary to, the Spirit's advocacy on earth — while the doctrine of propitiation is traced through the Old Testament sacrificial vocabulary of kippur to show that Christ both turns away divine wrath and removes guilt. The sermon closes with a direct call to unbelievers to flee to Christ, the only one under whose blood the wrath of God is turned away and peace with God secured.
The Supreme God
First Samuel 5 narrates a comedic yet deadly serious confrontation between Yahweh and the Philistine god Dagon, exposing the utter powerlessness of idols and the supreme sovereignty of the living God. When the Philistines place the ark of the Lord beside Dagon, Dagon twice falls prostrate before it — losing his head and hands — while Yahweh's hand falls with devastating judgment on city after city across Philistia. The passage teaches both that all false gods are helpless before Yahweh and that idolatry remains the deepest disease of the human heart, whether expressed in carved images or in the good things we elevate above God. The call of the sermon is to turn from every idol — visible or conjured — to the one divine Warrior who conquered sin and death, and in whom alone there is everlasting life.
1 Kings 22:29-53
The death of Ahab in 1 Kings 22:29–53 demonstrates that no disguise, armor, or strategic cunning can outmaneuver the decreed word of God — a randomly shot arrow, guided by divine providence, finds its precise mark between the joints of Ahab's armor, fulfilling prophecies made in chapters 20, 21, and 22. The narrative also traces the reign of Jehoshaphat, whose overall godliness was nonetheless marred by foolish alliances with Ahab and later Ahaziah, illustrating that genuine piety is not always accompanied by good sense, yet God in His mercy delivers His people even from self-inflicted danger. Ahaziah's accession to Israel's throne closes the chapter with predictable wickedness, the natural fruit of parents who not only model sin but actively instruct their children in it. The passage calls believers to receive the whole counsel of God without flinching, to rest in His sovereign providence, and to extend to fellow Christians the same gracious assessment God gives to imperfect but genuinely godly people.
The Lord's Betrayal in the Garden
Matthew 26:47–50 records the betrayal of Christ in Gethsemane, and this expository sermon works through three dimensions of that event: its significance as the arrival of the cup of God's wrath that Christ had prayed over, the plan behind the betrayal as Judas and the religious leaders converge under God's sovereignty, and the execution of the betrayal through a hypocritical kiss. Woven throughout is the parallel account in John 18, where Christ's absolute declaration of 'I Am' causes the arresting mob to draw back and fall to the ground — a manifestation of divine glory that underscores both his power to resist and his voluntary surrender to the Father's will. The sermon calls hearers to see in Christ's resolve the willingness of the Savior to save sinners, and to flee to him rather than trust in external proximity to Christ or religious position.
Free Grace Baptist Church - July 2, 2017 AM
This expository sermon on Matthew 26:40–46 examines the sluggishness of the disciples in Gethsemane against the backdrop of Christ's resolute, prayerful obedience to the Father. The disciples' repeated failure to watch and pray — despite explicit warning and their own loud protestations of loyalty — exposes the persistent pride and creaturely weakness of even regenerate believers. Christ's threefold prayer, his endurance of the cup of divine wrath by imputation, and his gracious invitation to the sleeping disciples ('let us be going') together constitute the ground for the sermon's central exhortation: the ordained means of victory over temptation and spiritual lethargy is watchfulness and prayer, practiced in both private devotion and the corporate worship of God.
Of Justification (2LCF 11)
Justification — the forensic declaration by which God accounts and accepts sinners as righteous — is examined through the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter 11. The confession distinguishes justification sharply from sanctification: it is not an infused or imparted righteousness but an imputed one, grounded entirely in Christ's active obedience to the law and passive obedience in His death. Faith, itself a gift of God and not a human contribution, is the sole instrument by which the justified receive and rest on Christ's righteousness. The sermon closes by tracing the ongoing practical realities of the justified life — including fatherly displeasure, confession, and the impossibility of falling from the state of justification — and by drawing on J.C. Ryle to clarify precisely how justification and sanctification are alike yet distinct.
Of Free Will (2LCF9)
The doctrine of free will, rightly understood, is not denied by Reformed theology but carefully defined according to the fourfold state of man as Scripture and the 1689 London Baptist Confession (chapter 9) set forth. This confession-study exposition works through the four paragraphs of chapter 9 — man's will in innocency (able to sin and not to sin), in sin (unable not to sin), in grace (freed from bondage yet still corrupted), and in glory (perfectly and immutably free to good alone) — showing that each state demands a distinct account of human liberty. The doctrines of total depravity, effectual calling, and remaining corruption are not isolated abstractions but are woven into the covenantal structure of the confession, where chapter 9 stands between the covenant mediator (chapter 8) and the application of redemptive benefits (chapters 10 and following). Believers are urged to pray for dead sinners with urgency, to pursue Spirit-enabled obedience with vigor, and to take honest comfort in the confession's frank acknowledgment of remaining corruption rather than retreating into either perfectionism or despair.
The Cross as the Demonstration of God's Love
John 3:16, which Martin Luther called 'the Bible in miniature,' is examined through four observations concerning the cross: the immeasurable love of God toward an unworthy world, the gracious gift of the only begotten Son delivered up as a sacrifice, the object of saving faith as Christ alone, and the promised blessing of not perishing but having everlasting life. The sermon defends particular redemption by noting that 'world' in John 3:16 denotes men without distinction — Jew and Gentile elect — rather than every individual without exception, and grounds this in the parallel logic of Deuteronomy 7 and Romans 5. Believers are exhorted to contemplate the unchanging love of God displayed at the cross as a weapon in their ongoing warfare against remaining corruption, and those without faith are called to look to Christ alone, in whom the principal acts of saving faith find their immediate object.
The Prohibition Against Judgmentalism
Matthew 7:1–5 contains not a universal ban on discernment but a precise prohibition against the censorious, fault-finding spirit that delights in the shortcomings of others. Working through three movements — the prohibition itself, Christ's explanation of its consequence, and the plank-and-speck illustration — the sermon establishes that judgmentalism is a serious sin condemned by Christ on the Mount, one attended by self-righteousness, a lack of charity, and a practical denial of remaining corruption in oneself. The application calls believers to seek the Spirit's influence, apply biblical law evenhandedly, pursue humility, and let the cross be the death knell of self-righteousness.
The Works of the Flesh
Galatians 5:19–21 presents a vice list Paul calls 'the works of the flesh,' catalogued here under four headings: sins of the flesh (adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness), sins of religious apostasy (idolatry, sorcery, heresy), sins against personal relationships (hatred, contentions, jealousy, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, envy, murder), and sins of intemperance (drunkenness, revelries). The sermon distinguishes between remaining corruption — the ongoing struggle common to every justified believer — and reigning corruption, the habitual, unrepentant practice that characterises the unregenerate and excludes from the kingdom of God. Drawing on the Westminster Larger Catechism, Calvin, and Perkins, the preacher grounds each vice in the moral law and closes with a double summons: believers who have fallen into these sins are to repent and seek forgiveness through the blood of Christ; unbelievers are to see in the law their need for the Saviour.
The Past as a Present Reminder
Hebrews 10:32–39 calls the people of God to recall their early days of faith — the illumination received, the sufferings endured, the goods joyfully surrendered — not as a memorial to past zeal but as a present summons to perseverance. The passage moves from a reminder of former faithfulness (vv. 32–34) to a direct exhortation not to cast away confidence (vv. 35–39), grounding both in the confession that the just shall live by faith. Trials are not accidental but divinely ordered, and endurance is not a matter of moral bootstrapping but of faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. The sermon calls hearers to shake off spiritual lethargy by drawing near to God, holding fast the confession of their hope, and actively considering one another in the assembly.
The Warning Against Apostasy
Hebrews 10:26–31 has long troubled sensitive believers who fear they have committed the unpardonable sin described there. This exposition argues that the willful sin in view is not the ongoing struggles and failures of the regenerate, but apostasy — a total, obstinate repudiation of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, the renunciation of the gospel itself. Drawing on the parallel warning in Hebrews 6, the covenantal comparison with Deuteronomy 17, and the testimony of Owen, Calvin, and Gill, the sermon demonstrates that those most troubled by this passage are precisely those whom it does not address. The comfort the text affords is real: the priestly intercession of Christ sustains weak and failing saints, and the just shall live by faith — not by the perfection of their obedience.
The Believer's Response to Trials
James 1:2–4 commands believers to count trials 'all joy' — a response so counterintuitive that James must ground it in theology before it can be practiced. This sermon works through four elements of the believer's response: the nature of the trials in view (external afflictions and hardships, not solicitations to sin), the settled expectation that trials are a normal feature of Christian life, the disposition of joy that must govern the believer under trial, and the recognition that God's purpose in trial is the production of endurance leading to spiritual maturity and completeness. The governing application is that Christians must be formed by passages like this one before trials arrive, so that when they do, the believer counts God as sovereign and purposeful rather than panicking, raging, or despairing.
2LCF Chapter 26 - Of the Church, Part 13
The conduct required of an offended church member, and the proper interpretation of Matthew 7:1–6 in relation to church discipline, stand at the center of this study of 2LCF 26.13. The confession forbids the offended party from absenting themselves from worship or disturbing church order while awaiting the church's further proceeding, and calls them instead to wait upon Christ. Matthew 7:1–6 is not a blanket prohibition against all judgment but a condemnation of the censorious, nitpicking, fault-finding spirit that disregards the law of God and one's own sin. The sermon closes with the exhortation to remove the plank of self-righteous censoriousness before seeking to help a brother with his speck.
The Conversion of Matthew
What does genuine conversion look like? Expounding Matthew 9:9–13, this sermon traces the call of Matthew the tax collector — one of the most notorious sinners in first-century Jewish society — to show that Christ's power to forgive is precisely suited to the wretched. The three movements of the passage — the call to discipleship, the feast at Matthew's house, and Jesus' confrontation with the Pharisees — together establish that Christ came not for the self-righteous but for sinners, and that His summons produces immediate, costly, and joyful obedience. Five marks of genuine discipleship are drawn out: saving faith, repentance as a consequence (not a condition) of grace, kingdom priority, beholding Christ as altogether lovely, and serious pursuit of sanctification — set alongside an honest account of remaining corruption and the struggles that attend the Christian life.
Matthew 6:13
The sixth petition of the Lord's Prayer — 'lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one' (Matthew 6:13) — is a plea for divine protection from the solicitation to sin, distinct from the God-ordained trials that conform believers to Christ. This study examines the meaning of temptation in the petition, its two-part structure (negative and positive), and four reasons the church must pray it: remaining corruption, desire for communion with God, zeal for God's glory, and longing for the eschatological state. The Westminster Larger Catechism Q195 frames the petition's full scope, and Owen's warning — 'he who prays as he ought will endeavor to live as he prays' — issues the closing call to integrity between confession and conduct.
2LCF Chapter 9 - Of Free Will
The doctrine of free will, as confessed in chapter 9 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, is neither denied nor affirmed without qualification — it is carefully defined in relation to the fourfold state of man. In the state of innocency man possessed genuine freedom to do good, yet was mutable; in the state of sin he retains natural liberty of choice but has wholly lost all ability to will any spiritual good; in the state of grace God monergistically transfers the sinner from bondage into freedom to will and do what is spiritually good, yet remaining corruption sustains a continual warfare within; and in the state of glory the will is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone. The central pastoral application is that a true grasp of total depravity and total inability is the only ground on which amazing grace is truly amazing, and the presence of ongoing battle against sin — not its absence — is the mark of regenerate life.
2LCF Chapter 6 - Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof
1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 6, paragraph 1–5, traces the fall of man from its covenantal roots through its universal consequences and the only remedy found in Christ. The covenant of works established a principle of justice in the garden, making Adam's transgression a covenantal violation with representative consequences for all his posterity — every faculty of soul and body wholly defiled, every man by nature a child of wrath. The divine purpose in the fall was not an accident requiring a divine plan B, but was ordered by God according to His wise and holy counsel to manifest both His justice in reprobation and His grace in the redemption of the elect by the second Adam. Believers are freed from the power, guilt, and condemnation of sin by Christ alone, yet remaining corruption persists through this life, driving the regenerate to the means of grace.
The Lord's Prayer, Part 7
Matthew 6:13 presents the sixth and final petition of the Lord's Prayer: 'Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' This study works through the meaning, explanation, reasons, and practical scope of the petition, grounding it in the reality of remaining corruption in the believer's heart as described in Romans 7 and Galatians 5. The petition simultaneously acknowledges God's absolute sovereignty over temptation, confesses the Christian's ongoing weakness, and recognizes the power of the world, the flesh, and the devil as constant enemies. The study closes with the doxology of the Lord's Prayer and the sobering exhortation that he who prays as he ought will endeavor to live as he prays.
The Lord's Prayer, Part 6
What does it mean for a justified believer to pray 'forgive us our debts'? This study of Matthew 6:12 distinguishes between forensic justification — God's once-for-all judicial declaration of pardon — and the ongoing filial forgiveness a child of God seeks from his Father so that he may know the smile and nearness of God in daily life. Six reasons are given for why believers must continually pray this petition: remaining corruption, desire for God's fatherly favor, consciousness of the evil of sin, trust in divine mercy, renunciation of self-righteousness, and acknowledgment of Christ's sufficiency. The study closes by examining the expansion of the petition in verses 14–15, showing that a forgiving spirit toward others is not the cause but the necessary sign and fruit of having been forgiven by God through justifying grace.
The Prevention of Judgmentalism
Matthew 7:1–5 forbids not all judicial discernment but the petty, fault-finding, hypocritical spirit that condemns the speck in a brother's eye while ignoring the plank in one's own. This sermon, the evening complement to a morning exposition of the same passage, turns from diagnosis to remedy, working through seven biblical means by which Christians may actively resist a censorious spirit. The prevention runs from the internal (Spirit-filling, humility, a sober doctrine of sin) to the relational (charity, esteem for the brethren, continual recourse to Christ and his gospel), and the whole is anchored in the recognition that perfection in this duty awaits glory.
Undivided Submission to One Master
Matthew 6:24 confronts the hearer with an absolute either-or: no one can serve two masters. This sermon expounds the third of Christ's three metaphors in Matthew 6:19-24 — after heavenly treasure and single-eyed devotion — pressing the claim that total submission belongs to God alone, and that divided loyalty to God and Mammon is not merely difficult but impossible. A careful distinction between condition and consequence grounds the exposition: the loyalty Christ demands is never the basis of acceptance with God, which rests entirely on Christ's active and passive obedience imputed to the believer by grace alone through faith alone. The sermon closes with a direct call to the unbeliever to look to Christ and be freed from the slave market of sin.
The Necessity of a Kingdom Focus
Matthew 6:22–23 presents the eye as a metaphor for the soul's orientation: a 'good' eye signifies single-minded devotion to the kingdom of God, while a 'bad' eye signifies a divided, darkened loyalty that amounts not to partial commitment but to deep-seated idolatry. The sermon argues that the believer's every pursuit — treasure, focus, and master — must be ordered wholly toward God, and that divided allegiance is darkness, not a lesser degree of light. Drawing on Philippians 3:12–14 and Psalm 73, the preacher calls hearers to press on with single-eyed determination, to realign priorities through Scripture and the Spirit, and — for those whose darkness is not the remnant sin of a believer but the reigning darkness of an unconverted heart — to flee to Christ alone as the only remedy.
The Pursuit of Heavenly Treasure
Matthew 6:19–21 sets before the believer a stark choice: lay up treasure on earth, where moth, rust, and thieves destroy, or lay up treasure in heaven, where nothing can diminish what is stored. The sermon expounds three movements in the text — a prohibition against covetousness and materialism, a positive command to pursue heavenly treasure through kingdom-shaped living, and an implication that wherever a man's treasure lies, his heart inevitably follows. The application presses hearers toward honest self-examination, gratitude for Christ's perfect loyalty to the Father, and the call to believe on him as the only one who perfectly laid up treasures in heaven on behalf of his people.
The 6th Petition: Protection
Matthew 6:13 presents the sixth and final petition of the Lord's Prayer, a twofold request — 'lead us not into temptation' and 'deliver us from the evil one' — that together constitute a comprehensive prayer for spiritual protection. The sermon distinguishes between God's sanctifying trials and Satan's solicitation to evil, drawing on James 1 to clarify that God tests but never tempts, while remaining corruption in the believer's heart gives every temptation a potential ally within. Four features of the negative petition are unfolded: acknowledgement of divine sovereignty, admission of the believer's weakness, recognition of temptation's power, and humble appeal for divine aid. The doxology closing the prayer grounds every petition in God's kingdom, power, and glory, and the sermon closes with a direct call to unbelievers to seek justification by faith alone in Christ alone as the only basis on which anyone may rightly address God as Father.
The 5th Petition: Forgiveness
What does it mean to pray 'forgive us our debts' when the believer has already been justified by faith alone? This exposition of Matthew 6:12 and 14–15 distinguishes between God's forensic pardon of the sinner and the ongoing filial forgiveness a child of God seeks from his Father in the life of sanctification. Six reasons are given for the necessity of this daily petition — remaining corruption, desire for the smile of God, consciousness of sin's evil, trust in divine mercy, renunciation of self-righteousness, and acknowledgment of Christ's sufficient atonement. The sermon closes by pressing the inseparable link between receiving forgiveness and extending it: an unforgiving spirit that approaches God for pardon is a form of hypocrisy, while those who freely forgive others give evidence that sovereign grace has genuinely worked in their hearts.
Spiritual Poverty and Holy Mourning
The Beatitudes are not imperatives but indicative descriptions of those whom God has transformed by sovereign grace. This exposition of Matthew 5:3–4 argues that poverty of spirit—the recognition of one's utter bankruptcy before a holy God—and holy mourning over sin are not natural human tendencies but the direct fruit of divine grace working in the heart. Drawing on the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, the church at Laodicea, Isaiah 57 and 66, and the lament of Romans 7, the sermon demonstrates that pride is an offense to God while humility and contrition are the marks he blesses. The comfort promised to holy mourners is both present—through justification, the indwelling Spirit, and the Scriptures—and eschatological, when God himself will wipe away every tear in the new Jerusalem.