Theological term
Sanctification
470 sermons · All terms
The Faithful Christian Mother
Proverbs 31:28–30 sets forth a vision of the faithful Christian mother whose defining characteristic is the fear of the Lord — a fear that is itself the fruit of sovereign, effectual grace. Drawing on Proverbs, Titus 2, Leviticus, the fifth commandment, and the testimony of C.H. Spurgeon, this sermon identifies four dimensions of biblical motherhood: her condition before God (saved by grace and walking with the Lord), her God-given influence over her children, her God-given authority over them, and her fourfold responsibility to instruct, example, discipline, and love. The closing application calls mothers to constant dependence on Word and prayer, theological literacy sufficient to catechize their children rightly, faithful perseverance in a demanding and underappreciated calling, and daily recourse to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Nature of Saving Faith, Part 1
James 2:14–17 has provoked sharp disagreement in the history of the church, with readers perceiving a direct contradiction between James and Paul on the doctrine of justification. This sermon works through five hermeneutical tools for harmonizing the two apostles — the unity of Scripture, the internal consistency of James's own doctrine of salvation, the immediate context, the different audiences and purposes of each writer, and the statement of 1689 LBCF 11.2 — before turning to the question James poses in verses 14–17 concerning the validity of a particular species of faith. The central distinction is not faith versus works or faith plus works, but false faith versus true faith: genuine saving faith is never alone in the person justified, but is always accompanied with all other saving graces, producing the practical Christianity James demands.
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.
The Prohibition Against Partiality
James 2:1–4 issues a direct prohibition against partiality — the sin of showing favoritism based on economic status, ethnicity, or social rank within the gathered assembly of Christ's body. The sermon works through the command of verse 1 and its illustrative example in verses 2–4, while devoting substantial attention to demonstrating that James's soteriology is fully consistent with Paul's: salvation is by sovereign grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, with works serving as the necessary evidence of genuine saving faith rather than its ground. The persistent tendency to judge by externals and to divide the body of Christ into cliques and factions is exposed as a form of sinful judgmentalism that usurps God's own prerogative as judge.
The Necessity of Pure and Undefiled Religion
James 1:27 presents a 'succinct threefold characterization of authentic religion': measured speech, care for the needy, and separation from the world. This sermon expounds the final two marks — visiting orphans and widows in their distress, and keeping oneself unspotted from the world — grounding both in the Old Testament witness to God as defender of the fatherless and in the New Testament pattern of the apostolic church. True religion is neither merely external social action nor merely internal piety, but both together, flowing as the necessary consequence of justifying faith rather than as a condition of it. Those who have believed the gospel are called to a Godward orientation in every good work, resisting the temptation to perform religion before men rather than before God and the Father.
The Bridled Tongue
James 1:26 confronts professing Christians with a concrete test of genuine faith: the bridling of the tongue. The sermon expounds the passage within its context of James's call to be doers of the Word, arguing that an unbridled tongue is not a minor failing but a symptom of self-deception — a religion James pronounces useless. Drawing on the Decalogue, the Proverbs, Romans 1, and James 3–4, the preacher demonstrates that Scripture condemns sins of speech — gossip, slander, backbiting, hypocrisy — with the same severity as the grosser immoralities the church is quick to discipline. The sermon closes by grounding the believer's hope not in perfected speech but in Christ, who alone fulfilled the law of the tongue in his sinless life, and calls hearers to pursue tongue-discipline as a fruit of sovereign grace and dependence on God.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 14
The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14–30) is Christ's definition of watchfulness: not passive waiting for the Son of Man's return, but diligent, faithful stewardship of whatever the Master has entrusted. The sermon expounds the three servants in turn, establishing that talents are distributed according to God's sovereign wisdom rather than merit, that faithfulness rather than quantity of output determines commendation, and that the one-talent servant's condemnation flows directly from a defective doctrine of God. The central application is that justification by faith alone is never a license for inactivity — those truly justified will evidence it by serving the Master's interests in light of His coming.
The Fear of God
Proverbs 1:7 declares that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, yet this disposition is widely misunderstood and neglected among professing Christians. This topical survey distinguishes slavish fear from filial fear, demonstrates from Romans 3, Jeremiah 32, and the book of Proverbs that true fear of God is a gracious implantation sovereignly worked in the regenerate soul, and traces its necessary effects on the mind, the conduct, and the perseverance of believers. The sermon closes by calling both individual believers and the corporate assembly to cultivate this fear — in personal holiness, in theological engagement, and in God-directed, regulative-principle worship.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 12
Matthew 24:45–51 closes the first section of practical application in the Olivet Discourse with a parable of two servants: one faithful, one wicked. The parable's central question — 'Who then is a faithful and wise servant?' — is designed to arrest the conscience and promote eschatological self-examination. Watchfulness for Christ's return is not idle sky-gazing but active fidelity in one's God-appointed vocation, whether pastoral ministry or ordinary daily labor. The wicked servant's ruin flows directly from his denial of the master's return, a pattern the sermon presses against both unbelievers and professing Christians living as practical atheists.
1 Kings 8 Part 2
Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple in 1 Kings 8 exposes several foundational truths for the people of God: the covenantal faithfulness of God across the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants; the nature of God's presence among His people, which produces both reverential awe and deep joy; and the theological precision required for rightly ordered prayer, including the doctrines of divine incomparability, transcendence, immanence, and simplicity. The sermon closes by drawing out practical lessons for new covenant believers: the centrality of Scripture, the necessity of heart obedience, the perpetual need for forgiveness, the remedial purpose of afflictions, and the indispensable role of communion with God in the genuine pursuit of holiness.
The Wisdom from God
Christ is the wisdom of God made concrete for sinners, and 1 Corinthians 1:30–31 inventories what that wisdom consists of: righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. This exposition argues that these three blessings are not coordinate with wisdom but are its very demonstration — the specific ways God's sovereign, gracious salvation exposes the folly of human wisdom and self-commendation. Justification by faith alone, grounded in the imputed righteousness of Christ, is shown to be the necessary foundation for, not the enemy of, holiness. The design of the whole — election, union with Christ, and the triad of blessings — is that the redeemed glory in the Lord alone, not in themselves.
The One Thing Needful
Luke 10:38–42 presents two sisters whose contrasting responses to Christ's presence expose a perennial danger for every believer: allowing lawful, even godly, activity to crowd out the one thing needful. The sermon works through the difference between Martha's distracted service and Mary's devoted hearing, establishing that Christ's commendation of Mary is not a commendation of monasticism but of right priority — the kingdom of God and communion with Christ must govern the believer's ordering of life. Drawn from the parallel teaching of Matthew 6 and Luke 12, five consequences of carnal anxiety are identified, and the congregation is exhorted to repent of marginalizing Christ from the daily calendar and to attend faithfully to both the corporate preaching and the private reading of God's Word.
The Seventh Commandment
The seventh commandment, 'You shall not commit adultery' (Deuteronomy 5:18), is neither a narrow prohibition of one act nor a relic of Mosaic theocracy — it is the summary of God's creational design for sexual integrity, binding on all people in every age because it reflects the law first written on Adam's heart and confirmed throughout both Testaments. This exposition examines the basis of the commandment (God's law, the purposes of marriage, and the severity of its sanctions), then moves through ten specific sins the commandment forbids, from adultery and fornication to pornography and unlawful divorce. The three uses of the law are applied: the civil use demands that governing authorities punish gross sexual sin; the pedagogical use drives sinners to confess their guilt before a holy God; and the normative use calls believers to active mortification of sexual sin, the faithful practice of biblical marriage, and close communion with God as the surest guard against violating the second table.
The Incarnation and the Victory of Christ
Revelation 12 presents three symbolic figures — the woman (the messianic community and church), the dragon (the devil), and the male child (Christ) — to narrate the decisive victory won at Christ's first advent. The chapter demonstrates that the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Son of God accomplish what was promised in Genesis 3:15: the crushing of the serpent's head. Against prosperity-gospel distortions, the sermon insists that Christ's enthronement does not remove the church's trials but rather explains them, calling believers to resist the devil through the blood of the Lamb and to identify themselves as those who keep the commandments of God.
The Riches and the Poverty of Christ
Second Corinthians 8:9 presents the incarnation of the eternal Son as the supreme theological ground for Christian generosity: though he was rich in essential deity, Christ became poor by addition — taking on humanity — that his people through his poverty might become rich. The sermon exposits the riches of Christ in his divine nature and the poverty of Christ in his state of humiliation, drawing on the Chalcedonian definition of the hypostatic union as articulated in the 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 8. Doctrinal appropriation of Christology is shown to be the indispensable spring of practical Christian living, including sacrificial giving, mortification of sin, and love within the home.
The Reformation of the Church
What does it mean for the church to be 'the pillar and ground of the truth'? Expounding 1 Timothy 3:14–16, this sermon examines the identity and confession of the church through three descriptions Paul gives in verse 15 — the house of God, the church of the living God, and the pillar and ground of the truth — before applying the doctrinal legacy of the sixteenth-century Reformation to the contemporary church. The great Christological confession of verse 16 is shown to be the theological center around which all church conduct, worship, and proclamation must orbit. The sermon calls the church to guard sola scriptura, justification by faith alone, the regulative principle of worship, and a proper Christology against the perpetual drift toward pragmatism, experientialism, and Romanizing errors.
Free Grace Baptist Church - October 23, 2016 PM
What does it look like for a justified sinner to walk in the Spirit? Working through Galatians 5:22-26, this exposition of the fruit of the Spirit demonstrates that love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are not optional extras but the necessary outflow of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. The sermon argues that because those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires at regeneration, the absence of these fruits is not an excuse but a call to repentance, and the presence of the Spirit provides the very power by which they are cultivated.
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.
Thanksgiving for the Mercy of God
Psalm 103 calls the redeemed sinner to bless God with the totality of his being, and to resist the ingrained tendency to forget the Lord's benefits. This expository sermon works through the psalm's three movements: David's self-directed reminder to bless God (vv. 1–2), the reasons that fuel that blessing — the gifts received, their recipients, and above all the character of the Giver whose mercy is infinite, thorough, tender, and enduring (vv. 3–18) — and the recognition of God's sovereign kingdom that widens the summons to bless into a universal chorus (vv. 19–22). The sermon closes with five applications showing that thanksgiving is not an annual posture but the daily disposition of every soul that has tasted the mercy of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Most Important Question for Young People
Psalm 119:9 poses what the sermon calls the most important question for young people: 'How can a young man cleanse his way?' Before answering, the text forces an honest reckoning with the doctrine of total depravity and total inability — the way stands in need of cleansing precisely because every faculty of human nature is corrupted by the fall in Adam, and no sinner can commend himself to God apart from sovereign grace. The answer the psalmist gives, 'by taking heed according to Your Word,' encompasses both initial justification by grace through faith in Christ and ongoing sanctification by the same Word and Spirit. Parents and young people alike are exhorted to engage Scripture with the whole heart — obeying, memorizing, meditating, declaring, and delighting in it — as the only path to a cleansed way.
The Astonishment of Paul
Paul's opening salvo in Galatians 1:6–9 is a study in holy alarm: the apostle marvels not with wonder but with grief that the Galatian churches are so quickly defecting from the gospel of grace to a Judaizing corruption that mingles law-keeping with faith. The Judaizing heresy — like Roman Catholicism, the New Perspective on Paul, and the Federal Vision after it — does not abolish Christ but supplements him, which Paul declares is no gospel at all, because justification is either entirely by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, or it is not justification at all. The sermon traces three movements in the passage: Paul's astonishment at the defection, the nature of the false gospel as something that is 'not another,' and the double anathema pronounced on all who pervert the gospel regardless of their authority. The application calls hearers to a 'blessed intolerance' toward gospel corruption, to precision in doctrine, and to the personal embrace of Christ's doing and dying as the sole ground of acceptance with God.
2 Samuel 22
Psalm 18's twin text, 2 Samuel 22 presents David not as a great military king but as a theologian of grace, ascribing every victory to Yahweh alone. The sermon examines the deliverance of God's servant (vv. 1–20), then takes up the harder exegetical question of David's assertion of his own righteousness (vv. 21–31), arguing from Psalms 32, 51, and 65 and from Romans 4 that David's righteousness is the imputed righteousness of Christ, received through faith, not a claim to sinless perfection. The sermon closes by grounding David's confidence in the Davidic covenant of 2 Samuel 7 and calling the congregation to the same exuberant, theologically informed praise.
The Need for Wisdom
James 1:5–8 calls the believer in the midst of trial not to seek deliverance but to seek wisdom — the divinely granted skill to bear affliction rightly. God is the inexhaustible and non-reproaching source of that wisdom, and He gives it liberally to all who ask in faith. The sermon works through four aspects of the pursuit of wisdom in verse 5, then three features of the necessity of faith in verses 6–8, showing that doubt produces instability, unanswered prayer, and a double-minded life. The governing application is that the afflicted saint must ask God for wisdom and do so in genuine faith, trusting the Scripture's testimony that trials work patience and conform us to Christ.
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.
Free Grace Baptist Church - May 22, 2016 PM
Colossians 3:12–14 grounds Christian virtue not in moral effort but in the sovereign grace of God — the elect are holy and beloved not because they were found worthy, but so that they might become so. This sermon works through the identity and character of the new man in Christ, showing that tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, forbearance, and love are not conditions for election but fruits of it. The believer is called to forgive as Christ has forgiven — casting sin into the depths rather than holding it over others — and to put on love as the bond that holds every other virtue together.
The Whole Armor of God
Ephesians 6:10–18 calls believers to put on the whole armor of God — not for ceremonial display but for genuine hand-to-hand combat against principalities, powers, and the spiritual hosts of wickedness. The armor is not native to the believer but is provided entirely through union with Christ: truth, imputed righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, and salvation constitute the defensive elements, while the Word of God is the offensive sword. The sermon argues that the Christian life is a lifelong fight requiring daily, persevering diligence — not passive rest — and closes by urging both believers and unbelievers to recognize that lasting victory over sin is possible only through the blood of atonement and the grace of the triune God.
The Covering of Sin
Proverbs 28:13 presents both the ruin of the one who covers sin and the mercy awaiting the one who confesses and forsakes it. This exposition works through the problem of sin-covering under four heads — the scriptural assumptions behind it, biblical examples of it, the various means sinners employ to conceal transgression, and the cursed result in this age and the age to come. The solution is penitential faith in Christ alone: genuine confession lays the hand on the great sacrifice, and true forsaking proves the sincerity of that confession. Believers and unbelievers alike are called to stop concealing sin and to cast themselves upon the mercy of God, which is the only covering that satisfies divine justice.
The Lawyer and the Great Commandment
Matthew 22:34–40 records a Pharisaic lawyer testing Jesus with the question of which commandment is greatest — a live dispute in rabbinic Judaism with deadly intent behind it. Jesus answers by citing the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4–5) as the first and great commandment and Leviticus 19:18 as its inseparable companion, demonstrating that the whole Decalogue hangs on love to God and love to neighbor. The sermon argues that these two commandments expose every person's total failure to render the perfect, personal obedience God demands, driving the hearer to the only One whose obedience is reckoned to all who trust Him. Believers are exhorted to examine whether their love to God is genuine and whole-hearted, expressed in Sabbath observance, rejection of idolatry, and tangible love for the brethren.
Colossians 1:10-14
Paul's prayer in Colossians 1:9–14 reveals what the apostle considered most essential for the people of God: not merely physical welfare, but a walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him. This study works through the four participial phrases of verses 10–14 — fruitfulness in good works, growth in the knowledge of God, God-wrought patience and long-suffering with joy, and thankfulness — showing how each flows from being filled with the knowledge of God's will. The practical challenge is double: to pray for others in the manner Paul prays, and to examine honestly whether one's own life resembles what Paul prays for.
2 Samuel 4:1-12
Second Samuel 4 narrates the assassination of Ish-bosheth, the last surviving rival to David's throne, by two Benjamite officers who expected royal reward but received capital punishment. The passage raises the perennial question of divine providence and human responsibility: God works through the wicked acts of men to accomplish His decreed purposes, yet this in no way legitimises those acts or excuses the men who commit them. David's response — swearing by the God who redeemed his life from all adversity and executing the murderers — models both gratitude for sovereign faithfulness and the administration of justice that foreshadows the kingdom of Christ. Believers are exhorted to live by God's revealed, preceptive will rather than by self-serving interpretations of His secret will, and to resist the temptation to mask sin or unkindness behind theological language.