Theological term
Special Revelation
76 sermons · All terms
The Darkness of Depression
Proverbs 15:13 declares that sorrow of heart breaks the spirit, and Scripture is neither silent nor superficial on the darkness of depression. This sermon surveys the presence of depression among the people of God across the canon — from Elijah under the broom tree, to David's lament in the Psalms, to the Man of Sorrows himself — establishing that the condition is real, that it afflicts genuine believers, and that in itself it is not sinful. Practical counsel drawn from both special and general revelation is offered: the physical ABCs of rest, diet, and exercise; the spiritual ABCs of prayer, Scripture, and corporate worship; and careful instruction for those seeking to help the suffering, closing with the reminder that the ground of hope is not gladness of feeling but the imputed righteousness of Christ received by faith alone.
Free Grace Baptist Church - June 9, 2019 AM
The Christological unity of Scripture — the truth that the Old Testament prophets testified to Christ by the Spirit of Christ — grounds the believer's hope under suffering and shapes a properly Christocentric hermeneutic. Drawing from 1 Peter 1:10–12, this sermon argues that the Spirit of Christ was personally present in and through the prophets, disclosing the sufferings of Christ and the glories that follow, so that the Old Testament is not Israel-centric but Christ-centric in its ultimate focus. The sermon calls believers to read Scripture not merely for cognitive information but as a supernatural encounter with Christ himself, whose revealed glory transforms the reader into his likeness and sustains eschatological hope in the face of suffering and persecution.
The Purity of God's Word
Proverbs 30:5–6 presents two inseparable claims: every word of God is pure, and God is a shield to those who trust him. This sermon expounds the purity of Scripture as an attribute derived from the character of God himself, extends it across every genre and testament, and anchors it in the New Testament's own witness to its inspiration and authority. The warning of verse 6 — that adding to God's words brings divine rebuke and the verdict of liar — is applied not only to unbelieving Judaism, Roman Catholic tradition, and Charismatic continuationism, but to the Reformed believer's own temptation to bind consciences where God has not legislated. Hearers are called to read the whole counsel of God daily, to rest in its sufficiency, and to resist every impulse to place human words on a level with or in competition with divine revelation.
Free Grace Baptist Church - March 17, 2019 PM
Romans 1 confronts humanity with the universal condemnation that falls upon Jew and Gentile alike: God's righteousness is revealed in the gospel precisely because all people suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness. The sermon traces Paul's argument from general revelation — God's invisible attributes made plain in creation — through the progressive moral descent that follows the rejection of the Creator, culminating in divine judgment expressed as God giving humanity over to its disordered desires. The remedy is the righteousness of God revealed through faith in Jesus Christ alone, which the apostle sets against the backdrop of universal guilt in order to magnify the grace of justification freely given.
The Judgment of God upon Idolaters
Romans 1:18–32 expounds Paul's indictment of Gentile idolatry as the root of all human unrighteousness, demonstrating that ungodliness — the rejection of the true and living God — inevitably produces the full range of moral disorder catalogued in verses 29–31. General revelation renders every person without excuse before God, yet it is insufficient to save; only the special revelation of the gospel, culminating in the propitiation of Romans 3:21–26, provides the antidote to mankind's idolatrous condition. The sermon traces the descent from suppressed knowledge of God through exchanged glory, divine abandonment, and catalogued vice, and closes by calling hearers to identify their own idols — theological, material, and self-oriented — and to look to Christ alone for justification.
Free Grace Baptist Church - October 14, 2018 PM
Depression — what Scripture calls a broken spirit or heavy heart — is a real affliction that has touched the lives of Elijah, Jeremiah, the Apostle Paul, and the Lord Jesus himself. Drawing from repeated passages in the book of Proverbs, alongside First Kings 19, Psalm 88, and Psalm 102, this exposition surveys both the presence of melancholy among the people of God and a range of strategies — physical, psychological, and spiritual — for those who suffer and for those who walk alongside them. The central application is that the sorrowful saint must not abandon the corporate means of grace — the Word, prayer, and the gathered church — which are God's appointed instruments for sustaining the broken spirit.
Genesis 4:9-16
Genesis 4:9–16 records the arraignment, indictment, and punishment of Cain following the murder of Abel — the first trial and sentencing in Scripture. The passage exposes the pattern of sin's progression: outright denial before God, arrogant rhetoric, and complaint against righteous punishment rather than repentance. God's response demonstrates that He prizes human life even after death, that undealt-with guilt produces consuming fear, and that sin drives man ever further from the presence of the Lord.
The Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Christ
What is the gospel, and why does its content matter for the Lord's Supper? Expounding 1 Corinthians 15:1–20 with focused attention on verses 3–4, this sermon argues that the gospel is defined by three inseparable historical and theological events: the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Each event carries precise atoning weight — the death is substitutionary, propitiatory, and expiatory; the burial confirms the reality of that death and sets the stage for resurrection; the resurrection vindicates Christ's saving work, bears witness to the justification of his people, and establishes him as judge of the living and the dead. Delivered in the context of the Lord's Supper, the sermon calls believers to a wonder-filled, theologically informed observance of the ordinance, and warns unbelievers that the risen Christ who died for sinners will also be their judge.
The Majestic Name
Psalm 8 frames the majestic name of God as the beginning and end of all true praise, confronting the reader with the infinite distance between Creator and creature while simultaneously revealing the astonishing condescension of God in both creation and redemption. The sermon works through three movements: God's majestic name proclaimed in creation and defended through weakness (vv. 1–2), God's mindfulness of an infinitesimal humanity (vv. 3–5), and God's appointment of man to vice-regential dominion (vv. 6–9). Each movement is shown to find its ultimate fulfilment in the Lord Jesus Christ — the one who, as the last Adam, was made a little lower than the angels to purchase new creation for his people. The sermon closes with a call to study the attributes of God as the antidote to idolatry, and with a direct appeal to unbelievers to look to Christ, in whom Psalm 8 is fully realised.
Genesis 1:3-25
Genesis 1:3–25 presents not a bare catalogue of events but a theologically ordered narrative of God's creative work, moving from formlessness to a world formed and filled for man's habitation. The study traces a recurring five-part formula in each day of creation — announcement, command, fulfillment, evaluation, and temporal marker — and then unpacks the structural pattern in which days 1–3 establish realms (light, sky and sea, land) and days 4–6 install their respective rulers (luminaries, fish and birds, land creatures), with man as the image-bearing vice-regent over all. The account is also polemical: Yahweh's creation of sun, moon, stars, and sea creatures directly undercuts the astral worship and mythological cosmologies surrounding Israel. Hearers are called to embrace six-day creationism by faith, to reject the incipient Gnosticism that denigrates the material world, and to read Genesis 1 as Scripture reads it — by faith we understand, not the reverse.
Free Grace Baptist Church - March 25, 2018 PM
Acts 4:23-31 records the early church's corporate prayer in the face of threats from the Jewish authorities, and this sermon expounds four dimensions of that prayer: its occasion, its character, its content, and God's answer to it. The congregation's prayer is marked by a deliberate unity of purpose — a one-accord rooted not in uniformity of voice but in a shared commitment to the faith of the gospel. The content of the prayer moves through invocation and recognition of God as sovereign Creator, rehearsal of his works in creation and revelation, and confidence in his decree and providence — culminating not in a petition for deliverance from danger but for boldness to continue proclaiming Christ in the midst of it. Christians are called to pattern their own prayers on this model: knowing their God, drawing confidence from that knowledge, and asking not for the removal of trials but for the strength and resolution to endure through them.
2LCF Chapter 22 - Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day
The Regulative Principle of Worship, grounded in the Second Commandment and confessed in Chapter 22 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, holds that God alone determines the acceptable way in which He is to be worshipped — nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else than what He has commanded in Scripture. Working through paragraphs 1 and 2 of the confession, this session distinguishes the first commandment (who is to be worshipped) from the second (how God is to be worshipped), showing from Romans 1, Deuteronomy 12, 1 Timothy 3, Hebrews 12, and the narrative of Saul that innovation in worship — however well-intentioned — constitutes a form of idolatry. The practical application is that the elements of corporate worship must be drawn from Scripture alone: prayer, the reading and preaching of the Word, singing, and the sacraments — with no addition, subtraction, or substitution from the imaginations and devices of men.
2LCF Chapter 20 - Of the Gospel and of the Extent of the Grace Thereof
The gospel is necessary, revealed only through special revelation, and made effectual solely by the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit — natural law and general revelation are wholly insufficient for salvation. This session expounds 2LCF Chapter 20, tracing why John Owen and the Congregationalists added this chapter to address both the rise of salvation-through-natural-law teaching and the false charge that Reformed and Baptist churches were anti-missional. The sermon argues that the gospel advances to the ends of the earth through preaching, according to God's sovereign will, as the Spirit regenerates the elect who are dead in trespasses and sins. The practical burden is confidence and perseverance in gospel proclamation, grounded not in human ability or ecclesial authority but in the sovereignty of God.
2LCF Chapter 19 - Of the Law of God
God's moral law — first written on Adam's heart in the covenant of works, codified in the Ten Commandments at Sinai, and distinguished from the temporary ceremonial and judicial laws of Moses — remains perpetually binding on all humanity because it perfectly expresses the unchangeable holy character of its divine Author. This study works through chapter 19 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, examining the original revelation of the law, its survival after the fall, the threefold distinction of moral, ceremonial, and judicial law, and the abiding obligation of the Decalogue across all covenants. The threefold use of the moral law is treated in sequence: its civil use in restraining sin, its pedagogical use in exposing sin and driving the conscience to Christ, and its normative use in directing the regenerate life of the believer. Believers are called to embrace the moral law not as a covenant of works but in gratitude, enabled by the Spirit through the ordinary means of grace, standing in Christ's righteousness alone before the holy lawgiver.
Paul's "Jesus and the Resurrection"
What does Paul mean when he proclaims 'Jesus and the resurrection,' and why does the denial of bodily resurrection destroy the entire Christian faith? Drawing on 1 Corinthians 15:1–20, this exposition works through four interlocking realities: the gospel is comprehensive for all of Christian life, the events of the gospel are certain on the testimony of Scripture and eyewitnesses, the grace of God is foundational to both the delivery and reception of the gospel, and the resurrection of Christ secures an unconquerable hope for all who believe. The sermon presses toward a pointed application: Christian hope is not wishful thinking but the certain expectation that God's promises in the risen Christ will most surely come to pass.
2LCF Chapter 2 - Of God and of the Holy Trinity
The doctrine of God and the Holy Trinity, as confessed in 2LCF Chapter 2, is approached here through three progressive affirmations drawn from Scripture and the Reformed confessional tradition: God is, God is one, and God is one in three persons. The incomprehensibility of God frames the entire study — not that He cannot be known, but that He cannot be exhaustively comprehended by any creaturely mind. Moving from general revelation through the law of nature to the biblical witness of monotheism and finally to the Trinitarian distinctions of unbegottenness, eternal generation, and eternal procession, the sermon demonstrates that the doctrine of the Trinity is not speculative theology but the very foundation of all communion with God and comfortable dependence upon Him.
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.
Sola Scriptura: The Bible Alone
Hebrews 1:1–3 opens with the declaration that God has spoken — a claim the author of Hebrews treats not as background noise but as the controlling fact of redemptive history. This sermon works through six attributes of Scripture drawn from those opening verses: its divine source, its authority, its finality in the Son, its intended beneficiaries, its perspicuity, and its sufficiency for faith and life in the new covenant community. The Reformation's sola scriptura is shown to be not a negative protest but a positive testimony: Scripture alone is God's last, best, and sufficient word, complete in Christ, requiring no supplement from tradition, continuing prophecy, or moralistic self-help.
The Usefulness of Scripture
Paul's claim in 2 Timothy 3:16–17 that all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable is examined across four categories of usefulness — doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness — before turning to Scripture's specific function in completing and thoroughly equipping the man of God for every good work. The sermon challenges the anti-doctrinal sentiment prevalent in contemporary evangelicalism, arguing that indifference to biblical doctrine is indifference to God himself. Ministers in particular are shown to be completed not by leadership models or charismatic gifts but by deep saturation in the word of God. The hearer is called to approach Scripture not as a duty to discharge but as a daily feast — mining its treasures with diligence and gratitude.
Free Grace Baptist Church - December 27, 2015 PM
What makes the Bible the word of God, and how should that conviction shape the way believers read and live by it? This expository sermon on 2 Timothy 3:16–17 examines three interconnected questions: what Scripture is, where its authority comes from, and why it is indispensable. Working through Paul's claim that 'all Scripture is God-breathed,' the sermon establishes that this includes both Testaments, defends the unique apostolic authority that underwrites the New Testament writings, and argues that the doctrines of inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy are inseparable. The sermon closes with a call to imitate the psalmist of Psalm 119—hiding the word in the heart, meditating on its precepts, and rejoicing in its testimonies as in great treasure.
2LCF Chapter 22 - Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day, Part 4
The Fourth Commandment's perpetual and universal obligation — rooted in both natural law and the Word of God — binds new covenant believers to Sabbath observance no less than it bound old covenant saints. This session of a consecutive study through the 1689 London Baptist Confession (chapter 22, paragraphs 7–8) examines the twofold testimony to Sabbath necessity (general and special revelation), the positive-moral character of the Fourth Commandment, and the pre-Sinaitic origins of the Sabbath in Genesis 2. The change of the day from the seventh to the first is introduced and will be treated in full in the following session. The governing spirit of Christian Sabbath observance is not legal fear but cheerful compliance, strengthened by the risen Christ and the sweetness of the gospel.
2LCF Chapter 22 - Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day, Part 2
Prayer as a constituent element of Christian worship is examined through paragraphs three and four of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith (2LCF 22.3–4). The confession distinguishes natural worship — known by the light of general revelation — from instituted or religious worship regulated by Scripture alone, and locates prayer within both: obligatory for all men by nature, yet acceptable to God only when offered in the name of the Son, by the aid of the Spirit, and according to His revealed will. Seven features of prayer in worship are traced: its constitutional place as a means of grace, its universal obligation, its general tenor of thanksgiving, its Trinitarian form, its attendant posture (understanding, reverence, humility, fervency, faith, love, and perseverance), its linguistic restriction to a known tongue against the Romanist Latin mass, and the lawful scope of its content — including the rejection of prayers for the dead and for those who have sinned the sin unto death.
2LCF Chapter 22 - Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day, Part 1
What gives any human being the right to determine how God is to be worshipped? This study of 2LCF Chapter 22, Paragraphs 1–2 argues that the light of nature establishes the creational obligation to worship God, while Scripture alone establishes the acceptable manner of that worship — the regulative principle. The exclusive object of that worship is the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which the confession defends against both the Roman Catholic invocation of saints and the broader normative principle that permits what God has not commanded. Worshippers are called to receive God's own prescribed order of worship rather than supplementing it with the imaginations and devices of men.
2LCF Chapter 20 - Of the Gospel and of the Extent of the Grace Thereof
The necessity and exclusivity of special gospel revelation for salvation — not natural revelation — is the central concern of 2LCF Chapter 20. Against the errors of incipient deism (which denied the need for special revelation) and General Baptist soteriology (which allowed for salvation via the light of nature), the confession affirms that the gospel promise of Christ, inaugurated at Genesis 3:15, is the sole appointed means of calling the elect in every age. Divine sovereignty governs the dispensation of that gospel to nations and persons, and the effectual, insuperable work of the Holy Spirit upon the whole soul is necessary alongside the outward proclamation for any sinner to be converted.
The Call to Marvel, Part 1
The imperative 'Behold' in 1 John 3:1 is not a casual glance but a commanded, faith-filled, astonished gaze upon the love of God the Father displayed in adopting guilty sinners as His children. This sermon opens the first of three headings in the verse — the call to marvel, the content of marveling, and the intent behind it — treating in full the call itself and beginning the content (divine love, divine grace, divine fatherhood). The love that is to be beheld is uninfluenced, eternal, sovereign, infinite, immutable, and gracious — attributes rooted not merely in what God does but in what God is, since God does not merely have love but is love. Believers are pressed to behold this love daily, grounding their ongoing pursuit of holiness in the astonishing truth that those who were children of wrath and children of the devil have been sovereignly adopted into the household of God through the perfect work of Christ.
The Vainglory, the Virtue, and the Verity (Part 1)
Jeremiah 9:23–24 is frequently torn from its covenantal context and reduced to a generic self-improvement maxim, but the prophet issues this warning in the shadow of irreversible divine judgment upon apostate Israel. The passage divides into three movements — the vainglory of misplaced boasting, the virtue of knowing God, and the verities of his character — and this first installment works through the vainglory of glorying in wisdom, might, and riches. The sermon argues that such boasting is doubly condemned: these gifts originate with God alone and therefore belong to his glory, and they are powerless before the whirlwind of infinite divine justice that no political, military, or economic resource can deflect. The application presses both the unconverted and the indifferent to abandon every refuge in creaturely confidence and flee to Christ, the only one in whom boasting is lawful.
The Church's Duty to Train Pastors
Paul's charge in 2 Timothy 2:1–2 — that Timothy be strong in grace and commit apostolic doctrine to faithful men who can teach others — imposes a binding duty on the church in every generation. This sermon works through two commands: the call to courageous, Christ-dependent strength in gospel ministry, and the church's obligation to identify, instruct, and deploy faithful men for pastoral work. The qualifications of 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:5–9 supply the objective standard for identifying such men, distinguishing the unqualified (who may yet be fitted) from the disqualified. The sermon closes by locating this four-generation chain of transmission within God's eternal decree to save the elect through the ordained means of faithful preaching.
The Prayer of the Early Church, Part 1
Acts 4:24–28 records the early church's response to persecution: a corporate prayer that grounds confidence not in circumstances but in the character of God. The sermon traces three foundations of the congregation's confidence — God as sovereign creator, God as sovereign revelator (particularly through Psalm 2), and God as sovereign predeterminer and governor of all things — showing that the church's unity is a gospel-defined unity, not a generic sociological bond. The exposition presses these truths against fleshly anxiety, open theism, and the therapeutic impulse to find comfort in a God who co-suffers, calling the congregation to bring their petitions to the immutable, impassible God who has decreed all things and governs them for the good of his people.
2LCF Chapter 1 - Of the Holy Scriptures
The doctrine of Scripture (1689 LBCF Chapter 1) is examined through twenty aspects drawn from paragraphs 1–10, arguing that the Holy Scriptures alone are the sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. Beginning with the principium cognoscendi — Scripture as the epistemological foundation of all theology — the study moves through the limits of general revelation, the cessation of special revelation, the canon, the self-attesting authority of Scripture, and the role of the Spirit in producing genuine belief. The session closes with the Reformation axiom that Scripture is its own infallible interpreter and the supreme judge of all religious controversy, against Rome's claim that the magisterium validates the canon.
The Majestic Maker
Genesis 1:1 declares that in the beginning, the triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — created the heavens and the earth ex nihilo, by the word of his omnipotent power, in six literal twenty-four-hour days. The Hebrew term Elohim, a plural of majesty used with a singular verb, identifies the Creator as the sole rightful object of worship, the sovereign lawgiver, and the one to whom all creatures owe praise. The sermon draws out five lessons from the opening verse: the world had a beginning; the triune God is the active agent; creation was ex nihilo by divine speech; the Creator is the rightful lawgiver and proper object of worship; and mankind possesses unique dignity as image-bearers. Unbelievers are warned that creation renders them without excuse before the judgment seat of God, and are called to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who fulfilled the law and died as the perfect sacrifice.