Topic
Apologetics
374 sermons · All topics
The Solicitation to Apostasy
Deuteronomy 13 confronts Israel with three escalating scenarios of solicitation to apostasy: the false prophet, the intimate family member or friend, and the corrupt city given over to idolatry. In each case the text demands not tolerance but purging, because defection from the living and true God constitutes treason against the theocratic covenant order. The chapter's severity is inseparable from its mercy: faithful execution of justice removes the cause of divine wrath and secures the covenant blessings sworn to the fathers. The passage presses the hearer to examine whether fidelity to God holds firm against both miraculous signs that lead astray and the subtler pull of intimate relationships.
2LBC Chapter 24 - Of the Civil Magistrate
2 London Baptist Confession Chapter 24 examines the divine origin, proper scope, and Christian obligations relating to civil government. Civil magistrates are ordained by God, under his authority, for his glory and the public good, with their power limited to maintaining justice and peace through the sword — encompassing criminal punishment, capital justice, and defense against foreign invasion. The sermon argues that Christians may lawfully serve as magistrates or soldiers, directly contra the Anabaptist tradition, and that the Confession's three paragraphs provide a sufficient framework for navigating contemporary political crises. Believers are called to submit to lawful commands, resist unlawful ones, and pray persistently for governing authorities so that the church may worship freely.
The Goodness of God's Law
The law of God is good — but only when used lawfully. Expounding 1 Timothy 1:8–11, this sermon defends the goodness of the moral law against both antinomian dismissal and legalistic distortion, situating Paul's argument within the classical Reformed framework of the law's three uses: civil, pedagogical, and normative. The false teachers in Ephesus had neither understood the law nor handled it properly, and Paul's corrective is not to demote the law but to demonstrate its proper function — restraining lawlessness in society, exposing the sinner's need for Christ, and directing the justified believer in the path of sanctification.
The Apostle's Charge to Timothy
Paul's charge to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:3–7 commands the silencing of false teachers in Ephesus who taught other doctrine, devoted themselves to fables and endless genealogies, and generated disputes rather than godly edification. The charge is not motivated by power or animosity but by love flowing from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith — the fruit of regeneration. The false teachers compounded their error by combining ignorance of the law with arrogant confidence in their own assertions, a combination the apostle deems disqualifying. Churches today must hold the same line: qualifying teachers rigorously, refusing platforms to the heterodox, and measuring all teaching against the truth as it is in Jesus.
The Psalmist's Cry in an Age of Deceit
Psalm 12 presses the question Psalm 11 leaves open: not what becomes of the wicked in the end, but how the people of God survive and remain faithful in the present evil age. The sermon traces two movements in the psalm — the destruction of foundations (vv. 1–4), marked by idle speech, flattery, and the proud autonomy of godless men, and the preservation of the righteous (vv. 5–8), grounded in God's arising to deliver the oppressed and in the utter purity of his Word. David's prayer is read through a Christological lens: the psalm is supremely the prayer of Christ in his earthly ministry, opposed at every step, yet sustained by the Father's Word and promise. The congregation is urged to respond to cultural and ecclesiastical decay not by retreat or despair but by theology, prayer, and dependent trust in the pure and preserving Word of God.
CTF 2026: Q&A Panel Discussion
A panel of Reformed Baptist and Reformed theologians fields audience questions on some of the most demanding loci in Reformed theology: federal headship and the fall, God's effective and permissive will in the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, the mystery of the first sin, free will as acting according to nature, hyper-Calvinism, the infralapsarian and supralapsarian debate, and the legitimacy of the free offer of the gospel under God's exhaustive decree. The discussion is frank about the limits of creaturely knowledge on questions the secret will of God has not resolved, while insisting that doctrinal humility and ordinary means of grace—not cage-stage polemics or churchless social media—are the proper context for growth in these truths.
CTF 2026 - Session 3: Is God the Author of Sin?
Two difficult theological questions frame this conference session: Is God the author of sin, and do a believer's sins work together for good? Drawing on 1689 LBCF 3.1, Acts 2:23, Acts 17:28, and Romans 8:28, the session argues that God's comprehensive, eternal decree encompasses all things — including sin — without making God personally culpable for evil, because sin is a privation of good rooted in the creature's deformed nature rather than in God's infinitely good being. The session closes by showing from Romans 8:28, with support from Robert Haldane and Genesis 50:20, that God's overruling providence turns even the believer's own sins toward their ultimate good and his glory — not as license to sin, but as ground for humility, dependence, and hope.
Ask FGBC Batch 7: Anabaptists, Calvinism, Sincere Offer & More | Reformed Baptist Theology
This panel discussion brings together three Reformed Baptist pastors to address questions submitted to Free Grace Baptist Church on confessional identity, soteriology, covenant theology, and Lord's Day worship. The conversation distinguishes Particular Baptists from Anabaptists on historical-documentary grounds, examines the relationship between Calvinism and confessional Reformed Baptist identity, and evaluates the free and sincere offer of the gospel against what the panelists regard as the theological liabilities of well-meant-offer language. The discussion also treats the threefold division of the law, prosopological exegesis, and the scriptural rationale for two Lord's Day services, consistently grounding each answer in the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession and the exegetical tradition of the Particular Baptists.
Ask FGBC 68: Are Reformed Baptists More Baptist or More Reformed?
The question 'Are Reformed Baptists more Baptist or more Reformed?' draws out a careful answer: the two labels are not competing loyalties but successive correctives — Reformed Christianity corrects medieval Roman Catholic and Lutheran error, while the Baptist stream carries the Reformation's logic further in ecclesiology, the church-state relation, and liberty of conscience. Which emphasis comes to the foreground depends entirely on the conversation partner: against Christian nationalism the Baptist distinctives press harder; against Arminian dispensationalism the Reformed heritage dominates. The panel settles on a working formulation: Reformed in soteriology and theology proper, Baptistic in ecclesiology, and — with the addition of what the Reformation did not yet reform — small-c Catholic, Reformed, and Baptist.
The Theater of His Glory
Psalm 19 sets creation and Scripture side by side as God's two books of revelation: the heavens declare His glory in every language to every people, while the Word of God converts the soul and opens eyes to see what unbelief cannot perceive. The sermon works through the psalm to show that general revelation leaves all people without excuse before God, yet only the regenerate, illumined by the Spirit through Scripture, properly receive the theater of God's glory. The three closing applications call Christians to train their children in a Christ-centered view of both books of revelation, to cultivate daily awareness of God's hand in creation, and above all to prize the Word of God as the supreme gift that leads to life and holiness.
Ask FGBC #61: Conviction of Sin Before or After Regeneration?
The question of whether conviction of sin precedes or follows faith is examined through the lens of the ordo salutis. Conviction of sin necessarily precedes faith because without it the sinner would see no need for Christ, yet Scripture nowhere prescribes a fixed period of misery as a prerequisite for receiving the gift of faith. Conversion is the divine bestowal of the graces of faith and repentance together, not a staged sequence in which the sinner must accumulate sufficient guilt before God acts. The call of the gospel is not prolonged self-examination but immediate flight to Christ, and the doctrine of presumption that keeps sinners in unnecessary bondage is a Catholic, not Protestant, imposition on the gospel promise.
Ask FGBC #59: What is Faith?
Faith is defined in two senses in Scripture: as the objective content of the Christian religion (the propositions of the gospel to be believed) and as the subjective act of believing. In its saving sense, faith is the Spirit-given, empty-handed instrument by which a sinner rests upon and receives the Lord Jesus Christ and all the redemptive benefits secured by His obedient life, atoning death, and resurrection. Because regeneration precedes faith and faith itself is a divine gift, the strength of one's faith — or the feelings accompanying it — is never the ground of salvation; Christ alone is that ground. The discussion warns against distortions that load faith with feelings, smuggle faithfulness or love into its definition, or ground justification in evangelical obedience rather than in Christ received through faith alone.
SLBC: Of The Gospel, and the extent of the grace thereof
The 1689 London Baptist Confession's twentieth chapter, 'Of the Gospel, and the Extent of the Grace Thereof,' argues that two things are absolutely necessary for the salvation of sinners: the special revelation of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the effectual, insuperable work of the Holy Spirit upon the whole soul. This chapter arose in both the Savoy Declaration and the Particular Baptist Confession to counter four specific errors: incipient deism, Quaker inner-light theology, General Baptist salvific subsystems for the unevangelized, and Socinian rationalism. The sermon traces the sole dominion of Christ as the promised seed of the woman across all of redemptive history, demonstrates from Scripture that no saving knowledge of Christ is available through general revelation, natural ability, or any religious sincerity outside the gospel, and closes with the confession's insistence that the Spirit's invisible and invincible work upon the soul is the indispensable accompaniment to gospel proclamation.
The Command for the Conquest
Deuteronomy 7:1–11 sets out the divine policy for Israel's conquest of Canaan, commanding total destruction of the seven Canaanite nations and prohibiting political, social, and religious alliances with them. The passage answers the modern objection that God commanded genocide of innocent peoples by demonstrating from Leviticus 18 that the Canaanites were under divine judgment for extreme wickedness, and that God applied the same standard of judgment to Israel when Israel imitated their conduct. The distinction between Israel and Canaan rests entirely on sovereign, unconditional election — not Israel's numbers or righteousness — and finds its New Covenant fulfillment in the church as the true people of God united to Christ. The passage's prohibitions carry direct application to contemporary alliances: believers are to marry only in the Lord, avoid religious compromise on cardinal doctrines, and understand civil government's proper and limited role.
The Vindication of the Righteous One
Psalm 7 unfolds as a courtroom drama in which the psalmist — and, typologically, the Lord Jesus Christ — appeals to God for vindication against false accusers, refusing personal retaliation and casting the entire matter upon the justice of God. The sermon moves through three phases: the supplication of the righteous one, the assertion of innocence, and the extended vindication that grounds confidence in God's decreed judgment against the wicked. David functions as a type of Christ, whose spotless innocence alone fully satisfies the conditions of verses 3–4, and whose imputed righteousness is the sole ground on which the church may echo his plea. The practical summons is to resist paralysis or retaliation in the face of false accusation and social hostility, and instead to take refuge in the just God who is angry with the wicked every day and who has appointed a day of final judgment.
The Defense of the Faith
Jude 3 commands every believer — not merely church officers — to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. This sermon works through the exhortation (v. 3), the motivation supplied by the reality of internal heresy (v. 4), and the disposition required of faithful contenders (vv. 17, 20–21). The defense of objective Christian truth is grounded not in combative temperament but in the knowledge that God loves his people, and is sustained through the study of Scripture, prayer, and a forward orientation toward the return of Christ.
The Salvation and Blessing of God
Psalm 3 presents David's threefold movement through affliction, conviction, and petition — not as private biography, but as a typological window onto the Lord Jesus Christ and, in union with him, the whole church. David's flight from Absalom prefigures Christ surrounded by enemies, crucified, raised, and exalted; the same enemies who said 'there is no help for him in God' echo across the centuries to Golgotha. The psalm teaches that affliction does not dissolve confidence in God but sharpens it: the shield, the glory, and the lifter of the head are unchanging realities that produce sleep in the midst of crisis and courage before ten thousands of adversaries. The closing declaration — 'salvation belongs to the LORD, your blessing is upon your people' — is the direct answer to every accusation that God has abandoned his own, and it is the ground on which the church is called to pray, to sing, and to stand without fear.
The Ninth Commandment
The Ninth Commandment — 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor' (Deuteronomy 5:20) — addresses first and foremost the crime of perjury in a judicial context, then extends by implication to every form of falsehood: lying, slander, backbiting, gossip, and tailbearing. Working through Deuteronomy 19:15–21, the study examines the biblical lex talionis applied to false witnesses, where the perjurer receives the same penalty he sought to bring upon the accused, and draws out the retributive and deterrent logic of Old Covenant judicial law. The positive requirement of the commandment — the sanctity of truth in all areas of life — is traced through Leviticus 19, Proverbs, Romans 1, and the Westminster Larger Catechism's exhaustive treatment of sins against the ninth commandment. Hearers are called to active and passive faithfulness: neither speaking falsehood nor lending an ear to those who do.
The Refuge for God's People
Psalm 46 sets an axiomatic foundation — God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble — from which the necessary inference follows: therefore we will not fear. This sermon works through the psalm's four movements: the affirmation of God's presence (vv. 1, 7, 11), the demonstration of God's power amid cosmic and political chaos (vv. 2–6), the contemplation of God's proven works in history (vv. 8–9), and the sovereign command of verse 10. The titles 'Lord of hosts' and 'God of Jacob' ground the psalm's confidence in both the divine warrior who fights for his people and the covenant Lord who cannot be separated from them — a comfort the New Covenant believer holds with even greater fullness in Christ.
The Seventh Commandment Part 2
The seventh commandment's prohibition against adultery extends, by the interpretive principle of the Decalogue, to every form of sexual sin Scripture addresses. This study works through homosexuality, bestiality, unlawful divorce, immodesty, polygamy, prostitution, and lust — demonstrating from the Old and New Testaments that each represents a violation of God's creation ordinance for marriage. The study closes with the recognition that the law's exposure of sexual sin drives the believer back to the cross, where the imputed righteousness of Christ and free and sovereign grace provide both forgiveness and the motive for sanctification.
The Sixth Commandment, Part 5
The sixth commandment, 'You shall not murder' (Deuteronomy 5:17), is grounded not in mere legal convention but in the theological reality that man bears the image of God — an image that persists from conception through old age, in sickness and health, in the handicapped and the mentally ill. Drawing on Genesis 1, 5, and 9, alongside Jesus' exposition in Matthew 5:21-22 and John's application in 1 John 3, this study traces the commandment's reach inward to unwarranted anger and character assassination, and outward to the present cultural crises of abortion, euthanasia, and the neglect of capital punishment. Because the image of God is the theological rationale for both the prohibition of murder and the mandate of capital punishment, opposition to abortion and support for the death penalty are not contradictory positions but necessary corollaries of the same conviction about the sanctity of human life.
The Resurrection of Christ
The resurrection of Christ is the foundation of Christian hope, the confirmation of Old Testament prophecy, and the grounds of both justification and coming judgment. Working through John 20:1–10, this sermon examines the discovery and investigation of the empty tomb by Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the beloved disciple John, noting the eyewitness character of the narrative and the theological significance of the burial cloths. The shift from the seventh-day Sabbath to the first day of the week is grounded in Hebrews 4 and the pattern of new creation. The empty tomb preaches comfort to the believer and the certainty of judgment to the unbeliever, calling all to repent and believe on the risen Lord Jesus Christ.
The Burial of Christ
The burial of Jesus Christ in John 19:38–42 and Matthew 27:62–66 is not a peripheral narrative detail but a theological linchpin between the humiliation of the cross and the triumph of the resurrection. Through the actions of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus — two secret disciples emboldened by the death of Christ — the gospel accounts establish the true humanity of the Son of God, confirm the reality of his death against ancient and modern denials, and set the stage for the empty tomb. The security measures taken by the Sanhedrin, far from suppressing the resurrection, served only to make the miracle undeniable and the wrath of men an instrument of God's glory. Sinners are called to receive the gospel as historical fact: that Christ died for sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day.
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 5th Commandment
The fifth commandment — 'Honor your father and your mother' (Deuteronomy 5:16) — demands far more than a recipe for happy families; it is a covenantal obligation rooted in God's own authority and binding on every generation. This study examines the command under three heads: its explanation (the Hebrew word for 'honor' connoting weightiness and reverence), its scope (extending beyond the family to all superior-inferior relationships in church, workplace, and commonwealth), and its sanction (from the rod of correction in Proverbs to the capital sentence of Deuteronomy 21). The promise appended to the command — long life and general wellbeing — is understood as a principle of divine providence, not an absolute guarantee, and the study closes with the duty of superiors to govern those beneath them in a godly and nurturing way.
Kept By The Power Of God
Acts 27:39–28:16 records the final leg of the Apostle Paul's journey to Rome — shipwreck, a viper's bite on the beach at Malta, miraculous healings, and at last the arrival that God had promised. The central question the passage forces upon every hearer is whether God keeps His promises when His servants suffer. Drawing on Ecclesiastes 9, John 9, and Luke 13, the sermon demonstrates that calamity falls on the righteous and the wicked alike without distinction, and that the right response to suffering is not to identify whose sin caused it but to seek God's glory in it. The believer's ground of confidence is 1 Peter 1:5 — that the people of God are kept by His power through faith, and that the same sovereign purpose which brought Paul safely to Rome will bring every trusting soul to its appointed end.
The Warning Against Judaizers
Philippians 3:1–3 contains the only sustained polemical section in the epistle, and the apostle Paul deploys it as a warning against Judaizers — those who insisted that faith in Christ must be supplemented by Mosaic ceremonies such as circumcision for acceptance with God. Working through Paul's strategy in verse 1, his three-fold warning in verse 2, and his corrective in verse 3, the sermon demonstrates that the Judaizing error — whether in its first-century form, in Roman Catholicism, or in modern movements such as the New Perspective on Paul and Federal Vision — nullifies the grace of God by refusing to let Christ be a whole Savior. The church's only boast, identity, and worship are grounded in Christ alone, received through faith alone, apart from any confidence in the flesh.
The Third Commandment
The Third Commandment — 'You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain' (Deuteronomy 5:11) — carries far greater weight than mere avoidance of profanity, because the divine name is not an arbitrary label but a revelation of God's very being, perfections, works, and decree. The sermon examines three aspects: the theological significance of God's name, the breadth of the prohibition (spanning blasphemy, frivolous speech, euphemisms, unlawful oaths, magic and sorcery, misapplication of providence, and maintenance of false doctrine), and the positive duty to use God's name reverently in prayer, praise, theological discourse, and the keeping of solemn oaths. The closing application presses hearers toward an 'answerable conversation' — a profession of faith matched by a life that gives no occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.
The Victory of David Over Goliath
David's defeat of Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 is not a moralistic lesson in overcoming personal giants, but a theological declaration that the living and true God vindicates His covenant people against those who defy Him. The narrative turns on two explicit lessons David announces in verses 46–47: that all the earth will know there is a God in Israel, and that Israel will learn the Lord does not save by sword and spear. David functions typologically as the singular seed of the woman, his headshot of Goliath advancing the Genesis 3:15 promise toward its fulfillment at Golgotha, where Christ crushed the serpent's head through His death and resurrection. The sermon calls believers to the same confidence David displayed — trusting the living God rather than human strength, because the same God who delivered David has promised to build His church and defend His people.
The First Commandment
Deuteronomy 5:7 — 'You shall have no other gods before me' — is the foundation of covenant loyalty, defining not only who the one true God is but what response He demands from His people. This study works through the prohibition against other gods (atheism, polytheism, syncretism, sorcery, heresy, and creature-worship) before turning to the positive duties the commandment requires: knowing God, loving Him, fearing Him, obeying Him, trusting Him, and worshipping Him on His own terms. The first commandment is not merely theological orthodoxy but a call to total, exclusive, and practical devotion to Yahweh — a devotion made possible only by the grace that plants His fear in the heart.