Topic
Biblical Theology
1,075 sermons · All topics
11/26 AM
Psalm 19 is read not merely as a declaration of general and special revelation but as a prophetic anticipation, interpreted by the Apostle Paul in Romans 10, of the apostolic proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Working through seven points across the psalm's three movements, the sermon traces the symbol, referent, and message of each image: heavens and firmament pointing to the apostles, the sun pointing to Christ the Bridegroom and Son of Righteousness, and the law, testimony, statutes, and judgments pointing to the gospel itself. The Word of God is shown to be perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, true, and righteous — qualities that belong to the gospel, not the Mosaic law — and its effects of conversion, wisdom, rejoicing, and enlightenment call both believer and unbeliever to rest in Christ, the Son of Righteousness, whose glory has gone out to the ends of the earth.
Death Penalty, Part 3
Romans 13:1–7 furnishes the New Testament's clearest warrant for civil government bearing the sword, including capital punishment — yet common objections, both biblical and pragmatic, continue to challenge this teaching. This third installment of a study arising from Leviticus 20 addresses the two most significant biblical objections: the pacifist misreading of Matthew 5:38–42 and the attempt to leverage John 8:1–11 against lawful execution. The sermon argues that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is correcting the misapplication of the lex talionis to personal relationships, not dismantling civil jurisprudence, and that his handling of the woman caught in adultery actually upholds Mosaic evidentiary law rather than nullifying capital punishment. Five pragmatic objections — that the death penalty is incompatible with Christian forgiveness, lacks mercy, risks executing the innocent, fails to deter, and forecloses salvation — are each answered from Scripture and reason.
Leviticus 20 - the Death Penalty
Leviticus 20 catalogues capital offenses under the Mosaic law — idolatry, witchcraft, adultery, incest, homosexuality, and bestiality — and provides the occasion for a sustained biblical-theological treatment of the death penalty across the covenants. The study traces the authorization of capital punishment from the Noahic Covenant in Genesis 9 through the Mosaic legislation and into the New Covenant via Acts 25 and Romans 13, arguing that the death penalty remains a binding obligation upon civil magistrates. Romans 13 is read as the New Testament's clearest statement that the sword entrusted to the civil magistrate is God's instrument for executing wrath upon evildoers in history, not merely a sign of general authority. Hearers are called to think biblically about the proper and limited role of civil government, to resist the conflation of civil submission with capitulation to tyranny, and to uphold the abiding moral normativity of capital punishment for murder and other heinous crimes.
A Psalm of the Cross
Psalm 22 is a psalm of David written under prophetic inspiration, its true subject not David himself but his greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ — who took its opening words upon his lips from the cross. The sermon works through verses 1–21a under three headings: the distress of the Messiah (the cry of dereliction rightly understood), the suffering of the Messiah at the hands of beastly men, and the confidence of the Messiah who never ceases to affirm the holiness, faithfulness, and presence of God even under the weight of divine wrath. The cry 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' signifies not a rupture within the Trinity nor a dissolution of the hypostatic union, but the withdrawal of the Father's favor from the Son as our penal substitute — the Son receiving in himself the punishment due to sinners while continuing to petition the Father who heard him. Believers are exhorted to read the Old Testament through New Covenant eyes, singing the Psalms as words that belong to Christ and reveal dimensions of his suffering that even the Gospel narratives do not supply.
Holiness in the daily lives of Old Covenant Israel
Leviticus 19:19–37 presents a series of miscellaneous laws governing mixed breeding, pagan practices, sacred prostitution, necromancy, care for the elderly and the stranger, and fair trade — all set within the covenant calling of Israel to be holy as God is holy. These laws are classified under the threefold Reformed distinction of moral, ceremonial, and judicial law, with the ceremonial portions fulfilled and abrogated in Christ while their embedded moral duties remain, traceable to the Ten Commandments. The passage is expounded to show that Israel's separation from surrounding nations was not arbitrary but theologically grounded in God's own act of separating Israel as his covenant people. The enduring application is that the law's pedagogical function — exposing sin and driving the people to the Lamb of God — is as operative for the New Covenant believer as it was for ancient Israel.
Live Stream - October 29, 2023
Hosea 3 presents the redemption of Gomer as a mirror of God's unconditioned love toward his covenant people — a love not conditioned by the worthiness of its object but by who God is in himself. Hosea's purchase of his adulterous wife from bondage at the price of silver and barley points directly to Christ's redemption of his bride from the slavery of sin at the cost of his own life, meeting the covenantal demand that the wages of sin is death. The sermon traces three movements in the chapter: the display of unconditioned love, the call to fidelity during the betrothal period, and the promise of final consummation when Christ returns for his people. Hearers are called to pursue holiness not as legalism but as the fitting response of a bride who has been purchased at infinite cost, and unbelievers are urged to flee now to the only Savior who can free them from the bondage that leads to destruction.
The Gospel According to Hosea: Part 1
Hosea 2:14–23 presents the gospel in the form of an ancient Near Eastern marriage sequence — courtship, betrothal, and consummation — in which Yahweh pursues His unfaithful bride with an offer of abundant and eternal life. The passage is read as a mirror, not a window: the same spiritual harlotry that defined Israel before God defines every human being who has followed Adam into exile from God's presence. Justification is the legal transaction by which the sinner entrusts herself to God as husband, not master — received by faith alone, sealed by Christ's atoning work as the bride price of righteousness and mercy. The sermon closes with an urgent call to the unbeliever to accept the offer of eternal life, and with an exhortation to the believer to press on in anticipation of the consummation still to come.
The Apostolic Sermon
Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost, recorded in Acts 2:14–41, is the first apostolic proclamation of the risen Christ, and it follows a carefully constructed argument: correcting a false accusation, demonstrating from Old Testament Scripture who the Messiah is, and confronting the hearers with their guilt before the exalted Lord. The sermon examines how Peter builds his case through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, drawing on Joel 2, Psalm 16, and Psalm 110 to show that every stage of Christ's humiliation and exaltation was foreordained. The hearers' anguished question — 'What shall we do?' — is answered with a call to repentance, faith, and baptism, which Peter grounds not in human decision alone but in the sovereign, effectual call of God. The application presses hearers to submit to Christ as Lord, to feel the weight of sin's horror, and to follow repentance and faith with public baptism and membership in the local church.
Wednesday PM - Sept 27, 2023
Leviticus 17 governs the sacrificial use of blood among the covenant people of Israel, and this exposition traces three interlocking regulations: the prohibition against slaughtering sacrificial animals outside the Tabernacle, the prohibition against ingesting blood, and the rules for handling game animals. The central rationale is penal substitution — the blood of the animal represents life given in the place of the worshiper's life, prefiguring the atoning work of Christ. The Holiness Code of Leviticus 17–26 functions as the ethical imperative that follows the indicative of sacrificial forgiveness, a pattern that anticipates the New Covenant movement from justification into sanctification.
The Blessings of the Ascended Christ
The ascended and glorified Christ actively dispenses blessings to his church from the right hand of the Father. Expounding Acts 2:22–47, this sermon traces three categories of those benefactions: his proclamational gifts (the gift of preachers, the preaching of the Word, and the Spirit's empowering of that preaching), his salvific gifts (effectual calling and the forgiveness of sins), and his ecclesiastical gifts (the creed of the church, the building and unity of the church, the gathering around apostolic doctrine, and the new covenant ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper). Believers are exhorted to pray for Spirit-empowered preaching, to attend diligently upon all the appointed means of grace, and to find their unity in the objective content of Christian confession rather than in secondary things.
The Cessation of Revelatory Gifts
First Corinthians 13:8–13 declares that tongues, prophecy, and words of knowledge have a designed and determined end, giving way to the completed New Testament canon. This sermon argues from Acts 2, 1 Corinthians 13–14, Hebrews 1–2, Ephesians 2, and Daniel 9 that the revelatory gifts were temporary, apostolic, and tied to the first advent of Christ and the foundational era of the church. The 'perfect' of 1 Corinthians 13:10 refers not to the eschatological consummation but to the inscripturated fullness of divine revelation in the New Testament scriptures. Christians today are called to glory in the completed Word of God and in the abiding work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and illumination, rather than seeking gifts that have ceased.
Wednesday Night Bible Study - Leviticus 1-16
Leviticus 16, the Day of Atonement, stands at the theological center of both the book and the Pentateuch, answering the question Exodus leaves unresolved: how may sinful man enter the presence of a holy God. This session reviews the whole of Leviticus 1–16, tracing the book's structure from the sacrificial system and the institution of the priesthood through the laws of cleanness, showing that every element of the ceremonial apparatus — offering, priest, atonement — was divinely instituted, not humanly devised. The Nadab and Abihu incident demonstrates that unauthorized worship is mortal transgression, while the two-goat ritual of chapter 16 pictures both propitiation and expiation, all pointing forward to the once-for-all sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Glorious Exchange
Zechariah 3 presents a courtroom scene in which the high priest Joshua stands before the angel of the Lord clothed in filth while Satan waits to bring his accusation — and God silences the devil not by appealing to Israel's performance but by sovereignly removing the filthy garments and clothing Joshua in rich robes. This fourth night vision of Zechariah illustrates what Luther called the glorious exchange: the sinner's guilt imputed to Christ and Christ's righteousness imputed to the believer, received by faith alone. The sermon traces this double imputation through Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 1, 2 Corinthians 5, Galatians 2, and Philippians 3, and refutes the New Perspective on Paul's rejection of forensic imputation. The exhortation is plain: when the adversary accuses, the Christian's only answer is not performance but the gospel of sovereign grace in Christ the Branch.
Live Stream - September 10, 2023
First Corinthians 15 grounds the certainty of the resurrection in the testimony of the Old Testament scriptures, the evidence of eyewitnesses, and the grace of God attending gospel proclamation. The great hope of the gospel is established by Paul's chain of logical argumentation: if Christ is risen, then preaching is full, faith is complete, sin does not reign, and believers who have died have not perished. The sermon closes with the adamic theology of the gospel — the contrast between the first Adam, in whom all die, and the last Adam, Christ, in whom all shall be made alive — calling hearers to praise God for so great a salvation.
2LCF Chapter 4 - Of Creation
Creation is not a brute fact but a deliberate act of the undivided Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — for the manifestation of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness. This study of 2LCF Chapter 4 traces what creation is (all things not God, made ex nihilo and from previously created matter), who created (the triune God whose immutability and eternality mean creation produced no change in Him), and what man is within creation (a being made male and female, bearing reasonable and immortal souls, the image of God in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness). The chapter culminates in the covenant of works: man was not created in covenant but was brought into covenant by God's voluntary condescension, establishing the pre-fall communion whose loss in Adam and recovery in the second Adam frames the entire remainder of the confession.
Live Stream - August 20, 2023
Numbers 21:4-9 records Israel's sin of complaining against God and Moses in the wilderness, God's judgment of fiery serpents, and the divinely appointed remedy of a bronze serpent lifted on a pole. This sermon argues that complaining against God and his appointed authorities is a serious transgression that violates both the first and tenth commandments, and that God in sovereign mercy provides healing through ordained means that require faith to embrace. The exposition is the first part of a two-part message; gospel application connecting Numbers 21 to John 3:14-16 is reserved for the evening service.
The Context of John 3:16, Part 1
John 3:16 opens with the word 'for,' marking it as a continuation of a preceding argument — yet the verse is almost universally quoted without its Old Testament context. This sermon expounds Numbers 21:4–9, the account of the bronze serpent in the wilderness, which Jesus himself cites in John 3:14 as the direct backdrop for his declaration of the gospel to Nicodemus. The sin of Israel — grumbling against a gracious God despite his continual provision — brought deadly judgment in the form of fiery serpents, and the God-ordained remedy was not the removal of the snakes but a look of faith toward a bronze serpent lifted on a pole. Hearers are called to repent of complaining against God and the authorities he has appointed, and to return for the evening service where the typological fulfillment in the lifting up of the Son of Man will be applied to the gospel.
The Contest at Carmel
Elijah's confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel exposes the absolute futility of idolatry and the exclusive sovereignty of Yahweh. Set against the backdrop of Ahab's state-sponsored Baalism and a three-year drought, the passage drives a direct challenge: total allegiance belongs to the living God alone, with no syncretistic middle ground. The sermon traces the contest from Elijah's gauntlet through the false prophets' frenzied failure to God's decisive, fire-bearing answer, arguing that the same God who consumed the sacrifice at Carmel receives sinners today through the atoning blood of Christ. The application is direct: those who still halt between two opinions are called to repent and look to Christ in faith, while believers are charged to hold fast to God Most High without divided allegiance.
The Binding of Isaac
Genesis 22, the binding of Isaac, presents Abraham's supreme test of faith as both a window into faithful perseverance under affliction and a richly typological passage pointing forward to the atoning work of Christ. The sermon traces three movements: the presentation of the test, the obedience of Abraham, and God's approval and confirmed promises. Central to the exposition is the typological reading — Abraham as a figure of the Father, Isaac as the only beloved son who bears the wood, and the ram caught in the thicket as a type of the substitutionary Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The application calls believers to cultivate persevering faith through the ordinary means of grace, trusting that God furnishes sufficient grace for whatever trial he appoints.
Live Stream - July 16, 2023
Second Samuel 12:1–15 records Nathan's confrontation of David following his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah the Hittite. The sermon expounds three movements in the passage: the instruction of God's servant Nathan through the parable of the ewe lamb, the indictment of God's king through Nathan's direct accusation and rehearsal of divine grace, and the implementation of God's grace in David's brief but genuine confession and Nathan's declaration of pardon. The central argument is that David's recovery from grievous sin was initiated entirely by God's sovereign grace, not by David's own contrition, and that the pardon pronounced over David rests ultimately on the atoning work of Christ, the greater Son of David. Hearers are called to see in David a concrete illustration that God is a real Savior for real sinners, and to cast themselves on that same grace rather than on any supposed sufficiency of their own works or contrition.
A Harvest from an Unlikely Place
John 4:7–42 records Jesus crossing deep cultural, ethnic, and religious barriers to bring the gospel to a Samaritan woman and, through her testimony, to an entire village. The sermon works through three movements in the passage: Jesus sowing gospel seed by patiently steering the conversation from physical water to living water and then to his own messianic identity; Jesus reorienting his horizontally focused disciples to see the spiritual harvest already approaching; and Jesus and his disciples reaping that harvest among the despised Samaritans. The passage is applied as a missionary mandate — to cross ethnic and cultural boundaries, to address sin honestly, to keep Christ as the centre of every gospel presentation, and to lift our eyes to the 'Samaritans' in our own communities and the changing demographics of our cities.
The Riches of God's Grace
David's fall into adultery and murder in 2 Samuel 11 sets the stage for one of Scripture's most striking displays of divine grace in 2 Samuel 12:1–15. Nathan's parable exposes David's sin through the unstoppable initiative of God, and the prophet's indictment demonstrates that David's wickedness was aggravated, not mitigated, by the abundant grace God had already shown him. David's two-word confession — 'I have sinned against the Lord' — is met immediately with pardon, not because the confession was elaborate, but because forgiveness rests entirely on the atoning work of Christ, to whom David looked in faith through the promises of the Davidic covenant. The sermon calls both believer and unbeliever to receive the same grace: real forgiveness for real sinners, grounded in the righteousness of Christ imputed through faith alone.
The Triumph of Samson at Gaza
Judges 16 records the final chapter of the Samson cycle, moving from the removal of Gaza's city gates through Samson's betrayal by Delilah to his death in the destruction of the temple of Dagon. Against readings that reduce Samson to a figure of ungoverned sexual appetite, this exposition argues that Samson is a faithful judge of Israel, Spirit-empowered and strategically purposeful, whose every encounter with the Philistines is ordered by divine providence toward the deliverance of God's people. The departure of Yahweh from Samson is traced not to moral degeneracy but to Samson's disclosure of the sign of his Nazirite vow, which jeopardized the mission for which he was set apart. Throughout, Samson is presented as a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, whose greater deliverance through death saves more than his life alone could accomplish.
The Triumphal Entry
The triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem, recorded in John 12:12–19, is a dense convergence of Old Testament expectation and messianic fulfillment. The crowd's palm branches, their cry of Hosanna from Psalm 118, and Jesus' deliberate choice to ride a donkey in fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9 together constitute a public royal declaration — Christ confirming by his own action that he is the King of Israel, the opener of the gates of righteousness, who brings salvation not by overwhelming military force but by suffering and death. The disciples' initial incomprehension, resolved only after the glorification of Christ, illustrates how the resurrection supplies the hermeneutical key for reading the entire Old Testament. The Pharisees' admission of failure — 'the world has gone after him' — unwittingly echoes Zechariah 9:10 and testifies to the unstoppable advance of God's kingdom through Christ.
The Judicial Decision to Murder Jesus
The Sanhedrin's formal decree to execute Jesus, recorded in John 11:47–57, is the most extreme miscarriage of justice in human history — a body constituted to administer God's law plotting the murder of the only innocent man who ever lived. The sermon expounds the irony that Caiaphas, driven entirely by political self-preservation, nevertheless prophesied accurately: one man would die for the nation, and not for that nation only, but to gather the scattered children of God from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. John's theological commentary on the high priest's words (vv. 51–52) unpacks the doctrinal heart of penal substitutionary atonement — the just for the unjust, the holy and harmless for the thoroughly defiled. The passage calls believers to stand in awe that Christ willingly walked into this kangaroo court, refused self-defense, and bore the wrath of godless men so that sinners might be freed from the wrath of God.
The Triumph of Samson at Jawbone Height
Judges 15 presents Samson not as a man governed by lust but as a Spirit-empowered deliverer who typifies the Lord Jesus Christ. This exposition traces three movements: the betrayal by Samson's father-in-law, the treachery of the men of Judah who preferred Philistine subjection to covenantal freedom, and the triumph at Jawbone Height where the Spirit of the Lord shattered Samson's bonds and enabled him to slay a thousand men. The central application calls God's people away from the assimilation of godless culture toward uncompromising allegiance to the Word of God, grounded in dependence upon the God who furnishes His servants with every means of victory.
The Day of Atonement
Leviticus 16 stands at the structural center of the Pentateuch, and its legislation governing the Day of Atonement reveals both the absolute holiness of God and the total sinfulness of man. The two goats — one slaughtered as a sin offering and one driven into the wilderness as the scapegoat — together signify substitutionary atonement and the definite removal of guilt from a specific covenant people. The high priest's own need for sacrifice before he could minister for Israel exposes the inadequacy of the Levitical priesthood and anticipates the once-for-all, self-sufficient sacrifice of Christ, whose blood retroactively atoned for Old Covenant believers and finally accomplished what the annual rite could only shadow. Believers in the New Covenant era need no further Day of Atonement ceremony; every observance of the Lord's Supper recalls the same removal of guilt that the scapegoat ceremony made visible to Israel.
The Ministry of Paul in Ephesus
Acts 19:1–10 presents what appears to be a re-baptism of John's disciples by Paul, but a careful reading of the passage's punctuation and structure reveals that verses 4 and 5 record what Paul said — a summary of John's baptism — while verse 6 records what Paul did: lay hands on these men to confer the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit. John's baptism was Christian baptism, requiring repentance and faith in Christ Jesus, and these disciples had already received it. The extraordinary sign gifts of tongues and prophecy that accompanied the Spirit's coming in Acts 2, 8, 10, and 19 were revelatory gifts suited to the first-century church's founding mission and are not normative patterns for all believers in subsequent ages.
Our Good God Judges the Wicked
Nahum 1:7–14 sets the goodness of God against the backdrop of his unstoppable vengeance, and the two cannot be separated. The Lord is good precisely because he is a stronghold for his covenant people and because he will make an utter end of the wicked who oppress them — salvation and judgment belong together. Nineveh, the brutal capital of Assyria, stands under a certain death sentence, while Judah, even in a self-inflicted affliction, is promised the breaking of every chain. The passage calls the people of God to flee to Christ as the only refuge from end-time judgment, confident that his mercy endures forever toward those who trust in him.
Live Stream - June 04, 2023
Leviticus 8–10 presents the ordination, ministry, and judgment of the Aaronic priesthood as the divinely prescribed way for sinful man to access a thrice-holy God — access that comes only through blood atonement, not human innovation. The fire that consumes the sacrifices at the close of Leviticus 9 and the fire that devours Nadab and Abihu at the opening of Leviticus 10 are the same fire, with obedience or disobedience to God's explicit commands as the only determining factor. The entire Levitical system is typological, pointing forward to the Lord Jesus Christ as the great high priest who satisfies divine justice on behalf of guilty sinners. New Covenant worshipers are called to approach the unchanging holy God with the same reverence that the Levitical system demanded, now through the finished work of Christ and mediated at the Lord's Table.