Topic
Christian Living
1,140 sermons · All topics
Free Grace Baptist Church - July 22, 2018 PM
A borrowed faith collapses when the godly influences that sustained it are removed, while a living faith — wrought by the Holy Spirit through regeneration — endures. Expositing 2 Chronicles 24, this sermon traces the rise and catastrophic fall of King Joash: zealous for temple restoration under the mentorship of the priest Jehoiada, yet an idol-worshipper immediately after Jehoiada's death. Three lessons emerge: the indispensable role of godly role models in the life of faith, the sobering possibility of sustaining an outwardly faithful life on nothing more than borrowed conviction, and the patient, pursuing grace of God who sends prophets to arrest the backslider before judgment falls. Hearers are urged to examine whether their faith is genuinely Spirit-given or merely the reflection of another's godliness, and to seek Christ now — with all their brokenness — before the godly influences in their lives are gone.
Is Your's a Borrowed Faith?
The narrative of Joash in 2 Chronicles 24 raises a searching question for every professing believer: is your faith genuinely your own, or have you been living on the borrowed spiritual capital of a godly mentor? Conrad Mbewe traces three lessons from the passage — the providential gift of godly role models, the dangerous possibility of a faith that is merely reflected rather than rooted, and the grace of God that erects barriers of conscience and prophetic warning along the road of unbelief. The sermon closes with a direct appeal: while godly influences remain within reach, now is the moment to examine whether your faith is a living reality wrought by the Spirit through regeneration, and if not, to come to Christ with all your brokenness.
07-22-2018 Am
Psalm 34 is an acrostic poem written by David to commemorate a low and shameful moment — his feigned madness before Abimelech recorded in 1 Samuel 21 — yet David weaves none of his own disgrace into the psalm, choosing instead to erect a memorial to God's mercy alone. The sermon works verse by verse through the psalm's two major divisions: verses 1–10, a hymn in which David praises God and exhorts the godly to constancy in faith, and verses 11–22, a sermon addressed to the people of God on how to live before the Lord. The central pastoral burden is that God's redeemed children, whatever the difficulty of their present circumstances, have every reason to bless the Lord at all times, cry to Him in their troubles, and rest assured that none who trust in Him shall ever be condemned.
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.
Free Grace Baptist Church - July 15, 2018 PM
Hebrews 12:1 calls the people of God to run with endurance the race that is set before them, laying aside every weight and entangling sin. This exposition of the verse's first incentive — the great cloud of witnesses from Hebrews 11 — argues that those Old Testament saints are not spectators watching believers run, but witnesses testifying to the faithfulness of God in every circumstance of trial, hardship, and suffering. The sermon moves through Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, David, the three Hebrew youths, Habakkuk, Job, and the martyrs to demonstrate that the consistent, unanimous testimony of the faithful is that Yahweh upholds those who persevere, whatever their lot. The exhortation is concrete: lay aside weights and sin, fix your gaze on Christ, listen to the testimony of the cloud of witnesses, and press on toward the finish with disciplined, unglamorous, daily faithfulness.
The Woman Who Was a Sinner
Luke 7:36–50 presents three parties — a repentant woman, a judgmental Pharisee, and the Lord Jesus Christ — whose interactions disclose the theology of justification by grace alone through faith alone. The woman's extravagant acts of devotion at Christ's feet are not the ground of her forgiveness but its fruit: she loves much because she has been forgiven much. The Pharisee's self-righteousness exposes the danger of confusing surface morality with saving grace, and of imagining any sinner to be beyond the reach of Christ. The sermon calls believers to examine the warmth of their love for Christ as the chief evidence of genuine justifying faith, and invites the unconverted to come to the Savior whose mercy is wider than any sinner's guilt.
The Believer's Race
Hebrews 12:1 calls the people of God to run the Christian race with endurance, laying aside every weight and entangling sin. This sermon expounds the first of three incentives the author of Hebrews sets before believers: the great cloud of witnesses from Hebrews 11, who function not as spectators watching the runner, but as witnesses testifying to the faithfulness of God through every trial and affliction. Drawing on Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, David, Job, Habakkuk, and the martyrs Polycarp and Thomas Hawkes, the sermon presses believers to receive the unanimous testimony of the saints — that God is faithful, God sustains runners, and God will bring them through to the end — and to run without quitting, because the Christian life is a marathon requiring daily faithfulness, not a glamorous sprint.
Free Grace Baptist Church - July 15, 2018 AM
Luke 7:36–50 presents three parties — a converted sinner, a self-righteous Pharisee, and the altogether lovely Savior — whose interaction illustrates the Reformation doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone. The woman's extravagant acts of worship are not the cause of her forgiveness but the consequence: she loves much because she has been forgiven much. Believers are summoned to examine whether their own devotion to Christ reflects the logic of the parable — that those freely forgiven of the greater debt respond with the greater love.
The Response to Peter's Sermon, Part 2
Acts 2:43–47 describes the ordinary but Spirit-wrought practice of the early Jerusalem church, and this exposition presses that description as a prescription for church life today. The sermon examines steadfastness in apostolic doctrine, fellowship, the Lord's Supper, and prayer; the fear of God that attends his presence; the voluntary charity of believers toward one another; and the public and private conduct of a congregation living under sovereign grace. Against both charismatic enthusiasm and worldly accommodation, the sermon argues that faithfulness in ordinary, Word-regulated worship and mutual edification — not signs, programs, or radical individualism — is the enduring mark of a church built by Christ.
The Seven Things God Hates
Proverbs 6:16–19 presents a numerical proverb identifying seven things Yahweh hates and calls an abomination. The sermon works through each item in two groupings — five abominable members (proud eyes, lying tongue, murdering hands, cunning heart, swift feet) and two abominable actions (false witness and sowing discord among brethren) — showing how these vices characterise the man of Belial described in verses 12–15 and how they correspond to sins God condemns throughout the canon. The exposition draws extensively from the wider book of Proverbs to show the cumulative weight of each vice, applies the prohibition against shedding innocent blood to abortion and euthanasia, and closes with a call to pursue the corresponding virtues — humility, truthfulness, the protection of life, a guarded heart, and the pursuit of peace — as evidence of a heart transformed by the gospel of Christ.
The Importance of Keeping the Heart
Proverbs 4:23–27 commands God's people to keep their hearts with all diligence, because the heart is the source from which all conduct flows — mouth, eyes, and feet are merely its outlets. Drawing on the warnings of Jeremiah 17:9, the illustrations of Proverbs 7, and Christ's own teaching in Matthew 15, this exposition argues that total depravity makes diligent heart-keeping not optional but urgent. The sermon closes by pressing that this command can only be obeyed through constant dependence on God's Word and Spirit, and that apart from Christ we can do nothing.
Free Grace Baptist Church - June 10, 2018 PM
Proverbs 3:5–6 sets before the believer a threefold structure: a command to trust in Yahweh with the whole heart, a prohibition against leaning on one's own understanding, and an exhortation to acknowledge God in every area of life. The sermon traces total depravity and remaining corruption as the root of self-reliance, exposes three concrete forms of that self-reliance — outright reliance on self, rejection of godly parental counsel, and reception of ungodly influence — and grounds the call to entire, exclusive, and exhaustive trust in the immutability, impassibility, and covenant faithfulness of God. The closing movement draws on Jeremiah 32 and the divine simplicity formulated in the 1689 confession to show that God's commitment to his people is itself entire, exclusive, and exhaustive — making the demands of Proverbs 3:5–6 not burdensome but reasonable in light of the gospel.
The Believer's Commitment to the Lord
Proverbs 3:5–6 commands an entire, exclusive, and exhaustive commitment to Yahweh — a trust that spans salvation and all of ordinary life. The sermon works through three structural elements of the text: the command to trust in the Lord with all the heart, the prohibition against leaning on one's own understanding, and the exhortation to acknowledge God in all one's ways with the promise that He will direct the believer's paths. The doctrine of remaining corruption in the regenerate explains why this command is needed, while the perfections of God — His impassability, immutability, and divine simplicity — ground the assurance that His commitment to His people is equally entire, exclusive, and exhaustive. Hearers are called to search Scripture for explicit texts, implicit applications, and general principles, and to cultivate lives of prayer as a concrete expression of dependence upon God.
The Problem of Sin and the Mercy of God
Proverbs 28:13 sets the problem of sin and the mercy of God in sharpest relief: the one who covers his sin will not prosper, while the one who confesses and forsakes it will have mercy. Working through biblical examples — Adam, Achan, Saul, David, Aaron, Ananias and Sapphira — the sermon exposes the instinctive human strategies for concealing sin: outright denial, minimizing its gravity, blame-shifting, religious compensation, and abandonment of moral categories altogether. The solution is not Roman Catholic penance but genuine confession that sides with God's indictment and genuine forsaking that constitutes the inseparable twin of saving faith — what Christian theologians call conversion — received only through Christ, the surety upon whose head the confessing sinner lays his hand by faith.
Genesis 2:18-25
Genesis 2:18–25 narrates the provision of a wife for Adam as the divinely ordained solution to man's aloneness — the one instance in the creation account where God declares something 'not good.' The text establishes marriage as a pre-civil, pre-fall institution: one man and one woman, joined in an indissoluble one-flesh union, with the woman made neither to dominate nor to be dominated, but to be a comparable helper. The exposition draws out four implications for marriage today: its inherent goodness, its precise biblical definition against contemporary redefinition, its three purposes (companionship, procreation, and the prevention of uncleanness), and the creational distinction between male and female that undergirds both the home and the church. Hearers are called to prize their marriages as a reflection of Christ and the church, to approach marriage with sobriety and biblical discernment, and to stand firm against every cultural assault on God's design.
The Purpose of the Proverbs
Proverbs 1:2–7 sets out both the purpose and the prerequisite of the entire book of Proverbs. The purpose is comprehensive — to impart wisdom, instruction, and just judgment to the simple, the young, the wise, and every condition of man — while the prerequisite is singular: the fear of the Lord, which is not a natural attainment but a gracious work of God in the soul. The fear of God is shown to be the epistemological foundation of all true knowledge, the animator of righteous conduct, and the preserver of the soul — available only through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one greater than Solomon in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.
Free Grace Baptist Church - May 20, 2018 PM
First Kings 3 opens a new series through the book of Proverbs by establishing the credentials of Solomon as its primary teacher. The sermon examines Solomon's prayer for wisdom at Gibeon and its immediate proof in the judgment of the two harlots, showing that true wisdom is God-given, others-oriented, and marked by equity toward all people regardless of station. The generosity of God — who bids his people to ask boldly — is presented as the very foundation of prayer, and the sovereignty of God is answered as the reason to pray, not the reason to abstain from it. Hearers are urged to adopt Solomon's pattern of prayer, to seek wisdom for the benefit of others, and to enter the school of Proverbs expecting God to supply what is lacking in heart and mind.
Free Grace Baptist Church - May 13, 2018 PM
Philippians 1:27–30 calls the church to conduct worthy of the gospel and to receive suffering for Christ as a divine gift. Expounding these verses under two headings — worthy conduct and worthwhile suffering — the sermon argues that the local church, as a colony of heaven, is called to stand fast in unity against adversaries, and that both the initial grant of faith and the grant of suffering are gracious tokens of God's saving presence with his people. Persecution, far from being a mark of divine abandonment, is shown historically and biblically to be an assurance of salvation, a sign of perdition to those who oppose the gospel, and a means by which God strengthens his church.
The Recovery of Wandering Brethren
James 5:19–20 closes the epistle not with a random aside but with a call to mutual accountability rooted in the high stakes of wandering from the truth. The sermon establishes two movements: the problem of professing believers who drift from the truth into the error of their way, and the encouragement given to every member of the local church who pursues their recovery. Drawing on Matthew 18, Galatians 6, Hebrews 2, and Psalm 119, the exposition argues that truth and conduct are inseparably connected, that instrumental means matter in God's sovereign purposes of salvation, and that the antidote to defection from God is a disciplined, resolute, corporate love for the truth.
Genesis 1:26-31
Genesis 1:26–31 presents the creation of man as the deliberate, dignified pinnacle of God's creative work. The plural 'let us make' in verse 26 is examined through three interpretive options — heavenly council, plural of majesty, and the Trinity — with the Trinitarian reading affirmed as the only exegetically and theologically coherent position. The sermon exposits the Imago Dei with reference to Ecclesiastes 7:29, Ephesians 4:23–24, Colossians 3:10, and the 1689 LBCF chapter 4, establishing that the image encompasses rationality, knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness. Hearers are pressed to live as genuine image-bearers — treating fellow humans with dignity, resisting evolutionary reductionism, and exercising responsible dominion over creation for the glory of the triune God.
The Exhortation to Pray, Part 2
James 5:16–18 calls every believer — not a spiritual elite — to confess sins to one another, to intercede for one another, and to pray with the confidence that the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. The 'righteous man' of verse 16 is not a super-saint but any person justified by faith alone in Christ alone, whose imputed righteousness gives boldness at the throne of grace. Elijah is set before the church not as a larger-than-life wonder-worker but as a man of like passions — weak, despondent, yet prevailing in prayer — precisely so that ordinary believers will not despair of their own access to God. The sermon closes with a searching examination: are God's people truly prayerful as individuals, as families, as elders, and as a congregation?
The Prologue and Commission
Acts 1:1–8 opens with a prologue establishing that the book of Acts is not merely the acts of the apostles but the continuing acts of the risen, enthroned Christ — carried out by the Spirit, through the Word, and by means of the apostles he himself commissioned. The sermon examines what Luke signals by the phrase 'Jesus began both to do and teach,' arguing that faithful Christianity holds doctrine and good works together as an inseparable knot, neither collapsing into social-gospel activism nor retreating into a purely intellectual faith. The apostolic commission is shown to be authoritative and externally given, grounding the church's mission in Christ's own mandate rather than human initiative.
The Exhortation to Pray, Part 1
James 5:13–15 addresses the full range of Christian experience — suffering, cheerfulness, and sickness — and directs each condition toward God in prayer and praise. This exposition works through three aspects of the passage: the individual at prayer in verse 13, the elders and their ministry in verse 14, and the prayer of faith and its outcome in verse 15. The sermon confronts both the health-and-wealth error that denies sickness a place in the redeemed life and the cessationist question raised by the anointing with oil, arguing for a symbolic interpretation of the oil while insisting that prayer — not any physical element — is the means God honors. The governing application is that every condition of life, whether affliction or ease, calls for the same disciplined, God-directed response: pray, praise, and submit to the sovereign will of God.
Free Grace Baptist Church - April 8, 2018 PM
The reception of God's written Word must move the covenant people to thoroughgoing, comprehensive reform—in worship, life, and the observance of the sacraments—regardless of whether such obedience will produce measurable results. Expounding 2 Kings 23, this sermon traces three movements in Josiah's reformation of Judah: a public covenant renewal ceremony, an extensive purge of idolatry from both the southern and northern territories, and the restoration of Passover. The driving lesson is that obedience to God's law is not grounded in pragmatic expectation of blessing but in the simple rightness of what God commands—a faithfulness the speaker calls 'obedience without incentives.'
Of Good Works (2LCF16.13)
Matthew 7:1, 'Judge not that you be not judged,' is one of the most frequently misapplied verses in Scripture, often weaponized to prohibit every form of ecclesiastical discernment and render church discipline illegitimate. This session from a study of the 1689 London Baptist Confession examines 2LCF 26.13 on the conduct of the offended church member, then exegetes Matthew 7:1–6 to show that Christ forbids a nitpicking, censorious, fault-finding spirit toward fellow believers — not the lawful exercise of judgment required by Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians 5, and 1 Timothy 5. The positive application calls believers to mortify the censorious plank in their own eye, apply biblical law rather than personal preference to matters of judgment, cultivate humility, and look to Christ and his gospel as the continual remedy for self-righteousness.
2 Kings 25
The fall of Jerusalem in 2 Kings 25 is not merely a record of military conquest — it is a theological verdict on covenant unfaithfulness. The chapter traces the Babylonian siege, the systematic destruction of the temple and city, the appointment and assassination of Gedaliah, and the exile of Judah, reading as a sustained fulfillment of the curses pronounced in Deuteronomy 28. Yet the chapter's closing verses, recording the release and elevation of Jehoiachin in Babylon, preserve a glimmer of Davidic hope that Matthew 1 traces forward to Jesus Christ, the son of David whose kingdom has no end.
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.
Free Grace Baptist Church - March 18, 2018 PM
James 5:7-12 calls the people of God to cultivate patience — toward one another and under affliction — in light of the imminent return of Christ as judge and deliverer. The sermon traces two obstacles that undermine patience: grumbling against fellow believers, which contradicts the love and long-suffering that Scripture everywhere demands, and careless or rash oath-taking, which reflects a failure to let the tongue conform to truth. The prophets and Job stand as biblical examples of endurance through suffering, with Job's trial yielding not merely restored prosperity but experiential knowledge of God — which James presents as the ultimate end the Lord intends. Believers are exhorted to establish their hearts, pursue direct reconciliation rather than complaint, and find fresh resolve in the gospel of Christ, whose blood cleanses all the impatience, grumbling, and falsehood that the passage exposes.
The Condemnation of Wealthy Oppressors
James 5:1–6 pronounces a severe condemnation upon wealthy oppressors whose possession of riches has, in turn, come to possess them. The sermon identifies four specific offenses — hoarding wealth, defrauding workers, self-indulgent pleasure-seeking, and the oppression and effective murder of the righteous — situating James within the tradition of the Old Testament prophets (Isaiah, Amos, Micah, Zephaniah) who prosecuted the Lord's covenant against such sins within the covenant community. The critical interpretive question — whether the targets are unbelieving oppressors (Calvin) or professing believers within the church (Gill) — is resolved in favour of Gill, with the acknowledgment that professing Christians are not immune to grievous inconsistency. The passage's application presses hearers to examine how their riches are acquired, how they are used, and above all how wealth is affecting the posture of their hearts before God, while firmly rejecting both liberation theology's Marxist distortion and any notion that the mere possession of wealth is condemned by Scripture.
The Great Commission, Part 4
Matthew 28:20 calls the church to a lifelong, comprehensive teaching ministry — the fourth imperative of the Great Commission. The sermon examines this teaching activity under four headings: its simplicity (Scripture alone, not opinion or entertainment), its scope (all Christ's commands, Old and New Testaments, issuing in obedience), its perpetuity (traceable from Acts through the pastoral epistles to the end of the age), and its comprehensiveness (the whole counsel of God applied to individuals, families, churches, and civil society). The closing appeal summons hearers to the cross — the ransom of Matthew 20:28 and the invitation of Matthew 11:28 — as the indispensable foundation for any biblical obedience.