Topic
Christian Living
1,140 sermons · All topics
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 Presence of the God of Peace
Philippians 4:8–9 presents two inseparable imperatives — meditate on whatever is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, and of good report, and then do what has been learned, received, heard, and seen in the Apostle Paul — with the promise that the God of peace will be with those who obey. The sermon argues that orthodoxy and orthopraxy are not alternatives but are inextricably bound: the failure to practice truth indicts the practitioner, not the doctrine. The source of right thinking is both the light of nature (general revelation accessible to all men) and the special revelation of Scripture, which governs and clarifies all truth. The hearer is called to fill the mind with God's word, live consistently with it in a pagan society, and trust that the grace which saves also teaches and equips for godly conduct.
Ask FGBC #56: When Should a Believer Be Baptized?
Baptism should follow faith without unnecessary delay — this is the consistent pattern of the book of Acts and a direct command of the exalted Christ. Drawing on texts from Acts 2, 8, 9, 10, and 16, the speaker argues that the New Testament knows no extended waiting period between conversion and baptism, and that believers' baptism by immersion is the only mode consistent with the Acts narratives. Practical obstacles — fear of family disapproval, prior infant baptism, or a desire to feel spiritually ready — are weighed against the clear divine imperative to believe and be baptized, and are found wanting. The closing exhortation is simple: read Acts, see what new believers did, and obey the same command.
The Dangers and Precautions for Israel
Deuteronomy 6:10–25 addresses the second generation of Old Covenant Israel on the plains of Moab with warnings and precautions before they enter the Promised Land. Three dangers threaten covenant loyalty: forgetting God in prosperity, forsaking God through idolatry, and testing God under hardship. The precautions against these dangers are diligent obedience to the commandments and faithful covenant succession — passing the knowledge of God's redemptive acts to the next generation. These dangers are not merely ancient; they press upon the New Covenant church with equal force, and the remedies remain the same: fear God, keep His word, and rehearse His faithfulness to your children.
The Power of the Peace of God
Philippians 4:6–7 contains both a prohibition and a promise: Paul commands believers to be anxious for nothing and promises that the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard the heart and mind through Christ Jesus. The sermon examines the prohibition against carnal anxiety, the corrective of prayer offered with thanksgiving, and the promise of divine peace — arguing that prayer is not a formula for instant relief but the ordained means by which God's people cast their burdens on God and receive the peace that flows from justification and the indwelling Spirit. The congregation is called to pray with right motivation, godly manner, and kingdom-oriented priorities as modeled in Christ's own teaching on prayer.
The Propagation of Israel's Faith
Deuteronomy 6:6–9 commands Israel not merely to profess allegiance to the one true God but to propagate that truth — first by internalizing it personally, then by transmitting it diligently to children and grandchildren in both formal and informal settings. The passage is read against the wider covenantal structure of Deuteronomy and set in parallel with Ezra 7:10, Psalm 119, and Ephesians 6:4 to show that receiving, doing, and teaching God's word are inseparable obligations running across both covenants. The sermon presses home that teaching children the law and the gospel is not a specialist calling for the especially devout but a natural reflex of redemptive grace, as ordinary and non-negotiable as providing food and shelter. Parents are urged to establish modest, consistent patterns of family worship — Scripture reading, catechism, prayer, and informal covenantal conversation — as the primary means of inoculating children against the idolatry of the surrounding world.
The Believer's Joy and Moderation
Philippians 4:4–5 contains two imperatives that together define the outward shape of the Christian life: a command to rejoice in the Lord always, and a command to let moderation — or equity — be known to all men. The sermon argues that joy is not a feeling to be waited upon but a non-negotiable duty grounded in the objective realities of justification, sanctification, and glorification. The Greek word rendered 'gentleness' (epieikēs) is examined through Aristotle, Zanchi, and Gill to establish that it denotes reasonableness in judging and willingness to forgo one's rights in interpersonal matters — not a blanket disposition of quietness that would contradict the examples of Joshua, Elijah, Christ driving out the money-changers, and Paul's anathema on false gospels. Both commands are made possible only through the imputed righteousness of Christ received by faith and the indwelling Spirit.
The Conclusion of the Decalogue
Deuteronomy 5:22–33 records Moses rehearsing the original giving of the law at Sinai, and this exposition draws out the divine origin, authority, comprehensiveness, finality, and permanence of the Decalogue as the trans-covenantal moral law of God binding on all men in every age. The threefold use of the law — civil, pedagogical, and normative — is traced through the New Covenant, with the imputed righteousness of Christ received by faith as the only ground of justification. The people's terror at the theophany on Sinai is commended as the proper response to God's majesty, and the sermon presses the distinction between slavish fear that flees from God and filial fear that flees to Him, urging the congregation to recover a robust doctrine of divine transcendence in their worship.
The Exhortation to Perseverance and Unity
Philippians 4:1–3 sets before the church two inseparable obligations: standing fast in the Lord and pursuing unity among the saints. Working through the apostle's affection for the Philippians, his call to perseverance, and the concrete dispute between Euodia and Syntyche, this sermon shows that the absence of unity both destroys the church and renders perseverance a near-impossible task. The biblical remedy for conflict — private confrontation, appeal to witnesses, and involvement of the church — is traced from Proverbs 18 and Matthew 18:15–20, with a complementarian reading of 1 Timothy 2 clarifying the nature of Euodia and Syntyche's gospel labor. Hearers are called to fasten their grips on Christ, his doctrines, and one another for the long haul of the Christian life.
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
Psalm 139:13–16 declares that the formation of every human being in the womb is an act of God's immediate, intimate providence — the divine Weaver knitting together image-bearers for His own glory. The sermon argues that human dignity is grounded not in sentiment or politics but in divine authorship: God knows each person's substance before conception, fashions every inward part, and has decreed their days in His eternal book. The Incarnation deepens rather than evacuates this ethical claim, for the Son of God assumed embryonic and fetal life, passing through every stage of human existence to redeem a multitude of sinners. The congregation is called to tremble before the God who sees in secret, to defend the sanctity of life from conception to death, and to rest in the omnipotent providence of the One who has numbered both our members and our days.
The Tenth Commandment
The Tenth Commandment's prohibition against coveting addresses not the external act but the internal disposition of the heart, making it the capstone over all the other commandments. Covetousness — the inordinate desire for anything belonging to one's neighbor — is at root an act of discontentedness with God's sovereign allotment and a form of idolatry, placing the creature above the Creator. The sermon works through the threefold use of the moral law: its civil function, its pedagogical role in driving sinners to the cross, and its normative function in calling the redeemed to diligent watchfulness over heart and soul.
The Believer and Trials
James 1:1–8 confronts believers with a counterintuitive command: count trials as pure joy. This exposition works through the believer's required response to trials (vv. 2–4) and the believer's required request during trials (vv. 5–8), grounding both in the theological truth that the testing of faith produces endurance and conformity to Christ. The sermon argues that ignorance of God's remedial purposes in affliction is the root cause of disordered responses — panic, complaint, and double-mindedness — and calls believers to ask God for wisdom to navigate suffering in faith, confidence resting on the character of a God who gives liberally and without reproach.
SLBC Chapter 16: Of Good Works
Good works, as defined in chapter 16 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, are only those things God has commanded in his holy word — not deeds devised by men from blind zeal or good intentions. They are not the ground or cause of justification, which is by faith alone through Christ alone; rather, they are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith, flowing from hearts purified by that faith and enabled wholly by the Spirit of Christ. The confession targets both the Roman Catholic doctrine of supererogation and any merit-based soteriology, insisting that even the believer's best works, mingled with weakness and imperfection, are acceptable before God only through the mediation of Christ. Believers are therefore called to freely and cheerfully perform good works — including proper worship — not to secure salvation but as the grateful and Spirit-enabled response of those already justified by Christ's perfect obedience imputed to them.
The Darkness of Depression
Proverbs 15:13 identifies the broken spirit as a genuine human affliction, and the broader witness of Scripture — from Elijah under the broom tree to the weeping prophet Jeremiah to the Saviour himself as a man of sorrows — confirms that depression and melancholy are realities in the lives of God's people, not marks of spiritual failure. This sermon works through the reality of depression, its manifold causes (physical, psychological, circumstantial, spiritual, and diabolical), and practical strategies for those who suffer and those who come alongside sufferers. The controlling remedy throughout is the means of grace: rest, diet, exercise, prayer, Scripture, and the gathered worship of God's people — with the warning that singing songs to a heavy heart, after the manner of Job's friends, is a pastoral failure Scripture explicitly condemns.
2LBCF Chapter 15, Of Repentance unto Life and Salvation
Repentance unto life is not a work that precedes salvation but an evangelical grace sovereignly given by God in the covenant of grace, inseparable from faith as two sides of the same coin. Working through 2LCF Chapter 15, this study examines the nature, necessity, and elements of saving repentance, tracing the confession's teaching that remaining corruption and the prevalency of temptation make ongoing repentance a permanent feature of the Christian life, not merely its entry point. The session also challenges the assumption that a crisis conversion is more credible than a non-crisis one, arguing that the same effectual power of God works in the child catechized from infancy as in the most notorious convert. Hearers are urged to hate sin, apprehend the mercy of God in Christ, and avoid both antinomianism and the error of treating repentance as a meritorious condition for acceptance with God.
The Ninth Commandment: Part 2
The Ninth Commandment forbids not only perjury in a criminal court but all forms of lying, backbiting, slander, and gossip — sins Paul identifies as grieving the Holy Spirit within the church. The positive duty of the commandment requires active preservation of a neighbor's good name, charitable restraint of the tongue, and a settled love of truth grounded in the nature of God himself, who is the Lord God of truth, in contrast to the devil, who is a liar from the beginning. The threefold use of the law applies directly: the civil use restrains society from complete moral collapse, the pedagogical use exposes the sinner's need for Christ, and the normative use directs the redeemed — justified freely by grace through faith — in godly conduct toward one another. Every idle word will be accounted for on the day of judgment, making disciplined speech not optional but integral to the Christian life.
The Son of God and His Afflicted People
Matthew 14:22–33 presents Jesus walking on the sea as a revelation of His divine identity — the Son of God who, like Yahweh in Job 9:8 and Psalm 77:19, treads the waves. The disciples' terror, Peter's sinking faith, and the calming of the wind together drive toward the confession of verse 33: 'Truly, You are the Son of God.' The sermon draws out two complementary lessons: the people of God are not immune to prolonged trial and affliction, and the antidote to fear is not stoic resolve but the divinity of Christ — the Great I Am who sees His storm-tossed church and bids it be of good cheer.
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 Reign of the Son of the Most High
Psalm 2 sets the fallen world's rebellion against God and His Anointed within a framework of divine sovereignty, showing that the rage of nations and rulers against Yahweh and His Christ is both futile and answerable. The psalm unfolds in four movements: the insurrection of mankind against God, the installation of the Son as King on Zion, the revelation of the eternal decree establishing the Son's universal inheritance, and the exhortation to kiss the Son in saving faith. Christ is identified as the eternal, only-begotten Son of the Father whose resurrection vindicates His divine Sonship, and whose worldwide reign is not yet complete but is advancing through the gospel mission entrusted to the church. The psalm closes with both a warning to the impenitent and a promise of blessedness to all who trust in Him.
SLBC Chapter 13: Sanctification
Sanctification is a work of God's free grace — not of human effort — wrought in the elect by the Word and Spirit through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection. The 1689 London Baptist Confession, Chapter 13, sets out the nature and cause of sanctification: its undeserving recipients (the effectually called and regenerated), the initial definitive act of sanctifying grace at conversion, the progressive ongoing work of the Spirit, and the instruments God employs (Word and Spirit). The confession guards this doctrine on two fronts simultaneously: against moral-improvement schemes that reduce sanctification to human effort, and against sinless perfectionism that denies remaining corruption in the believer.
The Citizenship of the Believer
The enemies of the cross of Christ are not merely mistaken but are heading toward eternal destruction — and the Apostle Paul warns of them with tears. Expounding Philippians 3:18–21, this sermon identifies the Judaizers as those enemies: their god is their belly, their glory is in their shame, and their minds are set on earthly things. Against that dark backdrop, the believer's citizenship in heaven is a present legal possession that demands an eager anticipation of Christ's return, a purifying of life in light of that coming, and a deliberate seeking out of godly examples to follow rather than the many who walk the broad road to destruction.
8th Commandment: Part 2; Deuteronomy 5:19
The eighth commandment — 'You shall not steal' — carries not only a prohibition but a positive demand: diligent labor, charitable love toward others, and biblical contentment. Drawing from Deuteronomy, Proverbs, and the New Testament epistles, this exposition moves from the reasons grounding the command (God's sovereignty, man's image-bearing dignity, and the indirect assault on human life that theft represents) to its constructive obligations. The sermon closes with an application of the law's three uses — civil, pedagogical, and normative — including a pointed treatment of government taxation in light of 1 Samuel 8, where God warned that unchecked rulers will 'take, take, take.'
The Pattern for the Christian Life
Philippians 3:17 calls believers to join in following the Apostle Paul's example and to identify others in the local church who walk the same way. The sermon argues that faithful Christian examples are not found among social-media influencers but among ordinary, persevering saints whose lives are grounded in justification by faith alone, followed by sanctification, perseverance, and glorification. Paul's example is examined across four dimensions — his conversion, his life as a believer, his ministry, and his suffering — with particular attention to the courage and gospel-centrality displayed throughout Acts. The sermon's application presses the responsibility squarely on individual believers: they must actively seek out faithful examples in the congregation rather than waiting for examples to come to them.
The Eighth Commandment (Part 1)
The Eighth Commandment — 'You shall not steal' (Deuteronomy 5:19) — forbids far more than simple theft. This study works through the range of sins prohibited by the command, including burglary, robbery, kidnapping, fraud in its several forms, extortion, destruction of property, and religious theft. The internal dispositions that generate these external acts — covetousness, discontentment, and the idolatry of wealth — are examined through texts in Proverbs, 1 Timothy 6, and Matthew 6. The study closes by grounding the positive duty of honest labor and cheerful giving in the grace of the gospel, through which believers are freed from the dominion of covetousness and equipped to honor God with what He has entrusted to them.
The Third Appearance of Christ to the Disciples, Part 2
Peter's threefold denial of Christ is answered by Christ's threefold question — 'Do you love me?' — and his threefold commission to feed and tend the flock. This exposition of John 21:15–19 argues that the primary qualification and motivation for gospel ministry is love for Christ, expressed not in entertainment or corporate management but in the preaching and teaching of the word. The prophecy of Peter's martyrdom in verses 18–19 further establishes that faithful ministry is patterned on the cross-then-crown trajectory of Christ himself, and that the grace shown in Peter's full restoration is the same grace sufficient for the worst of sinners.
The Seventh Commandment, Part 3
Deuteronomy 5:18 forbids adultery, but the scope of the Seventh Commandment extends to every form of sexual disorder — from fornication and homosexuality to the surging contemporary phenomenon of transgenderism. Drawing on the Westminster Larger Catechism questions 138 and 139, this study moves from the commandment's prohibitions to its positive duties: the preservation of chastity, watchfulness over the senses, the practice of temperance, the pursuit of biblical marriage, diligence in one's calling, and the rejection of all occasions of uncleanness. The three uses of the law — civil, pedagogical, and normative — frame the closing application: the law exposes the corruption of the heart, drives the sinner to the imputed righteousness of Christ, and then regulates the redeemed life.
The Third Appearance by Christ to the Disciples
John 21:1–14 operates on two levels simultaneously: the ordinary scene of a fishing trip and breakfast, and the symbolic portrait of the church's mission under the risen Christ. The passage is read as a paradigm for gospel ministry — the disciples' commitment, challenge, and conviction in fishing corresponds to the church's calling to preach the gospel to all nations, while Jesus directing the catch, preparing breakfast, and eating with His disciples illustrates His abiding authority and presence with His church. The sermon applies this to a recovery of ordinary, patient faithfulness in church life against the pressure of 'radical Christianity' performance culture, insisting that Christ is sovereign over the results of gospel proclamation and that the church's task is obedient casting of the net.
The Christian Life of the Apostle Paul
Between justification and glorification lies the life of sanctification, and in Philippians 3:12–16 the Apostle Paul names that interim existence perseverance. Paul's honest self-assessment — 'not that I have already attained or am already perfected' — anchors both the doctrine and the practice: the believer presses on, forgets what is behind, and strains toward glory not to secure justification but as a necessary consequence of having been freely justified by God's grace. The sermon grounds perseverance in the immutability of the divine decree, the intercession of Christ, and the empowering work of the Spirit, before calling the congregation to single-minded use of the ordained means of grace.
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.