Topic
Christology
1,353 sermons · All topics
Live Stream - July 11, 2021
John 1:18 presents two inseparable doctrines: the invisibility and incomprehensibility of God, and the revelation of that invisible God through the incarnate Word. The sermon works through the prologue of John's Gospel to show that while no creature has ever perceived the essential glory of God — not Abraham, not Moses, not Isaiah — the only begotten Son, who exists eternally in the bosom of the Father as a distinct yet consubstantial person of the Trinity, has exegeted the Father to us. The practical burden is that saving knowledge of God is not merely knowledge about the economy of redemption but knowledge of the Redeemer himself — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and that the chief end of man is to glorify and enjoy this triune God forever.
Live Stream - July 04, 2021
Matthew 27:27–31 records the malicious mockery of Roman soldiers against the already-scourged and sleep-deprived Christ — a scene of savage psychological and physical abuse that simultaneously fulfills the prophetic servant songs of Isaiah and reveals the gravity of human sin and the inconceivable mercy of God. The sermon works through the participants in the crime (the governor, the cohort, and the conspiring Jewish leaders) and the specific elements of the mockery (mock homage, violent abuse, and the preparation for crucifixion), before turning to the irony that what soldiers performed in contempt — the royal robe, the crown, the scepter, the homage — is precisely what Revelation declares of Christ in truth. Believers are called to respond to Christ's vicarious sufferings not with detached admiration but with the crown-him-lord gratitude that the soldiers' counterfeit homage unwittingly foreshadowed, and the Lord's Supper is administered as the appointed means by which the congregation proclaims his death until he comes.
The Conversion of Cornelius
Acts 10:34–48 records the official inclusion of Gentiles in the covenant promises of God — a watershed moment in redemptive history. Peter's sermon before Cornelius and his household sets forth the peace, person, work, and prophetic witness of Jesus Christ, culminating in the declaration that through His name, whoever believes will receive remission of sins. The sovereign Holy Spirit falls upon the hearers before Peter has even finished speaking, confirming that salvation is of the Lord and that divine initiative — not human free will — drives the conversion of sinners. The passage concludes with the baptism of the entire household, a commanded public identification with the Triune God that pictures, but does not accomplish, the inward work already wrought by grace through faith.
The Soldiers Mock Jesus
The mockery of Jesus by the Roman soldiers in Matthew 27:27–31 is examined as a Lord's Supper meditation, tracing the psychological and physical brutality inflicted on the Son of God after Pilate's verdict. The scene is read through the lens of fulfilled prophecy — Isaiah 50:6 and Isaiah 53 — and the covenant of redemption, in which Christ willingly undertook every indignity as the surety and substitute for his people. The sermon closes by turning to the book of Revelation to show that what the soldiers performed in jest — robing, crowning, and hailing a king — Christ possesses in eternal reality, and calls believers to respond with the genuine homage these soldiers withheld.
The Incarnation of the Word, Part 2
John 1:15–17 presents the preeminence of the incarnate Word and the fullness of grace and truth that flows from Him to needy sinners. The testimony of John the Baptist — that Christ ranks before him because He was before him — is an affirmation of Christ's co-eternity, distinctness, and consubstantiality with the Father, in accord with the Nicene Creed. Verse 17 is not a sharp antithesis between Moses and Jesus but a contrast in the mode of divine revelation: the law was mediated through Moses, while grace and truth came through the mediator Himself, who is the very embodiment of God's glory. The sermon calls hearers to stand in awe of the preeminent Redeemer, to find every spiritual need met in His inexhaustible fullness, and to close with Christ without delay.
Psalm 24
Psalm 24 asks who may ascend into the hill of the Lord and stand in his holy place — a question that exposes the impossibility of any sinner approaching a holy God on the basis of personal merit. The psalm is expounded in three movements: the sovereign lordship of Yahweh the Creator over all the earth, the covenant conditions of holy hands and a pure heart that no creature can meet in himself, and the triumphal ascension of the King of Glory who alone meets those conditions and leads his redeemed captives into the presence of God. The righteousness required to enter God's presence is not achieved but received by faith, given freely by the God of salvation through the obedient life, atoning death, and victorious resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord Jesus and the Demoniacs
Matthew 8:28–34 presents Christ's authority over demonic powers as a ground for confident trust in him as the Son of God. The demons' own confession — 'You Son of God' — exposes what the disciples have not yet grasped: that Jesus holds sovereign dominion over every spiritual power, including the devil himself. The exorcism at Gerasa is set within Matthew's sustained demonstration, across chapters 8–9, that the one who teaches with authority also acts with authority. If Christ has conquered death and the devil, every lesser affliction that threatens the people of God lies well within his sovereign reach.
The Incarnation of the Word, Part 1
John 1:14 — 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us' — is the hinge on which all Christian theology turns. This exposition works through the identification, the incarnation proper, and the indwelling presence of the Word, establishing that the eternal Son assumed a true human nature (body and soul) without ceasing to be the second person of the Trinity — the doctrine the church confesses as the hypostatic union. The sermon draws on the active and passive obedience of Christ to show that the incarnation was not primarily exemplary but redemptive: the Word took flesh to render the perfect obedience sinners owe and to shed the blood that purchases their forgiveness. Hearers are pressed to see Christ not only as Redeemer but as reigning King, and the unbeliever is called to receive, by faith alone, that righteousness which comes from God.
The Trial Before Pilate, Part 3
Matthew 27:24–26 records the sentencing of Jesus by Pontius Pilate — the culmination of a trial in which the governor thrice declared the accused innocent yet delivered him to crucifixion anyway. The sermon examines Pilate's hypocritical self-absolution by the washing of hands, the crowd's willing acceptance of blood-guilt and its ominous extension to their children, and the formal scourging and condemnation of Christ. Throughout, the exposition presses the double benefit of the gospel: the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of Christ's righteousness received by faith alone, both grounded in the penal substitutionary atonement symbolised by Barabbas going free while the just one goes to the cross.
The Lord's Assessment of John the Baptist - Matthew 11:2-15
Matthew 11:2-15 presents Christ's own assessment of John the Baptist, and this exposition works through two movements: the question John sends from prison concerning the Messiah's identity, and the Lord's threefold commendation of John as no mere reed, no court prophet, but the greatest born of women and the anti-typical Elijah. The sermon argues that John's struggle was not with who Jesus was but with the implications of the messianic reign — why the herald of judgment should languish in prison while the Messiah's full justice remained deferred — a tension the church in every age must learn to hold without abandoning confidence in God's sovereign timetable. Listeners are called to pray for and expect ministers who combine the light of sound exegesis with the heat of genuine conviction, men who, like John, neither fear nor flatter any flesh.
The Mission of the Word, Part 2
John 1:10–13 presents two contrasting responses to the mission of the incarnate Word: the rejection of the world and of Israel, and the reception of those upon whom Christ confers the right to become children of God. The sermon works through the threefold use of 'world' in verse 10, the parallel between Israel's ancient rebellion and their rejection of the Messiah, and the sovereign grace underlying faith and new birth in verses 12–13. Central to the exposition is the Reformed insistence that regeneration precedes faith — those who receive Christ by believing do so because they have first been born of God — against both Pelagian and Arminian construals of conversion.
The Royal Wedding
Psalm 45 presents a royal wedding between the divine-human Messiah and his church, and the sons of Korah compose it as a song of love that the New Testament apostles and the entirety of the Old Testament prophetic witness sustain. The sermon works through the psalm's four sections — the psalmist's intention, the perfections and person of King Messiah, the instruction to the bride, and the closing declaration — demonstrating that a divine Messiah was not a novelty invented by John or Paul but was anticipated in the Hebrew Scriptures. Christ is celebrated as fairer than the sons of men, committed to truth and righteousness, triumphant over his enemies, fully God and fully man in the hypostatic union, and the one who clothes his bride in imputed righteousness received through faith alone. The appropriate response of the church is repentance, exclusive allegiance, worship, and gladness before her great King.
The Mission of the Word, Part 1
John 1:6–9 introduces John the Baptist not as an independent figure but as a divinely commissioned witness whose entire ministry exists to point to the Word made flesh. This sermon examines the origin, nature, and function of that witness ministry, demonstrating that the Baptist's testimony belongs to a network of overlapping witnesses — Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Scripture, and signs — that ground saving faith in historical reality rather than a blind existential leap. The function of John's witness is inseparable from its purpose: that sinners would believe on Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, not merely imitate him as a moral example. The sermon closes with a call to keep law and gospel in their proper places, so that sinners driven by the law's killing power may look by grace to the one who is both the true light and the only hope of the world.
The Divine Savior and His Afflicted People
Matthew 14:22–33 confronts the church with the Christological reality that the presence of Christ does not guarantee the absence of trial. Working through the storm on the Sea of Galilee, Christ walking on the water, Peter's sinking, and the disciples' confession of Christ as the Son of God, this exposition presses the claim that the 'I Am' of Exodus and the Psalms is the same Lord who meets his afflicted people in the middle of their storm-tossed sea. The sermon closes with a direct rebuke of health-and-wealth theology and a call to displace the fear of man with a robust fear of God grounded in Christ's sovereign lordship over creation.
The Divinity of the Word, Part 2
John 1:3–5 teaches that the eternal Word is the creator of all things, establishing Christ unmistakably on the divine side of the creator-creature distinction. The sermon works through the Trinitarian doctrines of inseparable operations and appropriations, showing from Genesis 1, Psalm 33, Job 26, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1 that creation is the undivided act of the one God, yet scripture distinctively attributes it to the Son. Because Jesus is creator, sustainer, and enthroned Lord, his people need not be paralyzed by circumstance — and the darkness, however violently it resists the light, cannot overcome it.
The Divinity of the Word
John 1:1–5 opens not in a Bethlehem stable but in eternity, establishing the Word's co-eternality, personal distinction from the Father, and full consubstantiality with the Father before a single creature existed. This sermon works through the first clause of John's prologue under five sub-points drawn from verse 1: the eternity, distinctiveness, and consubstantiality of the Word with the Father, the repetition of that glory in verse 2, and (deferred to the following week) the Word as creator of all things. The doctrine of the Trinity — one in essence, three in subsistence — is shown to be not an academic luxury but the very foundation of all communion with God and the indispensable framework for understanding why the incarnation is the supreme act of grace.
The Trial before Pilate, Part 2
Matthew 27:15–23 records Pilate's attempt to grant amnesty to Jesus through the Passover prisoner-release custom, a device that exposes the cowardice of the Roman governor, the envious malice of the Jewish religious leaders, and the terrifying moral bankruptcy of mob rule. The passage is expounded under five heads — the custom of amnesty, the leaders' motivation of envy, the warning of Pilate's wife, the demand of the multitudes, and Pilate's cross-examination — each of which illuminates the comprehensive reach of human depravity. The substitution of Barabbas for Jesus is treated as emblematic of definite atonement: the just going to the cross in the place of the unjust, securing both the forgiveness of sins and the imputed righteousness of Christ received by faith alone. Hearers are urged not to be carried along by ungodly leaders, to flee to Christ without delay, and to eat the Lord's Supper as a memorial of the blood atonement and active obedience of the Second Person of the Trinity wrought entirely on behalf of his people.
The Lukewarm Laodiceans
Revelation 3:14–22 confronts the church in Laodicea with a charge of spiritual lukewarmness — not outright apostasy, but ineffectual, self-satisfied religion that neither heals nor refreshes. Drawing on the city's historical wealth, its piped-in tepid water supply, and the covenantal language of Leviticus 18, this exposition argues that lukewarm Christianity is, in the end, no Christianity at all. Christ's threatened judgment is not arbitrary but covenantal, and his counsel to buy gold, white garments, and eye salve from him is an act of love that calls the church to honest self-assessment, renewed zeal, and genuine repentance.
The Trial before Pilate, Part 1
Matthew 27:11–14 records the first stage of Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate — his interrogation by the Roman governor. The passage unfolds in three movements: Pilate's opening question and Christ's guarded affirmation that he is indeed King of the Jews, the formal accusations brought by the chief priests and elders against which Jesus remains silent, and Pilate's astonished second question met again with silence. Christ's silence before Pilate is not passivity but purposeful obedience — fulfilling the fourth servant song of Isaiah 53 and accomplishing the active righteousness that is imputed to his people in justification. The sermon drives toward the twin realities of forgiveness and positive imputation: Christ's silence secured not only the remission of sins but the righteousness that avails with God, so that his people stand before the Father clothed in another's merit rather than their own.
The Empty Tomb and the Risen Lord
Matthew 28:1–10 narrates not the resurrection itself but the discovery of the empty tomb and Christ's first post-resurrection appearance — and the distinction matters theologically. This sermon works through the arrival of the women, the descent of the angel, the angelic announcement, and Christ's own greeting, demonstrating that the resurrection is attested historical fact whose denial collapses justification, undermines the prophetic witness, and renders the Christian hope pitiable. The risen Christ's address to the women — calling the disciples 'my brethren' despite their desertion — is shown to be a concentrated display of the grace and advocacy that sustains every believer who has sinned against the Lord he professes to love.
The New and Living Way
Hebrews 10:19–25 presents two grounds of confidence for the people of God — boldness of access to the Holy of Holies through Christ's blood and flesh, and the possession of a great high priest over the house of God — and then presses three exhortations upon that foundation: draw near, hold fast the confession of hope, and consider one another to stir up love and good works. The sermon traces the problem of sinful man's exclusion from God's presence from Exodus 40 through the Levitical sacrificial system to its resolution in the incarnation and definite atonement of Christ, who consecrated a new and living way. Particular attention is given to the prohibition against forsaking the assembly, argued to be grammatically tied to the third exhortation and theologically governing all three, so that corporate Lord's Day worship is the ordained context in which God's people draw near, are educated in hope, and mutually provoke one another to love and good works. The sermon closes by calling the unconverted to look to Christ and the converted to embrace their shared responsibility for one another's souls through faithful churchmanship.
The Deliverance of David by the Lord
The providential preservation of David under Saul's murderous pursuit, traced through 1 Samuel 19, illuminates how God delivers His people by ordinary and extraordinary means alike. Three escalating attempts on David's life — a thrown spear, messengers at his house, and a third company sent to Ramah — are each turned aside, culminating in the Spirit of God falling upon Saul's own men and upon Saul himself, rendering them incapable of violence. The chapter also traces the inverse arc of Saul's apostasy: his repeated, deliberate disobedience issues in a divine hardening that mirrors the 'giving over' of Romans 1. The central pastoral lesson is that the clearest evidence God has not deserted His servant is not that the trial is past, but that the servant is still standing in the middle of it.
The Defense in Jerusalem
Acts 22 records Paul's defense before the Jerusalem mob and his invocation of Roman citizenship before the commander, and this exposition traces both movements as a pattern for how believers engage hostile civil and religious authorities. Paul's account of his conversion — his Jewish upbringing under Gamaliel, his confrontation with the risen Christ on the Damascus road, his instruction through Ananias, and his temple vision — demonstrates that he is not an enemy of Israel but rather the fulfillment of what a faithful reading of the Old Testament demands. The crowd's fury erupts not over Paul's biography but over Christ's commission to the Gentiles, exposing their rejection of covenant promises made to Abraham and repeated through the Psalms and prophets. The sermon closes by pressing Paul's gospel — blood atonement, imputed righteousness, and salvation by grace through faith — upon every hearer, including the worst of sinners.
Nov. 8, 2020 Sunday AM Service
Mark 8:31-33 records Jesus' first explicit prediction of His suffering, death, and resurrection — a proclamation that shattered every nationalist expectation of a triumphant Messiah. The sermon works through two movements: the cross predicted (vv. 31-32a), where Jesus identifies Himself as the suffering Son of Man whose death and resurrection were decreed by God from eternity, and the cross rejected (vv. 32b-33), where Peter's rebuke earns the reply 'Get behind me, Satan' because man's thoughts about the Messiah stand in direct opposition to God's. Rooted in Isaiah 53, Daniel 7, Hosea 6, and Psalm 118, the exposition argues that penal substitutionary atonement — the Son of Man bearing the wrath sinners deserve — is the only ground of eternal life, and that the same Christ who prepared His disciples for His own suffering now calls His people to take up their crosses in this present evil age.
The Hearing before the Sanhedrin, Part 1
The trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin (Matthew 26:57–64) was no honest hearing but a predetermined execution by the highest religious court in Israel, assembled in violation of their own law and Scripture. This sermon examines the setting of the hearing, the fraudulent witness testimony regarding the temple, and the high priest's sworn examination of Jesus — in which Christ openly affirms that He is the Messiah, the Son of God, and Daniel's Son of Man. The temple charge against Jesus is shown to be a deliberate misquotation and misinterpretation of John 2:19, where Christ spoke not of the physical structure but of His own death and resurrection. The Sanhedrin's wickedness is set in sharp contrast to the resolve of Christ, who endures this sham trial in silence and then under oath, fulfilling Isaiah 53 and Daniel 7, in order to accomplish the salvation of His people.
Exodus 9
Exodus 9 records the fifth, sixth, and seventh plagues against Egypt — the death of livestock, the plague of boils, and the devastating hailstorm — each demonstrating that the Lord alone is the living and true God over all forces of nature. The plagues are not natural phenomena but direct sovereign acts of God, exposed as such by their precise timing, their discriminating effect on Egypt but not Israel, and the collapse of Egypt's magicians before their own affliction. God's hardening of Pharaoh's heart is treated not as injustice but as a righteous judicial act against a persistently rebellious sinner, a point Paul draws on in Romans 9 by quoting Exodus 9:16. The distinction between those Egyptians in verse 20 who feared the word of the Lord and those in verse 21 who did not becomes a pointed call to heed the gospel: Christ is the believer's Goshen, the place of safe refuge under the new covenant.
David's Rise and Saul's Resentment
1 Samuel 18 traces the beginning of David's rise to prominence and Saul's corresponding descent into envious rage. The chapter presents a sustained contrast between Jonathan's covenant faithfulness — his willing deferral to David as the Lord's anointed — and Saul's increasingly vicious antagonism, from murderous spear-throwing to cynical manipulation of marriage negotiations. The sermon draws out the theological spine of the narrative: the presence of Yahweh with David is both the cause of his success and the source of Saul's terror, a pattern that points forward to the New Covenant reality that those united to Christ by faith enjoy the peace, protection, and communion of God. Listeners are called to watch against both external and internal threats to the kingdom, and to pursue the God-fearing faithfulness modelled in David rather than the self-securing apostasy of Saul.
The Third Missionary Journey, Part 8
Acts 21:1–16 concludes Paul's third missionary journey with his determined journey to Jerusalem in the face of repeated prophetic warnings and the tearful pleas of fellow believers. The passage grounds Paul's resolve not in stoic courage but in his consuming vision of the gospel: men and women under God's wrath and curse, and Christ alone as the remedy. The sermon draws out Paul's love for the gathered people of God, his complementarian ecclesiology (defending male leadership in church office from 1 Timothy 2 and the cessation of revelatory gifts), and his example of a missionary strategy that planted self-governing, elder-led churches across the Roman Empire.
The Victory of David Over Goliath, Part 2
David's victory over Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 is fundamentally a theological event, not a heroic self-help narrative. The sermon works through David's preparation, his declaration of faith in the name of the Lord of hosts, the decisive defeat of Goliath, and the rout of the Philistines, arguing that the emphasis falls squarely on who Yahweh is rather than on what David achieves. The fatal headshot dealt to Goliath is then traced through the biblical-theological thread of Genesis 3:15, illustrated in Judges 4 and 9, and shown to culminate in Christ's crushing of the serpent's head through His own suffering, death, and resurrection — the definitive victory to which David's victory is typological.
Exodus 3
Exodus 3 records the theophany at the burning bush, God's commission of Moses, the revelation of the divine name 'I AM WHO I AM,' and the detailed instructions for the approach to Pharaoh. This study examines how God's self-disclosure as Yahweh — the eternally self-existent one — grounds Moses's authority and the certainty of Israel's deliverance from Egypt. The divine name is not merely biographical information but a theological foundation: God's faithfulness to the covenant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the warrant for every promise he makes to his people.