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Christology
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The Olivet Discourse, Part 10
Matthew 24:32–35 presents the parable of the fig tree and Christ's solemn declaration that 'this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.' This sermon argues the preterist interpretation: the parable is not a prophecy about the 1948 rebirth of Israel but a sign given to first-century disciples that the judgment on Jerusalem in AD 70 was near, confirming that Christ is presently enthroned at the Father's right hand. The phrase 'this generation' carries the same lexical and contextual meaning it holds throughout Matthew's Gospel — the contemporaries of Jesus — and Christ staked His prophetic integrity on the fulfilment of every detail within that generation. Hearers are urged to let the text drive their eschatology, and ultimately to flee not to the mountains of Judea but to Christ, the only refuge from divine judgment.
Of God and the Holy Trinity (2LCF 2)
The doctrine of God and the Holy Trinity, as confessed in 2LCF Chapter 2, is approached here through three progressive affirmations drawn from Scripture and the Reformed confessional tradition: God is, God is one, and God is one in three persons. The incomprehensibility of God frames the entire study — not that He cannot be known, but that He cannot be exhaustively comprehended by any creaturely mind. Moving from general revelation through the law of nature to the biblical witness of monotheism and finally to the Trinitarian distinctions of unbegottenness, eternal generation, and eternal procession, the sermon demonstrates that the doctrine of the Trinity is not speculative theology but the very foundation of all communion with God and comfortable dependence upon Him.
The Hope of OT Believers
What did Old Testament believers actually know about the coming Redeemer? This sermon works through six lines of biblical evidence — from the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15 through the prophets and Psalms — to demonstrate that the messianic hope of Israel was not vague or mystical but concrete, objective, and increasingly specific across the covenant history of redemption. Old Testament saints knew that the Deliverer would be a man born of a woman, would accomplish victory through substitutionary death, would be of Davidic lineage, would be both God and man, and that faith in him was the appointed way of salvation. The sermon closes at the Lord's Supper, grounding the ordinance in the fulfillment of all these promises in the person and work of Christ.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 9
Matthew 24:30–31 presents what many regard as the decisive difficulty for a preterist reading of the Olivet Discourse: the Son of Man coming on clouds and the gathering of the elect. This sermon argues that both verses are best understood through the grammar of Old Testament prophetic and apocalyptic language, in which cloud-coming consistently signifies God's judicial intervention against nations rather than a physical, bodily descent. The primary interpretive key is Daniel 7:13–14, read as an ascension text in which the Son of Man comes *to* the Ancient of Days, receives universal dominion, and then sends forth messengers to gather his elect — a movement that corresponds to Christ's post-resurrection enthronement and the subsequent worldwide proclamation of the gospel. Hearers are urged to rest their souls in the present, active reign of Christ at the Father's right hand, and to guard against both false teaching and carnal anxiety by understanding what Scripture actually teaches about the session and kingdom of the ascended Lord.
Free Grace Baptist Church - October 30, 2016 AM
Matthew 24:29–31 presents what many regard as the most exegetically demanding verses in the Olivet Discourse. This sermon works through each clause — the sign of the Son of Man, the mourning of the tribes of the land, and the coming on clouds — arguing from the grammar of Old Testament prophecy that verse 30 describes not the second physical advent of Christ but his coming in judgment upon apostate Israel in AD 70, a coming explicitly foreshadowed in Daniel 7:13–14. The ascension of Christ to the Ancient of Days, not a future descent to earth, is the referent: Dominion was given to him at his exaltation, and AD 70 was the vindication of the rejected Son of Man. The sermon closes by drawing out five practical implications, including the call to guard against false teachers, to resist carnal anxiety by resting in Christ's present reign, and to come to Christ before the final judgment that AD 70 only typifies.
The Reformation of the Church
What does it mean for the church to be 'the pillar and ground of the truth'? Expounding 1 Timothy 3:14–16, this sermon examines the identity and confession of the church through three descriptions Paul gives in verse 15 — the house of God, the church of the living God, and the pillar and ground of the truth — before applying the doctrinal legacy of the sixteenth-century Reformation to the contemporary church. The great Christological confession of verse 16 is shown to be the theological center around which all church conduct, worship, and proclamation must orbit. The sermon calls the church to guard sola scriptura, justification by faith alone, the regulative principle of worship, and a proper Christology against the perpetual drift toward pragmatism, experientialism, and Romanizing errors.
1 Kings 2
1 Kings 2 narrates the final charge of David to Solomon and the subsequent elimination of the kingdom's enemies as the foundation for stable, God-honoring rule. David's charge binds Solomon's strength and prosperity directly to covenant obedience — walking in the law of Moses — while the Davidic covenant of 2 Samuel 7 stands in the background as the unconditional guarantee that Messiah will come from David's line. The chapter's recurring refrain of the kingdom being 'firmly established' (vv. 12, 24, 45, 46) is the theological engine of the narrative: security is achieved not through political calculation but through sovereign divine purpose, as threats against the kingdom are neutralized one by one. Both David and Solomon function typologically, pointing forward to the Lord Jesus Christ, who shows grace to his people and executes terrible judgment upon his enemies — a reality that ought to produce more holy fear than the sword of Benaiah ever could.
Free Grace Baptist Church - October 23, 2016 AM
Matthew 24:29 and its declaration of cosmic upheaval — darkened sun, failing moon, falling stars — is examined through the lens of Old Testament prophetic grammar to argue that this language does not describe the physical end of the world but the covenantal judgment of God upon apostate Israel in AD 70. Drawing from Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Amos, and other prophets, the sermon demonstrates that such astronomical imagery is the standard biblical idiom for the catastrophic fall of opposing kingdoms, tethered to verse 29 by the twin time-indicators 'those days' and 'immediately.' The sermon closes with a solemn application from Amos 5: there was escape from the siege of Jerusalem, but there is no escape from the final judgment — the only refuge is faith in the righteousness of Christ alone.
1 Kings 1:28-53
1 Kings 1:28–53 records Solomon's anointing at Gihon, the collapse of Adonijah's attempted coup, and Solomon's act of clemency toward his defeated rival. The passage is examined under three considerations: the choice of Solomon (David's sworn oath and instructions), the coronation of Solomon (its comprehensive royal, divine, military, and popular approval), and the concern regarding Solomon (the rebels' fear and Adonijah's flight to the altar). Throughout, David is shown as a man animated by zeal for God's kingdom rather than personal ambition, pointing forward to the greater Son of David who rules over the kings of the earth.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 7
Matthew 24:22–28 addresses the days of the great tribulation surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and Jesus' warnings against false Christs who would arise during the siege. Taking a preterist hermeneutic, this exposition argues that the shortening of those days (v. 22) reflects God's sovereign limitation of covenant judgment for the elect's sake, and that the lightning metaphor of verse 27 describes not Christ's final physical return but a judgment-coming executed from His enthroned position at the Father's right hand. The carcass-and-eagles image of verse 28 is read against Deuteronomy 28 and Habakkuk 1 as a covenant-curse idiom for the Roman armies as instruments of divine vengeance. Throughout, the passage is applied evangelically: the only refuge from any coming judgment is flight to Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone.
Introduction to 1 & 2 Kings
The books of 1 and 2 Kings constitute the final volume of the Former Prophets and span roughly four centuries of Israel's monarchy, from the death of David to the release of Jehoiachin in Babylon. This introductory study surveys the authorship, date, structure, and major theological themes of these books, demonstrating that their history is fundamentally covenantal history: the kings are measured by the law of Moses, particularly Deuteronomy, and the fall of both kingdoms is God's judicial execution of covenant curses, not merely geopolitical misfortune. The Davidic covenant provides the thread of hope that runs through the narrative's darkest moments and points forward to the Lord Jesus Christ as the true and final king who builds the temple of God and extends the glory of God throughout the cosmos.
Free Grace Baptist Church - October 2, 2016 PM
Genesis 15 records God's covenant with Abram, and this sermon expounds that passage under two headings: the promise to Abram (vv. 1–6) and his request for a sign (vv. 7–17). The central argument is that when God alone passes between the divided animals — taking the covenant's self-maledictory oath entirely upon himself — he typifies what Christ accomplished on the cross: bearing the curse that covenant-breaking sinners deserved. Justification is by faith alone, as Genesis 15:6 declares and as Paul confirms in Romans 4 and Galatians 3; Abram's faith was not in a nebulous future hope but in the promised seed, the Lord Jesus Christ. The sermon closes by leading the congregation into the Lord's Supper, calling believers to eat and drink in grateful remembrance of the substitute who passed through judgment in their place.
Free Grace Baptist Church - October 2, 2016 AM
Matthew 24:15–20 is examined through a preterist lens, arguing that Christ's warning about the 'abomination of desolation' and the command to flee Judea were fulfilled in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, not in a yet-future dispensational timeline. The sermon draws on Daniel 9, 11, and 12, Luke 21, Deuteronomy 28, and Lamentations to establish that Jesus was answering his disciples' first-century questions about the temple's destruction — a covenantal judgment on Israel for breaking the Mosaic covenant and rejecting the Messiah. The pre-tribulation Rapture and futurist readings of the Olivet Discourse are assessed as systems imposed on the text rather than drawn from it, while the preterist interpretation is defended as the most exegetically responsible reading of the parallel Gospel accounts. The sermon closes by applying the typological weight of AD 70 to the final judgment, urging hearers to flee now to Christ, the only safe refuge when he comes in glory to judge the living and the dead.
Genesis 3:15
Genesis 3:15, the protevangelium, announces a Redeemer who would be born of a woman, accomplish victory through suffering and death, and crush the serpent's head — not a vague, undefined figure but a precisely identified Messiah. This Bible study traces the progressive covenantal narrowing of that promise from the seed of the woman (Genesis 3) through the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants, the Psalms, and the prophets, demonstrating that Old Testament believers possessed substantial, detailed knowledge of the coming Christ. The study draws on Paul, John Owen, and the 1689 London Baptist Confession to show that salvation has always been by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, with no separate Old Testament economy of law-keeping. The closing application presses hearers toward Simeon-like doxology in response to the Christ who fulfills every promise of the Old Testament.
Free Grace Baptist Church - September 25, 2016 PM
Second Samuel 22 records David's song of deliverance, but verses 21–25, in which David appeals to his own righteousness before God, present a theological problem: David was an adulterer, a murderer, and a negligent father, yet he claims the Lord rewarded him according to his righteousness. This sermon argues that David's righteousness is not intrinsic or earned by law-keeping but is the alien righteousness of Christ imputed to him by faith — the same doctrine Paul expounds in Romans 4 and Psalm 32, which David himself composed. The resolution lies in David's own theology: he understood his total depravity, the necessity of atonement, the doctrine of imputation, and the appropriation of Christ's righteousness through faith alone, demonstrating that Old Testament saints were saved in precisely the same way as New Testament believers.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 4
Matthew 24:14 declares that 'this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.' Preaching from a preterist perspective, this exposition argues that the gospel proclamation described in verse 14 was fulfilled in the first century prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and that 'the end' in view is not the final judgment but the termination of the old covenant dispensation and the Jewish temple. The sermon develops a biblical-theological account of the temple — from Eden through the Mosaic tabernacle, Solomon's temple, and into Christ as the antitype who fulfills and renders obsolete the entire sacrificial system — drawing especially on Hebrews 8. The practical conclusion is an unqualified call for the church to maintain its unchanged mission of gospel proclamation regardless of external persecution, internal apostasy, or cultural pressure.
Free Grace Baptist Church - September 18, 2016 PM
Second Samuel 23:1–39 records the last words of David and the roster of his mighty men — warriors whose exploits are attributed not to raw human ability but to Yahweh's gift of victory. The sermon draws four observations from the passage: the divine power behind the three elite warriors (vv. 8–12), the sacrificial devotion of the three unnamed men who fetched water from Bethlehem (vv. 13–17), the notable exploits of Abashai and Benaiah (vv. 18–38), and the sobering reminder of David's sin in the final mention of Uriah the Hittite (v. 39). The Uriah reference serves a double function: it grounds David's success entirely in the grace of God, and it drives the reader forward to the greater Son of David — the Lord Jesus Christ — who alone rules with untainted justice, righteousness, and perfection.
2 Samuel 23:8-39
2 Samuel 23:8–39 catalogues the mighty men who served David, and this exposition draws out four interlocking themes: the power of Yahweh standing behind every human exploit, the costly sacrifice of unnamed warriors who broke through a Philistine camp for a bowl of water, the particular exploits of Abishai and Benaiah as models of courage and resourcefulness, and the sobering placement of Uriah the Hittite at the list's end as a reminder that David's reign rested entirely on sovereign grace rather than personal virtue. The passage ultimately functions as a pointer toward David's greater Son, who will administer judgment and justice in utter perfection where David fell short, and the congregation is called to be faithful, courageous, and sacrificial in the kingdom of Christ.
Of the Last Judgement (2LCF 32)
The Last Judgment, as confessed in chapter 32 of the Second London Confession of Faith (1689 LBCF), is certain, comprehensive, and purposeful: God the Father has appointed a day on which God the Son will execute righteous judgment over fallen angels and every human being, accounting for thoughts, words, and deeds. The goal of that day is the manifestation of divine mercy in the eternal salvation of the elect and divine justice in the eternal damnation of the reprobate — a theocentric purpose rooted in Romans 9. The secrecy of that day is itself a means of grace, designed to deter sin, sustain the godly through adversity, and cultivate watchful readiness to say, 'Come, Lord Jesus.'
2 Samuel 23:1-7
David's final official words in 2 Samuel 23:1–7 are not a backward glance at his own reign but a forward-looking messianic prophecy concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, identified as 'the anointed of the God of Jacob' and 'the favorite of the songs of Israel.' The passage discloses the Trinitarian agency behind the words, the comprehensive and just nature of Messiah's reign, the everlasting Davidic covenant that grounds the hope of a perfect king despite David's own failures, and the exclusion of the unrepentant from that kingdom. Believers are called to take comfort in Christ's just and universal rule, to proclaim the terror of divine judgment honestly, and to worship the one to whom all the Psalms point.
Free Grace Baptist Church - September 4, 2016 AM
Matthew 24:1-3 opens the Olivet Discourse — the fifth of five Matthean discourses — with Jesus departing the temple, pronouncing its coming destruction, and receiving the disciples' questions about its timing and the sign of his coming. This sermon argues for a preterist interpretation: the discourse's primary referent is the AD 70 destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, understood as the covenantal judgment of God upon apostate Israel, the fulfilment of the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28, and the conclusive transition from the Old Covenant to the New. Practically, this reading simultaneously refutes anti-Semitism and Christian Zionism, and calls every hearer to reckon with the Prophet-Christ who speaks with divine authority and the Priest-Christ who bore the wrath due to sinners.
The Olivet Discourse, Part 1
The Olivet Discourse opens with a decisive act: Jesus departs the temple he has just pronounced desolate, and his disciples — grasping the covenantal weight of that moment — point to its magnificence even as he foretells its total destruction. This sermon establishes the interpretive framework for Matthew 24–25, arguing from the immediate context of chapters 21–23, the parallel witness of the Old Testament prophets (Ezekiel, Micah, Jeremiah), and the time-texts of the discourse itself that Jesus addresses first-century Israel, not a distant eschatological future. The Preterist reading on offer holds that AD 70 was the exhaustion of the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28 upon apostate Old Covenant Israel, that the church — not ethnic Israel — is now the covenant people of God, and that this understanding guards against both anti-Semitism and Christian Zionism.
The Pharisee and the Publican
Luke 18:9–14 presents two men at prayer whose contrasting postures before God expose the heart of the doctrine of justification. The Pharisee's self-congratulatory prayer — cataloguing what he is not and what he does — illustrates the fatal error of self-righteousness: banking one's standing with God upon personal merit, which inevitably produces contempt for others. The tax collector's wordless self-renunciation — 'God be propitious to me, the sinner' — is the only posture that receives the verdict 'justified,' because justification is an act of God's free grace wherein the righteousness of Christ alone, received by faith, is the ground of the sinner's acceptance. The parable calls every hearer to kill pride, renounce all self-congratulatory religion, and cast himself entirely upon the mercy of God in Christ.
2 Samuel 22:32-51
Second Samuel 22:32–51 closes David's great psalm of praise — a passage paralleled in Psalm 18 — by celebrating what the speaker calls the invincibility of God's kingdom. The study traces four movements: the incomparable power of Yahweh as the sole ground of David's military victories, the people encompassed by David's expanding dominion (both internal opponents and foreign nations), the praise David ascribes to the living God, and the Davidic covenant promise (2 Samuel 7) that secures the kingdom's advance through David's greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. David's assertion of his own righteousness in verse 21 is read through a redemptive-historical lens — the imputed righteousness of Christ — grounding Old Testament soteriology in the same doctrine of justification by faith that Paul expounds in Romans 4 from Psalm 32. The congregation is exhorted to learn from David's example: to praise the living God publicly and to trust Him through every internal and external trial.
2 Samuel 22
Psalm 18's twin text, 2 Samuel 22 presents David not as a great military king but as a theologian of grace, ascribing every victory to Yahweh alone. The sermon examines the deliverance of God's servant (vv. 1–20), then takes up the harder exegetical question of David's assertion of his own righteousness (vv. 21–31), arguing from Psalms 32, 51, and 65 and from Romans 4 that David's righteousness is the imputed righteousness of Christ, received through faith, not a claim to sinless perfection. The sermon closes by grounding David's confidence in the Davidic covenant of 2 Samuel 7 and calling the congregation to the same exuberant, theologically informed praise.
The Atonement at Gibeah
2 Samuel 21 presents a famine in David's Israel caused by Saul's covenant-breaking slaughter of the Gibeonites, resolved only when seven of Saul's sons are executed as a blood-atoning sacrifice before the Lord. The passage illuminates the costliness of covenant-breaking, the terror of divine wrath, and the nature of substitutionary atonement — themes that point unmistakably to Calvary. David's protection of Mephibosheth in the midst of judgment typifies Christ's covenant-keeping faithfulness toward his own people, while the death of the seven sons at Gibeah typifies the penal substitution of the innocent for the guilty. The sermon presses believers to resist domesticating the atonement into a bloodless abstraction, and to confront afresh the drippy, bloody, smelly reality of what the Son of God endured in the place of sinners.
Of the State of Man After Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead (2LCF 31)
2 London Baptist Confession chapter 31 surveys the state of the soul between death and the final resurrection, and the resurrection of both the just and the unjust. The chapter distinguishes the intermediate state — in which the souls of the righteous are immediately with Christ in paradise while the souls of the wicked are cast into hell — from the final resurrection, when body and soul will be reunited and raised to honor or dishonor. The sermon refutes soul sleep, limbus patrum, limbus infantum, and purgatory as departures from Scripture, arguing that purgatory is an affront to the finished atonement of Christ. Hearers are called to find comfort in the bodily resurrection, to resist Gnostic tendencies that denigrate the body, and to embrace the simplicity of biblical eschatology rather than elevating millennial schemes to tests of orthodoxy.
2 Samuel 20
Second Samuel 20 continues the unrelenting sequence of trials that mark the consequences of David's sin: no sooner does David return to Jerusalem after Absalom's rebellion than Sheba the son of Bichri, a Benjamite opportunist, exploits inter-tribal tension to launch a fresh secession against the Davidic throne. The chapter traces five movements — Sheba's rebellion, the reminder of David's sin through the fate of the concubines, Joab's cold-blooded murder of Amasa, the wise woman of Abel-Beth-Maacah who ends the revolt, and the list of David's officers — each illuminating how God preserves His kingdom despite the sinfulness of its human participants. Typologically, the chapter anticipates the rejection and vindication of David's greater Son: the worthless rebel who rises against God's anointed receives a mortal head wound, echoing the protoevangelion promise of the seed of the woman crushing the serpent's head.
Of the Lord's Supper (2LCF 30.1-8)
The Lord's Supper, as confessed in chapter 30 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, is examined across all eight paragraphs under four headings: its nature, administration, elements, and reception. The session expounds the Confession's positive affirmations — that the Supper is a divine ordinance of perpetual remembrance, proclamation of Christ's finished sacrifice, and a means of grace by which the risen Christ spiritually nourishes His people by the Holy Spirit — alongside its sharp rejection of Roman Catholic transubstantiation, the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice, and Lutheran consubstantiation. The 17th-century polemical context is traced, showing that the particular Baptists aligned with Presbyterian and Congregationalist confessionalism against both Roman Catholic sacerdotalism and the anti-Trinitarian Socinian memorial-only reduction. The session closes with an urgent call to faithful, frequent participation in the Lord's Supper as an act of communion with Christ and with one another, refusing both careless neglect and the errors of Rome.
The Warning Against Apostasy
Hebrews 10:26–31 has long troubled sensitive believers who fear they have committed the unpardonable sin described there. This exposition argues that the willful sin in view is not the ongoing struggles and failures of the regenerate, but apostasy — a total, obstinate repudiation of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, the renunciation of the gospel itself. Drawing on the parallel warning in Hebrews 6, the covenantal comparison with Deuteronomy 17, and the testimony of Owen, Calvin, and Gill, the sermon demonstrates that those most troubled by this passage are precisely those whom it does not address. The comfort the text affords is real: the priestly intercession of Christ sustains weak and failing saints, and the just shall live by faith — not by the perfection of their obedience.