Topic
Doxology
3 sermons · All topics
The Gospel Committed to the Apostle Paul
1 Timothy 1:15–17 contains one of five 'faithful sayings' in the Pastoral Epistles, and Paul deploys it here to contrast the life-giving gospel with the idle speculations of the false teachers troubling the church at Ephesus. The sermon works through three elements: the faithful saying as a standard confession received and guarded by the church; the glorious content of that saying — the incarnation of the Son and his effectual, definite work to save sinners; and the merciful application illustrated in Paul himself, who as the chief of sinners functions as a pattern of Christ's longsuffering for all who will believe. The doxology of verse 17 demonstrates that rightly understood soteriology issues in worship, and believers are called to keep this faithful saying at the centre of their hearts and to press it upon the unconverted.
Gospel and Doxology for the Galatians
Galatians 1:4-5 presents both a summary of the true gospel and a call to doxology, set against the backdrop of the false gospel threatening the Galatian churches. The sermon works through three movements in the gospel itself: Christ who gave Himself (His free act, His assumption of human nature, His vicarious obedience, and His sacrificial death), the substitutionary and cleansing effect of that giving 'for our sins,' and the deliverance from this present evil age effected according to the sovereign will of God the Father. The exposition closes with Paul's doxology, arguing from Job, Acts 17, and the 1689 confession that God does not stand in need of glory but that His creatures are called to ascribe to Him the glory eternally due His name. Hearers are exhorted to know the triune God, guard against every false gospel, and train themselves now in the ascription of glory that will occupy the saints forever.
The Content of Doxology
Jude's closing doxology (vv. 24–25) is not mere liturgical ornament but a theologically loaded ascription of praise to the Lord Jesus Christ that answers the heresy Jude has been combating throughout the epistle. The sermon works through three observations: Christ's exclusive preservation of his people, his singular greatness as the only God, the only Savior, and the only wise one, and the deserved praise that flows from those realities. The practical force is that the Christian's confidence under trial and the church's resistance to false teaching both rest on this one Christ, who keeps, presents faultless, and reigns with glory, majesty, dominion, and power, both now and forever.