Topic
Eschatology
512 sermons · All topics
The Tree and Its Fruits
Matthew 12:33–37 confronts every hearer with the inseparable connection between the inner condition of the heart and the words that proceed from it. Working through Christ's fourfold address to the Pharisees — exhortation to repent, condemnation of their wickedness, explanation of the heart's role as the source of speech, and anticipation of the Day of Judgment — the sermon establishes that words are not morally neutral but are the public evidence of what a person truly is before God. The doctrines of total depravity and total inability undergird the exposition: no one can speak good things from an evil heart, and only sovereign regeneration — God removing the heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh — can change the root so that the fruit changes. The only shelter from that coming day of accounting is the Lord Jesus Christ, the one man who never spoke an idle word, whose righteousness alone justifies the ungodly.
Joshua 15-18
The allotment of Canaan to Judah, Ephraim, and Manasseh in Joshua 15–17 is not a tedious roster of city names but the concrete, geographical fulfillment of the covenant promises God made to Abraham in Genesis. Each border description and town name is evidence of divine fidelity, foreshadowing the bodily resurrection and new creation that the land of Canaan itself anticipated. Running through these chapters are three sober warnings — Judah, Ephraim, and Manasseh each failed to drive out the Canaanites — sowing the seeds of the syncretism and apostasy that will characterize the book of Judges. The Josephite tribes' complaint against their lot and their fear of iron chariots is set in sharp contrast to Caleb's faith, calling hearers to trust the power of God rather than retreat into faithless discontentment.
The Conquering Power of the Davidic Son
Matthew 12:22–30 presents the healing of a demon-possessed, blind, and mute man as the occasion for a decisive confrontation over the identity of Jesus as the Davidic Son. The multitudes ask whether this could be the Son of David; the Pharisees respond by attributing Christ's power to Beelzebub. Jesus refutes this accusation with two arguments — a divided kingdom cannot stand, and the Jewish exorcists the Pharisees approve operate by the same power Christ claims — then draws three implications: the kingdom of God has arrived, the strong man has been bound, and there is no neutral ground. The sermon calls hearers to reckon with the absolute antithesis between the two kingdoms and to flee by faith to the conquering Davidic Son.
Joshua 12
Joshua 12 presents a catalog of defeated kings—two conquered under Moses east of the Jordan, and thirty-one under Joshua west of it—that is far more than a dry archive. Four lessons emerge from this summary: it guards the unity of the covenant community by refusing to marginalize the eastern tribes, it demonstrates the fulfillment of the Abrahamic land promise, it provides an itemized record of God's kindnesses that should shape the gratitude and praise of God's people, and it foreshadows God's ultimate victory in Christ, in whom all three elements of the Abrahamic covenant—land, seed, and blessing—reach their consummation. The great application is that the people of God should practice detailed, act-by-act thanksgiving rather than only generic gratitude, trusting the God who fought for Israel in Canaan to secure every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
The Son of Man Lifted Up
John 12:27–36 presents Jesus in soul trouble as the hour of his crucifixion approaches — not merely fearing physical death, but facing the full weight of the Father's wrath against sin. The sermon expounds four redemptive results of Christ being 'lifted up': the judgment of the world, the casting out of Satan, the effectual drawing of all peoples without distinction to himself, and the glory of God the Father. Preached as a meditation preceding the Lord's Supper, the exposition calls the congregation to prize what they proclaim at the table — not a martyr's moral example, but a cosmic transaction in which the Son exhausted divine wrath on behalf of his people.
The Condemnation of Israel's Unbelief
Jesus pronounces solemn woes upon Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum in Matthew 11:20–24, condemning their unrepentance despite being the primary sites of His Galilean ministry. The greater the privilege and witness a people have received — miracles, preaching, the very presence of the Messiah — the greater the condemnation they bear for rejecting it. Capernaum, Christ's own base of ministry, is likened to both Sodom and Babylon, cities proverbial for wickedness, because its sin of impenitence in the face of such light exceeded even theirs. The sermon applies this graduated judgment directly to hearers in the Western world who possess Bibles, faithful churches, and the preached gospel, calling them urgently to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ before the day of judgment.
The Indictment of Israel's Unbelief
Israel's rejection of both John the Baptist and Jesus Christ is the subject of Matthew 11:16–19, where Jesus indicts his generation as incorrigible — stubbornly unresponsive to the mourning of the Baptist and the celebration of the Son of Man alike. The parable of children in the marketplace exposes the fatal irony: the very charge Israel leveled against Jesus — that he was a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of sinners — echoes the language of Deuteronomy 21's incorrigible son, the language that rightly belongs to Israel herself. Christ alone is the obedient Son who lived in perfect submission to the Father, providing the righteousness and forgiveness that rebellious sinners require. The sermon closes with a direct summons to repentance, warning that greater privilege under gospel preaching brings greater accountability on the day of judgment.
The Lord's Assessment of the Baptist
Matthew 11:7–15 records Christ's own assessment of John the Baptist, delivered to the multitudes immediately after answering John's question from prison. The sermon examines what Jesus' threefold rhetorical questioning — was John a reed shaken by the wind, a man in soft garments, or merely a prophet? — reveals about John's uncompromising character, his singular role in redemptive history as the fulfillment of Malachi 3:1, and the nature of the kingdom of heaven that he heralded. Central to the passage is the relationship between the Old and New Covenants: John stands as the greatest born of women and yet the least in the new covenant era exceeds him, not in moral stature but in covenantal privilege on this side of the cross. The sermon closes with an urgent exhortation drawn from verse 15 — he who has ears to hear, let him hear — calling sinners to repent and believe on Christ alone.
The Messenger of the Covenant
Malachi 2:17–3:5 confronts Israel's practical atheism — the posture of those who affirm God doctrinally yet live and speak as though He neither sees nor judges. The prophecy announces a forerunner and a messenger of the covenant who will come to His temple, but whose coming will not be what the self-righteous expect: He comes as refiner's fire and launderer's soap, purging sin and executing judgment. The sermon draws out three applications: guard against practical atheism in the Christian life, recognise that the two tables of the law stand or fall together, and heed the warning of Amos 5 that desiring the day of the Lord without being in Christ is to court inescapable judgment.
The Way, the Truth, the Life
John 14:1–6 presents Christ's answer to the disciples' heart trouble on the eve of his crucifixion: he is himself the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him. The sermon works through two movements — Christ's departure and promised return to prepare a place for his people (vv. 1–3), and Thomas's question as the occasion for the sixth 'I am' statement in John's Gospel (vv. 5–6). Against every form of religious pluralism and syncretism, the sermon insists that faith is only as good as its object, and that the object who saves is Christ alone. The application is threefold: let eschatological hope displace heart trouble, let faith be the remedy for despair, and let the exclusivity of Christ be confessed without apology.
Christ Our Peace
Ephesians 2:11–22 sets the Gentiles' former condition — Christless, hopeless, and without God — against their present status as full members of the one new covenant community purchased by Christ's blood. The sermon argues that Christ himself is peace, that he makes peace by abolishing the ceremonial law and reconciling Jew and Gentile to God through the cross, and that he preaches peace through the proclamation of the gospel. Gentile believers are now fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, being built together as a dwelling place of the Spirit, and this corporate solidarity must be prized alongside the individual salvation it encompasses.
Crushing the Head
Romans 16:20 contains a striking promise — that the God of peace shall bruise Satan under the feet of his people. This sermon expounds that promise by tracing the crushing of Satan across five dimensions: historically at the cross, judicially in justification, experientially in the believer's security, ecclesiastically in the preservation of the church, and eschatologically at the end of days. The word translated 'shortly' is shown to carry connotations of certainty and sovereignty rather than mere temporal nearness, grounding the church's confidence in God's irreversible triumph over the adversary.
The Effects of Jesus' Mission
Matthew 10:34–42 confronts a persistent misreading of Christ's mission: he did not come to establish immediate social peace, but to divide — along the precise line of the enmity God announced in Genesis 3:15 between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. The sermon traces two effects of apostolic mission: the division that the gospel necessarily produces in families and societies whose hearts are at enmity with God, and the reception that God's elect show toward Christ's messengers. The exposition draws out three demands of genuine discipleship — loyalty to Christ before family, before physical life, and before any earthly security — before closing with the encouragement that even a cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple is an act God rewards, meaning every believer participates in the mission.
The Pursuit of Wisdom
Proverbs 30:24–28 presents four small creatures — ants, rock badgers, locusts, and spiders — as teachers of wisdom, and this exposition draws out the spiritual lesson each one emblematises. Ants call for preparation in both temporal industry and eternal readiness before death and judgment; rock badgers call for caution in fleeing sin rather than presuming on personal strength; locusts call for cooperation and churchly unity in humility, gentleness, and long-suffering; spiders call for godly ambition — a steadfast, grace-fuelled determination to press toward the King of Kings. The sermon closes by urging hearers to pursue all four traits together as marks of Spirit-wrought wisdom in the Christian life.
The New Heaven and a New Earth
Revelation 21:1–8 sets before the believer a vision of the new heaven and new earth — blessed not only for what is present (God and the Lamb dwelling with His people) but for what is entirely absent (death, sorrow, pain, and sin). Preached in the context of a young congregation member's death, this expository sermon traces the biblical-theological movement from Adam's failed dominion mandate through Christ's perfect fulfillment as the last Adam, showing that the new creation is the consummation of every covenant promise God made to His people. The text's fourfold structure — the new creation, the bride prepared, the announcement of blessing, and the voice from the throne — culminates in a direct call to believe on Christ and a sober warning that the unbelieving are excluded from the new Jerusalem.
The Mission of the Twelve
The mission of the Twelve in Matthew 10:5–15 is not a universal mandate for all gospel ministry but a historically specific, geographically confined commission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel — the necessary first movement in a salvation-historical arc that culminates in the Great Commission of Matthew 28. The sermon works through four observations: the scope, nature, provision, and response to the mission, demonstrating that the sign gifts authenticated apostolic preaching rather than being ends in themselves. The sermon closes with a sober warning drawn from verse 15: greater gospel privilege demands greater accountability, and to hear the word faithfully preached and refuse it is a more grievous offense than the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Introduction to Joshua
The book of Joshua stands as Scripture's definitive testimony to divine covenant faithfulness: every promise God made to Abraham regarding the land finds its historical fulfillment here. This introductory study surveys the date, authorship, and canonical setting of Joshua, presents a four-part structural outline (entering, taking, dividing, and retaining the land), and examines the book's major theological themes — holy war and the ban, the land as covenant inheritance, and the unqualified faithfulness of God. The closing summary in Joshua 21:43–45 anchors the entire exposition, demonstrating that not one word of God's promised word failed.
The Believer's Race
Hebrews 12:1–4 summons believers to run the Christian race with endurance by fixing their gaze upon Jesus — not upon their trials, their failures, or the examples of the Old Testament saints alone, but upon Christ as the author and finisher of faith who endured the cross for the joy set before him. The sermon works through three aspects of this exhortation: the specific activity of looking (a faith-act, not mere moral imitation), the particular focus upon Christ in his person, work, resolve, and suffering, and the necessary consideration of his endurance to promote both spiritual stamina and sober self-assessment. The closing call is twofold: those outside Christ are directed to look to him for salvation, while believers are charged to use the means of grace — Scripture, prayer, and the corporate assembly — as the ordinary instruments by which the eyes of faith are kept fixed upon Jesus.
Hebrews 12
Hebrews 12:1 calls believers to run with endurance the race set before them — not a sprint, but a lifelong, disciplined pursuit of Christ through every obstacle and trial. This Bible study exposition works through the duty stated in verse 1, the two obstacles to lay aside (encumbering weights and ensnaring sin), the nature of Christian endurance as distinct from mere stoic grit, and the kindness God shows in repeatedly exhorting his people rather than cutting them off. The central incentive examined is the great cloud of witnesses from Hebrews 11, whose collective testimony is not that they are cheering from the stands but that God is faithful — a truth that grounds and motivates the runner's perseverance.
Thy Kingdom Come
The second petition of the Lord's Prayer — 'Thy kingdom come' — presses the believer to understand what the kingdom of God actually is before praying for it with any intelligence. This sermon traces three biblical dimensions of the kingdom: God's universal providential reign over all things, the already-present kingdom of grace inaugurated at Christ's first coming, and the not-yet consummated kingdom of glory awaiting his return. With that theological foundation laid, the sermon moves through concrete, structured applications for how the individual believer, the local church, and the wider world ought to be brought before God under this single petition.
Wage the Good Warfare
Paul's charge to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:18–20 — to wage the good warfare — is the ground for a sustained argument that gospel ministry requires both the positive exposition of truth and the courageous refutation of error. The sermon works through the basis of that charge (prophetic appointment), its necessary instruments (faith and a good conscience), and the catastrophic consequences of rejecting those instruments, illustrated by the named cases of Hymenaeus and Alexander. Church discipline, including excommunication into the realm of Satan, is presented not merely as punitive but as remedial — aimed at the repentance and restoration of the erring sinner. Every Christian, not only ordained ministers, is called to maintain fidelity to Christ and his gospel as soldiers and sailors in a genuine spiritual combat.
The Resurrection of the Bridegroom
The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is not a peripheral doctrine but the very ground of Christian hope, justification, and assurance. Working through John 20:1–23, this sermon examines three successive narratives — the empty tomb, the appearance to Mary Magdalene, and the appearance to the disciples — demonstrating through eyewitness detail, fulfilled Old Testament prophecy, and apostolic interpretation that the risen Lord is none other than the crucified sacrifice. The resurrection vindicates Christ's atoning work, secures the believer's justification, and commissions the church to proclaim the forgiveness of sins as its primary and irreplaceable task.
Deuteronomy 32
Deuteronomy 32, the Song of Moses, functions not as an emotional appendix to the covenantal legislation but as a doctrinal witness designed to penetrate Israel's heart and promote fidelity to Yahweh. The chapter moves through four movements — the creation of Israel as a chosen people, Israel's apostasy through ingratitude and idolatry, the covenantal judgment God brings through Assyria and Babylon, and the ultimate salvation and vindication of God's people — all within the framework of the Mosaic covenant's blessing-and-curse structure. Idolatry, rooted in the rejection of God and the embrace of His gifts over the Giver, is shown to be the defining sin of the nation, and its antidote is robust theology proper. The song closes with Gentile inclusion in covenant blessing, which Paul explicitly cites in Romans 15 as fulfilled in the new covenant era.
Deuteronomy 30
Deuteronomy 30 is not merely a conditional exhortation at the edge of Canaan but a programmatic prophecy of what God would accomplish through exile, return, and ultimately the new covenant in Christ. The chapter's pivotal verse — the circumcision of the heart in verse 6 — is shown to be the fountainhead of the same promise later amplified by Jeremiah and Ezekiel and fulfilled in the regenerating work of the Spirit. The sermon traces five realities embedded in the future blessing (verses 1–14): the certainty of exile, the return to Yahweh, the divine initiative in restoration, the obedient response of the renewed heart, and the empowerment that Paul draws on in Romans 10 to describe the righteousness of faith. The practical summons in verses 15–20 — "choose life" — is then heard not as bare moralism but as a call to embrace the God who is himself the life and length of days of his covenant people.
Deuteronomy 29
Deuteronomy 29 records Moses' third and final address to Israel on the plains of Moab, structured as a covenant renewal ceremony before the people enter Canaan. The sermon traces three movements in the chapter: a historical review of God's redemptive acts (the Exodus, the wilderness, the defeat of Sihon and Og), the terms and central promise of the covenantal bond ('I will be their God and they shall be my people'), and a solemn warning against apostasy and idolatry, with its attendant curses culminating in exile. The sermon situates these three elements within the broader covenantal structure of Scripture, from the covenant with Adam through the new covenant announced in Deuteronomy 30, and concludes by pointing to Christ as the one who bore the covenant curses in the place of his people through penal substitutionary atonement.
Christ and the Demoniacs
Matthew 8:28–34 presents two men so thoroughly dominated by demonic forces that no human restraint could subdue them — yet Jesus casts out an entire legion with a single word. This exposition works through the description of the demoniacs, their confrontation with Christ, the exorcism itself, and the city's fearful rejection, arguing that the passage is Matthew's sustained demonstration of Christ's absolute authority over the powers of hell. The demons' own testimony — confessing Jesus as the Son of God and acknowledging a coming day of judgment — stands as a rebuke to all who withhold that confession. The sermon closes by calling hearers to flee to Christ rather than away from Him, pointing to the restored men clothed and in their right minds as a picture of what sovereign grace accomplishes.
Deuteronomy 28
Deuteronomy 28 sets out the covenantal sanctions of the Mosaic economy: comprehensive blessing for obedience and devastating curse for disobedience, with the curses dwarfing the blessings in scope and detail. The chapter's structure mirrors ancient Near Eastern treaty form, and its predictive detail concerning plague, exile, siege, and national reversal has been dismissed by naturalistic interpreters who deny Mosaic authorship — a denial the sermon firmly rejects. The curses, including cannibalism during siege and the reversal of every Abrahamic promise, are traced through Israel's history from the wilderness to A.D. 70. The sermon closes by directing the hearer to praise God for the new covenant, in which Christ as covenant surety rendered the personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience Israel never could, bearing the curse of the law so that the blessing of Abraham might come upon His people.
Christ and the Centurion
Matthew 8:5–13 presents a Roman centurion whose faith surpasses anything Jesus has found in Israel, and whose encounter with Christ becomes a theological announcement: the Abrahamic promises are now being fulfilled in the inclusion of Gentiles and the judgment of unbelieving ethnic Israel. The centurion's approach to Christ models three marks of genuine faith — a plea grounded in misery rather than merit, profound humility before the Lord's authority, and unshaken confidence that Christ's spoken word alone is sufficient to heal. The sermon calls hearers to examine whether they stand in faith or unbelief, and to rest entirely in Christ's authority and grace rather than any personal worthiness.
The Son-Tilted Focus of All Things
Colossians 1:16 presents the Son of God as the author, agent, and goal of all creation — not merely its first product, but its sovereign Lord. The sermon argues that 'firstborn of all creation' (Col. 1:15) carries the Old Testament sense of preeminence and rank, not ontological origin, so that the Son is the Creator and not a creature. From this text the preacher traces a 'Son-tilted' architecture running through creation, providence, and redemption, showing that all three are oriented toward the glory of the eternal Son. The sermon closes with the gospel call: the same Son who made all things assumed human nature, suffered, rose, and now brings many sons to glory — a glory in which believers will stand blameless before God with great joy, solely on the ground of Christ's righteousness.
A Brief Survey of Covenant Theology, Part 3
Why is the New Covenant necessary? This session of a three-part survey of covenant theology works backwards through redemptive history to answer that question with six interlocking reasons: the Mosaic Covenant was temporary and could not save; the Abrahamic Covenant promised but did not present Christ; Genesis 3:15 gave only the first promise of a mediator; Adam's failure as covenant head made Christ's obedience necessary; Adam broke the covenant of works God placed him under at creation; and the entire plan was purposed by God before the foundation of the world. The argument culminates in the claim that the New Covenant does not restore believers to Adam's pre-fall probationary state but brings them, through the last Adam, to the glorified status Adam forfeited and Christ secured.