Topic
Justification
3 sermons · All topics
The Resurrection-Hope of the Righteous One
Psalm 16:7–11 opens a window into the mind of Christ according to his human nature, revealing the steadfast confidence that carried him through suffering, death, and into resurrection glory. The passage is not ultimately about David — as Peter and Paul demonstrate in Acts 2 and Acts 13 — but about the resurrection of the Holy One who, having rendered perfect obedience, could not be held by the grave. His secured resurrection grounds the believer's own resurrection hope and calls the unbeliever to repent and receive the forgiveness of sins and the imputed righteousness of Christ by faith alone. The sermon exhorts both believer and unbeliever to fix their gaze on the path of life Christ has opened — pleasures forevermore in the presence of God — as the only sufficient anchor through the dark providences of this present age.
The Gospel Committed to the Apostle Paul
Paul's declaration in 1 Timothy 1:15—'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners'—is one of five 'faithful sayings' in the Pastoral Epistles, a standard confessional truth received and owned by the early church. The sermon examines the incarnation and saving work of the Son (active and passive obedience, propitiation, imputation), the merciful application of those benefits to the chief of sinners as a paradigm for all who will believe, and the doxology that inevitably flows from a right apprehension of sovereign grace. The repeated exhortation is that the church must never drift from this central gospel proclamation, and that the unbeliever must own it by faith.
Livestream - Baptism: Shirley Crow, Jennie Krul, John Krul, +1 other
The two baptisms of Christ in Matthew 3 and Matthew 20 provide the theological ground for Christian baptism. In Matthew 3, Christ undergoes water baptism to 'fulfill all righteousness' — inaugurating his public ministry of active obedience in the place of sinners. In Matthew 20, he speaks of a baptism yet to come: being overwhelmed by the cup of divine wrath at Calvary, the passive obedience by which he ransoms his people. Baptism is therefore not a declaration of the believer's achievement but a public identification with the doing, dying, and rising of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom alone sinners are justified before a holy God.