Topic
Soteriology
28 sermons · All topics
Laws Concerning Debt, Slaves, and Firstborn
Deuteronomy 15 contains three interlocking bodies of legislation governing debt release, indentured servitude, and the sacrifice of the firstborn — all set within the framework of Old Covenant Israel's theocratic obligations under the covenant of works. The sabbatical release of debts and the manumission of Hebrew slaves both press beyond bare external compliance to demand a right internal disposition: generosity flowing from a heart shaped by the memory of God's own redemptive act in the Exodus. The firstborn legislation culminates typologically in Christ, the unblemished firstborn Son of God, whose sacrifice fulfills what the animal sacrifices prefigured. The session closes with an extended Q&A examining how these principles of restitution, due diligence, and ordered benevolence translate into the life of the New Covenant church.
The Exhortation to Wage the Good Warfare
Paul's charge to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:18–20 is a summons to wage good warfare against false teaching — a warfare grounded in Timothy's apostolic authority, prophetic calling, and possession of faith and a good conscience. The sermon exposes the defection of Hymenaeus and Alexander as the concrete conflict that makes this warfare necessary, tracing their blasphemy to a rejection of both the objective content of the faith and a good conscience. The application presses the church to hold the line through faithful exposition, qualified eldership, and the exercise of church discipline, all in defence of the gospel that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
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 Freeness of the Priceless Feast, Part 1
Isaiah 55:1–2 opens with a single attention-grabbing word — 'Ho' — that God employs as an imperatival invitation, commanding sinners to come and feast without money and without price upon the abundant provision of the covenant. The freeness of the offer rests on three realities: the goodness of God, the infinite worth of the things offered, and the infinite payment already made by the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. Water, wine, milk, and bread are not bare metaphors but point to Christ himself — the personification of every element of the feast — who alone satisfies the restless soul that the world's marketplace of false substitutes can never fill. Hearers are called to cease the squandering madness of spending wages on what is not bread and to believe on Christ, receiving the feast he secured at infinite cost and now offers entirely free.
The Freeness of the Priceless Feast, Part 2
Isaiah 55:3–13 unfolds in three movements: the ground of the gospel summons, the required response, and the guarantee attached to it. The ground is the covenant of grace itself — the sure mercies of David fulfilled in the person and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the covenant champion who secures abundant pardon for abundant sinners. The response calls for active, whole-souled seeking, calling, forsaking, and returning to the Lord while He may still be found. The passage closes with the guarantee that God's word never returns void and that Christ's saving work reverses the curses of Genesis 3, replacing thorns with cypress, expulsion with joyful leading out, and cosmic groaning with cosmic praise.
The Blood of the Unblemished Lamb
The redemption of sinners cannot be purchased by any corruptible thing — not silver or gold, not the accumulated wealth of the cosmos, not the religious observances of the old covenant. Expounding 1 Peter 1:18–19, this sermon traces Peter's negation-then-assertion structure: material things and old covenant types alike are insufficient to ransom a soul bound under sin and divine wrath, but the precious blood of Christ as an unblemished and spotless Lamb accomplishes what nothing else can. The blood of Christ is precious because of the surpassing excellence of the person who shed it, the definite redemption it secures, the infinite cost it required of the Father, its unrepeatable once-for-all character, its endless efficacy, and its eternal appointment in the counsel of the triune God before the foundation of the world. Hearers are pressed toward the Lord's Supper with minds fixed on the logic of substitution: the Lamb's own unblemishedness is the very ground of his capacity to bear the blemishes of his people.
Christ's Precious Gem Collection
What does it mean that God's elect are described throughout Scripture as precious stones being gathered into a temple? This sermon traces the biblical-theological thread from the Garden of Eden through Solomon's temple, the Babylonian exile, Isaiah's restoration promises, and into Revelation 21, arguing that Christ — the greater Solomon and last Adam — is building his church by gathering his elect from among all the scattered nations. The identity of the precious gems is God's chosen people; their location is every tribe, tongue, and people; and the means of their gathering is the gospel of Christ, who has already bound the strong man and now commissions his people to mine for treasures in the darkness.
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.
The Resurrection-Hope of the Righteous One
Psalm 16 is read through a christological lens, with the Apostle Peter (Acts 2) and the Apostle Paul (Acts 13) as the interpretive guides: David speaks here concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. The sermon traces the earnest petition of verse 1, the joyful contentment of verses 2–6, and the steadfast confidence to be treated in verses 7–11, showing how Christ's human dependence on the Father, his delight in the saints, his repudiation of idolatry, and his sufficiency in divine providence together constitute the resurrection-hope of the righteous one. The imputed righteousness of Christ, received by faith alone, is the ground on which David, and every believer in saving union with Christ, can share in that same hope. Hearers are called to imitate the Savior in prayer, meditation on Scripture, and a rightly ordered love that prizes God above every earthly portion.
Testimony, confession, and baptism: Hans
A believer presents his public testimony before the congregation prior to baptism by immersion, tracing his journey from Eastern mysticism and Stoic philosophy to saving faith in Jesus Christ. His conversion crystallised through reading Scripture — beginning with Proverbs and ending with a sermon on Matthew 24:15 — when the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 became for him a vivid demonstration of divine justice and mercy held together. The 1689 London Baptist Confession's teaching on baptism frames the ordinance as a public pictorial representation of the believer's union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection.
The Conversion of the Apostle Paul
Paul's gratitude in 1 Timothy 1:12–14 is inseparable from the account of his own conversion — from blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent man to apostle and chief exhibit of sovereign mercy. The passage establishes that Christ himself is the enabler of true gospel ministers, in deliberate contrast to the false teachers in Ephesus who were self-appointed desirers of the law. Paul's ignorance in unbelief before Damascus belongs to a different moral category than the willful, post-enlightenment sin of those who profess Christ and then turn against him. The text drives toward verse 15: the exceedingly abundant grace poured out on the chief of sinners is the pattern and ground of hope for every sinner who comes to Christ.
The Goodness of God's Law
The goodness of God's law is not nullified by the false teachers who mishandle it, nor by those who reject it in the name of the gospel. Expounding 1 Timothy 1:8–11, this sermon establishes that the law is intrinsically good because it is a revelation of God's own nature, and then works through the three classical Reformed uses of the law — civil, pedagogical, and normative — showing that each harmonises with the gospel rather than opposing it. The civil use restrains external lawlessness, the pedagogical use drives the sinner to Christ by exposing sin and misery, and the normative use directs the blood-bought believer in the pattern of sanctification. The sermon closes with a direct exhortation: do not seek justification by the law, use it lawfully to show the unconverted their need for Christ, and in the life of faith delight in it as the Spirit-empowered norm of obedience to God.
The Lament of the Psalmist
Psalm 13 is a lament psalm in which David — and, by virtue of his identity as the greater Son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ — cries out to God under the perceived forgetfulness of divine providence, the daily sorrows of the soul, and the threatening triumph of the enemy. Lament is distinguished from whining precisely in that it is directed toward God in faith, not away from Him; it is the transitional space between present pain and future promise, driven by covenant confidence in God's hesed. The sermon traces the structure of the psalm in two movements — the lament of verses 1–4 and the refuge of verses 5–6 — and applies it to the believer's life through the sympathizing high priesthood of Christ in Hebrews 4:14–16, calling Christians to bring their sorrows boldly to the throne of grace.
The Priestly Blessing of the Ascending King
Luke 24:50–53 presents the ascending Christ as the great high priest who, having offered himself as the perfect and unrepeatable sacrifice for sin, lifts his nail-scarred hands to bless his people as he ascends to the right hand of the Father. The typological connection between Aaron's priestly blessing in Leviticus 9 and Christ's blessing at Bethany illuminates the finality and efficacy of his once-for-all sacrifice and the everlasting nature of the blessing he confers. Because Christ ascends while still blessing — not after — the favor, power, and life he bestows upon his people does not cease. Those who receive this blessing respond with continual worship, corporate praise, and the joyful acknowledgement of God's intrinsic and extrinsic glories — the very pattern the Lord's Supper calls every generation of disciples to embody.
The promise of blessing or curse
Deuteronomy 11 sets before Old Covenant Israel a stark choice: obedience leading to blessing in the land, or disobedience leading to curse and exile. The sermon traces three sections of the chapter — the works of God in Israel's history, the requirement of obedience, and the promise of blessing or curse — showing how the covenant of works that Israel repeatedly broke is fulfilled by Christ, the true Israel of God, who bore the covenant curse on the cross. The Apostle Paul's argument in Galatians 3 is brought to bear: all who trust in works of law are under the curse, but Christ has redeemed his people from that curse by becoming a curse for them, so that the blessing of Abraham comes upon the Gentiles through faith alone.
The Psalmist's Cry in an Age of Deceit
Psalm 12 confronts the believer with a world of flattering lips, double hearts, and lying tongues — both outside and inside the professing church — and asks how the righteous can persevere when the foundations are being destroyed. The sermon argues that the psalm is preeminently the prayer of Christ in his earthly ministry, who faced this same godless opposition and who, as the incarnate covenant head, is the definitive fulfilment of verse 5's divine promise to arise and set the oppressed in safety. The contrast between the corrupt words of the wicked (verses 1–4) and the pure, tried word of God (verses 5–8) teaches that theology, prayer, and dependence upon Scripture are the appointed means by which the pilgrim church endures in a present evil age. Unbelievers are warned that the autonomy expressed in verse 4 — 'our lips are our own, who is Lord over us?' — leads to the judgment of God, and are called to kiss the Son before his wrath is kindled.
The Apostle's Charge to Timothy
Paul's charge to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:3–7 exposes a crisis in the Ephesian church: false teachers devoted to fables and endless genealogies were generating disputes rather than the godly edification that flows from sound doctrine. The sermon traces two movements in the passage — the apostolic charge to silence the heterodox and the anatomy of the false teachers' departure from the law — demonstrating that gospel ministry is driven by love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. The application presses churches to hold elders to the qualifications of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, to refuse a pulpit to the unqualified, and to guard the congregation against any teaching that diverts attention from the truth as it is in Jesus.
The Central Demand of the Covenant
Deuteronomy 10 confronts Israel — and every subsequent reader — with the central demand of the covenant: to fear God, love Him, walk in all His ways, and serve Him with undivided heart and soul. The first eleven verses narrate the renewal of the Sinaitic covenant after the golden calf catastrophe of Exodus 32, demonstrating that Israel's continuation rested entirely on divine long-suffering and the intercession of Moses, not on any righteousness of their own. Verses 12–22 then press the covenantal demand that runs from Genesis 18 through Micah 6:8 and into Matthew 23, showing that the people always knew what God required but consistently failed to live accordingly. The passage finally anticipates what only the new covenant can accomplish: the circumcision of the heart wrought by the Spirit through the gospel of the true Israel, Jesus Christ, apart from any merit in the creature.
The Introduction to First Timothy
Paul's apostolic authority and his commission 'by the commandment of God our Savior' stand at the center of 1 Timothy 1:1–2, establishing both the legitimacy of Paul's office and the delegated authority of Timothy in Ephesus. This introductory sermon traces Paul's missionary journeys, his post-imprisonment ministry, and his relationship with Timothy to locate the Pastoral Epistles within the apostle's life and the history of the early church. The epistle's overarching purpose — directing ministers and churches in conduct, refuting false teaching, and declaring sound doctrine — is shown to be as binding on congregations today as it was on the church at Ephesus. The sermon closes with a call to unbelievers to receive the Christ whom God, the Savior, sent into the world to save sinners.
CTF 2026: Q&A Panel Discussion
A conference Q&A panel explores difficult questions arising from the doctrine of God's exhaustive decree, including federal headship and the fall, the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, the authorship of sin, the infralapsarian and supralapsarian debate, and the legitimacy of the free offer of the gospel. The panelists frankly acknowledge the limits of creaturely knowledge before the secret things of God, grounding their answers in Scripture, the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, and the tradition of Reformed orthodoxy. Practical counsel closes the session: those newly awakened to Reformed theology are urged to slow down, submit to the ordinary means of grace, read widely before entering debates, and avoid unaccountable online discourse.
CTF 2026 - Session 1: God's Decree in the Puritan Confessions
The doctrine of God's eternal decree, far from being confined to a single chapter, runs as a unifying thread through the entire fabric of the three major Puritan confessions — the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Savoy Declaration, and the Second London Baptist Confession of 1677/1689. Drawing on Isaiah 46:8–11, this lecture traces how the divine decree undergirds Scripture's authority, creation, providence, the fall, the covenant of grace, the person and work of Christ, the ordo salutis, and the final judgment. Because the decree is simply God decreeing — an expression of His eternal, immutable, and holy will — the doctrine is inseparable from the classical Christian doctrine of God in His simplicity, sovereignty, and self-sufficiency. Believers are called to receive this doctrine humbly, to resist both the error of making God the author of sin and the error of bare permission, and to respond with worship as they watch the eternal decree unfold in history.
CTF 2026 - Session 4: Pastoral Sermon
Hebrews 2:10 frames the whole of redemptive history as God bringing many sons to glory through the sufferings of Christ, and this sermon traces that theme from the eternal decree of predestination through the means of grace in the present assembly to the consummation awaiting the saints. Drawing on John Owen's exposition of Hebrews, the 1689 London Baptist Confession's chapters on God and election, and John Calvin's theology of creation as a theater of divine glory, the sermon argues that God's eternal purpose is both ultimate — his own glory — and penultimate — the saints' participation in that glory. The congregation is urged to receive the Word, baptism, and the Lord's Supper as present foretastes of the glory to come, and to read creation itself as a stepping stone toward knowing and enjoying God rather than a terminus for the affections.
CTF 2026 - Session 2: Introducing “Of God’s Decree”
God's decree, as confessed in Chapter Three of the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, is a revealed mystery demanding both theological precision and creaturely humility. The scope of that decree is comprehensive — God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass — and yet it must be carefully distinguished from God's will of precept, from any necessity of nature, and from any conferral of actual being through the decree itself. Three guiding principles govern the study: the decree is not our moral duty, it remains largely veiled despite scriptural revelation, and any engagement with it requires a robust Creator-creature distinction throughout. The pressing question raised by so radical a scope — whether God is therefore the author of sin — is the burden taken up in the subsequent lecture.
CTF 2026 - Session 3: Is God the Author of Sin?
The comprehensive decree of God—that he has ordained whatsoever comes to pass—immediately raises two pressing questions: Is God therefore the author of sin, and do a believer's own sins somehow work for their good? Drawing on 1689 LBCF 3.1, Acts 2:23, Acts 17:28, and Romans 8:28, this session argues that God cannot be the author of sin because sin is a privation of good rather than a positive entity, and God, being essentially and immutably good, cannot be the deformed agent that authoring sin would require. The doctrine of concurrence—God acting as the divine first cause while creaturely second causes act according to their own natures—resolves how God upholds sinners in their sinning without being morally implicated in that sin. Believers are called to receive even their falls as instruments in the hand of a sovereign God who overrules the effects of sin to produce humility, dependence, and ultimately a glorified state exceeding even Adam's original condition.
The Authority of Christ Over the Demons
Christ's authority over the demonic kingdom is the central demonstration Matthew presents in chapter 8, where two men reduced to a subhuman, tomb-dwelling existence are liberated by a single word from the Son of God. The passage exposes both the wretchedness of Satanic bondage — no glamour, only madness, nakedness, and self-destruction — and the sufficiency of Christ's power to deliver the most apparently irredeemable sinners. The sermon draws a direct line from the Gadarene demoniacs to Paul's confession in 1 Timothy 1:15, arguing that the same sovereign grace that rescues the most visibly ruined also reaches the self-righteous religious man who trusts in his own standing before God. Parents, youth, and all hearers are urged to flee the occult, resist the devil through gospel proclamation, and rest in the one whose word alone — 'Go' — dismantles the kingdom of darkness.
2LCF Chap.19 Of the Law of God
The moral law of God, written on the human conscience at creation, is trans-covenantal in its binding authority — obligating all people in every age, including justified believers under the new covenant. This confession study of 2LCF Chapter 19 traces the threefold division of Old Covenant law (moral, ceremonial, judicial), the divinely designed obsolescence of the ceremonial and judicial laws at Christ's first advent, and the abiding utility of the moral law in its civil, pedagogical, and normative functions. Christ stands at the centre of the law's story as its giver, its perfect active and passive obedient fulfiller, and the one who by his Spirit now governs the hearts of his people in cheerful, free compliance with what the law requires.
The Exhortation to Perseverance and Unity
Philippians 4:1–3 presents two interconnected apostolic exhortations: the call to stand fast in the Lord and the call to pursue unity among the saints. The sermon examines the apostle's affection for the Philippians as his joy and crown, the meaning and manner of steadfast perseverance, and the concrete dispute between Euodia and Syntyche as a vehicle for a thorough exposition of biblical conflict resolution from Proverbs 18, Matthew 5, and Matthew 18. The practical burden is that both perseverance and unity demand disciplined, long-haul commitment — fastening one's grip on Christ, the doctrines of the gospel, and the one-another obligations of church life.
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.