Topic
Theology Proper
369 sermons · All topics
Stephen's Defense, Part 5
Stephen's defense before the Sanhedrin in Acts 7:30–36 draws on the call and rejection of Moses to demonstrate that the very history Israel appeals to condemns their rejection of Jesus. The sermon expounds six attributes of God revealed in the burning bush — God as revelatory, covenantal, holy, compassionate, delivering, and the self-existent I Am — showing that Moses received a theophany of the pre-incarnate Christ in Gentile territory, dismantling the council's temple-centered objections. Moses functions as a deliberate type of Christ: called by God, rejected by the people, and authenticated by signs and wonders. The sermon closes by applying the typology directly: as Moses was sent to deliver Israel from earthly bondage, Christ is sent to deliver sinners from the bondage of sin, and the call to come to him is extended to all who are weary and heavy laden.
Free Grace Baptist Church - March 10, 2019 AM
Stephen's defense before the Sanhedrin in Acts 7:30–36 centers on the call and rejection of Moses as a deliberate typological argument: the same Israel that rejected Moses now rejects Jesus, and in doing so rejects the very law and temple they claim to honor. The sermon works through six attributes of God revealed in the burning-bush theophany — God as revelatory, covenantal, holy, compassionate, delivering, and self-existent (I AM) — showing that this theology proper undergirds Moses's commission and, by extension, Christ's. The typological parallel between Moses (ruler and deliverer) and Jesus (ruler and Savior) anchors Stephen's defense and issues a direct summons: the same Christ who heard Israel's groaning in Egypt hears the groaning of sinners in spiritual bondage today, and he has both the compassion and the power to deliver.
The Great Commission
Christ's Great Commission in Matthew 28:18–20 provides the church with her complete marching orders: go, make disciples, baptize those disciples, and teach them to observe all that Christ commanded. The authority behind the commission belongs to the risen and exalted Christ, who possesses all authority in heaven and earth; the assurance sustaining it is His promise of perpetual presence to the end of the age. The sermon treats the specific focus of the commission in sequence, defending believers' baptism by immersion as the pattern demanded by the text and the order it establishes — make disciples first, then baptize — against both baptismal regeneration and paedobaptism. The Trinitarian formula of baptism occasions an extended treatment of theology proper, including divine simplicity, impassibility, and the unity of essence in three persons, with warnings against tritheism, modalism, and subordinationism.
Livestream - Baptism: Carrie Lawson, Catharine Shook
The Great Commission of Matthew 28:18–20 defines the church's narrow, ordered mission: make disciples, baptize those disciples, and teach them to observe all Christ has commanded. This expository treatment of the Commission frames a baptism service for two women who profess saving faith in Christ, arguing that believer's baptism by immersion is the proper New Testament pattern — the sign of a new covenant already sealed by sovereign grace, not a sacrament of hopeful inclusion. The sermon draws on the doctrine of divine simplicity, the Trinity, and the covenant promises to Abraham to show that baptism is administered into the one name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that this triune God is himself the substance of eternal life.
The Dedication of the Temple
Solomon's dedicatory prayer in 1 Kings 8:22–53 is examined as a model of theological depth and dependent petition. The prayer opens by rehearsing God's incomparability, faithfulness, transcendence, and imminence — attributes that ground every request that follows. Six petitions structured around covenant curse and restoration (Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28) demonstrate that forgiveness is the central burden of the prayer, and that affliction is a designed instrument for drawing God's people back to dependence on Him. Practical applications press the congregation toward reverent worship, heart-obedience rooted in justification by Christ's righteousness alone, daily confession of sin, and confidence in God's unfailing covenant fidelity.
Free Grace Baptist Church - January 27, 2019 AM
Capital punishment is not a contradiction of the sanctity of life but a divine mandate grounded in the image of God. Working through Genesis 9:6, the Mosaic economy, and Romans 13, this sermon argues that God instituted the sword of civil government precisely because the murder of an image-bearer is an assault on the divine majesty — and that the penalty of death reflects the justice and holy character of God. Common objections, both biblical and pragmatic, are examined and answered, and unbelievers are confronted with what the gravity of God's justice against sin reveals about their need for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Bible and Capital Punishment
Capital punishment is not a relic of Old Testament severity but a universal, creation-order ordinance grounded in the image of God and confirmed in the New Testament — and therefore not in tension with a pro-life ethic but demanded by it. Expositing Genesis 9:6 and Romans 13:1-4, this sermon argues that God commissioned the civil magistrate to wield the sword as His appointed agent of retributive justice precisely because human life bears divine dignity. Common objections — from the Sixth Commandment's 'thou shalt not kill,' to Christ's handling of the woman caught in adultery, to the fear that execution forecloses repentance — are examined and answered on biblical grounds. Hearers are called to embrace the full counsel of God's Word on civil ethics, to resist the moralizing of secular humanism, and to see in God's hatred of bloodshed the very reason every sinner needs the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.
The Rejection of the True Prophet of God
When Ahab of Israel gathered four hundred prophets to sanction his campaign at Ramoth-Gilead, he had already resolved what he wanted to hear — and hated the one man who would tell him the truth. This exposition of 1 Kings 22:1–28 traces the confrontation between King Ahab and the prophet Micaiah, examining how the rejection of the true prophet is ultimately the rejection of the Word of God itself. Drawing on the parallel Paul draws in 2 Timothy 4:1–4, the sermon calls hearers to guard their hearts against the perennial temptation to accumulate teachers who scratch itching ears, and to receive the whole counsel of God — rebuke and exhortation included — as the mercy of a wise and sovereign Father.
The Glory of the Father and the Son
John 17:1–5 opens Christ's high priestly prayer with a petition that the Father glorify the Son so that the Son may glorify the Father — a reciprocal glorification whose goal is the glory of God Most High. The sermon works through three grounds for this petition: the salvation of the elect given to the Son in the covenant of redemption, the accomplishment of Christ's active and passive obedience as the basis of justification, and the restoration of the Son's pre-incarnate glory. The full deity of Christ is defended against subordinationist readings by surveying New Testament texts where the title theos is applied directly to Jesus, and the sermon closes with the call to pursue the knowledge of God and Christ as the very essence of eternal life — through Scripture reading, prayer, and faithful attendance upon the means of grace.
The Judgment of God in the Early Church
Acts 5:1–11 records the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, struck down by God for lying to the Holy Spirit. This sermon works through the passage under two headings: the deceitfulness of the couple (vv. 1–4) and the death they suffered by God's direct judgment (vv. 5–11). The preacher grounds the episode in a high doctrine of God — holy, just, and a consuming fire — and insists that the primary practical lesson is the fear of God, not merely ethical instruction about honesty. The sermon closes with the gospel: no one can stand before this holy Lord God except Christ alone, and all who are savingly united to Him by faith stand in Him.
Genesis 9:1-7
Genesis 9:1–7 establishes the Noahic Covenant, which mandates capital punishment as a universal and perpetual ordinance rooted in the image of God — not merely an Old Covenant provision for Israel. This study addresses common biblical objections (Exodus 20:13, Matthew 5:38–42, John 8) and pragmatic objections (deterrence, innocence, forgiveness), arguing that none successfully overthrow the divine mandate of Genesis 9:6, which is confirmed and not abrogated by the New Testament. The session urges listeners to think carefully from Scripture rather than from cultural sentiment, trusting that God's law concerning criminal justice reflects his character and serves the stability of the created order.
Genesis 6:1-8
Genesis 6:1–8 presents some of the most contested verses in the Pentateuch alongside some of the clearest. The identity of the 'sons of God' in verses 1–4 has generated three major interpretive traditions — angelic beings, tyrannical rulers, and the godly line of Seth intermarrying with the ungodly line of Cain — and the sermon surveys each view while favouring the Sethite interpretation without demanding confessional certainty on it. Verses 5–8 then deliver an unambiguous portrait of universal human depravity and the righteous judgment of God, interpreted through the theological categories of anthropomorphism and anthropopathism to guard the immutability and impassibility of God against misreading. The sermon closes by showing that grace precedes conduct in Noah's case, establishing the pattern that runs through all of Scripture: God's sovereign grace produces the righteousness it requires.
A Psalm of the Cross
Psalm 22 is a prophetic psalm of David that transcends David's own experience to describe with precision the suffering, death, and exaltation of the Messiah. The sermon examines the cry of dereliction ('My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?') with theological care, rejecting the notion that the Father abandoned the Son in any way that ruptured the Trinity or dissolved the hypostatic union, and instead grounding the forsakenness in the Son's substitutionary bearing of the wrath due his people. Three features of Messianic confidence sustain Christ through his ordeal — the holiness of God, the past faithfulness of God, and the invoked presence of God — and the congregation is called to meet their own trials with the same theological ballast that sustained the Savior on the cross.
Free Grace Baptist Church - June 10, 2018 PM
Proverbs 3:5–6 sets before the believer a threefold structure: a command to trust in Yahweh with the whole heart, a prohibition against leaning on one's own understanding, and an exhortation to acknowledge God in every area of life. The sermon traces total depravity and remaining corruption as the root of self-reliance, exposes three concrete forms of that self-reliance — outright reliance on self, rejection of godly parental counsel, and reception of ungodly influence — and grounds the call to entire, exclusive, and exhaustive trust in the immutability, impassibility, and covenant faithfulness of God. The closing movement draws on Jeremiah 32 and the divine simplicity formulated in the 1689 confession to show that God's commitment to his people is itself entire, exclusive, and exhaustive — making the demands of Proverbs 3:5–6 not burdensome but reasonable in light of the gospel.
The Believer's Commitment to the Lord
Proverbs 3:5–6 commands an entire, exclusive, and exhaustive commitment to Yahweh — a trust that spans salvation and all of ordinary life. The sermon works through three structural elements of the text: the command to trust in the Lord with all the heart, the prohibition against leaning on one's own understanding, and the exhortation to acknowledge God in all one's ways with the promise that He will direct the believer's paths. The doctrine of remaining corruption in the regenerate explains why this command is needed, while the perfections of God — His impassability, immutability, and divine simplicity — ground the assurance that His commitment to His people is equally entire, exclusive, and exhaustive. Hearers are called to search Scripture for explicit texts, implicit applications, and general principles, and to cultivate lives of prayer as a concrete expression of dependence upon God.
The Purpose of the Proverbs
Proverbs 1:2–7 sets out both the purpose and the prerequisite of the entire book of Proverbs. The purpose is comprehensive — to impart wisdom, instruction, and just judgment to the simple, the young, the wise, and every condition of man — while the prerequisite is singular: the fear of the Lord, which is not a natural attainment but a gracious work of God in the soul. The fear of God is shown to be the epistemological foundation of all true knowledge, the animator of righteous conduct, and the preserver of the soul — available only through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one greater than Solomon in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.
Free Grace Baptist Church - May 13, 2018 AM
Psalm 8 is a hymn of praise situated amid the laments of Book One of the Psalter, offering a glimpse of hope by directing the worshiper to consider the majesty of God displayed in creation. The sermon works through three movements: the majestic name of the Lord proclaimed throughout the earth and demonstrated paradoxically through weakness; the condescension of God in being mindful of frail man within the created order; and the God-given dominion of man over creation, which finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. Drawing on the New Testament quotations of the Psalm in Matthew 21 and Hebrews 2, the preacher shows that Psalm 8 is a 'two-Adams text' — the dominion forfeited by the first Adam is purchased and perfected by Christ through his incarnation, suffering, resurrection, and exaltation. The hearer is called to study the character of God, to offer praise that silences the adversary, and, if an unbeliever, to look in faith to the Christ who has conquered sin and secured the new creation for his people.
The Majestic Name
Psalm 8 frames the majestic name of God as the beginning and end of all true praise, confronting the reader with the infinite distance between Creator and creature while simultaneously revealing the astonishing condescension of God in both creation and redemption. The sermon works through three movements: God's majestic name proclaimed in creation and defended through weakness (vv. 1–2), God's mindfulness of an infinitesimal humanity (vv. 3–5), and God's appointment of man to vice-regential dominion (vv. 6–9). Each movement is shown to find its ultimate fulfilment in the Lord Jesus Christ — the one who, as the last Adam, was made a little lower than the angels to purchase new creation for his people. The sermon closes with a call to study the attributes of God as the antidote to idolatry, and with a direct appeal to unbelievers to look to Christ, in whom Psalm 8 is fully realised.
Genesis 1:26-31
Genesis 1:26–31 presents the creation of man as the deliberate, dignified pinnacle of God's creative work. The plural 'let us make' in verse 26 is examined through three interpretive options — heavenly council, plural of majesty, and the Trinity — with the Trinitarian reading affirmed as the only exegetically and theologically coherent position. The sermon exposits the Imago Dei with reference to Ecclesiastes 7:29, Ephesians 4:23–24, Colossians 3:10, and the 1689 LBCF chapter 4, establishing that the image encompasses rationality, knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness. Hearers are pressed to live as genuine image-bearers — treating fellow humans with dignity, resisting evolutionary reductionism, and exercising responsible dominion over creation for the glory of the triune God.
Genesis 1:3-25
Genesis 1:3–25 presents not a bare catalogue of events but a theologically ordered narrative of God's creative work, moving from formlessness to a world formed and filled for man's habitation. The study traces a recurring five-part formula in each day of creation — announcement, command, fulfillment, evaluation, and temporal marker — and then unpacks the structural pattern in which days 1–3 establish realms (light, sky and sea, land) and days 4–6 install their respective rulers (luminaries, fish and birds, land creatures), with man as the image-bearing vice-regent over all. The account is also polemical: Yahweh's creation of sun, moon, stars, and sea creatures directly undercuts the astral worship and mythological cosmologies surrounding Israel. Hearers are called to embrace six-day creationism by faith, to reject the incipient Gnosticism that denigrates the material world, and to read Genesis 1 as Scripture reads it — by faith we understand, not the reverse.
Genesis 1:1-2
Genesis 1:1–2 demands that the people of God hold tenaciously to the doctrine of creation, because what is affirmed or denied there reverberates through the whole of Scripture and Christian ethics. This study surveys the doctrine of creation through the lens of 1689 LBCF chapter 4, paragraph 1, examining the time, author, purpose, and scope of God's creative act, before turning to the precise structure of Genesis 1:1–2 and the arguments for six-day creation. The session closes with two applications: maintaining the aseity and immutability of God, and preserving the Creator-creature distinction against any notion that God is merely the most excellent member of a chain of being.
The Doubter Turned Confessor
Thomas's refusal to believe the disciples' eyewitness testimony of the risen Christ is one of the most emphatic denials of the resurrection in the New Testament — not mere doubt, but obstinate, threefold rejection of Scripture, Christ's own words, and apostolic witness. When Jesus appears and meets Thomas's exact conditions, Thomas confesses 'My Lord and my God,' bookending John's Gospel with the same declaration of Christ's deity found in its opening verse. The sermon expounds John 20:24–31 in two movements: the post-resurrection appearance to Thomas and the stated purpose of John's Gospel — that all who read it might believe and have life in Christ's name. Hearers are urged to stop placing conditions on God, to confess with Thomas that Jesus is Lord and God, and to avail themselves of the church's theological resources to grow beyond a superficial grasp of cardinal doctrines such as the Trinity.
Free Grace Baptist Church - March 25, 2018 PM
Acts 4:23-31 records the early church's corporate prayer in the face of threats from the Jewish authorities, and this sermon expounds four dimensions of that prayer: its occasion, its character, its content, and God's answer to it. The congregation's prayer is marked by a deliberate unity of purpose — a one-accord rooted not in uniformity of voice but in a shared commitment to the faith of the gospel. The content of the prayer moves through invocation and recognition of God as sovereign Creator, rehearsal of his works in creation and revelation, and confidence in his decree and providence — culminating not in a petition for deliverance from danger but for boldness to continue proclaiming Christ in the midst of it. Christians are called to pattern their own prayers on this model: knowing their God, drawing confidence from that knowledge, and asking not for the removal of trials but for the strength and resolution to endure through them.
Free Grace Baptist Church - March 4, 2018 PM
John 1:1–18 and 1:29 are expounded together to set the cross in its full Trinitarian, Christological, and covenantal context. The preacher establishes the eternal deity of the Word, the distinction of persons within the one divine essence, the doctrine of eternal generation, and the incarnation, before arriving at John the Baptist's declaration — 'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.' The sermon is preached in a Lord's Supper service, and the atonement is shown to be the act of an eternal divine person who stepped into time to accomplish, as the antitype of every Old Testament sacrifice, the definitive removal of the sin of his people from every nation.
The Glory of the Lamb of God
John 1:29 — 'Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world' — cannot be rightly understood apart from the Prologue that precedes it. The eternal Word who was with God and was God became flesh, was eternally begotten of the Father, and stands as the covenantal head of the new covenant before he is identified as the Lamb whose violent, substitutionary death takes away the sin of the world. The scope of that sin-bearing is not every individual without exception but persons without distinction — Jews and Gentiles alike — as the consistent use of 'world' in John's Gospel and the song of the redeemed in Revelation 5 make clear. The proper response is to place the cross in its full Trinitarian, Christological, and covenantal context and to worship the one who left the eternal life of God to enter our flesh and save us from our sins.
The Great Commission, Part 3
Matthew 28:19 commands that disciples be baptized into the singular name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — a text that stands as one of Scripture's clearest witnesses to the doctrine of the Trinity. This sermon works through the baptismal formula to establish what the one name and three persons require the Christian to confess: one divine essence, three distinct subsistences, free from the errors of tritheism, modalism, and subordinationism. The active obedience of Christ is exposited as the ground of the righteousness imputed to sinners in justification, showing that the gospel itself is inseparable from a right doctrine of God. The congregation is urged to study the confession's chapters on theology proper and Christology, and to hold the doctrine of the Trinity as a white-knuckle conviction worth dying for.
2 Kings 19:1-37
Second Kings 19 narrates the Assyrian crisis under Sennacherib and Hezekiah's response — a pattern of seeking God through the prophet Isaiah, spreading the enemy's letter before the Lord, and praying with conspicuously theological concern for God's honor rather than merely for personal safety. The sermon moves through three sections: the prophet's word of encouragement, Hezekiah's model prayer, and the divine defeat of 185,000 Assyrian troops by the angel of the Lord. Hezekiah's David-like rationale — that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that the Lord alone is God — illustrates why theology matters in trial, and why the best pleas in prayer are those taken from God's honor.
Warning of Antichrist
What does the term 'antichrist' in 1 John 2:18–23 actually mean, and why is the popular question 'Who is the Antichrist?' the wrong question to ask? This exposition argues that John is not pointing to a single future eschatological figure but to a multitude of false teachers who deny that Jesus is the Christ and that He came in the flesh — teachers who have already appeared in every generation of the last hour, the entire era between Christ's two Advents. The remedy against antichrist is not prophetic speculation but deep, Spirit-illumined knowledge of the true Christ: His identity as the eternal Son, His unity with the Father, and the Trinitarian relations that ground saving faith. The sermon closes with a direct call to confess Christ, study His person rigorously, and stand ready for His return.
OF Christ the Mediator (2LCF 8)
The doctrine of the Incarnation — that the eternal Son of God took to himself a full human nature, body and soul, yet without sin — is one of the two great mysteries of the Christian faith alongside the Trinity. This confession study works through 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith Chapter 8, Paragraph 2, establishing first what the Incarnation does not mean (mutation of the divine nature, mere appearance, assumption of body only, full humanity without exception, addition to divine being) before drawing out five positive theological entailments: it is the Son alone who became incarnate through the undivided work of the triune God; it is the divine Son who assumed flesh; the assumed humanity is full and complete; Christ is sinless in that humanity; and the two natures are united in one person without conversion, composition, or confusion. The whole doctrine is shown to be the necessary foundation of the Christian gospel, since only a mediator who is truly and fully God, truly and fully man, and wholly without sin can accomplish the redemption of fallen humanity.
The Crucifixion of Jesus, Part 3
Matthew 27:45–46 records the darkest three hours of history and the lone saying of Christ that Matthew preserves from the cross: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' This sermon works through the cry of dereliction with careful attention to what the text does and does not teach, ruling out any ontological division within the Trinity, any dissolution of the hypostatic union, and any notion that all three persons suffered at Calvary. The forsakenness Christ voiced was real — a qualified withdrawal of the Father's consolatory smile and favour, not an abandonment of love — because Christ stood as the covenant surety of his people, bearing the punishment of loss that sinners deserve. The gospel comfort that follows is decisive: because Christ cried 'Why have you forsaken me?' those united to him by faith will never have to.