Topic
Trinity
13 sermons · All topics
Live Stream - December 15, 2024
John 16:25–28 forms the doctrinal climax of the upper room discourse, where Christ sets before his disciples three interlocking truths: the manner of his instruction through figurative language soon to be illumined by the Spirit, the direct access believers have to the Father through the Son in the new covenant era, and the Christological ground of that access in the Eternal generation, Incarnation, and Ascension of the Son. The sermon presses into the Eternal generation of the Son — his being begotten of the Father before all worlds, not by creation or adoption but by an Eternal relation of origin — and then into the Incarnation as the assumption of human nature without any compromise to his divinity. The unchanging love of the Father for his elect, grounded not in their merit but in sovereign grace and the mediation of Christ, is held out as the sustaining comfort for disciples facing tribulation, and the call to unbelievers is to look to Christ — his blood and righteousness — as the only escape from divine judgment.
The Spirit's Conviction of the World
Jesus declares to his sorrowing disciples that his departure is to their advantage — not despite the coming persecution, but precisely because it secures the gift of the Holy Spirit. This sermon works through John 16:5–11 under two heads: the departure of Christ (vv. 5–7) and the conviction of the world (vv. 8–11), pausing to develop the first at length. The Trinitarian logic of the temporal missions — the Father sending the Son, the Father and Son sending the Spirit — is shown to be the very theology that sustained the apostles under hostility and that sustains the church today. The sermon closes with a call to rest in the Spirit's power rather than human eloquence or celebrity, because the Paraclete is the disciples' power, protection, and advantage.
The Revelation of the Father
John 14:7–11 presents Christ's claim that knowledge of the Son is knowledge of the Father, and that the Father dwells in the Son and the Son in the Father — a claim no mere creature could make. The sermon works through three confirmations of this unity: the nature of the Son (his consubstantiality with the Father), the words of the Son (which are the Father's words by virtue of shared essence, not mere instrumentality), and the works of the Son (which the Father performs through the Son as one divine operation). The Trinitarian theology at stake is not speculative — it is the doctrinal ground upon which the disciples, and all believers, stand when the world collapses in on them, because the Son who is God of God, light of light, very God of very God, is the one who came down 'for us and for our salvation.'
The Year of Jubilee, Leviticus 25
John 13:1–3 introduces the Upper Room discourse by establishing three realities that govern everything Christ says to his disciples in chapters 13–16: the arrival of his appointed hour, the opposition of the devil through Judas, and the sovereign authority and mission of the Son. The passage centres on the love of Christ for his own — a love that is unchanging, constant, and infinite — as the motivating force behind every word he speaks in the upper room. The sermon presses toward a single application: it is robust trinitarian and Christological doctrine, not self-help or guilt, that moves the church to worship, evangelism, and endurance under opposition.
The Ministry of the Holy Spirit, Part 2
Ephesians 1:13–14 presents the Holy Spirit as both the seal and the guarantee of the believer's inheritance, grounding the security of salvation not in human performance but in the inseparable operations of the triune God. The sermon traces the instrumentality of the word of truth — showing that sinners must hear the gospel before they can believe — and then expounds the sealing of the Spirit as authentication, ownership, and security. The guarantee of the Spirit is the first installment of a heavenly inheritance that awaits the full redemption of the purchased possession at the consummation of the age. Believers are therefore urged to rest their assurance in the Father who chose, the Son who redeemed, and the Spirit who seals and guarantees.
Clip: Theology is crucial for every church and believer
Theology proper — the knowledge of who God is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — is not an academic luxury but the essential foundation of Christian life, worship, and witness. This sermon clip from an exposition of Ephesians 1:3–14 argues that the church's tendency to rush past doxological passages to practical ethics has left believers spiritually thin, prone to a mercenary relationship with God rather than one grounded in the infinite riches of his grace. The preacher calls the congregation to disciplined study of the Trinity, warning that without it believers become vulnerable to ancient heresies and lose the impetus to proclaim Christ to a lost world.
The Ministry of the Holy Spirit
What is the Holy Spirit's relationship to the Father and the Son, and why does it matter that Christians understand this precisely? Working through Ephesians 1:13–14 as the destination, this sermon first establishes the full personal divinity of the Holy Spirit by tracing his presence and activity across both Testaments — from creation in Genesis 1 through the baptism of Christ, Pentecost, and the apostolic letters — demonstrating that the Spirit is not a force or a lesser deity but the third person of the one undivided triune God. The sermon draws on the 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 2 paragraph 3, the Nicene Creed, and a wide range of triadic New Testament texts to guard against the heresies of Sabellianism and Arianism. The congregation is called to pursue the knowledge of this triune God as the irreplaceable foundation of assurance, evangelism, and Christian perseverance.
Live Stream - July 11, 2021
John 1:18 presents two inseparable doctrines: the invisibility and incomprehensibility of God, and the revelation of that invisible God through the incarnate Word. The sermon works through the prologue of John's Gospel to show that while no creature has ever perceived the essential glory of God — not Abraham, not Moses, not Isaiah — the only begotten Son, who exists eternally in the bosom of the Father as a distinct yet consubstantial person of the Trinity, has exegeted the Father to us. The practical burden is that saving knowledge of God is not merely knowledge about the economy of redemption but knowledge of the Redeemer himself — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and that the chief end of man is to glorify and enjoy this triune God forever.
The Great Commission
The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18–20) constitutes Christ's formal mandate to his church for this age: going, making disciples, baptizing believers, and teaching them to observe all that he commanded. The authority behind the commission is Christ's present, universal lordship — not a future investiture but a reigning reality — and the assurance sustaining it is his promised presence to the end of the age. Baptism is treated as believers' baptism by immersion, an initiatory ordinance that publicly identifies the disciple with the triune God and symbolises union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. The sermon calls the church to be comprehensively about this single focused mission — preaching the gospel for justification, then grounding the justified in sanctification through the teaching ministry of the local church.
The Question Concerning the Messiah
Matthew 22:41–46 records the final public controversy between Jesus and the religious leaders, in which Jesus turns from defendant to questioner and asks: 'What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?' The Pharisees answer correctly but incompletely — 'the Son of David' — and Jesus presses Psalm 110:1 upon them to show that David, writing in the Spirit, calls the Messiah his Lord, which demands that the Messiah be not merely a human descendant but also the divine Son of God. The sermon traces Matthew's sustained identification of Jesus as both Son of David and Son of God, explains the Hebrew distinction between Yahweh and Adonai in Psalm 110:1, and grounds the hypostatic union in that one verse. Believers are called to love this God-man with whole-hearted devotion; unbelievers are urged to reckon with the Christ who alone could fulfill the law and bear the wrath owed to sinners.
4 Aspects of the Incarnation
Galatians 4:4–5 contains one of the most compressed statements of the gospel in all of Scripture, setting forth the incarnation of the eternal Son of God as the decisive corrective to the Galatian error of adding legal works to faith in Christ. This sermon examines four aspects of the incarnation: the timing sovereignly appointed in the eternal covenant between Father and Son, the triune glory visible in the Father's sending of both Son and Spirit, the double humility of Christ being born of a woman and born under the law, and the twofold purpose of redemption and adoption. The application calls hearers to be astonished at God's sovereign plan, to know the Trinity rightly, to rejoice in Christ's condescension, and to rest solely in His finished work — neither adding legal performance nor trusting in one's own standing as a professing Christian.
The Lord's Prayer, Part 1
The preface to the Lord's Prayer — 'Our Father in heaven' — calls the believer to ground every act of prayer in sound theology proper before a single petition is offered. Against both the hypocrite's ostentation and the heathen's vain repetition, the Lord Jesus provides a model that is at once personal and majestic: the One addressed is Father by adoption through the redemptive work of Christ, and He is in heaven, sovereign over all creation. This study traces six qualities of 'Our Father' — that He is personal, gracious, hearing, caring, loving, and the exclusive object of prayer — before turning to 'in heaven' as the warrant for approaching God with both filial confidence and reverential awe.
The Word Became Flesh
John 1:14 presents one of the most concentrated statements of Christology in all of Scripture: the eternal Word, who was God and was with God in the beginning, became flesh and tabernacled among men. This sermon expounds the incarnation under two heads — the fact of the Word becoming flesh, and the glory beheld in that incarnate Word — with sustained attention to the doctrine of eternal generation, the Shekinah-tabernacle background of John's prologue, and the covenantal purpose of the incarnation in redemption. The hearer is called to rest in the Christ who perfectly fulfilled the law, bore the wrath due to sinners in their stead, and rose for their justification, and to hold fast to a sound Christology as the very ground of salvation.