Topic
Worship
962 sermons · All topics
The Infallible Rule of All Saving Knowledge
Second Timothy 3:16–17 grounds the authority and sufficiency of Scripture in its divine origin: God breathed out these words, making them infallible, inerrant, and profitable for every purpose of the Christian life and ministry. The sermon works through the identity of Scripture (the whole Old and New Testament canon), its authority as the God-breathed word that admits no human arbitration, and its fourfold utility — doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. The specific profitability of verse 17 is shown to fit the man of God for every good work, with the primary work being the preaching of the word commanded in 2 Timothy 4:2. The practical summons is to receive Scripture's reproof and correction without shrinking, and to value sound doctrine as the very means by which God shepherds, sanctifies, and equips his people.
Wednesday PM - Sept 27, 2023
Leviticus 17 governs the sacrificial use of blood among the covenant people of Israel, and this exposition traces three interlocking regulations: the prohibition against slaughtering sacrificial animals outside the Tabernacle, the prohibition against ingesting blood, and the rules for handling game animals. The central rationale is penal substitution — the blood of the animal represents life given in the place of the worshiper's life, prefiguring the atoning work of Christ. The Holiness Code of Leviticus 17–26 functions as the ethical imperative that follows the indicative of sacrificial forgiveness, a pattern that anticipates the New Covenant movement from justification into sanctification.
The Blessings of the Ascended Christ
The ascended and glorified Christ actively dispenses blessings to his church from the right hand of the Father. Expounding Acts 2:22–47, this sermon traces three categories of those benefactions: his proclamational gifts (the gift of preachers, the preaching of the Word, and the Spirit's empowering of that preaching), his salvific gifts (effectual calling and the forgiveness of sins), and his ecclesiastical gifts (the creed of the church, the building and unity of the church, the gathering around apostolic doctrine, and the new covenant ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper). Believers are exhorted to pray for Spirit-empowered preaching, to attend diligently upon all the appointed means of grace, and to find their unity in the objective content of Christian confession rather than in secondary things.
Wednesday Night Bible Study - Leviticus 1-16
Leviticus 16, the Day of Atonement, stands at the theological center of both the book and the Pentateuch, answering the question Exodus leaves unresolved: how may sinful man enter the presence of a holy God. This session reviews the whole of Leviticus 1–16, tracing the book's structure from the sacrificial system and the institution of the priesthood through the laws of cleanness, showing that every element of the ceremonial apparatus — offering, priest, atonement — was divinely instituted, not humanly devised. The Nadab and Abihu incident demonstrates that unauthorized worship is mortal transgression, while the two-goat ritual of chapter 16 pictures both propitiation and expiation, all pointing forward to the once-for-all sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Live Stream - August 13, 2023
The contest at Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18 sets the living God of Israel against the false prophets of Baal and Asherah, exposing the utter futility of idolatry and demanding undivided allegiance to Yahweh. Elijah's brief, confident prayer stands in deliberate contrast to the frenzied, all-day invocations of Baal's prophets, demonstrating that God is not manipulable by human religious technique. The fire that falls from heaven is not merely a proof of Yahweh's power but a display of his grace, confirming that he receives sinners through the sacrifice he himself ordains. The sermon closes with a direct call: halt no longer between two opinions, but come to the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom alone there is justification, peace with God, and every spiritual blessing.
The Contest at Carmel
Elijah's confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel exposes the absolute futility of idolatry and the exclusive sovereignty of Yahweh. Set against the backdrop of Ahab's state-sponsored Baalism and a three-year drought, the passage drives a direct challenge: total allegiance belongs to the living God alone, with no syncretistic middle ground. The sermon traces the contest from Elijah's gauntlet through the false prophets' frenzied failure to God's decisive, fire-bearing answer, arguing that the same God who consumed the sacrifice at Carmel receives sinners today through the atoning blood of Christ. The application is direct: those who still halt between two opinions are called to repent and look to Christ in faith, while believers are charged to hold fast to God Most High without divided allegiance.
Live Stream - July 30, 2023
Second Samuel 22:21–25 presents David's claim that God rewarded him according to his righteousness — a claim that stands in apparent tension with his adultery, conspiracy to murder, and failure to act justly in the rape of Tamar. This sermon argues that David's righteousness is not a profession of sinlessness but a celebration of imputed righteousness: the perfect obedience of Christ credited to the believing sinner by faith alone, the same basis on which every saint in every covenant has ever stood before God. Drawing on Romans 4, 2 Corinthians 5:21, and Philippians 3:9, the sermon shows that David possessed a thorough theology of sin, atonement, and justification by faith alone — and calls both the unconverted and the believing congregation to rest in and pursue the God whose grace is capacious enough to cover even the most public and heinous failures.
The Righteousness of David
David's declaration in 2 Samuel 22:21–25 that God rewarded him according to his righteousness stands in apparent tension with his gross sins of adultery, murder, and failure to act in the rape of Tamar. This sermon resolves that tension through the theology of justification by faith alone, demonstrating from Romans 4 that David, like Abraham, was accepted by God not on the basis of personal moral achievement but through the imputed righteousness of Christ received by faith — the same way any sinner in any covenant has ever entered the presence of God. David's own writings, particularly Psalm 32 and Psalm 51, confirm that he understood his standing before God to rest on atonement, forgiveness, and the crediting of another's righteousness, not sinless perfection. The sermon closes with a call to treasure public worship as David did, and to bring great sin to the great Savior who justifies the ungodly.
The Exhortation and The Exemplar - Philippians 2:6-11
Philippians 2:5–11 presents Christ not merely as a moral example but as the supreme Exemplar whose condescension from pre-incarnate glory to the death of the cross exposes the pride of the first Adam and calls redeemed sinners to humility. The passage is examined under five headings within the hymn to Christ as to God: his consubstantiality with the Father, his equality with the Father, his condescension in the Incarnation, his active and passive obedience unto death, and the blessed exaltation that follows the perfection of his mediatorial work. Against contemporary subordinationism, the sermon insists that the Son is in no way inferior to the Father in his divine nature. The practical close calls Christians to exercise humility, to deepen their knowledge of the person and work of Christ, and to bend the knee in worship and confession that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
A Harvest from an Unlikely Place
John 4:7–42 records Jesus crossing deep cultural, ethnic, and religious barriers to bring the gospel to a Samaritan woman and, through her testimony, to an entire village. The sermon works through three movements in the passage: Jesus sowing gospel seed by patiently steering the conversation from physical water to living water and then to his own messianic identity; Jesus reorienting his horizontally focused disciples to see the spiritual harvest already approaching; and Jesus and his disciples reaping that harvest among the despised Samaritans. The passage is applied as a missionary mandate — to cross ethnic and cultural boundaries, to address sin honestly, to keep Christ as the centre of every gospel presentation, and to lift our eyes to the 'Samaritans' in our own communities and the changing demographics of our cities.
The Exhortation and The Exemplar
Philippians 2:5–11 sets forth the Lord Jesus Christ as the supreme exemplar for Christian humility, but the apostle's purpose is not merely moral instruction — it is to ground the call to others-mindedness in the incomparable descent of the eternal Son from pre-incarnate glory to the shame of the cross. The sermon works through five aspects of what has been called the 'hymn to Christ as to God': his consubstantiality with the Father, his equality with the Father, his condescension in the incarnation (the assumption of humanity), his active and passive obedience unto death, and his subsequent exaltation above every name. Christians are exhorted to exercise humility and conduct themselves worthy of the gospel, precisely because their redeemer — who was in the form of God and equal with the Father — willingly descended to the lowest ignominy in order to accomplish their salvation as the second Adam.
Sunday School Confession Study - 2LCF 2.2
God's external relations to the created order — his independence, omniscience, holiness, and the creature's obligation to him — are the subject of 2LCF Chapter 2, Paragraph 2. The confession's insistence that God is entirely self-sufficient and derives no glory from creatures corrects any notion that God created the world out of need or incompleteness. The omniscience of God is infinite, infallible, and independent of the creature, so that nothing is contingent or uncertain to him. The study closes by grounding the creature's obligation of worship, service, and obedience in what God is — holy in all his counsels, works, and commands.
The One Thing Needful
Luke 10:38–42 presents two sisters whose contrasting postures before Christ expose a perennial danger for the people of God: the distraction of much serving to the neglect of the one thing needful. The sermon works through Martha's fourfold complaint — impugning Christ's care, demanding he redirect Mary, mingling grumbling with service, and collapsing into self-pity — before turning to Christ's gentle double-named rebuke and his commendation of Mary's humble discipleship. The passage does not condemn service, family, work, or daily necessity, but it does condemn the disordering of priorities that allows lawful things to crowd out devotion to the word of Christ. The lasting and untakeable benefit Christ promises to those who sit at his feet is the governing application: seek first the kingdom, receive the word with a noble heart, and trust that all other things will be added.
The Anointing at Bethany
John 12:1–11 presents the anointing at Bethany as a window into the worthiness of Christ on the eve of His passion. Mary's extravagant gift of costly spikenard — lavished on the feet of Jesus six days before the Passover — is set in deliberate contrast with the sanctimonious theft of Judas Iscariot and the misguided indignation of the disciples. Christ receives the anointing, defends Mary from her critics, and interprets the act as preparation for His burial, underscoring that the one going to the cross is altogether lovely and chief among ten thousand. The sermon calls believers to a devotion that spares no expense in worship while also commending practical service to the poor — not as competing priorities, but as the inseparable fruit of a life oriented toward Christ.
The Triumph of Samson at Jawbone Height
Judges 15 presents Samson not as a man governed by lust but as a Spirit-empowered deliverer who typifies the Lord Jesus Christ. This exposition traces three movements: the betrayal by Samson's father-in-law, the treachery of the men of Judah who preferred Philistine subjection to covenantal freedom, and the triumph at Jawbone Height where the Spirit of the Lord shattered Samson's bonds and enabled him to slay a thousand men. The central application calls God's people away from the assimilation of godless culture toward uncompromising allegiance to the Word of God, grounded in dependence upon the God who furnishes His servants with every means of victory.
2LCF Chapter 2 - Theology Proper, Part 2
What does it mean that God is one, infinite, simple, invisible, incorporeal, and without passions? This Sunday school session works through paragraph 1 of 2LCF Chapter 2, tracing the classical attributes — or perfections — of God through their biblical foundations and the theological vocabulary refined by the church across centuries. Divine simplicity, aseity, incomprehensibility, and impassibility are each examined with care, showing how these doctrines are not abstract curiosities but guard the God of Scripture from distortion and secure the stability of his love, justice, and grace toward his people. The session closes by connecting the doctrine of divine impassibility to the assurance of salvation: because God does not move from one state to another, his love for his people is always most.
The Day of Atonement
Leviticus 16 stands at the structural center of the Pentateuch, and its legislation governing the Day of Atonement reveals both the absolute holiness of God and the total sinfulness of man. The two goats — one slaughtered as a sin offering and one driven into the wilderness as the scapegoat — together signify substitutionary atonement and the definite removal of guilt from a specific covenant people. The high priest's own need for sacrifice before he could minister for Israel exposes the inadequacy of the Levitical priesthood and anticipates the once-for-all, self-sufficient sacrifice of Christ, whose blood retroactively atoned for Old Covenant believers and finally accomplished what the annual rite could only shadow. Believers in the New Covenant era need no further Day of Atonement ceremony; every observance of the Lord's Supper recalls the same removal of guilt that the scapegoat ceremony made visible to Israel.
Live Stream - June 18, 2023
Justification by faith alone — grounded in both the active and passive obedience of Christ — is the doctrinal foundation on which three believers are publicly baptized. The sermon works through two passages in Matthew's Gospel: the water baptism of Jesus by John, which marks the beginning of his active obedience in fulfilling all righteousness on behalf of sinners, and his metaphorical 'baptism' of suffering and death, which satisfies the wrath of God and secures redemption for his people. The double imputation — of Christ's righteousness credited to the believer and of the believer's sin laid upon Christ — is the only ground on which a guilty sinner can stand before a holy God, and baptism is the public emblem of that inward, Spirit-wrought reality.
The Active and Passive Obedience of Christ
The obedience of Christ — both active and passive — is the sole foundation of justification by faith alone. Working through two texts in Matthew's Gospel, this sermon expounds the theological distinction between Christ's active obedience, in which He fulfilled all righteousness on behalf of His people, and His passive obedience, in which He drank the cup of divine wrath and was overwhelmed by death as a ransom for many. Sinners cannot contribute a righteousness of their own; they need both the imputed righteousness of Christ's perfect life and the cleansing of His atoning blood. The occasion of three baptisms serves as the concrete illustration: the water publicly declares what God has accomplished inwardly through the finished work of the Savior.
The Problem of Uncleanness and Its Treatment
Leviticus 11–15 addresses a crisis of ritual uncleanness that threatens Israel's access to the holy God dwelling in the tabernacle. The death of Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10 creates a double tension — a defiled sanctuary and a compromised priesthood — and these five chapters lay out the categories of uncleanness (diet, childbirth, skin disease, bodily discharge) along with their remedies, all grounded in the repeated divine declaration, 'Be holy, for I am holy.' The laws of clean and unclean are not arbitrary ritual hygiene but theological instruction: to be unclean is to be excluded from the presence of Yahweh, and to be made clean is to be made fit for that presence, a pattern that finds its ultimate fulfilment in the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Live Stream - June 04, 2023
Leviticus 8–10 presents the ordination, ministry, and judgment of the Aaronic priesthood as the divinely prescribed way for sinful man to access a thrice-holy God — access that comes only through blood atonement, not human innovation. The fire that consumes the sacrifices at the close of Leviticus 9 and the fire that devours Nadab and Abihu at the opening of Leviticus 10 are the same fire, with obedience or disobedience to God's explicit commands as the only determining factor. The entire Levitical system is typological, pointing forward to the Lord Jesus Christ as the great high priest who satisfies divine justice on behalf of guilty sinners. New Covenant worshipers are called to approach the unchanging holy God with the same reverence that the Levitical system demanded, now through the finished work of Christ and mediated at the Lord's Table.
The Installation of the Priesthood
Leviticus 8–10 records the ordination, ministry, and judgment of Israel's priesthood, tracing the way sinful man may approach a thrice-holy God through divinely prescribed sacrifice. The death of Nadab and Abihu for offering that which the Lord had not commanded warns that worship is regulated by God alone, not by the worshiper's innovation. Christ fulfills every type embedded in this system — as the holy, harmless, and undefiled High Priest who satisfies divine justice once for all. The sermon calls new-covenant worshipers to approach the Lord's Supper with the same reverence and eager joy that the priestly fire of Leviticus 9 ought to have kindled.
The Installation of the Priesthood
Leviticus 8–10 presents the ordination, ministry, and judgment of the Aaronic priesthood as a unified theological unit — the resolution of the tension left at the end of Exodus 40, where the glory of God filled the tabernacle but no one could enter. The divine approval signaled by fire consuming the sacrifice in Leviticus 9 stands in sharp contrast to the lethal fire that devours Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10, grounding the regulative principle of worship in the character of God himself: He must be regarded as holy, and He alone determines the manner of approach. The detailed legislation of chapters 1–7 is not merely ceremonial scaffolding but the appointed means by which a holy God draws near to an unclean people, typifying the better access secured by Christ in the New Covenant. The sermon calls the congregation to receive New Covenant worship as an advancement of — not a departure from — the principle that God's people must come to Him on His terms.
2LCF Chapter 1:5-10 - Hermeneutics
Paragraphs 5–10 of the Second London Confession's first chapter contain an implicit hermeneutical program that governs all responsible reading of Scripture. This session works through those paragraphs to identify six distinct interpretive principles: the Christocentric scope of all Scripture, the extent and finality of Scripture's sufficiency, the perspicuity of Scripture for salvation, the availability of Scripture through faithful translation, the analogy of Scripture and faith as the rule of interpretation, and the supreme judicial authority of Scripture over all human councils and traditions. The practical thrust is that every reader, learned or unlearned, is equipped by ordinary means and the Spirit's illumination to understand what God has revealed — and that bad presuppositions inevitably produce bad theology.
The Other Offerings
Leviticus 2–7 presents the grain, peace, sin, guilt, and trespass offerings alongside the burnt offering already treated in chapter 1, and the cumulative weight of this sacrificial legislation presses the reader toward two convictions: the absolute holiness of God and the radical sinfulness of man. Each offering — the substitutionary death of an unblemished animal, the sprinkling of blood, the atonement language repeated in nearly every pericope — functions as typology pointing forward to the one Lamb of God who would fulfill all that the system signified. The final summary verse of chapter 7 frames the entire system as divine law, not human suggestion, which carries direct implications for how the church must approach God in the new covenant era under the regulative principle of worship.
The Resurrection and the Life, Part 2
John 11:17–37 records Jesus' arrival at Bethany and His decisive dialogue with Martha before the raising of Lazarus. The sermon expounds the fifth 'I Am' statement — 'I am the resurrection and the life' — showing that Jesus does not merely possess resurrection power but is its very ground and source, limiting physical death for all who believe and conferring spiritual life that can never be forfeited. Martha's confession that Jesus is 'the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world' is held up as a model of faith that does not wait on emotional confirmation, resting instead on the objective person and work of Christ alone.
2LCF Chapter 1.1 - The Necessity of Scripture
The necessity of Holy Scripture, as confessed in 2LCF Chapter 1, paragraph 1, arises from the insufficiency of general revelation to communicate saving knowledge. While creation and providence manifestly display God's goodness, wisdom, and power — leaving all men without excuse — they do not and cannot reveal blood atonement, the incarnation, or justification by faith alone. It therefore pleased God to commit His will to writing, producing a Scripture that is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. The session closes with extended discussion of cessationism, the distinction between inerrancy and infallibility, and the hermeneutical principle that Scripture interprets Scripture.
The Burnt Offering
Leviticus 1 presents the burnt offering as the paradigmatic Old Covenant sacrifice, establishing the pattern of how sinful man may approach a holy God. The chapter addresses the costliness of sacrifice, the worshiper's heart disposition, the laying on of hands as substitutionary transference, and the meaning of atonement as the satisfaction of divine justice. The New Testament interprets this system typologically: the male without blemish, the substitutionary slaughter, and the sweet aroma of acceptance all prefigure the penal substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. Believers are called to read the Old Testament as a Christ-centered book and to worship God only in the manner He has prescribed.
The Royal Wedding
Psalm 45 presents a royal wedding between the divine King and his bride, the church, composed centuries before the incarnation as a song of love pointing directly to the Lord Jesus Christ. The sermon moves through four sections: the psalmist's overflowing intention, the perfections and divine-human person of the King, the instruction to the bride concerning faith and repentance, and the declaration of the King's eternal glory. Christ is shown to be fairer than all the sons of men, advancing his kingdom through truth, humility, and righteousness rather than deception, while his priestly office — not only his kingly conquest — is pressed upon the hearer as the only ground of hope for sinners. The bride is clothed not in her own righteousness but in the imputed righteousness of Christ, received by faith alone, to be brought with gladness into the King's palace.
Introduction to the Book of Leviticus
The book of Leviticus resolves a theological tension created at the close of Exodus: the tabernacle has become God's dwelling place, but no Israelite — not even Moses — can enter it. This introductory exposition surveys Leviticus 1:1 and the book as a whole, tracing three dominant theological themes: the holiness of God, the sacrificial system as God's own provision for sinful man's access to His presence, and the purity required of His covenant people. The Levitical types find their antitypes in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is simultaneously the high priest and the sacrificial victim, and whose atoning work is the substance toward which the entire ceremonial law pointed.