Cited in sermons
Bruce Waltke
63 sermons · All people cited
The Abrahamic Covenant
Genesis 15 records the formal ratification of the Abrahamic covenant, in which God alone passes between the divided animals — a self-maledictory oath binding God himself to the fulfillment of his promises to Abraham. This unilateral act reveals the sovereign grace and indefectibility of the covenant of grace: God stakes his own being on the oath, and that oath finds its ultimate enactment in the blood of Jesus Christ at Calvary. The sermon traces three lessons from this ceremony — the nature of the covenant of promise, the indefectibility of God's covenant, and the imputed righteousness by which Abraham and all who share his faith are justified — calling hearers to find assurance and comfort in the God who cannot fail.
The Adamic Covenant
Genesis 3:14–24 records the first historical expression of the covenant of grace — what covenant theologians call the Adamic covenant. This sermon works through the fall of Adam and Eve, the immediate context of that catastrophe, and then the divine initiative by which God addresses the serpent, the woman, and the man with both curse and promise. The protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15 stands at the centre: God sovereignly places enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, pointing forward to the One who would crush the serpent's head through suffering at Calvary. The sermon calls hearers to see themselves either in the first Adam under condemnation, or in the second Adam under grace, and to trust the covenant-keeping God who seeks out sinners and covers them with what they cannot provide for themselves.
A Biblical View of Capital Punishment
Capital punishment is not merely a contested social policy but a divine ordinance rooted in the Noahic covenant, grounded in the doctrine of the imago Dei, and confirmed throughout the whole of Scripture into the New Testament. This sermon traces a biblical theology of capital punishment from Genesis 9 through the Mosaic law, the example of the apostle Paul before Festus, and the role of the civil magistrate in Romans 13:1–4. The argument is that nations and magistrates are in sin when they fail to execute murderers, because blood-guilt defiles the land, and that no ransom may substitute for the life of a murderer. Hearers are called to pray for civil rulers to wield the sword as God's ministers of wrath, and unbelievers are confronted with the reality that the death penalty is a foretaste of the eternal wrath that awaits the unrepentant.