Cited in sermons
Christopher Wright
80 sermons · All people cited
The Misc. Laws and Laws of Sexual Immorality
Deuteronomy 22 presents a body of Mosaic legislation covering miscellaneous civil duties and laws governing sexual morality, each rooted in the moral law summarized in the Ten Commandments. The first half of the chapter (verses 1–12) addresses property rights, gender distinction, ecological stewardship, safety precautions, and ceremonial mixtures — all concrete applications of the love command and the Decalogue to life in covenant community. The second half (verses 13–30) addresses premarital unchastity, adultery, and the critical distinction between the rape of a betrothed woman and the seduction of a consenting single woman, a distinction obscured by some English translations but essential to a fair reading of the text. Throughout, the threefold division of the law — moral, ceremonial, and judicial — provides the lens for identifying what carries permanent moral weight, what was fulfilled in Christ, and what expired with the Israelite commonwealth while leaving principles of general equity for civil application.
The Laws of the Unsolved Murder, Family Matters, and Dead Criminals
Deuteronomy 21 addresses five distinct legal ordinances governing the covenant community of old covenant Israel: the unsolved homicide, female captives taken in war, the firstborn son in a polygamous household, the stubborn and rebellious son, and the hanged criminal. Running beneath all five is a single theological concern — the prevention of blood guiltiness defiling the land God has given his people as an inheritance. The passage is read typologically: the heifer sacrificed for the unsolved murder foreshadows penal substitutionary atonement, the charge of 'glutton and drunkard' leveled at Jesus in Matthew 11 echoes the indictment for the rebellious son in Deuteronomy 21, and Paul's citation of Deuteronomy 21:23 in Galatians 3:13 makes explicit that Christ became a curse for his people by hanging on a tree. The session closes with a Q&A discussion of polygamy, slavery, and the relationship between creation ordinances and post-fall civil legislation.
Laws Concerning Homicide and Witnesses
Deuteronomy 19 applies three commandments of the Decalogue to the concrete conditions of civil life in Old Covenant Israel: the sixth commandment through legislation on cities of refuge distinguishing accidental homicide from murder, the eighth commandment through the prohibition on moving property landmarks, and the ninth commandment through the law of witnesses and its penalties for perjury. The sermon examines the distinction between manslaughter and premeditated murder, the role of the avenger of blood, the lex talionis as a limiting and proportional principle, and the blood-guiltiness that falls on a nation that fails to execute justice. The overarching application is that these laws reveal the sanctity of human life, the justice of God in civil society, and the sinfulness that made such detailed legislation necessary — all of which drives the hearer to the new covenant, in which Christ alone kept what Israel could not.
The Regulation of Priests and Prophets
Deuteronomy 18 governs the two offices through which God communicated with Old Covenant Israel: the Levitical priesthood and the prophetic ministry. The chapter moves from the material provision owed to priests and Levites, through a comprehensive prohibition of pagan divination, to the promise of a succession of prophets culminating in one greater than Moses — the Lord Jesus Christ, identified explicitly in Matthew 17 and Acts 3. The sermon draws out the typological and redemptive-historical unity of the chapter, showing that what Israel sought illegitimately through witchcraft and necromancy, God supplied legitimately through his Word-bearing offices, and that the old covenant's pattern of 'do this and live' finds its fulfillment in Christ who kept the covenant perfectly on behalf of his people.
The Maintenance of Justice (Higher Court and Monarchy)
Deuteronomy 17:8–20 establishes two institutions for the maintenance of justice in Old Covenant Israel: a higher court to adjudicate cases too complex for local tribunals, and a monarchy governed by the law of God. The higher court — composed of priests, Levites, and judges at the central sanctuary — held binding authority over difficult cases involving degrees of guilt, civil disputes, and punishments, with criminal contempt of that court carrying a capital sanction. The king was not an absolute sovereign but a servant under God's law, prohibited from multiplying horses, wives, and wealth as a guard against misplaced trust, and required to read the law of God daily so that fear of the Lord, not pride or military power, would govern his reign.
The Maintenance of Justice
Deuteronomy 16:18–17:7 establishes the framework for civil justice in Old Covenant Israel: the appointment of impartial judges, the prohibition of idolatrous practices that precede full apostasy, and a carefully guarded procedure for prosecuting capital offenses. The passage demonstrates that God's theocratic ordering of Israel required both judicial righteousness and cultic holiness, since Yahweh was simultaneously God and King. Israel's repeated failure to maintain this standard drives the expectation forward to Christ, the true Israel, who alone executes judgment with perfect righteousness. The enduring principles of due process, equal application of law, and capital punishment remain binding norms for civil government in every age, grounded not in Mosaic theocracy alone but in the Noahic covenant and the New Testament's own teaching on the sword.
Laws Concerning Debt, Slaves, and Firstborn
Deuteronomy 15 sets out three bodies of legislation governing Old Covenant Israel: the sabbatical release of debts, the release and provision for indentured servants, and the sanctification of the firstborn. The sermon traces how each law flows from a divinely ordered reciprocity — God prospers his covenant people so that prosperity rolls downward to the poor and the victim — while insisting that outward compliance must be driven by an internal disposition of genuine covenantal loyalty. The firstborn legislation is read as pointing forward to the unblemished firstborn Son of God, whose sacrifice fulfils what the animal offerings could only foreshadow.
Deuteronomy 14:1-29 - Laws of Death, Diet, and Tithing
Deuteronomy 14 regulates mourning rites, dietary practices, and tithing for Old Covenant Israel — not as arbitrary impositions but as expressions of a holy people set apart by God from the nations around them. The chapter's controlling logic is covenantal identity: because Israel bore the status of God's firstborn son, every dimension of daily life, from the menu to the method of mourning, was to reflect that consecration. The dietary laws, now abrogated under the New Covenant as ceremonial law fulfilled in Christ, nevertheless carry a permanent New Covenant counterpart: the people of God are still to be distinguished from the world in holiness, presenting their bodies as living sacrifices. The tithing section closes the chapter with a call to generous, joyful giving that cares for the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow — a call that carries into the New Covenant era as well.
The Solicitation to Apostasy
Deuteronomy 13 confronts Israel with three escalating scenarios of solicitation to apostasy: the false prophet, the intimate family member or friend, and the corrupt city given over to idolatry. In each case the text demands not tolerance but purging, because defection from the living and true God constitutes treason against the theocratic covenant order. The chapter's severity is inseparable from its mercy: faithful execution of justice removes the cause of divine wrath and secures the covenant blessings sworn to the fathers. The passage presses the hearer to examine whether fidelity to God holds firm against both miraculous signs that lead astray and the subtler pull of intimate relationships.
The Central Sanctuary
Deuteronomy 12 establishes the principle that Israel's worship must be conducted where and how God commands — not where or how the surrounding nations worship their gods. Working through four sections of the chapter, this exposition traces the logic from the destruction of Canaanite shrines and the centralization of sacrificial worship, through the legislation governing ordinary and sacrificial eating, to the climactic prohibition of verse 32: 'You shall not add to it nor take away from it.' The regulative principle of worship is not an Old Covenant curiosity but a transcovenantal demand, grounded in the first and second commandments and confirmed in the New Covenant by 1 Timothy 3:15 and Hebrews 12:28-29. The sermon calls hearers to resist the perennial temptation to import pagan practices and autonomous creativity into the worship of the living and true God, and to find in prescribed worship the very joy and blessing God promises his obedient people.
The Central Demand of the Covenant
Deuteronomy 10 presents the central demand of the Mosaic covenant — that Israel fear, love, and serve the Lord with all their heart and soul — set against the backdrop of the golden calf incident and the covenant's renewal. The sermon traces this demand from its roots in Deuteronomy 10:12–13 through its echoes in Genesis 18, Proverbs 21, Hosea 12, Zechariah 7, Micah 6, and Matthew 23, demonstrating that obedience rooted in heart religion has always been God's requirement of His people. The threefold division of the law is expounded, with the moral law established as perpetually binding while the ceremonial law finds its fulfillment in Christ and the judicial law expires with the Israelite theocracy. The sermon closes by pressing believers to hold fast to God, keeping His law not as a means of justification but as the pattern for sanctification purchased by Christ, the true Israel who alone fulfilled the covenant.
Review Of Israel's Rebellion
Deuteronomy 9 confronts Israel's temptation to attribute their inheritance of the promised land to their own righteousness, and Moses systematically dismantles that presumption. The chapter divides into the anticipation of the conquest (vv. 1–6) and a recapitulation of Israel's wilderness rebellions (vv. 7–29), each episode confirming that Israel stood not by merit but by the sovereign mercy of God and the faithfulness of his covenantal promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses's intercessory prayer at the chapter's close models covenant pleading that appeals not to Israel's worthiness but to God's glory, his sworn word, and the redemption he himself accomplished. The passage calls God's people in every era to forsake self-righteousness and rest entirely on divine grace.
Life in the Wilderness and Canaan
Deuteronomy 8 sets the wilderness generation of Israel before the land of Canaan with a threefold movement: a reminder of God's providential humbling in the wilderness (vv. 1–5), a promise of abundant blessing in the land (vv. 6–10), and a solemn warning against the pride and forgetfulness that prosperity tends to generate (vv. 11–20). The wilderness was not divine cruelty but divine chastening — designed to produce dependence on God rather than self-sufficiency — a pattern the New Testament applies both to the believer's ongoing trials and to the person of Christ, who as the true Israel recapitulates the exodus, wilderness, and restoration that old covenant Israel failed to embody faithfully. The sermon closes by calling hearers to combat forgetfulness of God through regular remembrance of his word, his covenant, and his redemptive acts, recognising that the danger is never prosperity itself but the pride that severs gratitude from grace.
The Blessings of Obedience
Deuteronomy 7:12–26 sets before the second generation of Israel the blessings that follow covenant obedience — material prosperity, physical health, and military victory over Canaan — and the antidote to the fear that would tempt them to doubt God's promises. The passage is read within a covenant-theological framework in which the Mosaic covenant functions as a covenant of works for the nation, distinct from the covenant of grace that runs through the promise of Genesis 3:15 to its fulfillment in Christ, the true Israel of God. The sermon draws the New Covenant application that the God who did not spare His own Son will certainly sustain His people in every present trial, and calls hearers to destroy idolatry publicly, conquer it in the heart, and keep it out of the home.
The Command for the Conquest
Deuteronomy 7:1–11 sets out the divine policy for Israel's conquest of Canaan, commanding total destruction of the seven Canaanite nations and prohibiting political, social, and religious alliances with them. The passage answers the modern objection that God commanded genocide of innocent peoples by demonstrating from Leviticus 18 that the Canaanites were under divine judgment for extreme wickedness, and that God applied the same standard of judgment to Israel when Israel imitated their conduct. The distinction between Israel and Canaan rests entirely on sovereign, unconditional election — not Israel's numbers or righteousness — and finds its New Covenant fulfillment in the church as the true people of God united to Christ. The passage's prohibitions carry direct application to contemporary alliances: believers are to marry only in the Lord, avoid religious compromise on cardinal doctrines, and understand civil government's proper and limited role.
The Dangers and Precautions for Israel
Deuteronomy 6:10–25 addresses the second generation of Old Covenant Israel on the plains of Moab with warnings and precautions before they enter the Promised Land. Three dangers threaten covenant loyalty: forgetting God in prosperity, forsaking God through idolatry, and testing God under hardship. The precautions against these dangers are diligent obedience to the commandments and faithful covenant succession — passing the knowledge of God's redemptive acts to the next generation. These dangers are not merely ancient; they press upon the New Covenant church with equal force, and the remedies remain the same: fear God, keep His word, and rehearse His faithfulness to your children.
The Propagation of Israel's Faith
Deuteronomy 6:6–9 commands Israel not merely to profess allegiance to the one true God but to propagate that truth — first by internalizing it personally, then by transmitting it diligently to children and grandchildren in both formal and informal settings. The passage is read against the wider covenantal structure of Deuteronomy and set in parallel with Ezra 7:10, Psalm 119, and Ephesians 6:4 to show that receiving, doing, and teaching God's word are inseparable obligations running across both covenants. The sermon presses home that teaching children the law and the gospel is not a specialist calling for the especially devout but a natural reflex of redemptive grace, as ordinary and non-negotiable as providing food and shelter. Parents are urged to establish modest, consistent patterns of family worship — Scripture reading, catechism, prayer, and informal covenantal conversation — as the primary means of inoculating children against the idolatry of the surrounding world.
The Central Confession of Israel's Faith
The Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 — 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one' — is examined as the central confession of Old Covenant Israel's faith, carrying both theological and polemical force for a people about to enter a land saturated with polytheism and syncretism. The sermon traces the purpose of God's commandments (obedience secured tenure in the land), the theological content of the Shema (divine unity of singularity and simplicity, and its compatibility with Trinitarian confession), and the fitting response of wholehearted love toward the one living and true God. The application presses New Covenant believers to the same totality of devotion — presenting themselves as living sacrifices — grounded in the redemption God has accomplished in Christ, the true Israel who kept the covenant His people perpetually broke.
The Conclusion of the Decalogue
Deuteronomy 5:22–33 records Moses rehearsing the original giving of the law at Sinai, and this exposition draws out the divine origin, authority, comprehensiveness, finality, and permanence of the Decalogue as the trans-covenantal moral law of God binding on all men in every age. The threefold use of the law — civil, pedagogical, and normative — is traced through the New Covenant, with the imputed righteousness of Christ received by faith as the only ground of justification. The people's terror at the theophany on Sinai is commended as the proper response to God's majesty, and the sermon presses the distinction between slavish fear that flees from God and filial fear that flees to Him, urging the congregation to recover a robust doctrine of divine transcendence in their worship.
The Tenth Commandment
The Tenth Commandment's prohibition against coveting addresses not the external act but the internal disposition of the heart, making it the capstone over all the other commandments. Covetousness — the inordinate desire for anything belonging to one's neighbor — is at root an act of discontentedness with God's sovereign allotment and a form of idolatry, placing the creature above the Creator. The sermon works through the threefold use of the moral law: its civil function, its pedagogical role in driving sinners to the cross, and its normative function in calling the redeemed to diligent watchfulness over heart and soul.
The Ninth Commandment
The Ninth Commandment — 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor' (Deuteronomy 5:20) — addresses first and foremost the crime of perjury in a judicial context, then extends by implication to every form of falsehood: lying, slander, backbiting, gossip, and tailbearing. Working through Deuteronomy 19:15–21, the study examines the biblical lex talionis applied to false witnesses, where the perjurer receives the same penalty he sought to bring upon the accused, and draws out the retributive and deterrent logic of Old Covenant judicial law. The positive requirement of the commandment — the sanctity of truth in all areas of life — is traced through Leviticus 19, Proverbs, Romans 1, and the Westminster Larger Catechism's exhaustive treatment of sins against the ninth commandment. Hearers are called to active and passive faithfulness: neither speaking falsehood nor lending an ear to those who do.
8th Commandment: Part 2; Deuteronomy 5:19
The eighth commandment — 'You shall not steal' — carries not only a prohibition but a positive demand: diligent labor, charitable love toward others, and biblical contentment. Drawing from Deuteronomy, Proverbs, and the New Testament epistles, this exposition moves from the reasons grounding the command (God's sovereignty, man's image-bearing dignity, and the indirect assault on human life that theft represents) to its constructive obligations. The sermon closes with an application of the law's three uses — civil, pedagogical, and normative — including a pointed treatment of government taxation in light of 1 Samuel 8, where God warned that unchecked rulers will 'take, take, take.'
The 5th Commandment
The fifth commandment — 'Honor your father and your mother' (Deuteronomy 5:16) — demands far more than a recipe for happy families; it is a covenantal obligation rooted in God's own authority and binding on every generation. This study examines the command under three heads: its explanation (the Hebrew word for 'honor' connoting weightiness and reverence), its scope (extending beyond the family to all superior-inferior relationships in church, workplace, and commonwealth), and its sanction (from the rod of correction in Proverbs to the capital sentence of Deuteronomy 21). The promise appended to the command — long life and general wellbeing — is understood as a principle of divine providence, not an absolute guarantee, and the study closes with the duty of superiors to govern those beneath them in a godly and nurturing way.
The Second Commandment - Deuteronomy 5:8-11
The Second Commandment (Deuteronomy 5:8-11) prohibits both the making of images to represent God and the worship of those images — two distinct but related offenses against the infinitely simple, spiritual, and incomprehensible God. Because God cannot be captured in creaturely form, any visible representation of Him, including pictures or films of the Lord Jesus Christ, violates the commandment: the hypostatic union cannot be depicted by an artist's rendering, and Christ is to be set forth through preaching, not imagery. The positive demand of the commandment is worship regulated strictly by divine command — the regulative principle — which restricts the church to the elements God has prescribed in Scripture, excluding both the inventions of men and the traditions of Rome.
The First Commandment
Deuteronomy 5:7 — 'You shall have no other gods before me' — is the foundation of covenant loyalty, defining not only who the one true God is but what response He demands from His people. This study works through the prohibition against other gods (atheism, polytheism, syncretism, sorcery, heresy, and creature-worship) before turning to the positive duties the commandment requires: knowing God, loving Him, fearing Him, obeying Him, trusting Him, and worshipping Him on His own terms. The first commandment is not merely theological orthodoxy but a call to total, exclusive, and practical devotion to Yahweh — a devotion made possible only by the grace that plants His fear in the heart.
The Necessity of Faithful Obedience, Part 2
Moses concludes the historical prologue of Deuteronomy with a programmatic warning to the second generation of Israel: idolatry will bring exile, but repentance will meet a merciful God. The sermon expounds Deuteronomy 4:25–49, tracing the consequences of covenant-breaking, the grounds of covenant mercy, and the incomparability of Israel's God as the only legitimate basis for obedience. The practical application presses the necessity of self-government, the danger of forgetfulness, and the trans-covenantal obligation of parents to pass covenant instruction to their children.
The Necessity of Faithful Obedience
Deuteronomy 4 closes Moses' historical prologue with an urgent exhortation to the second generation of Israel on the necessity of faithful covenant obedience before crossing the Jordan. The chapter's three movements — the necessity of obedience (vv. 1–8), the dangers of idolatry (vv. 9–31), and the incomparability of Israel's God (vv. 32–40) — are treated as an impassioned speech by a man who lived the history he recounts. Scripture's sufficiency is defended against every form of addition or subtraction, and the regulative principle of worship is grounded in God's self-revelation at Sinai as a consuming fire who receives no image.
Wilderness Wanderings
Deuteronomy 2–3 records Moses rehearsing the wilderness wanderings for the second generation of Israel, poised on the plains of Moab before the conquest of Canaan. God's multinational sovereignty is on display as He assigns territorial boundaries to Edom, Moab, and Ammon, then delivers Sihon and Og into Israel's hands — demonstrating that the God of Israel governs all nations, not merely His covenant people. The historical review functions both as a warning against repeating the unbelief of the first generation and as an encouragement to trust the same God who preserved Israel through forty years of wilderness trudging. New Covenant believers are called to the same posture: to dwell on the record of God's faithfulness in redemptive history so as to remain steadfast through present trials.
Deuteronomy 1
Deuteronomy 1 opens Moses' first address to the second generation of Israel on the plains of Moab, a historical review designed to prepare the people for the conquest of the promised land. Moses rehearses four episodes: God's command to advance from Horeb, the appointment of judges, the rebellion at Kadesh Barnea rooted in unbelief, and the punishment that fell on the first generation. The central diagnostic is verse 32 — 'you did not believe the Lord your God' — which exposes unbelief as the taproot of Israel's grumbling, refusal, and covenant faithlessness. The sermon calls the New Covenant congregation to dwell on this history so as to be steadfast in the future, trusting the same God whose promises are yes and amen in Christ.
The War Against the Midianites
Numbers 31 records God's command to execute vengeance upon the Midianites for their role in seducing Israel into idolatry and apostasy at Baal-peor — a crime instigated by Balaam that caused 24,000 Israelites to perish under divine judgment. The study argues that the severity of Moses' orders upon return from battle is not arbitrary cruelty but the just execution of God's judicial wrath against specific criminal offenders. Three passages from Deuteronomy (chapters 13, 20, and 21) are examined to demonstrate that Israel's normal wartime ethic was governed by humane principles that distinguished her from surrounding nations, underscoring that the Midianite war was a unique act of covenantal vengeance rather than a general template for holy war. The session closes by grounding these difficult texts in the consistency of God's justice, goodness, and faithfulness in bringing his people to the land of promise.