Cited in sermons
Peter Singer
4 sermons · All people cited
Laws concerning sexual relations
Leviticus 18 regulates sexual morality within the structure of a covenant document, moving from preamble to prohibition to sanction. The chapter forbids incest, adultery, child sacrifice, homosexuality, and bestiality — not as arbitrary decrees but as God's just response to the documented wickedness of Egypt and Canaan, with the land itself serving as the instrument of covenantal judgment. Paul's invocations of Leviticus 18:5 in Romans 10 and Galatians 3 reveal that the chapter's 'do this and live' principle exposes the impossibility of law-keeping as a ground of justification, driving the reader to salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone. The abominations condemned here are not confined to the Mosaic code but are binding legislation upon all people at all times, as their reappearance in the New Testament epistles confirms.
Laws Concerning Marriage and Capital Offences
Exodus 22:16–20 presents two distinct legal categories: the seduction of an unbetrothed virgin and three capital offenses — sorcery, bestiality, and idolatry. The sermon works through each law in its ancient Israelite context, drawing on Deuteronomy 18, 22, 27, and 13 to amplify and clarify the Exodus text, and defends the coherence of the bride-price legislation against the charge that it sanctions rape. All three capital offenses are shown to be covenant-destroying acts that strike at both the religious and civil foundations of Israel's polity, carrying the theological weight of treason against the Lord of the Covenant. The general equity of these laws presses the church today toward a high view of marriage, a total rejection of the occult, and recognition that first-table faithfulness to God is the indispensable ground of second-table obligations to one's neighbor.
The 6th Command, Part 2
The sixth commandment's prohibition against murder extends far beyond the physical act of killing to encompass the internal disposition of the heart — unwarranted anger, bitterness, and character assassination. Drawing from Exodus 20:13, Matthew 5:21-26, Leviticus 19:17-18, and the Westminster Larger Catechism, this study traces the biblical distinctions between murder and lawful homicide (capital punishment, just war, and self-defense), demonstrates that all human beings at every stage of life bear the image of God and therefore possess inviolable dignity, and applies the commandment's positive duty to preserve life. Hearers are called to deal faithfully with relational sin rather than harbor grudges, to resist the culture of abortion and euthanasia as violations of the image of God, and to understand the civil use, pedagogical use, and normative use of this commandment.
The Seventh Commandment
The Seventh Commandment — 'You shall not commit adultery' (Deuteronomy 5:18) — is grounded in God's creation ordinance of marriage as a covenant of companionship, the prevention of uncleanness, and procreation, and it comprehends a far broader category of sexual sins than adultery narrowly defined. Working through eleven specific violations forbidden by Scripture — from adultery and fornication to pornography, rape, sodomy, and unlawful divorce — the sermon demonstrates that sexual sin is never victimless but is first and foremost an offence against God, confirmed by both divine sanction and the wrath of violated human covenants. The law's pedagogical use exposes every hearer's guilt and drives sinners to Christ, in whose name the sexually defiled may be washed, sanctified, and justified (1 Corinthians 6:11). The sermon closes by urging the mortification of sin, faithful biblical marriage, and renewed communion with God through the means of grace as the only sustainable path to sexual purity.