Cited in sermons
Stephen Dempster
8 sermons · All people cited
Introduction to Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy is introduced as the second giving of the law — not a new law, but a restatement of the Sinai covenant addressed to the second generation of Israel standing on the plains of Moab, poised to enter the land of promise. The session surveys Mosaic authorship, the book's place in the Pentateuch, its historical context, its broad outline (God's activity, law, covenant, and servants), and its major theological emphases: reminder, transition, exhortation, and instruction in theology proper, the promise of land, and the worship of God. The study concludes with the typological significance of Deuteronomy for the New Testament, tracing how the book prefigures Christ as prophet, priest, king, and true Israel, and how its promise of new covenant in chapter 30 points forward to what Jeremiah 31 and the gospel make explicit.
The Dedication of the Temple
Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple in 1 Kings 8:22–53 is grounded not in Israel's merit but in the character of God — his incomparability, faithfulness, and transcendence held together with his immanence. The petitions that follow address every covenant curse Moses had warned of: civil injustice, military defeat, drought, famine, and exile, each met with Solomon's recurring plea that God hear from heaven and forgive. The prayer reaches beyond Israel to encompass the nations, anticipating the Gentile inclusion Paul expounds in Ephesians 3 and finding its ultimate fulfilment in the Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God who builds the eternal house of God. Believers are exhorted to imitate Solomon's theology-saturated prayer, to receive affliction as God's appointed means of conformity to Christ, and to rest in the faithfulness of a God who has always kept his covenant promises.
Introduction to the Book of Numbers
The book of Numbers records Israel's wilderness sojourn from Sinai to the plains of Moab, functioning as the narrative of a covenant community learning to live under Yahweh's sovereign guidance. This introductory study surveys the title, authorship, structure, and major themes of Numbers within the framework of the whole Pentateuch, tracing how the glory cloud of Exodus 40 provides the predicate for both Leviticus and Numbers. The overarching argument is that every element of the book — census, legislation, failure, and restoration — testifies not to Israel's faithfulness but to God's faithfulness to his covenant promise to the patriarchs, a promise that finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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.
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.
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.
Epilogue to the Decalogue
Deuteronomy 5:22 supplies a concise epilogue to the Decalogue, highlighting the divine origin, absolute authority, comprehensive character, and finality of God's moral law — a law that is trans-covenantal and binding on all men everywhere. Working through Exodus 20:18–26, this exposition examines Israel's terrified response to Sinai's theophany, Moses's distinction between slavish fear and filial fear of God, and the protocols for the altar that bridge the giving of the law to the detailed judicial legislation of chapters 21–23. The threefold division of the law — moral, ceremonial, and judicial — is defended against dispensationalist revision, with the 1689 LBCF chapter 19 paragraph 5 cited as the correct Reformed statement of the moral law's perpetuity. The sermon closes by calling believers to a filial fear of God as the most fundamental restraint against sin, and to gratitude that Christ, as the true Israel, perfectly kept the law his people swore and failed to keep.
Exodus 19
Exodus 19 records Israel's arrival at Sinai and God's formal entry into covenant with the nation — a covenant that functions as a republication of the covenant of works, in which Israel, like Adam before them, is called to obedience and fails, thereby pointing forward to the last Adam, Jesus Christ. The chapter unfolds in three movements: the exhortation to faithfulness through the covenant terms (vv. 1–8), the consecration of the people for readiness (vv. 9–15), and the theophanic demonstration of divine glory (vv. 16–25). The Sinai theophany, with its thunder, fire, and death-boundary around the mountain, teaches that God's people require a mediator — a lesson that finds its fulfillment in Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant. The church, as the true Israel of God, inherits the vocation of Exodus 19:6 — a royal priesthood, a holy nation — and is therefore called to proclaim the praises of God with reverence befitting the consuming fire she approaches in worship.