Theological term
Blood Guilt
6 sermons · All terms
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.
The Third Missionary Journey, Part 6
Acts 20:28–31 records the Apostle Paul's pastoral charge to the Ephesian elders at Miletus — a charge that functions as the first pastors' conference in the new covenant era. The passage demands that elders take heed to themselves and to all the flock, that they shepherd the blood-bought church of God, and that they remain vigilant against both external persecution and internal doctrinal corruption. The theological weight of the phrase 'the church of God which He purchased with His own blood' opens into a precise treatment of the communication of idioms, establishing that the divine and human natures of the one person of Christ are the ground on which Scripture can speak of God's own blood. Ministers are called to feed the flock with the whole counsel of God, warned that savage wolves and ambitious false teachers will arise, and exhorted to watch and warn with the same tear-stained fidelity that marked Paul's three years in Ephesus.
The Impending Judgment of Israel
Matthew 23:34–36 records Christ's announcement of impending divine judgment upon the generation of Israel that would reject him and murder his sent messengers. The sermon traces three interlocking movements: the rejection of the prophets Christ sends in the new covenant era, the accumulation of blood-guilt from Abel to Zechariah spanning the entire Hebrew canon, and the prophetic assurance — sealed with Christ's own 'amen' — that all these things would fall upon that first-century generation in the destruction of AD 70. The exposition situates Matthew 23 within a consistent covenantal pattern running from the Mosaic curses through the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities to AD 70, and closes with a direct call to flee to the Righteous One whose shed blood is the only escape from the condemnation of hell.
2 Samuel 2:12-3:1
The civil war ignited by Abner's aggression against David's kingdom in 2 Samuel 2:12–3:1 exposes the anatomy of pride, hypocrisy, and discord among the covenant people of God. Working through three sections — the battle at Gibeon, the pursuit of Abner, and the truce between Joab and Abner — the study shows that Abner's rebellion against David was ultimately a rebellion against the living God who had decreed David's reign. The passage closes with a summary verdict: 'David grew stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul grew weaker and weaker' — a pattern the study applies typologically to Christ's kingdom and practically to the church's calling to preserve unity rather than sow discord.
Deuteronomy 19
Deuteronomy 19 addresses three domains of civil and judicial justice under the Mosaic law: the cities of refuge for accidental homicide, the prohibition against moving a neighbor's landmark, and the law governing witnesses and perjury. The cities of refuge reveal that God's law is concerned equally with punishing the guilty and protecting the judicially innocent — unexecuted murder and the execution of an innocent man both bring blood guilt upon the land. The law of witnesses, culminating in the lex talionis applied to the false witness, demonstrates that God does not take perjury lightly, and that biblical judicial procedure builds in structural safeguards against abuse.
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.