Theological term
Covenant Lord
8 sermons · All terms
Profaning God's Name
Malachi 1:6–14 indicts the post-exilic priests and people of Judah for profaning God's name through corrupt, indifferent, and weary worship — offering blind, lame, and stolen animals while vowing better. The sermon expounds three forms of disordered worship: worship that is questionable in its offerings, worship that ignores God's coming universal praise among the Gentiles, and worship that is openly profane through contempt and deceit. The underlying diagnosis is a low view of God: when the covenant Lord is diminished in the mind, acceptable worship becomes impossible. The application presses the regulative principle of worship — that God is to be approached on his own revealed terms, not by pragmatic innovation or felt-need programming — and calls the congregation to a high view of divine majesty as the indispensable foundation of right worship.
Genesis 41
Genesis 41 narrates the providential exaltation of Joseph from prison to vice-regent of Egypt through his God-given interpretation of Pharaoh's two dreams. The chapter's three movements — the report of the dreams, their explanation, and their fulfillment — together demonstrate that the sovereignty of God is not a speculative doctrine but a force working through every human contingency toward the preservation of His church. The sermon draws out three concluding applications: the wisdom that comes from God alone surpasses all human learning; God's blessing outlasts and outweighs His servant's affliction; and divine sovereignty never collapses into passivity — Joseph's predestined knowledge of famine calls forth prudent human action, not hyper-Calvinist resignation.
The Second Commandment, Part 2
The second commandment not only prohibits making and worshiping idols but supplies three reasons for that prohibition: the character of God as covenant Lord, the threat of transgenerational punishment for persistent idolatry, and the promise of mercy to thousands. This sermon works through Deuteronomy 5:8–10 to argue that God's 'jealousy' is an improper predication — an accommodation to human language that conveys his righteousness and justice without implying divine passibility — and that false worship, far from being a neutral innovation, constitutes an act of hatred toward God. The exposition draws on Deuteronomy 24, Ezekiel 18, Leviticus 10, and 1 Samuel 13 to demonstrate that the punishment threatened in the commandment is not a transgenerational curse but the judicial consequence of children imitating their parents' idolatry. Hearers are called to regulate corporate worship strictly by divine prescription, to teach their children true religion, and to approach God solely through faith in Jesus Christ.
The LORD is my Shepherd
Psalm 23 is examined as a hymn of trust composed amid difficulty rather than prosperity, arguing that David's confident confession — 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want' — is made precisely in the shadow of danger, not in spite of it. The sermon expounds the psalm under two headings: the covenant Lord as the shepherd who provides daily physical and spiritual provision, and as the gracious host who prepares a table in the presence of enemies. Christians are exhorted to make diligent use of the means of grace — private prayer and Scripture, corporate worship, the preached word, and the Lord's Supper — as the God-ordained way to walk with Christ through the valley of the shadow of death toward their eternal dwelling in the house of the Lord.
Judges 13
Judges 13 opens the Samson cycle with a birth and call narrative that reveals far more about God than about the deliverer He raises up. The chapter's deepest lesson lies in what is conspicuously absent: unlike every previous cycle in Judges, Israel does not cry out under Philistine oppression — a sign that the nation has grown comfortable with its subjugation and assimilated the culture around it. Against that backdrop of spiritual declension, God acts sovereignly and unilaterally, sending the angel of the Lord to a barren and anonymous woman, stipulating the Nazirite consecration of her son, and prefiguring in Samson the greater Deliverer who was marked out before the world was made. Manoah and his wife together model the right response to the divine presence: trembling fear and confident joy held together, the posture Psalm 2:11 commands.
2LCF Chapter 1 - Of the Holy Scriptures, Part 1
What does it mean that 'all Scripture is given by inspiration of God'? This study of 2 Timothy 3:16–17 examines the doctrine of Scripture under three headings: its extent (the full Old and New Testaments as God-breathed canon), its character (Theopneustos — God-breathed, not merely humanly inspired), and its utility (profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness). The apostolic authority undergirding the New Testament canon is traced through the writings of Peter, Paul, and the early church fathers, establishing that the closed canon is the sufficient and final Word of the Covenant Lord. Hearers are called to give themselves to private Scripture reading, memorization, family worship, and faithful attendance upon the preached Word.
Deuteronomy 34
Deuteronomy 34, the final chapter of the Torah, records the death of Moses and the transfer of leadership to Joshua, framing both events within the larger structure of covenantal succession. The chapter's central theological weight falls on the faithfulness of the covenant Lord, who fulfils to the letter every promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob regarding the land — a faithfulness Moses witnesses from the summit of Pisgah. Moses' death and anonymous burial serve as an emblem of the law's inability to bring God's people into the heavenly inheritance, a typological thread that runs forward to Joshua (whose name is the Hebrew form of 'Jesus') and ultimately to the Mediator of the new covenant, whose own 'exodus' Moses would discuss face to face on the Mount of Transfiguration. The sermon closes with a sustained application on the means of grace, arguing that corporate worship ordered by God's own prescription — word, prayer, and sacraments — is the appointed means by which God's people gain their clearest foretastes of the heavenly Canaan.
Deuteronomy 11
Deuteronomy 11 brings Moses' extended introductory appeal to a close, pressing Israel with three requirements for obedience grounded in God's past redemptive acts, the goodness of the promised land, and the covenant blessings that await faithfulness. The chapter's repeated call to love and keep the commandments of Yahweh exposes the radical inability of sinful man and thereby magnifies the necessity of Christ, who alone kept the charge, statutes, judgments, and commandments always as mediator, head, and surety for his people. The chapter concludes with the solemn setting of blessing and curse upon Mounts Gerizim and Ebal, which bracket the entire legal code of chapters 12–26 and press the covenant choice before Israel. Christians are called to let God's past faithfulness, future inheritance, and covenantal promises serve as the engine of present obedience.