Theological term
Eighth Commandment
16 sermons · All terms
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.
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.
2LCF Chapter 27 – Of the Communion of Saints
The communion of saints, as confessed in 2LCF Chapter 27, is grounded in the believer's union with Christ by the Spirit and through faith — a union that conveys participation in His graces, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory without any divinization of the creature or diminishment of Christ's divinity. From that vertical union flows a horizontal obligation: holy fellowship in corporate worship, mutual edification through rightly ordered spiritual gifts, and material relief distributed according to ability and necessity. A necessary qualification guards the confession against both spiritual individualism and collectivist error: the communion of saints neither licenses neglect of public worship nor grants any person a right to another's private property, placing both socialism and communism in direct conflict with the Eighth and Tenth Commandments.
Love your neighbour
Leviticus 19:9–18 sets out the concrete shape of neighborly love within the covenant community of Israel — not as sentiment, but as law. Working through gleaning regulations, prohibitions against theft, lying, exploitation, and a corrupt judiciary, the passage demonstrates that to love one's neighbor is to refrain from every breach of the second table of the Decalogue. The sermon shows that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and Paul in Romans 13 do not improve upon Moses but confirm what the moral law of God has always demanded: that love is the fulfilment of the law, and hatred of a brother is always a sixth-commandment violation.
The Conduct of the New Man, Part 1
Ephesians 4:25–28 grounds the Christian's ethical conduct not in legal compulsion but in the indicative of redemption: the old man has been put off, the mind is being renewed, and the new man has been put on. This sermon works through three prohibited actions — lying, sinful anger, and theft — each examined under its corresponding commandment from the Decalogue (the Ninth, Sixth, and Eighth), with a prohibition, an exhortation, and a motivation for each. The ethical demands of the New Covenant are not a new law but the restoration of the creational law now internalized by the Spirit according to Jeremiah 31:31–34. The hearer is called to put off deceit, guard against nursed anger that gives opportunity to the devil, and replace theft with diligent labor aimed at charitable surplus.
The Laws Concerning Homicide and Bodily Injury, Part 3
Exodus 21:33–22:15 sets out Israel's case laws governing property damage, animal theft, and home defense — laws designed not as an exhaustive legal code but as representative principles equipping judges to adjudicate equitably. Three features of biblical law emerge with force: the pervasive principle of restitution (the offender must make the victim whole, not merely 'pay a debt to society'), the absence of a prison system in the Mosaic economy, and the explicit legitimacy of lethal self-defense when a thief breaks in under cover of darkness. The sermon calls hearers to appreciate the pro-victim orientation of God's law and to think biblically about criminal justice, property rights, and self-defense in the present civil order.
The 8th Command - You Shall Not Steal
Exodus 20:15 — 'You shall not steal' — encompasses far more than common burglary. This study works through the range of sins prohibited by the Eighth Commandment, from robbery and kidnapping to fraud, extortion, the destruction of property, and the robbing of God through withheld tithes, before examining the inner dispositions — covetousness, discontentment, and idolatry — that drive those external violations. The theological grounding for the command rests on three pillars: God's sovereignty as owner of all things, the position of man as steward and vice-regent, and the recognition that an attack on another's property is an indirect attack on the life that property sustains. The study closes with a direct application to civil government, arguing that unjust taxation, inflation, and redistributive economic systems are themselves violations of 'you shall not steal.'
The Judgment of God in the Early Church
Acts 5:1–11 records the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, struck down by God for lying to the Holy Spirit. This sermon works through the passage under two headings: the deceitfulness of the couple (vv. 1–4) and the death they suffered by God's direct judgment (vv. 5–11). The preacher grounds the episode in a high doctrine of God — holy, just, and a consuming fire — and insists that the primary practical lesson is the fear of God, not merely ethical instruction about honesty. The sermon closes with the gospel: no one can stand before this holy Lord God except Christ alone, and all who are savingly united to Him by faith stand in Him.
The Unity and Charity in the Church
Acts 4:32–37 presents Luke's summary portrait of the early Jerusalem church under three headings: its unity, its apostolic instruction, and its generosity. The sermon argues that the voluntary, cheerful sharing of material resources among the believers was not a social programme but the fruit of gospel preaching — the apostles' witness to the resurrection of Christ produced the grace that moved God's people to give. Crucially, the passage grounds charity in justification: the people of God are not charitable in order to be saved, but because they have been saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. Hearers are called to examine whether their own generosity reflects the one-heartedness that true faith produces, and to resist any reduction of Christian giving to state-coerced redistribution or voluntary moralism divorced from the gospel.
The Diligence of the Ant
Proverbs 6:6–11 and 26:13–16 present the ant as a model of self-directed industry and the sluggard as a figure of moral and practical ruin. The sermon traces four marks of the lazy man — excuse-making, love of sleep, inability to complete tasks, and self-congratulating conceit — before turning to the genuine blessings diligence brings: material provision, the dignity of honest labor, and the honor of excellent work. The exposition closes by applying the same categories spiritually: the sinner who makes excuses before Christ and the drowsy saint grown cold in the means of grace are both called to a diligence that flees to the Savior and feeds on the Word.
The Response to Peter's Sermon, Part 2
Acts 2:43–47 describes the ordinary but Spirit-wrought practice of the early Jerusalem church, and this exposition presses that description as a prescription for church life today. The sermon examines steadfastness in apostolic doctrine, fellowship, the Lord's Supper, and prayer; the fear of God that attends his presence; the voluntary charity of believers toward one another; and the public and private conduct of a congregation living under sovereign grace. Against both charismatic enthusiasm and worldly accommodation, the sermon argues that faithfulness in ordinary, Word-regulated worship and mutual edification — not signs, programs, or radical individualism — is the enduring mark of a church built by Christ.
The Eighth Commandment
The eighth commandment, 'You shall not steal,' addresses far more than petty theft — it encompasses burglary, robbery, kidnapping, fraud, extortion, property destruction, and even religious theft in the withholding of tithes. This exposition of Deuteronomy 5:19 works through three structural movements: the prohibition and its associated sins (including sins of the heart such as covetousness and idolatry), the theological reasons grounding the commandment in God's sovereign ownership of all things, and the positive duties it implies — diligent labor, charitable giving, and biblical contentment. The civil implications extend to currency manipulation, unjust taxation, and ideological systems such as socialism and communism, all of which violate the same moral principle. The sermon closes with Christ as the fulfillment of Psalm 15, the one who perfectly honored every obligation the commandment demands, and through whose righteousness covetous sinners are justified.
Malachi 1
Malachi 1:6–14 indicts Israel's priests and people for offering blind, lame, and stolen animals at the altar — worship that was external in form but contemptuous in heart. This study works through three features of the passage: God's complaint against those who despise his name, the people's defensive response, and five observations about the nature of careless worship. The central application is that careless, heartless, or self-serving worship — whether in ancient Israel or the contemporary church — is not merely negligence but a form of evil that provokes the wrath of God, and that the blood-bought people of God ought to find the corporate worship of the Sabbath a delight, not a burden.
Deuteronomy 25
Deuteronomy 25 contains a cluster of miscellaneous laws governing the theocratic covenant community of Israel — provisions for workers, levirate marriage, the threat to progeny, just weights and measures, and the command to destroy Amalek. Each law is examined in its covenantal context, with recurring attention to the twin promises of seed and land that anchor the Abrahamic covenant. The study draws direct lines from Old Testament case law to New Testament ethics, showing that God's moral order is consistent across both Testaments and demands integrity in every area of life — domestic, commercial, and civic.
Deuteronomy 22
Deuteronomy 22 presents two categories of miscellaneous Mosaic legislation: covenant community obligations (verses 1–12) and laws governing the integrity of marriage and sexual relationships (verses 13–30). The exposition examines each of the six laws in both categories, demonstrating that the principles underlying them — mutual care within the covenant community, God-ordained gender distinctions, sexual purity, and the protection of the innocent — remain directly applicable in the new covenant era. Sin is the constant in every generation, and God's law, rightly understood, punishes the guilty and protects the innocent, pointing his people toward holiness and away from the patterns of the surrounding nations.
A Biblical View of Private Property
The eighth commandment — 'You shall not steal' (Exodus 20:15) — grounds a comprehensive biblical ethic of private property that reaches far beyond street crime into fraud, extortion, currency debasement, and even the withholding of tithes. This sermon works through the prohibition in its many forms, then sets out four theological reasons for the command rooted in God's sovereignty, man's dignity as image-bearer, and the positive law of Scripture. The exposition closes by calling hearers to diligent labor, charitable giving, and contentment — and by pointing thieves and extortioners alike to the justifying blood of Christ, under which such sinners have been washed and sanctified.