Theological term
Image of God
68 sermons · All terms
Genesis 5:1-32
Genesis 5 presents the genealogy of Adam through the godly line of Seth, tracing the covenant community from creation to Noah and ultimately to the Lord Jesus Christ. The relentless refrain 'and he died' across eight patriarchs confirms the execution of the curse pronounced in Genesis 3, while the singular exception of Enoch — who walked with God and was translated without death — serves as a visible foretaste of resurrection and eternal life. Walking with God, as Enoch's life demonstrates, is not reserved for extraordinary vocations but is the calling of every believer in every station of life, actuated by faith in Christ and ordered by the law of God as the rule of life.
The Fall of Man
Genesis 3:1–13 confronts the reader with the anatomy of humanity's first rebellion against God: the serpent's subtle theological assault on God's word, the creature's willing capitulation, and the sinner's instinctive flight from the Creator. The sermon traces three movements — the temptation to sin (vv. 1–5), the fall into sin (vv. 6–7), and the reckoning with God (vv. 8–13) — showing how Satan's tactics in Eden (insinuating doubt about God's word, denying divine judgment, impugning divine goodness) remain the pattern of every temptation. The doctrines of federal headship, original sin, and divine sovereignty over the fall are drawn out from the text, and the Adam-Christ parallel of Romans 5 frames the only remedy: the skull-crushing seed of the woman who succeeds where Adam failed.
Genesis 4:9-16
Genesis 4:9–16 records the arraignment, indictment, and punishment of Cain following the murder of Abel — the first trial and sentencing in Scripture. The passage exposes the pattern of sin's progression: outright denial before God, arrogant rhetoric, and complaint against righteous punishment rather than repentance. God's response demonstrates that He prizes human life even after death, that undealt-with guilt produces consuming fear, and that sin drives man ever further from the presence of the Lord.
Free Grace Baptist Church - June 13, 2018 Bible Study
Genesis 3:1–13 records the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve, events that form the theological foundation for the whole of redemptive history. The sermon traces three movements: the serpent's subtle assault on the veracity, goodness, and security of God in verses 1–5; the fall itself and its immediate consequences in verses 6–7; and God's gracious interrogation of the guilty pair in verses 8–13. The anatomy of temptation displayed in Eden — doubt cast on God's word, denial of divine sanctions, and the lure of autonomous wisdom — is the same pattern by which sin operates in every generation, making a firm grip on Scripture the believer's only sufficient defense.
The Purpose of the Proverbs
Proverbs 1:2–7 sets out both the purpose and the prerequisite of the entire book of Proverbs. The purpose is comprehensive — to impart wisdom, instruction, and just judgment to the simple, the young, the wise, and every condition of man — while the prerequisite is singular: the fear of the Lord, which is not a natural attainment but a gracious work of God in the soul. The fear of God is shown to be the epistemological foundation of all true knowledge, the animator of righteous conduct, and the preserver of the soul — available only through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one greater than Solomon in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.
Genesis 2:4-14
Genesis 2:4–14 introduces the man placed in the garden, and this study draws out two interlocking themes: the creation of Adam from the dust as both image-bearer and creature, and the Garden of Eden as the first temple-sanctuary. The garden is shown to be the original holy mountain of God — the unique place of his presence — with Adam functioning not primarily as a gardener but as a priest called to tend, guard, and expand that sacred space. This priestly vocation, forfeited by the first Adam, is traced through the tabernacle, the Solomonic temple, Mount Zion, and ultimately fulfilled by the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, whose work brings the garden-temple theme to its consummation in the new Jerusalem of Revelation 21–22. The study closes with a call to prize corporate worship as the present Mount Zion and to live as faithful priest-servants of the God who has purposed communion with his people from the beginning.
Genesis 1:3-25
Genesis 1:3–25 presents not a bare catalogue of events but a theologically ordered narrative of God's creative work, moving from formlessness to a world formed and filled for man's habitation. The study traces a recurring five-part formula in each day of creation — announcement, command, fulfillment, evaluation, and temporal marker — and then unpacks the structural pattern in which days 1–3 establish realms (light, sky and sea, land) and days 4–6 install their respective rulers (luminaries, fish and birds, land creatures), with man as the image-bearing vice-regent over all. The account is also polemical: Yahweh's creation of sun, moon, stars, and sea creatures directly undercuts the astral worship and mythological cosmologies surrounding Israel. Hearers are called to embrace six-day creationism by faith, to reject the incipient Gnosticism that denigrates the material world, and to read Genesis 1 as Scripture reads it — by faith we understand, not the reverse.
Genesis 1:1-2
Genesis 1:1–2 demands that the people of God hold tenaciously to the doctrine of creation, because what is affirmed or denied there reverberates through the whole of Scripture and Christian ethics. This study surveys the doctrine of creation through the lens of 1689 LBCF chapter 4, paragraph 1, examining the time, author, purpose, and scope of God's creative act, before turning to the precise structure of Genesis 1:1–2 and the arguments for six-day creation. The session closes with two applications: maintaining the aseity and immutability of God, and preserving the Creator-creature distinction against any notion that God is merely the most excellent member of a chain of being.
2LCF Chapter 25 - Of Marriage
The 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 25 sets forth a comprehensive theology of marriage as a monogamous, creational institution between one man and one woman, ordained for companionship, procreation, and the prevention of sexual immorality. This study walks through each paragraph of the chapter, examining the biblical case against polygamy, homosexuality, bestiality, and unequal yoking, while grounding each prohibition in specific Old and New Testament texts. The two paragraphs on divorce and remarriage that the Westminster Confession adds but the 1689 omits receive extended treatment, with the conclusion that Scripture's exception clauses permit dissolution of the marriage bond in cases of adultery and desertion, without penalising the innocent party. Hearers are exhorted to treasure their spouses, pursue marriage only in the Lord, and rear their children in the fear of God.
Free Grace Baptist Church - January 21, 2018 PM
James 3:1-12 presents not a program for tongue improvement but a sustained lament over the tongue's untamable, poisonous, and inconsistent nature. The passage warns that no man, however disciplined, can fully bridle his speech — a recognition meant to cast the believer upon sovereign grace rather than upon personal resolve. The sermon moves through three main headings: the warning concerning teachers and universal sinfulness, the power of the tongue illustrated through bits, rudders, and fire, and the impossibility of human self-control over speech. The practical conclusion grounds tongue-discipline in justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, the fear of God, self-examination, and prayer — and closes with the imputed active obedience of Christ as the believer's only ultimate hope before a God who will call every idle word to account.
Paul at the Areopagus
Paul's sermon at the Areopagus (Acts 17:22–34) is an unapologetic proclamation of the exclusive lordship, unbounded glory, and all-sufficient independence of the one living and true God over against the multiplicity of Athenian idols. The sermon traces Paul's argument through four movements — the prelude, the proclamation proper, the mercy extended, and the Athenian reception — grounding each in the prophetic witness of the Old Testament. The idols of Athens are shown to be dependent, spatially confined, and utterly without refuge, while Yahweh is immense, uncircumscribable, and the source of all life, breath, and existence. Hearers are pressed to abandon the folly of any idolatry, old or modern, and to believe on the risen Christ before whom all will be judged.
The Bible and Capital Punishment
Capital punishment is examined as a biblical mandate rooted in the sanctity of human life as image-bearers of God, tracing the consistent teaching of Scripture from Genesis 9:6 through Romans 13:1–4. The sermon argues that the Noahic covenant establishes civil government's God-given authority to execute murderers, an authority confirmed rather than overturned in the New Testament. Common objections — from the sixth commandment, the Sermon on the Mount, the woman caught in adultery, and concerns about deterrence and salvation — are answered exegetically. Believers are called to submit to governing authorities as God's ministers of wrath, to pray the imprecatory psalms, and to reject both personal vengeance and the sentimental rejection of God's revealed standard of justice.
The Bible and Abortion
Exodus 21:22–25 is examined as a direct biblical address to the ethics of abortion, situating the text within the Sixth Commandment's prohibition of murder and the broader biblical witness to the sanctity of human life from conception to death. The sermon argues that the Hebrew vocabulary of the passage — the language of childbirth rather than miscarriage — establishes that God's law affords protection, including capital sanction, to pre-born image-bearers of God. The image of God in man, displayed across every stage of human life from Genesis to James, grounds the absolute moral prohibition of abortion and exposes the moral bankruptcy of societies and churches that disregard it. Hearers are called to informed prayer, faithful proclamation of the law, sexual purity, and confidence in the sufficiency of Christ's blood to forgive even this sin.
The Question Concerning Taxes
Matthew 22:15–22 records a trap laid by an unlikely coalition of Pharisees and Herodians who sought to impale Jesus on the horns of a political dilemma: endorse the Roman poll tax and alienate the Jewish populace, or reject it and face a capital charge of sedition. Jesus exposes their hypocrisy, turns their own coin against them, and delivers one of the most compressed and consequential ethical statements in all of Scripture: 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.' The sermon works through the parties, the plan, and the particulars of the question before drawing out the doctrine of two distinct but overlapping spheres of authority — civil and divine — showing that Caesar's jurisdiction is real but bounded, while God's claim on his image-bearers is total and is met only through faith in Christ.
2LCF Chapter 24 - Of the Civil Magistrate
Civil government is not a social convention or mere human compact but a divinely instituted ordinance answerable to God Most High — and that divine origin is simultaneously the source of its authority and the boundary of its competence. This study of 2LCF Chapter 24 works through three paragraphs: the nature, purpose, and power of the magistrate (including the sword and capital punishment); the lawfulness of Christian participation in government against Anabaptist objections; and the Christian's duties of submission and intercession toward civil rulers. The abiding application is that Christians must neither deify the state nor abandon it, but submit to it in all lawful things, resist it when it commands sin, and pray for the conversion and restraint of those who govern.
2LCF Chapter 22 - Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day, Part 4
The Fourth Commandment's perpetual and universal obligation — rooted in both natural law and the Word of God — binds new covenant believers to Sabbath observance no less than it bound old covenant saints. This session of a consecutive study through the 1689 London Baptist Confession (chapter 22, paragraphs 7–8) examines the twofold testimony to Sabbath necessity (general and special revelation), the positive-moral character of the Fourth Commandment, and the pre-Sinaitic origins of the Sabbath in Genesis 2. The change of the day from the seventh to the first is introduced and will be treated in full in the following session. The governing spirit of Christian Sabbath observance is not legal fear but cheerful compliance, strengthened by the risen Christ and the sweetness of the gospel.
2 Samuel 1:1-16
2 Samuel 1:1–16 records an Amalekite's false report to David claiming credit for Saul's death, and David's swift, severe response. This exposition examines the inconsistencies in the Amalekite's account, David's genuine grief over Saul and the house of Israel despite Saul's wickedness, and the theological weight of fearing to touch the Lord's anointed. Three practical lessons emerge: guarding against self-promotion, cultivating a multifaceted response to divine judgment that avoids bitterness, and living under the motivating power of the fear of God.
2LCF Chapter 19 - Of the Law of God
The moral law of God — summarized in the Ten Commandments, written on the heart of man at creation, and codified at Sinai — remains perpetually binding on all persons, regenerate and unregenerate alike. This study of 2LCF Chapter 19, paragraphs 1, 2, 5, and 6 traces the law from its origin in the covenant of works with Adam through its threefold use (civil, pedagogical, and normative) for believers under the covenant of grace. Christ did not abolish the law but fulfilled it, thereby confirming rather than dissolving its authority. The session closes with a call to avoid antinomianism, to obey the law from proper gospel motives, and to delight in it as the revealed will of God.
The Shedding of Innocent Blood
The sixth commandment's prohibition of murder, grounded in the doctrine of man as image-bearer of God, applies with full force to abortion. This sermon works through Exodus 21:22–25 to demonstrate that the Mosaic civil law affords explicit legal protection to both mother and pre-born child, and that the correct translation of the passage — 'she gives birth prematurely' rather than 'she miscarries' — is exegetically decisive for the abortion debate. The sanctity of human life is established across the full range of human existence: before the fall, after it, in children, the pre-born, the handicapped, the sick, and the elderly — and is ultimately grounded in the Incarnation, by which Christ assumed and thereby dignified human flesh. The sermon closes by calling the church to informed prayer, chaste living, and flight to the cross, where there is full forgiveness even for those implicated in abortion.
2LCF Chapter 4 - Of Creation
The doctrine of creation, as confessed in chapter four of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, encompasses far more than the sheer scale of the cosmos — it demands precise theological definition on every point from the time and agent of creation to its purpose and result. This study works through three sections of the chapter: the overview of creation (paragraphs on creation ex nihilo, the triune authorship, divine purpose, the full extent of all things visible and invisible, the literal six-day duration, and the verdict 'all very good'), the apex of creation (the constitution, identity, and integrity of man made in God's image in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness), and the fulcrum of creation (the covenant of works in the garden as the hinge upon which God's redemptive purpose to save sinners by Christ Jesus turns). Creation is neither an emanation nor a reshaping of pre-existent matter, but a free act of the triune God out of nothing, ordered ultimately to the manifestation of his glory and the redemption of his elect to the praise of his glorious grace.
Joshua 18-21
Joshua 18–21 records the distribution of the remaining tribal allotments, the establishment of cities of refuge, the assignment of Levitical cities, and a concluding theological summary of the entire book. The seven tribes' failure to claim their inheritance is exposed as unbelief and ingratitude, while Caleb and Joshua stand as models of faith that acts upon the promises of God. The cities of refuge illumine God's justice — distinguishing murder from manslaughter, protecting the innocent, and underscoring the sanctity of human life made in God's image. The passage closes with the theological heart of the book: not one word of God's promise failed, a principle that extends through the new covenant to the final defeat of all Christ's enemies and the rest that awaits the people of God.
The Descent into Idolatry
Romans 1:18–32 presents the universal condemnation of mankind, tracing the descent from the suppression of general revelation into full-blown idolatry and its attendant vices. The wrath of God is not an incidental doctrine but the necessary backdrop to the gospel: ungodliness precedes unrighteousness, and when God is rejected, judicial abandonment follows — God gives men over to the very sin they have chosen. Idolatry is not merely an ancient phenomenon but the root of every vice list Paul enumerates, and contemporary idols of false religion, mammon, and self demand the same vigilance the Apostle John commands: 'Little children, keep yourselves from idols.' The only antidote to idolatry is the gospel, in which the righteousness God demands is also the righteousness He supplies through faith in Jesus Christ alone.
Christ and the Demoniacs
Matthew 8:28–34 presents two men so thoroughly dominated by demonic forces that no human restraint could subdue them — yet Jesus casts out an entire legion with a single word. This exposition works through the description of the demoniacs, their confrontation with Christ, the exorcism itself, and the city's fearful rejection, arguing that the passage is Matthew's sustained demonstration of Christ's absolute authority over the powers of hell. The demons' own testimony — confessing Jesus as the Son of God and acknowledging a coming day of judgment — stands as a rebuke to all who withhold that confession. The sermon closes by calling hearers to flee to Christ rather than away from Him, pointing to the restored men clothed and in their right minds as a picture of what sovereign grace accomplishes.
Capital Punishment, Part 2
Capital punishment is examined through Scripture, addressing both biblical and pragmatic objections to the state's God-ordained authority to execute criminal offenders. Drawing on Genesis 9:6, Romans 13:1–4, and several New Testament texts, the study demonstrates that the sixth commandment prohibits murder — not all killing — and that covenant theology maintains continuity between the Testaments on this point. Matthew 5:38–42 and John 8 are answered in turn, showing that neither the call to personal forbearance nor Christ's compassion toward the adulterous woman overturns the civil magistrate's duty to execute justice. Christians are called to govern their interpersonal relationships by a spirit of longsuffering while trusting God-appointed authorities to bear the sword faithfully.
The Bible and Abortion, Part 2
Scripture consistently treats the unborn as image-bearers of God, and this sermon works through four questions designed to test that conviction: whether abortion is ever lawful, how to handle hard cases such as rape and incest, how to avoid abortion altogether, and what the church is called to do. Drawing on the biblical categories of lawful killing — self-defense, legitimate war, and capital punishment — the sermon demonstrates that abortion satisfies none of these conditions and therefore remains sin without exception. The hard cases do not alter the status of the conceived, and Deuteronomy 22 establishes that in rape the criminal, not the child, bears the penalty. The church's answer is the whole counsel of God: law that restrains sin and gospel that offers genuine hope to those who have already committed it.
Unsolved Homicide, Family Matters, and the Executed Criminal
Deuteronomy 21 presents five laws that appear culturally strange to modern readers — an unsolved homicide, female captives of war, the firstborn son's inheritance, the rebellious son, and the disposal of an executed criminal's body — but each displays the equity and justice of God's holy law as it protected the vulnerable within theocratic Israel. The chapter closes with a passage Paul quotes directly in Galatians 3, revealing that the one who is hanged and accursed of God is none other than Christ, who bore the curse of rebel sons in their place. The sermon moves from the civil legislation of the old covenant to the glory of the Son, showing that God made him who knew no sin to be sin, constituting him the disobedient son so that his people might become the righteousness of God in him. Readers of this chapter must resist dismissing it as barbaric and instead marvel both at the fairness of God's law and at the redemptive transaction accomplished at Calvary.
Deuteronomy 21
Deuteronomy 21 addresses five distinct legal cases in ancient Israel: an unsolved homicide, a female prisoner of war sought as a wife, the inheritance rights of the firstborn son, the incorrigible rebellious son, and the disposition of an executed criminal's body. Far from being a barbaric legal code, these provisions consistently protect the vulnerable — the murder victim whose blood cries out, the captive woman, the unloved wife's son — and reflect the equity, righteousness, and goodness of God's character. The chapter also anticipates the gospel: the heifer's substitutionary death foreshadows atonement, and the curse pronounced on the hanged man is cited by Paul in Galatians 3:13 as fulfilled in Christ, who bore the curse of the true rebellious son in the place of sinners.
The Prophet on the Run
The book of Jonah confronts God's people with a persistent temptation: to allow hatred of the wicked to harden into contempt for the lost. Working through Jonah's flight from God's command, his forced submission in the belly of the fish, and his bitter displeasure at Nineveh's repentance, this sermon argues that prejudice against those we deem unworthy is a direct hindrance to the gospel mission God has assigned to his people. The sovereignty of God in dispensing mercy to whom he wills — not to whom we judge deserving — strips away every excuse for withholding the proclamation of Christ from any sinner, however offensive.
Slaves and Masters
Colossians 3:22–4:1 addresses the conduct of bondservants and masters within the Roman imperial context, grounding workplace ethics not in social reform but in the Lordship of Christ over every sphere of life. The passage calls slaves to obey their earthly masters in all lawful things — not with eye-service or people-pleasing, but in sincerity of heart and fear of God — because the ultimate master is Christ, who will reward his servants with an eternal inheritance. Masters are likewise charged to give what is just and fair, knowing they too answer to a heavenly master. The sermon closes with an evangelistic appeal: every person is either a slave to sin or a slave to Christ, and freedom from sin's bondage comes only through faith in the Son.
The Culmination of God's Plan for the World
Acts 17:30–31 presents the resurrection of Christ not merely as a past historical event but as the divine guarantee of a coming universal judgment. Paul's Areopagus sermon situates God's appointment of Jesus as judge within the framework of creation, providence, and exclusive worship, demonstrating that to deny the creator is to suppress the reality of the judge. The sermon traces five particulars of Paul's address — God as creator, ruler of nations, the only proper object of worship, the appointer of a day of judgment, and the ordainer of Christ as judge — and calls every hearer to flee to Christ alone, who is both savior and coming judge.