Theological term
Post-Lapsarian
3 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.
Genesis 3:14-24
Genesis 3:14–24 records the consequences of the fall, and the heart of this study is the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15 — the first gospel promise in Scripture. God's curse upon the serpent contains within it an announcement of the Messiah: the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head, accomplishing total victory through suffering and death. The sermon traces this skull-crushing seed through the biblical narrative — from the typological head-wounds of Judges and David's defeat of Goliath, to New Testament fulfillment in Colossians, Hebrews, 1 John, and Revelation 12 — demonstrating that the cross of Christ is the decisive blow against the devil foreshadowed in Eden. The study closes by examining the consequences for the woman and the man in verses 16–19, situating the tensions of marriage and labor in a post-lapsarian world that Christ's redemptive work is already beginning to address.
Of Free Will (2LCF9)
The doctrine of free will, rightly understood, is not denied by Reformed theology but carefully defined according to the fourfold state of man as Scripture and the 1689 London Baptist Confession (chapter 9) set forth. This confession-study exposition works through the four paragraphs of chapter 9 — man's will in innocency (able to sin and not to sin), in sin (unable not to sin), in grace (freed from bondage yet still corrupted), and in glory (perfectly and immutably free to good alone) — showing that each state demands a distinct account of human liberty. The doctrines of total depravity, effectual calling, and remaining corruption are not isolated abstractions but are woven into the covenantal structure of the confession, where chapter 9 stands between the covenant mediator (chapter 8) and the application of redemptive benefits (chapters 10 and following). Believers are urged to pray for dead sinners with urgency, to pursue Spirit-enabled obedience with vigor, and to take honest comfort in the confession's frank acknowledgment of remaining corruption rather than retreating into either perfectionism or despair.