Theological term
Second Commandment
20 sermons · All terms
The Central Sanctuary
Deuteronomy 12 establishes the principle that Israel's worship must be conducted where and how God commands — not where or how the surrounding nations worship their gods. Working through four sections of the chapter, this exposition traces the logic from the destruction of Canaanite shrines and the centralization of sacrificial worship, through the legislation governing ordinary and sacrificial eating, to the climactic prohibition of verse 32: 'You shall not add to it nor take away from it.' The regulative principle of worship is not an Old Covenant curiosity but a transcovenantal demand, grounded in the first and second commandments and confirmed in the New Covenant by 1 Timothy 3:15 and Hebrews 12:28-29. The sermon calls hearers to resist the perennial temptation to import pagan practices and autonomous creativity into the worship of the living and true God, and to find in prescribed worship the very joy and blessing God promises his obedient people.
The Necessity of Faithful Obedience
Deuteronomy 4 closes Moses' historical prologue with an urgent exhortation to the second generation of Israel on the necessity of faithful covenant obedience before crossing the Jordan. The chapter's three movements — the necessity of obedience (vv. 1–8), the dangers of idolatry (vv. 9–31), and the incomparability of Israel's God (vv. 32–40) — are treated as an impassioned speech by a man who lived the history he recounts. Scripture's sufficiency is defended against every form of addition or subtraction, and the regulative principle of worship is grounded in God's self-revelation at Sinai as a consuming fire who receives no image.
Ask FGBC #40: Is It Okay to Have Children’s Bibles With Pictures of Jesus?
The second commandment forbids images of God and Christ, including pictures of Jesus in children's Bibles. While children's Bibles without images may serve a limited purpose, parents are called to instruct children directly from Scripture, since it is by the Word — not by pictures — that God saves sinners and edifies his people. Any children's Bible used should accurately represent the sense of Scripture rather than obscure it through paraphrase.
Ask FGBC - Dec 2024 Podcast with Pastors Butler and Porter, Batch 4
A panel of two pastors works through a batch of listener-submitted questions spanning baptism and the Lord's Supper, the eternity of hell, church membership, faith and fear, the unpardonable sin, images of Christ, dry preaching, and extra-biblical theological vocabulary. Across each topic the answers are grounded in Scripture and the 1689 London Baptist Confession, with particular attention to second-commandment concerns, the nature of saving faith, and the perseverance of the saints. Listeners are urged to anchor their assurance not in the strength of their own grip on Christ but in the immutable decree of election and the intercession of the Triune God.
The Context of John 3:16, Part 1
John 3:16 opens with the word 'for,' marking it as a continuation of a preceding argument — yet the verse is almost universally quoted without its Old Testament context. This sermon expounds Numbers 21:4–9, the account of the bronze serpent in the wilderness, which Jesus himself cites in John 3:14 as the direct backdrop for his declaration of the gospel to Nicodemus. The sin of Israel — grumbling against a gracious God despite his continual provision — brought deadly judgment in the form of fiery serpents, and the God-ordained remedy was not the removal of the snakes but a look of faith toward a bronze serpent lifted on a pole. Hearers are called to repent of complaining against God and the authorities he has appointed, and to return for the evening service where the typological fulfillment in the lifting up of the Son of Man will be applied to the gospel.
The Idolatry of Israel, Part 2
Exodus 32:15–35 records the descent of Moses from Sinai and the immediate consequences of Israel's golden calf idolatry. This study covers four movements in the text: Moses' symbolic breaking of the covenant tablets, Aaron's evasive self-defense, the Levites' execution of three thousand offenders, and Moses' intercessory return to the Lord. The gravity of idolatry — as a direct assault on the being and honor of God — is traced from Sinai through Numbers 25 and Psalm 106, and pressed home with Calvin's warning that the human heart is a perpetual idol factory, turning even good gifts and the self into objects of ultimate devotion.
The Idolatry of Israel, Part 1
Exodus 32:1–14 records the catastrophic breach of Israel's covenant oath, sworn only weeks earlier in Exodus 24, as the people demand a visible god and Aaron fashions the golden calf. The passage exposes the persistent human tendency toward idolatry — rooted in total depravity and inflamed by impatience, carnality, and the craving for a manageable deity — and demonstrates that their sin was not a denial of Yahweh but a second-commandment violation: representing the true God by a forbidden image. The sermon then turns to Moses' masterful intercession, grounded in appeals to God's power, his glory before the nations, and his covenant oath to the patriarchs, and concludes with extended treatment of divine immutability and anthropopathism to explain why Exodus 32:14 ('the Lord relented') cannot be made to teach flux or change in God.
The Third Missionary Journey, Part 3
Acts 19:21–41 records Paul's final days in Ephesus, culminating in a riot instigated by the silversmith Demetrius, whose financial interests were threatened by the gospel's advance against idolatry. The passage is examined under four headings: Paul's strategic plans for further ministry, the anger of the silversmiths rooted in profit dressed as piety and patriotism, the confused uproar in the theater, and the intervention of the city clerk whose cool legal reasoning protected the church. The exposition draws out the apologetic purpose of Luke's account — demonstrating that Roman civil authority found no legal fault with Christianity — and closes with an urgent call to forsake every idol and trust the righteousness of Christ alone.
2LCF Chapter 22 - Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day
The Regulative Principle of Worship, grounded in the Second Commandment and confessed in Chapter 22 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, holds that God alone determines the acceptable way in which He is to be worshipped — nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else than what He has commanded in Scripture. Working through paragraphs 1 and 2 of the confession, this session distinguishes the first commandment (who is to be worshipped) from the second (how God is to be worshipped), showing from Romans 1, Deuteronomy 12, 1 Timothy 3, Hebrews 12, and the narrative of Saul that innovation in worship — however well-intentioned — constitutes a form of idolatry. The practical application is that the elements of corporate worship must be drawn from Scripture alone: prayer, the reading and preaching of the Word, singing, and the sacraments — with no addition, subtraction, or substitution from the imaginations and devices of men.
2 Kings 1:1-18
2 Kings 1 records the idolatry, judgment, and death of Ahaziah, king of Israel — a man who, when facing death, turned not to Yahweh but to Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron. The chapter exposes the nature of idolatry as a practical confession that the living God is incompetent to meet one's needs, and it establishes the certainty of God's word against any king or army that would silence it. God's protection of Elijah through consuming fire is neither divine caprice nor Old Testament barbarism, but the settled, holy justice of a God who will brook no rival and whose jealousy for his own glory is inseparable from his mercy toward sinners. The passage calls hearers to examine what their instinctive cry in trial reveals about the true object of their allegiance.
Paul in Athens
Acts 17:16–21 presents the Apostle Paul's arrival in Athens, where he encounters a city so consumed by idolatry that ancient sources estimated some 30,000 deities. The sermon examines two subjects: the preacher and the people. Paul's spirit is provoked to a wholesome, righteous indignation — not a curmudgeonly repulsion — rooted in zeal for the glory of the one true God, the demands of His law (particularly the first and second commandments), and a knowledge of the deliverance the gospel brings to souls in bondage. His response to that provocation is immediate proclamation of Christ in the synagogues and the marketplace, even before a hostile audience of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers who insult him as a babbler and misunderstand the resurrection as a second deity alongside Jesus.
1 Kings 12:25-33
Jeroboam's religious innovations in 1 Kings 12:25–33 are not a misunderstood accommodation but institutionalized idolatry driven by fear, insecurity, and a refusal to trust the God who gave him his throne. The passage exposes six specific violations: rejection of the first and second commandments, the central sanctuary law of Deuteronomy 12, Solomon's temple, the Levitical priesthood, the appointed feast calendar, and the canonical rule of Deuteronomy 12:32 against adding to or taking from God's commands. The sermon draws a direct line from Jeroboam's heart-driven worship innovations to the regulative principle of worship, arguing that acceptable worship is defined solely by divine prescription, not human preference or political convenience.
The Importance of Preaching
Paul's declaration in 1 Corinthians 1:18–25 that God saves sinners 'through the foolishness of the message preached' establishes preaching not as one option among many but as the divinely ordained and irreplaceable means of grace. The sermon traces four interlocking claims: preaching is the means by which dead sinners are brought to saving faith, the means by which Christ builds his church, a proclamation that has Christ himself as its sum and substance, and a proclamation that has the cross as the apex of its content. Hearers are pressed to pray and give financial support for gospel ministers, to deepen their knowledge of Christ crucified, and — if as yet unconverted — to seek salvation through that cross alone.
2LCF Chapter 22 - Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day, Part 1
What gives any human being the right to determine how God is to be worshipped? This study of 2LCF Chapter 22, Paragraphs 1–2 argues that the light of nature establishes the creational obligation to worship God, while Scripture alone establishes the acceptable manner of that worship — the regulative principle. The exclusive object of that worship is the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which the confession defends against both the Roman Catholic invocation of saints and the broader normative principle that permits what God has not commanded. Worshippers are called to receive God's own prescribed order of worship rather than supplementing it with the imaginations and devices of men.
The Crucifixion of Christ
John 19:16–24 records the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ with deliberate conciseness, and this exposition works through four elements of that account: the setting, the crucifixion itself, the charge written by Pilate, and the division of Christ's garments. The sermon argues that John's restrained narrative avoids passion mysticism while insisting that the physical suffering of Christ was real, public, and theologically loaded — every detail, from the seamless tunic to the trilingual inscription, unfolds under the sovereign decree of God and fulfills Old Testament prophecy. Ungodly men such as Caiaphas and Pilate become unwitting prophets, confessing substitutionary atonement and Christ's kingship by the overruling providence of God. The sermon closes with a call to the Lord's Supper, distinguishing the symbol from the reality it represents and exhorting unbelievers to faith in Christ alone.
Judges 17
Judges 17 exposes a pattern of religious apostasy that pervades Israel in the period of the judges: a facade of devotion to Yahweh maintained through idolatry, syncretism, and unauthorized worship. The chapter traces corruption from Micah's household through the Levitical priesthood, demonstrating that doing what is right in one's own eyes is identical to doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord. Three dangers pressing on the contemporary church emerge from the text — the folly of idolatry, the persistence of syncretism, and the subjectivism that treats worship as a matter of personal preference — and the sermon calls hearers to submit to divine regulation of worship rather than construct religion on their own terms.
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.
Acts 17:16-34
Paul's address to the Athenian philosophers in Acts 17:16–34 stands as the biblical model for proclaiming the gospel to a pagan audience that lacks the foundation of Old Testament revelation. The sermon works through the setting, the sermon, and the summary of Paul's speech, showing how he confronts idolatry as genuine moral offense against the Creator, not as an approximate form of true religion, and how he frames the resurrection not as a proposition to be proved but as God's appointed assurance of coming judgment. The three responses Paul receives — mockery, curiosity, and belief — are the same responses faithful gospel proclamation produces in every generation.
Deuteronomy 13
Deuteronomy 13 exposes three escalating threats to covenant fidelity in Israel: the false prophet who performs genuine signs but leads toward idolatry, the family member or close friend who privately solicits apostasy, and the urban revolutionary movement that corrupts an entire city. The chapter shows that God tests his people through such enticements to reveal whether their love for him is genuine, and that the severity of the prescribed penalties is proportionate to the gravity of the crime — which was not merely religious sin but constitutional treason against the covenant Lord. The same principles carry into the new covenant: gospel perverters are anathematized, family loyalty must never outrank loyalty to Christ, and the first and second commandments still demand undivided allegiance.
Deuteronomy 12
Deuteronomy 12 grounds the second commandment in the concrete realities of conquest and worship: God not only names himself as the sole object of worship but strictly regulates the manner of approach, permitting nothing that originates in pagan practice. The chapter moves from the mandate to obliterate Canaanite religion and its very names from the land, through the prescription of a central place where God sets his name to dwell, to practical rules distinguishing sacrificial from non-sacrificial meals. The governing principle — 'whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it' — is the Old Covenant grounding of the regulative principle of worship, as binding in substance for the new covenant church as it was for Israel on the plains of Moab.