Miscellaneous

Meaning of a Sacrilege

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Miscellaneous

Lesson: 10-18

Genre: Lecture

Track: 29

Dictation Name: RR109A2

Location/Venue:

Year:

A few years ago when I completed writing my study of Biblical law, I began to collect material on a very important aspect of scripture related to biblical law. The subject of sacrilege. I found it very difficult to find material on the subject. Although there was a time once when sacrilege was considered the most serious of all offenses by Catholics and Protestants, and even pagans feared to commit sacrilege, for the past couple of centuries the subject has been forgotten. Almost the only material I could find on it was 17th century material.

First of all to define sacrilege. The word only appears once in scripture, in Romans 2:22 and it means very literally “robbing God”. The idea of sacrilege however is over and over again stressed from one end of scripture to the other. Of course immediately there comes to your mind a very obvious example of it in Malachi. When God through Malachi accuses the covenant people of robbery, of robbing him. And when they say “Wherein have we robbed God?” ‘Wherein have we committed sacrilege?’ “In that ye have withheld your tithes and offerings.” God requires both, we do not give a gift or an offering to God unless it is above and over the tithe. The tithe is his Tax.

Robbing God of anything that belongs to him is sacrilege. It can be a sacrilege of money. It can be a sacrilege of property, and we shall deal with this at some length. It can be a sacrilege or robbing of the time that belongs to him, the Lords day. And it can be a robbery of ourselves. Because we are doubly God's property. First he created us, all things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made. We are his possession. But he bought us, at the price of the blood of Jesus Christ his only begotten. So that we are doubly his, his by creation. His by regeneration, purchased through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Will a man rob God? Achan did. This story was once readily believed even by unbelievers. Today it is an embarrassment even to many believers. Why the difference? There was a time when even the ungodly were afraid of sacrilege because they saw the consequences. They saw that God exacted vengeance upon those who robbed him. So that for example after the fall of the Roman Empire, when barbarian ranged across the face of the earth, very quickly they stopped robbing churches. Oh it happened from time to time, but by large they feared it because they came to see that some terrible things happened to anyone who did. And so it happened that merchants including the great Jewish merchants who carried on most of the commerce in Europe up to the year 1000, would deposit their gold and silver in the churches. Just take it in there and the pastor would show them a room, this was routine. And they would leave it there in his custody and make a gift for the use of the premises, in the confidence that there were very few men living who dared violate the house of God.

But who feels that way now? The reason of course is that our idea of cause and effect has changed. First of all what we’ve done is to have a naturalistic idea of causality. And we have wiped out the idea of God as the cause. So the most obvious things can happen and we do not see God as responsible. And second we are dropping the idea of causality all together. I won’t go into the contemporary scientific thought which has replaced the idea of causality with the idea of probability, the probability concept, and is now busy dumping the probability concept. But we have lost the idea of God as the great and absolute cause of all things.

Now as we turn to the story of Achan we must remember that the law of God saws that the first fruits belong to God. The first fruits of the field. The first fruits of our body, the first born son belongs to God. And he had to be redeemed at a price to indicate that God had the first of everything. The first fruits then like the tithe are according to the law of God's property and to deny them to God is sacrilege. They must be redeemed. The first conquered city of Canaan therefore belonged to God. It was the first roots of Canaan and so the requirement when they crossed the river Jordan, was that the first fruits of the land had to go to God. But because it was evil it was to be totally destroyed, except for Rehab and her household who by faith became the people of God. All its silver, all its gold, all its vessels of brass and iron were to be given to the sanctuary and everything else had to be destroyed.

But Achan committed sacrilege. He robbed God, in the course of the destruction of that city. He saw a goodly Babylonian garment and 200 sheckles of silver and a wedge of gold of 50 sheckles weight. A tremendous wealth, a sheckle at that time was not a coin. It was a bar, a weight. And so he seized and hid in his tent a considerable amount of wealth. He did this with the knowledge of his whole family. Together they hid it; they were all involved in the guilt. Subsequently the Israelites went to battle against Ai. This was a small rather poorly armed city. They sent only a handful of men against it and they were defeated. And they wept and blamed God for leading them into defeat. It is a sin to look to God alone as the ultimate causation and to forget proximate causes. And so God directed them to themselves. He told them that one of their number had committed sacrilege and therefor they must cleanse themselves of this guilt or his judgment would continue to be upon them.

So it was that judgment was removed from Israel and placed upon Achan the guilty man. Moreover it was declared that Jericho as devoted to God could never be rebuilt without judgment upon whoever built it. Centuries later in the days of Ahab. Ahab owned at that time, that territory which was a part of the tribe of Judah and he ordered it rebuilt and fortified for defensive purposes against Judah. And the prophesy uttered by God was fulfilled. For on the day that the builder thereof did build Jericho. He laid the foundation there of an Abiram his first born and set up the gates with the loss of his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the lord, which he spoke by Joshua the son of Nun 1st Kings 16:34. The prophecy of Joshua 6:26 was fulfilled. Now is this exceptional? Is this something that happened in Bible times and has nothing to do with us except that it’s a very interesting piece of history? Certainly it happened more than once in scripture. Saul for his sacrilegious acts was cut off. Earlier the sons of Levi for their sacrileges acts were cut off. Over and over again in scripture we meet with this. What about our times? All times are God's times. All ages are a part of God's realm, God's judgment, God's grace operative in every age and every moment.

When the so called recrimination in England began, what it amounted to was that Henry the 8th who was bankrupting the nation seized the church properties under the pretense of reformation. He sent around a group of men supposedly to make a study of the monastery, the religious foundations, the convents and the like. And they reported all kinds of supposed scandalous behaviors going on which needed to be repressed. In a few cases they were true. In every case it was a pretext. The Godly thing to have done was to say they must be reformed and this land, this church, this convent, this monastery belongs to the Lord. If we are going to sell it the money belongs to the Lord's work.

But what Henry the 8th did was to seize this wealth. What he had already done was to debase the coinage, and to replace the gold coinage of the realm with copper coins with a thin wash of gold over them. The irony of it was those coins soon began to wear thin and the copper showed through as the thin wash of gold wore off. And it showed up first on Henry the 8th's face on his nose. His image on the coin. And so they began to call Henry the 8th old copper nose.

But having debased the coinage he now reached out and seized God's land. He sold it to various lords and gentlemen of the realm, and the resultant wealth was tremendous. But this was sacrilege. What happened? A 114 years later Sir Henry Spelman wrote a study the History and Faith of Sacrilege a rather rare book, and he declared and I quote: “Property consecrated to God in the service of his church has generally when alienated to secular purposes brought misfortune on its possessors, whether by strange accidents, by violent death, by loss of wealth, or that chiefly by failure of heirs male. And such property hardly every continues long in one family.” It was 1536 that Henry the 8th seized the church properties. 14 years later on February the 2nd 1550 the Reverend Thomas Labor one of the founders of puritanism in England, declared in a series of very tremendous sermons, moving sermons that stirred all of England, that gave birth to Puritanism and much more, declared emphatically and with great emotion that the curse of God was upon the realm. Because God's property had been stolen, had been robbed, and not until man made restitution to God could the curse be removed. He knew that the crown was not going to do it and so he summoned the people of God to make restitution to God by giving not only their tithes and offerings but above and beyond that. And then and there began the greatest wave of giving in the history of the world. The results were tremendous.

It created the puritan movement, it created most of the colleges and schools of England. It created virtually every charitable organization in England. It took care of all the needy in England of all the sick, of all the inferred, it began missionary efforts. It subsided a century and a half later but it was revived again in the 18th century and led to the great 19th century missionary impetuous that spread the Gospel all over the world. All of this from Thomas Labor's preaching in 1550.

W.K Jordan a British historian has devoted 3 volumes simply to listing some of the main tithe agencies and offering agencies that were created as a result of his work where by this tremendous change was brought about in a generation or two in England. We cannot understand puritanism apart from this that it was born out of the desire to avert the disaster of sacrilege from the land. It was 1536 when Henry the 8th began the seizure of God's properties, the misappropriation of the funds. In 1667, a hundred and thirty one years later, one of the great preachers of England in preaching on sacrilege, one of the last sermons unfortunately that was heard on the subject, declared and I quote: “We need not go many nations off nor many ages back to see the vengeance of God upon some families raised upon the ruins of churches and enriched with the spoils of sacrilege, gilded with the name of reformation, and for the most part so unhappy the purchasers of church lands that the world was not now to seek for such and argument from a long experience to convince it, that though and such purposes man have usually the cheapest pennies worth, yet they have not always been the best bargains. For the holy thing has struck back. Has stuck fast to their sides like a fatal shaft, and the stone has cried out of the consecrated walls that have lived within for a judgment upon the head of the sacrileges intruder; and heaven has heard the cry and made good to the curse. So that when the heir of blasted family has risen up and promised fair, and perhaps flourished for some time upon the stock and parts of great favor, Yet at length a cross event has certainly met and stopped him in the career of his fortunes, so that he has ever after withered and declined and in the end come to nothing. Or to that which is worse. So certainly that which some call blind superstition take aim when it shoots a curse at the sacrilege, the sacrilegious person. But I shall not engage in the odious task of recounting the families which this sin has blasted with a curse.” Unquote. And (South?) went on to say that: “This is so obvious I need not go into the details of it.” Was it obvious?

In 1632, less than a hundred years after the event, Sir Henry Spelman documented the fact of judgment. Six hundred and thirty families had been among the greediest associates of Henry the 8th who had taken these church lands. In less than a hundred years only fourteen families still existed. Oh but you say: “Those were bloody days and many families were dying out.” Well the Duke of Norfolk in his part of the realm had two hundred and sixty of those families and in his own life time only sixty of them endured. And those disappeared soon after. But the Duke of Norfolk gave some of his land gave some of his land not God's land to twenty of his men, and every one of them continued.

I talked not too long ago with a man who was an Englishman and who knew something about these church lands, many which are standing vacant and idle today, and he said: “Well it is the superstition in the old country that having those lands is bad luck.” We must say there is a curse upon those who have alienated what belongs to God and it cries out for restoration to God. And as a result two scholars among the last ever to deal with the subject concluded, as the reviewed Sir Henry Spelman's book, as they checked it out the last time the subject was studied in 1843; and they found that it had continued. They declared: “We can only lament these things, we cannot correct them. We have no reason to think God will be reconciled to national sin, without national restitution. And there is less chance of that today.”

The curse of Jericho struck five hundred and twenty years after Joshua pronounced it. What belongs to God cannot be alienated from God. This is a fearful fact. But it is also a tremendously encouraging fact. God brings about judgment in order to restore that which is his. “I will overturn, overturn, overturn, until he comes whose right it is.” God will not allow that which is ungodly to stand. God will not allow theft, sacrilege, robbery of that which is his to endure. And his judgment is a welcome fact for us. It means salvation, it means restitution, it means restoration.

And we can rejoice but again today the faith that Thomas Labor held forth on February 2nd 1550 is being restored to our land. That the banner of the reformed faith is once again set forth to the national Presbyterian church and in other bodies and in other groups. And let us be in prayer that restitution being made to God by us by the people of God, that even as Thomas Labor's sermon was followed by the greatest out pour of giving in all of history; so too as this movement begins there will be great outpouring to make restitution to God, to give unto God the glory that is his. To give unto him the tithes and offerings that are his. To give unto him the property, the money, the time, the men that he requires. That his name be magnified. That all peoples tribes and tongues be brought into the saving knowledge of God through Christ. That his law word be set forth and obeyed, unto the end that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our lord and of his Christ.

Let us rejoice that what belongs to God cannot be alienated from him. And let us place ourselves our families, our possessions in his hands. For we are doubly his. By creation and by redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ. And all that we are and all that we have must be placed at His service. And even as the curse falls upon sacrilege, so the irresistible blessings of God fall upon faith and obedience.

I believe that God is moving in our time, and that we are going to see tremendous outpourings of blessings, because people again are turning to His word, and are giving themselves to the Lord. Sacrilege will be replaced by restitution, by faith and obedience. So be it. Let us pray.