Power, Family, Community and Law

Sacrilege and Judgment

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Sociology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 5

Track: 36

Dictation Name: RR111A1

Date: 1974

Our scripture is from the Joshua 7:1, 16-26.

[Joshua 7] “1But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel.”

“16So Joshua rose up early in the morning, and brought Israel by their tribes; and the tribe of Judah was taken:

17 And he brought the family of Judah; and he took the family of the Zarhites: and he brought the family of the Zarhites man by man; and Zabdi was taken:

18 And he brought his household man by man; and Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken.

19 And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me.

20 And Achan answered Joshua, and said, indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done:

21 When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.

22 So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran unto the tent; and, behold, it was hid in his tent, and the silver under it.

23 And they took them out of the midst of the tent, and brought them unto Joshua, and unto all the children of Israel, and laid them out before the Lord.

24 And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and they brought them unto the valley of Achor.

25 And Joshua said, why hast thou troubled us? The Lord shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones.

26 And they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger. Wherefore the name of that place was called, the valley of Achor, unto this day.”

The word sacrilege occurs only once in the Bible, but it is often dealt with in scripture as in this passage. We meet with the word sacrilege in Romans 2:22, where when we read verses 21 and 22, we find St. Paul declaring, “21Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? 22 Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?” The word sacrilege literally means ‘to rob God;’ ‘to rob God.’ It involves placing oneself before God and saying my needs constitute a greater need than God’s need. And therefore it involves a defrauding of God, a robbing of God in terms of an idolatry, the worship of oneself.

The most conspicuous example apart from the instance of Achan, is of course in Malachi 3:8-12, when God says through Malachi,

“8Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.

9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.

10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

11 And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts.

12 And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts.”

Now God declares that withholding tithes and offerings to Him is sacrilege. Notice God does not limit it to tithes. The tithe is His tax. He requires it. And God is no more happy when you withhold it from Him than when the bank is lacking your payment on your house is happy about it. The bank acts on it. God says, ‘I act on it. Ye are cursed with a curse when ye withhold your tithes and offerings from me.’ But the people said, ‘wherein have we robbed God? Are we not better than all the nations around?’ Look, Lord, don’t complain about us! You’re the best we’ve got, so you ought to be grateful for what we give you. But God said, ye have robbed me of tithes and offerings and ye are cursed with a curse. God is very specific. Curses and blessings, there’s no neutrality. God is not indifferent to us, though we may be indifferent to Him. He deals with us constantly in terms of curses or blessings. Now, we don’t choose those blessings. We may want them in the material realm, in the physical realm and they come in the spiritual realm. He chooses them, not we.

Now let us turn to Achan. They had come to the land of Canaan. The first city therein was Jericho. And God require Jericho as the first-fruits unto Him. Because God required that men should remember that He came first, so that you not only gave Him a tithe after the harvest was in, after your income was in, but at the very beginning, the first sheep in the field, the first basket of fruit belonged to the Lord, that it might be a continual reminder unto us, that God has first claim upon all that we are and all that we have.

This was once a custom, by the way, even in this country where devout and godly farmers would bring the first basket of fruit to the Lord’s house, for the pastor to use or to give to the elderly and the needy in the congregation. I was very moved when my cousin who is of my age and with whom I grew up returned from the Soviet Union not too long ago, and Soviet Armenia visiting relatives and said that in spite of anything the government does, the believers still carry the first fruits to the house of God.

Jericho—the first city in their path—was to be first fruits unto God; the whole city to be given over to destruction at God’s command; all the vessels thereof, all the gold and the silver to be taken and given to the Lord for the work of His priests, His Levites. One household, the family of Rahab, to be separated unto Himself as holy and elect to Him. Everything in the city belonging to God, either to be destroyed or to be set apart for His purpose.

But Achan saw a garment, gold and silver, a considerable wealth, and seized it for himself. And with the help of his family, he got it into his tent and concealed it there. When Israel then went out to battle against Ai, they assumed that it would be an easy matter to overthrow Ai. It was hardly worth the whole army. But the little town of Ai dealt them a resounding defeat. And so they cried out unto the Lord and the Lord rebuked them and said, why do you cry out against me? Ye have trespassed, ye have committed sacrilege. Ye have robbed me. And the sin was bound to be that of Achan’s. He was given over to destruction.

When Jericho was destroyed, [Joshua] 6:26 tells us, “And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.” Five hundred years later, in the days of Ahab, one man rebuilt Jericho to be a fortress, because it was in a strategic point. In I Kings 16:34, we read, “In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun.” Five hundred years later, the Word of God was fulfilled and Hiel the Bethelite lost his oldest and youngest son for disobeying God. Five hundred years later!

Is this kind of thing true today? Is sacrilege still punished as it was of old? Or is the Word of God a dead word? Can we now rob God with impunity? Has God grown old and absent-minded, and He no longer notices our sacrilege, our theft? Or is He the same yesterday, today and forever? Is He the God who declared through Malachi, “I am the Lord; I change not.”

The pagans during the middle ages were fearful of sacrilege, fearful of robbing God. Why? They did it and they found that they suffered for it and they began to be fearful of the consequences. They knew that the churches had a great deal of wealth because in those days if there was any trouble, whether men were businessmen or farmers or peasants, whatever, they took their treasure and put it in the church. It was the place of sanctuary. Well, the churches were robbed at times, but the judgment upon those who did frightened off even the most pagan of pagans in time.

Let us take an example closer to us. Henry VIII. Henry VIII was a very greedy man. He very early used up the tremendous wealth his father, Henry VII had accumulated and he wanted more money. The place to go for it was in the religious foundations—the convents, the monasteries, the churches. They had a great deal of accumulated wealth. They were using this, by the way, many of them, to take care of relief of the needy, of the aged in England. But Henry VIII heard of the Reformation in Germany and he went through a pseudo, a false reformation. He sent out commissioners to investigate corruption in the monasteries and convents. Well, they found some. They did. But he used that as an excuse to seize all these things, all the wealth for himself. Now, had he said, I am going to reform the Church in England, and I am going to take the Church and put it in the hands of reformers and the wealth here in the hands of godly men to establish schools throughout the land, to translate the scriptures to proclaim the Word of God faithfully and fully, that would have been one thing. But he laid hands on money that had been given to the Lord. The Church of that day was indeed being judged of God for its waywardness. But the judgment upon Henry for his greater waywardness was even greater.

What happened? He confiscated all that property and then the lands he gave to his favors. Within a generation of several hundred men who received lands from Henry, only 14 had heirs. They were struck down by God. In 100 years, not a one of them remained.

Well, you say, perhaps this was a time when there were epidemics and wars and people died more readily in those days. But the other families of England, the nobility, did not perish. The Duke of Norfolk gave 20 of his men portions of his land, not God’s land, all of them had heirs and were still there 50 and 100 years later. The families that took that land that belonged to God disappeared. And Henry’s own family disappeared.

Within a few years after Henry seized these church lands, the Rev. Thomas Laver, one of the first Puritan preachers, preached a series of sermons about it in London in which he warned the people that they were guilty before God, that their ruler and their lords had committed sacrilege. They had robbed God. They had seized monies, lands, buildings that belonged to God that could only be used for His purposes and if sold, the funds had to be given to the Lord’s work, and the curse of God, the judgment of God would be upon the land, unless they repented and in their own way worked restitution.

The result was one of the greatest movements in the entire history of the Church. One British scholar, W.K. Jordan, has written three volumes on what the believers did in response to Laver’s preaching to ward off the curse of God, to make restitution unto the Lord. And he barely tapped the surface, he says. They created one kind of Christian agency after another; schools, foundations, relief agencies, missionary agencies, and the outpouring of funds to make restitution has scarcely been equaled in all of history. The result was the Puritan commonwealth not too many years later.

The movement waned for a time. Then it sprang up again in the 18th century and the 19th century in direct continuity from the preaching of Laver, into the greatest missionary movement of all history, which caught fire then in America. The great missionary movement of those centuries was an outcome of Laver’s call for restitution.

The great preacher Robert S{?}, 130 years after Henry seized the church properties in 1538, preached on sacrilege, warning the congregation in London as he preached of the fearfulness of robbing God, of robbing God of the monies that was His due, of robbing God of the time that was His due—the Lord’s Day, of the devotion, of the worship, of the faith that was God’s due. And he commented in passing, “I need not remind anyone of the fearfulness of sacrilege and what happens to those who commit it, for we have seen in the past century, the hand of God in these things.” It was obvious to all his listeners.

To this day, those vacant cathedrals and churches stand in England and the land is regarded as ‘unlucky’ by the moderns. They don’t believe in God, but they know there’s something unlucky about that land, about those rooms. And yet today, in England, in Germany, throughout Europe, churches built 500—1000 year ago are up for sale. They’re being closed down by the godless leaders of the churches. They’re for sale to anyone except a church. So they can be antique shops, or bars, but not a church.

Will they escape judgment for such things? God is not dead. God has not grown old nor his Word become obsolete. But why no fear now? Why are people so casual? Why was it that the pagans, the barbarian tribes as they would overrun Europe were fearful of sacrilege and it hasn’t been preached about for a couple of centuries? Because we have been too much infected with modern scientific Humanism.

The only kind of causes we recognize are natural causes, not supernatural causes, not the hand of God. And so today men commit sacrilege casually, and their tithes, well, if I feel like it, but there are so many other things I can do with the money. And God’s buildings used to proclaim a false word, false loyalties to sacrilegious churches, false use of God’s time, false use of ourselves, who have been bought with a price. And we have become so blind, we will not see the hand of God.

In my Biblical Philosophy of History which I mentioned yesterday, I spoke about the fact that in the 15 years or so after World War II there were far more disasters, natural disasters, floods, hurricanes, tornados, than in the 50 years before and since then of course, the pace has been stepped up. But we see this sort of thing and droughts, and we say, well, that’s nature; as though God did not exist. And sacrilege is committed daily. But we must give God His due.

Instead of robbing Him, we must render to Him that service, that obedience, that faith that is His due. We must yield to Him of our substance, of our lives, of our devotion. And our loyalty must not to be to the form or to the group but to the faith. We must give Him the first fruits of our lives—not the left-overs. No one enjoys left-overs. No one enjoys a left-handed gift.

I recall when I was a student I was asked to speak at a mid-week meeting in a very prominent church in California. This was during the Depression. And I was not getting anything for speaking. The minister, a very prominent man in California, and not a very faithful man, felt that I should have something, so he had a book that he had just secured in his library and he said, just a minute,’ and he went in to get the book and he thumbed through it and there was a picture in it that he wanted, and a table. So he ripped them out and shut the book. I could see that through the open door, and he brought it out and gave me the book as a little present. I resented that person. I resented it! I hadn’t expected anything, but I had a bad taste about speaking in that church because I had received that kind of a gift. The left-over. Had he given me nothing, it would have been better.

And God feels that way, I suspect about left-handed gifts, about giving Him the left-overs of our lives, as though we should be grateful for them. Sacrilege is committed daily with impunity. When God who has given His only begotten Son to die for us, asks of us that we become His people, when He has declared that through us, He is to make disciples of all nation, through us, the witness is to be made. And so we need to ask ourselves, a witness to what? A witness to what?

A witness to powerlessness because we are not moving in terms of the Word of God? A witness to the blasting of God because we have disobeyed Him? Or a witness to the power of God unto salvation and the blessing of God which maketh rich? “Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve.”

Let us pray.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, Thou hast given us so much—Thine only begotten Son to die for us. Thou hast given us riches and prosperity, food unto fatness, clothing in a world where many go naked, shelter where many are homeless, Thou hast beset us before and behind with such blessings. Give us one thing more. Oh, Lord, give us a grateful heart, that we may yield unto Thee that which is Thy due, with all our heart, mind and being we may serve Thee, magnify Thee, give unto Thee, that Thy name may be exalted and that we may be a people not powerless, not helpless in the face of the powers of darkness, but mighty and effectual in Jesus Christ unto the tearing down of the things that are, unto the shaking of the powers of darkness, at that which is unshakeable, Thy Word, Thy truth may stand and prevail. Use us, oh Lord. Be merciful unto us. Give us grace to yield unto Thee that which is Thine and bless us in Thy service. In Jesus’ name, amen.