Ninth Commandment

Sanctification and the Law

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 5

Track: 95

Dictation Name: RR130BA95

Date: 1960s-70s

Our subject is “Sanctification and the Law,” Leviticus 19:1, 2. “1And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 2Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy.”

These verses are repeated again and again throughout the Law. The summons to be holy, because God it holy. The word ‘holy’ comes from the German. We have the same word from the Hebrew, {?} through the Latin, as sanctified. Sanctified and holy are identical words, but it’s simply that they come through different languages to us: the one Germanic in origin, the other Latin.

This commandment, “Ye shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy,” is a prefix to the entire law. It is restated again and again throughout the law as a reminder of the purpose of the law. In fact, one portion of the law, Leviticus 17-26, is often called by scholars the Holiness Code precisely because over and over again throughout these chapters, this commandment is repeated. “Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” The meaning of this is a very simple and an obvious one. The law is the way of holiness, the way of sanctification. The law over and over again is declared to be the way of sanctification.

And at this point, the Church has gone sadly astray. According to scripture, justification at salvation is by faith. It is through the sovereign grace of God. Man does nothing towards his salvation, he simply receives it from God, and even his receiving is of the grace of God. Salvation or justification is by faith. But sanctification is by law—God’s Law. And at this point, the Church has gone astray. Phariseeism converted the law into a way of salvation and they’ve clouded the meaning of the law. The law was not the way of salvation; it was the way of sanctification. Then Phariseeism, having converted the law into what it was not (a way of justification), altered the meaning of the law and substituted the traditions of men for the law of God, according to our savior. But the Church too has strayed.

Before we examine to a degree the way in which the Church has strayed on this, let us look at the list of its apostasies. It is the influence of Ptolemic (or Greek) philosophy; Greek thought. Very early, when the Church moved out into the Roman Empire, the Greco-Roman philosophies began to affect the thinkers in the Church. And the result was a new doctrine of sanctification. The biblical doctrine calls for the progressive submission of man and the world to the Law of God. Man and his entire world are made holy to the degree that they submit to the Law of God, which is the righteousness of God. The law is thus a program for conquest and victory with the progressive sanctification of man and of his world. Even a partial obedience to the Law of God leads to greatness, to a truly holy {?}. Thus during those periods of the Middle Ages when the Law of God was very strongly enforced, civilization flourished. When the Puritans revived the emphasis on the law as the way of sanctification, again they built a great society. This country is coasting on the Puritan doctrine of sanctification, that the law is the way.

The Ptolemic thought, Greek philosophy was basically dualistic, at the least, dialectical. They believed that the world could be divided into two separate substances or being. On the one hand, matter, which was called darkness and evil and on the other hand, spirit, which was called light and goodness. As a result, salvation was deliverance from one order to the other. The way to be saved was to forsake the world of material things for the world of spiritual things, or for some it was to forsake spiritual things for material things. You could take either aspect and magnify it. But it was forsaking one for the other. The one was good, the other was bad. And so you were bad if you were material and bad if you were spiritual in your emphasis. Of course, Satan being a spiritual being, you could be a total Satanist and still be spiritual. And man’s fall was not into materialism, man fell body and soul and both need to be reconverted. Both need to be regenerated. Both are alike bad when man has fallen, and both are alike good when man is redeemed.

But Greek philosophy led many theologians to assume that instead of a whole man being fallen, one segment of him was fallen and the other remained pure. This is why so many Christian theologians have insisted that man’s reason has not fallen. Therefore all you have to do is to appeal to man’s reason and you can convert him. In other words, man doesn’t have to be born again. He can come to the faith logically. This is the implication and it is false. As a result, for this kind of thinking, this false doctrine of sanctification which invaded the Church, sanctification as well as justification involved forsaking one wrong for the other. It meant spirituality. It meant spiritual exercises. And as a result, very early, paganism entered the Church.

The old pagan attar-gattis cult, which was really a form of Baal worship, very quickly became a part of the church. One of the foremost exponents of this old Baal worship, of the attar-gattis cult was the so-called saint Simeon Stylites, the pillared saint. You’ve read about him. He sat on a tall pillar (I think it was about 40ft. high), with a 3ft. platform on it and spent 37 years on that pillar. During the last 40 years of his life, he took no food at all during lent. He despised the flesh and when his flesh began to rot under his {?} and maggots infested it, he would pick up the maggots if they fell and place them back, ordering them to consume his wicked flesh. It is important to note, by the way, that the Church of the day condemned him; he was not a saint in their eyes, though he claimed to be a Christian, he was basically a pagan. His philosophy was a part of the pagan Hellenic asceticism that had infected the day. You had on the one hand, the cynics, who magnified the flesh and forsook the spirit and you had on the other hand, these people, the other extreme of Greek philosophy, who forsook the flesh for {?}.

But unfortunately, this kind of deo-platonic asceticism crept steadily into the Church. And as a result, we have then a long, dreary chronicle of horrors, of self-torture, of flagellation, of fasting, to wearing the {?} to mortify the flesh. Cases where ascetics are mocked and {?} rolled in rosebush fonds, in order to mortify the flesh, feeling that thereby they would become more spiritual. They treated the body as though it were a Satanic {?}. This was fully in line with Greek philosophy, but a weak body does not make for a strong mind.

The Reformation restated the doctrine of justification very faithfully: justification by faith. Luther, in his Romans, his lectures on Romans, also in his analysis of Romans 3:31, “…yea, we established the law.” “Do we make void the law … yea, rather, we establish the law,” also restated that the doctrine of sanctification was the law. The rule of sanctification, the rule of life is the law. Unfortunately, however, the medieval influence was strong at this point, and there are points in both Calvin and Luther where there are hints of the old medieval {?}. As a result, this doctrine of pagan sanctification tended to creep back into the Church.

Westminster Confession of Faith, one of the finest in Church History, in its chapter 13, entitled “Of Sanctification,” is excellent as far as it goes, but it’s very vague about defining the way of sanctification. When it speaks of the Law of God, it again introduces confusion. It speaks of the law as a rule of life informing believers of the will of God and their duty, but it also is faulty as to some of the details and leads to confusion. The Formula of Concord in 1576 spoke very clearly on this matter. The Formula of Concord was between Lutherans and the reformed believers, and in Article V, section II, they declared, “We believe, teach and confess that the law is properly a doctrine divinely revealed which teaches what is just and acceptable to God and which also denounces whatever is sinful and opposite to the divine will.” Then in Article VI the law is declared to be in its third purpose, “that regenerate men to all of whom nevertheless much of the flesh still {?}, of that very reason may have certain rules after which they may and ought to shape their lives. The law gives us a way of sanctification as against the impulse of self-devised devotion.” Now that phrase was very prominent. The law gives us the way of sanctification, as against the impulse of self-devised devotion.

By and large, unfortunately, Protestantism has bypassed the law as the way of sanctification except for Puritanism, in favor of the impulse of self-devised devotion. And the result has been a great deal of self-righteousness and Phariseeism. I’ve heard many, many pastors and read in many church periodicals that the way of sanctification, the way to be holy is to go to church twice every Sunday and to spend much time on your knees in prayer and much time going to midweek prayer meetings and this and that and the other things. And there are, by and large, in every church, a group of people much addicted to long-winded prayers and even boast of it. In fact, you can go to any evangelical book store and get manuals which tell you that you should spend a couple of hours a day in prayer and this is the way a true Christian should live and how much time you should spend in the House of God, as though you grew in holiness by means of this sort of thing.

Some few years ago, every {?} was ordained to the ministry received a little paperback book written by one of the most prominent evangelical ministers in the country (he is still active), which really made it clear that you were not really a Christian or a true minister of God (especially), unless you spent about three or four hours every morning in prayer. It was a marvelous means of getting practically every new minister a guilt conscience if he didn’t get up about 4 or 5 in the morning and pray for a few hours before breakfast. Unless he finally decided to chuck the whole rubbish, as many did and {?} well, the Bible doesn’t amount to much because it’s too unreasonable. But of course, this is not the scriptures.

And the Armenian and Holiness Churches have really gone to great exception—not only long-winded prayer (and you remember what our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount said about long prayers, “they think they shall be heard by their much speaking”). None of us enjoy, do we, having someone come to ask us a very simple thing which could be said in a sentence, or in 4 or 5 sentences, and then taking half an hour of our time with a long-winded, round-about statement. It’s a waste of our time. When we pray to God, or pray to the point—we don’t have to be long-winded.

But with the Armenian and Holiness Churches, it has not only led to emphasis on this sort of thing, but also on all kinds of emotional binges: rolling in the aisles, all kinds of hysterical manifestations which are called ‘speaking in tongues,’ (although they had been over and over again, faithful {?} and it’s been demonstrated that they are no language whatsoever but simply a hysterical repetition of one of these syllables). In fact, in most of your Holiness Churches, a great deal of self-righteousness develops over testimonies. I read recently the statement of one member of one Holiness Church in which he was quite upset. He thought he could make a better testimony than any of the young fellows who were testifying and he was mad because the preacher wouldn’t let him testify and he was a lot more holy than the others because he had bigger sins to confess. He had a long record of adulteries. And the reason why the preacher wouldn’t let him confess was that he had committed adultery with a woman preacher and the preacher didn’t want that brought up! But he was more sanctified than the rest of them because he had a better testimony.

Now this is the kind of blasphemy it amounts to when you have the impulse of self-devised devotion taking over. I could go on and tell you what goes on in some of these Holiness Churches but I’m not interested in getting pornographic. But it becomes very {?} as ever religion does when the impulse of self-devised devotion takes over. What it means is that man’s sin takes over and what becomes the way of sanctification becomes Satanic.

I found by and large when I was a pastor that I could spot the people who were trouble-makers in the church, because if there was a prayer meeting, they were the long-winded self-righteous ones. They were the sanctimonious ones who prided themselves on how much they came to every kind of meeting. And they might very often add that they never smoked or drank—but oh, how they could gossip! Self-devised devotions are Satanic. They lead to emotional binges which are closer to Baal worship and Baal worship in its extreme led to cutting and castrating oneself.

St. Paul, incidentally, refers to some of these people who have false ideas about justification and sanctification in Galatians 5:12 and he says, “I wish those who are unsettling you would also become eunuchs,” that they follow the process of Baal worshipers. The King James Version translates that a little delicately so sometimes you don’t entirely get the meaning.

But all kinds of errors abound when men seek a way of sanctification other than the Law of God. It’s very clear. We are saved through the grace of God which we receive by faith. We are sanctified through the Law of God which is summed up for us in the Ten Commandments. It’s that simple. And you grow in holiness in grace, not because you’re long-winded in praying, or good at getting up and giving testimony, but because you obey the Law of God faithfully. And the more you grow in your obedience to the law, the more you grow in your sanctification. This is why by and large, Protestant orthodoxy has become stale. If it does not go out into the holiness-type of thing, emotional binges, it gathers together people who are saved and have no means of growth because the law is not stressed as the means of growth, the way of sanctification.

In the church in which I was until recently a member, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, one of the problems in the past decade was the pennalism. What was pennalism? It was people who wanted to grow spiritually, wanted to grow and know sanctification, and they could not figure out any way except through emotional and spiritual exercises. And so they went in greatly for relying on the Holy Spirit which meant ultimately all kinds of self-devised spiritual exercises, which led to preposterous excesses. And very rightly, they had to be eliminated from the church. But there was no answer—because there was no emphasis on the law as the way of sanctification.

As a result, today Christians are bound by {?}. There’s no emphasis on the way of growth, the law. During the past few weeks, the Herald Examiner has been carrying a series of {?} Guidelines. I was interested in one statement because I used to know the man in question. He’s a very prominent doctor in Los Angeles. He used to be, formerly, in Berkley. This doctor became a Christian a few years ago; very honest, a vey superior, a very zealous man. He decided that he needed to grow spiritually, so he decided the way to do it was to follow the counsel of his spiritual superiors and to pray an hour every morning. And so while still in Berkley in 1942, he set his alarm one morning for 5:30 in order to spend an hour in prayer before he got up and had breakfast and went about his duties at the hospital. And he reported his experiences the first morning. “I fought my way out into the dark living room. I switched on a light, knelt down in front of the sofa and started to pray. I prayed for my family, friends, patients, the other doctors at the hospital, doctors at other hospitals, doctors who didn’t have hospitals, our country, our soldiers, the enemy, their soldiers, all the missionary families. At last, I looked at my watch. Only twenty minutes had gone by. I went back over the list in more detail, and at last, sixty minutes crawled past. I was exhausted. But week by week, God was not only becoming more real to me as I continued, He was becoming the meaning and all reality. And the hour that started out seeming so long, now became more and more precious. My whole life, in fact, was different and I knew the investment of time was paying off.” Well, we thought he had a real growth from that and he still does a good 18 years after.

But {?}. As long as I knew that doctor, he was a member of a church he should have left. He didn’t make a stand against what was going on in the church, or leave it. He was morally compromised because {?}. I was at that time a missionary on an Indian reservation in Nevada and I visited in the Bay area and several ministers I knew where appalled at his prayer group because by now he had a whole group of ministers and laymen and professional people getting together to pray. And I went to two or three of those meetings to give them a fair chance. And about the only thing they did was to upset me, because everyone whom I knew had grown indeed as a result of those meetings—in self-righteousness and in Phariseeism. They had a real glow about them, a sanctimonious glow rather than a sanctified growth. And I wanted no part of them. And the last one of them that I had contact with (reluctantly), I ordered out of my house finally as a liar and a man who was totally lawless.

The impulse of self-devised devotion is ultimately Satanic. It accomplishes nothing. God has given us the way: “Ye shall be holy for I am holy, saith the Lord.” And the law is God’s way of holiness. This is why it is given. Therefore, who wants to go {?}. It’s not proper for us to teach the impulse of self-devised devotion and to become long-winded in prayer, but to obey God’s Law. Prayer has its place. Prayer is talking to God. When we talk to God, we talk to Him naturally and freely.

One of the healthiest things in a person’s prayer life is to pray 20, 30 times during the day sentence prayers. Every time you have something that is upsetting you, ‘Lord give me patience to cope with this person,’ or ‘Lord, give me light so I can see my way through this problem.’ That is communication. But to get on your knees for an hour and to go over every doctor you know and every hospital, and all the soldiers you can think of, and just—all over the landscape about things you aren’t really concerned about but you feel it’s your duty to pray. That is not communication; that is the impulse of self-devised devotion. It’s precisely what our Lord condemned in the Pharisees: “They think they should be heard by their much speaking.”

In his Small Catechism, Luther said the law teaches us Christians which work we must do to lead a God-pleasing life. It’s that simple. The law is the way of holiness and sanctification. Next time you hear them, someone, saying that the law has no meaning for us as Christians, tell them then that they have forsaken the way of holiness, for they have. We have no right to substitute man-made ways for the God-ordained ways. Scripture makes it clear. This is the way. Walk ye in it. “Ye shall be holy for I the Lord, your God am holy.”

Let us pray.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee that Thou hast given us the way of holiness, the way of sanctification. We thank Thee that Thy Law not only is for our growth but for our joy, to maketh all {?} that {?} safe and wonderful place. Give us grace therefore to walk in the way of holiness and to reclaim men and nations for Thy Law unto the end that the kingdoms of this world might indeed become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Those churches are indeed successful in getting people out.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. They are not successful in making them of any value as far as God is concerned. I know churches that (I could cite some in the State of California, quite well-known), that have several thousand members and their prayer meeting will have 1500, 1800 out. And the members are very proud of themselves. In fact, some will have two and three, and four prayer meetings, and yet I can think of one church which is of that size in a very small city. You would think that many people who are dedicated to the law—if they were, which they are not—the whole community would be changed. But the whole community is as sick and rotten as it could be. And you can go to the church and find that there are people of flagrant lawlessness who are teaching Sunday school and holding office. So the churches are successful, but not in God’s sight.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Many of these testimonial meetings are extremely slick and they do draw crowds, precisely because it’s a good place to hear a lot of dirt.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, these testimonials are religiously wrong. What are they a testimonial to? Yourself, basically. And what are we to witness concerning? It is Christ. Oh, supposedly it’s what God has done for them, but there’s quite a sanctimonious glow about the place and basically what they are saying is how wonderful and superior they are. And in most of these churches, you’ll find there’s a kind of a hierarchy. Those who are good at getting up and testifying feel that they are a spiritual elite; something like an “amen choir.” They are the upper crust spiritually because they are so good at getting up and witnessing and testifying.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right, and you see, the Existentialists temper of the world, even among people who’ve never heard of the word is it leads to this kind of testimonial because it’s an emphasis on the individual and on the moment and on your feelings at the moment, and you have to feel all hopped up as it were in order to be saved. And this is why they Holiness Churches have to have continuous revivals, because if you’re not hopped up, you’ve lost your salvation, which is why the non-“Christian” Existentialist need psychotics to be hopped up. It’s basically the same thing—you have to be buoyed up by your feelings because your holiness, your salvation ultimately {?} from your self-devised devotion. This is Existentialism. So you have Existentialism in the Church.

Yes.

[Audience] Do you feel that … {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. But that’s not the only way to pray. Usually, in Old Testament times, the normal way of praying was {?}.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Sometimes, under stress of great emotion. There’s no position of prayer, just as there’s no position of communication. I may be flat on my back in the bed when I’m talking to Dorothy; I don’t feel I have to stand up on my feet or get down on my knees to talk to her. I talk to her in whatever is the normal and the {?} position at the time. Now prayer to God is communication.

Now in church it may be formalized because there it is corporate, just as in a group we do not talk unless we have permission to speak. Everyone doesn’t speak at the same time. So in church we formalize it. Therefore, in a church, there are proper positions. In some churches, standing in prayer, in others, kneeling, both very, very fine, but in our private communications just as with one another we do not formalize our way of speaking, so not with God; it’s informal, it’s direct, it’s personal.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Exactly. Our Lord was speaking against precisely the kind of thing that is going on now. The Pharisees were given to the same sort of thing that we have today in the churches.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. There are many who feel that their way of proving they’re a Christian is to spend a certain amount of time every day in devotional books or in reading the Bible. Now, we do need to read the Bible and people do not read it enough. But I have found that many of these people who read mechanically and hour or half an hour or two hours a day are amazingly ignorant of the Bible. They’re not reading it because they love it and are interested in it; they’re reading it because it’s a kind of spiritual exercise. And therefore, it’s a means to an end. They’re putting in time.

Now, the way to read the Bible is to read it because it is important to know about God and to read it systematically. Read it to learn. So whether you read it for 10 minutes or 20 or whatever time, read it to learn something, not because it’s a kind of a spiritual exercise that’s going to give you so many points with God. You might as well then follow the Catholic method and recite so many Hail Mary’s or something like that, because it amounts to the same thing with many of these people, and the thing that appalls me with the clergy is that so many of them do, according to their words, spend an hour or two hours reading the Bible every day and yet they’re really amazingly ignorant of it. They haven’t learned anything about doctrine. They haven’t learned anything about the law. They just read it because they feel it’s their duty to read it and it accomplishes nothing.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] In sanctification, both God and man are active. But in sanctification, it’s a question of are we growing or are we not. I believe that one of the evidences of a lack of justification is an unwillingness to grow in sanctification. And I feel that many of these people today who claim to be Christians in some of these churches are Baal worshipers, rather than worshipers of Christ.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. This is a good illustration how foot-washing does prevail among certain churches and they are…. I have a great deal of respect for some of these groups. But I have also over the years known a couple of the pastors in these foot-washing churches and I do know that they have a great deal of problem with morality—just plain ordinary morality, and one of them finally left that particular church which was, for several centuries the foot-washing church, because, he said, I looked around and I realized that I was having more shotgun weddings out of my own congregation than some of these churches that we were looking down on all around us. And said I suddenly realized there was something wrong with this. And he said we were doing things by rote. And foot-washing was a sign and symbol of something, and we were interested only in the outward rite, not in the meaning of it. And of course, for them, the law was nothing. And this was one of the reasons they had fallen.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, in those days, because people wore, in Palestine, sandals as foot gear, the roads were dusty. There were very few paved roads. The Romans were great road-builders but especially in Palestine, most roads were dirt roads. When you arrived at a house, your feet were hot, dusty and {?} and it was the custom to have a servant come forward immediately with a basin of water and a towel to wash every guest’s feet. It was cool and refreshing. Now, when the disciples got together in the Upper Room, it was just our Lord and the twelve disciples; thus, there was no one to do it, there was no servant there. Had they gone into the home of one of the members of the twelve, and some of the members were very wealthy people. James and John, Peter, came from wealthy fishing families, who had fishing fleets on Galilee. There would have been someone to do it. And here, that they all sat, figuring, well somebody ought to do it, we’ve walked in from Bethany and downright uncomfortable, but I’m not going to do it, I’m above this sort of thing. And so our Lord did it, to teach them a lesson.

Now simply to repeat that kind of ritual is meaningless. I know in the medieval period it was quite often repeated and in some countries, the kind did it. They did it to a number of beggars, or people brought in from the street. And of course they made clear that they were all cleaned up first, so the job wouldn’t be too unpleasant for the king. So here is something to show the humility of the king, of the Christian leader of the people, but it was really a means of boasting, and everything was insured against being unpleasant for him, because he certainly didn’t want to wash the dirty feet of the beggars. Ah, what meaning is there in such a service you see? It’s been turned into something really blasphemous in some cases.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] “Pray without ceasing” means pray continually, incessantly, it means that we are continually in communication with God. So that, the kind of thing I referred to, sentence prayers, in other words, your mind is always open to God. If you’re working alongside someone all day long, you’re continually chatting with them as you work. Supposing two women are working in a kitchen. They’re continually chattering and keeping one another informed as they go along and discussing various things. There may be silences from time to time, but there’s a continual communication. So it is with God, {?} working under Him and with Him. Therefore, we keep our mind continually open to Him and share every problem with Him. If you misplace something, just say, ‘Lord, help me to locate this thing I’ve misplaced.’ You see what I mean? This is praying without ceasing. Or if you have a problem, every time it begins to fret us, we bring it up in prayer to God—just a sentence. This is praying without ceasing, continually being in communication with God.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] {?}

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] A very good point. Our children are in communication with us not only by their speech but by their obedience. If they refuse to obey us, they have broken off communication, no matter how much they may try to talk; so that our communication with God involves obedience to Him. Otherwise, God has no desire to hear us.

{?} tends to simply close the door on their children. They made it clear to them, you’ve gone your own way, you’ve made your own bed, you’ve made your own marriage or your own life, we want no part of you, you’ve at every point defied us and disobeyed us. Now, the child may want to continue talking on their terms, but there is nothing to talk about. All they’re trying to do is to milk the parents and yet disobey them and show contempt for them at every turn. Communication has been broken by their disobedience.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The Holy Spirit is at work and we are told that He prays within us also with groanings that cannot be uttered, when we are in deep distress.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I do believe that it is in some sense, blasphemy, yes. Now whether it’s a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, I’m not prepared to say, but it is blasphemous.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, they have become Humanistic. They have become Humanistic and therefore {?} Jesus as the second person of the Trinity, with Jesus as a kind of a divine man who’s going to rescue us all and take us out of our problems that they’re interested in, not as the conqueror, who will enable us to triumph.

Yes, one last question.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Can this what?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No. We are, as Christians, to place ourselves under the care and protection of God and as we walk closely with Him and under Him by obeying His Law and invoking His protection, we are progressively blessed and we do know his protecting care. And we are told , “for He hath said I will never leave thee nor forsake thee, so that we may boldly say the Lord is my helper. I shall not fear what man may do unto me.” That’s in Hebrews 13:5… 4 and 5 I believe. Now, we are to place ourselves under God’s care and protection. We are to realize that He is very near—closer to us than we are to ourselves. But we are also to remember that the way that we become close to Him is by obedience.

Well, our time is up. And next week we shall continue our studies in the Ninth Commandment and the meaning of sanctification and the law.