Law in the Old Testament

The Law and the Covenant

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Lesson: The Law and the Covenant

Genre: Speech

Track: 128

Dictation Name: RR130BS128

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture is Isaiah 24:1-6. The Law and the Covenant. Isaiah 24:1-6. “Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him. The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word. The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away, the haughty people of the earth do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.”

Scripture is one word, and as that one word is given age after age, we see it in terms of the incidents in the history of Israel, its crises, the coming of the Messiah, the hatred of him, his death, and his resurrection, the work of the early church. All though this there is one unchanging word, but that word is revealed afresh through all these episodes, through all these events, so we understand it more fully, more plainly. We see it from the perspective of its various manifestations.

So, too, in our lives. When we are regenerated, we are made new creatures in Christ, but through the years, as we experience many things, trials, temptations, testings, sorrows, and joys, our awareness of the meaning of regeneration grows. We see people fall away, and people we never expected to stand, make a stand and grow, and again our awareness of that one word deepens. Scripture is one word, and that one word, like a diamond with many facets, is revealed to us through the centuries, so that we might better understand the wholeness of that word which is given to us in all its fullness in scripture. Thus, there can be no dispensational changing of God’s purpose, or plan. Thus, we do not have an age which is given to law and another to grace. God’s dealings remain the same.

This comes out clearly when we analyze relationship of the law and the covenant in the prophets. The prophet Isaiah, for example, indicted Judah and Jerusalem in the name of God as a law-breaker. The book of the prophet Isaiah begins with an indictment. In the tenth verse of the first chapter we read, “Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom. Give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.” Hard language to use concerning Judah and Jerusalem, but used by God, and they are told that the curse of the law shall descend upon them because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despise the word of the holy one of Israel, Isaiah 5:24, but this is not all. [

After the early chapters where we have the bill of indictment drawn up and read to Judah and Jerusalem, then we have an indictment against all the great nations of Antiquity by name, and then against the world in general. The great nations are indicted in Isaiah 13-23. All the world’s sin, we are told, will be severely judged by God the King, according to Isaiah 24-27. We are told that the judgment on Judah and Jerusalem will be so radical that only a tithe, that is, a tenth, shall return. This tenth then shall also be eaten or consumed until only a holy seed shall remain, according to Isaiah 6:13. The judgment on the other nations shall be even more radical. Isaiah 24:1-6, in particular, gives us a telling statement of this radical judgment upon the entire world of Isaiah’s day. “Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste and turneth it upside down and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.” Moreover, we are told in verse 3, “The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word.”

We have therefore, a declaration of radical judgment upon all the nations of the ancient world. Those nations indeed were judged. Nations that were so great and so powerful that their disappearance from history seemed impossible to believe, disappeared. Ancient conquerors walked over their ruins and were unaware that great empires were under their feet. Historians doubted that some of these great empires even existed until the archeologist’s spade dug them up and corroborated the word of God.

The reason for this radical judgment is stated in verse 5. “The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof.” The earth, the whole world. This comes after the judgment on the specific nations of the ancient world. Then, as it looks out to the other nations whom Isaiah has not named by name, judgment is simply declared on the earth as such, because it is defiled under the inhabitants thereof, “because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.” Now, this verse is one of most important in the Bible in understanding the nature of God’s law and covenant. Some generations ago, one of the greatest biblical scholars ever to live in the Unites States, Dr. J.A. Alexander, in commenting on this passages, said that all three terms, “laws, ordinance, or statute, and covenant” are equivalent terms. Different terms for the same thing, or different sidelights on the same fact.

The implications of this are enormous. It means very clearly that God’s law and God’s covenant is not with Israel alone. True. In a very special sense, Israel was called out and God made a covenant with them, or renewed a covenant with them, made earlier with Abraham, but the covenant with Abraham that called him out was God’s original covenant with Adam, with Noah, with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. There are only two kinds of people in the world therefore. Covenant keepers and covenant breakers. Israel was called out to be covenant keepers, but all the world is tied, the law to the ordinance, to the covenant of God. We cannot understand God’s dealings in Antiquity, as recorded in scripture and throughout all history unless we grasp this fact. All men and all nations are tied to the covenant of God, to the law of God, whether as keepers or breakers. It is called by Isaiah the everlasting covenant. It is everlasting with all men. Hence, there is judgment on all men. Hence, all men, whether they are the Lord’s elect group or those within the covenant, or not, are punished. Hell is not reserved only for the covenant members who fall away. All men are circumscribed by the everlasting covenant. Law and covenant are used synonymously in all the Bible. There are differences between the two words, but they are interrelated. Man is tied to God on God’s terms. Because the ungodly refuse to recognize the covenant of God does not change the fact that they are inescapably tied to it. Because they treat the law of Moses as ancient nonsense, it does not change the fact that they shall be judged by it. The earth is defiled under the inhabitants thereof. Because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant, “therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.”

Now, this point is of critical importance. The curse that is spoken of here is the curse of the law; Deuteronomy 27 and 28. Those chapters do not deal exclusively with Israel. They deal with all men and all nations. They were spoken to Israel, but they cover every man. All men are either covenant keepers or covenant breakers and they are either blessed or cursed in relationship to the covenant of our God.

As we go through the other prophets, we find a similar situation. Jeremiah gives us a judgment on Judah, but again, on the foreign powers in chapters 47-51. Judgment is pronounced against Babylon, for example, in chapter 50:14, “For she hath sinned against the Lord.” Then, Jeremiah proceeds to declare the reverse of the Golden Rule. It is interesting that liberals are always citing the Golden Rule as a standard to live by, but they never give us the reverse of it, which we meet with repeatedly in scripture. Obadiah gives is very emphatically in Jeremiah. Instead of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” God says, “Take vengeance upon her,” as she hath done, do unto her. Jeremiah 50:15, in verse 29, “According to all that she hath done, do unto her.” Against Moab, Jeremiah declares that the word of the Lord is, “Curseth be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.” Jeremiah 49:10. The curses of Deuteronomy 27-28 are pronounced against all the nations. This is the vengeance of the Lord, the vengeance of his temple. Again, in Ezekiel, we have judgment declared upon all of the nations in chapters 25-32, as well as elsewhere. In Daniel, the four great empires are judged, all the prophets in {?} stress the judgment of all nations, because all men and all nations are inescapably tied to God and his covenant, his law.

St. Paul sums up this aspect of scripture in Hebrews 12:18-29. He declares that when Israel came to the mountain and they saw the mountain shake, and the lightening and the fire, it was an awe-inspiring sight, but he said the contrast between Mt. Sinai and Christ is between the lesser and the greater, and therefore, obedience to the greater is all the more mandatory and disobedience all the worse, for our God is a consuming fire. The covenant is an everlasting covenant. All men are in it, either as covenant keepers or covenant breakers, and there can be no covenant without law, nor any law in God’s sight without a covenant. The two are inseparable. The covenant and the law go together.

Thus, every renewing of the covenant was a renewing of the law, and when Christ renewed the covenant, he renewed the law of the covenant. The covenant is always a covenant of grace to the redeemed. It is a covenant of death or curses to his enemies. In Isaiah 28:14-18, we read, “Wherefore hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem. Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves: therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.”

The covenant with death and hell is the assumption that God’s covenant and God’s law are not operative. Therefore, men say that we will make a covenant with death and hell. We shall make lies our refuge. Men doubting God, rejected the world of law, the world of grace, the world of causality, the world of providence. They declare that, instead of God governing the world, redeeming man by his grace and placing man under his law word to walk therein, the world was a meaningless world, and man should walk pragmatically. They were saying, Isaiah says, what Nietzsche more recently has said, that a lie may be the most useful thing a man can make use of, because in a world without God, there is no meaning, there is no law, there is no truth, and man therefore, must walk pragmatically. The world is neutral. It does not favor the truth, nor does it favor a lie, and so what Isaiah calls a covenant with death and with hell, means that man has made a covenant, as it were, with ultimate meaninglessness. He says because the world has no real meaning, man is just alone in the universe, therefore, nothing has meaning and I can do as I please. I move in a neutral world, but God declares in this same passage, of verse 22 or Isaiah 28, “Now therefore, scoff no more lest your bondage be aggravated, of a determined annihilation upon the whole earth have I heard from the Lord of Hosts.” There is no escape from God, no escape from meaning. Man inescapably lives in God’s universe, God’s covenant, God’s law, govern all things, and god purposes to overthrow all who seek to overthrow God and his covenant. Ezekiel said, “I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more until he comes whose right it is, and I will give it him.”

This process of overturning of all covenant breakers, of all nations, has as its purpose, Ezekiel said, and this is the verse that is the theme verse of Ezekiel that occurs again and again and again, “And ye shall know that I am the Lord God.”

Thus, the prophets reveal to us that law is the revelation of God and his righteousness, that no revelation is possible without law. For the say that God has no law would mean to say that God has no nature, no person of defined and totally self-conscience purpose, nature, or being. There is no essence, no meaning in God. Then, no knowledge of God would be possible if the idea of law is rejected. This is what has happened in our day. Bartianism has rejected the idea that there is a law of God. It is denied that there is any law any longer as far as God is concerned. Therefore, it rejects the idea of any determined nature of God, and it speaks of the freedom of God. Now, when Karl Bart speaks of the freedom of God, what he means is that God is free from any law in himself. Today, God may say, “Thou shalt not kill, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, or covet,” but this does not mean that God will say the same thing tomorrow. God cannot be defined by saying, “This is the righteousness of God that we meet with in the Ten Commandments. This is the righteousness of God, his grace revealed to us through Jesus Christ.” No, God cannot be so defined. God is free from any nature. So today, God may play around with saying, “Here are the Ten Commandments. Try it on for size, and tomorrow we may take the exact reverse of the Ten Commandments, and say, Let’s play around with this for awhile.” God is not definable.

This is why, because of Bart’s antinomianism, that modern antinomian evangelicalism has gone overboard for Bartianism. Thus, Billy Graham recently was cited as declaring, and this was in a recent issue of Harper’s, that the greatest theological mind of the twentieth century was Karl Bart. A few years ago, Eternity magazine, again, had a glowing article on Karl Bart, {?} Fuller Seminary, and it is Karl Bart, who again is held aloft as the great mind of this century, a great guide for evangelicals, and the essence of Bart’s position was this declaration of a freedom of God from any law, any righteousness that is definable. Such a God cannot be known. Today, he may be, or yesterday he may have been the God we know in the Bible. Today he may be what we’ve always thought the Devil was, and this is why, in evangelical circles, there is a radical disintegration. This is why, as the next step in the development of this kind of thinking, men like Hamilton and others, of the Death of God School said, “Well, since this God has no nature and he can never be known, how do we even know he is alive?” So the logical step has been the Death of God School of Theology. An unknowable God, and then a non-existent God, but the God of scripture is a God of law and a God of grace, a God who fully defines himself and declares, “I amt he Lord. I change not.” He is a God who binds all men to his covenant, and when men and nations depart there from, he declares that the earth is defiled under the inhabitant thereof. The very ground is defiled by covenant breakers. Therefore, hath the curse devoured the earth because they have transgressed the law, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant, but we, who by the grace of God, have been called into newness of life and made members of the new creation, we have been reinstated and that purpose to which Adam was called, to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth under God in terms of his covenant and his law, and in terms of this, when by faith and obedience we serve him, the blessings and the prosperity of the law are promised to nations and to the peopled thereof. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that, by thy grace manifested unto us in Jesus Christ, thou hast reinstated us as covenant keepers and given us grace to keep thy law. Prosper us, O Lord, in thy service. Give us zeal in obeying thee and serving thee, in magnifying thy holy name, that we may ever rejoice in thy blessings, and see the land again restored unto thy law word, and thy kingship. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name. Amen.

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

[Audience] Would you say that the wide acceptance of Bart’s philosophy was in itself a punishment upon the nations, and {?}

[Rushdoony] A very good point. Yes. The question was, is the wide acceptance of Bart’s philosophy a form of punishment upon the nations? It definitely is, because by accepting Bart, what has happened is this. The anarchism of our day has been radically furthered. It was, in the last days of World War 1, that Bart began to write. By the beginning of the twenties, he became the most powerful influence in the churches of Europe and America, and by the thirties, on the churches outside of Europe, all over the world. The consequence of this influence we see today in the radical breakdown of the churches. Karl Bart today is a power (he passed away recently), not only in the modernist churches, but in the so-called evangelical churches, the most single, decisive influence, and a very real judgment upon them. Yes?

[Audience] Is it reasonable to {?}

[Rushdoony] Israel, in the day of our Lord, was brought under the worst curse of all history, because the Fall of Jerusalem and Judea in the Jewish/Roman was of 66-70 A.D., was and still is the most fearful disaster in all history. There has never, in all history, been a war and a disaster as radical as that war. Now, today, they are still no under the blessing of God, but neither are any of the nations, because they have all forsaken and abandoned him. So, we’ve all placed ourselves on the same level. We’ve all become Judas nations.

[Audience] However, we’re not condemned totally because of God’s grace.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Calvin once said that if God had not preserved mankind after the Fall, the whole would have collapsed into anarchy, but God never allows the implications of the Fall to develop to their full extent, but of course, this is what we are trying to do today. The implications of the Fall are that every man is his own god, determining for himself what is right and wrong. This means total anarchy. Every man at war with all other men. This is exactly what Existentialist philosophy today is pushing the world towards, and it’s only the grace of God that we do not wind up in that total anarchism. Yes?

[Audience] Jeremiah 31 transfers{?} 31 through 33, {?} The Lord says I will put my law in your inmost parts.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. This has reference, this is the promise of Christ and his renewing of the covenant, that with Christ, the covenant now would no longer be with a nation or a people, but with individuals. Out of many people comes tribes and nations who, through an inward calling rather than a national calling, would be gathered out of the people to become God’s people.

[Audience] In the time,{?} the king was a {?} and now, we have {?} of the elect. Now, {?} Christians {?} but {?} the elect {?}

[Rushdoony] The significance is not in the form of government, but whether that government maintains God’s covenant and God’s law order. In other words, it can vary, the form of the government, but what cannot vary without the judgment of God, is the covenant with God. Yes?

[Audience] I didn’t quite understand your last {?} where you said {?} no longer a curse on them?

[Rushdoony] No. As long as any individual is apart from God’s covenant and is a covenant breaker, he is punished. So that if one generation is alien to God and his covenant, covenant breakers, they are punished, but their grandchildren, if they are covenant breakers, are also punished. What my point was, of course, they are outside the covenant now. They are covenant breakers, not covenant keepers. So, they have continued in their unbelief, but today, all the nations have become Judas nations, covenant breakers. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, very definitely. At the time of the founding of our country, the entire purpose was to further the covenant of God in the oath of office, which the Constitution specifies. At that time, meant only an oath in terms of the Bible with the Bible open to Deuteronomy 28. So it was religiously conceived. That was the only thing an oath meant then, and this was emphatically regarded as basic, because at that time, the biblical law was the common law of the land. Yes?

[Audience] {?} the Jew had {?} Christ as a man, and therefore, {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, it all depends on how she meant Jew. If she meant she continued in Judaism, no. But if she meant she was Jewish in her nationalistic allegiance, yes.

[Audience] {?} Son of God {?} man {?}

[Rushdoony] I would have to see the statement, because you see, if she meant the Son of Man, that meant the Son of God. That’s difficult for us to understand, but the Son of Man in Old Testament prophesy definitely meant the divine one from heaven, and our Lord always spoke of himself as the Son of Man, which certainly didn’t set well with the Pharisees. They accused him of making himself to be one with God. Yes?

[Audience] {?} at the same time, {?}. I was wondering {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. That’s a very debatable point, quite the liberator’s been popular for a century. The abolitionists were the first ones to revive that, to use the image of Christ as a revolutionist. Now, the idea of a liberator is alright, but the connotations they give it, they’re taking it out of revolutionary terminology, and is usually been used by revolutionists. Now, the fish was used because the Greek word for fish in the early church was, the letters of it were an anagram, represented Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. However, because the fish had a symbolism in some pagan cults as well, it was both a cover-up and it was a dangerous thing to use. After awhile it was abandoned. So it was a two-edged symbol. I think it is preferable to eliminate it, because while it did have its usefulness in that the fish symbol was a convenient disguise when the church was in the catacombs, and a secret organization, and they could take it and make it mean something else. It can also be misinterpreted, and does have pagan origins.

[Audience] {?} Christian group {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, I can illustrate this fish symbolism by saying let us suppose we were a group in the Soviet Union, meeting say, in a rural commune as a communist organized group, and we used the red star, and the hammer and sickle to cover up the fact that we were a Christian group meeting secretly, you see. Now, you can excuse it in a situation like that and you can say it is absolutely a necessity for survival, but when you take that out of that context, and you continue the symbol, then it’s a different thing. So, the symbol in the early church was an excellent cover-up, but it no longer has that significance for us. So, we don’t need it.

Our time is just about up and there’s something I’d like to pass on to you, because it is of interest in view of the fact that yesterday was Halloween. This is from Alfred M. Rehwinkel’s book, The Flood, and I’d like to read a somewhat extended passage, because it does make clear what Halloween is.

“There is another tradition found with many peoples in widely separated areas in both ancient and modern times, which bears witness to the historical fact of the flood. Even to the extent of pointing to the season of the year in which this fearful cataclysm destroyed the human race. That season is the festival of the new year, observed as the disappearance of the Pleiades at the end of October, or the beginning of November. Erkohart{?}, who reports these traditions says that a new year festival connected with and determined by the Pleiades seems to be one of the most universal of all customs. It is not only the fact that new year’s day was observed by so many peoples at about the same time, which makes this significant, but that the observance of this event was always connected with the memory of the dead, or was observed as a feast of the ancestors.

The natives of Australia, for example, observed this day at about the season mentioned. On this occasion, they painted a white stripe over their arms, legs, and ribs, and dancing by the light of the fire, appear like so many skeletons celebrating. The same custom is found among the savages of the society islands, where the closing of the old and the opening of the new year were always celebrated about November. At the conclusion of this celebration, each man returning to his hut was expected to offer a special prayer for the spirit of the departed relatives. In the Figi Islands, a commemoration of the dead takes place toward the end of October, and Peru, the new year came at the beginning of November, and was called Ionarka{?}, which signified the carrying of a corpse. The festival was celebrated in memory of the dead, and was observed with songs and music, and by placing food and drink upon the graves of the dead. The Hebrews celebrated their Durga{?}, a festival of the dead, which originally was their new year’s day, and was observed on the 17th of November. The Persians called November Mordat{?}. That is, the angel of the dead, which took place at the same time as Peru, and was considered new year’s festival, or the ancient Druids, the night of the first of November in which they annually celebrated the reconstruction of the world was full of mystery. According to a custom connected with this event, the priestesses were obliged at this time to pull down and rebuild each year the roof of their temple as a symbol of the destruction and renovation of the world. If one of them, in bringing the material for the new roof, let fall her sacred burden, she was seized by her enraged companions and torn to pieces. On this same night, the Druids extinguished the sacred fire which was kept burning throughout the rest of the year, and at the signal, all the fires in the community were put out, and it was believed that in the complete darkness that followed throughout the land, the phantom spirits of those who had died during the proceeding year were then carries by boats, the judgment seat of the god of the dead.

A relic of this festival has survived in our present Halloween, hallow eve. On the last day of October, on All Saints and All Soul’s Day on the first and second of November. In former years, the relics were even more numerous. In the Halloween torches of the Irish and the bonfires of the Scotch and Welsh, while in France, it was customary to visit the cemeteries and graves of their ancestors at this time. The Mexicans, to this day, observe a day of the dead in much the same way and at the same time. They still place food and drink upon the graves of the departed ancestors as modern travelers in that country have observed. In ancient Egypt, and so on, he gives a great deal more on this.

But now it must be admitted that the origin of these strange traditions is not as clearly traced as the flood traditions, and yet there seems to be a connection between these strange events and that great event in the history of the human race. The date of the festival corresponds to the date of the flood, if, as some hold, the year began in the fall of the year. There are others who question this. All these traditions have in common the remembrance of the dead which seems to point to a major calamity of the human race. Then, there are echoes of a perishing world and the rebuilding of another. Customs and traditions found so widely scattered and with so many people, must have their origin in some great experience in the past history of man. There is no common experience of the human race which so well accounts for these strange customs and traditions as the flood, and we may therefore well agree with Erkohart{?} who, in concluding his remarks on these traditions said, ‘Here, the traditions not only unite in bearing down to our time, that awful cry of anguish which once shook earth and sky, but also fix upon the very month and the very day which the scriptures have recorded.’”

So, he continues and points out the evidences that point to the flood at the end of October, and to the common belief all over the world in the flood, and the celebration of the dead who died in the flood at that time. The fact that the spirits of the dead who are connected with that event, and with Halloween are assumed to be evil spirits, also ties in with the traditions of people that it was a world of evil men who died with the flood. This book which came out in the fifties is now available also in a paperback. It is well worth getting and reading, because it does deal more with the traditions and evidences in the various cultures, although it does go into geology to a degree. Yes?

[Audience] What was the title again?

[Rushdoony] The title is simply The Flood, by Alfred M. Rehwinkel.

[Audience] {?} the Genesis Flood?

[Rushdoony] No. Genesis Flood is by Whitcomb and Morris.

[Audience] Published by Concordia.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Published by Concordia and now available in a paperback. You should be able to order this from almost any Bible bookstore. Let us bow our heads now for the benediction.

And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape