IBL13: Law in the New Testament

The Kingdom of God

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 5

Track: 133

Dictation Name: RR130BV133

Date: 1960s-1970s

Our scripture is Luke 16:14-18, “The Kingdom of God.” Luke 16:14-18,

“14And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things: and they derided him.

15 And he said unto them, ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.

16 The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.

17 And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.

18 Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.”

In this passage, we come to a very flat statement by our Lord. In verse 17 He says it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away then for one tittle of the law to fail. A stronger statement is hardly imaginable. The force of that verse can in no wise be diminished. Let us examine the context.

He had been attacking the Pharisees for their misinterpretation of the law, for their destruction of the law, their supplanting of it with the traditions of men. In the previous verse, He says the law and the prophets were until John. The ‘were’ there, as you will notice, in your King James Version, is italicized to indicate that it has been supplied. It is understood. “Since that time the kingdom of God is preached and every man presseth into it.” Now that can be rendered, ‘til John, we had law and prophets. Since that time, the kingdom of God is preached. The force of it is a little difficult to convey into English. The meaning is, up until a particular time, the preaching was from the law and the prophets. Now the kingdom of God is preached, is declared in my person. The force here therefore, is in terms of the change, not in the law and the prophets, but of the preachers. Up until now the law and the prophets were preached by their representatives the prophets, the interpreters of the law, John the Baptist, the last of the prophets. Now the kingdom of God, that is in the person of myself, God incarnate. And everyone is energetically pressing into it.

{?} Linsky renders the last call, ‘everyone.’ That phrase has reference not to just everyone ‘round about, but it refers to the goyim, the Gentiles, all nations, all people. So our Lord declares, up until now we’ve had one type of preaching. Now the preaching has changed. I am here as king to proclaim the kingdom of God. And everyone is continuously going to be pressing into it. Those who press into the kingdom are not the leaders of the people; they are the ones being criticized. They are the common people, but they are also the peoples of all the world. All nations are now welcome and all nations shall have a place therein. The kingdom of God is preached.

The expression, ‘kingdom of God’ and ‘kingdom of Heaven’ both appear in the gospels. There are some people who make a difference between these two expressions. The pre-millennial dispensationalists have all kinds of interpretations as to the difference in the meaning. The reality is, there is no difference. The expression ‘kingdom of Heaven’ appears primarily in Matthew. ‘Kingdom of God’ almost exclusively is used by Luke. But ‘kingdom of Heaven’ is mostly the usage of Matthew. Why? The reason for this is that the Hebrews were very much afraid of blasphemy, taking the name of the Lord in vain. As a result, they leaned over backward to avoid saying, well, we’ll never pronounce the name of the Lord. As a result, the name of the Lord was never used by the Hebrews. They avoided it. As a result, we really don’t know how it is pronounced to this day. The translators, English translators of the Bible have rendered it as Jehovah. Some modernist translators say it is Yahweh. All they really know are the consonants. They don’t know the vowels in the name of the Lord because even those were left out.

This was the kind of rather literalistic and almost superstitious obedience to the law that was often rendered. The law was on the one hand set aside, or then followed in a rather slavish and meaningless fashion. As a result, since Matthew’s gospel was the one that was written for Israel in particular, it avoids the use of kingdom of Jehovah or of God, whereas Luke, for example, because he was writing in response to the inquiry of a Roman official and for the world of the Roman Empire did not hesitate to use the kingdom of God. To have so used it for readers who were Jewish would have meant immediately that they would have put the book down. This was the absurdity of their position.

Thus, the terms ‘kingdom of Heaven’ and ‘kingdom of God’ are identical. Now what does it mean? The term kingdom can also be translated as ‘rule.’ And some translators have so rendered it, the rule of God, the realm of God. Now, rule also implies law. So that when we speak of the kingdom of God we speak of an area in which God is the ruler and the law-giver. So that the kingdom of God to be preached, as our Lord said, the kingdom of God is now preached, I am here as the king to declare the law, to enforce the law. And so summon the people of grace within the protection of my law realm.

He then proceeded to declare as the king, it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fail. This was a proclamation of God’s sovereignty. God is sovereign, absolute Lord. There are no chinks in God’s kingdom. No corners of the universe where He does not rule, no place where we can go into a closet and say, ‘now I’m outside the kingdom of God, outside His law, outside His government.’ That’s an impossibility. Therefore, not one jot, not one tittle of the law can fail. It applies absolutely everywhere.

We have seen that the scribes and Pharisees supplanted the law of God with the traditions of men. They claimed to be the interpreters of the law and faithful to the law, but they had destroyed the law. Our Lord then puts His finger on one such destruction. The law of divorce was very carefully spelled out in the Old Testament. There was no mistaking its meaning. And yet, the scribes and Pharisees had altered it drastically so that a man could, to use the expression that our Lord echoed, put away his wife, summarily. The expression means at will. They did this. First of all, they reserved the right of divorce to the man. Second, they said that the man had absolute lordship so that, it seem preposterous, but their law actually stated that if the wife over salted the food or served it too hot so that the husband burned his tongue on it, or if he saw someone more attractive, he could say get out, I’m putting you away. They not only did this, which was bad enough, but they did this in the name of God as supposedly a valid interpretation of the law.

So our Lord, having declared that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fail, went on immediately and said, “Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.” This does not have reference to the Law of Moses; the putting away is the expression that has reference to the human traditions of Israel. He wiped out with one sentence, all their man-made traditions and said, you claim to be so righteous; you are with your human traditions, guilty of adultery and guilty of teaching adulterers.

Thus, our Lord made clear that the kingdom of God had indeed come. All men were pressing into it. We do know from the gospel record that Greeks and foreigners, and there is an authentic report which comes from ancient Church and Talmudic sources that people came from as far as China during our Lord’s ministry to hear Him. All people were pressing into it, and they were not for the religious leaders.

And our Lord immediately follows in verses 19-31 with the parable (if it is a parable) of a certain rich man which was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day, and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus. Now, this is a very interesting fact. This story of Lazarus and the rich man; it is an emphatic condemnation of the religious leaders. And our Lord declares that if they hear not Moses and the prophet, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead (as He was about to do before too long). The interesting thing about this story is that nowhere else in the gospels does our Lord in telling a parable ever give the name of any person in the parable. In the parables, it’s always a certain man, a certain king, a certain housewife; never a name, except here. And scholars through the years have from the early days wondered, did our Lord cite a particular person and a particular case that involved a religious leader to make clear their condemnation? Be that as it may, what He does bring home is that the Pharisees, the religious leaders have rejected Christ and the law and the grace of God for human tradition, for Humanism. And His illustration makes that clear.

By saying they have set aside the grace of God and the Law of God for their tradition as the way of salvation, they have made themselves in effect gods. And in their divorce practices, they acted it. They said in effect, we shall not be governed by the Law of God, although we shall use the pretext of God’s Law, but we are the lords of creation, the gods of creation. Could they make their own claim, their Humanistic claims to be god more emphatic than by saying, if my wife doesn’t please me and I see a more attractive one I can get rid of her? Or if she serves the food too hot or over-salted I can get rid of her? In other words, I cannot in any wise be crossed; I am god. They were proclaiming the kingdom of man and themselves as the only men.

But the believers, accepting the grace of God through Jesus Christ, pressed into the kingdom, obeyed His Law and are protected by His Law.

In Matthew 11:22-24, our Lord denounced the cities of Israel for rejecting Him. And He said to them that Sodom and Tyre would fare better on Judgment Day than the cities of Jerusalem, where Phariseeism was enthroned, cities that were centers of Phariseeism.

Now, the Pharisees spoke of their tradition, their Talmudic regulations of ‘the yoke of the law.’ In that passage, our Lord declared that His yoke was easy, His burden was light, that man’s law is an imposition, an alien thing, a burdensome thing to man. But God’s Law is easy because it conforms to man’s created nature. Sin is an alien thing to man. It is a cancer, a disease on the nature of man. Man is a sinner; fallen, depraved. But that sin represents a cancer, a disease, because man was created wholly good. And therefore, the yoke of the law is easy and the burden of the law is light to man, because Christ’s rule is the natural thing for man, it is that for which he was created in the beginning. Just as health is easier to live with than a fatal sickness, so the grace of God and the Law of God are the natural conditions of man and when men are in sin, when they reject the grace and the Law of God, then it is that life is hard for them.

Thus it is that the Pharisees, having set aside the Law of God, and having replaced the Law and the grace of God with human traditions as the way of salvation, had replaced what they said was too hard with what, as the apostles declared, was an unbearable yoke, the unbearable yoke of human tradition which made the Law of God of none effect.

As Dr. Geerhardus Vos of a generation or two ago said, speaking of these words of our Lord, “In His teaching, the kingdom once more becomes the kingdom of grace as well as of law, and thus the balance so beautifully preserved in the Old Testament is restored.”

The kingdom of God is preached and every man presses into it. This then is the heart of the gospel, the proclamation of the king, Jesus Christ, His saving grace and His rule, His Law. And it is for this that we are to pray. The model prayer which our Lord taught us, is the only prayer in which we pray without concluding, ‘in Jesus’ name,” because our access to God the Father is always through Jesus Christ and therefore we pray in His name, in Jesus’ name, in the name of our Lord, but by invoking Him who is our mediator. But in the Lord’s Prayer, we pray the very words of the Son, His prayer. Since we pray in Him and in His words, the Lord’s Prayer does not have ‘in Jesus’ name,’ or “in the Lord’s name,’ or ‘in His name’ as a conclusion. And what our Lord prayed for and summoned us to pray for was Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. The king has come and He summons us to pray that His kingdom, His rule, His law order, His saving grace prevail from pole to pole, and to acknowledge that even as men are lawless, they are still not out of His kingdom, for they are under His judgment, and in the battlefield of history and of nations, they are judged weighed in the balances and found wanting and sentenced. And so the prayer concludes, “For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.” Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father, indeed Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. And we pray, our Father, that that kingdom may come, in our hearts, in our midst, in our nation, in our world, that Thy grace may prevail, converting men, women and children unto Thee, summoning them into Thy law order, Thy rule, Thy kingdom, that again, according to the words of the psalmist, our houses and our possessions and our streets may be safe, that there may be no breaking in, that all may resound to Thy glory. Our Lord and our God, we look unto Thee for these things, in Jesus’ name, amen.

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

Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] About a what?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. You’re right. It’s all those things. Now the kingdom of God, or Heaven, is a person, Jesus Christ. It’s the king. It’s a place. It’s wherever God’s rule is. It’s in heaven. It shall be fully on earth. It is the rule, the law, of the kingdom. It’s all those things, and more. It’s also you. Every home that is a godly home is an area of the kingdom. It’s an outpost of the kingdom, and it’s a place of reconstruction. Ever Christian family is an area of reconstructions.

[Audience] Well, isn’t it the {?} law, and {?} it’s not, I was just wondering, {?}… is that the way that everybody is told {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, what I’ve taught is nothing new, it’s what has been taught through the centuries. In recent years, the waters have been muddied by dispensational pre-millennial teaching which has read all kinds of interpretations into this which really represents in part, the Jewish hope of the Pharisees, not the biblical hope.

Yes.

[Audience] Wondering, where {?} I came across {?} Also the three verses Luke used {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Now that’s a good question. Now, that leads us to the question of, did Luke write in Greek or in Aramaic? And there are many scholars who believe that the gospels were originally written in Aramaic, in the very early years after the resurrection, and before 50 A.D. So that, if we say that the crucifixion was somewhere in the years between 27 A.D. and 33 A.D. which is the usual estimate, by 50 A.D. at the latest, would mean within 25 years at the most, approximately, or 28, all four gospels were written.

Now the interesting thing is that one of the great champions of this theory was a man who was not even a Christian, Dr. C.C. Torrey of the University of Chicago, and Dr. Torrey, an archeologist, an expert in Greek and in Hebrew, not only held that they were written within a very few years after the resurrection, but he also felt that the Gospel of John was the first one written. Now, in terms of this, you can see why there was this hesitation. It think it is quite likely that they were first written in Aramaic and then by the very writers, probably, written also or translated (they translated themselves), into Greek, within a very short time. The Aramaic versions have apparently disappeared.

The Assyrians still use an Aramaic version. There is one Assyrian scholar in this country, Dr. George Lamsa, who is not altogether to be trusted in his position, he is rather liberal in many respects, maintains that the Assyrian translation is the original Aramaic version. Many scholars (virtually all) doubt his claim. They believe that the Peshitta, the Aramaic translation, or the Aramaic version of the Assyrians is not the original, but either a translation or a revision from the Greek in about the 10th or 12th century.

But there is some evidence of an Aramaic original, which would account for the difference. Now, very clearly, in Luke there was no feeling that this had to be maintained in the Greek form, but there were so many Greek-speaking Hebrews of the dispersion who primarily read Greek that even if there were no Aramaic original, these people carried over into Greek, the same feelings that they had had in Hebrew. Hebrew was a difficult language for them because some of them had been living for some generations in North Africa, in Europe and elsewhere. They were primarily Greek-speaking because Greek was the language of the empire, the business language, the language everybody spoke. So they would carry over into Greek, all these people in the dispersion their feelings that they had had for the Hebrew.

Does that help answer?

[Audience] Regarding the religious {?} … the Hebrews?

[Rushdoony] Yes, many of them did have that feeling, and many of them still do today, so that today converted Jews usually tend to avoid using the word Jehovah.

[Audience] Was there one {?} along the lines {?} …word that the Hebrews {?} might have had for God? Is there some name for God {?} that really {?} that had the meaning {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, we do know what it means. And God Himself declares it in Exodus 3, “I Am that I Am,” or it can also be translated ‘He who is.’ In other words, when Moses asked God, “What is Thy name?” What he said was, ‘God, define yourself.’ Names, in antiquity and until fairly recent times, were definitions of the person. So, a person’s name would change if their character changed. So when God spoke to Moses at the burning bush, the first reaction of Moses was, I don’t understand you. Here we’ve been in slavery all this time, and what have you done about it, God? What is your name? Define yourself. I find you difficult to understand. And God said, I cannot define myself. I am, that I am, I am He who is. Instead of being define, I am He who defines everything, so that all things are defined in terms of me. So tell them, He who is has sent. Then He went on to say, but I am known by revelation, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I am the God who reveals Himself.

This is why we can never take any statement about God, like ‘God is Love’ as a definition. Scripture does not give that as a definition, it gives it as an attribute of God. Just as when it said God is a jealous God, that’s an attribute, not a definition, that He is almighty, that is an attribute, not a definition, because God is He by whom all things are defined. If you can define something, you define it in terms of something that is higher, you see.

Yes.

[Audience] Does the Westminster teach {?} to define God {?}

[Rushdoony] No, it is giving the attributes of God. They were very self-conscious about the fact that they could not define God; they could simply list the attributes that God Himself has listed in His Word.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] What was that?

[Audience] …problem with the… {?}

[Rushdoony] The problem?

[Audience] … with the {?} with the {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] Has been {?}

[Rushdoony] I hadn’t heard what came over….

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, about the kidnapping. No.

Yes.

[Audience] You mentioned that St. John was the last of the prophets.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and the greatest, according to our Lord.

[Audience] Uh, I understood that Jesus was a prophet, and {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the last of the Old Testament prophets. In other words, the Old Testament era actually closed with John the Baptist, according to our Lord. And He as the great prophet, the great priest, began the new covenant, so He sums up everything in His own person and carries it on. Prophet, priest, king. So the kingship ended of the Old Testament, because He was now the permanent king. The priesthood of the Old Testament ended because now He was the permanent and continuing priest. The prophets ended because now He was the continuing and permanent prophet of God.

[Audience] Apparently there was {?}... process …. {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. Right.

Our time is almost up, but I’d like to pass on something to you in a lighter vein.

First of all, I had a very interesting letter from Dr. L{?} of the Creation Research Society commenting on some things in the Chalcedon Report and elsewhere, but this; he commented on the moral decline and he, then he commented on the article in Life for November 20, 1970 about co-ed dorms and the fact that one such existed at Oberlin which was established as a Christian college. And he said, “The people who founded Oberlin College would really be surprised. It’s hard to believe that ‘some couples have been sleeping together for weeks without making love.’ The sexual system has not degenerated that much, even in modern man.”

[Laughter]

Now, to me, I think he’s put his finger on it with humor. They think we’re crazy that we can believe that kind of guff such as Life and other periodicals put out.

Then, one more item. This is from the American Magazine for June, 1926. Now, American Magazine at that time (some of you may remember the magazine), carried quite a series on inflation. Those were terrible days of inflation. ‘Course, we would like to see something like that again, but you must realize at the beginning of the century, only 24, 25 years or so before, working men were receiving as a month’s salary (and they felt they were doing very well), a $20 gold piece. That was their pay at the end of the month. And you could buy a house for $300, or have it built from the ground up for $300, and a lot of those $300 houses are selling for quite a few thousand now in San Francisco. There are a lot of them still standing there. But at any rate, this is an article written by a school teacher, on how he’s making out in inflation.

Now, I’ll quote this because I think it’s so interesting, it reveals how far gone we are now; jut a portion of it. “I am a teacher and receive a salary of $2,500 for nine months of teaching.” (Teachers were very well paid in those days. They were plutocrats.) “Starting with $1,500 savings at the time of our marriage three years ago, my wife and I have increased our reserve fund to almost $6,000. For the 10 months of the year during which we live in the town where I teach, our monthly budget is approximately as follows:

Salary $ 250.00

Income from Investments: 30.00

Total $ 280.00

Expenditures:

Rent $ 35.00

Food 25.00

Clothing 20.00

Entertainment and advancement 10.00

Insurance 8.00

Fuel 5.00

Lights, water and telephone 4.50

Medical 3.00

Charity 2.50

Laundry 2.00

(They were well-paid so they sent all

Their laundry out)

Total $ 115.00

Savings $ 165.00/mo.

Now, that was big money in those days--$250/month! And they felt they had inflation. They really did. They really did. And you can see how far-gone we are, and we’re just starting now. We haven’t seen anything yet.

Yes?

[Audience] {?} at that time was {?}

[Rushdoony]... and they were still on a gold standard to some extent.

Yes

[Audience] Would you {?} about {?} … fall off the gold standard?

[Rushdoony] I… couldn’t…

[Audience] Could you {?} the gold standard now? {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, I didn’t see that. I’ve been so busy the last couple of day.

Well, Switzerland has been one of the few countries on the gold standard. But the problem Switzerland has is that it is not an industrial country. It has a small population of just a few million which live mostly on tourist trade and banking.

Now, in view of that, since Switzerland is the world’s banker today, a good deal of its money in its banks is invested abroad; they cannot invest it in Switzerland. Even its watch industry is a minor thing today. So if you take money to Switzerland and put it in a secret Swiss account, what happens to that money is that the Swiss banker turns around and invests it, say, in Los Angeles, because he has to invest it someplace and the major place for investment is right here in the United States. So you’ve made a needless trip to go all the way over there, because you have not protected your money, you see.

So while the Swiss currency has been until now gold-backed, it has not had enough gold to back its deposits nor everything that has been invested in the franc, in case you’ve gone and bought francs. So as a consequence, it’s been an artificial standard. If they were not into the entire world economy through their banking, their economy would be a very minor, insignificant thing. But the Swiss nation has become important as bankers, then lenders to the world. So they’re totally tied to the other countries. They’re tied to our economy. And as a result, their currency doesn’t have much independence.

[Audience] Does our economy … {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. I think it’s a serious weakness in Brown’s book that he puts so much stock in Switzerland. The tragic fact is there is no real hiding place for your money abroad. Inflation is much further along abroad than it is here. It’s bad enough here.

Someone called me this week to say they had had dinner with a young woman from Sweden who said that the people in this country have no idea how bad things are in Sweden. She’s a secretary there, so that her tax payments are not as much as people who have a good income, but 48% of her income goes for taxes! Income tax, across the board, 48%! And everything that she buys is astronomical by comparison to things here. The cheapest steak that she can pick up there is $5.00/lb. or better. So life is very meager and very, very difficult. And it isn’t getting any better, it’s getting worse. So she has no intention of going back. She feels that this is freedom by comparison, and she said everyone there would be crowding into the United States except the papers there carry such horror stories about how utterly unsafe to walk the streets of America, so this keeps a lot of the Europeans from migrating here.

Well, our time is up, let’s 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.