Law and Life

Sacrilege

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 4 of 39

Track: 115

Dictation Name: RR156B4

Date: 1960s-1970s

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Give unto the Lord, oh ye kindreds of the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name. Bring an offering and come into His courts. Oh worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, fear before Him all the earth. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee for the blessings of the week past. We thank Thee for Thy loving care and for Thy faithfulness. We thank Thee our Father, that we who are so often mindless of Thee, are ever the object of Thy mindful care. Teach us, our Father, so to serve Thee, that in all things we may seek Thy face, and seek to obey Thee and to magnify Thy Word and Thy kingdom. Bless us now by Thy Word and by Thy Spirit, and grant us Thy peace. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Malachi 3, verses 7-11, our subject is sacrilege, we begin with this study, a series of studies on the implications of sacrilege. Our next study will take us to another subject briefly so that we can see sacrilege more clearly when we return. This morning, an introduction to the study of sacrilege, Malachi 3:7-12. “Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return? Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. 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. 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. And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts.”

The word sacrilege appears only in Romans 2, verse 22. It means literally “to rob the temple” or “to rob God”. Although the word itself only appears once in Scripture, it is a very common concept in the Bible. The idea of sacrilege rests on God’s sovereignty, the fact that He is creator of all things. God has an absolute ownership over all things, over all men and every aspect of the universe. We are God’s property. We are His property in a total and absolute sense. Moreover, the covenant people are doubly God’s property. They are His property by virtue of His creation. Again, the covenant people are secondly, God’s property by virtue of His redemption. They have been bought with a price. They who were created His. Thus, sin is more than personal, and more than man-centered. It is a theological offence; it is an offence against God. Thus, Saint Paul said concerning fornication in I Corinthians 6, 19 and 20, “what know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God? And ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” Now in a sense, all sin involves sacrilege. But there are certain offences which have through the centuries, from the days of the Old Testament, been regarded as in particular constituting sacrilege. Moreover, sacrilege through the centuries until the last two or three centuries, was regarded as the most serious of all offences. In fact, it was so seriously regarded, that fear of sacrilege was often a major restraining force, even with ungodly men and towns. The reason for this was the fact of observed consequence, of obvious and radical judgment on sacrilege. In a few weeks we will return to that fact and deal with the data here, sacrilege has been studied more than once, and the evidence clearly indicates that there is a statistical evidence of overwhelming character of the judgment that God visits on sacrilege. But now, there is no sense of consequence. Since the Enlightenment, the whole idea of sin has been changed. Sin has become an offence against your fellow man, as though humanity were God, as though humanity were the ultimate force, the ultimate power. So that the definition of sin is now man-centered, it is anthropocentric. And the result has been that sacrilege steadily receded in the 18th century into the background, became virtually unknown, and there has been nothing written on sacrilege for many a generation. The last work on sacrilege was really a republication of something that has been written about four centuries ago with a new introduction, and even that came out a hundred and thirty or forty years ago. As a result, sacrilege has become the forgotten offence. And yet, sacrilege, robbing God, the most fearful of offences, was once the one sin that even the ungodly, who didn’t hesitate to rape, rob, and kill, drew the line at committing.

Now let us see what Malachi has to say about sacrilege. This is the great text, of course, on tithing. And we shall deal in part with tithing, but basically to use this text, a very obvious one on sacrilege, to illustrate what sacrilege involves. And even then, we shall just be barely touching the subject. We shall return to it, as I said earlier, in subsequent studies. Because, when we come to sacrilege, we have an opening up of so much that is essential to Scripture. So much that has been so long forgotten that it has warped our whole perspective on Scripture. And, our study this morning is the most elementary and beginning introduction. There are far-reaching implications that we shall see subsequently. But sacrilege will open up to us new insights on the Law, new insights on salvation, new insights on our future under God. Now when this text on Malachi is normally used, what we are told is that if we tithe, great blessings will come to us, which is true. But, too little is said about that fact that God says because you do not tithe ye are cursed with a curse for ye have robbed Me, even this whole nation. Moreover, this is very significant. When God indicts the people of “robbing Me”, their answer is “wherein have we robbed Thee?” and God’s answer “in tithes and offerings”. Now a tithe is distinct from an offering, a tithe cannot be called an offering, a tithe is fifteen percent of your income, which is God’s tax, God’s basic tax. The offering is evidence of gratitude; all men owe God the tithe. Covenant men, in addition, owe God offerings as evidence of gratitude. The absence of both tithes and offerings, God calls robbing Him, sacrilege.

Now the tithe is God’s creation tax. The offerings are His redeemed creation’s thanksgiving to Him. Their absence leads to a curse on creation. Verse 11 cites specifically what that curse is. It is a curse on nature, creation frustrates man, there are blights, there are plagues of locusts, there are droughts, there are crop failures, bad health, one thing or another leads to creation, which is to render God a tax, being cursed and blighted. Now the curse on sacrilege is related to the curse on man at his fall. In the garden of Eden, there was perfect fruition. Man’s work was blessed. When man labored in the garden of Eden, he had perfect crops, everything bore in abundance and work was a joy. The curse, as pronounced by God in Genesis 3, verses 17 through 19, is on the ground, on creation, and on man, and on man’s labor. So that there is a frustration now in all that man does. And instead of his work producing the desired and necessary results, it leads to very unhappy results, frustrating results. Now the failure to obey God’s law, the failure to tithe and sacrilege in its every form, aggravates and develops the curse God declares. It means curse upon curse. And the result, because of man’s fall, plus man’s continuing sacrilege, his attempt to rob God, has led to a progressive degeneration in the world. The degeneration from the garden of Eden to after the fall, and from after the fall to Noah’s time when the world of the flood with its still superior conditions was wiped out, and from Abraham’s time to our own is a marked degeneration. On the other hand, we are told that if we obey God, if we do not commit the sin of sacrilege whether in tithing or in anything, He will, He declares, “open the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, and there shall not be room enough to receive it. 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 fields, saith the Lord of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed, for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts.” The redeemed step out of the curse into blessing, and to the extent of our sanctification, to that extent we move into the world of blessing. And to the extent that we avoid sacrilege and we obey God’s word with regard to tithing and every other thing, to that extent we move into the world of blessing, which culminates, Isaiah 2, verses 1 to 5 tell us, in world peace, when nation shall not make war against nation any longer, and the righteousness of the Lord shall cover the earth as the water cover the sea, and to longevity, as the days before the flood. According to Isaiah 65, verse 20. In other words, there is no neutral ground between the curse and blessing. And as men move under the curse, to that extent as they aggravate the curse with sacrilege and disobedience, because sacrilege is the ultimate in disobedience, to that extent they bring judgment and frustration and the whole of the natural realm upon them. And creation, which is to render a tax unto the Lord, finds itself taxed by God with judgment. But, as men move, first by God’s regenerating grace in and through Christ, into the realm of blessing, and then by their obedience to the Law and supremely their avoidance of sacrilege, into blessing, nature yields more abundantly, so that the time shall come when the desert shall blossom like a rose and man finds himself more and more blessed, his nations blessed, his life, his health, his entire being, now because it is under blessing, sees the removal progressively of those aspects of the curse which have so blighted life. There is no neutral ground between these two grounds, and men move either under the curse or under blessing.

Original sin was the usurpation of God’s absolute lordship. Man said, I will be my own god, I will govern my own life, I will decide for myself what is right and wrong, and too often men who are Christian still submit to that temptation, still show the effects of that and they say I will decide how far I am going to be obedient. I don’t commit adultery or kill or steal or bear false witness or covet, and so if I don’t give a tithe the Lord should be pleased with me, look how far I’ve gone. Or maybe they say, I tithe, in fact there’s nobody who’s a better giver than I, so if I slip a little bit here in my business on what technically might be stretching the point with regard to theft. Or if I commit adultery on the side, well the Lord ought to overlook this because I have been so good about tithing or something else. Now this is sin. God’s Lordship is absolute, His property rights in us and in all creation are total. We do not have the right to say we will obey according to our own decision. God’s law-word tells us how we are to obey. We rob God if we do not yield Him tithes and offerings, both. We cannot, in other words, choose the limits of our obedience when we deal with God. And there is nothing that is more prevalent in the church today than this matter of choosing the limits of obedience and being proud that, well I’ve gone further than other people, as though the standard were other people rather than the Word of God. And this is why the church is powerless today. We have at least forty million people in this country who are evangelicals, who believe the Bible from cover to cover, but they choose the limits of their obedience, and the most sizable single group in the United States is impotent because God says ye are cursed with a curse. Malachi, in 3:7, tells us when he made this statement, or God made it through him, and the people were amazed. God declared “Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?” Why, we’re the best you have in the world, Lord. Look at us, we made a stand. We left Babylon and Persia. We journeyed, a hard long journey, a lot of sacrifice involved, all the way back to Jerusalem. We have worked hard to build the second temple. We worship faithfully. We believe your word from cover to cover. Now maybe we haven’t done everything exactly the way you want it, but we’re the best you’ve got, what do you mean we should return? But God says, “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, this whole nation.”And we must say if it is true here, it is true today. And the whole world is moving rapidly under the curse. And the churches have become churches that are furthering the curse of God, because they do not stress the significance of obedience to God. We cannot choose the limits of obedience with a sovereign God. And sacrilege is an unheard of subject.

Peter and the apostles, when brought before the counsel, declared, we are told in Acts 5:29, “we ought to obey God rather than man.” The early church, in fact the church through the centuries in every period of health, had no period where sacrilege was forgotten as it is today. This is an important fact. Middle Ages never went so far astray as to forget sacrilege. The church was always mindful of the significance of sacrilege. We find very early, for example, that it was sacrilege for any Christian to save his life by delivering up the Bible to the persecutors, to Diocletian’s persecutors, this was the first time it came up. If they surrendered the word of God to the enemy, instead of holding onto it at the cost of their lives and saying we cannot surrender the Word of God to those who despise it and want to destroy it. It was sacrilege. Moreover, any limitation on the Word was regarded as sacrilege also. It was sacrilege, moreover, to yield up any aspect of church belongings, in those days they had no church buildings, utensils, or the wine of the communion element, or anything else, in fact we have a declaration from the early church, “if anyone, either of the clergy or laity, takes away from the Holy Church and honeycomb or oil, let him be suspended, and let him add the fifth part to that which he took away”. Why? It was sacrilege. The honeycomb, what was the role of that? Why, the honeycomb and some milk were kept in the church at baptism time, in order to be given to the toddlers, it was a time of persecution. But they believed that if they stood in terms of the whole word of God, they would ultimately triumph, and the honey and milk signified you have now become a citizen of the new creation, of the new Canaan of God, of the land flowing with milk and honey, and by our stand we will conquer, and we shall be the blessed meek who will inherit the earth. If not in our time, in time to come. And so they could not surrender it.

Sacrilege, thus, was very central to the life of the church. It was held from Old Testament that the covenant nation had to punish sacrilege. This is why, to almost a century ago, there was a civil enforcement of the tithe in America. Where there was no ecclesiastical or civil judgment on sacrilege, God declares both through Samuel and Jeremiah that He Himself will avenge the deed, as in I Samuel 5:6, Jeremiah 50:28, and in other passages. When Saint Paul speaks of sacrilege in Romans 2:22, he says, “You who forbid adultery, do you commit adultery? You who detest idolatry, do you commit sacrilege?” Do you rob God? It is not merely the avoidance of sin that God requires, but the active obedience which is virtue. Now, blasphemy and sacrilege are closely related. Blasphemy is the offence against God in word, and sacrilege is the offence in deed, in act. We shall return, in a few weeks, to sacrilege in order to develop it more thoroughly in all its ramifications. To see its relationship, which will be our next study, to salvation, its relationship to the law, and its relationship to everyday life. Sacrilege is an important subject. In order for man again to get on the track, to become once again the people of blessing, the people of victory, of conquest, it is necessary once again for the people of God to consider the seriousness of sacrilege. It is interesting that Puritanism in large part became men against the sacrilege committed by Henry the eighth. And it was out of this that they summoned people to a total obedience to God. We shall deal in passing with what they had to say. And they continued to say it, not only in Henry the eighth’s time, but thereafter, a generation two or three after, because they felt sacrilege is something to be dealt with. God will not lightly deal with any who rob Him, who despise the things that are of God. And thus it is important for us as we think of Christian reconstruction, of those things which are necessary to bring all things into subjection to God in Christ, in order to further the establishment of God’s rule, it is imperative that we consider the significance of sacrilege. It has been neglected as a subject of concern since the very early 1700’s. It’s time we considered its meaning. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank Thee for Thy Word and its plain speaking. We thank Thee, Lord, that Thou hast so clearly laid out before us the way unto death and to curses, and the way unto life and to blessing. Teach us therefore, by Thy Spirit, to yield unto Thee, who art absolute Lord over all things, that we may be blessed of Thee and may prosper, and become more than conquerors through Christ our Lord, in His name we pray, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson, first of all? Yes?

[Audience member] I’ve been thinking of {?} goes on and on {?}

[Rushdoony] I would say it involves both word and act, so it’s both blasphemy and sacrilege. Yes? We shall return to the fact that even pagans were afraid of sacrilege, and with good reason why they were. Yes?

[Audience member] What do you do about {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the fifteen percent is this, first, there is the annual tithe of ten percent, and then the poor tithe every other year of ten percent, so that on the first, third, and fifth year, there had to be a second ten percent. If you average it out on an annual basis, it comes to fifteen percent. Now there are some who would give you a different figure, because it’s never been fully determined whether the second ten percent is computed from the original total, or from the balance that is left after the basic tithe is deducted. So that would make a difference in your computation, if you figured the second ten percent on the ninety percent left or on the original one-hundred percent. Now I don’t think there’s any answer that I know of to that, as I say it’s been debated by some of the experts in the field who have written volumes on the history of tithing and the Biblical texts dealing with it. Yes?

[Audience member] Is the tithing gross or on the net?

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience member] Is the tithing gross or on the net?

[Rushdoony] The question is, is the tithing on the gross or on the net, it is on the net of course.

[Audience member] Wasn’t there something about the rejected ten percent of your harvest at the end of the year?

[Rushdoony] Yes, well you see, where you had a harvest, that in those days, it was your own harvest, you harvested it entirely, and therefore it was a ten percent of everything, because you didn’t have costs, you didn’t have the modern crews coming in and working, unless you’re a big landlord, there were a few like that. But by and large it was a family operation. Now some people ask questions, while we’re at it, on the storehouse, bring your tithes into the storehouse. Well, the storehouse, or tithe barns, you’ll still find in some places in the East, and in Europe. They were in the farming communities, so when you tithed, for example, ten percent of your sheep or ten percent of your cows at the end of the year, you took them to the tithe barn, and the same with the bushels of grain and what-not, or sacks of wheat. And it was there kept and sold by the Levites and given to the designated causes, which could include everything from health, education, welfare, the priests or temple or whatever. So the tithe barn was the storehouse from whence things were disposed of, because for the rural population, it was not a monetary economy, basically. For the city dweller, it was on the basis of their income, but you can still find some tithe barns in the United States that survive. Yes?

[Audience member] Where people are tithing today to apostate churches, does the principle of blessings from God still operate?

[Rushdoony] Very good question. Where people are tithing to apostate churches, is the principle of blessing still operative? This is a question that was asked in ancient times because it was very obvious that God regarded even that which was given to the pagan temples as His. And a very interesting fact. We will return to that subject at a later date. In other words, anything that went to any religion, properly belonged to the only true God. So that all those churches, their buildings, everything given to them belongs to God. But this does not make what they do good. So that even though it belongs properly to God, they are sinning in getting to a church which is frustrating the work of the Lord, so that it is not truly a tithe to an agency that is working against God. But in the hands of the church it belongs to God all the same, and God will judge them for their disobedience. It’s an interesting fact how we are beginning to see judgment come upon the churches. A report this week indicates that the Christian Science Church is selling properties all across the United States. One third of their churches in California have either been sold or up for sale, and the attendance is down in the others, the original church started in Malden, Massachusetts, has I believe three members left, and it’s a magnificent structure, and their paper, the Christian Science Monitor, lost I believe five million dollars last year. The major denominations, like the Presbyterian, which once had, fifteen years ago had perhaps a few hundred million at the very least, and accumulated endowments of over two hundred years at least, of accumulated endowments is down to three million. They’ve tapped those endowed funds and laid them waste. They had to sell their headquarters building in Philadelphia recently. And this is happening to all the major denominations, all of them. Yes?

[Audience member] You mentioned the forty-five million evangelicals.

[Rushdoony] At least forty million, yes.

[Audience member] Forty, their work being impotent. But then those who are in reconstruction, if there’s not some obedience there then our work also will be hindered.

[Rushdoony] Exactly. God require perfect obedience, otherwise there is no blessing. There might be limited blessings for some, but basically the real blessing of God does not flow without total obedience. Yes, you had a question?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] It had a wide variety of functions. As I point out in Biblical Law, the civil government, the state, received only the head, or pole tax, which provided for the court basic justice and defense. No more, it had to be the same for every male, 20 and older. The basic government of a society was through the tithe, health, education, welfare, the church, everything was taken care of by the tithe. And this was still true in early America, and it did more than the government is doing today, because in the early years, the tremendous waves of immigration before the public schools were started were established, well, the education of those immigrants, young and old, was by a tithe agency. And we’ve never had such a massive wave of people to handle, you might say, on welfare. And it was done entirely by tithe agencies. There are enough churches in the United States to house virtually every American on any given Sunday. This has all been done by volunteer giving. You see what the spirit of volunteerism can do. Well the tithe, only a bare fraction of the people in the country tithe, consider what the tithe could do. It could replace the existing governmental agencies very quickly, and it’s the only way. This is why George Washington rightfully regretted the passing of the tithe as a legal passing of the tithe as a legal requirement in Virginia in his old age, because he knew that you either had one or the other, either the state or God’s tax. This is where conservatism is off-base. They want to abolish the governmental intervention in these areas, government welfare, government this that and so-on, they have nothing to replace it. And the tithe has done this, done it efficiently, and done it brilliantly. Now there is a very brilliant English scholar, W.K. Jordan, who’s written three volumes on just what the Puritans accomplished in England with the tithe. And you remember they were only four percent of the population. But they tithed, and the implications of that were startling in English history. Yes?

[Audience member] How did they police this ten percent tithe?

[Rushdoony] Well, of course in colonial America, the state required it, and there was a tithe officer who made sure that everyone paid. Now the only state where there was a problem was Virginia because Virginia was Episcopal to the core and they were requiring the Presbyterians to tithe to the Episcopal Church, and just to the church. But in other states there were various tithe agencies and you could designate.

[Audience member] But doesn’t the percentage technically mean you have to know the person’s income {?} And you have to find out how much his income is by looking at their books. That’s one argument against the income tax, is violation of privacy.

[Rushdoony] Yes, well they didn’t have a problem in those days because this was the last country where sacrilege was still considered an offence by the people, and a serious one, a century after it was forgotten in Europe. And because they recognized the implications, they were honest about it, the honesty here was startling. Because even the ungodly were afraid of sacrilege, they knew what it led to, and we’ll come back to that subsequently. Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, well of course you see, it used to be that it was very simple, there were Christian hospitals, there were Christian welfare agencies, Christian relief agencies, Christian missionary agencies, all of which could absorb one or another aspect of the tithe. So there were a variety of causes whereby these things could be met. What we need to do as we create a tithing people is again to reestablish these various agencies. There were literally thousands of them in the English speaking world. Our time is just about up. Yes, one?

[Audience member] Would you give a report of your trip, back East?

[Rushdoony] Alright, very briefly because as soon as this meeting is over, Gary North, Greg Bahnsen and I must start on another trip within five or ten minutes, and we’ll be gone for three days. But I was in Birmingham, Alabama and adjacent areas for ten days, and it was a very interesting trip. I spoke at the University of Alabama, I spoke at a seminary there in Birmingham, I spoke to a group of 228 doctors at a dinner meeting, I spoke to a paramedical group as well, to a variety of groups, and before very sizable audiences up to 1,100, I believe. Had a very good response and thoroughly enjoyed it. The itinerary was sponsored by the Briarwood Presbyterian Church, which is one of the churches in the old Southern Presbyterian Church, which is in process now of leaving the Southern Presbyterian Church, to become a part of the new Continuing Church, which will be formally organized in December and will meet at the Briarwood Presbyterian Church. The Briarwood Church is the biggest in this new group and there’s a great deal of anger in Birmingham and adjacent areas in the Presbytery there over their departure, because they are a very powerful and wealthy congregation, they have a school, they have started a mission church, they have started a mission among colored people of Birmingham as well. Their giving to church agencies has been enormous so their loss is really creating quite a rumpus and they are threatening to take them into court to try to take over the property. So we do need to pray for that congregation and others as they face these problems. I was very impressed by a great many things I saw there and the growth of the Christian school movement there has been very, very rapid. Five or six years ago there was nothing and now it’s growing by leaps and bounds, and the Christian schools are specifically Christian schools. There are segregated schools such as the Citizen Counsel, or the White Counsel schools, but they are not doing too well.

This church, I should add, is an integrated church, and I was impressed there as I was in Mississippi by the fact that there is more integration in the South than there is in the North or in the West. And the reason is a very obvious one, they’ve grown up side-by-side, they know each other much better, and it’s much easier for them to get along. Now I was very interested, last Sunday morning I spoke at the Briarwood Church, at both morning services and at the evening service, and at the evening service there were about eight hundred I think present, there was a colored minister who spoke for about ten minutes, and he and a colored minister from South Africa, together with one or two others have established a missionary organization to start work among the Negros of this country. This colored minister from South Africa had made a trip in this country from one end to the other, and he was horrified by what he saw, and he said there were fewer Christians, true Christians, not modernists, in the colored communities of the United States than there are in South Africa or in Nigeria. So he felt that maybe they ought to do something to start a mission here, so he has come into this country and a small handful of colored men have gotten together and they have determined that they’re going to start a nationwide missionary program to the Black communities. And I was very tremendously moved, the man was a very superior man and very, very able. He was a college graduate, with now a seminary degree as well, and he had been working in some kind of secular vocation and he said, I kept trying to turn over a new leaf and reform and be a superior person in the community, and he said every leaf I turned over kept getting dirty. And he found I couldn’t reform myself. And he said I realized finally that only Christ could make me a new person.

I was also very impressed with a young Cuban, a PhD, whom I met there at the church. He had started a seminary in Spain, and I had some good visits with him and when I get back from this trip, I’m going to wrap up all our Chalcedon books and send them to him for his use for the seminary there. They are just starting, religious freedom is fairly young in Spain, only six years old, and they will start training ministers at their school next fall. So he was very anxious to have our books there and hoped we could get over there sometime, which would be wonderful. 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.