Law and Life

Inheritance, Lot and Land

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 35 of 39

Track: 141

Dictation Name: RR156T35

Date: 1960s-1970s

[Rushdoony] Our Scripture is Psalm 16, verses 5 and 6, and our subject Inheritance, Lot and Land. Inheritance, Lot and Land. Psalm 16, verses 5 and 6. We dealt with one aspect of this passage two weeks ago and now we return to it to see its further implications. We concentrated earlier on the meaning of portion. Psalm 16, verses 5 and 6. “The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.” The word portion as we have seen is related to the fact of inheritance, and it means providential bestowment and more specifically the providential bestowment of God’s justice overriding man’s sin and injustice. We are told in Psalm 11, verse 5 and 6 that “the Lord trieth the righteous, but the wicked and him that loveth violence His soul hateth. Upon the wicked He shall reign snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.” Thus we inherit from God as we are His covenant people, His justice, and the wicked inherit His judgment. Psalm 23, verse 5 says my cup runneth over in the presence of my enemies. And here again the cup, as in this passage, the Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup, has reference to the bounty of God, what He gives to us.

Now, as we come to Psalm 16, verses 5 and 6, the part that concerns us this week in particular is Thou maintainest my lot. And then the next verse says the lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage. It is important for us to grasp the meaning of this passage and so much else in Scripture, to understand the meaning of the word lot. Now too often, here and elsewhere in Scripture, words and ideas are spiritualized and the meaning is lost. The word lot, very literally, has reference to choosing by lot. The land was divided by lot. But it also means a great more. The word lot does refer primarily to the Biblical practice, ended at Pentecost, making a choice by casting lots. But it had more than that at all times. The use of lots, which ended at Pentecost, took the decision out of man’s hand and required a total reliance on the providence of God. After Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, working through the covenant people, made the decisions. The word portion stresses the inheritance from God by means of a providential bestowment. Lot is a word that makes the same doctrine more emphatic by underscoring the predestinating council of God in our worship, our portion and our lot, include our total inheritance of all things, all experiences, material and spiritual. But, the first use of lot was when the land was divided by lot. The Promised Land; Canaan. And therefore, the time of division, men came to speak of their land as my lot. And to this day, coming right out of Scripture, we speak of a piece of land as a lot. And it is pure Scripture that governs our usage. As a result, we find that the very term lot is used over and over again in Scripture for land; in Joshua 15:1, Joshua 17:14 following, Judges 1:3, Isaiah 57:6, and many, many other passages.

The same time, the word lot not only refers to land, but to God’s providential, predestinating award to His people, as in Psalm 16:5, Isaiah 17:14 and 34:17, Jeremiah 13:25, Deuteronomy 12:12, and many other passages. So, the word lot refers to what God providentially has brought to us and it means land; the earth, God’s gift to us. As a result, this passage, Psalm 16:5, can be rendered, as it has been by very literal translators, in this way, the allotted piece of field has fallen to my lot in pleasant places, yea I have a goodly heritage. In other words, the Psalmist here is saying, God has given me a good piece of land, a good inheritance. We fail to understand, therefore, the meaning of the word lot unless we see its relevance to the idea of land. Just as the supreme fact of history is the incarnation, so the whole point of history is the materialization of our lot, our providential bestowment, our portion. God says the meek shall inherit the earth and delight themselves in the abundance of peace. Blessed are the meek, the tamed of God, for they shall inherit the earth. Our lot, therefore, is the land, it is the earth. And we fail to see the meaning of the very frequent use of the word lot if we miss that connection. This association of the idea of lot with our inheritance of land is very apparent, for example in Psalm 125, “They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth forever. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from henceforth, even forever. For the rod of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous, lest the righteous put forth their hands unto iniquity. Do good, O Lord, unto those that be good and to them that are upright in their hearts. As for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the Lord shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity, but peace shall be upon Israel.”

Now this is again a trust declaring that the Lord is the protector of His people. It deals with the menace of evil men, and our protection from them. When it says that the rod of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous, what it is literally saying is the rod, the scepter, the power of evil men, whether they are tyrants from within or invaders from without, shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous, upon the land; the possession of the righteous. In other words, God declares Himself to be the protector of the people, the land, the nation, that is righteous, and they shall not fall under evildoers. But, as for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the Lord shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity. Emphatically, therefore, what Scripture is saying here and over and over again as it deals with the word lot, that the godly have their lot, they have their land, they have their possessions from the Lord. God will protect them, it is their inheritance. He will bless them in it. But when they depart from Him unto their crooked ways, God brings judgment upon them, and they are separated from their lot.

Now, in Psalm 16, we’re dealing with the individual, Psalm 125; the nation, godly or ungodly. But in Psalm 16, it is the righteous, the godly individual in the face of hellish oppression, in an ungodly nation, facing very great difficulties, yet the Lord protecting him. “The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.” Thus, God declares indeed the righteous will suffer in an ungodly nation, but God cares for His own, and though we suffer, though we go through grave and trying experiences, we still have the assurance, when we stand in terms of His righteousness and move in terms of His Word, we have His protecting power.

Again, in Psalm 105, the significance of the land to the covenant is very clearly set forth. God declares that He has established a covenant with Abraham, and confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant, saying unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance. Moreover, He says that in gaining Canaan, they inherited the labors of the people, that is the Gentiles, the unbelievers. The covenant people are promised over and over again the land. The land is the sign of the covenant and the place where God’s law is enforced, made a way of life for sanctification for the redeemed people.

Now we cannot understand the United States apart from this doctrine. When the Pilgrims and the Puritans came here, they said that they were going to conquer this land for the Lord. They were going to make a covenant with Him. They made it clear that they believed that as long as they abided by the covenant that God would abide by His word and protect them in their lot. They made it equally clear that they knew that when they departed from His covenant, God would not protect them in their lot, in their land. This is why Deuteronomy 28, in terms of this faith, was used as a place where Scripture was opened for the oath of office, and that oath of office was incorporated in the Constitution, and that passage was used, because they recognized the significance of the lot; that is of land, in terms of God’s covenant. It is the place where God’s law is to obeyed, enforced, and made a way of life for the redeemed people; a basis where they are to prosper, and having prospered, to use their prosperity to further the Lord’s work from one end of the earth to the other. The ungodly nations are to be disinherited, Scripture makes clear, and the covenant people to inherit their labors.

Now, the last use of lots, as I said earlier, was on the day of Pentecost in Acts 1:26. The purpose was to replace Judas with Matthias, to restore the number of the disciples to twelve. Why twelve? Other men function just as well. As a matter of fact, the twelve disciples in some instances, some of the number are not as well known as other men in the New Testament, such as Paul, Silas, Barnabas, Timothy, Titus, and others. The twelve included some men, who while godly men, did not become as prominent in the history of the church. Why then was it necessary to make that number twelve? And Matthias, who became the twelfth, we hardly know apart from this fact. It was because the number twelve represented the true succession to the twelve sons of Jacob, to signify that the new Israel of God was made up with the people of the new covenant. The beginning of a new nation, a kingdom of priests and kings unto God, as Revelaton 1:6 makes clear. The new heirs of the Promised Land, now the whole earth, and therefore it was important, in order to set forth this fact, to have twelve disciples. The meaning of this was not lost on the Sanhedrin, or on anyone else of the day who knew their Bible, and this was part of the fury that they felt as they approached the church. Here were people claiming to be the true twelve sons of Israel, to whom now the whole earth was to be allotted, who could look at the earth and say this is my lot; the whole earth under God. And we are not faithful to the purpose of those men, of the twelve disciples, and to their choice of Matthias, and the purpose of the twelve as such, if we fail to see the whole earth as our lot, as our land, with an obligation to bring every area into captivity to Christ, to bring all men, women, children, nations, the earth as a whole, and to make it the lot of the Lord. Very clearly, in our Lord’s mind in Matthew 6:13 and other passages, is the preaching of the gospel to the whole world.

Moreover, it is not hyperbole when Saint Paul speaks of the whole world hearing the gospel in his day, as he does in Romans 1:8, 10:18, and elsewhere. We do know increasingly how far and wide they went. We know that they went to China, they went to India, they went into Africa, perhaps someday we will discover even further afield marks of their tracks. They felt it their obligation when they began to go out of Jerusalem and Judea to witness to the whole world because it was the lot of the righteous. It was the new kingdom, belonging to the people of the renewed covenant who shall inherit the earth, and establish Christ’s kingdom in righteousness and truth. Inheritance in Scripture thus means that by the adoption of grace, we are the legal sons of God and our inheritance is the land, or the earth. The means to the possession of our inheritance is to believe in Christ, and then to apply the covenant law as means of conquest. Thus, when Scripture speaks of our lot, it summons us to do exactly what our Lord said in the Great Commission, “Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” All power, all authority in heaven and on earth is given unto me, He declared. He therefore, in so saying, claimed the whole earth for His possession. This then is the Biblical meaning of our lot. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank Thee that our lot in Jesus Christ is to be heirs of all things. Make us strong, our Father, to this end, that through the ministry of Thy Word, through Christian schools, through the application of Thy law, we may bring every area of life and thought into captivity to Jesus Christ our Lord. Bless us to this purpose, we beseech Thee, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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

[Audience member] You stated that when the selecting of Matthias the use of lots ended, why do you say that? Why did it end then?

[Rushdoony] Yes. The use of lots did end, we know historically. It was never again used in the church, never. It ended there because henceforth now the Holy Spirit, who operated in the selection by means of lots, was not going to work in and through the people of God. It was followed by Pentecost.

[Audience member] I don’t see, what’s the significance of the Pentecost occurrence have to do {?}.

[Rushdoony] Yes, because hereafter, you see, God was going to operate through His people in the selection of men. And they were going to bear whatever God chose, good or bad, through their own choosing.

[Audience member] The next question, has there ever been any serious speculation that the twelve disciples actually became the twelve different tribes? I don’t see anything to imply this, the number was that they were representative.

[Rushdoony] No. Yes. The number twelve was simply representative, and they were by and large Galileans, as far as we know all Galileans, in the original number there was only one Judean; Judas. So that they predominantly represented the twelve tribes, the ten northern tribes, excuse me. And there was no attempt to make them inclusive of all twelve tribes because they represented not the old Israel, but the new Israel of God, and therefore they represented a break. Yes?

[Audience member] I heard someone say that all the disciples except for Judas were of the tribe of Benjamin, is there truth to that?

[Rushdoony] No, there is no truth to the idea that all of them were of the tribe of Benjamin, save Judas. As a matter of fact, the tribe of Benjamin was living so close to Judea that by and large they were practically one with the tribes of Judah. Now, Saul was of the tribe of Benjamin, or Paul. Our Lord was of the tribe of Judah of course. Yes?

[Audience member] In our study of church history, I believe it was in the 1300’s, one of the reforming groups mentioned the Brethren of the Common Life and that their reform was for Christian education. Would you comment on that group?

[Rushdoony] It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything on the Brethren on the Common Life, but they were a very important group in the days before the Reformation. In some respects very medieval, having their roots in the past, in other respects very, very definitely forerunners of the Reformation in that they saw as their responsibility, as their name did indicate, destroying the old distinction between priest and people. They were in fact, without putting it into so many words, enunciating the belief in the priesthood of all believers. They were insisting on the relevance of the faith to the common life. The idea had grown up as a result of Platonism and Neo-Platonism that holiness meant withdrawal from the world, it meant a retreat into a cell to be a monk or a nun, and there was a time much earlier when it was the monastic clergy that represent the real life of the church. Now, when the monastic clergy gave way to the secular clergy, or to the parish clergy, it was a major change, you might almost say a revolution in the medieval church. Because now, the real power and the authority rested not with those who withdrew totally from the world and did not feel that entanglement with the world represented real Christianity, but those who were the parish priests.

Then the Brethren of the Common Life took it a step further. They said we cannot say it is just the priesthood, even though they are in the parish and dealing with the people, because still there is a distinction made between the sanctified life and the workaday world. You see, this was carried so far even then, that it was felt that it was improper for a priest, in some periods of the medieval era, to go to a wedding. He could perform the service but he couldn’t stay for the celebration because laughter and joy and eating were somehow non-Christian, you see. That was a thoroughly Neo-Platonic idea. And to get mixed up with laughing and drinking and celebrating, even though he may have behaved himself in an exemplary manner, not getting drunk or been in any way a disgrace, it was bad, it was very bad in the eyes of many theologians. And it was also regarded as very, very bad if a priest were fat. There are all kinds of satires about fat priests. Somehow, you see, the very fact that he might be overweight, even a little bit, indicated there was something very wicked about him, highly immoral. He enjoyed food, what a horrible sin. If he were lean and emaciated, it was assumed he was holy. Well, that type of opinion, you see, we still have reflected in the literature of the day in their scorn of the fat priests. And by fat they didn’t mean grossly fat, if he were just moderately well-built.

Well the Brethren of the Common Life, even though they were still in a sense convent or monastery oriented, and they felt it was good to take people apart from the world for meditation and so on, so that they still in a sense were moving under this older ideal, the older monastic ideal, they were still under the shadow of it, were still concerned about bringing holiness to the man who was in the workaday world, the man who had a job to do and the woman who had a job to do. And as a result, they carried the step towards the Reformation that much forward by insisting on the relevancy of the faith to the man in the street, and they did a marvelous work in this regard in Germany and the Netherlands, in Northern Europe generally, though not in Scandinavia, and prepared the way for the Reformation.

So that the next step in what was a long development that took centuries came with Luther, who spoke of the priesthood of believers and in some of his sermons preached so eloquently about the responsibility of Godly men in their work and holiness in their work in his very famous sermon on Luke 2, the shepherds who came to Bethlehem with a concluding verse, I believe Luke 2:18, “And the shepherds returned glorifying God.” He has a magnificent sermon on that, he says the shepherds what? They returned? What is the Scripture telling us here? They didn’t go after having a marvelous vision into a monastery and spend their life in prayer, saying we are now too holy to be taking care of sheep? He says no, they went back glorifying God, glorifying God in their work out there with the sheep, taking care of them, doing the dirty everyday work whereby they glorified God, meeting responsibilities. Again he preached a sermon, and I refer to this also on other occasions, about the Annunciation; Rafael appearing to the Virgin Mary and telling her she would conceive and give birth to the Christ, and he says what did Mary then do? Did she then withdraw into a convent because she was now too holy to help her mother with everyday chores? No, she went right on cooking, sweeping, taking care of the livestock, doing all the ordinary chores that were her everyday responsibility because that was her way of holiness, meaning responsibilities.

Now you see, with those sermons a real change had taken place and the Brethren of the Common Life are the step before Luther in this. Then, of course, the next step came with the Puritans who did what Luther and Calvin halfheartedly did and sometimes undid, to say the law of God fully applied is the way of sanctification. Luther and Calvin were on the borders of that but because they were so deeply involved with affirming the doctrine of justification, although they said the rule of faith or the way of sanctification is the law, they never went into it properly and fully, the Puritans did. But of course, we’ve lost that sense because Neo-Platonism was revived and the ivory tower became in humanism, the counterpart of the monastery cell; you withdraw from the world. You retreat from the rural area, you despise it. To the city, and in the city to the cloisters of the university, and the word cloister was very often used for the academic community. You do not dirty your hands with the world.

One professor. who has recently written a satire on his profession and their abhorrence of the workaday world, has said the average university professor thinks that manual labor is a Mexican.

[Laughter]

But you see what has happened. This virus of Neo-Platonism has infected over and over again the Western world. It has infected Christianity, it has infected humanism, we see it on the march in Hegelianism, in Marxism, and in various other religions. It takes differing forms; in some it’s a retreat from the world, in others it is to make the Hegelian or Platonic idea possess the material world as the only way of redeeming it; it’s worthless apart from being overwhelmed by the idea and the idea or the plan totally governing and ruling the material world. Well that was a very long answer to a short question, but does that help? Yes?

[Audience member] Who were the theologians that represented the Puritans, I think {?}.

[Rushdoony] Yes, well there was no one great figure among the Pilgrim theologians, there was quite a school of them, a great number of them, but no outstanding one. Yes?

[Audience member] Why is there much hatred of the Puritans {?}.

[Rushdoony] Yes, there is an intense hatred of the Puritans on all sides within the church and without because the discipline and the structure they gave to society is that which the modern world is rebelling against. After all, our basic law structure in this country, against which there is now a legal revolution is really that which was laid down by the Puritans. Now it’s been patched over with humanism so often that it’s neither fish nor fowl now, but it is a hostility to everything the Puritans represent. Any other questions. Yes?

[Audience member] I would like an explanation on Proverbs 10:12, it says “hatred stirs up strife, but love covereth all sins.” It’s that “love covereth all sins” that I have a question about.

[Rushdoony] That’s 10:12. “Hatred stirreth up all strife, but love covereth all sin.” Yes, the word cover there is also the same word as atone. Now, it’s not stating that this is necessarily a proposition that is valid, but it does state the fact that this is what love does. Love works to make atonement, to make restitution, if we love someone we try to undo the evil they have done, to cover the sin, to bring them into line, to make them over into what they should be. So, what Solomon is here saying is that hatred goes out of the way to open wounds, to create trouble, but the work of love is to try to justify, to atone for. Now, he’s not saying that it’s capable of doing it. Humanistic love cannot, but he’s just observing on the difference between love and hate. Are there any other questions?

Well if not let us bow our heads 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]