65. Leviticus; The Law of Holiness and Grace
Jubilee and Covenant II
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Pentateuch
Genre: Lessons with Q & A
Lesson: 74
Track: 74
Dictation Name: RR172AN74
Date: Early 70s
Let’s worship God. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Draw nigh unto God and He will draw nigh to you. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise.
Let us pray.
Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee in this blessed season for all Thy providential cares in the years past. We thank Thee that in the days ahead, we live and move and have our being in Thee, who art ever-mindful of us. Oh Lord our God, give us grace to take hands off our lives, knowing that Thy care for us is far greater than anything we are capable of; all-perfect, all-wise, and all-merciful. We thank Thee for Thy many blessings. We come into Thy presence opening wide our mouths that Thou mightest fill them. Bless us by Thy Word and by Thy Spirit, and make us strong in Thy service. In Christ’s name, amen.
Our scripture is Leviticus 26:3-13. Leviticus 26:3-13. Our subject again, for the second time, “Jubilee and Covenant.” “Jubilee and Covenant.”
“3 If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them;
4 Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
5 And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.
6 And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land.
7 And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.
8 And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.
9 For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with you.
10 And ye shall eat old store, and bring forth the old because of the new.
11 And I will set my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor you.
12 And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people.
13 I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright.”
Like almost everything in Leviticus, this is a very much neglected passage as far as the Church is concerned. The neglect comes in part from the influence of pietism. All the blessings promised here are temporal ones, a very important fact to remember. They have to do with time, not with eternity, with history, not with the soul of men. These verses clearly and very plainly declare God’s concern with the here and now, with time and history. For those only interested in Heaven, these verses and the law as a whole are distasteful and somehow no longer valid.
This neglect of time and history is not biblical. It is commonplace, but it is not scriptural. The Bible is concerned with the whole of creation, not just the soul of man. But pietism has in effect said the world belongs to the devil, the world evolved out of nothing, the world is the product of Evolution, and therefore we need not concern ourselves with things physical, only with things spiritual.
This has been a major retreat on the part of the Church, a retreat that has had a damaging effect on the faith. It has led to the retreat of Christianity from the marketplace, from the political sphere, from everyday life, and its increasing irrelevance. Thus, we must insist that the neglect of time and history is not biblical.
But it is amazing how far some people will go to separate God from mundane affairs. As a matter of fact, some very prominent evangelicals have insisted that AIDS is not a curse from God, that God has nothing to do with it. I think John Lofton gave the excellent and telling answer to that, he said, are we then to see AIDS as a blessing from God?
In verse 6 we have a particular promise, “I will give peace in the land and ye shall lie down and none shall make you afraid.” These are magnificent words. This promise and its preconditions as stated in this chapter and throughout Leviticus are especially wonderful because they come from our God, of who we are told that He cannot lie. In these days of very massive insecurities and troubles, it is a text like this that should be preached and made familiar to all Christians. “And I will give you peace in the land, and ye shall lie down and none shall make you afraid.” It is a sad fact that such verses are not preached, nor the fact that these depend on the Law.
There are a series of promises in these verses in Leviticus 26:3-13:
1. There is a promise of rain so that the land will be fertile.
2. Fertility is promised, an abundance of crops and general prosperity.
3. They are promised safety and security in their persons and possessions, and that this will come from obedience.
4. Evil beasts will be eliminated from the land. We live in a century when, ironically, animals are more protected than human beings. Never in all of history have there been more laws protecting animals and less protection for people. More murder, mass murders of people. Last night, Dorothy was reading in the volume of the National Geographic before World War I; the early days of 1914. And even then, animal care was paramount. In Belgium, there were no laws at that time against child labor. There were very strict laws against the abuse of working dogs. They had to be provided with water and food, nice bed, and a great many other things regulating the conditions of their labor, because dog carts were in common use. But child labor had no protection. It was an interesting indication of what was to come in this century.
5. God says invasions will be eliminated and they shall easily overthrow their enemies no matter how much they are outnumbered. Again, this is a very interesting and important fact. We know now that if a people have no will to fight, no numerical superiority nor superiority of arms will suffice. People who have no will to fight, people who are deeply in debt, people who have no faith, are more concerned with the protection of their lives than with anything else. “Better red than dead.” This type of sentiment is centuries old.
6. The promise is that they would be blessed with a population increase. Ironically, today that is considered a curse.
7. Their prosperity will be so great that the old store, the reserve foods, will be plentiful even as the new harvest comes in.
8. The promise is that if they are obedient, there shall be peace in the land.
9. God will be with them because of His covenant to be their God. And He will bless them.
Now these are God’s promises to covenant Israel. They are His promises also to the Church, Christ’s new covenant Israel. By Christ’s atonement, we are His covenant people. We are the recipients of His peace and we are the New Israel of God, according to Galatians 6:16.
To deny these promises is to deny Christ’s covenant with us. It is to deny the meaning of the whole selection of twelve disciples, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel to replace Old Israel. It is to deny everything that our Lord did in the way of calling the twelve, and summoning them as the new patriarchs of Israel to go forth and to reclaim the people.
The promises are all very emphatic. They are pointed ones; “I will give you rain in due season.” And this is important: in due season. God does not say He will send the rain haphazardly or dangerously. In one part of the West, where now attempts are being made to have it declared a disaster area, the crops were lost, first because of draught during the winter, and then second, because rains fell in the summer to destroy the harvest. God’s promises thus are not only temporal, they are timely.
I recall some years ago, a seminary professor, a liberal or a modernist, who ridiculed the crass materialism of so much of the Old Testament and its promises, such as those in Leviticus. He believed in more intelligent motivations for man, intellectual ones of course. However, man needs food to survive—now that’s crass materialism if you want to term it that! And to ignore the day-by-day crass materialism of our lives is insanity. And a faith that ignores that aspect of our lives and God’s relationship to the everyday facts of our lives has abandoned reality.
O.T. Ellis, one of the great Old Testament scholars of the earlier part of this century rightfully called attention to verse 12 and said, “And I will walk among you and will be your God and ye shall be my people,” and he said, “this is an echo of Genesis 3:8 where we are told that God walked in the Garden of Eden. He was present with Adam and Eve.” And Ellis went on to say, “that with faithfulness, covenant man will see the earth become a greater Garden of Eden because the God of Eden so ordains it and declares this is His purpose for redeemed man. What Eden was, the whole earth shall become, with a far greater glory in Christ. We have therefore the Dominion Mandate, and we have here the terms thereof and the blessings for obedience.”
One of the promises in verse 11 is of God’s tabernacling presence. “And I will set my tabernacle among you and my soul shall not abhor you.” This we have fulfilled, or put into force for us in the person of Jesus Christ. In John 1:14, we read very literally, “the Word was made flesh, and [tabernacle] among us.” It is translated as dwelt among us, but very literally, it is tablernacled. We cannot take this promise and neglect all the others of the Bible.
If we are obedient, God says, “I will have respect unto you,” or literally, ‘I will turn toward you.’ Now, the term is a very interesting and a technical one. It has reference to the court of a king, a king who was very busy with his work and one of those whom he loves comes into his presence, and he turns from all his work to them. That’s the meaning of the expression, “I will turn toward you.” Whatever he problems of the King of Kings may be, when you come into my presence with your needs, I will turn toward you. It’s a very beautiful text.
Calvin’s comments on this text are not Calvin at his best. But he was still very correct in noting, and I quote, “Because nowadays God does not openly take vengeance on sins as of old, fanatics infer that He has almost changed His nature. Nay on this pretense the Manicheans imagine that the God of Israel is different from ours. But this error springs from gross and disgraceful ignorance, for by not distinguishing His different modes of dealing, they do not hesitate impiously to cut God Himself in two.”
Leviticus 25 and Leviticus 26 are necessary aspects of a covenant. All covenants are treaties. And a treaty properly has two aspects:
It has promises, contractual promises,
It has contractual penalties.
This is an aspect of treaties which no longer exists. And that’s why treaties in the modern world are worthless. There are no penalties attached. Nothing put up by way of forfeiture. Treaties today are merely agreements which are meaningless, which are purely verbal and readily violated. There is no guarantee that they will be observed. Each promises to do something, but no penalties exist for failure to do so. After all, a few years ago, we made a treaty with the Soviet Union, a human rights treaty. Of what value was it? It was worthless, because there were no penalties attached. Nobody put up anything by way of security. Even into the early part of the Christian era, treaties sometimes involved the kings exchanging their sons as hostages, in case there were violations. There were penalties attached. This we have forgotten. This is why treaties in the modern world are anathema. Not only because God forbids treaties of believers and unbelievers, because each has a different standard of truth, but also treaties are no longer treaties. There are no penalties attached. And the person who has some measure of integrity will therefore always be the loser. [0:20.16.3]
All treaties in the world of antiquity had clear advantages and penalties for both parties. This is why they could not readily be broken. God’s covenant with man sets forth the maximum blessings and curses so that it has the requirement of a total commitment.
The promise given for obedience are often cited by the prophets, as witness Amos 9:13, “Behold the days come, saith the Lord that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed. And the mountains shall drop sweet wine and all the hills shall melt.” This is a poetic description of the plenty, the prosperity that shall come with faithfulness to God’s covenant.
God makes it clear, in other words, that He is no absentee God. That He is a very present help as well as judge, and we cannot escape either His blessings or His judgments. He is a God who is totally involved with our material as well as our spiritual lives. And it is God’s purpose that in due time His covenant blessings become permanent. This is the purpose of His tabernacling presence, and also the purpose of the gift of the Holy Spirit.
In verse 13, “I am the Lord your God which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen, and I have broken the bands of your yoke and made you go upright.” God reminds Israel that in Egypt they were slaves. Like animals, they were in effect yoked, unable to stand upright. Remember in antiquity, slave labor was like animal labor. Men were the beasts of burden. And they are again in the world outside of Christ; in the Soviet Union, in red China and elsewhere.
But God says that by His covenant, He made Israel free. His covenant purpose for them and for us is freedom to do His will and to be His covenant dominion people. Joseph Parker, a century or more ago wrote, “God will have no slavery of a social kind. He is against all bonds and restrictions that keep down the true aspirations of the human soul. God has always proceeded upon the principle of the enlargement and the inheritance of liberty. We know how much God has done for a man by the degree of that man’s uprightness. That is an excellent and an undeniable standard of judgment. God has no crouching slaves cringing around His altar and afraid to look up to the cross which has given them forgiveness. In proportion as we are carrying bands and yokes, have we not known the spirit of the Living God? This relates to all conduct and religious observances, to the keeping of times and seasons and the offering of all manner of sacrifices. Whatever is done through a sense of servility and humiliation is wrongly done and is in no sense done in obedience to the command of Christ. When all is right within us, we run the way of God’s commands. We sing at our work. We turn the very statutes of God into songs in the house of our pilgrimage. What God has been doing for man in the first instance has been the breaking of yokes.”
Parker was right. God’s summons to His people is to stand upright, to be the free men of His kingdom and His law and grace together make us free. If the Son make you free, then are ye free indeed.
Let us pray.
Our Lord and our God, we thank Thee for the promises of Thy Law. We thank Thee for Christ and for the Spirit. Make us ever mindful, our Father that all the aspects of our life—material and spiritual, are to be governed by Thy Word and by Thy Spirit. Give us joy in Thy Word. Teach us to see that Thy Law is a song for the faithful, a way of blessing, and prosper us in Thy dominion service. In Christ’s name, amen.
Are there any questions now about our lesson?
Yes, John
[John] {?} Not sure exactly how to word this, but, you mentioned the absentee God, which is kind of the heart of Deism. Uh, it seems to me that one of the mistakes that’s been made in the past is that some have taught the Law to the exclusion of other doctrines that would prevent one from thinking of the Law as a purely mechanical device, that once God decreed it and set it in motion that He could go off and do other things would thus lead to Deism. And when you mentioned the idea that God is no absentee God, could you expound on that just a little bit more and, and put up the fences against Deism?
[Rushdoony] First let me qualify the fact of Deism. Not all Deists believed in an absentee God. There were four schools of Deism, one of them believed in an absentee God. For example, Benjamin Franklin was a Deist. But he did not subscribe to the idea of an absentee God, but a very present God.
The basic weakness of Deism in all four schools was there was no sound doctrine of Christ. He was simply a great teacher for them. And second, they tended to see the replacement of God’s Law by Natural Law. And this is what led, in the one school, to an absentee God, because while the others felt that God had created all the natural laws, He … and intervened occasionally, basically it was the operation of the natural laws of the natural sphere.
Well, the antidote to that kind of Deism is very clear and by the fact of Deism, is very definitely set forth. What did they neglect? Christ. All four school of Deism. Therefore, when you have a sound doctrine of Christ, you know that you have the tabernacling presence: God with us. Immanuel. And therefore we have the presence of God, we are members of the body of God the Son, we have the Holy Spirit, so we have His activity in us and in the world around us, and therefore the Law, given by the triune God is made operative in our lives by God the Son and God the Spirit, so that it is impossible then to see anything here of an absentee power, an absentee God.
Any other questions?
Yes.
[Audience] Well first, the promises are only part of the contract.
[Rushdoony] Yes
[Audience] The other part of the contract is how you fulfill your duties.
[Rushdoony] Exactly. So the promises are conditional, and we have the obligation of obedience and the penalty for disobedience. That’s why it is called a covenant, a treaty. And as I’ve pointed out on other occasions, there are two kinds of covenants, one between equals, which is a Covenant of Law; the other, The Covenant of Grace and Law, when a superior deigns to enter into a covenant with a lesser. Now those who insist on seeing the Law and the covenant apart from grace, they do not see the “grace of law,” as the Puritans called it, are those who are saying that the covenant between God and man is like a covenant between equals, which is altogether false.
Any other questions or comments?
[Audience] The most you hear about, generally speaking, are the promises.
[Rushdoony] Yes, yes. And that’s why so many people who claim to believe the Bible from cover to cover have a very limited Bible.
I recall very vividly, Dr. C.C. McCown, the archeologist who was a ultra-modernist, nonetheless ridiculing from a pulpit, the modernist perspective, because he said at that time, the fundamentalists were known as ‘fighting fundamentalists.’ And he said he had more respect for fundamentalists than for his fellow modernists, because they turned the whole of the Bible into sentimental slush. And he said, if you want to go through the New Testament, or he said, just take the words of Christ, and tabulate all those that talk about love and all those that talk about judgment, you’re going to find you have a small section dealing with love and a larger section dealing with judgment. And he said the reason for it is obvious—Jesus was dealing with sinful people. At least, that was the perspective from which he operated, Dr. McCown said. Therefore, judgment is what he had to promise. And he said, if you believe that people have become suddenly totally benevolent, then you can skip all the passages that deal with judgment. But if not, you must recognize they are clearly in the majority. There have been very few modernists like him, and the result has been that not only has modernism continued in the vein of sentimental slush, but evangelicalism has drifted into it also.
Any other questions or comments? Well if not, let us conclude with prayer.
Our Lord and our God, it has been good for us to be here. Thy Word is truth, and Thy Word heals, cleanses, tempers and strengthens us, and we give thanks unto Thee for Thy Word and Thy governing Spirit. Bless us day by day and prosper us in Thy service. Make us ever mindful that greater is He that is in us and with us than he that is in the world. 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.