Leviticus; The Law of Holiness and Grace

The Expulsion

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Lesson: 36

Track: 36

Dictation Name: RR172T36

Date: Early 70s

Let us worship God. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, we beseech Thee to be merciful unto Thy people. Give us, oh Lord, Thy grace and Thy spirit that we may be more than conquerors in this evil day. Give unto Thy Church victory against the powers of Humanism, Statism and Socialism. Make Thy people wise in Thy ways, oh Lord and fearless by Thy spirit, that we may be more than conquerors through Christ our King. In His name we pray. Amen.

Our scripture is Leviticus 18:24-30. Our subject, “The Expulsion.” Leviticus 18:24-30, “The Expulsion.”

“24 Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you:

25 And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.

26 Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you:

27 (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled ;)

28 That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you.

29 For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people.

30 Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance, that ye commit not any one of these abominable acts, which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the Lord your God.”

In this text, the two key words are ‘defile’ (to pollute) and ‘to spue’ (to vomit). We have blunt language, in other words. What is said here is amplified at great length in Leviticus 26:14-38 as well as in Deuteronomy 28:15 and following. God promises judgment for faithlessness to himself and His covenant Law. There is a double defilement spoken of. The land is defiled when the people are defiled. So when the people defile themselves, more is at stake than themselves; the land is also. But then a single vomiting takes place. The land spues out the defiling people. God clears the place. He clears the land of the offending people, whoever they are, whether Israelite or Canaanite, whatever their color, their nationality, or their race. Now these divisions of nationality and race are important to men, but they are unimportant to God. But His Law is important to Him. And He governs in terms of His Law.

So He tells us there are two things that happen. When a people defile themselves, they begin the pollution of the land. The land has its vengeance of them in all kinds of natural disasters and in bad weather. Disastrous weather. Then if they continue, the land spues them out. They are wiped out one way or another. All the nations are held accountable. Israel as a nation is warned, and all persons, all nationalities are also warned. God makes clear that no nation, whether they claim to have no connection to Him or are His people, have a license to sin. Now the disastrous fact is that very often, precisely those people who are blessed by God feel they are a privileged people and have a license to sin. That’s the story of the Old Testament and Israel. Thus, the story of history since; Christian nations being exalted by God, by faithfulness to the Lord and His Law and then feeling they are a privileged people—a superior people, and therefore have a license to sin. But the covenant gives no protection in such cases. In fact, it heightens the judgment. Sin is the transgression of the Covenant Law.

All must keep, obey, and guard God’s Law strictly. “Therefore, shall ye keep mine ordinance, that ye commit not any one of these abominable customs which were committed before you and that you defile not yourselves therein. I am the Lord your God.” Thus, God’s Law very strictly and sharply makes a clear statement of the relationship between man’s faithfulness to God and to the land around us; the soil, the weather, the fertility of the soil—all things. As C.D. Ginsberg commented, “The physical condition of the land therefore depends upon the moral conduct of man. When he disobeys God’s commandments, she is parched up and does not yield her fruit. The land is defiled when he defiles himself. When he walks in the way of the divine commands, she is blessed. God is merciful unto the land and to His people. Hence, the earth mourneth when her inhabitants sin. And the earth is glad when God avenges the cause of His people. It is owing to this intimate connection between them, that the land which is here personified is represented as loathing the wicked conduct of her children and being unable to restrain them. She nauseated them. The same figure is used in verse 28, in chapter 20:22 and in Revelation 3:16.” Thus, being a believer, or being a foreigner or an unbeliever gives no exemption from God’s moral law. The Law is applicable as verse 26 says,” to any stranger that sojourneth among you.”

The people to whom Moses spoke are told of the still-future destruction of the Canaanites as an already-accomplished legal fact. They are thus the witnesses of God’s judgments. To us, we have far more evidence and much more attention; much more respect for God’s Law is required. We are the witnesses of the whole of a series of judgments in the Old Testament and of ever since, the nations that have seen these disasters, the relationship between judgment and natural disasters. Otto Scott has written in his book on Robespierre, about all the natural phenomena that preceded the French Revolution that men refused to harken.

So the fact of expulsion follows. When a people pursue their sins to a certain point, there are two facets to the judgment. First, God casts out the defiled people. But then we are told the land itself vomits out the defiled people. The land does the vomiting. The people become like poison to the land, and so the land vomits them, because the land is innocent. It is not the land that sinned, but the people that sinned.

Now, the reference here is to a fact that was once well-known in many cultures. I’ve heard missionaries speak about it. Only once have I seen it in writing, and the written account dates back to 1935 and relates an experience that took place earlier. The writer was Gordon Sinclair describing the ordeal in a certain portion of Africa. “A better explanation came from Dr. Sapara, the British-trained medicine man of Lagos. Poison ordeals are old and crude, he explained. They are back-woods behavior, and yet they work. An innocent man being compelled to submit to a poison ordeal will toss off his brew quickly as something to have done with. In other words, all who are suspected of a crime in these ordeals are given this poison to drink. The man who knows he is innocent has faith in the attending doctor. He drinks it and quickly vomits it. A guilty man is in terror. He sips, but he’s frightened to drink it all. What he does drink, he drinks slowly. The particular barks and herbs used have a terribly nauseating effect if taken quickly. They turn a stomach and come up at once, causing no damage. But if taken slowly, they are deadly. But such things are crude, fit only for the bush.”

Now central to this type of ordeal, of this vomiting out of poison was innocence. The innocent persons in the ordeal vomited out the poison. And this is the focal point of these verses. The land is innocent. The people have become poison by virtue of their sin. The transgression of God’s Law means that man’s being is poisoned by sin and the land therefore vomits out the people. The land suffers because of man.

This is not new! When we go back to the Garden of Eden, what we find is that because they sinned they were cast out of the garden, and they were told the whole earth would in a sense reject them because ‘thorns and thistles shall it bear to you.’ And man by the sweat of his brow will produce, and with difficulty. In Romans 4:25, in Romans 5:15-20, Paul speaks of the same fact of man’s offence, a deviation, a transgression that leads to man’s rejection. Man is vomited out of the land by his sin. The flood is another great expulsion. There have been many expulsions, many judgments by weather and by storm and by other natural phenomenon over the centuries. The Canaanites, the exile of Israel, the fall of Jerusalem, all these cases up till the present; we are in a time of judgment now. Israel in those days was a wooded, well-watered land. It is a waste place now; the forests are gone, the streams no longer as they once were. Sin has a lasting effect.

Again and Again the Bible speaks of this kind of judgment. It is the constant emphasis of the Law, and of the prophets. For example, in Jeremiah 6:10-19, we have a like statement. Jeremiah declares,

“10 To whom shall I speak, and give warning, that they may hear? behold, their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken: behold, the word of the Lord is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in it.

11 Therefore I am full of the fury of the Lord; I am weary with holding in: I will pour it out upon the children abroad and upon the assembly of young men together: for even the husband with the wife shall be taken, the aged with him that is full of days.

12 And their houses shall be turned unto others, with their fields and wives together: for I will stretch out my hand upon the inhabitants of the land, saith the Lord.

13 For from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely.

14 They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

15 Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the Lord.

16 Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, we will not walk therein.

17 Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, we will not hearken.

18 Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them.

19 Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it.”

Again, we are told in Hebrews 12, that God, because nations sinned, had a continual shaking to destroy the things which were from Moses to Christ, and the fall of Jerusalem. And we are told there shall be another great shaking, from the fall of Jerusalem until only those things which cannot be shaken might remain.

And what is this word again and again spoken throughout the Bible, houses, fields, countries, wives, daughters, sons, husbands, were all going to be handed over to others by the judgment of God. Because men reject God, God rejects them. Because men defile themselves in the, the Lord casts them out of the land. Because there is a breech between God and the people, there soon follows a breech between the land and the people. All of this, like so much of the prophetic teaching is simply the application of Leviticus 18:24-30.

Bu this is not all. No one who reads these verses with a seeing eye can fail to see that our Lord in Matthew 24 is applying the judgment of Leviticus 18:24-30 to Judea. And that they apply to the whole world of our time. They apply today to an age arrogant in sin and given to making saints out of sodomites. Unless men turn to Christ to be made whole and then become the people who hear and obey His Law, they too shall be rejected and spued out. We live in a time of judgment. And we need to recognize the Word of the Lord stands true forever.

Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, we thank Thee that Thy judgments are righteous all together, that they are justice applied. Give us grace therefore, in terms of Thy Word, to begin to re-order all things in terms of Thy justice—Thy Law, to make all things whole, to make them new in Christ, and to yield them unto Thee as Thy possession, to serve Thee and to fulfill Thy purpose, that Thy kingdom may come, and Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Bless us to this purpose we beseech Thee in Christ’s name. Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

When I wrote A Biblical Philosophy of History, I called attention to the fact that even non-Christian writers had noticed that the number of natural disasters in the fifteen years after World War II had increased dramatically over the number in the fifty years before. And since that time, they have continued to increase. And yet, people are heedless of this fact.

Well, if there are no questions, let us bow our heads now in prayer.

Oh Lord, our God, how great Thou art, and how righteous are Thy ways. We thank Thee that Thou hast made us, Thou hast redeemed us, and Thou hast set forth in Thy Word the way of justice and of life. We thank Thee that by Thy grace, Thou hast separated us unto life—a life everlasting. Empower us by Thy grace to make the realm of life expand here on earth; that as the ungodly are judged and removed, we may occupy in Thy name. 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.