Deuteronomy

The Days of our Lives

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 51-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 051

Dictation Name: RR187AB51

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. I will come into Thy house in the multitude of Thy mercy and in fear will I worship towards Thy holy temple. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight oh Lord my strength and my redeemer. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we give thanks unto Thee for the mercies with which Thou dost daily surround us. We thank Thee that though we live in an evil, troubled and angry world it is Thy will that shall be done. Thy kingdom that shall indeed come and we shall be blessed, strengthened and made more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. Bless us by Thy word and by Thy spirit that we may grow in Thy grace and in knowledge of Thy kingdom. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture this morning is Deuteronomy 16:9-12 and our subject: The Days of our Lives.

“ Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee: begin to number the seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn.

10 And thou shalt keep the feast of weeks unto the Lord thy God with a tribute of a freewill offering of thine hand, which thou shalt give unto the Lord thy God, according as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee:

11 And thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite that is within thy gates, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are among you, in the place which the Lord thy God hath chosen to place his name there.

12 And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt: and thou shalt observe and do these statutes.”

We have again a festival which sets apart some time for rejoicing before the Lord. First the time of this festival is not set by the calendar but by the harvest. In verse nine the time is specified as seven weeks from the time the sickle is put to the grain. Normally this counting to the feast of weeks was tied to the calendar in that it began two days after Passover. The fifty days allowed time for variations in the ripening of the grain. All the same dating the feast of weeks or Pentecost, Pentecost, pente = fifty, made men mindful that our lives are governed by a calendar that is not man made. We live in time, we do not make it nor did we create the world. One of the aspects of evolutions is that they dream of altering the calendar. The calendar is a given. It moves in terms of a year that is tied to the sun. It has aspects to it which are not created by man, man doesn’t determine the seasons, he doesn’t decide that spring should go all year long or six months. Man has found this objectionable, when he dreams as a revolutionist of reordering the world in terms of his will he also dreams of remaking the calendar and for a time of course the French revolution had a very different calendar and the Russian revolution tried to tamper with time. The objection is that as I said we live in time, we do not make it and therefore here at least man is face to face with the fact that we are not our own we did not make ourselves and this is objectionable to man.

Then second neither the world nor time exist for our benefit but for the Lord’s purposes. As a result God gives us His pattern for our days and His Sabbaths and more. Our rejoicing before the Lord is again governed by His will, it must include others as verses eleven and twelve make clear. God’s law must govern our days, our time, we must remember our past and God’s providence. Because of this we must include in our community and celebration, the foreigner, the widow and the orphan. When the Lord centers our lives on Himself He includes our neighbors in that rejoicing. Third this celebration of time is to be observed with a tribute of a free will offering of thy hand according to verse ten. The Hebrew word translated as tribute occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament. It means sufficiency or proportionate offering. According to C. H. Wheeler this means the free will offering proportioned to a man’s means and prosperity. The command is simply no man shall appear before me empty. This is repeated more than once. Then fourth verse eleven begins with an unusual command. Thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God. We do not normally think of joy of being commanded. The tendency of mankind however is too often self-pity and self-pity is determined to be joyless. Those who are full of self-pity are aggressively resolute to see no good in the present or the future. For them not God but evil men are in control, they do know that they are not. The command rejoicing means to require men to assess and recognize God’s providential care. This joy must be shared with one’s family and the family too often feels a man’s joylessness rather than his contentment and gratitude. The servants, aliens, the widowed and the orphans are included in this celebration of the feast of Pentecost to make us mindful as we face them of God’s bounty to us. When men are in revolt against time they disassociate themselves from other people and from the normal sequence of time. I recall reading years ago with shock and then hearing someone whose spiritual home was in New York and who regularly went there to spend most of his summers there that a great deal of the pleasure of the nightlife in New York was knowing that you could sleep until noon, that you were not a part of the work. The working world, of the compulsion to order your life, you were free from that and you could go until three or four in the morning and wake up and look out at the window knowing you were not one of those people bound by the routines of time.

This was a very self-conscious thing with this man who boasted of that kind of thing. Well, Passover should have made the covenant man grateful for his salvation. Now Pentecost or the feast of weeks should make him thankful that he had something to share with others. The festival is known not only as Pentecost and the feast of weeks but also of the feast of harvest in Exodus 23:16 and the day of the first fruits in Numbers and Exodus at three different points. It is not accidental that the Christian day of Pentecost is tied to the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church in Acts 2. The time of harvest becomes now the harvest of man and nations. The world harvest must be celebrated. Al though the world harvest of all men and nations is not yet complete we must celebrate it in advance and rejoice in the assured victory. First Corinthians 15:20 following declares Jesus Christ the first fruits of the dead. The first resurrected person of the new creation. The first of God’s ultimate harvest. The fallen world is therefore from the resurrection on in its death throes and the victory of Christ is assured. What we are seeing is what one writer referred to as God giving the body to falsehood that it may be cast off forever. The victory is a matter of time and so here and now we are required to celebrate time and its goal. We must be joyful, grateful and generous. Then fifth memory is again stressed inverse twelve. By remembering past bondage and grief we become a force for deliverance to those around us. We know that what God has done for us He will do again and again and increasingly so. Our gratitude for deliverance from our past we show by gifts to God and to man. The direction of our thanksgiving is thus two fold, upward and outward. Pentecost marked the end of the great harvest. It was therefore to be a time of celebration of the ultimate harvest at the end of time. The celebration lasted for one day. Two loaves, the first fruits of the wheat harvest were waived before the Lord, only then could any part of the new harvest be eaten.

Gratitude had to precede everything else. Thanksgiving before enjoyment. Although the feast of weeks was celebrated on the fiftieth day after Passover it was to be a time of joy throughout the fifty days. Instead of any concern or wailing over the lightness of the harvest there was to be joy that there was a harvest and anxiety was to give way to gratitude. Now it has to be stressed that gratitude should not be confused with self-satisfaction. It is a sad fact that a modern orthodox Jewish manual for this festival sees Moses’s concern about Israel’s waywardness as only superficial and not discerning. God supposedly saw Israel’s (and I’m quoting):

“Untainted spiritual potential back in Egypt and that was sufficient merit for the redemption.” Unquote.

That was the opinion of [unknown] one of the greatest of the Rabbis. In other words their salvation from Egypt was due to merit. Immanuel writes also and I quote about Israel’s enthusiastic even angelic acceptance of the Torah. Where do you see that in the Torah? We are actually told according to this manual and I’m quoting:

“God created the universe on the condition that it could endure only if Israel were to accept the Torah, creation exists in our merit.” Unquote.

Well of course this was and is Phariseeism, a very common evil. And today it’s a very prevalent evil all over the world. We have blacks who see virtue concentrated in their race and if they do anything wrong it’s because the whites are responsible for it. And whites who see virtue concentrated in their own people. Wherever we find this it is Phariseeism and that anathema to God. As Paul so bluntly stated it in First Corinthians 3:7:

“For who maketh to differ from another and what hast thou that thou didst not receive. Now if thou didst receive it why dost thou glory as if thou hast not received it.”

The biblical calendar requires us to focus our lives on God’s time and on His works. The modern man’s calendar requires men to set aside God’s word in favor of the state’s concerns and man’s pleasures. The income tax day has become perhaps the most commanding if not enjoyed day of the modern calendar. It is a fitting symbol of what happens when man’s priorities go astray. The calendar is in part an expression of faith. We either accept time on God’s terms or we try to establish our terms and then days such as tax days will only increase in their importance and their command of us until the faith of men changes. The days of our lives reflect our priorities. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that Thou hast established time. Had we ordained time we would make it a perpetual spring or whatever suited us to the destruction of life. And when we order our time, our days in terms of our priorities we turn them into a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. So teach us to number our days that we may apply our lives unto wisdom. Give us grace to hear Thee and to obey Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes and we are told very specifically that man lived hundreds of years before the Flood. After the flood God so altered the conditions of the natural world that our lifespan was reduced. And Isaiah says as sin is overcome and man becomes more and more God’s man and orders the world as God’s kingdom than man’s lifespan is going to be extended again very dramatically. So our time is governed by God and the present day longevity limited as it is God’s punishment on the generations that manifest the Fall and it will change in due time. Are there any other questions?

We can see the rebellion against time all around us and the attempt to see time as determined by men in spite of all the realities of the world. The passage I read from the manual for this festival just produced this year for use this year, well everything including the existence of the world is made dependent on man. Now this is the ultimate revolution that is taking place all around us. Men of all races, of all political opinions are determined that this world is going to be controlled by man’s decisions and as a result we are seeing the aggravation of the revolution against God and of the world wide disaster. Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that our times are in Thy hands. We thank Thee that Thou hast made us for Thy purposes. Give us grace to accept Thy purpose for us. Teach us so to walk day by day that we are always open to Thee, instant in obedience to Thee, ever joyful that Thou art on the throne. Teach us to say no to our will and let Thy will be done in our lives. 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.