Deuteronomy

The Locale of Power and Grace

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 100-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 100

Dictation Name: RR187BB100

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness come before His presence with singing. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name for the Lord is good His mercy is everlasting and His truth endureth for all generations. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee that all flesh shall stand before Thee. That all things great and small shall face Thy judgment, Thy deliverance and nothing is too great nor too small for Thee. We come therefore thanking Thee for Thy mercy unto us in Christ. We thank Thee that in this evil world justice shall triumph in time and in eternity. We therefore commit ourselves unto Thee afresh knowing Thy mercy, knowing Thy loving kindness, work in us that which is Thy holy purpose. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is from Deuteronomy 27:14-26 and our subject: The Locale of Power and Grace. The Locale of Power and Grace, Deuteronomy 27:14-26.

“And the Levites shall speak, and say unto all the men of Israel with a loud voice,

15 Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto the Lord, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place. And all the people shall answer and say, Amen.

16 Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen.

17 Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark. And all the people shall say, Amen.

18 Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way. And all the people shall say, Amen.

19 Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say, Amen.

20 Cursed be he that lieth with his father's wife; because he uncovereth his father's skirt. And all the people shall say, Amen.

21 Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast. And all the people shall say, Amen.

22 Cursed be he that lieth with his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen.

23 Cursed be he that lieth with his mother in law. And all the people shall say, Amen.

24 Cursed be he that smiteth his neighbour secretly. And all the people shall say, Amen.

25 Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent person. And all the people shall say, Amen.

26 Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen.”

As we go through these verses and then the text of Deuteronomy 28 we will understand a great deal about the modern world that is not commonly reported. The modern worldview we saw last week stripes life of all moral and theological meaning. In one area of life after another the correct intellectual stance has been to avoid any analysis which reflects on any biblical element and certainly to cite the bible is the ultimate horror. The enlightenment regarded it as a triumph of intelligence to view all things in purely naturalistic terms. So we have had three, four, centuries of this steady attrition of stripping life of theological and moral meaning. The Marque De Sade and after him Kinsey insisted on denying that any moral or theological standard has any meaning, any reality but thought, ideas determined life. We know have an increasing number of people to whom any moral or religious considerations or standards are irrelevant. As a result the world around us grow more evil and more anarchic. We have here in our text twelve curses. The twelve tribes or clans are all required to take part in the ceremony, the Levites proclaimed the twelve curses in unison in a loud voice, all the tribes shall respond by saying Amen. The first curse is on all forms of idolatry, four curses are on perverse sexuality, one involves bestiality, the other three incest in some form. One curse is on all who dishonor their father and mother, another curse is on all who pervert justice in order to exploit widows, orphans and aliens. Another curse is on all who mock the blind by misdirecting them; two are concerned with violence against others, in one case secret violence against a neighbor and the other hiring someone to kill an innocent person. Another curse is on all who remove or misplace landmarks to increase their own land limits.

In Ancient times and to this day especially in areas like ours it is not uncommon for surveyors to leave posts, steel bars, in the ground as landmarks and for centuries it has been a common practice until landmarks were reported by surveyors to move these landmarks in wet weather when it was dark. Thereby by moving a boundary mark a few feet some acreage could be accumulated. The final curse is on all who will not confirm the whole law, that is, make it their way of life. There is an important strand in these curses. They deal in most cases with perversity, not too long after World War Two I learned that police were encountering a growing number of cases of incest. The appeal of such an offense to the perpetuator was on its perversity. A desire to push back restraints and more boundary marks marked such people. I learned also of acts of bestiality performed on a dare as a way of manifesting some kind of eminence by their boldness. To excel in evil has become a part of our popular culture. Misdirecting a blind man no longer has a popular appeal but the premise is still with us, that is, making a mockery of those around us who cannot strike back. All that happens is, the locale of such mockery shifts, and again, the element of perversity is very strong. The godly and moral man is helpful to those in need, the evil man relishes opportunities for perversity. The world of rock and roll music is full of evils of major character. In the Hebrew, cursed is passive. It means that those who perform these acts enter into the curse, it falls upon them, it overtakes them, they are accursed. Amen means affirm, assure, it is or will be so.

An important aspect of naturalism whether in its modern form as in Sade or Kinsey or in the ancient paganisms, Hittite, Canaanite and others, was its belief in acts of chaos as revitalizing. As Christians, we look above for grace and power. The non-Christian world inevitably looks below for its kind of grace and power. So that whenever the Christian faith wanes demonism, occultism and related phenomena well up because men will look to the source of power for their grace and for their power and if, as with our renewed paganism, since the Enlightenment and stepped up with Darwin, we regard primeval chaos as the origin of all things, that therefore becomes our source of grace and power. Our source of renewal. In some ancient religions it was held that sexual intercourse with a sacred animal could lead to physical union with a deity. This was the Canaanite practice and we’re not told the truth about the Canaanite religions. The Roman saturnalias was such a cult of chaos. It suspended all laws and work, only the bakers had to work so the people could be fed, and it crowed as king for the duration of the festival a condemned criminal. He then possessed the queen and had free reign for the entire time of the saturnalia as did all. When it was over he went back to prison and was executed. Anti-morality was the law of the carnival and its purpose because society had to be revitalized by lawlessness. We have a relic in this in the Mardi-Gras and like carnivals. In biblical faith power and grace as we have seen come from above, from God. In ancient and modern paganism power and grace come from below and never before in all of history as man been more geared to the primeval past, to chaos then he is now. Intellectually, scientifically, in every way.

Well the consequence is devastating because the premise is the greater the moral anarchy the greater the revitalization. That is why Henry Miller held with others before him that what we had to bring on was two centuries of total lawlessness with all libraries, schools, civilized agencies, destroyed and total moral anarchy for man to be free and revitalized for a new garden of Eden. Because of this premise the greater the moral anarchy the greater the revitalization, rulers were thus above the moral law as in the case of Nero, Caligula, Heliogabalus and others. In the modern world this evil doctrine persists in such beliefs as the royal privilege, the artist’s freedom from all moral restraints, and so on and on. The whole frame of reference in curses and blessings is to power and grace from above, from the triune God. This is why the language of curses and blessings is so alien to modern man. People will occasionally say damn and things like that but seventy five years or more ago the language of curses and blessings was relegated to melodramas, with the hero saying to the villain curse you foul villain and that sort of thing. Well the language of curses and blessings is alien because it refers to a personal world, a personal god and persons on earth, whereas the modern view is impersonal or at the very least depersonalizes. It was an important aspect of the churches teaching over the centuries to stress that the opposite of true faith is the anathema. To act as one who could pick and choose where the faith is concerned was to be a heretic and accursed because it was depersonalizing reality. In fact, in its original form, which the modern era has altered, the Nicene Creed ended with these words and I quote:

“And whosoever shall say that there was a time where the Son of God was not or that before He was begotten He was not or that He was made of things that were not or that He was of a different substance or essence from the Father or that He was a creature or subject to change or to conversion they that say so, the Catholic and Apostolic church anathemas them.” Unquote.

The twelfth curse is general. It demands full obedience to the whole of God’s law, a curse on the man who will not give effect to the words of law in Moffat’s rendering. The law is the way of life and blessing whereas disobedience is the way of cursing and death. Psalm 1 and many another tell us this. Men can look for good from God or from this world; their standards can reflect God’s law or their own wishes. There is nothing impersonal or mechanical about it. The modern appetite is for success with no strings attached, no obligations to anyone. To be a success means owing nothing to any man, to succeed entirely on one’s own. That is why it is dangerous very often to help people if they are ungodly they will kick you in the teeth to demonstrate their independence from you. But the bible tells us that no man can lively only unto himself without paying a deadly price and the bible declares that faith and character govern more than human life. As one scholar, Andrew Harper wrote almost a century ago and I quote:

“A truly modern mind scorns the idea that the fertility of the soil can be affected by immorality yet there is the whole of Mesopotamia to show that misgovernment can make a garden into a desert. In Palestine the same thing may be seen, under Turkish domination the character of the soil has been entirely changed. Before that it was a land indeed flowing with milk and honey and of forests and streams. In many places where in ancient days the hills were terraced to the top the sweeping rains have had their way and the very soil has been carried off leaving only rocks to blister in the pitiless sun. Even in the less likely sphere of animal fecundity modern science shows that peace and good government and righteous order are causes of extraordinary powers and the movements which are going around us at this day and the elevation and depression of nations and races have a visible connection with fecundity or lack of fecundity to known principles of order and justice.” Unquote.

Ideas have consequences in every sphere and faith requires results, it leads to blessings, not curses. The removal of blessings and curses in modern thinking, of moral consequence from life leads to a radical depersonalization of man. The 18th century classic of anti-Christianity, La Mettrie’s Man A Machine, has colored intellectualism ever since. It was still in print when I was at the university although its mechanistic thinking was giving way to the biological substitute of Darwinism with the same depersonalization. Scholarly works have stripped their analyses of all theology and morality and yet scholars when they note the growing moral collapse refuse to see their part in the spread of ethical suicide. Man is not a machine. He is God’s creature and is inescapably in a world of blessings and curses. The scholar or intellectual who does not make that fact basic to his perspective may be prominent but he is also irrelevant. The world, whatever man may think, is always God’s world. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank Thee that we move in a world of blessings and curses and by Thy grace in Christ we have been changed, we have been transferred from the world of curses to the world of blessings. Thy grace is great and wonderful and we thank Thee, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Yes but as the Westminster Confession and Catechism made clear they could refer to intellectual images and idols…same thing, yes, and the same curse is upon them. And modern man has his graven images made by his own mind. Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] That’s a very, very telling point and very true, yes. We can lead people who are spiritually blind away from the truth and we can mock those who are naive and young because they show any predisposition towards the faith. That’s a very important point and a very telling one to describe what’s going on in our day. It’s very dangerous now in universities to express an opinion that challenges the idolatries of the academy. Any other questions or comments?

You can see why the language of curses and blessings is so remote, it lingered on incidentally longer in this country than in Europe and it is interesting how before the civil war would at times appear in some presidential proclamations but that is now gone because we are living in a Darwinian world and therefore we are living in terms of a belief in the creative power of chaos. It was one of the Chicago seven, the radical hippies I believe, who said that he was involved in revolution for the hell of it.

For the sheer delight in overthrowing things and creating disturbances because there was something socially regenerating in that. We’ve just seen an interesting example of that in San Francisco, Mayor Jordan has demanded that the homeless people around City Hall and adjacent areas be cleared out; because they’ve been using the streets for toilet purposes it is impossible to walk without keeping your eyes firmly on the ground [laughs]. Now at the same time dogs cannot use the streets but the homeless have a constitutional right according to the ACLU to use so and there’s something degrading about preventing them from doing so. This is the insanity of any belief in the regenerating power that comes from below, meaning that the, as Van Till pointed out, you don’t look to the best in the culture for guidance, you look to the worst and you look then down to animals and then you look to the primeval slime, it is as he marvelously termed it, integration downward into the void. Yes?

[Question] Well it’s interesting that the people who…[unintelligible] are very sensitive about insults to their own.

[Rushdoony] Yes of course they are the touchiest people imaginable, they’ve got to have the world exactly as they choose and with each passing year the moral insensitivity grows. I was doing a little reorganizing in my library and I encountered a reference to a former secretary of agriculture that made me realize how far things have gone downhill. He told a thoroughly stupid and tasteless joke which dealt with a racial group and for that he had to leave office, people were so horrified, now we’re so insensitive that we’ve got a president that can do the most horrifying things and we’re supposed to tolerate it. There’s been a tremendous integration downward. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Question] In your understanding and pastoring this is still not the worst of times. The times that have passed even when Christ was alive and after and all the churches were set up, those were some very bad times, weren’t they?

[They repeat the question several times]

[Rushdoony] We’ve had some incredible downs in history as well as some remarkable ups. Certainly the time of the latter Roman Empires was an amazing low point. The nine hundreds in some areas, especially Rome, when you had the [unknown], a very low point. Then when you had the goliards in the latter middle ages, the wandering minstrel students, like the hippies with their guitars going place to place preaching revolution, it led to some pretty grim things and the Renaissance was a nightmare, a radical nightmare. So we’ve had precedents and yet we’ve had amazing moral recovery. I still marvel at the fact that with the Renaissance there was such a moral degeneracy and so much of a spread of V.D. that medical historians of our time or rather a generation below when they studied some of the data felt that at least a third of Europe was venerealy diseased and it could in a generation or two more have led to the destruction of Europe. And yet the reformation changed that and Steven Osmont has written a landmark book When Fathers Ruled, how with the reformation fathers took back government, created strong families and revolutionized things. Then of course you had the enlightenment which has led to our present predicament. And I do believe we’re going to see a major regeneration of society. Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we know that Thy hand is in all things and that Thou hast brought about the things which we see so that man may appreciate all the more Thy regenerating power when it is manifest. We look unto Thee oh Lord for the cleansing of the nations, of the churches, of all institutions by Thy sovereign grace. 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.