Life and Obedience

In Numbers six, verses twenty two through twenty seven, we have the priestly blessing on Israel and on God’s people of every generation. In that text we read: “And the Lord spoke unto Moses saying. Speak unto Aaron and unto his son saying, on this lives Ye shall bless the children of Israel saying unto them, Lord bless thee and keep thee, Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee, the Lord lift up his continence upon thee and give thee peace. And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel and I will bless them.”

Now the expression make his face shine is the synonym for save. And we read it in that since in Psalm 31:16. It is also a synonym for restore in Psalm 80:317 and 19 and for redeem in Psalm 119 verses 134 and 5. To lift up his continence upon thee means to show favor in countless texts. Moses does here in Deuteronomy something very important. He reminds Israel that God has put his name upon them, and they have an obligation to obey Gods covenant law. Because of Israel’s disobedience and Moses's weariness with them Moses was denied the privilege of entering the Promised Land. He was however permitted to view it from the top of mount Pisgah. In Deuteronomy 4:1-4 Moses reminds Israel that they must be faithful to the covenant God and His law. First he makes very clear that the Lord God who sees the beginning and the end has through all eternity, decreed and established his canon of his law word. He says, Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you. Now it is idiocy to assume that it is accidental that the Bible closes with revelation and that almost its concluding words make a same declaration. Revelation 22: 18 and 19 read:

“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto these God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy God shall take away his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city and from the things that are written in this book.”

This is legal covenantal language. And in both Deuteronomy and Revelation it is clear that it has a binding and permanent application. Modernism, dispensationalism and antinomianism are all guilty. They either subtract or add to God’s covenant word. As Hoppe noted obedience is the foundation of Israel’s relationship with God, because it brings Israel closer to God than is thought humanly possible. The result and proof of faith is obedience. Verse one is emphatic about this, now there for harken oh Israel unto the statutes and unto the judgments which I teach you for to do them that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers giveth you. Theologically we can see that works are the keeping of the law as a result of faith and in the New Testament Matthew 7: 15 to 20, Romans 3:31 and James 2:12 to 26 make this clear. In verse one of our text they are closely identified as different sides of God’s grace to and in his people. To live is to harken or believe. And to obey is to do what God commands. The whole premise of covenantalism is that of clear and immutable, unchanging, legal obligations. To assume that covenantal laws are culturally conditioned or apply only to their time is the denial of the Bible, of the covenant, and of our faith.

Scholars tell us that Biblical covenants reproduce a covenant pattern of antiquity. But a better analysis would be to recognize that from the beginning God established the covenant pattern and various peoples imitated it, they reproduced it. For example the ancient Babylonian law code of King Lipid Ishtar asserts the law code covenant to be an enduring covenant of justice and invoked the gods to sustain it. These are imitations of God’s covenant. Now the basic premise of a covenant is that while it can be broken it cannot be altered. This is basic to understanding the Bible. A covenant can be broken but it cannot be altered, but terms of the relationship remain unalterable. But try to understand that by applying it to something were familiar with. The marriage covenant. The marriage can be broken by a variety of offenses and therefore God who ordains marriage provides for divorce. Whereby the brokenness is publicly declared but at the same time the covenant requirements for marriage cannot be altered. They are always the same. There cannot be different terms for marriage in different generations or in different times, they are always the same. But they can be broken and that breaks the marriage. Now failure to recognize this distinction, leads to various different errors. For example, God’s covenant with the nation of Israel is held by some to be an eternal one. So that despite the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, we are told God’s covenant with Israel still stands. This is the whole point of premillennial dispensationalism.

Last year, January 21st, the capital prayer breakfast with leading Christian figures, members of congress, the white house, was dedicated to the theme of God’s unchanging and abiding covenant with Israel. Now that’s blasphemy, it’s a clear cut denial of scripture. God’s covenant remains, a new people have replaced the nation Israel. The covenant can be broken, but the covenant cannot be altered. Similarly there are many people and denominations, churches which hold that a marriage cannot be broken. Because it is a covenant and that all divorce is sin. Now this is again blasphemy, such thinking confuses the covenant as God decrees it and as man practices it. With respect to marriage our Lord makes clear in Matthew 19:3 to 9 that God ordained marriage to be a lifelong covenant, but also made provisions for divorce because men are sinners. The terms of marriage remain unalterable, the specific union can be broken by sin. Now the Bible is a covenantal book and we cannot understand the Bible if we don’t realize that while a covenant and its law remain unalterable, the covenant can be broken, the relationship can be terminated and a new one made with another person or people. Now what we have done is to say that the law is what is set aside. So what is left of the covenant? Only a binding tie that is meaningless. In other words, no matter what Judea or Israel did the tie with God remains! The law means nothing. No matter what a man or a woman may do, the tie remains, again God’s law is made into nothing. I submit this is a fearful blasphemy. And it will bring God’s judgment upon all who affirm it.

In verses three and four Moses makes clear that disobedience to God’s law brings death and destruction because God’s covenant requires his judgment on offenders. Man cannot trifle with God’s law. To demand that God’s law applies against others but not against us is sin. Israel wanted judgment against its enemies and those who violate the marriage covenant want to hold the innocent party captive. God however renounced Israel and declared the relationship broken, so too he provided means for severing ties with an ungodly spouse. From start to finish the Bible is covenantal in all is laws. In verses three and four Moses refers also to the events in Baalpeor. When the men of Israel gave themselves over to ritual prostitution with a Medianite woman, judgment followed. The generation that left Egypt is further destroyed at this time and again a little later, they had broken God’s covenant and he broke with them and he killed them. Moshe Weinfeld, a Christian commentator, sees in Deuteronomy beginning in these verses the theology of repentance. This may be an overstatement but it is very clear that Moses throughout Deuteronomy seeks to instill a humility and a repentance spirit in the covenant people. He does not allow them to forget the sins of their fathers but rather to learn from them.[ tape cuts out] Peter Craggy wrote with respect to verse one and I quote: “The law here is not simply a written code, rather it is a presentation of law in a context of education, to teach you, an application to do. Moses then states the purpose of his teaching of the law. It is so that ye may live and go in and take possession of the land. The life of the Hebrews as a nation would depend on the law. Now in a totally, legalistic sense. But in that the relationship was the basis of the covenant, and in the covenant rested their close relationship with their God.” Unquote.

Now, while Craggy's statement is a bit vague at some points he was fully accurate in concluding that Moses told Israel, as he went on to say, that their greatness would lie in the wisdom and discernment that was the fruit of obedience to the law. Wisdom and discernment come from obedience to God’s law. Moses refers in verse one to statutes and judgments. Statutes engraved decrees and judgments or ordinances refer to judicial decisions applying God’s law and they refer to those given by Moses. An example, this is Numbers 36 where Moses clarifies the law of inheritance. The reference is thus limited to Moses, even though rabbis and Christian thinkers have claimed it for themselves. Clamance summed up the meaning of these 4 verses very ably when he said life and prosperity are dependent on obedience to God. Obedience however is not a popular subject these days. In fact you have to go back a good many generations to find much said about obedience by Christian commentators. Charles Bach who died in 1815 defined it very simply as ‘the performance of the commands of the superior’. The performance of the commands of the superior. Since God is the superior over all creation, obedience to him is the duty of all. It is strange that some regard obedience to God as legalism rather than the loving faithfulness of his people. Since we are doubly God’s creatures, by the fact that creation and regeneration we are all the more bound to love and obey him. There is no conflict between love and obedience, but rather a strict harmony and congruity. The church's failure to stress obedience evidences active disobedience.

Let us pray. Our Father we thank Thee for Thine unchanging covenant, we thank Thee knowing it is an expression of Thy being. For Thou art the Lord, Thou changest not. Thou art the same yesterday, today and forever. We thank Thee our Father that in a world of constant revolution and turmoil we have a sure anchor in Thee in Thy word. Give us grace day by day to anchor ourselves in all our ways upon Thee. That we may stand in the day of adversity; grant us this in Christ’s name, Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Man from crowd indiscernible]

[Rushdoony] Yes it is. Mohammad grew up in an area where there were Jews especially and some Christians. And he heard a great deal of what they had to say and what they taught. So in many respects, the Koran was an imitation Bible which was designed to supplement it, claiming to be a higher revelation. He refused to accept Christ as the Messiah and declared he was the greater prophet that Moses spoke of in Deuteronomy. In a sense, Islam represents a great deal of confusion because it mingles a great many pagan ideas, with ideas borrowed from the Bible, borrowed second hand, not from actual reading but hearing about it. It also was guilty of incorporating, not only superstitions but fatalism, because Islam is fatalistic, which is very different from predestination. As a result Islam has a problem coming to terms with the modern world. It has no capacity to create. It is a kind of frozen faith, it freezes people onto a set mold. All the supposedly great scientific thinking that Islam in its early years supposedly possessed was a product of captives who were converted or of Christian women who were captured and enslaved and who educated their sons and their sons became the intellectual leaders. So when they age of enslavement and captivity waned the so called Islamic science began to disappear and they became an ingrown and superstitious people.

[Man from crowd indiscernible.]

[Rushdoony] Not very much, because after all their faith is so fatalistic man is virtually nothing in their faith.

[Man from Crowd] Because I talked to one and he said that we are to obey the law and we don’t deviate and he says you don’t reason? And I said not when it comes to Christian law, and that was a real joke to them.

[Rushdoony] Well, Islamic revivals usually set the people back. Because the only progress Islam has made historically has been through conquest. Seizing the wealth of another people and exploiting it. When I was a boy, some people, especially in the Armenian community would speak of the soviet unity as the new Islam because it was parasitic. It only gained by seizing other countries. Destroying all their wealth, so it had to be continuously imperialistic and once it had nothing more to exploit it began to collapse.

[Man from Crowd] The more intelligent ones I met in California said they had everything in the Bible except Christ, they claim they have, the Islam religion is everything Christianity is except we do not accept Christ.

[Rushdoony] Mhmm, well the answer to that is read the Koran. You will find [tape cuts out] Very interesting in disabusing yourself of any such idea. Yes?

[Man from crowd] How does one know whether or not the version currently available of the versions of the Bible [cuts out] verse two and chapter four?

[Rushdony] Well, that’s a good question, the translation so called since Weskit and Hort are all based on a premise namely that the received text is not authentic, or not accurate. Now the received text is the text that over the centuries was carefully copied and recopied and when it was copied the copyist would read the copy together with the original, to make sure it was word for word correct, then they would count the words letters and make sure it was accurate. With Weskit and Hort, especially Hort whose possession was theologically unsound, the idea came about that text had to be corrupt, therefore it had to be reconstructed. The copyist would keep the defective parchments or manuscripts to wash them subsequently with acid and reuse them. When printing came about a lot of defective manuscripts were in barrels in monasteries and elsewhere. Those defective manuscripts have been used to form the basis of the new translations. You know when you’re typing something; your eye often skips a line because the same word appears on two lines at the beginning. And then you go back and realize something was emitted. Well the copyist very often made that mistake and they would discard the text. Well these people have found that these defective texts are supposedly the accurate ones. The new translations are all dependent on things other than the received text. They also, as I have pointed out more than once, have this advantage. From the attitude of the translators, they are translations that can be copyrighted. They really paraphrase what is rephrasing, not word for word translations. Well since the Bible is the best seller of all time and every year if you have a copyright to a Bible you have a money maker. And now, for example, one version has penetrated the evangelical and reformed communities very extensively simply by telling all the seminaries that represent the evangelical and reformed community if you will use these for your students we will give you a cut in the royalties.

So the new versions represent reconstruction and they are in violation of what Deuteronomy 4:2 is talking about, they subtract and they reconstruct, they add. And they not only subtract and reconstruct, they alter the meaning very often by softening the force of the theological statement that is not to their taste.

[Man from crowd indiscernible]

[Rushdoony] The King James or Authorized Version. It’s not a perfect translation and very often the words that it has used are a bit antiquated. More or less obsolete but it has two tremendous assets. One, it not only translates word for word, but where a word is understood in a noun or in a verb it italicized it. So if you look at verse 2. The word ought is italicized. It means that the word is not in the Hebrew, but is implicit in the verb. So you know what you’re reading when you read the King James. When the value of the King James is it was antiquated when it was translated as was the Geneva Bible which it virtually is. But they did it deliberately because they saw it as a basic old fashioned English that represented the purity of the language. If you are brought up on the King James Bible or the Authorized Version, you can read Shakespeare and Milton and Bunion and the literature of the past. But if you’re not, you’re a foreigner to our heritage. And without the translations of Luther and of the committee of translators in Britain and various other versions in other countries the language would not be fixed. Now it’s a deliberate thing to change the language and cut us off from the past. Yes?

[man from crowd indiscernible]

[Rushdoony] No they’re not translating it, it is a translation they are printing it. [man cuts in indiscernible] Very little, the King James is really the Geneva Bible minor improvements here and there clarifying various texts. The reason why King James was opposed to the Geneva Bible was because of the marginal notes which were designed to help the reader understand what he was reading about, and the marginal notes were offensive to James because they reminded people that God rebuked kings and rulers. And hence he could not tolerate even a handful of such things in the Bible. Now I would agree with him that marginal notes perhaps should not be in a Bible. It should be the plain text of scripture. But the reproductions of the Geneva Bible are an old fashioned typography, and they’re not the clearest reading and you get the same thing in the King James virtually. You would have to read quite a while having someone read say, Genesis 1:49 – 50, to you and then comparing it to catch the variations. Well if there are no further questions let us conclude with prayer. Our father we thank Thee that we have a sure anchor of Thy covenant and Thy covenant law and word. That in a world where man’s word changes from day to day and where man’s laws change and embody evil, we have a sure standard. And we thank Thee for that. 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.