Deuteronomy

Freedom under God’s Law

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 12-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 012

Dictation Name: RR187F12

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Lord I have loved the habitation of Thy house and the place where Thy honor dwelleth. I was glad when they said unto me let us go into the house of the Lord. Praise ye the Lord. Sing unto The Lord and new song and His praise in the congregation of saints. For the Lord taketh pleasure in His people and He will beautify the meek with salvation. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God unto Whom all honor belongeth. We rejoice in Thy government, in Thy word, and in Thy providential care. We come again to Thee to cast our every care upon Thee knowing Thou carest for us. Thou knowest better than we do our every need. Minister unto us in Thy sovereign grace and wisdom. Grant that now we indeed behold wondrous things out of Thy law and that we grow in grace and in understanding. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is from Deuteronomy 5:1-6. Freedom under God’s law.

“And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them.

2 The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.

3 The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.

4 The Lord talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire,

5 (I stood between the Lord and you at that time, to shew you the word of theLord: for ye were afraid by reason of the fire, and went not up into the mount;) saying,

6 I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.”

These verses are usually described as the prologue or preface to the ten commandments. They are that certainly but they are also much, much more. We have come to regard a preface as something to skip and as not essential to the argument of the book. Whereas from a biblical perspective and in terms of the Reformation and its key documents a prologue is often basic to what follows.

Charles R. Eardmen stated clearly the importance of these verses and I quote: “The preface to the commandments ‘I am the Lord Thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage.’ Is an integral part and supremely part of the decalologue. It relates all moral obligations on the revealed will of God and it states that the motive for obedience to His laws is gratitude for His redeeming love.” Unquote. Moses first word to the people is ‘hear’. In the Hebrew it means much more than to give ear, because its meaning requires understanding and obedience. It also implies consent and contentment. To hear God’s word is to hear the truth and our lives must be grounded on God’s truth as our Alpha and Omega. The demand is hear oh Israel and it is the nation that is addressed. The generation of adults at Sinai had died but Moses still says first God made the covenant with the men now before him; second He did not make it with their fathers, those who had died. God knew they were covenant breakers in all their being. His covenant had in mine therefore the faithful men who stood before Moses, those who came after him and to us and to all the redeemed to the end of time. God looks beyond the moment to plan in terms of the generations and the ages. Third, God confronted Israel directly as it were face to face, and Moses acted as the mediator of God to the fearful people. Fourth, the purpose of God and of Moses mediation was to show you the word of God. Face to face means that while the covenant was a legal document it was also a highly personal bond between God and man.

Even more, face to face tells us that God’s covenant and law are very clearly personal facts as well because they are the conditions of their relationship. We can understand this by analogy to marriage. Marriage is a legal fact. At the same time it is clearly a personal one. Our modern view of the law is an abstract and impersonal one and that is mythical. The law against murder is no abstract fact. Murder involves a person; it involves hurt and grief to those who are of the family of the murdered one. Theft involves personal loss and anger and pain to the person robbed. The idea of the law as an abstract thing for bureaucrats and lawyers to deal with is nonsense. It is a part of the Greco-Roman heritage which destroyed those cultures. Law can never be rendered an abstract fact anymore then marriage is a legal fact, it is therefore abstract and not personal. We are dealing with mythology when we come to the modern perspective. Israel is to hear the statutes and judgments of the Lord. God’s law is given first as a privilege for Israel. It is not a punishment nor a yoke as the interpretations given by the Pharisees made of the law. It was given to be a liberating prospering and governing force. Second, the commandments are restricted in that they require an exclusive and radical faithfulness to God. The covenant people are God’s property. Therefore he declares that they can have no other gods before Him. So when we are told Thou shalt not kill, steal, commit adultery, bear false witness, it is an offense not only against the person whom we sin against but against God. Then we can have no other gods before Him and every law reflects the person of God and our obedience and disobedience of personal relationship to God. Then third as we have seen in verse three God declares that the covenant is against those who stand before Him. Because men live and die they view such events as the giving of the law as Mount Sinai as simply historical events in a remote past.

God’s covenant is an aspect of an eternal present even as our God is the same yesterday, today and forever. And it is we who are quickly a part of the past, so His covenant is a part of God’s eternal realm of the present. We are commanded in verse one to hear the laws for God and to learn them. The word translated as learn can also be rendered as study. The study of God’s covenant law is the key of wisdom. All things must be studied from the perspective God and His covenant and His fundamental and universal law. This insistence of the Bible is basic to the fact that in Christendom the goal for all has been literacy, knowledge of God’s law word and wisdom. True Christianity is a faith for students. For those who seek wisdom and understanding. If the church is not an educational ministry it has ceased to be a church. These verses stress God’s covenant law and covenant grace. Israel was about to enter the land of Canaan. They had no natural nor historical right to that land. No nation according to scripture has a natural right to anything because the earth is the Lords. Claims to natural rights are invalid. God and His providence can raise up one people and put down another. To leave God out of history is at the least like attempting to maintain life without air. We are in the midst today of a national controversy if you can call it that, on the academic level on putting down Columbus. And even the national council of churches and other organizations have said that he was an invader not a discoverer.

And therefore he was an evil man. Well then what shall we say about the Indians who obviously invaded and supplanted people before them. There were waves of migrations to the Americas. This kind of thinking is absurd. No one raises it with anyone except someone from Christendom. Verse six is both the conclusion of the preface and the first sentence of the Ten Commandments. It declares: I am the Lord Thy God which brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.’ The law comes from the God which delivered them from bondage and the law is therefore not just a necessary part of their relationship with God but the key aspect of their deliverance. They are not saved to live as moral idiots but as God’s people of power and the law is a key to that. The law is given as an aspect of their redemption. Having been saved they are now told how to live in freedom by means of God’s law. It is interesting to note that in one realm, in the early medieval era when they became an independent area they adopted God’s law and saying in the preface this one sentence: we are men and we must have law, God’s law. Paul in Romans 6:20-23 speaks of the law as freedom. For when ye were servants of sin ye were free from righteousness, free from justice. In other words, men who are slaves of sin have a freedom, the kind of freedom that is proclaimed by the media in our time. A freedom from justice.

What fruit, Paul says, have ye then those things which ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. For the ungodly the law is a sentence of death for the people of Christ is the way of life. Verse six begins: I am the lord thy God. This is the foundation of all God’s claims on us. He is the creator, the sovereign, the governor. All things are made by Him and without Him was anything made that was made. There can thus be no questioning of His word or law. Isaiah says of those who turn the moral universe upside down: “Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potters clay. For shall the work say of him that made it ‘he made me not’? Or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, ‘he hath no understanding’?” This verse from Isaiah 29:16 is used by Paul in Romans 9:19. Not only is God their creator and ours but that he brought them out of Egypt and out of the house of bondage. Similarly, He has brought us out of our blindness and not only so, He uses our past and makes all things work together for good. He empowers us to be more than conquerors, even as then He made Israel a conquering people. Given these things to substitute a manmade law for God’s law is not only rebellion and stupidity it is also the charter for human slavery which is something fallen men prefer to freedom under God.

This preface to the Ten Commandments has as its purpose to remind us that there can be no valid law other than the law of God. The summons thus is to hear, understand and obey and to learn or to study God’s law word. It is our magna carter of freedom in Christ. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father, we come to Thee mindful that we as a nation like the nations of all the earth have chosen sin rather than justice. Have chosen slavery instead of freedom; have chosen themselves rather than Thee. Lord have mercy upon us, use us almighty God to the casting down of the things that are. And to be establishing of the kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. And the state is not a person and therefore everything that the state decrees is an abstraction like itself. It is interesting that more than once of late someone who has been robbed or assaulted finds that the trial of the guilty party has taken place without them being notified. And they have been told when they have complained that their presence is not essential. It used to be that a case on trial was not the state of California or her Majesty versus so-and-so, it was John Smith versus Jane Doe. It was person to person because it was an offense against a person by a person. Yes?

[Question] Unintelligible….part of the law as an abstraction is that all writers are determined on the census. Therefore, you have no right to own property excepting for what was taken [unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well whatever view of law they take if they leave out the fact that it comes from the Supreme Person, God, ultimately either the law or the people who are under that law become abstractions because you have depersonalized the very source of law. And I think this is the problem, there are those who argue against laws and abstractions but their arguments are invalid because they cannot see the fact that there is no escaping the abstraction if the ultimate source is not a person, the Supreme Person. And the abandonment of God as the author of liberty which is what we once maintained, not only in our songs but in practice, the abandonment of God is the author of liberty has meant that liberty is something that the state giveth and the state can take away.

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, at least they are open about it. The Republicans are not as honest- uh- we are facing a choice between twiddle-dum and twiddle-dee and I dislike them both. Yes?

[Question] Is our state worse than the Roman State?

[Rushdoony] No I wouldn’t say that. There is an interesting sentence that Dorothy caught to my attention a few days ago in a conference ‘Christianity and Classical Culture’. And [unintelligible] observed that states die from the top down. I’ll have to think about it but it’s a very interesting sentence. Well, certainly the death at the top is present in our country and a rottenness. But there is a great deal of health on the grassroots level and it’s because we still have a considerable body of people who are in varying degrees faithful to their Christian inheritance and have a strong personal faith. I’ve seen that vividly this past week in the course of working on the Chalcedon project trying to get medical supplies and materials to a central European universities medical school. Almost every day has brought surprises in the number of groups that are dedicated to collecting and providing in this instance medical supplies and others dental supplies and others clothing and food. And people are working hard at it and there’s nothing like this anywhere else in the world. We’re certainly dead at the top and worse than that, rotten. But there’s a remarkable health at the bottom and I’m also learning that nowhere else in the world is there a like outpouring on the part of the people of a variety of things, gifts, a desire to help those in need. So that this never existed in Greece, Rome or any other country over the centuries. It is a unique situation and we are thoroughly rotten at the top but there is a Christian grassroots of amazing helpfulness.

And I have been started at the peoples ready to offer help, what kind of supplies do you need, it’s really wonderful. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Question] In verse five it infers that people could have gone up the mountain if they wanted to, but in Exodus they were expressly forbidden..

[Rushdoony] They were forbidden to go up the mountain beyond a certain point but they did not dare go up even to that point. They were so fearful. And they had reason to be, they were guilty of flagrantly disobeying God and they were like a disobedient child, they were hiding, and wanted to keep as much distance between themselves and God as they could. And of course we know what was in their hearts, because when Moses stayed up a while in the mount they promptly turned the golden calf of fertility cult worship.

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

Our Father we thank Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee that our times are in Thy hands who doeth all things well. Give us grace day by day to cast our every care upon Thee because we know Thou carest for us. Watch over us in the days ahead in our work, in our travels, in all our activities. Protect us, prosper us, and watch over our children’s children to the end of time to make them ever Thine. And now go inpace, 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.