Deuteronomy

Guarding Life

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 18-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 018

Dictation Name: RR187J18

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. We have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities but was with all points tempted like as we are yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Let us pray.

Our Father we come to Thee in the time of need and in the time of joy and thanksgiving. Knowing that Thou art our sufficiency. Thou knowest us better than we know ourselves and so we come to Thee to wait on Thee, to rejoice in Thee, and to know that because Thou art God Thy word is truth and Thy word will speak to us in our every condition. Make us therefore joyful in Thy word. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture this morning is Deuteronomy 5:17. Deuteronomy 5:17 and our subject: ‘Guarding Life’.

“Thou shalt not kill.”

As we have seen the commandment to honor ones parents is a requirement to honor life. In this word, Thou shalt not kill, life is protected. It cannot be taken except on God’s terms. As P.C. Craggy noted, the Decalogue was representative of God’s law in that its junctions, both negative and positive, led not to restriction of life but to fullness of life. The law however is a burden to evil men, for as Calvin said, men would feign being accepted from all bondage. Men want only that there will be done. Anything else is for them slavery. Calvin said further and I quote:

“Now we must understand that the way for men to rule their lives well and orderly is to abstain from all evildoing, injury and violence and bear with all to live chastely and honestly without hurting or hindering of any men. And on the other side, to keep their tongues from harming any man by any manner of false hood and lying. All these good properties must be in us if we would frame ourselves to God’s will and righteousness. So then, it is not to be marveled at that God should speak here of murders. For it is done to hold us in awe, that we should not go about doing any outrage or harm to our neighbors. But yet for all this, we must come back again to what I have touched already. That is to wit, that God speaketh after a rude and gross fashion, to apply Himself to great and small and even to the very idiots. For we see how every man excuseth himself by ignorance and if a thing be somewhat dark and hard we think we have therewith to wash our hands of the matter. When we have done amiss we think all is safe if we can say ‘oh it was too deep and profound for me, I understood not a whit of it’. To the end therefore that men should have no such starting holes, God’s will was to speak after such a fashion that even little babes might understand what He said. That is the cause why He said in short words ‘Thou shalt not kill’.”

Calvin held that this law requires men to abstain from all wrong and violence. He held that it is not enough for men to abstain from evildoing, because the positive implication of the law is to love our neighbor and to be godly in our relationships with him. God’s laws contain with them penalties for disobedience. We are told in Ecclesiastes 10:8 ‘he that diggeth a pit shall fall into it, and he who so breaketh a hedge shall smite him’. This is the fundamental premise for understanding the Bible. Digging a pit here has reference to a lawless attempt to trap a man. The man who does this shall in time be trapped by his own evil. Then farms in those days and later on in such countries as England had hedge fences, trees grew up in hedge fence which became a nesting place for birds and a refuge for small game and a feeding ground for snakes. To breakdown a hedge fence at night to steal or to allow one’s cattle to enter a neighbor’s field meant that the trespasser was likely to get a snake bite. And how true is this. Well since World War Two we have to a great extent set aside God’s law, the death penalty, for most cases of murder. We have cheapened life thereby and murders have increased to a very high number. By making life easier for murder and for criminals generally we have made it less tenable for ourselves. We have fallen in a pit of our making, we have broken the fence of God’s law and we have been smitten as transgressors. Another illustration, God’s law and for century’s civil law, requires the death penalty for homosexuality. This has been set aside for much of the world and what is the result? In San Francisco for example, in cases like this can be multiplied from coast to coast but you don’t hear about them. The Reverend Charles [unknown] fired a homosexual organist, won the battle in court, and in other ways made clear his opposition to homosexuality. As a result the church there has been regularly defaced. And one murder attempt against him and his wife failed only because of an unexpected incidence. Then also the house he lives in was fire bombed with much damage.

Where we fail to follow God’s law the penalties turn on our society. If we deny the validity of God’s law its death penalties begin to operate against us. When we let murderers live more people die. [unknowns] comment is a valid one. The Ten Commandments manifest God’s love and they lead not to restrictions of life but to fullness of life. Modern man’s disobedience is leading to severe restrictions on our lives. Saint Peter says in First Peter 4:15-16: “But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a busybody in other men’s affairs, yet if any man suffer as a Christian let him not be ashamed but let him glorify God on this behalf.” The word ‘suffer’ means to experience passion and strong feelings. The first two offenses cited by Peter are very specific, murder and theft. Then evildoer, which is a general term. Peter is speaking of not only the acts of murder and theft but the desire to kill or rob someone who offends us. The last sin is revealing, a busybody in other men’s affairs, that is a meddler. One who interferes by talk or action in the lives of others. If rather our passion, in actual suffering or fellow feeling be as a Christian we are to glorify God. Our lives are then in harmony with him. Peter speaks here in part about the temper of our lives in thought and action. The first murder of ABal by Cain is the root of all murder, is the desire to be one’s own god. And it is the hatred of God because he is God and not us, the more men hate God the more they hate others and themselves. In Isaiah 44:45 we read I am the Lord and there is none else, there is no God beside me. Hence the commandment Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. When men seek to be their own gods they not only deny the living God but also the right of all other men to any life in contradiction to themselves. A total intolerance of differences is then inevitable. In effect, such men are demanding of all others, including their own families, bow down and worship me. The will to murder is a denial of God’s sovereignty and the God-given grace of life to all other persons. Ungodly hatred is very often what man thinks a safe way of expressing vengeance and committing murder, destroying the reputation of another.

The inwardness of this law is stressed in both the Old and New Testaments. To cite just a few verses: Leviticus 19:17-18: “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy hate. Thou shalt not avenge or bear any grudge against the children of thy people. But thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. I am the Lord.”

Again in Exodus 23:5: “If thou see the ass of him who hatest thee lying under his burden and wouldst forebear to help him, thou shalt surely help him.

Again in Deueteronomy2:4: “Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ass or his ox fall down in the way and hide thyself from him, thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again. “

In First John 3:15: “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”

In Romans 13:8: “Owe no man anything but to love one another for he that loves one another hath fulfilled the law.”

It is important to call attention to a qualification made by Calvin in terms of God’s law. What is here forbidden in the sixth commandment is unjust violence. The protection of our lives and property from violence and lawless men means at times we must kill them. This is not a pacifist law. What is required is godly peace and lacking that godly conduct we are in fact guilty of breaking this law if we allow earth to become polluted by innocent human blood. Calvin held that we then implicate ourselves in the guilt. All Ten Commandments are very brief when compared to modern statutes. The sixth, seventh and eighth are especially brief and the first three words in the English out of four in commandments six and eight, five and seven, are Thou Shalt Not. No words are wasted. Nor is time spent vindicating the law or expanding it. The context of all God’s law is the totality of the bible. This provides more than enough explanation and understanding. This is not true of U.S. federal law or any state or county law or administrative law issued by any statist agency on any level.

In such cases there is no uniform or stable content. The laws shift and change and are arbitrary. We can carry all of God’s law in our hands, the Bible. You cannot carry the acts of congress in a truck. And if you add up all the acts of the federal agencies and the state agencies you’ll have a vast library of legislation. Some acts of congress run commonly to five hundred or more pages. All unreadable and also unread by those who pass them. They have also no clear unchanging context. The bible alone gives us that. Supposedly acts of congress are in conformity to the U.S. Constitution. But the constitution has become a fluid and meaningless piece of putty, made to mean whatever the federal government and its courts decree. This is not law. It is simply the fiats of our new sultans. As against that, God’s law is very simple, brief and to the point. It does not create a vast network of beaucracies and agencies. This is one reason why when the statist began to develop their position in the United States they had to replace biblical law in our courts with state and federal law. And it meant very quickly that instead of having a congress that met two weeks and state legislatives that met for two weeks every other year, you had a year round congress and year round legislatures. This has happened in my lifetime as far as states are concerned. Much earlier with regard to congress. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee that man’s law is self-defeating. And will in due time self-destruct but Thy law abides forever. We thank Thee that because Thy law is written into the context of all creation who so breaketh the hedge the fence of Thy law, a serpent will smite him. Teach us therefore to look unto Thee, to walk in faithfulness to Thee, and to know that because Thou art God it is Thy will that shall be done. Our God we thank Thee, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question] I’m greatly cheered about Paul’s admonition about digging a hole and falling into it, that’s carried out by some of our politicians; I can barely contain my enthusiasm [Rushdoony laughs].

[Rushdoony] I think in the years ahead they are going to fall into the holes they have been digging for us. I think the time of reckoning is beginning. It is interesting that this election is remarkable for the lack of any popular enthusiasm. And both here and abroad people who are normally interested in elections are seeing both candidates as disasters.

[Question] People normally see the outcome of elections as a sign of hope for the future and it bodes ill when people in this country don’t have a great deal of hope in the future, their own or anybody else’s.

[Rushdoony] Yes and people who normally have been very excited and enthusiastic at election times are very much down about everything. Yes, you had a question?

[Question] I’ve heard that the Mexican trade treaty insists on two thousand and eight…[becomes unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Now how many of the negotiators do you think read all of that? I question whether anyone has done. Two thousand pages for the Trade Treaty with Mexico which will close down a great many manufacturers in the United States almost certainly. They will go across the border. It will increase unemployment and here is two thousand pages.

[Question] There’s a term that they often use in some of these bills when they call an [unintelligible] you remember the [same unintelligible word] the federal government broad general powers within two thousand pages or two thousand rules, the government can pick and choose virtually anything that they want to do out of that whereas it’s so difficult for the average person to even learn about the existence of some of these rules so that the people are really at the mercy of this legislation, you don’t know when you are breaking the law and when you are not as far as the federal rules are concerned.

[Rushdoony] Yes and I think no matter who wins after this election we will see a rash of more laws like that as the solution to the problem. I don’t know why when they’re so busy at it they don’t take a few minutes to abolish death because it’s the same premise; they feel that by legislation action they are going to solve every problem. Yes?

[Question] Do you have any more examples of some of the pits these people are falling into, I just like to hear some of the good news and lick my chops thinking about it.

[Rushdoony] Well, one of the pits they are falling into is the Pure Air Act which is destroying even some of the wealthy supporters of both parties who are ready to go along with it because they felt they wanted to prove their environmental status. I saw a list of those corporations that had gone overboard on that sort of thing and it was appalling, you wondered who in those corporations was responsible for that kind of idiocy. But almost any evil act that is past has a long list of people who should know better who favor it and think they are doing something good. A public service by coming out for it. Any other questions or comments?

The growth industry by the way, because we have despised God’s law in this country is prison construction. It’s the one area where there is a major boom in construction. Building new prisons because we keep getting more and more people sentenced to prison although we have wiped out a great many classifications of crime because the courts cannot be bothered with them. But we are filling up the prisons so rapidly and the judges are ruling out overcrowding as cruel and inhumane punishment and setting people free so the construction is continuing. Yes?

[Question] The darnedest things like the Clean Air Act. Who initially brings these things up, is it the wealthy businesses that try and push them forward to rub out the small businesses, or is it socialist intellectuals that get it going and then businesses jump on board as the follow on?

[Rushdoony] Well you have a huge environmental lobby and that environmental lobby bullies people into submission. So you have a problem today that is increasingly irrational. For example, well Otto go ahead you can answer that.

[Otto Scott] It’s a socialist variation. It’s a mean of controlling industry.

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is also a witness to the growing cowardice. We learned two days ago when in the bay area that Stanford and you can take time to laugh with glee over this, is facing a major problem. Because it has a lot of woods and grounds around the university, people are dumping off unwanted cats. The cats are breeding galore. So they had devised a plan to catch these cats by feeding them and making them tame enough so that an exterminator could pick them up and take them to the pound. Well, the students and others took to feeding them and leaving the food out there not just putting it down and having them come and get tame enough to get caught, so skunks moved in to eat the rest of the food, and skunks breed prolifically. There is a huge skunk population now on the Stanford grounds. An evening stroll can be difficult and dangerous. But the animal rights people are against any action against the skunks or against the cats. So there’s an increasing problem with Stanford that they cannot cope with, they have backed down to these people. Now that is significant, what was to prevent them, since they are not a part of the city of [unknown], they have their own post office and their own individual existence. What was to prevent them from going out there and catching those cats and trapping and killing the skunks? Nothing except their fear of public opinion. And it’s that cowardliness that runs through the population today and every branch of it. Capital and labor, church and non-church, school and non-schools, it’s everywhere! So that’s a problem at Stanford and elsewhere.

Well, let us bow our heads now in prayer.

Our Father we thank Thee that Thy word is truth and Thy will shall be done. We thank Thee that we live, move and have our being in Thee and not in the will of man. Oh Lord our God give us patience as we wait on Thy judgment and the triumph of Thy justice. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.