Deuteronomy

Sharpened Knowledge

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 24-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 024

Dictation Name: RR187M24

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Not unto us oh Lord, not unto us but unto Thy name give glory. For Thy mercy and for Thy truth’s sake. Help us oh God of our salvation for the glory of Thy name and deliver us and purge away our sins for Thy name’s sake. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. It is better to trust in the Lord then to put confidence in man. Oh taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man who trusteth in Him. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father again we gather together in Thy name, to rejoice in Thy truth, in Thy mercies in Thy providential care and in the majesty of Thy kingdom. Give us grace day by day to please Thee as we ought, to know Thy hand in all things and to know that Thy purposes are all together righteous and holy. Teach us to look more closely on the things that are of Thee and of Thy kingdom, of Thy word then in the things of man and of his [unknown word]. Bless us now as we give ourselves to the study of Thy word, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 6:1-15. Our subject: Sharpened Knowledge. Sharpened Knowledge, Deuteronomy 6:1-15.

“Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it:

2 That thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son's son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged.

3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey.

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:

5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.

9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

10 And it shall be, when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not,

11 And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full;

12 Then beware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

13 Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name.

14 Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you;

15 (For the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.”

Moses here tells Israel and all generations something which is never been popular, namely, obedience will bring prosperity and disobedience brings judgment and death.

Our generation is hostile to this fact also. We are so far gone in our rebellion against law, discipline and structure that our educators imagine the children can learn to read without knowing and mastering the alphabet. Such determined resistance to ordered learning means a willful resolution to several links of the past in the name of freedom. In economics the failed experiment of John Law is now disregarded. In politics, we repeat every failure of the past and present. Especially with respect to Christianity, men inside and outside the church say in effect of Jesus Christ, we will not have this man to reign over us. Not only is obedience required but an open avow of faith. In verses eight through nine we have a command to Israel to reveal their faith by an identifying mark on their heads and on their houses. This was easier to obey then and not a usual commandment because various nations notably Egypt from whence they came used such identifications. They were designed to reveal religious citizenship. The phylacteries of various peoples were a means of identification, of public evidence. It was common place also in Christendom and until fairly recent times for crosses to be worn by men and lapel crosses to be worn by men to indicate their faith. It is important to recognize relationship of this to the mark of the beast in Revelation 13:16-17 and Revelation 20:4. The beast, the anti-Christian world order demands that all men be identified in terms of this humanistic society. Men are to be known not in terms of God nor their own achievements but in terms of the state and its dominical classifications.

This is the dehumanization of man. The phylacteries were worn as a profession of faith; the mark of the beast is a mandatory identification of all people. The verses in this text can be divided into the following sections. First fear the Lord thy God to keep all His statutes and commandments. Verse two, God is the ultimate and absolute power, to fear men and things and not to fear God is a strange and radically obtuse attitude. The essential determination of all things is in God’s hands. There is a blessing in fearing and obeying God. And verses one through three and thirteen through seventeen we have an emphasis on fear and obedience. And second, the love of God is equally stressed. In verse four through five the command stresses the unity of God and the requirement that we love Him. Not to love God is to love evil. The love of God is thus a witness test of our faith. Then third, in verses ten through thirteen we are commanded to remember the Lord and to remember His blessings. We did not enter into an empty world and we must not leave it less rich when we leave. We have a duty to God to capitalize the future. The emphasis is very clearly that faith must be practical. Faith without works is not faith but a pretension. The faith required is a living working one; it means a love of God and a hatred of sin. Such a faith creates a division between good and evil, between law keepers and law breakers. And the law means God’s covenant law. In verse four we have these summons: hear, oh Israel or Shema, hear, oh Israel. To declare God to be one Lord is to proclaim the unity of faith and life. Instead of a pluralistic universe with diverse loyalties and alien realms there’s one Lord, one universal realm of truth and one obvious allegiance to God the Lord. This is closely related to verse fifteen. The Lord thy God is a jealous God among you. The world cannot be divided into realms that are religious and other realms that are not.

If we say that for example, law in mathematics or spheres outside God’s jurisdiction we incur His wrath. Since all things were made by Him there is no truth nor reality outside or apart from Him. We provoke God’s jealous wrath if we limit His dominion and truth to the church. The confession ‘the Lord our God is one Lord’ is in four words in the Hebrew. In verse seven through nine parents are ordered to teach their children the faith. This is to be done, we are told diligently. The future of the family and the nation depends on the godly education of the generations to come. God teaches his people out of love and failure to educate our children in the faith manifest a lack of sound love. It is one thing to be proud of our children but it is another to make sure that they are reared in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Failure to teach our children and to instruct them in the faith and in God’s law often rests on an implicit humanism. Especially in the modern era. Men have believed that the child is naturally good. If this be the case child rearing becomes child indulgence because the child is held to reflect the lovely perfection of a state of nature rather than original sin the child is then given freedom of self-expression and self-will. Of course, instead of producing heaven on earth such theories of child rearing are creating a new barbarism, massive lawlessness and a break with the past. If the child is actually good our past history and our Christian faith are impediments to the child because the child state of nature is far superior to past history and biblical faith and the child should not then be past bound as they hold. Humanistic child rearing is thus undermining both Christianity and a sound historiography. Not surprisingly humanistic educators have banned the Bible from schools and replaced history with social studies. No lesson from God or from the past are permitted. This is the basic premise of the new barbarians. Wisdom is born with them and therefore neither God nor past history have anything to offer them. The Shama Israel appears in various forms in Deuteronomy and in Numbers. It was a text for repetition twice daily. The command to teach and to talk about God’s law word diligently both in the house and out of it and both sitting and walking is an image of total application. The whole of life and thought must be governed by God’s word. It is of total relevance and therefore there must be a total allegiance.

Verse five is called by our Lord the first and the great commandment, Thou shalt love thy Lord thy God with all they heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might. [unknown name] has called verses ten through fifteen a stereotype list of real estate because it is a legal form in [unknown]. It is like a land register of legal properties. So that almost the identical section that can be found with different names in legal documents. In this instance its meaning is this: God reminds them that the land is a gift from Him to them and it represents an ancient gift promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. If Israel despised God He would wipe them off the face of the earth. They will be landless people. This is the essential statement of Deuteronomy6:1-15. Obedience will bring prosperity and disobedience will bring death. The commandments clearly were to saturate and permeate every area of the life of man. There is an important aspect to the command in verse seven to teach one’s children God’s law. As one scholar noted, God’s higher right of property is set forth and it is sealed by circumcision and with us, by baptism. Which says that we are not our own, we are God’s property. God owns us and our children, circumcision and baptism are public admissions of this fact. As a result, the basic and fundamental requirements of parents is that they acknowledge this fact and act in terms of it. The commandment in verse seven says ‘Thou shalt teach them God’s law diligently’. According to John [unknown] in a literal reading and it may be rendered ‘Thou shalt whet or sharpen them’. This is the literal meaning of ‘Thou shalt teach them the words or commandments’. This is an expression of diligence and industry and teaching by frequent repetition of things. When you whet a knife you hold it to the whetstone as you turn it. And you keep holding it and turning it this way and that way so that teaching here implies sharpening by repetition, by diligent application.

In the constant teaching of God’s law we gain a growing knowledge and insight into their meaning and application. Our failure to sharpen our knowledge of God’s law has meant our dullness in understanding the problems of our time. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee that Thou dost summon us to sharpen our knowledge and our children’s knowledge of Thee by constant application of Thy whetstone, Thy law word. Make us diligent therefore in this sharpening, in this knowledge that we thereby may be Thy conquering people in this generation. Grant us this we beseech Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well you are right, the qualifications of deacons means that they are, an elders too, ones who have reared their child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Of course this means that during their years of faith they were parents and were diligent in it, it doesn’t apply if they came to the faith later. But the meaning is very clear. They have to be given to this. And one reason for the great strength of the Scottish kirk was precisely because they took this so much to heart. They believed in sharpening, in whet stoning and the children were regularly drilled. As a matter of fact one of the major duties of elders in the Scottish kirk was a regular visitation of all the families and when they visited the family they questioned the children on the shorter or larger catechism, at length. And if the children didn’t know it the parents were rebuked because emphasis on memorization, on regular drill did a couple of things. It created for a time in Scotland a culture that some have called without equal anywhere because the knowledge was so great. And the ability which modern educators pay no attention to, to memorize and remember. The fact that they came from some distance to the church, in the villages especially, and came on foot because not all could afford to have a carthorse, meant that they didn’t come to turn around after an hour. They came to hear a long sermon because they wanted it. So sermons in those days had forty and forty five points and it was common knowledge that any time during the week you could discuss someone else, another woman or another man, point forty three or pint forty six and they could know what you were talking about. That was the kind of memory that memorization had produced. It also produced children who were better educated and for a time as long as this lasted the Scottish universities were without equal anywhere in Christendom. So they paid attention to this for a few generations with dramatic and sensational results. We haven’t done anything in our time but to abandon the kind of memorization which was minimal that existed when some of us who are older were going to school. We’ve had a total turn around here and we’re paying a price as a culture and a civilization. Any other questions or comments?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Having talked to a number of people of that generation with that kind of background, one is inclined to believe that they had an almost total recall of everything from their childhood onward. My father who grew up under such a disciplined education as I’ve mentioned before could tell you the name of any textbook, the author and the title, that he had from the first grade on up through his graduate school years. I couldn’t tell you the names of some I’ve had a couple of years before. Any other questions or comments?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes it ends with school because they are not trained to learn nor do they have a history, a historical sense which was routine when people grew up not only knowing the bible thoroughly and all of biblical history but of all history in the Christian era. All the history of their country in detail. And that’s gone. It’s appalling to find how little the students of our time, public school students know of American history. When Otto and I went to England in ’87, at Bristol, we got into a discussion that got into history and my answer to a question, and they were startled at my knowledge of English history and of English kings and [laughs] I recited to them the succession from Henry the Eighth to the present and they were amazed, they couldn’t believe it. Which startled me. This rootlessness makes it easy to lay a guilt trip on people, they don’t know their history, they don’t know for human progress, what is involved. Otto had to rebuke them for their ignorance for the past and I said a hearty Amen to it. So we are producing barbarians because we are not whet stoning in our educational process. Yes?

[Question] I remember in the late forties and early fifties…[becomes unintelligible]…

[Rushdoony] Well I can remember at the university one older professor who belonged emphatically to the old school and who was retired while I was still a student, who routinely required in test examinations that you know, for example, a particular sonnet of Shakespeare by heart so you could make a word by word analysis of it. I can’t imagine that kind of requirement exists anywhere but it never occurred to him that there was anything unusual about his requirement. Well if there are no further questions let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee for what it does for us and in us. Give us more and more understanding of Thee. Make us increasingly useful in Thy service and for Thy kingdom. Make us more than conquerors in Christ. 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.