Deuteronomy

The Free Society

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 25-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 025

Dictation Name: RR187N25

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Give unto the Lord, oh yekindreds of the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name, bring an offering and come into His courts. Oh worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, fear before Him all the earth. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father who of Thy grace and mercy has made all things. Has called us to be Thy people and has given us Thy word. Grant oh Lord that day by day we walk in faithfulness to Thee. That we rejoice in all Thy ways and in all Thy dealings. That we know that in all things Thy purpose is holy, righteous and good. Teach us therefore to walk by faith. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 6:16-25. And our subject: The Free Society. Deuteronomy 6:16-25.

“Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God, as ye tempted him in Massah.

17 Ye shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and his testimonies, and his statutes, which he hath commanded thee.

18 And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the Lord: that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers.

19 To cast out all thine enemies from before thee, as the Lord hath spoken.

20 And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord our God hath commanded you?

21 Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand:

22 And the Lord shewed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household, before our eyes:

23 And he brought us out from thence, that he might bring us in, to give us the land which he sware unto our fathers.

24 And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as it is at this day.

25 And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord our God, as he hath commanded us.”

In Matthew 4:1-11 in the account of our Lord’s temptation in the wilderness we see that all three times our Lord answered the devil and all three times it was by quoting a verse from Deuteronomy. In his first answer he quoted from Deuteronomy 8:3. In the second, Deuteronomy 6:16, the first verse we just read. And in the third, Deuteronomy 6:13 which we studied last week. Thus two are from this chapter, Deuteronomy 6:13 forbids the invocation of any other god but the Lord God in all oaths.

This means less to us today because not much means anything to our time. But it means that the legal and actual foundation of all society and of all spheres of society must be in the God of scripture and His law word. An oath is an invocation of a society’s ultimate and absolutely essential ground of all truth and law. In too many states now a man’s oath rests simply on a man’s word. This means that we have shifted the foundation of society from God to man and man is depraved, a fallen creature. In Deuteronomy 6:16 ‘ye shall not tempt the lord your God as ye tempted him in Massah’ we are forbidden all efforts to prove, test or evaluate God. God stands in and of Himself and His word. At Massah Israel needing water declared in contemptuous unbelief ‘is the Lord among us or not?’ Israel was saying in effect, God is meaningless for us unless He serves us. The test of God becomes what he does for man. In J.A. Thompsons words and I quote: “To test God is to impose conditions upon Him and to make His response to the people’s demand in the hour of crisis the condition of their continuing to follow Him.” Unquote. In verses seventeen through nineteen the covenant requirement of faithfulness to the covenant law is stressed. Obedience means the blessing of prosperity, possession of the land, and defeat of all enemies. Obedience must not be perfunctory but diligent. The direction of our lives must be to fulfill our duties diligently. We do not keep the law when we do it to avoid trouble; we keep it because we delight in righteousness or justice. Our Lord says blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. In verse eighteen we are told: “And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the Lord.” The brief marginal note in the Geneva bible says simple ‘here He condementh all men’s good intentions’. Here He condemns all men’s good intentions. Our intentions and our ideas of good and evil count for nothing. What matters Is the law word of God, hence our concern should be that which is right and good in the sight of the Lord. God had promised Canaan to Israel.

How much of it they possessed now depended on them. Their conquest depended on their faithfulness to God’s law, according to verse eighteen. God had promised in verse nineteen to cast out all their enemies before them but this was contingent on doing that which is right and good in the sight of the Lord. God can and does impose conditions upon us. We can never impose conditions upon God. In verses eighteen through twenty five the education of the young is commanded. The amount of teaching by parents is minimal in a humanistic society and that’s what we live in. And its standards saturate us. In such a society, in such a culture, the child is assumed to be naturally good. In having the families hereditary is held to be well equipped for life. The sad fact is that man’s fallen estate is neglected in such rearing and the child grows up an alien to his family because sin is always divisive. Three things are stressed in this emphasis on education. First, the emphasis is on witness. The natural curiosity of the child is to be directed towards knowing the meaning of the faith. The child must be encouraged to know the meaning of the law and of the history of the faith. This is particularly important today. The present generation has been cut off from the past by misdirection in the schools and vague and general teachings in the church. To be cut off from the past is to be a barbarian. Second, our history like that of Israel is one of deliverance and blessings. Youth today knows or believes it knows much about the evils of our time when it has no awareness or appreciation from the hard fought victories of past generations. Again, this is the mark of a barbarian. None of us are born into an empty world and we must not leave it emptier when we die. We have a God-imposed duty to leave the world richer for having been here as our Lord demonstrates in Matthew 25:14-30. Then third, not only is the teaching of the law required but it must be stressed that it is for our good always, that he might preserve us alive. The survival of the people and of civilization depends on this. God’s law must not be taught as a burdensome imposition. That was the teaching of the Pharisees who turned the law into a yoke with their additions.

The law is for our protection and liberation, for example remove two laws, Thou shalt not kill and Thou shalt not steal, and it immediately becomes obvious how devastating the consequences would be and how liberating God’s law is. It is for our good always as verse twenty four makes very clear. One aspect of Biblical education was music and songs. For example, in Deuteronomy 31:19 we read: “Now therefore write ye this song for you and teach it to the children of Israel, put in their mouths that this song might be a witness for me against the children of Israel.” The song in question is the whole of Deuteronomy 32. Of course many, many other portions of scripture were memorized and sung by young and old and also the psalms as a part of their education. Now, never in the history of Christendom has a generation be more musically impoverished than our own. Before World War Two group singing, singing in cars, in buses was commonplace, all that is gone. Even in churches that are liturgical, where there is chanting and singing of the liturgy there has been a retrogression in that people are no longer used to singing, they cannot do it well any longer. And yet, one aspect of biblical education is music and songs. Receiving the law was the first step in education and towards freedom. Memorization was for centuries together with music an essential part of education. Calvin favored the singing of the creeds and much more. According to A.D. H. Mayes in verse twenty three the phrase ‘he brought us out’ and I quote:

“This expresses in legal terms Yahweh’s emancipation of Israel from Egypt. Compare Exodus 21:2 following. For the verb is frequently used of a slave legally gaining his freedom.” Unquote.

This is at the heart of the text. The people must know God’s law and each successive generation must be taught the law for there is no freedom without it. To imagine a free people or society without law is to imagine a state of anarchy. This is of course where humanistic doctrines of freedom are very, very rapidly taking us. As in Rome and in the Renaissance and so now also this moral anarchy is always accompanied by statism and tyranny. Men not having the law in their being have to have the coercive force of the law to maintain any semblance of order. Arch Bishop Cranmer; too little appreciated in recent generations commenting once upon a godly society said and I quote:

“There must be great strength to support such good days. “

There must be great strength to support such good days. This is something our age has forgotten. There is no cheap or easy road to the good society for fallen men. It requires the strength of men faithful to God’s law, to establish and maintain a good society, there must indeed be great strength to support good days, good order. Freedom comes not from lawlessness nor antinomian doctrines but only from godliness and the obedience of faith. To establish a good society or to attempt to establish a good society without God is stupidity. The Marque De Sade knew better than modern humanists and modern Washington and the Supreme Court what the outcome would be. Verse twenty five says it shall be our righteousness, our justice. If we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord our God as He hath commanded us. Justice for us and our society means, in other words, keeping God’s law. The just and free society is the godly society. Let us pray.

Our Father, give us by Thy spirit and faithfulness to Thy law word, great strength so that we may have good days and godly society. Oh Lord our God we have sinned, we have as a people gone astray, we have indeed made mischief into a law and enthroned evil. Lord have mercy upon us, cleanse us from all our iniquities make us again a godly people, a nation wherein righteousness, justice dwells. Teach us to follow Thee, to obey Thee and to rejoice in Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question] Well if there ever was a time for praying, now is the time.

[Rushdoony] Yes indeed because if we do not mend our ways the consequences are going to be devastating.

[Question] Pandora’s Box has been unleashed.

[Rushdoony] Yes, Pandora’s box. Any other questions? Yes?

[Question] I see that the gays of Colorado are outraged at the amendment that just passed.

[Rushdoony] Yes, they will tolerate nothing except that which is pleasing to them and this is increasingly the temperament. It’s not a law abiding effort to change laws, it is lawlessness in protest against laws. I read the statement again and again of leaders in Haiti who have repeatedly in the past generation declared and have been dissuaded with difficulty from using it in advertisements, propagating their position in the United States. The statement is this: We must overcome evil with evil. Now that’s an incredibly evil statement. And yet that is precisely what a great many people attempt to do. The gays in Colorado protesting the law against homosexuality and too many church people in Operation Rescue indulging in lawless acts in order to protest an evil law. And it isn’t good, no matter who does it, and yet it has become enormously popular in our time. Incredibly so. We seem to think that we can build a good society with lawlessness. And I’m afraid we’re going to see more and more people in the 1990’s taking to the streets as Otto has more than once observed as they try to resurrect the 60’s with more permanent results.

Any other questions or comments?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony]Exactly, that’s the theme verse of the book of Judges, in those days there were no king in Israel, in other words God had been dethroned, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes. This is the temper of our time. Every man does that which is right in his own eyes. The Christians in the early church were unwilling to submit to laws which they considered lawless but they simply paid the price, they died for their convictions. And Saint [unknown] who also died for his faith. Well, he was presiding as bishop, declared emphatically to the people: profession, not demonstration. They were to profess their faith in every aspect of its requirements. They were not to indulge in demonstrations before some imperial office. You don’t hear about that premise of the early church very often now a days. Profession, not demonstration. Any other questions or comments? Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, Thy church and this generation, schools, the states of the world, have all strayed, they have turned their backs upon Thee and Thy word and thy trample underfoot the things that are of Thy kingdom. We know oh Lord that we deserve and will get judgment. But Lord in judgment remember mercy and use the judgment to bring forth Thy kingdom. To prepare Thy people and to give them great strength so that we may do that which is right in Thy sight and have then good days and godly order. 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.