Deuteronomy

The Covenant and Mercy

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 27-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 027

Dictation Name: RR187P27

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father, indeed we face spiritual wickedness in high places and low. But we thank Thee our Father that in the face of all these things, greater is He that is with us then he that is in the world. Teach us therefore to walk day by day in the assurance of faith and the assurance that Jesus Christ is king of kings and lord of lords and He shall prevail. We thank Thee that we can come to Thee and commit ourselves and all of our hopes, our joys, our fears, our plans into Thy omnipotent hands. Our God we thank Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 7:12-16. Our subject: The Covenant and Mercy. Deuteronomy 7:12-16.

“Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye hearken to these judgments, and keep, and do them, that the Lord thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy which he sware unto thy fathers:

13 And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee.

14 Thou shalt be blessed above all people: there shall not be male or female barren among you, or among your cattle.

15 And the Lord will take away from thee all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon all them that hate thee.

16 And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee.”

This text is usually given a brief and hurried treatment. It is an embarrassing text because it is too specific and vaguer promises by God are for many people easier to deal with. The text first of all is totally at odds with spiritual interpretations of biblical faith. An essential link is declared between our faith and the material realm. It is not an infallible link but it is an essential link. It does not say that all who are godly will be healthy and will not be barren for God’s own purposes for example, Sarah was long barren, so too was Rachel and centuries later Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist. Both fertility and barrenness, health and sickness, are in God’s hands. And both have His sovereign purpose in mind. And all things can be blessings or curses.

Normally however, the essential link between our faith and our material lives must be seen as the text declares it. Then second, diseases in particular can be a part of God’s curse on a people. In verse fifteen mention is made of the evil diseases of Egypt, all well-known to the Hebrews. Well into the present century these were very many and included such infectious diseases as [unknown name] various boils, eye diseases, and bowel infections. By mid-century twentieth century man with a variety of powerful drugs felt that these ancient curses were nearing an end. Now however a variety of disease and viruses threaten the life of a sizable part of mankind as against these and other plagues God would protect a covenant nation. Third, there would be material prosperity and agricultural fertility in abundance if they were godly. This would be by God’s blessing so that the cred it would not be theirs but be God’s. To assume otherwise means that we believe that the natural realm is more determinative than God himself. This heresy of naturalism reduces God to an influence rather than the determiner. History is not determined by men nor by natural forces but essentially by God. In whose hands man and nature are simply instruments. This text radially ignores if not for the same time negates the naturalistic interpretation of history. The religions of antiquity strongly affirmed naturalistic determination so that our text speaks against the faith of the times. Israel’s sin in the centuries that followed was to lapse regularly into Baalism. Into naturalistic determinism. Baalism was the worship of either the forces of nature or of the state, naturalistic determinism in either case. Fourth, verse sixteen affirms military success for the covenant people. They shall consume or eat up all the people whom God delivers into their hands. This is the key; all depends on God delivering the nations into their hands. We cannot shift determination into our obedience, necessary as that clearly is. Whether it be fertility, productivity or victory it all depends on God’s sovereign purpose.

A law order is posited, obedience than brings blessings. But obedience cannot command blessings. These are contingent upon the will of God. The promises of the law do not transfer determination from God to man. Rather they tell us how God blesses us when he chooses. This text and others like it become embarrassing only to those who insist on a humanistic determination. Such people say in effect, if we do certain things then God must give us certain blessings, but to believe so is to say that we are blessed or cursed in terms of our expectation and determination. Fifth, when we are faithful, verse fifteen tells us, God’s curse will fall on our enemies. If faithless, the covenant-breakers will be smitten in the same way and worse. According to Deuteronomy 28:27-29:

“ The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.

28 The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart:

29 And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee.”

In Deuteronomy 30:7 the promise is the same as in our text, verse fifteen. “And the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies and upon them that hate thee, which persecuted thee.”

Sixth, the very fact that these things promised by God are blessings makes clear that determination rests in God’s hands. We receive blessings or favors, not earnings. The giver determines the gift. And what we receive may be other than what we desire but it is what God purposes in terms of an eternal plan. Seventh, everything even then is conditional also on our obedience. Verse twelve begins ‘if you harken to these judgments’ or it can be rendered ‘if you listen and obey these laws’ or ‘this is a return for your harkening’. Our immunity to the foul diseases of Egypt is also conditional upon our obedience. Clearly immunity to diseases as a fundamentally religious aspect. In verse fourteen the promise is ‘thou shalt be blessed among all people’. Too often in studies of diseases we have a one way perspective. We read of the diseases which white men gave to the natives of the Americas, the fact is that the natives had various diseases, very serious diseases prior to the coming of the Europeans. Although there were exceptions, much of the reported transmission was from the European to the natives who were supposedly we are told in better health.

Scholars have not to my knowledge studied the relative immunity of the Europeans. In Africa, for example, many Europeans died at first but soon gained either a resistance or developed an effective medication. This is how the white man was able to live in America. Eighth, as an aspect of the relationship between biblical faith and the material realm, we have in verses thirteen and fourteen the plain assumption of an essential link and the productivity of the earth. Most peoples of history have been abusive of the soil. So too despite popular belief to the contrary have been more than a few animals. The American Buffalo destroyed trees streams and grasslands. The African Elephant destroys forests and so on. Where unrestrained by men animals can be very destructive. Godly faith on the other hand develops the fertility and usefulness of the earth. The whole of the buffalo plains of Canada and the United States have become more productive in the hands of men then they were before. Incidentally it is a myth that virgin soil, so called, is necessarily highly productive. Such soil is often heavily abused by various animals before the coming of man and requires much work to restore it to fertility. Ninth, verse thirteen makes obvious that a covenant of law is basic to a relationship of love by God to man. God’s love is not for those who despise Him and who transgress His laws. It is for those who keep His covenant law. Obedience gains love and blessings. This is fundamental to all the bible. Our text tells us of the blessings of obedience and the love of God for the obedient. God’s love is not lawless, it is not antinomian. Salvation throughout the bible is God’s sovereign grace alone. But this is not no charter to antinomianism that despises the law or nature of God, which is a fearful offense.

Tenth, as C.H. Walter noted and I quote: “The law of Moses was in many of its details a sanitary quite as much as a moral code.” Unquote. This again underscores the essential link between biblical faith and the material world. There is no confusion between the two but neither is there a false separation. Finally eleventh, verse twelve refers to God’s relationship to Israel as the covenant and the mercy. The two are inseparable. God’s covenant with man in all ages is a covenant of law and it is therefore a covenant of grace because God in His mercy gives a law to man. The law which expresses His being and justice. This term, the covenant and the mercy makes clear that law and grace cannot be separated and that all of God’s blessings and providential care are aspects of His mercy. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee for Thy mercy unto us through Jesus Christ. We thank Thee that thy by Thy grace we have received Thy covenant, Thy law, Thy word. Teach us the way that we should go. Guide us into looking ever to Thee that we may be directed by Thee and not swayed by the currents and winds of opinion in this world. Give us the strength of the rock of ages. Our God we thank Thee for Thy covenant and Thy mercy, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] It has been breaking down in recent years, we for example now know that many illnesses such as ulcers are psychologically caused, we have what is caused psychosomatic medicine. At one time if you believed in the psychosomatic origin of ulcers you could be expelled from medical school. This is what a specialist told me some years ago. However, as that man also stated, we have not been willing to go beyond that and say basic to the psychosomatic ailments is a religious factor and this, he felt, was the key. Yes?

[Question] Well all diseases are spiritually rooted, right?

[Rushdoony] We don’t know enough to say that but we do know that they are all a product of the fall. So they do have their origin, their ultimate origin in a sin. Man’s will to be his own god. But we cannot then say that every ailment that every man has is a product of sin. We live in a world that because of the fall is affected in every sphere, the mental and the material, by the fall. So we feel the effects of that, all of us.

[Question] What about cancer?

[Rushdoony] Well we do know that cancer can have very often a mental or a psychosomatic or a spiritual cause. It can also be a part of the degeneration that sets in with age because once we pass twenty one we begin slowly and then more rapidly to go downhill. It’s like a car as it gets older, its more liable to wear out, to break down. Any other questions or comments?

This is a sphere that not much has been said about, it was after World War Two in particular that stress was place on psychosomatic medicine, however, in recent years there has been a swing away from that because the implications of it would lead to a more religious perspective on the whole of life. And so we have been going back more and more to a materialistic interpretation of diseases.

[Question] Would you elaborate on what Christ told the [becomes unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well, that has reference to people who are giving religious counsel to people that they themselves do not practice. Any other questions or comments? If not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank Thee for the truth of Thy word. We know our Father that we live in a time of judgment and we know that we need to have a sense of direction on these times and the days ahead. Teach us to study Thy word so that we might have a compass in the troubles and dark days that confront us. Grant that we know Thy word and that it become a light upon our way, a lamp for our feet. Give us joy in our faith so that as we face the very grim and serious crisis of our time we may not be overcome by either despair or by evil. That might be in all these things become stronger, more confident and more joyful in Thee. We pray for all our loved ones, for Thy true church everywhere, for Thy suffering saints the world over, for under fire in persecution. Defend them and deliver them we beseech Thee. 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.