Deuteronomy

The God who Humbles Us

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 29-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 029

Dictation Name: RR187Q29

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, hosanna in the highest. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee that Thy grace in the person of Jesus Christ has come into the world to destroy the darkness. We thank thee that he has come into our lives to make us a new creation in Him. Grant that in this blessed season we see Thy hand in all things, that now always we may know that Thou art on the throne and it is Thy will that shall be done and Thy kingdom alone that shall prevail. Grant us this we beseech Thee, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 8:1-20. Deuteronomy 8, our subject: The God who Humbles Us.

“All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers.

2 And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.

3 And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.

4 Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years.

5 Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee.

6 Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him.

7 For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;

8 A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;

9 A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.

10 When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.

11 Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day:

12 Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein;

13 And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied;

14 Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;

15 Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint;

16 Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end;

17 And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.

18 But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.

19 And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.

20 As the nations which the Lord destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the Lord your God.”

One of the things that is very apparent in biblical high criticism is the particular focus that many of these scholars have on the book of Deuteronomy. They have gone after Deuteronomy to tear apart, to reduce it to numerous documents, to try and invalidate what It has to say and for a very good reason. Because very clearly from beginning to end Deuteronomy which is a series of sermons by Moses reviewing the law and teaching its meaning to the people, you have a statement about the meaning of history. Well if you share the modern viewpoint the book of Deuteronomy is immediately anathema. Because the perspective from the enlightenment to the present is that man determines history. And Deuteronomy is emphatic: God determines history. So that the perspective of the enlightenment and modern man and that of Deuteronomy are mutually exclusive. Very hostile the one to the other. Deuteronomy is unequivocal, God govern history, totally. And the purpose of this text is clearly stated in verse two. Thou shalt remember. It is important to remember the meaning of history because without that you are living a meaningless life. Animals have no history, man does. It is a God given history. An emphasis on historical memory is to be found in the law and the prophets as well as in the various books of wisdom. Without the correcting force of a godly memory men will act stupidly and will repeat their sins endlessly. The implications of this are very ably set forth by the Reverend Joseph Seymour Pratt the Third and I quote:

“Chapter eight and nine tell us that God’s claim reaches the mind and attitude and obedience involves a total submission of the thought life including what we think of ourselves to the word. These chapters warn us of pretend autonomy. Autonomy is the sinful notion that we responsible to ourselves alone. That we alone are responsible for the governing of our passions and desires, that our minds are sufficient to understand and improve on life, with no regard to God and His word. But life is what we say it is, and the truth is what seems to be true to us. Chapter eight warns us especially of any sense of self-sufficiency which is the sinful notion that we don’t need God in the everyday course of events because we have great wisdom and strength and we are the bringers of prosperity and producers of success.” Unquote.

These verses also tell us much about Palestine and that era before the Turks made it a desert. It was verse seven tells us, a land of brooks of waters and of springs and depths, depths referring to deposits of underground waters. Although wheat and barley were not the major crops they are cited because they were staples of diet. Then we have cited, vines, fig trees, pomegranates, olives and honey. Three of these, the fig tree, the grape vine and the olive were basic. In fact the history of these three could be important in tracing the course of civilization in the Mediterranean world. No one has ever attempted it but it was so basic to commerce and to life that a very interesting history of antiquity and well into the modern era could be written, tracing these three things. The olive, the grape vine and the fig. The reference to brass as I said earlier means copper. Now verses two and three make a startling statement. We are told that God humbled Israel in the wilderness by making them dependent on manna. And this is again stated in verse sixteen. Here was a great miracle of providence; it did give the people a startling measure of economic security, every day except Sundays or the Sabbaths rather for about forty years. It was a blessing and yet it was God, tells us, a humbling. The proud and ungodly Israelites were reminded daily as they ate manna that they were dependent upon God, not upon themselves. Now kings in antiquity fed all the members of their court. This accomplished a double purpose. First, being fed by the ruler made them members of their family, it was a form of adoption, it was an act of grace. But second, the daily feeding was a reminder of who was king, a reminder of his power and protection. It was used to stress dependence and to further humility.

This was God’s purpose. At first he allowed them to suffer hunger to teach them to rely on Him then He fed them daily with manna. He made them His sons and He chastened, humbled and disciplined them. Manna was thus in part a blessing and part a humiliation. Man seeks to live by bread alone but as verse three stressed this is not possible. Man cannot live like a [unknown]. His own work cannot feed the whole man no matter how productive he is nor how much food he raises. He needs the every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Now, we know from records that have been kept that when people lose faith in any meaning beyond the material part of life they are very prone to suicide. And the longer this continues the higher the rate of suicide grows. It was [unknown] in the last century who first saw the correlation between these two things. Man cannot live by bread alone, he is not an animal. Food is not sufficient to make life livable for him. Israel accepted manna as a privilege not as a humiliation and a gift of grace and thereby sinned. This chapter makes a contrast between Israel’s life in the desert and its future life in a land with a rich soil and great fertility. In a desert Israel readily forgot God even though its existence depended on God’s supernatural care. This providential guidance went so far that their clothing did not wear out nor their feet give out in the wilderness. God went overboard to show them that they were dependent on Him. If they could forget God under the wilderness circumstances what gratitude would they show in a lush land of milk and honey? God’s power and care would be forgotten. Moses then makes three contrasts and three commandments. In each of these three Moses speaks of this day or today, verses one, eleven and eighteen. The first verse one is a summons to obedience. God has given them the gift of His covenant and the gifts of the land and its prosperity. Their response must be to obey the law.

Then second, they are commanded in verse eleven to remember and obey. They must not become existentialist, living for the moment, forgetting the history of God’s covenant grace and assuming that their own powers had given them these gifts of care, land and prosperity. And this is stressed from verse eleven through seventeen. Then third, in verses eighteen through twenty they are told that the consequences of forgetting will be that God will place them on the same basis as the Canaanites and then deal with them accordingly. If they forget God he will forget them as His people and will punish them as He does the Canaanites. The land did not create itself, it is the Lords and He will give it to whom He wills, whether as a blessing or as a curse. As verse one says so plainly all the commandments which I command thee this day will ye observe them to do that ye may live. Life, personal and national depends upon God and His care. About 1900 some theologians used this chapter to warn the people of the west about the necessity for faithfulness. They were not heeded and we see the results today. Verses nineteen and twenty have been called by some such as P.C. Craggy as basic to Deuteronomy. And verse eighteen Israel is reminded of God’s sovereignty.

“But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.”

God gives gifts to men to bless or to curse them as the case may be. To his covenant people the power to get wealth is given that He may establish his covenant. The gifts God gives us whether of wealth or of talents is not for our sakes but for the sake of His covenant. The goal of life is not our enrichment but the kingdom of God. It is very wrong therefore to say as did Bernard Schneider and I quote:

“Prosperity is still a great enemy of faith and spiritual life.” Unquote.

Now that’s a very common opinion but God can make prosperity which he gives as a blessing indeed as a curse. But also poverty is a blessing and a curse. It all depends on what we are and the focus in Deuteronomy is not on ourselves nor on our prosperity nor on our lack of it but it always is on God’s covenant and His grace and law. And prosperity is not the great enemy of faith and spiritual life, but we are!

And man the sinner can take prosperity or poverty and become a monster in either case. Moses says this clearly, he declares that the dangers ahead come not from their enemies but from themselves. In verse eleven, beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God and not making His commandments and judgments and His statutes that I command thee this day. God’s purpose in the wilderness journey is three fold according to verse two, to humble thee and to prove thee, to know what was in thy heart, whether thou wouldst keep his commandments or no. They were being tested and tried so that they would see themselves as the major problem. Joseph Parker calls this process God’s plan of life. When Moses declares man does not live by bread only but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord, doth man live, he is not contrasting a material way of life against a spiritual one, because a spiritual life can be a demonic one, but rather the contrast is between man’s desire for autonomy as against a total dependence on and trust in God. The stress throughout the chapter is on God’s providence. Man is not alone in this world. More pervasive and total than the air he breathes is the providence of God. We are never outside His particular government. To live by God’s every word and predestined act for us means also that we cannot pick and choose our destinies. They are God ordained. Man is not self-sufficient nor autonomous and for him to think of life as apart from God’s purposes is to live in terms of illusions rather than the truth. Verse two, when Moses says that God puts us through various experiences to know what is in our hearts, the meaning as C. H. [unknown] pointed out, is that the knowledge might arise, that a refining process would develop and bring out in us our potential under God.

This chapter has had in part a sad history because it sets forth so clearly God’s prerogative to humble, test and prove His people by subjecting them to a variety of sad experiences. The great medieval scholar, [unknown] rebelled against such a doctrine, and the sad fact is that much of Judaism followed him. Evil experiences were charged off to various material causes. In the twentieth century as one Jewish scholar has pointed out, this development led some rabbis to reject the hand of God in the Jewish ordeal under Hitler. And behind this is a belief common now to both the synagogue and the church that God has no right to will anything but good for a man. Together with this we have a broad in our culture, the belief in the natural goodness of man. The grim consequence of such thinking is this: if man is good and evil comes to him then God is either incapable of controlling history or He is not good and both positions have their followers. This is why this chapter is not popular. In Deuteronomy, more quoted by our Lord than any other book of the Old Testament is so much neglected in our time by Christians. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank Thee that Thy word is truth. We thank Thee although it is not easy for us to do so for the humbling experiences, the troubles and the trials Thou hast put us through. We know that Thou hast a greater purpose for us in time and in eternity. Give us grace to trust in Thee and to walk in faithfulness to Thy word. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

[Question] I was reading that the early pioneers when they quoted from the bible most frequently..[becomes unintelligible.] Do you know why that would be?

[Rushdoony] because they were undergoing a kind of wilderness experience. And therefore, as they suffered a great many things, it was a source of strength to them to know that God’s hand is in everything. Deuteronomy has had a great part in American history and it is now a vilified and neglected book. Yes?

[Question] The problem with a man centered philosophy is that if [unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, when you have that perspective you cannot learn from anything that history brings your way. So beginning with the individual refusing to learn because he’s determined it’s not his fault, nor if it isn’t that it can teach him something, you go on to history at large so you reject meaning in history. And it is so commonplace now for professors of history to begin by disclaiming that there is an overall meaning to history. Yes?

[Question] You’re talking about the attacks on historical critics on the book of Deuteronomy, I’m not very familiar with their work can you give me an example of how they would do that?

[Rushdoony] Oh basically they say this was probably produced somewhere around 450 or 400 B.C. Not when it was supposed to have, a thousand years almost earlier. 800-1000 years depending on the dating. This means it was an attempt to go back and say this was the meaning of the events. They of course deny the Mosaic authorship, they chop it up into at least four documents woven together and some into many more, and their basic thesis is that we cannot regard it as historical. By doing so, of course, they are rejecting meaning in history. Because Deuteronomy is not a book, as some of the other books of the law, that recount some historical events and records great miracles like the parting of the Red Sea and so on, it is a series of sermons and declarations of what God does in history and what his work in history is. Totally. And that’s the offense.

[Question] What evidence would they try to bring up in support of their claim and what evidence would we have to counter them?

[Rushdoony] The evidence is an apropos belief that certain things could not have characterized the thinking of people in the wilderness journey or the thinking of Moses. Therefore, if [unknown] they have to be later. They had to have come after the whole of the Old Testament history when certain scribes were reflecting on these things and they wove together various documents so that it was nothing that occurred there in the wilderness but something that people much later said ‘oh this is what it all meant’. So you see if you begin with that premise you can take and rewrite any history, you can say it’s impossible, that there could have been, let us say, such a figure as George Washington. The whole story of Washington is a composite.

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Because history is in a sense prophetic. History tells us on an elementary level that the wages of sin are always death. History always tells us how God has operated in the past, that He is the same yesterday today and forever. History means moreover that we are not cows and sheep to whom the past is meaningless. Your dog doesn’t know the history of his family. Animals have no history. They are incapable of telling you that they came over on the mayflower. They are total existentialist and this is what modern man wants to be. And this has been openly stated as far back as [unknown] who said we should be able to turn like a cow and graze and have no thought about anything. Well this is the existentialist temper that has prevailed since World War Two. That man should be unaffected by the past or the future, only by the existential moment and his biology. So those who despise history are trying to reduce us to the level of animals. It used to be that the great historians wrote for the general public. We may not agree with Gibbons, his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but the thing that is remarkable about Gibbons was that he spent most of his life as an adult researching the history of Rome in order to write from the humanistic perspective, the enlightenment perspective, its history. And he wrote for the general reader. In the last century McCalley wrote for the general reader and wrote excellent history. But of course his history now is despised by the professional historians as is that of Hume who while a relativist to the enth degree when he wrote history still wrote as a product of a Christian culture. Other men wrote histories that were the product of as much and more research than our current professors, but they wrote for the general reader because they felt religiously that every man needs to know the past in order to understand the present and to help in determining how his life is to be governed by these things? So to downgrade history, in fact to abolish it as it has been done, it’s been replaced by social studies is very definitely to dehumanize man. And if you don’t believe that that is what’s happening just look at the crime in our streets or in our schools. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, Whitley, a great teacher of logic, early in the last century wrote some historic doubts about Napoleon Bonaparte and while she applied good logic plus the techniques of the biblical scholars and proved that Napoleon who was alive at the moment was a fiction of the British foreign office. There was no evidence that he existed. It’s a classic. I’m sorry that that book is not required reading for every student. It gets reprinted periodically in a limited edition and very quickly disappears but it is a classic. Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] It was written to demonstrate how fallacious the biblical criticism was. And it is so convincing that there are actually people who are convinced that the British foreign offices, that collection of scoundrels, had come to close to bankrupting Britain in terms of a myth they had propagating. It was that convincing because it used the established cannons of logic and historical methodology. Well our time is growing to a close so let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we delight in Thy word and Thy word is truth. Thy word enables us to become not existentialist but Christians. To live our lives, to live, move and have our being in Thee. Instruct us day by day by Thy word and by Thy spirit. 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.