Deuteronomy

Programming God?

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 34-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 034

Dictation Name: RR187S34

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. There is therefore no condemnation to those which are in Christ Jesus. For as many as are led by the spirit of God they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption. Thereby, we cry, Abba Father. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we give thanks unto Thee that Thou who dost rule heaven and earth art mindful to us, even to the very hairs of our head. And so our Father we come confessing that indeed we are not as mindful of Thee as we ought to be, rejoicing still in Thy grace and mercy unto us. We come to hear Thine word and to be instructed by Thy spirit that we may serve Thee with all Thy heart, mind and being. Bless us to this end, in Jesus’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is from Deuteronomy 10:12-22. Our subject: Programming God? Deuteronomy 10:12-22.

“ And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,

13 To keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?

14 Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord's thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is.

15 Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day.

16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.

17 For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward:

18 He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.

19 Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

20 Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name.

21 He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen.

22 Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now the Lord thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.”

This text has a very familiar ring because it is so soften quoted or echoed elsewhere in the Bible. There is scarcely a phrase which either has not been used previously and is not used again and again after this passage. Moreover the moral requirements such as charity to widows, orphans and aliens is the key law repeated over and over again throughout the Bible. In verse twenty, for example, the fear of God is commanded, again something often repeated. And the reference in verse twenty two to the patriarchs in Egypt as well as the promise to Abraham of great growth is one common to the prophets and the apostles. But all this is put together in this text with a particular emphasis which we will come to later.

The modernists are very prompt to call this a late passage written long after Moses because their evolutionary views bar anything that they would call advanced as against primitive religion. Their very rigid evolutionary framework destroys meaning from one end of the bible to the other because they have to go through and sort out passages in terms of ‘is this a primitive kind of statement or is it not’ and then they date everything in terms of an evolutionary ladder. Even evidence to the contrary is quietly disregarded. The word fear or revere and the words walk, love, serve and keep are found repeatedly in Deuteronomy to describe what man’s religious responses should be. What Moses tells Israel is that God’s law word does not call for a debate or a discussion but obedient action. In verse sixteen an uncircumcised heart means an unregenerate heart, one governed by the fall of man rather than by God’s grace. Throughout the Bible this image is used to again and again to indicate the centrality of regeneration. The uncircumcised heart represents the stubborn rebellion against God. In verses seventeen through nineteen we have a vivid stress on the majesty and omnipotence of God. And this is combined with the requirement of charity as our response to His majesty. Because He is so great and we are so undeserving we must manifest the same kind of grace we receive by showing grace to others. Some of these people we must show a loving charity towards will be clearly unlovable. But we are to remember that God loves us who were unlovable when not in His grace. And we are therefore to manifest His grace towards those who are unlovable in our eyes. This fact is brought into sharp focus in verse twenty one which says ‘He, God, is thy praise, and He is thy God that hath done for thee these great and terrible things which thine eyes have seen’. If He would be asked what there is in us that can be praised, we would begin cataloguing our assets and liabilities. But Moses tells Israel and he reminds us that God is our praise!

The word praise here which we should read is a noun. Means a hymn, a libation, God is our hymn as well as our God. That is, He is our joy, hope and strength and He has demonstrated this by the great and marvelous things He has done. God is thus two things to us according to Moses, among many other things. He is our song and He is our God. Verse twenty tells us that we should cleave to God or keep very close to Him. In Genesis 2:24 the same word cleave indicates the necessary relationship between a man and his wife in true marriage. We must have a great closeness to God in order to know and feel secure in His government and power. In verse twenty two God speaks bluntly on a very practical and pragmatic level. Thy fathers went down into Egypt with three score and ten persons and now the Lord thy God hath made Thee as the stars of heaven for multitudes. We forget that until recently in all the world much of it still, and perhaps again soon, for most if not all, survival has meant children and land. The very early marriages, for example, in the medieval nobility often at puberty were for intensely practical reasons. The nobility were the military [unknown] and their death rate was very high and their life expectancy not long, early marriages marked this fact because there had to be a continuity of government and power. And God tells Israel for whom He is about to give the land of Canaan that He has already given them a remarkable fertility. With the land and fertility they will have the essentials of survival and power from the humanistic perspective.

They are to remember, however, that both fertility and land are God’s gifts to them. Moses had already told them beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God and not keeping His commandments and His judgments and His statutes which I command Thee this day. And thou say in thy heart ‘my power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth’ but thou shalt remember the Lord thy God for it is He that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish the covenant which He sweareth unto thy fathers as it is this day. God is not only their hymn of praise and strength, He is also their sustainer and the one who gives them power to get wealth. Fertility and the land are alike God’s gifts and it is God whom they must always remember with thanksgiving and praise. This is why this passage begins in verse twelve with the form of the great commandment of Deuteronomy 6:5. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy might. This of course is cited by our Lord also. The subject of this particular passage especially but also of all Deuteronomy is allegiance. This is why Deuteronomy is so fitting a book for our time and also why it is a very much resented book. God makes clear that He requires of a covenant people a total allegiance to himself. Loyalty to God means loyalty to his covenant self. Any lesser loyalties that minimize or impinge upon a people’s loyalties to the God of the covenant are thereby evil because they warp both men and society. But Israel’s loyalty in time became loyalty to itself and Caiaphas the high priest would say it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation perish not.

A like judgment has been pronounced by the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress and the Presidency. So that national allegiances all over the world and here have superseded allegiance to the triune God. This is why the warnings of Deuteronomy are so urgent. Beware and remember again and again this is stated. In the words of Charles Simeon and I quote:

“There is to be no limit to our obedience. No line beyond which we will not go if God calls us. No commandment is to be considered grievance or anything to be regarded as a hard thing. We are to walk in all God’s ways, obeying every commandment without partiality and without hypocrisy. We are to do His will on earth even as it is done in heaven, and the angels we are told, do God’s will hearkening to the voice of His word. They look for the very first intonation of His will and fly to execute it with all their might. They never consider for a moment what bearing the command may have on their own personal concerns. They find all their happiness in fulfilling the divine will and this should be the state of ours also. It should be our meat and our drink to do the will of Him that sent us. And if suffering be the recompense allotted us we should rejoice that we are counted worthy to suffer for His sake. Even life itself should be not dear to us in comparison to His honor and we should be ready to lay it down at any time and in any way that the sacrifice may be demanded of us.” Unquote.

Now in verse seventeen we have a very remarkable description of God. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, a great God and mighty and a terrible who regardeth not persons nor taketh reward. This is coupled with verse eighteen ‘he doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widows and loveth the stranger in giving him and food and raiment’. So we are given a description of the mercy and the charity of God but at the same time He is described as a great God and a mighty and a terrible which regardeth not persons nor taketh reward.

Our problem with these words is that our age is too hypocritical to understand these words readily. God says that He is so mighty and so terrible for men to accept readily because He has no respect for persons and states and cannot be bribed. Men want powers over them that can be influenced, manipulated or bribed. Go back over the centuries. Whether it is Rome or Greece or any other culture you find that the kind of government that people have do not like when it works against them, but like because they can use it is one that can be manipulated and bribed. Go back to [unknown] tablets from the time of Abraham and you find that bribery was routine. Men want powers over them that can be influenced, manipulated or bribed. And the religions and the theologies they create are of the same kind. This is what Arminism is about. For God to say that He is above and beyond these things leaves men uneasy and uncomfortable. It means that god cannot be manipulated by man. It means that man cannot bribe God, he cannot treat Him like his congressman or some local official. And men want only superior powers that can be used, manipulated or placated. And God takes no bribes of any kind. During my university as well as seminary years I repeatedly heard Calvinism referred to as a monstrous faith. And it was obvious why. It depicted a God that was above and beyond man’s manipulation and this is intolerable. Man wants nothing in the universe that he cannot control. And therefore he may profess the Bible from cover to cover but he will reinterpret it so that it is not God who governs and controls man but man who controls God. So these verses are essentially related to the doctrine of predestination. It tells us that men want a God they can program and predestinate whereas God declares that he creates and governs man, that he is a great, a mighty and a terrible which regardeth not persons nor taketh reward. There is nothing man can do that will enable him to manipulate this God which reveals himself in scripture. Man’s sin, his will to be his own God requires him to redefine God. If God is to be given any place as one whom man can program a bribe or predestine in terms of man’s will. It cannot be done and it is madness to think so. Yet all through history men have insisted on believing that it can be done. This is the madness of our time. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee for this Thy way. We thank Thee that Thou art a God who cannot be bribed, who cannot be influenced by man. But are He who dost reign, whose will alone shall be done. Whose kingdom alone shall be triumphed. Oh Lord our God we thank Thee for Thy grace and we thank Thee that Thou art not such a one as ourselves. And therefore we worship Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

[Question] Should we regard the immigration problem that we have in California in light of the instruction in verses eighteen and nineteen? It is difficult to tell the difference between unrestrained immigration and honoring the conviction [?].

[Rushdoony] That’s a very good question and a very important one because there is a difference between an invasion and immigration. The other day a Hispanic spoke out against the present day immigration, he said the ones who are coming now are not coming because they are running away from tyranny, most of them are for material advantage and they despise this country. And he said I love this country and these newcomers do not. Others have compared such migrants to invaders and thieves who are not to get that which is good without any regard for the country, ready to go on welfare, something which was previously unheard of. In fact, if any migrant before World War Two I know, came in this country and in any way sought public assistance even to go to a country hospital for treatment he was to be deported. So there is a difference. And on top of that one of the problems with immigration today is that it seemed to be designed to bring in non-Christians in order to flood out the Christian element of this country. We do have a problem therefore. There is a legitimate place for immigration and it is healthy for a country, it has made this country great, we are still doing a remarkable job of absorbing many of these immigrants. But right now there is a case in New Jersey of a man who is on our wanted list of terrorists, he is a [unknown], Muslim leader, a refugee here from Egypt but also a refugee from our efforts but he has come here on a visitor’s visa which we gave him even though he was on our wanted list, he has been here over two years, he is filing to remain as a political refugee and it appears because of the demonstration in New York City by the Muslims in his favor that possibly the judge will knuckle under and grant him such a status. Which means we will become a center for terrorist activities aimed at the Middle East and against us on occasion also. So one reason I think for our present immigration policies is not any kind of charitable concern but an anti-Christian stance and cowardice. Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Very different. Very, very different. And our policy today is really suicidal. I think the people in power intend to drown the WASPs out and they forget that in the process they can destroy themselves.

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] No, not immediately. The strangers could become converts immediately, in fact Rush came into Israel as a convert. However, it was not until the tenth generation that her descendant David could occupy office. This does not mean that they were not a long line of very superior and godly people, prominent, wealthy but they could not hold office. So there were rules in that regard, it meant that they had to become not only of the faith but in time fully a part of life of the people. Yes?

[Question] Do you think that some of these fundamental…[becomes unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] I think they represent a humanistic argument, yes. And humanism is all heart and no mind; it does not feel that if you introduce any intelligent considerations you are being other than hateful. I like to correct myself; David was the tenth generation from Tamar so he had that bond and then the fourth from Ruth. So he had on two counts something that necessitated waiting in his family before they could hold office. Sentimentality in our time is a very, very powerful and governing factor. Curiously the roots of sentimentality are normally traced to romanticism and that is in part true. But they actually go back to the enlightenment rationalism because rationalism and the enlightenment presented a rather schizophrenic view of man. It portrayed man as in some instances a rational creature and in others really as a totally emotional creature and the sexes were accordingly divided. Man as epitomizing reason and woman, emotions, feelings. Well Romanticism was the feminization of culture. And a classic example of that, of course, is [unknown] a very effeminate person. This effeminate tendency steadily moved into the arts and to light at large. And humanism became captured by it so that you can trace humanism from the early figure in this country who were rather rationalistic to the later who feeling was everything. And since they associated feeling with women it became an effeminized movement and we have had as a result a deadly effect on American life in that you are a heartless person and you have no feeling unless you are all gushy and tearful over the plights of people everywhere. And we have that of course today with regard to Somali.

And the problem is not confronted but Somali and the rest of Africa are seeing a division into old tribal lines and total warfare as a result. And this warfare is destroying the ability to produce. And either you allow them to work out their own way or you go in with the same old colonial policies. Only now on a U.N. Basis and stay there permanently at a cost that will be staggering. Because at least the old colonialism to an extent paid for itself but now we’re going to pay for it well and so it will be fruitless for Africa and any other area because there’s no Christianization accompanying it, no attempt to change the people and it is fruitless because it will bankrupt the rest of the world. Any other questions or comments?

Well, if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father as we face these troubles and difficult times we thank thee that Thou art a God beyond the control of men and Thou art all righteous and all merciful and Thy justice and Thy mercy far exceed that of man’s imagination or capacity. Therefore we come to Thee, looking unto Thee, rejoicing that it is Thy will that shall be done. Our God we thank 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.