Deuteronomy

Prayer And Alms

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 48-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 048

Dictation Name: RR187Z48

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Oh come let us sing unto the Lord let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we thank Thee for the blessings of the week past. We thank Thee that in and through under and above all things is Thy providential care so that all things work to accomplish Thy sovereign purpose. Teach us to look not to our will but to Thy will and to pray that Thy will be done not ours. Now Lord instruct us by Thy word and by Thy spirit and grant that we behold wondrous things out of Thy law. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 15:7-11. Our subject: Prayer and Alms.

“If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother:

8 But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth.

9 Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be sin unto thee.

10 Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him: because that for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto.

11 For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.”

These verses are very important to an understanding of Biblical faith and certainly of the New Testament as well. Paul in Ephesians 4:28 sets forth a contrast. He tells Christians they should steal no more, their focus should not be to get the best of everybody but they should work, work hard, why? That thou mayest have to give to him that needeth. In other words, the Christian abandons a world based on theft for a work oriented society. We are told of the centurion Cornelius in Acts 10:1 that he was a devout man and one that feared God with all his house which gave much alms to the people and prayed to God always. When the angel appears to Cornelius he says thy prayers and thy alms are come up for a memorial before God. Prayer and alms are not an association made by the modern church. If it prays its prayers are separated from action whereas both Paul and God’s angels make an inseparable connection between prayer and alms or charity. The early church saw this connection as did the medieval church in its healthy days and the reformation as well, most certainly Calvin. Now the modernists have substituted statist welfarism for charity and the evangelicals have been content too often with prayer, not action. The biblical requirement is not that either church nor state should govern all things, both are limited in their jurisdiction and income. The sanctuary received for worship a tithe of the tithe or one percent and also a variety of sacrifices or offerings according to Numbers 18:26. The civil order received half a shekel from every male from age eighteen or twenty rather on up. Thus both church and state were strictly limited in their powers. The basic government and charities were in the hands of the people under God.

Now this is the doctrine of society which our text and all of the Bible sets forth. The good society requires a good people, the Levites as the instructors of Israel, clerisy, received the most in order to instruct the people in governing themselves and their society and caring for the needy if the individual did not do it himself directly. Our text, Acts 10:4 and other texts stress the connection between prayer, charity and blessings. This is in fact a major stress of the Bible as it was of the early church and of the medieval church and of reformation churches. It was very basic to Calvin. Despite the biblical stress on this it is now rarely taught or preached. It would startle a great many professing bible believers to be told that prayer and alms are preconditions of blessings. Nowadays the very idea of private or personal charity has been savagely attacked by one non-Christian writer, a leftist, she interviewed prominent wealthy people much given to charity as though she were sympathetic and then wrote a vicious book against the whole thing. The biblical stress on Christian charity on the personal level was not stated in a vacuum. Rome had at that time a vast welfare system administered by a huge bureaucracy. This welfare system was a major drain on Rome and in part responsible for its collapse. This is a fact nowadays with our modern welfarism we’re never reminded of. Paul was undoubtedly familiar with the Roman answer but he knew God’s answer was and is a radically different one. Now basic to our text, Deuteronomy 15:7-11 is a biblical awareness of the nature of man. In verse nine the covenant man is addressed in uncomplimentary language. His heart he is told is wicked but that’s the reading of the English Authorized Version in the Hebrew it reads ‘thy belial heart’. If we hesitate to help our covenant brother where we can we have a belial heart and are enemies of God.

Our eye is evil against our covenant brother and it is a sin on our part. This does not mean that the poor are necessarily good. This is the equation that is common to modern politics but it is foreign to the Bible. The text is concerned with the legitimate and deserving poor, the unfortunate ones. The presupposition of all the Bible is man’s depravity. Jeremiah 17:9 for example tells us as Paul later repeats: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?” Or in James Moffat’s words: who can fathom it? Because we are ourselves sinners we are unwilling to face up to the full scope of evil. Our money is a stewardship from God as are all our possessions. We dare not use them foolishly nor selfishly. Charity is both a duty and a task. Sir James George Adam Smith at the beginning of the century rightly saw the centrality of our text which he called one of the most beautiful as it is one of the most characteristic passages in the law books. But we can add that it is characteristic of the law and the prophets and of the New Testament. In verse seven both the families and the communities are addressed and the scope is more than local. If there be any among you, addresses the whole community, within thy gates, refers to all the urban communities of the nation, while action is to be personal the concern for action must be both civil and ecclesiastical. It must be manifested in all spheres. This means that the teaching ministry must be faithful in declaring the duties of prayer and alms. The civil ministry must be mindful that the nations will not be blessed if its negligent in prayer and in alms.

It used to be that the wealthy could give up to one hundred percent of their annual income to charity or to the church and get full deduction, no taxes but because of one man’s work, a law was passed some years ago limiting it to fifty percent, that was J. Howard Pew, the legislation was aimed specifically at him in the debate. In verse seven’ thou shalt not harden thy heart’ is literally ‘ye shall not be strong against your heart’. Don’t suppress your good feelings, your pity, your desire to help. If you are covenant man and in your heart you know what your duty is you must do it, that’s what verse seven says. The text states that community obligation because the consequences of failure to be charitable are disastrous for all. The condition dealt with what one scholar called necessitated poverty. In all our dealings with the poor we must treat them with respect as a brother in the Lord. In Deuteronomy 24:10-13 the case law requires that in lending to a poor believer we must not enter his house to take his pledge or security, he is not to be shamed because of his poverty but given the same respect due to all godly men. Wealth gives us no prominence before God nor does poverty. Understanding the New Testament without a knowledge of the Old, especially the law, is difficult and many simply skip baffling injunctions. For example, Luke 6:30-31 reads: ‘’Give to everyone who asks you and do not request your belongings back from him who took them”. Treat others exactly as you would like to have them treat you. In our Lord’s day these words had a double significance. First they referred to our text, the year of release and loans of money or items of property to help the poor and second, in first century Judea the Roman forces had the right to commandeer men or possessions; whatever the occasion however we must treat others as we would be treated. God makes clear in His law that poverty will disappear within an obedient people, Deuteronomy 15:4. He knew however that they would be on all levels of society each in his own way a disobedient people and He tells Israel this again and again. Therefore in verse eleven he says the poor shall never cease out of the land or the text has been translated perhaps better ‘to the end that there be no poor among you’. This is God’s purpose. Verse ten tells us that this thing, our charity, the Lord thy God shall bless thee and all thy works and in all thy putest thy hand unto. Given this unequivocal statement it is very obvious that many Christians do not want to be blessed. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God grant that in our time we may see a great and mighty revival of Christian charity so that Thy will may be done and Thy grace manifested in and through us. Oh Lord our God we beseech thee, use us towards this purpose. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

[Question] Well the welfare state seems to me to have deliberately decided to replace individual charity. When I did an article on the [unknown] the city of New York tried to close it down at the same time that it was improving its own welfare expenditures.

[Rushdoony] Yes, private charities have always felt the pressure of the state and its hostility. The desire of the state to hinder and finally suppress such work in favor of statist action and the reason is power. As long as Christians were totally responsible for health, education and welfare they were the power. It was in the hands of independent Christian agencies, charitable groups, and neither church nor state could command the scene. So both church for a time and then subsequently the state have sought to take over in this sphere, health, education and welfare in order to gain power. I’ve mentioned to some of you what is a real scandal in San Diego, namely, that Mexicans drive across the border in their cars to register with the welfare offices as homeless and then come back monthly to claim welfare checks and live in Mexico on the welfare. One former Los Angeles police officer went to San Diego and began to be a fraud inspector and had to leave the service because of the hostility of the welfare department to what he was doing in uncovering this. And the media by and large has not touched the story. So we can see a militant hostility on the part of the state. The more welfare they command the more money they have, the greater the pay for example, the office that adds more and more people onto the rolls. I saw this in the Indian service because it was beneficial to them to claim to have more Indians then they did, more problems than they had, because they wanted to upgrade their status. They would resort sometimes to incredibly stupid tricks which usually passed muster in order to increase their power by increasing the scope of their work artificially.

Are there any more questions or comments? Yes?

[Question] When the charity is impersonal it destroys gratitude.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Statist welfarism is impersonal. It destroys not only gratitude but community because where it is personal there is a concern. I’ve known of cases where people who’ve helped someone wound up helping not only the man get work but maybe his son also as the son grew up and maintaining a personal relationship, that’s gone now. And instead of being a sense of community and a Christian grace to give charity now those who receive charity regard it as their right and are very hostile to Christians who attempt to help them, because they don’t want charity they say they just want their rights which is free access to our money. So it’s been destructive of society in one way or another and one of the things it has done is to create marked class divisions. There have been eras when despite the sharp lines between let us say the nobility and the aristocracy and burghers and the poor there has been a greater closeness if there has been a stronger Christian faith. And as a result the community was closer together. I don’t recall the name of the English knight, a member of the gentry in the eighteenth century, that the Spectator Papers wrote about, do you recall Otto? He’s presented as lovable, sometimes comical, very earnest and honest man. And given to the old Christian virtues and order he knew who he was, he was the squire, but he also knew that these people were his Christian brothers and each had their own place but they had good communication with each other. [Someone speaks up] Sir Roger de Coverley that’s right. Any other questions or comments?

If not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we thank Thee that Thou hast called us to Thy service. And we pray that we may indeed bring about a truly Godly order, a Christian order in which Christians are members one of another and their grace goes out to all. Bless our work to this end 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.