The Gospel of John

Evil

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 21- 70

Genre:

Track: 021

Dictation Name: RR197M23

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after. That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in His temple. Wait on the Lord, be of good courage and He shall strengthen thy heart. Wait I say, on the Lord.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee that day after day Thy mercies are indeed new every morning. We thank Thee that in Thy will is our peace. Give us grace therefore day by day to rejoice in all that Thou doest knowing that though we may not understand Thy ways and though we may feel them to be trying for us Thy purpose for us is all together good, all together righteous and holy. Bless us our Father, prosper us, heal us, and make us strong in Thee and for Thy eternal kingdom. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our Scripture is from John 7:45-53, our subject: Evil. John 7:45-53.

“ Then came the officers to the chief priests and Pharisees; and they said unto them, Why have ye not brought him?

46 The officers answered, Never man spake like this man.

47 Then answered them the Pharisees, Are ye also deceived?

48 Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?

49 But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed.

50 Nicodemus saith unto them, (he that came to Jesus by night, being one of them,)

51 Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth?

52 They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.

53 And every man went unto his own house.”

In this text John 7:45-53, we come face to face with evil and its enormity. Mankind is in the main unwilling to acknowledge the true nature of evil. Men do not want to reveal themselves and if they would be honest they would have to acknowledge that they are evil. In the twentieth century a higher percentage of mankind has been killed by war, mass murders, torture, slave labor camps, famine, religious persecution and so on and on than ever before in history. And yet we boast of our high civilization and our enlightenment. It was Elliot who in the twentieth century Book of the Dead collected and published all the statistics of the mass murders and the horrors of this century, not yet over. His book was not well received. Not only that, but during the long butchery and horror of the Soviet Union politicians, intellectuals, the media, many of the clergy, educators and more insisted that the Soviet Union was a great and noble experiment. The greatest of its kind in history. I recall vividly in the thirties when Stalin took all the food away from the peasants in the Ukraine and starved them to death the lowest estimate was that six million died. Some other estimates are as high as thirteen million and yet although there were eye witnesses who saw what happened, the media in the west, the educators, the politicians refused to acknowledge it.

I recall very clearly the anger of a professor at Berkeley when I brought up the fact of that horror. Men do not want to face up to evil because they are evil and they feel that their ways are righteous and will accomplish what they want. In those days to be critical of the Soviet Union was to be obviously morally derelict and evil. Far worse than this within the so-called free west we now have abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, and a growing contempt of morality, a hatred of that which is good and a catering to evil. The Soviet Union unlike other countries of the past which boasted of its evil claimed it was ridding itself of its enemies. But what about us? How are unborn babies enemies? Evil now wears a smiling face and is pharisaical to the core. Knowing this about our time we should not be surprised that the very religious leaders saw Jesus as their enemy. These men were the ostensible champions of God’s law which they had reinterpreted to make it mean something else. They were the champions of the temple and of worship and they had defiled it. Our Lord repeatedly spoke bluntly of their hypocrisy as witnessed these words from Mark 12:38-40:

“And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces,

39 And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts:

40 Which devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.”

Now this is one of the shortest condemnations of the leaders, religious leaders of the day, by our Lord. It clearly cites the pretensions of the religious leaders and their immorality. To rob widows of their homes by fraud is especially evil in the sight of God. God says the defenseless must be protected, not exploited. The essence of evil is that it claims to be the true good much of the time and it calls the good evil. The whole moral order is reversed. The hatred of God, morality in the people of God marks the evil ones. The Soviet Union proclaimed itself as the true order. The ungodly within the churches insist on their superiority to Christ’s flock whom they despise and denigrate. In our text we see this passionate and religious if ungodly contempt. First, the officers who were sent to arrest Jesus retrned to the chief priests and Pharisees to report that this man was no transgressor, never spake man like this man. For this they gained contempt. Notice the unity here that John speaks of. Between the chief priests, that is the Sadducees, and the Pharisees. They were normally bitter enemies but they were united now in their hatred of Jesus and second, their standard is radically humanistic. In verse forty eight they say:

48 Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?

As though that were conclusive. The elite of the nation are against Jesus, how dare they have another opinion. Well we have that today, do we not, the media acts as though if you disagree with them somehow you belong to a vicious minority. Today men would say neither the U.S. supreme court nor congress recognize the claims of Jesus and the Bible, it is the superstitious people who believe. They have not changed much since our Lord’s day. Third the leaders recognize that the people largely believed in Jesus. So they said ‘this people who know not the law are cursed’, verse forty nine. The people whose leaders they ostensibly were received only their contempt. Today those who loudly proclaim their beliefs in democracy are least ready to respect the people if the people disagree with them. They use and abuse them. Then fourth, Nicodemus spoke up to question the sense of their condemnation before any formal hearing. It was clearly illegal. They were to sit as judges but they were judging Him before the fact. As rulers and judges over the people how could they condemn any man without a hearing? This was Nicodemus’ point. Biblical law does not even allow for passing sentence on a confession without corroboration. How then could they act and speak as they did? Fifth the people are called in verse forty nine ‘cursed’. In effect they were excommunicating the whole nation without going through the open procedure of doing so. Unless the people obeyed them they were nothing. If they followed them they were still stupid fools in their eyes.

They had no respect for anyone except themselves. Then sixth the people are described as being ignorant of the law. In reality the people were very well educated in the law. It was the Pharisaic additions to it and the Sadducees beliefs regarding it that the people did not know. An American may know the U.S. Constitution backwards and forwards and yet be radically ignorant of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reinterpretation of it. But this does not make it ignorant of the fundamental law of the land. Then seventh the rulers had challenged the officers saying ‘have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed on Him?’ Almost at once Nicodemus challenges their attempts against Jesus as lawless. It undermined their statement that Jesus had no worthy supporters, there were a number of prominent people of the day, a minority, but still a number who believed in Jesus. But they were brushed aside and now the leaders were contemptuous of Nicodemus. They said in effect that anyone who disagreed with them could have no standing and this is still a common tactic. If you disagree with our self-appointed elite you are obviously ignorant. Nicodemus had not spoken in favor of Jesus, only in favor of lawful proceedings. He insisted on justice, not lynch law and so they turned on Him. They refused to acknowledge that Nicodemus was right. They chose instead to interpret His remarks as a defense of Jesus, a defense because Nicodemus insisted on justice.

We are again in our time as in many a time before face to face with evil and it’s intense self-righteousness in power and using power viciously. Our inability to confront evil often begins with ourselves. One man a monster of egocentricity and contemptuous of all others, including family and kin, held that as a good man he didn’t need the church and the Bible, he was ready to take his chances with heaven if it existed. He could not understand how God could ever reject him given his track record. No one shared his opinion of himself. If we fail to appreciate our own sinful dispositions we will hardly be able to recognize its dimensions in the world around us. Too many people faced with evil collapse because such knowledge is too much for them. A vision of evil, knowledge of evil, is a terrifying fact because it makes too clear the enormity of what is against us. That is why the Christian alone can confront evil and recognize it for what it is because he knows there is a greater one, God the Son, God the Father, God the Spirit and so he can overcome evil. Evil can only be confronted by the vision of God in Christ. We know that evil cannot accomplish more than God’s permission allows. Our Lord’s prayer includes this petition:

“Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

Some have translated this latter clause as deliver us, or save us, from the evil one.

Others question this possible reading, it’s a bit difficult from the text to determine which it is and both are probably acceptable translations. But what is clear is that while we are not to concentrate on evil we are to pray for deliverance from it. We are not to be victims of it but conquerors over it. When our Lord commands us to pray ‘deliver us from evil’ or the evil one He’s not commanding us to do anything that is impossible but only that which can be done. And so we have a duty to pray that evil be confounded or be changed or be destroyed if need be. That’s in God’s hands whenever we confront it. That’s our duty! We cannot deal with evil until we are ready to pray ‘deliver us from evil’ and know when we so pray we’re asking God to do something about it in His wisdom, not in our wisdom. We may want to see evil completely smashed and destroyed or we may want to see it spared because while we’re unhappy with it we want our solutions to it. God knows that. All He asks us to do is to say put it in my hands, pray, ‘deliver us from evil’. Our Lord here was confronted with evil and He became the victor over it. He destroyed the power of sin and of death in his own life and He made us members as the last Adam of His new humanity so we are now the people of the new creation. We therefore are more than conquerors and we can pray ‘deliver us from evil’ and be heard. Let us pray.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for this Thy word. We thank Thee that Thy son, our Lord, our redeemer, confronted evil in all its enormity and destroyed the power of sin and death and made us members of His new creation. Enable us by Thy spirit to fight the good fight of faith, to pray as Thou hast commanded us to leave the issue in Thine omnipotent hands knowing that Thy love for us is greater than we can fathom and Thy protecting care beyond our imagination. How great Thou art oh Lord and we praise Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question] Well you have to confront evil because if you tolerate it in any way, if you are complacent surrounded by evil, evil will overcome you.

[Rushdoony] Yes. A problem in our time is instead of confronting evil Christians withdraw from the world and the evil around them and try to hole up in the church. And it was a friend of ours, one of the greatest political scientists of this century, a devout Catholic, who observed that one of the problems of our time is that protestants have created out of their churches monastic communities of married priests and nuns who withdraw from the world. And so a tremendous force for Christ withdraws into the church as though it were their convent or monastery and they are not going to think about the world out there.

And I believe that when Christians begin to pray ‘deliver us from evil’ and say ‘Lord God Thou art able, do Thou deal with evil as it confronts us all around us and the world at large’ then we will see the world dramatically changed. But now it’s a monastic withdrawal and in effect a surrender.

[Question] So is that one of the purposes of evil to make the Christians respond?

[Rushdoony] I think so. One poet a couple of centuries ago and not the best of poets but occasionally very telling in his insight wrote a line that was a classic. I saw the finger of God go forth giving a body to evil that it might be cast off forever. In other words, God allows evil to develop so that we realize what it is, so that we then turn to Him and we turn to His law word and we realize that holiness has a task, not to be overcome evil but to overcome it. And you see when the church became pietistic and withdrew from the world it surrendered that task, it surrendered that calling. And it amazes me how in church publications and other Christian publications they’ll actually say that the Christian has no responsibility to deal with the evil in this world. That’s frightening.

Any other questions or comments? Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank Thee that in Thy teaching Thou hast taught us how to pray and how to work. To pray for the coming of Thy kingdom, to pray for Thy care of us in all things, deliverance from evil, forgive us oh Lord for the negligence of these our duties and make us strong and zealous in prayer and in action so that indeed Thy kingdom may come and Thy will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. Bless us in this task. 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.