Systematic Theology – The Land

The Redemption Of The Land

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: 6-19

Genre: Speech

Track: 06 of 19

Dictation Name: 06 The Redemption Of The Land

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us begin now with prayer. Oh Lord our God we come unto Thee who art the author of all things, all whose works are great and magnificent, whose purpose circumscribes all of history from the beginning to the end and we give thanks unto Thee our Father that we have a place in Thy plan, that we are a part of Thy victory and that Thou hast called us to serve Thee in this day as Thy people, Thy soldiers, Thy servants. Give us grace day by day to do our work in the confidence of Thy government and Thy victory that in all things we may be more than conquerors through Jesus Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, Amen.

Our text is Leviticus 25:1-7. Our subject: The Redemption of the Land. Leviticus 25:1-7.

“And the Lord spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying,

2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the Lord.

3 Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof;

4 But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.

5 That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land.

6 And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee.

7 And for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat.”

When we think of the ownership of land our thinking is governed by present day considerations so that we see the issue as one between private ownership and state ownership or socialism. Actually neither is biblical. Neither private ownership nor state ownership is any part of the pattern of God’s law, rather in the bible, land is family owned. The family was a trustee under God for the land and the use thereof. A trustee from God and from its ancestors and to its descendants so that every family regarded the land as a trust received from their forefathers to be passed on to their descendants. The land was given to the families of Israel at the time of the conquest as Numbers 33:54 and Joshua 13:7-33 make very clear. When Ezekiel spoke of the forthcoming exile, the captivity for their sins, he indicated that on their return they were again to go back to the pattern they had abandoned, family ownership. This pattern of course we have to a degree in this country and there are traces of it still in the community property laws. These laws indicate that ownership is in terms of the family. What some are doing in the form of setting up family trusts is a return to the biblical pattern of the family ownership of property. At the same time special lands were set aside for the Levites who were the instructors of Israel. We see this in Deuteronomy 33:10 where they called the instructors and the division of the land to them in Numbers 35:1-6. The Levitical lands differed however from family held lands because they were religious lands. They were set aside for use by God’s ministry. The premise of both types of ownership was the earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof. Now it is interesting that while we have no record of any Hebrew resistance to a land tax when it came with oppressors, there was to any tax of land that belonged to God.

Land that was reserved for his ministry. The great chapter that deals with this and sets forth the implications of biblical law is Ezra 7. In Ezra 7 we have the rescript of Artaxerxes which even critical and skeptical scholars like Meyers admit as authentic. The language thereof is virtually identical with the legal language of the tablets that have been uncovered in recent years. What this chapter, Ezra 7, tells us is: is that Artaxerxes when the exiles returned to Palestine under Ezra that he gave full tax exemption not only to the temple land but to all who were connected with the temple even to the porters and janitors. Full immunity from all taxation because the area that was set apart for the rule of God and His work could not be taxed by man. This was the pattern which subsequently Judea fought for as against Rome and of course the church subsequently took up the battle. The land in its entirety according to scripture is Gods. Certain portions of it were reserved particularly for him and cannot be subjected to the government of men. Sales of land and perpetuity is forbidden in the bible. This is especially plainly set forth in Leviticus 25:23. Even as the Israelites were aliens in Egypt they were to see themselves as aliens in Palestine because God was setting that aside as a pilot area for Himself. Thus, even as at the beginning the Garden of Eden was a pilot project, a limited fenced in area, where God wanted Adam and Eve to learn the pattern of dominion to be applied to the whole of the earth, so Palestine was set aside for Israel as an area where this kind of dominion was to be exercised as a pattern to be applied then to the whole earth.

We know that the Israelites were aware of this responsibility, we see for example in Solomon’s prayer of dedication when the temple was built his very plain statements that all who came there God was to listen to in a special way, so that the word of God and the dominion of God could be spread abroad to all the earth and an awareness of all that God wanted to be made known to all nations. As a result, there was a particular character to Palestine, even as to Eden. We are told of the necessity for dominion and the dominion mandate that was renewed to Israel in Joshua 1:1-9. As a matter of fact this is called the commission, when our Lord gives the Great Commission the difference now is that was said to Joshua is summarized more briefly by our Lord to the church with the difference that it now applies to the whole world. The dominion that Israel was to exercise in Palestine now the church had to exercise in all the world, to move out and where so ever they trod to make that God’s ground and God would give it to them if they moved in faithfulness to Him. Thus the church is now commissioned with that world role of dominion. But to continue with the laws concerning the land: if the poor through their poverty sold the land redemption was possible.

The redemption of the whole earth is God’s goal and these laws give a pattern for it. The alienation of land from God’s people is to be prevented as much as possible and all the earth is to be returned to the dominion of God and His law. It’s a sad fact that the church in modern times has paid no attention to these laws. The only group heretical and a non-Christian group in essence which has paid attention to this, ironically, has been the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons and they have a systematic plan to prevent the alienation of any land owned by any of their people. And to go out to buy land and to give it on terms to their members, to enable them to grow in their dominion. All they have done is to adopt a pattern that is scriptural. We don’t know too much about the use of this in the middle ages but there are hints that some of these laws apparently were kept and the gradual subjugation of Europe by Christians was made possible through a like pattern. Thus what we see here is a positive duty when we see these things positively to help God’s people get property for covenant growth. The redemption of the land is a biblical mandate. The earth is the Lords, the bible tells us, and its use is conditional upon God’s terms. Thus we saw in our scripture that the land was to rest every seventh year. This is repeatedly stated in scripture as in Exodus 23:10-11 and in other portions of Leviticus 25 and many and other passage of the law. These land laws are called holiness laws and this, the Sabbath law, is a holiness law. The implications of it are enormous. First of all, if men were to abide by the sabbatical year which applied to the land and to man which meant men would have to work six years and rest the seventh year, have a year off from work, it would require a providence of men, emphatically.

Men have learned something that the pagans could not do, to work five or six days and rest on the seventh, that was a revolution in world history. God says we are to rest the seventh year and we are to work for a society where that is possible. For some where certain things must be maintained in terms of continuous operation those things there will be staggered sabbatical years but none the less, a principle of providence, of foresight, would then be necessary. Remember too at the same time that the law stipulates that debts cannot run beyond the sixth year, they are to be terminated in the seventh year because a man cannot mortgage his future indefinitely, he belongs to God, he is not to be a slave of men. Now with no long term debt again you have a social revolution, as a matter of fact I can remember when loans on farms and houses were for five years only. It’s only since World War II that we have had a major revolution in the type of lending practice and of course we’ve had a major revolution in that we have become an inflationary society. The two go together. So that we can recognize that God’s sabbatical law not only provides for the rest of the land but for the rest of men and for the preservation of society from the kind of economic chaos that long term debt and inflation creates. Now remember, the sabbatical laws with regard to land and debt apply to men and the institutions of men. This would mean that no civil government would be allowed to contract debt beyond six years.

That in itself would be far reaching in its implications. We do know that where there is a Sabbath for the land, and there are some people still who abide by this in this country, the fertility of the land and the production is greatly increased, so they are not the losers by allowing the land to lie fallow six years. One religious group still practices it strictly, they’re not the only ones, but the Amish do. An interesting sidelight on that is that one elderly Amish in speaking to a friend said that they learned how to use the seventh year from someone who really didn’t like them very much, John Calvin. It would be worth tracking the historicity of that fact and it surprising that that is so, if it is, but this Amish elder stated it was. As a result the Amish devote the seventh year to general improvement of their premises. They paint their barns, for example, and those are not hex signs you see in Amish country on the barns, for example, in Pennsylvania, they don’t believe in that kind of thing, they’re simple decorations. They devote themselves to arts and crafts, to improving the property, to doing all those things their wives wished they had done during the previous six years, for example, and generally resting and enjoying themselves so that the seventh year culturally has some remarkable implications. I indicated that the land because it is the Lords has become a part of the holiness code of scripture. Another aspect of this fact of the land and its ownership by God is the tithe. The tithe is God’s tax. Since the earth is the Lords we pay a tax for the use of the land and for the privilege of the earth and it is the tithe. God owns the land and us, His law thus governs every area of life and God is the sovereign.

I spoke earlier of land sales in the Old Testament, that they were conditional but permitted. When a person sold out his land in Palestine which he could do it meant he was abandoning hope in terms of God and putting his hope in economic advancement. Thus when Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, moved out of Judea with his two sons, Mahlon and Kilion, what he was saying was that because times were hard and there was a drought in Judea he believed there was more future for him outside of God’s purposes and in terms of sheer economic thinking and so he moved to Moab. Very obviously they intended to stay there permanently and his sons married Moabite girls. Their return was due to Noami who when the two sons and her husband died returned with Ruth. Now this has an implication for Christian reconstruction. What is the implication of that law of land sale and the departure from Palestine? It meant as we have seen forsaking a hope in God and His kingdom in terms of the kingdom of economics. If we sell our stake in covenant redemption it means living without dominion. It means that we view all things economically and personally. It means a material existence divorced from God’s covenant requirements and then we reduce holiness to a meaningless emotional fact. An Old Testament scholar, R.K. Harrison in his study of Leviticus and of the laws we’ve been dealing with, makes this statement and I quote:

“A closer study of Leviticus provides the reader with remarkable insights into the character and will of God, particularly in the matter of holiness. Amongst the pagan near eastern nations holiness was a state of consecration to the service of a deity and often involved the practice of immoral rites. For the Hebrews to be holy as God is holy required a close relationship of obedience and faith and a manifestation in daily life of the high moral and spiritual qualities characteristic of God’s nature as revealed in the law. This same kind of holiness is demanded also of every believer in Jesus Christ.” Unquote.

In other words, biblical holiness is to live by the law of God. As James said faith without works is dead. As our Lord said: by their fruits shall ye know them. Good tree bears good fruit. But pagan holiness was divorced from morality and sometimes it could even involve immorality but basically it required devotional practices. Going to the shrine, doing all kinds of supposedly spiritual things which were divorced from the real world. We have a great deal of pagan holiness in the church today. People who can go to church morning and evening and Wednesday night and go to all the church conferences but who in their working world are stinkers. We know that we have been planning an issue of the Journal of Christian Reconstruction to deal with reconstruction in the world of business and Dan Maxwell has been assisting in the preparation of that issue. We have had a number of business men who were approached by Dan Maxwell and asked about contributing something or telling us of someone who is doing something in the world of business in the way of Christian reconstruction respond with ‘what has Christianity to do with business’.

As though the world of business were outside the area of ethics, outside the area of the faith, a neutral realm. Now that is commonplace today not only in the business world but also with regard to the family as though what one does as a husband and wife has no relationship to their faith. Or what one does as a teacher has no relationship to their faith. Take any profession, medicine, law, it applies in all these. What we have is too much pagan holiness and too little biblical holiness. We have seen that the great commission is a continuation of the dominion mandate. Our Lord tells his disciples to disciple all nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you and lo I am with you always, even into the end of the world. So Christ sends us out, the earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof and we are to bring the whole of the earth and every aspect of it under the dominion of God. We are to exercise dominion in His name and to every extension of God’s kingdom by our service over any sphere of life. Any area of thought or any portion of the earth is an aspect of the redemption of the whole earth and this is our requirement as Christians. The kingdoms of this world shall in due time become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ and if we are not a part of that dominion mandate we are not a part of Him. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we thank Thee that Thou hast called us whom Thou hast redeemed to be a part of the work of redemption. Grant that each of us in our sphere may continue that work, may be prospered in it, and may rejoice in our calling. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Are there any questions now?

[Question] In the scripture you read, the fifth verse, sounds like you’re to leave the crops on the ground and not use them.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Elsewhere it is stated that in the seventh year they can take for household use any of the fruit they want but they are not to have a harvest.

[Question] Is that a method of returning some of the nutrient to the soil?

[Rushdoony] Yes and also the fallowing allows the microorganisms in the soil to increase and the fertility of the soil is greatly increased. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] I didn’t hear…

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. The trees and vines were specifically spoken of the law elsewhere and in the sabbatical year you can help yourself to as much as you want for household use and strangers going by can stop and help themselves to what they want as long as they don’t carry anything away but the rest is to drop to the ground.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] In this chapter if you read through you’ll find that that is specified, there is only one area, as I’ve often remarked, where sabbaticals are still observed. It was once regarded as the rule, university professors. They still get a sabbatical every seventh year which they…

[Interruption]

[Rushdoony] Unless that’s been dropped of late.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Oh yes. And some public school teachers do also in a few systems but the idea of the sabbatical was once much more generally recognized.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] As far as possible we are not and we are told the borrower is servant or literally slave to the lender in Proverbs and as a general principle Paul says in Romans 13 ‘owe no man anything save to love one another’. However, the law specifies that in case of need loans can be made, this is personal matters, business loans yes, but for no more than six years.

[Question] And with no interest, is that referring to…

[Rushdoony] If it is a charitable loan it is to be without interest, in other words, if a brother believer is in need he is to be loaned money interest free. This does not apply to other types of loans. Now some churches already are beginning to return to this and they are setting up loan funds within their congregations , in the last journal of Christian Reconstruction there is an account of the Chalcedon Presbyterian Church in Dunwoody, Georgia and they have such a fund that has proven to be a major blessing to the members.

They can borrow interest free and many of them repay and make a gift to the funds so that the fund has been increasing over the years.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. In every area of our life we are limited in our borrowing to six years because first it is slavery, if it is more than that and second it creates a false economic order, it leads to the kind of thing we have. Now the law specifically states if you are a lender, you can lend to an unbeliever on long terms, ten, twenty, thirty years, because the unbeliever is already a slave and therefore freedom is not a matter of concern to him.

[Question] I think that with respect to business that the primary indication is that equity acquisition is better than acquiring an interest relationship with someone and one of the perspectives that I’ve often seen in that whole thing is the fact that when an individual loans money to a business man at a fixed rate of interest he is expecting the business man to guarantee his financial future which is something only God can do. And that’s one of the really gross ethical liabilities because you’re really expecting this business man that you’re loaning money to, you’re expecting him to function as God and guarantee the future rate of return, whereas an equity position you both take your chances and God gives the increase.

[Rushdoony] Yes. An interesting fact that we often forget is the kind of thing I’m talking about was once routinely practiced in Christendom. In this country it was not until after 1860 that we had limited liability practices as a routine thing. It began earlier in the century in Great Britain. Laws were passed in a few states in this country in the 1840s and 50s, I believe, but generally it was regarded as a fly by night practice. So any company that became a limited liability company was immediately regarded as a shady outfit but after 1860 the climate of opinion changed dramatically, a limited liability company is one where the owners or shareholders are limited in their liability to the amount of their investment. So if they have insisted a hundred dollars in shares they can only lose a hundred dollars whereas without that the practice was that if you invested a hundred dollars in shares which in those days was a lot of money then if the liability of the company if it went bankrupt were ten thousand per share you were liable for ten thousand, you could lose your home, you could lose everything you owned. The net result was when you did not have limited liability anyone who bought shares in a company was not merely interested in dividends, he was interested in how the country was run and the control of every company in this country was quite strict by the shareholders, they had everything to lose if they did not exercise a careful control. Now you see the revolution that came in with limited liability. It meant immediately that businesses could be less scrupulous in their practices and more inflationary in their practices as well. The extend of shareholder responsibilities was even further limited by the new deal. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible] I think a little earlier, you in speaking of the land being laid fallow, I think you said six years meaning the seventh year.

[Rushdoony] The seventh year, yes. Six years of planting, seventh year the land goes fallow, I’m sorry, yes John?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Another person speaks] How did the Levites and such people as the temple helpers, those who didn’t have fields that they could glean or grow into, how did they exist during the seventh year?

[Rushdoony] The tithes, they were apportioned in terms of that.

[Question] So then the tithes…

[Rushdoony] Six years of tithing, the seventh year no tithes.

[Question] So how did they…did they just save up, they had to save up from the tithe?

[Rushdoony] Exactly.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Exactly, just as the Amish have to save a portion out of their six years of income for the seventh year and once it becomes a pattern of life it’s very important and when you do not have an inflationary society it’s very easy.

[Question] The Amish obviously work during the seventh year but they rest as I understand it because that work is not their regular…vocation.

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes well…

[Person continues speaking]

[Rushdoony] For example, the let us say, an Amish young man who is very good at painting and decoration. He will decorate his barn, paint it and decorate it and do his neighbors and let us say someone else is very adept at some other kind of skill, and enjoys it, it’ll be an opportunity for him to indulge himself and with no pressures.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] No. They will help each other.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well that was Phariseeism, Phariseeism limited the amount of steps you could take on the Sabbath, anymore constituted work. However getting drunk on the Sabbath was not work so that was permissible. [laughter]

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, there were a number of sects in Judea in the New Testament times, the Pharisees are the best known and they left the most extensive literature, so we tend to identify the culture of the day with the Pharisees but we know for example that while they were quite powerful in Judea Galilee was totally indifferent to the Pharisees. They had very little in the way of following there and it was said that one prominent Rabbi moved into Galilee to try to bring these Galileans into line and he stayed there a number of years and no one came to hear him in all that time, they didn’t want his brand of religion. Well our time is up let us bow our heads now in prayer.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee for the multitude of Thy blessings, the glory of Thy word and the certainty of Thy ways as the way of truth, of life. Dismiss us now with Thy blessing and grant that day by day we may be prospered in 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, now and always, Amen.