Systematic Theology – The Land

The Land And Holiness

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: 16-19

Genre: Speech

Track: 16 of 19

Dictation Name: 16 The Land And Holiness

Location/Venue:

Year:

Oh Lord our God who art the author of all things and by whom and of whom all things consist. We come into Thy presence mindful of the grief, the sin and the evil which prevails in the world. Thou hast made all things for Thy glory and we know that all things oh Lord shall show forth Thy glory and Thy holiness. Grant that as we face this world we are ever mindful oh Lord that it is the sin of man that has brought forth these things. That out of these things Thou shalt bring forth Thy righteousness, Thy perfect justice and Thy sure mercies. Grant that we walk oh Lord ever mindful that greater is He that is with us and in us then He that is in the world and that we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, Amen.

Our scripture this morning is from Leviticus 20:22-26 and our subject is The Land And Holiness. Leviticus 20:22-26, The Land And Holiness.

“Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out.

23 And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.

24 But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people.

25 Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean.

26 And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.”

W. D. Davy is an expert on problems relating to the land. As discussed in a book on the bible and the land the biblical premise concerning the earth, the earth is the Lords and therefore Davy said some of the ways which scripture says this ownership is expressed are as follows: first because the earth is the Lords He can therefore give it to whosoever He wills and therefore he takes it from one and gives it to another as in our text he tells Israel, I took this land from the Canaanites and I’ve given it to you. And the land since has been given to a series of peoples, not only Canaan but every part of the earth has changed hands and been ruled by one group after another. Second, God says the tithes, gleanings, the offerings of the first fruits, firstlings, the first born and much more all are His. They are to indicate His ownership of the land and are His tax. Then third God requires the keeping of the Sabbath, not only by man but by the land as well and fourth because God is holy all His creatures and all His creation must be holy. This in particular is our concern today. In Numbers 35:30-34 which we considered some few months ago we saw that any murderer had to be dealt with. That murder could not go unpunished. Indeed if a murderer could not be found in a particular crime then the community nearest to the place of murder had to make some kind of restitution. Otherwise, the land would be polluted. So that it was mandatory that there be restitution that the broken, the destroyed holiness be restored.

Moreover when God says that the land is to be holy and that people are to be holy He does not use the language nor does scripture anywhere use the language that we are prone to use such as the holy land. We speak of Palestine as the holy land, as though the land in and of itself were holy! Now that’s contrary to scripture. Holiness is not something that inheres, that belongs to anything, it is derivative, it comes from God so that we are holy if we are separated to and dedicated unto God. A place, a building, an area is holy if it too is separated unto God and used in terms of His purposes. So that holiness is not something that adheres, it is something that belongs to God alone and when we are faithful to the Lord then we too become holy. Thus it is not a personal attribute, it is a spiritual attainment. On the other hand God made everything good. He made all things holy and to the pure all things are holy. Because we know that God made them and they are dedicated to His purpose. They may be defiled but they need to be cleansed so that their holiness can be restored, so that for example we read in Isaiah 6:3 when Isaiah describes this great vision in the temple:

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.”

Now, when Isaiah had that vision and when the seraphim were singing those lines the powers of the world were certainly as evil as they are today.

And certainly the remnant of the faithful was very limited so that the whole earth you might say was filled with evil but the seraphim cried out the whole earth is full of his glory. Now some have said that this is a prediction of the future but the seraphim does not say the whole earth shall be full of his glory, it declares the fact that the whole earth is full of his glory. Glory is both present and eternal, the whole of creation, not merely the whole earth is His glory so that all things are glorious because God made them so and it is the blindness of men that keeps them from understanding and seeing the glory of God in all creation. Just as sin blinds us and sin pollutes us it keeps us from seeing what God is and what His creation is. Now, this is an important point because when the seraphim say the whole earth is, IS, full of His glory what they are saying is that man cannot by his sin secularize anything. We live in an age that says this is secular and this is holy, in other words, it limits God’s holiness to certain things like the church, the bible, prayer, missionaries and a few things like that. But the whole earth is full of His glory and we cannot secularize and say no this is separated from God, it is not. It is defiled in the presence of God but it can never be separated from Him, it can never be called by its nature evil or separate or unholy. It is defiled but it was made holy and God will purge sin from the earth and make all things holy again in His sight.

But in due time the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken it Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 41:5. God made all things good and therefore holy. Man’s sin defiles the earth and it defiles man but man’s sin cannot alienate and secularize any aspect of creation. Even in sin man and the earth are God’s creation. The whole point of judgment in scripture is this: to purge out the defilement of God’s possession, of God’s creation in order to restore the essential holiness with which all things were created. To be holy means two things: to be separated from certain things. Very obviously to be holy means to be separated from sin. That’s the negative side. The positive side is second, that holiness means dedicated to something, dedicated to the Lord, used for Him, made His possession as totally as possible. The earth thus can be defiled but it cannot be separated from God. God’s purpose is to remake heaven and earth and to remake it in terms of the eternal perfection of His plan. In Revelation 21:1-5 we have the description of that recreation of all things. Moreover the land was holy before Israel conquered Canaan and because the people were defiling themselves and the land God says in our scripture that He cast out the nations which were there before you for they committed all things and therefore I abhorred them. Thus God declares the Canaanites were cast out by Himself. Moreover in Leviticus 18:24-30 God makes it clear that He was the one who was essentially responsible for the victories of Israel. God possesses and dwells upon earth, the whole earth is full of His glory the seraphim says. Hence, as Leviticus 22 following declares:

“Defile not therefore the land which ye shall inhabit wherein I dwell for I the Lord dwell among the children of Israel.”

And Numbers 35:34 says the same thing. Because God dwells in the land therefore it must not be defiled and if we defile it we are cast out. Now it is absurd to limit this to Palestine. To what is called the holy land and I pointed out the term is an unfortunate one. The whole earth was created by God and therefore God declares He judges the nations. In Isaiah we have a long section, chapter after chapter, in which the nations of antiquity are summoned to judgment and their downfall predicted. Why? Because the whole earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof. This was not only true in Old Testament times but is true today so that the nations shall be judged by God in every generation and hence the certainty of generation in our time. And what happens when we defile the land? The land will spew you out, God says. The land does God’s work. Blessings and curses which God sends to those who are faithful and to those who are faithless are natural disasters. Deuteronomy 28 gives us all the blessings that flow and the curses which flow to faithfulness and to unfaithfulness. We defile the land, the land spews us out, land is holy unto the Lord and when it is defiled it spews out those who defile it. Now there’s a very interesting point here that people often overlook. Men can go, and some very de finitely do, to hell.

But we are told that God will remake the whole of creation so that this world we live in, the whole of the universe is going to be remade, it’s going to be remade in a way that is beyond our imagining. It will be heaven and earth as one unified creation. Nothing in this material universe will go to hell. The only thing material in hell will be the resurrected bodies of the reprobate. Now there are some who question whether the reprobate will be resurrected but there are scriptures that tell us this very emphatically, for example, Daniel 12:2, John 5:28-29, Acts 24:15 and Revelation 20:13-15. Thus, hell is the habitation of the reprobate. But this physical universe is going to be recreated and made new. It will be the habitation of all God’s redeemed ones. Thus the spewing out is a process that takes place in history when judgment overwhelms nations. We live in a time of judgment, we are moving towards it and all the politicians of the world are trying to prevent that judgment which shall come upon them economically and politically and naturally in what happens in natural disasters.

But the spewing out is also an event at the end of the world when the finality of that judgment occurs. The nature of the whole of creation demands holiness because it was made by God who made things with a character so that the earth spews out as unnatural all that defiles it. And the scripture tells us that sin because it is a defilement of that nature with which God made us is something which is unnatural for us. Psalm 139 is the great psalm concerning that. God cannot be escaped, the psalmist says, though I make my bed in hell behold thou art there. God haunts every man, every atom in every man’s being cries out against himself, against his sin because God made every atom in creation. Saint Augustine echoed Psalm 139 when he said at the very beginning of his confessions ‘our hearts are restless till they rest in thee’. Francis Thompson in the greatest single poem in the English language, The Hound of Heaven, said the same thing echoing both Psalm 139 and also Augustine because he said in this poem when he describes God pursuing Him as He tries to escape from God to find refuge in nature, in friendship, in love, in children, in one thing after another and nothing satisfies him apart from God and hears the voice of God saying ‘all things betray thee who betrayest me’. There is an eschatology in the earth. It is God’s creation and therefore it serves Him. The very ground beneath our feet serves God and moves in terms of His purpose. Every atom of our being was made by God and therefore serves Him and Him alone so that when we attempt to serve ourselves our hearts cry out within us.

They witness against us for He made us for His own purpose and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee. Let us pray.

Holy, Holy, Holy art Thou oh Lord and heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Oh Lord our God Thy glory resounds in all creation and in all our being. Give us grace oh Lord to shut out the voice of our own sins and to hear Thee and to echo the cry of the seraphim and to rejoice for it is Thou oh Lord who dost govern all things. It is Thy purpose alone which shall prevail and even the wrath of man shall praise Thee. Give us grace therefore our Father day by day to take hands of our lives and to commit them into Thy omnipotent hands. To trust in Thee step by step all the days of our life, to rejoice in Thee and to know oh Lord that Thou shalt prevail. Thy kingdom shall come, Thy kingdom shall and does govern all of creation. Our God we praise Thee. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Are there any questions now first of all on our lesson? Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] …cut off from among his people. Yes that expression ‘shall be cut off from among his people’ depending on the context apparently has two meanings. One is excommunication and the other is death, the death penalty.

So it depends upon the particular offense and the context. Excommunication of course means that we are not made secular but we are judged because we who are holy have defiled ourselves. So that judgment emphases the necessary holiness of all things so when things are not holy they are judged. So the division is not between sacred and secular but between holy and something which is defiled but should be holy. So there’s a world of difference, in other words let’s put it on very practical, every day levels. If I choose to break the laws of the state of California I do not therefore exempt myself from the laws of the state of California, I cannot say well, I have broken the laws, I have broken ten of them, therefore the state has no claim on me, I’ve made myself to be outside its jurisdiction, that’s impossible. All I’ve done is to make myself liable to their penalties. So the idea of secularity is that I can say I’ve seceded from your universe, God. And that’s an impossibility, it is possible to secede from a country or to leave it but you can’t secede from God’s creation. Therefore, secularism is an impossibility, it’s a common faith but it’s a faith in unreality. No man can be secular, separated from God, he can only be guilty before God and therefore liable to judgment. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. The term Lord God, the Lord where it is capitalized in the King James Version refers to the name of God, Jehovah or Yahweh. Now the Jews avoided as did the ancient Hebrews any reference in speaking to the name of God because they were afraid they would take the name of the Lord in vain. So in the first chapter of Genesis it says that God made heaven and earth and the usage there of course is Elohim. Now when in the second chapter you have the Lord God now it is the covenant name indicating that God has entered into covenant with His creature man so that the covenant name, the personal name, is now used. So in the first chapter of course it is the story of creation but in the second the Lord God is used to indicate God now has entered into covenant with one of His creatures, man.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well in was it last month’s Chalcedon report I dealt with a secularism or is it in the forthcoming one, I forget [laughs], any rate I pointed out there are two usages of secular, one is that which is of the laity, so in that sense secular humanism would be humanism practiced by laymen rather than by say, a Unitarian minister, and secular Christianity would be Christianity practiced by people I their everyday lives. On the other hand secular as opposed to sacred means that which is separated from God and in that sense nothing can be secular. So that usage which is a newer and very prevalent usage now is very, very wrong.

Now this past week Senator Kennedy appeared at the college connected with the Lynchburg church of which Jerry Falwell is pastor and he said that religion should keep out of political affairs. Well if God created man no religion related to God or professing to be faithful to God can be silent on anything because then it is betraying God. What should be said to Senator Kennedy is let the state keep out of the church. But of course he believes whatever faith he professes in the omnipotence of the state and therefore the state has the right to be in everything. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] He is separated from the love of God but not the judgment, you see. He’s not outside God’s universe so that hell is under the government of God. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] No, very good point, I’m glad you brought that up because first of all the kingdom is both present and future, God ids governing all things today but the kingdom is coming in that we not yet fully obey Him, when we do the kingdom will have come in our own lives, Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now God made all things, God knows what is happening, nothing happens outside His plan and government. He is giving evil a chance to develop its potentialities so that we may see and we may learn, so there’s a process of maturity, He created all things good but not mature. A seed is good but it is not yet a tree and in the process of growing it has to have all kinds of weather, spring, summer, winter, fall weather.

So too the historical process is comparable to that. It has to endure the weather of sin. So, Thy kingdom come means in due time God’s kingdom is going to come in our hearts and we will be fully a part of it in our obedience and all things will praise and serve Him as they should. They will have matured into perfection. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] He does.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] If a man lives without God and without His law word He is in hell but he is still there because God has so ordained it. In other words He’s not living in a blank. The men who are in prison in San Quentin and Folsom are outside of citizenship but they are still within the boundaries of the state of California and under the judgment of California. So the men outside of God’s Grace and mercy and love in hell are living outside God’s blessing and totally under His curse but that’s still being within God’s government. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes. We shall continue next time with more about the land and the holiness of the land because we have a problem in our time in that some people have made the land in itself to be holy and you have a lot of these environmentalists and ecologists who really deify the land and get us into all kinds of evil situations whereby we really have no right to touch the holy earth. We are the polluters. They have fallen into a Manichaeism in which man is bad and the earth is good so in dealing with the theology of the land we have to distinguish ourselves carefully from all such thinking. It’s so prevalent today that it constitutes a real menace to the future of man. Any other questions or statements or anything before we have our benediction?

Well if not let us bow our heads now in prayer. Oh Lord our God how great Thou art and how marvelous Thy grace and mercy unto us. We thank Thee that all the days of our life we live and move and have our being and that underneath all the experiences of life are Thine everlasting arms. Give us grace therefore to come to Thee day by day and to cast our every care upon Thee who carest for us. We pray for those of our number who are ill, who are absent as are the Saunders because of death in the family. Be with them to comfort, strengthen and bless them. And now g 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.