3. Curses and Blessings (Remastered)

The Curse and the Blessing

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture lesson is Deuteronomy 27:15 - 28:19 and our subject, ‘The Curse and the Blessing.’

“Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto the Lord, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place. And all the people shall answer and say, Amen. Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark. And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way. And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that lieth with his father’s wife; because he uncovereth his father’s skirt. And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast. And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that lieth with his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that lieth with his mother in law. And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that smiteth his neighbour secretly. And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent person. And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen.

And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out. The Lord shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways. The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, and walk in his ways. And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be afraid of thee. And the Lord shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers to give thee. The Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them: And thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.

But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee: Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field. Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store. Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out.”

Deuteronomy 27:15–28:19.

Deuteronomy 27 and 28 are extremely important because they give us important insights into the meaning of the Law, the fact that curses and blessings are inescapably associated with the Law. 

Now the word ‘curse,’ or ‘ban,’ or ‘anathema,’ all three words are basically the same. That which is under the curse, or ban, or anathema, is, literally, devoted, dedicated, in this case, to destruction, destruction which is required by God. To be under a curse or anathema or ban means that God has declared, according to His Law, that here there is a dedication to judgment, to death, to being an outcast, as the case may be. Now in the Church, excommunication is the ban, curse, or anathema, and is to be applied only according to the Word of God. The purpose of the ban is always moral; it is to preserve the people of God and the community of God’s people when it is gravely endangered. 

Now the ban, or curse, does not disappear from a society when it abandons Biblical faith; it is simply transferred to a new area of life. Harper, the first president of the University of Chicago, at the beginning of this century, was a thoroughgoing humanist and a liberal, but on one occasion he commented on the fact of the ban, or curse. And he wrote:

“Notwithstanding that the Church of the New Testament is the bearer of the higher interests of humanity, we are taught that when it is least definite in its direction as to conduct, when it is most tolerant of the practices of the world, then it is most true to its original conception. We are told that an indulgent Church is what is wanted; rigour and religion are now supposed to be finally divorced in all enlightened minds. This view is not often categorically expressed, but it underlies all fashionable religion, and has its apostles in the golden youth who forward enlightenment by playing tennis on Sundays. Because of it too, Puritan has become a name of scorn, and self-gratification a mark of cultured Christianity… In wide circles both within and without the Church it seems to be held that pain is the only intolerable evil, and in legislation as well as in literature that idea has been registering itself.” ⁱ

Now Harper was right; the modern world has shifted its ground. Now we put under the ban such things as sickness and poverty and discrimination, and we say that any kind of discrimination with regard to race, color or creed has to be under the ban legally, it is cursed, by law. 

No society, in other words, can escape having a ban, a curse. The important question is what shall be banned? What shall be put under a curse? And today a whole humanistic concept of the ban or curse is replacing the Biblical concept. As a result equalitarianism is demanded, and anything else is cursed. And increasingly, orthodox Biblical Christianity is being put under the curse by the state. But according to the Word of God, it is violations of God’s Law which place men under the ban or curse. 

Now, in Deuteronomy 27:15 to 26, the first part of our Scripture reading, we read a list of the curses. It’s a very subtle list, and it’s a blockbuster of a list. Why? There are twelve curses. The first eleven are very obvious ones; against secret breaches of the second commandment or idolatry, against, contempt of, or a lack of, respect of parents, against those who remove their neighbor’s landmarks, against men who lead the blind astray, in other words, people of a very perverse disposition. Against all who pervert justice which is due to foreigners, strangers, widows and orphans, against incest with a stepmother, against bestiality, against incest with a sister or a half-sister, against incest with a mother-in-law, against murder, against anyone who accepts a bribe, either to kill a man, or anyone who brings about the death of a man through false witness. Now at this point, everyone can sit back and relax and say, “Well, these fit very, very perverted characters, it doesn’t fit me.” “And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’” And they can Amen very, very readily.

And then comes the twelfth, and the twelfth is the one that really strikes home at everyone. Because what it says:

“Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen.”

The whole of God’s Law, all Ten Commandments, every subordinate law:

“Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them.”

Now, what does this include? It includes everything the other curses have pronounced and which most people could say, “Amen!” very piously, thinking, “That’s never going to touch me, I don’t have to worry about the curse.” But it includes not only, thou shalt not commit murder, nor adultery, but all the subordinate laws. You shall not rob God by withholding His tithe, you shall give the earth its rest, you shall abide by the Biblical Law of debt and not go into debt on a long-term basis. You shall not transgress God’s Law at any point; willingly, knowingly. 

This puts the curse under a different light does it not? And you can see why this table of curses was avoided. It was supposed to be read periodically, but it was a difficult thing to read because you could say “Amen” to eleven, but the twelfth stuck in the craw of many people. 

Then in the next passage, in Deuteronomy 28, we have a magnificent declaration of blessings and curses. The blessings, or beatitudes, because blessings are beatitudes, promise life, prosperity, and success to those who obey God’s Law. Very emphatically, the Law declares that if you obey, you are blessed. According to Dr. Kline:

“Israel, if faithful to the covenant oath, would come out on top in every military and commercial encounter with other nations. Within the kingdom there would be abundance of the earth’s goodness. Canaan would be a veritable paradise, flowing with milk and honey. Of primary import, Israel would prosper in her relationship to her covenant Lord. This is the secret of all beatitude, for his favor is life.” ⁱⁱ

Obedience to God’s Law is an act of faith that God is faithful and will bless His people. 

Now, David was echoing these beatitudes when he said in Psalm 37:9-11: 

For evildoers shall be cut off:

But those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.

For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be:

Yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.

But the meek shall inherit the earth;

And shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

The Law, in other words, is the way to a rich life on earth. There’s no promise of any prosperity apart from the Law. Our Lord also echoed these beatitudes of Deuteronomy and David when he said:

Blessed are the meek [that is, the tamed of God, those who obey God - RJR]: for they shall inherit the earth.

Matthew 5:5.

On the other hand, lawlessness opens up curses, it opens up the way to defeat and to death. Even as it did in the beginning with Adam and Eve; faith without works, in every age, is dead. 

Now it is significant that Keil and Delitzch, two of the greatest of the Old Testament commentators, in the third volume of their commentary of the Law, have said,

“The blessings are represented as actual powers, which follow the footsteps of the nation, and overtake it.” ⁱⁱⁱ

This is a very pointed and accurate statement. In other words, the blessings, and the curses as well, are declared by God to be something that overtakes and overwhelms a people.

Now this is an extremely important fact. The Word of God teaches the doctrine of irresistible grace. What does ‘irresistible grace’ mean? Irresistible grace means that our salvation is entirely of God. That we cannot save ourselves, it’s God’s doing, we receive it by faith, so that our salvation is the sovereign predestinating work of God. And the fact that we are here, and we rejoice in God’s Word, and we desire to know more of it, proves that we are the called of God, the ones whom He has chosen. And we respond to His Word; grace is sovereign and irresistible. 

Now what our Scripture is telling us in Deuteronomy 28 is that the blessings of God are also irresistible, as well as His curses, that where there is obedience by a people, blessings are irresistible. They shall pursue and overtake you. This is what our Scripture tells you; that blessings and curses for obedience and disobedience are irresistible, we cannot escape them. 

Now, the blessings and the curses are not smorgasbord blessings and curses. In other words, we don’t say, when we obey God, “Now Lord, I believe in you and I’ve obeyed you, I’d like to choose my blessing. I’d like to have money as my blessing, or I’d like to have four boys as my blessing.” It isn’t a smorgasbord blessing. Just as it is a sovereign act of God and irresistible, it is His sovereign choice. But the blessing is real, and it is impossible to interpret Deuteronomy 28 any other way than in terms of this. It teaches a doctrine of irresistible blessing and cursing in terms of the obedience of faith and disobedience.

Our Lord Himself echoed this when He concluded the Sermon on the Mount by saying that those who heard His words and obeyed them would be either like a man whose house was planted on the rock who would stand in terms of the storm, or who would be cursed and destroyed. 

Now man wants and needs a world of curses and blessings. Everything in his nature, because man is God-created, demands a world of consequence and causality. However, because man has fallen and is in rebellion against God, he wants those curses and blessings to be meted out on his terms; in relationship to his demands and his estimate of what justice is. 

My eight and a half years in Nevada in the forties was a very instructive period. One of the things that really startled me was how often gamblers prayed. I never would have thought it, never! But more than once as I encountered all kinds of characters in Nevada. Some of these people took time out to come over to me and tell me how angry they were with God and me, because I was God’s minister. Why? God wasn’t a square shooter, He didn’t play fair. They were gambling and they needed to win. They were risking everything; thousands of dollars, plunging, and they said a prayer then and there, and they told God that if He would let them win, they’d go partners with Him, and they would take so much to the priest or to a minister in the community, or to a particular church. I know one angry man told me that he had promised to repay his mother a sizable sum of money he owed her, and he felt that was so noble. He couldn’t understand why God hadn’t let him win. Of course he had chiseled his mother out of that money to begin with. In other words, “Look God, I’m going to be noble, I’m going to cut you in. Now, why don’t you bless me?”

Sometimes the things that happened along these lines are really tragic. One very unhappy story concerned a man whom I knew, not too well, but reasonably well, who was one of the more prominent businessmen in a small Nevada city. He was an elder in a church in that community. On one occasion I preached in that city, in that church, and he was presiding as the most prominent member of the church. Several times I spoke for various civic groups in that particular city by invitation, and very often he was on the platform, conducting the meeting. But he reached a time in his early forties, and even in terms of today’s money, he was, we would say, well off. I think almost all of us would have liked to have been in his shoes. In terms of the latter part of the 1940’s, he had a lot of money, but it wasn’t enough to suit him. And he had grandiose ideas for what he wanted to do for his children, who had reached the college age, and before long would be out in the world, and he wanted to set them off even better than he was in some business, or in homes, and so on and he felt God should help him to do that. And the business, which was doing very well, wasn’t doing it fast enough, especially with all the college expenses. And so he turned to gambling. And began to lose heavily. And his bitter, his savage statement to his pastor, and to several of his friends, who were friends of mine, was one of total resentment and anger with God. Why didn’t God bless him? After all, he’d gone to Sunday school and church all his life, he’d never cheated on his wife, he’d been an honest storekeeper, or businessman, rather, and he was ready to give God a sizable share of his winnings. Why didn’t God let him win? He not only gambled away a large sum of capital, but was finally taking the profits out of the store and finally the money that was coming in, before the bills were paid. 

His wife asked finally one of the girls in the office to let her know when the money came in and he headed for the casino. And she got there before he did, because he stopped to cash the checks, and pleaded with him to stop, and he struck her down in the street. It was such a scandal in that community; he had to sell out and leave within a month. And yet, those who were close to him said, to the last he was bitter against God, “Why didn’t God bless him?” In other words, what he wanted, what he believed in, was blessing, yes, but on his terms, not in terms of God’s Law. An unsound operation is not made good by naming God a partner. Man cannot break God’s Law without being broken. 

Look again at those curses. A man is not exempted from a curse because he has avoided the first eleven offenses, is he? There’s always the twelfth, the big one. When God arraigns us for violating His lLaw, we therefore cannot plead that we did not commit incest or bestiality or murder, we must plead in terms of the offense of which we are guilty. 

Prison society is perhaps one of the most highly stratified areas of all human society. Do you know there’s more discrimination in prison than in the outside world? In prison, everybody, of a particular type of crime, looks down on everybody else. The murderers despise the rapists, they’re creeps, they won’t talk to them. The thieves look down on the murderers, they are professional men, they have standards. And so on down the line, every last one of them. This is very, very much the fact in every prison. I have visited in prisons, and I’ve heard some of these men comment about so and so, that they don’t associate with him, because of the type of offense he’s in for.

In fact, on one occasion I did something for a government agency; I took a man from one state to another, who had been in prison for a narcotics offense, peddling narcotics. He made it very clear to me that he was a moral man. He had promised his mother when he left home years before, that he would never smoke or drink and he had never done either. He had three convictions as a narcotics peddler. He felt a glow of righteousness. 

No thief is exempt from prison because he has not committed murder or rape, is he? He is tried on his theft. Similarly, in God’s sight we are accountable for His total Law. We cannot be exempted from the curse if we keep 99% of the Law and treat the rest with casualness or contempt, saying, “I like this part of the Law, but that I don’t feel I should bother with. After all, I haven’t cheated on my wife, so it won’t hurt if I cheat a little on my employer.”

As the brother of our Lord, James, declared, 

“For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.”

James 2:10.

The Law promises curses and blessings; irresistible curses and irresistible blessings. And the people that walk by faith and obedience indeed shall be truly blessed of the Lord. His blessings shall pursue and overtake them. 

Let us pray. 

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that thy Word is true, that thy grace is irresistible and thy blessings and curses are irresistible. We rejoice, our Father, then that evildoers shall indeed be punished. Make us, O Lord, faithful to thy Word that we may indeed be pursued and overtaken by thy blessings and may know the joy of walking with thee. In Jesus' name. Amen.

* * *

Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson? 

Yes.

[Audience] Can you speak about the meaning of the ‘amen’ as it is used in today’s scripture reading? ^iv

[Dr. Rushdoony] The people of God are asked to say ‘Amen’ to God and to His law-order, by saying “Yes, so be it Lord.” “So be it. May thy curse be upon all who offend thy law at this point, at every point.” 

Yes.

[Audience] Can you comment on the God’s blessings for those outside the covenant who nevertheless obey important sections of His Law? ^v

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. As we pointed out last week, there are blessings for obedience to the Law, even by the ungodly to a degree. But of course, as history advances, that kind of thing is disappearing. But in the ancient times, to the degree that the Romans, for example, for a time, were a law-abiding people, to that degree they were prospered and blessed by God. 

Yes.

[Audience] Why does the Mafia, for example, prosper? They are clearly ungodly, are they not? ^vi

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Why do we have, say, the mafia, which is prospering? Of course the death rate in the mafia is a very high one. The reason for that is that God has also made it clear in His Word that when you, as a nation, abandon God’s law-order, you praise the wicked, this is the statement.

They that forsake the law praise the wicked:

Proverbs 28:4.

Therefore they put wickedness in the ascendency. 

Now, the society then is cursed by its own disrespect, disregard, for law. But this does not mean the mafia’s necessarily blessed. I’ve read about a dozen or so books on the mafia, and I think there would be nothing more difficult than the kind of life they have; theirs is a hellish life, a life of continual fear, of tension. And a great deal of profit, but it’s a difficulty even using that money because how can they account for the wealth where internal revenue is concerned? It’s a nightmarish life they live and they pay a high price for it. So, wealth without peace of mind and other things, can be a curse. 

[Audience] But surely a non-Christian people or nation can’t truly keep God’s Law? ^vii

[Dr. Rushdoony] You’ve put your finger on it, of course. Without regeneration, no one can truly keep the Law. Various nations like the Romans in their early period, disciplined themselves pragmatically because they figured, “We have to a disciplined moral people or we won’t triumph.” And so the basic purpose, as with the Assyrians and Romans, for their morality, and the Babylonians too, and Alexander the Great for a time, and the Persian Empire, was military, it was a military discipline. Like the discipline of a boxer, you know. The boxer when he’s training for a fight, watches his diet, keeps good hours, stays away from any kind of dissipation because he’s got to win that fight. So various powers in history, countries, have risen for a time, briefly, or stayed longer because there’s been no one to tumble them, and just gone into a long stagnation without grace.

But, as history moves forward, this has become progressively less and less possible, and I would say now, is truly impossible. That without grace, there is really no law keeping possible any longer. And when a man truly has the grace of God in his heart through regeneration, it is his desire then to keep the Law, so that he continually tries to improve himself, like a fighter. And that’s the imagery of an athlete that St. Paul uses. The Greek words in Romans, where he speaks of disciplining himself, of striving to bring his will and his feelings in subjection to Christ, come from the athletes training language of the Roman Empire of the day. So St. Paul in effect was saying, as he wrote the letter of Romans, “I am an athlete for Christ so I avoid everything that will hinder me, so that I may better fulfill the Law of my Lord because, being a believer, everything by faith, moves me to seek to train myself to do better.”

Does that help answer your question?

[Audience] Can you speak about the relation between the covenant and law and faith and regeneration, Dr. Rushdoony?  ^viii

[Dr. Rushdoony] The Law is the Law of the Covenant, therefore no one can be in the covenant without faith. Now, we are going to go through the Old Testament with respect to the Law, and then come to the New Testament and what it has to say with respect to the Law, with respect to regeneration, with respect to all these aspects. Because regeneration is the ground and condition of lawkeeping, the two cannot be separated; faith and obedience. Without faith, ultimately there is no true obedience, and without obedience, there’s no true faith; “faith without works is dead.” The two are ultimately inseparable. For a while the one may seem to flourish, but you remember the parable of the sower and the seed. The seed that sprouted for a while and flourished, but only up to a certain point, under the heat of the sun it was wilted and destroyed. 

The world as a whole is today moving into radical humanism. As a result, judgment is facing the entire world. That’s one of the most obvious facts of our time. But let us remember this, that in the Word of God, judgment and salvation are different sides of the same coin, you see. The judgment of the old world with the flood was the deliverance of the godly. Noah and his household. The judgment of Egypt was the salvation of Israel, the judgment on the Cross of the old Adam was also the birth of the new humanity in Jesus Christ. So, regeneration and salvation and judgment are different aspects of one and the same thing. Our salvation is our dying in Christ, being sentenced to death in him for violation of the Law, and our regeneration is our being raised in him, that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, as St. Paul put it. 

[Audience] But surely we can’t hope in our nation, Dr. Rushdoony? ^ix

[Dr. Rushdoony] Oh yes, I have hoped, not because there’s a country, but because there’s a God, you see. Our hope is above. So if we look to a country, we’re in trouble. But if we look to a God, we know He is sovereign, omnipotent, and triumphant. And we as His people, saved by His irresistible grace, shall also ultimately reap His irresistible blessings. 

Yes.

[Audience] It seems like some churches preach an inverted law, Dr. Rushdoony.  ^x

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, the modernist churches of course preach a humanistic law, the social gospel, as their way of salvation. And that is totally anti-Christian. They eliminate both the Old and New Testament, the modernists do, but too many evangelical churches practically eliminate the Old Testament, and they preach faith, but a faith without works. You cannot have half a gospel. You have to have the whole Word of God. All of it. 

Our time is just about up, but there are a couple of things I’d like to share with you. Perhaps only one, since our time is so brief. 

Perhaps you recall a few months ago I called your attention to a book by a University of California Berkeley physicist, I believe he was, who wrote about the death of science that was coming. And he said science will be dead in the near future, and man will perish in a few generations because life no longer has any meaning. As humanists, instead of entering the golden age, we have destroyed meaning, so everything is equal. So if everything is equal, what meaning does working in physics or chemistry, or biology have? It’s all meaningless. And so he said we’re increasingly finding this radical anarchism and meaninglessness infecting the sciences. So that before long, people will figure what’s the point in it? 

Well, yesterday morning I read a very interesting book, Geoffrey Bibby, a very prominent archeologist, the title, Looking for Dilmun. Now, what is ‘Dilmun?’ The jacket, or the cover, describes it as a great ancient civilization, hitherto totally unknown, to rival the 5,000 year old glories of Egypt, Babylon, Sumer, and the Indus valley. 

Now, the interesting thing, of course, about Dilmun is that it goes back before these other ancient empires, and in terms of Biblical chronology, we would have to say it was established very shortly after the Flood, on the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, and owned the surrounding land areas of Arabia and elsewhere, that it was a tremendous commercial empire, doing business with India and Europe, and an extremely important state. 

By 1,000 B.C. say, the days of Saul and David, it was in its last gasp after an approximately 2,000 year history; this is how far back it goes. It was a byword for great wealth and power. Now, it disappeared, incidentally, and the name was not even known, for 2,400 years until some excavations in Assyria uncovered references to this great power of earlier days, of long before, named ‘Dilmun,’ and then excavations a few years ago on Ur of the Chaldees uncovered a house of a copper merchant. And his bills were found, his business records, and they showed that he was, his suppliers, were the wholesale houses of Dilmun. So the search for Dilmun set about, and they located it, and they’re doing excavations, and are finding some very interesting things. But, Dilmun, or rather, Geoffrey Bibby, after doing all this work and having written a number of monographs and then this book on the subject, Looking for Dilmun, concludes his book thus. 

“And when, one day, it will all have been said and done, when the last basketful of earth has been carried up from the diggings, and the last word of the last report written — what will it all have mattered? That Dilmun has emerged once more from the mists of oblivion, that we can cross the threshold which Uperi, king of Dilmun, trod, look up at the fortress walls that guarded the emporium of all the Indies — what does it matter? Does it matter who the people were who, in the dawn of our time, opened up the trade routes from Meluhha to Makan, from Makan to Dilmun, from Dilmun to Sumer? For two and a half millennia even the fact that they had been was forgotten, and the world went on happily enough, unaware that it was unaware. Among all the lost volumes of human history, what is one lost chapter more or less? 

They are dead and gone, these merchant adventurers of another age; and neither the archaeologist’s trowel nor the pen of the chronicler can bring back the argosies that once sailed the blue waters of the Arabian Gulf. It can matter as little to them as it does to us, that now once more we know a little of their doings, a few of their names.” ^xi

Now here’s a man who worked for years digging under the hot sun with all kinds of funds from various foundations, and this is his conclusion, “What does it all matter?” And what other conclusion can man come to when he has no faith? What’s the sense of it all? It just so happens he enjoys this kind of work and is ready to put up with the hardships and the sufferings and living without water, except a little bit to drink, out in a desert site while he does his diggings. But there’s no meaning to anything for him. And ultimately, because what Geoffrey Bibby believes is what the students today believe in the public schools, and in our colleges and our universities, this is why we have the growing anarchy. People will believe nothing, will hesitate at nothing, and because they hate things that have meaning, since they have no meaning, their sovereign hatred is for the Word of God, and for those who believe in Jesus Christ. The battle lines are being drawn. Those who stand by faith in Jesus Christ and believe in his Law-Word, and strive to create a godly society, godly churches, godly Christian schools, to glorify God in every area of life, and those who like Bibby say, “What does it matter? What does it matter?”

Let us bow our heads now for the benediction.

* * *

And now go peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always. Amen.

i. Andrew Harper, The Book of Deuteronomy (New York: Doran, n.d.), p. 185.

ii. Meredith G. Kline, Treaty of the Great King, p. 125.

iii. Keil and Delitzsch, The Pentateuch, III, 435 f.

iv.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

v.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

vi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

vii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

viii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

ix.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

x.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xi. Geoffrey Bibby, Looking for Dilmun, New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969, p. 383.