God’s Abiding Law – Page 6

The Sovereign God

While sitting in a Dentist’s office I picked up one of the magazines and read,

“More problematic … are the disturbing images of God we find in parts of the Old Testament. At times, the Old Testament portrays a God who seems judgmental, vengeful, and capricious, sanctioning or even instigating excessive violence. One has only to think of the conquest recorded in Joshua and God’s command to “utterly destroy” the Canaanite nations (Deut. 7:2; 20:17). Or descriptions of God unleashing disease and death among his own people (Num. 21:6; 2 Sam. 6:7; Jer. 21:3-7). Or the psalmists’ prayers to God as the great Avenger who curses our enemies and heaps evil upon those who seek our downfall (Ps. 69:22-28; 109:8-15).”

I would suggest here that there is nothing disturbing in the slightest about the images of God we find in parts of the Old Testament when we begin with the premise that because of man’s sin, no man deserved anything but the wrath of God against sin. The shock really isn’t that God was demonstrably wrathful in the Old Testament to the point of excessive violence upon some people. The shock is that God wasn’t demonstrably wrathful in the Old Testament to the point of excessive violence upon all people. From Genesis to Revelation the wages of sin has always been death and God does no one wrong in the slightest when He gives what is deserved. It strikes me that often the character of God in the Old Testament is complained about most when people wrongly believe that somehow they deserve something better from God then violence, destruction, and death.

We must consider that all that blood flowing in the sacrificial system of the Old Testament flowed, in part, to demonstrate what the one bringing the sacrifice deserved. The question is not then, “why did God kill people in the Old Testament.” The question rather is, “Why didn’t God kill everybody in the Old Testament.” We should not be surprised by justice. We should be surprised by mercy and grace.

Keep also in mind that God was long-suffering towards the Canaanites that He eventually visited with just judgment. In Genesis 15, God speaks to Abraham and tells him that His people will go into captivity for 400 years. In Gen. 15:16 we read,

16 But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

What is suggested here is that those God would eventually visit just judgment upon were a people God was yet being long-suffering towards. They had not reached the point yet where they were ripe in their sin and rebellion against God and God was being patient in the face of their iniquity. The curiosity then of this aspect of the Old Testament character of God is not that He eventually visited just penalty against Canaan but rather the curiosity lies in the incredible patience, long-suffering, and forbearance of God.

Before our outrage swells to high at the thought of God’s just judgment against Canaan let us keep in mind what a wicked place Canaan was. They were a people who burned their children in honor of their gods (Lev. 18:21), and practiced sodomy, bestiality, and all sorts of loathsome vice (Lev. 18:23, 24, 20:3). As a result the land itself began to “vomit” them out as the body heaves under the load of internal poisons (Lev. 18:25, 27-30). Talking about how mean God is in light of this is really an objection to the highest manifestation of the grace of God in keeping the infection of sin from spreading to His people. After all, Canaan is justly judged so as to prevent Israel and the rest of the world from being corrupted (Deut. 20:16-18). Allow me to suggest that only if God had not visited the just wage of sin upon the Canaanites could we talk about the scandalous character of the Old Testament God.

We should also note here that the just visitation of God’s judgment against His enemies is also intended to be read as a warning to the greater judgment of God against His enemies in God’s visiting the unrepentant with eternal punishment. So Canaan serves as a type that is answered in the anti-type of Hell, the subject of which is on Jesus lips more than any other New Testament figure.

In terms of God visiting His own people with wrath, again this is consistent with the New Testament where we learn that judgment begins in the household of God (I Peter 4:17). It could be said of Ananias and Sapphira that they were part of the Covenant people who in the NT God visited with justice. In terms of the God of the Old Testament being a “great avenger who curses our enemies and heaps evil upon those who seek our downfall, we read in the New Testament in Romans 12:9 in the context of speaking to Christians that “vengeance is mine; I will repay, said the Lord.”

Also we find the theme of vengeance struck in 2 Thessalonians 1:6-9

6 For it is a righteous thing with God, to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you,
7 And to you which are troubled, rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall show himself from heaven with his mighty Angels, 8 In flaming fire, rendering vengeance unto them, that do not know God, and which obey not unto the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, 9 Which shall be punished with everlasting perdition from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power

And finally the desire for vengeance is articulated righteously in Revelation 6:10 where we find the martyred saints crying with a loud voice, saying, How long, Lord, which art holy and true! dost not thou judge and avenge our blood on them, that dwell on the earth?

What we see here then is that the Character of God is consistent from the Old to the New Testament. When people find problems with the Old Testament God the problem generally is, is that they believe that somehow God is unjust for giving people what they have earned.

Another aspect we need to consider here is that while it is our moral duty to follow God’s revealed law, God Himself is not under the same moral duty we are. God does not issue commands to Himself and so He has no moral duties to us to fulfill. The point here is that while we are responsible to God and so must follow His Law God is not responsible to us. He does not answer to us.

As an example, God tells me that “Thou Shalt Not Murder” and so I may not take a judicially innocent life and to do so would be murder. But God has no such prohibition upon Himself. He can give and take life as He chooses. We recognize this at every funeral when we say, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away … blessed be the name of the Lord.” We all recognize this when we accuse some authority who presumes to take life as “playing God.” Human authorities arrogate to themselves rights which belong only to God. God is under no obligation whatsoever to extend my life for another second. If He wanted to strike me dead right now, that’s His prerogative.

What that implies is that God has the right to take the lives of the Canaanites when He sees fit. How long they live and when they die is up to Him. This is the right of ownership. God as Creator owns everything and everything is at His disposal to do with as He pleases. When He does so, it is not for us to question God (Romans 9:20).

So the problem isn’t that God ended the Canaanites’ lives. Some might contend that the problem is that God commanded the Hebrew soldiers to end them. Isn’t that like commanding someone to commit murder? No, it’s not. Rather, since our moral duties are determined by God’s commands, it is commanding someone to do something which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been murder. The act was morally obligatory for the Hebrew soldiers in virtue of God’s command, even though, had they undertaken it on their on initiative, it would have been wrong.

On divine command theory, then, God has the right to command an act, which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been sin, but which is now morally obligatory in virtue of that command.

Sovereignty — Some Meaning & Implications

1.) Sovereignty is totalistic

Absolute sovereignty extends to complete rule. An absolute sovereign means that said sovereign has absolute and total government. God, being absolute sovereign rules so minutely that not even a sparrow can fall without His consent (Mt. 10:29-31). Amos teaches that God’s sovereignty is so totalistic that even if calamity comes to the city that God has done it (Amos 3:6). Isaiah teaches that God creates disaster (Is. 45:7). In Job, Satan must receive approval from God before Satan can touch God’s servant. Acts 17:29 teaches that “we live and move and have our being in God and His government.

We see the State seeking to pick up the prerogatives of Sovereignty when it seeks to create a environment where God’s revealed sovereignty is put into abeyance in favor of the States. The State longs to create a social order where we live and move and have our being in the State.

2.) Sovereignty is characterized by total planning

In the Scripture total planning is called predestination. Isaiah 14:24 teaches, “Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand…” Elsewhere in Isaiah 46:10 we find, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.'” And again, Psalm 33:9, “For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast. 10The LORD nullifies the counsel of the nations; He frustrates the plans of the peoples. 11The counsel of the LORD stands forever, The plans of His heart from generation to generation.…

When God’s Sovereignty is denied, predestination does not go away. Some other agency enters in in order to provide total planning. The more godless a people become the more they will turn to some other agency to provide total planning. Typically that is the State and Obamacare is a perfect example of the State seeking to do total planning. This is a example of humanistic predestination and another demonstration of the State’s attempt to seize God’s sovereignty.

3.) Sovereignty is characterized by Omniscience

Of course total planning can not happen without Omniscience. The idea that one can predestine the beginning from the end without knowing the beginning from the end is just absurd. The Scriptures teach that God is Omniscient.

Psalm 139:4
Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely.

Proverbs 5:21
For your ways are in full view of the LORD, and he examines all your paths.

Proverbs 15:3
The eyes of the LORD are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.

Jeremiah 16:17
My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes.

Hebrews 4:13
And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Of course this overturns all other teaching that suggests that God does not know the future, or that God and man are co-operating in order to create a uncertain future.

When we deny omniscience to God omniscience does not go away, but instead it seeks to find itself seized by whatever immanent god seeks to be god. We are hearing of this all the time today. We are seeing reports about NSA — a Government agency — seeking to collect all kinds of information and data on Americans.

A Congresswoman (Maxine Waters) recently noted that,

“The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday.

“That’s going to be very, very powerful,” Waters said. “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that…. It’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”

Rushdoony noted here,

“When the State claims sovereignty, the logic of its position requires that a like total knowledge be acquired concerning all men and things, and the result is the inquisitive and prying state which aims at knowing all in order to govern all.”

4.) Sovereignty is characterized by claims of ownership

Deuteronomy 10:14
To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it.

Job 41:11
Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.

Psalm 24:1
The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;

Psalm 50:12
If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it.

Psalm 89:11
The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth; you founded the world and all that is in it.

If we belong to God that means we do not believe to ourselves or the State. However, the State does claim the citizenry as property. We are assets to be used and resources to be exploited.

Jonathan R. T. Hughes in his book, “The Government Habit,” offers this,

“It would surprise most American landowners today, as it often does those who cannot meet their property taxes, to learn that the state owns the land outright. Owners in fee simple have possession only of right in real estate: this phenomenon is part of what historians call the English Heritage.”

But it gets worse than that.

Prior to 1913, most Americans owned clear, allodial title to property, free and clear of any liens or mortgages until the Federal Reserve Act (1913) “hypothecated” all property within the federal United States to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, -in which the Trustees (stockholders) held legal title. The U.S. citizen (tenant, franchisee) was registered as a “beneficiary” of the trust via his/her birth certificate. In 1933, the federal United States hypothecated (pledge (money) by law to a specific purpose) all of the present and future properties, assets and labor of their “subjects,” the 14th Amendment U.S. citizen, to the Federal Reserve System.

In return, the Federal Reserve System agreed to extend the federal United States corporation all the credit “money substitute” it needed. Like any other debtor, the federal United States government had to assign collateral and security to their creditors as a condition of the loan. Since the federal United States didn’t have any assets, they
assigned the private property of their “economic slaves”, the U.S. citizens as collateral against the unpayable federal debt. They also pledged the unincorporated federal territories, national parks forests, birth certificates, and nonprofit organizations, as collateral against the federal debt. All has already been transferred as payment to the international bankers.

So, the idea of ownership inherent in Sovereignty, doesn’t go away when one denies it to the God of the Bible. Instead the idea of ownership is transferred to an immanent god.

5.) Sovereignty is characterized Law

In any social order Law is always reflective of the Law giver. God takes to Himself the authority to establish the boundaries of man’s rule. This includes, of course the issue of taxation (Ex. 30:11-16), (I Sam. 8:7-8). With God as law giver the tax is a tithe. When the State seeks to be sovereign it seeks a far higher percentage rate.

When it comes to the broader idea of the Law, we see that what the State invokes is called Positive Law

“There is no logic to the law in the “traditional” sense: it does not reflect in any meaningful way a constant standard of right or set of moral absolutes. Rather, the “path” of the law is historical in nature, weaving and winding through changing cultural norms and varying political circumstances. Thus judges (and now executives) who alter the law by fiat only hurry along the next stage of progress.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

When you rid yourself of God’s transcendent law you don’t rid yourself of Law. Instead what you get is legal Positivism. The key to legal positivism is in understanding the way positivists answer the fundamental question of jurisprudence: “What is law?” The word “positivism” itself derives from the Latin root positus, which means to posit, postulate, or firmly affix the existence of something. Legal positivism attempts to define law by firmly affixing its meaning to written decisions made by governmental bodies that are endowed with the legal power to regulate particular areas of society and human conduct. If a principle, rule, regulation, decision, judgment, or other law is recognized by a duly authorized governmental body or official, then it will qualify as law, according to legal positivists. Conversely, if a behavioral norm is enunciated by anyone or anything other than a duly authorized governmental body or official, the norm will not qualify as law in the minds of legal positivists, no matter how many people are in the habit of following the norm or how many people take action to legitimize it.

Bret Lee on Brian Lee

“Focusing perhaps too much on the civil laws of the old covenant, as if they were still in effect in the new covenant era, the book (Tim Keller’s “Generous Justice”) gives too little attention in my view to Jesus’ explicit “new commandment” for his followers to “love one another as he has loved them” (John 15:12-17; 1 John 2:7-10; 3:11-24). Jesus even says that it is by this special love that his followers will be known in the world. How does this command relate to Israel’s calling to manifest God’s justice societally?”

Dr. Brian Lee
Minister — URC
Article From Modern Reformation Publication

http://www.modernreformation.org/default.php?page=articledisplay&var1=ArtRead&var2=1285&var3=main&var4=Hom

1.) I don’t agree with Tim Keller. I think Keller advocates a kind of soft Marxism as Christianity. Whatever will be written here is not in defense of Keller. Instead I am defending the idea that the Old Testament law is not obsolete per Lee’s reasoning.

2.) The Westminster Confession insists that the civil law remains in effect in terms of its general equity.

“To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging under any now, further than the general equity thereof may require…”

The fact that the last phrase is placed in the WCF 19:4 suggests that Lee is in error about the civil laws no longer being in effect today. The civil laws as they pertained to OT Israel, as the Old Testament saints existed in their National existence, have expired, however, the general equity of those civil laws abide on and remain in force. When we attempt to just throw out God’s civil law without paying attention to the general equity that remains we eviscerate the applicational use of the Moral law as the civil law was merely the moral law as interpreted into case law. When we whimsically toss out the general equity of the civil law we make the moral law toothless. It is true that we have to do interpretive work here to find the general equity of the civil law but upon doing the interpretive work the heart of the civil law continues to live.

3.) When Lee appeals to Jesus’ new commandment and plays that off as superseding God’s eternal law as codified in the OT how is Lee not making a Dispenstional move here? Is Lee here suggesting that the amorphous idea of “love” is supposed to be the ethic by which New Testament Christians are to live? How is Lee’s approach any different than Joseph Fletcher’s approach in his book, “Situation Ethics: The New Morality?” Fletcher posited an ethic of “Loving concern” as the beacon by which all decisions are made. Is this what Lee is suggesting as well?

4.) When Jesus commanded his people to love one another, He did so in the context of upholding the law of God at every turn. The point here is that love as an ethic, cannot be defined without a transcendent law structure to inform it. When Jesus said “love one another,” they could only know what love was and looked like by referencing and accessing God’s transcendent law. Jesus Himself loved His people by fulfilling God’s law in relation to them. If they were to love one another as He had loved them then in order to do so they would have to love one another by respect to and fulfillment of God’s law word just as Jesus had loved them in respect to and fulfillment of God’s law word.

5.) So, Keller makes the OT speak soft Marxism, while Lee makes it speak antinomian Dispensationalism. Neither approaches are particularly satisfying.

Postscript,

For a good article reviewing Keller’s “Generous Justice” as soft Marxism see,

http://freedomtorch.com/blogs/3/2762/tim-keller-and-social-justice

Why Rape Is A Capital Offense Per Scripture

“Third, the reason the rapist in Deuteronomy 22:25 is put to death is not because the woman he raped was betrothed, but because rape is a crime equivalent to murder. Verses 26b and 27 read: “For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor, because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.”

Francis Nigel Lee writes

‘Why precisely death to this rapist? God says: “For it is as when a man rises against his neighbour and slays him, even so is this matter” (Deuteronomy 22:26b). Rape is thus like a case of premeditated murder, where God says also the murderer is to get the death penalty’ (Genesis 9:6). [4. Lee, Rape!!!, 10.]

The reason rape is equivalent to murder is because the woman is forced against her will: “because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.” This can and does happen to betrothed and non-betrothed women alike. Since forcing a woman to have sex against her will is the basis for executing the rapist, then rape always warrants capital punishment—regardless of whether the victim is betrothed or not. Just as murder is always a capital offense, regardless of who is murdered, so rape is always a capital offense, regardless of who is raped.

Fourth, one might still ask, “Why then does Deuteronomy 22:25-27 deal only explicitly with a betrothed woman?” Michael H. Warren, Jr., believes it
—–
speaks of a betrothed virgin because it is continuing the theme of Deuteronomy 22:23-24 in which a betrothed virgin consents to sex with a man not her husband, not because the latter was meant to limit the death penalty for rape to betrothed virgins. The distinction that is the focus of the section is between betrothed virgins who consent (Deut. 22:23-24) and unbetrothed virgins who consent (Deut. 22:28-29). [5. Michael H. Warren, Jr., e-mail message to author, January 3, 2010.]
—–

Moreover, while Deuteronomy 22:25-27 deals explicitly with betrothed women, it does deal implicitly with unbetrothed women. As noted in the previous point, rape in and of itself is equivalent to the capital crime of murder.

Fifth, the interpretation that Deuteronomy 22:28-29 deals with a man committing rape is counterintuitive, since the man is required to pay the woman’s father fifty shekels of silver and to marry the woman. But how many fathers would even want to see a man who raped his daughter, let alone permit him to marry her? How can he even look at the rapist without wanting to kill him? Moreover, “And what if the man rapes five virgins seriatim? Should he then marry all five?!” [6.Lee, Rape!!!, 11.] Or, what if five men gang rape one virgin? Should they all marry her? Finally, the requirement for the woman who is raped to marry “would lay a burden and penalty on the woman who had no part or consent in the act, which is as unfair and senseless as punishing the victim of attempted murder.” [7. Bahnsen, Pre-Marital Sexual Relations.] The Bible requires punishing the criminal, not the victim. Eye-for-an-eye means “you take an eye, you lose an eye”—not “you lose an eye, you lose another eye.”

“God is Just”

The Basis Of Our Political & Legislative Positions … McAtee contra DeYoung

“”That is to say, our political and legislative positions cannot be determined simply by noting that the Bible calls something a sin and therefore that sin should be illegal. Further considerations about the common good, natural law, human rights, the unfolding of redemptive history, and the nature and scope of the state must come into play. I do not think the state should recognize gay marriage (so called), but my justification for this position goes deeper than merely asserting that homosexual behavior is ethically wrong.”

– Rev. Kevin DeYoung

1.) It is true that not all sins are crimes or should be legislated against as crimes but unfortunately Rev. DeYoung does not articulate that distinction which leaves his assertion confusing and open to the misinterpretation that would allow someone to suggest that all because the Scripture teaches that something is a crime that does not therefore mean that it is a crime for today. Rev. DeYoung’s statement is open to the accusation that he is saying that Scripture alone is not sufficient to define crime as crime.

2.) By what standard will Rev. DeYoung and the rest of us determine the Common good if not by God’s standard as found in the Bible? John Stuart Mill, would argue that the Common good is arrived at by pragmatism but of course Christians are not pragmatists.

3.) Rev. DeYoung invokes Human Right but Humans have no rights. Humans have only duties. Only God has rights. The whole notion of “Human Rights” as they have been sold since the Enlightenment is a complete creation by Humanist categories. I would encourage Rev. DeYoung to read “What’s wrong with human rights,” by T. Robert Ingram. All ministers need to think twice about willy nilly invoking this human rights language. It may be possible for Christians to use “Human Rights” language but the usage of it by Christians would be something completely different then what we find in a Biblical Worldview.

4.) If Nature is fallen, why should we look to Natural Law? Besides, presuppositionalism has completely destroyed the whole Natural Law position. Natural law posits a reading of reality by way of neutrality. There is not such thing as neutrality.

5.) How do we know what the nature and scope of the State should be without consulting God’s Word?

All of these other considerations invoked by Rev. DeYoung are non-sequiturs.

6.) “My justification for this position goes deeper than merely asserting that homosexual behavior is ethically wrong.” Rev. DeYoung’s justification goes deeper then the reality of relying on God’s word for what is ethically wrong?

That is a stupendous and curious statement.