Dennis Tuuri

Q1:

Questioner: In Isaiah 1:23, it says, “Thy princes are rebellious companions of thieves. Everyone loveth gifts, followeth after rewards. They judge not the fatherless. Neither do the cause of the widow come unto them.” There’s an injunction—there’s a charge against the princes, the civil magistrates in the land as it were, that they’re rebellious and that the cause of the widow doesn’t come unto them. So we know that they have fallen short of the mark God has set for them.

Pastor Tuuri: In Isaiah 10:1, “Woe unto them that decree unrighteousness decrees and that right grievousness that they have prescribed to turn aside the needy from judgment and to take away the right from the poor of my people that widows may be their prey and that they may rob the fatherless.”

Now the New American Standard interprets that first verse as this: “Woe to those who enact evil statutes and to those who constantly record unjust decisions to the end that they pervert the justice due to a widow and that they rob the fatherless.”

Widows can be preyed upon by the civil magistrate just as they can be preyed upon by individuals in society because of their weakened position—their seemingly weakened position, I should say, because after all, we remember that they have a defender whose nostrils will be flared against people who come against them. That’s God himself. But their seeming weakness in society will make them vulnerable to attack both by individuals and also by the civil magistrates.

Some immediate applications, of course, are inheritance laws. Inheritance laws are one way for the civil government to gobble up the house, as it were, and the possessions of the widow and to rob her. We’re very fortunate, as Dick Foley pointed out in our session with him regarding wills and inheritances, that in this state and even in the federal government now, they have very good inheritance laws that place the taxation of inheritance at a much higher limit.

And so none of us would probably be affected by that. It’s good to continue to work toward the end of all inheritance taxes. However, we also have to recognize, as we do with the homeschooling bill that we passed, that there’ll be people coming against that as well in the future. There will be those people who will see widows as being easy prey, as it were, because they don’t have a good constituency, and we want to defend against that legislatively as well.

But in any event, the civil magistrate has specific requirements to not pervert the justice due to widows, and there are specific woes upon them who reject that commandment of God.

So we see that God is recreative. He restored us, and on the basis of that we’re to understand that we’re to show recreative acts of mercy to others. And on the basis of that we understand that there are case law provisions for God—for families, for the widows themselves, for churches both corporately and individually, and for the civil magistrate—to show grace and kindness to widows and indeed in some cases to even pay them for their services and to pay them out of respect and honor.

Of course, in that context, in Acts 6:6, the whole office of deacons was created for the specific purpose of ministering to widows. There were groups of widows that were Greek speaking and so were being neglected in the daily ministration of food. This handing out of food to the widows—and so there was a special office in the church, the second office of the church: elder and deacon.

The deacons were created for the specific purpose, originally, of servicing widows. That’s how important it is. It’s how important it should be to our church and us individually as well.

Summing up, in James 1, he tells us that pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world—to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction.

Does that just mean to pop in and say hello? Too bad you’re doing poorly. No, obviously not. The whole point of this is to visit the fatherless and widow to the end of helping them in their affliction. True religion is summed up by James in those commandments to love these people on the basis of the love that God has shown to us. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might—to love your neighbor as yourself.

In a very real sense, the widows, the strangers, the orphans, the fatherless—that is—are neighbors in a realer sense to us. We have more of an obligation to love them in active ways. There are blessings for that.

And in Acts 9:39–40, we read the account of Dorcas having died and Peter comes, and it says that Peter arose and went with these people there, and when he was come, they brought him into the upper chamber and all the widows stood by him weeping and showing the coats and garments which Dorcas made while she was with them.

Dorcas understood that necessity of having the true Christian life revolve around care to these people—that demonstrate the care that God has shown to us—to open our hands to those who are in need. And Dorcas did that. She made coats and garments, many of them. And so there was this great group of widows there standing around Peter when Dorcas had died. And I think there’s a connection into the next verse.

But Peter put them all forth and kneel down and prayed and turning him to the body, said, “Tabitha, arise.” Tabitha is another translation of the word Dorcas in Greek, I guess, I think is what it is. Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes. And when she saw Peter, she sat out. She was brought back from the dead.

And in that account of Dorcas being raised from the dead by Peter, there’s specific reference made to her kindness showed to widows and her act of concern toward them. And so God gave her the long life. We read about in Ezekiel 10–20 that God’s statutes are life to us. Dorcas understood that she acted in obedience to those laws relating to widows and they were life to her.

Now we know from that, of course, and from other scriptures, that on the basis of God’s commandments to us, there are sanctions that God brings against us or for us in relationship to how well we obey those laws. And the same thing is true of the widow.

We have the basic principle of lex talionis—eye for eye and tooth for a tooth—in relationship. We talked about last week in terms of the stranger. We see the same thing in relationship to the widows. In Exodus 22:24, it says that God’s wrath will wax hot against those who afflict widows. To what end? “I will kill you with the sword your wives shall be widows and your children fatherless.”

To obey God’s commandments regarding the widow results in long life and in blessing from God. And to disobey—we see that God’s wrath will come upon us and he’ll make us widows or wise widows rather. We see this repeated throughout the scriptures as well. When the people of God forsook God and demonstrated their unbelief, in the book of Isaiah, in terms of oppressing widows, God makes the city of Jerusalem herself a widow, desolate as it were. God’s judgment comes upon them for that and he makes them desolate as well.

Remember we talked about last week, in Malachi 3:5, the context of the sin of oppressing the stranger, afflicting the widow and the orphan. And that context is those people that are sorcerers, adulterers, and false swearers. That’s the same group of people that God puts people in who oppress the widow and the fatherless. And so God’s judgment comes upon them.

An excellent manifestation of how that all works out is in the gospels. There are various accounts in Matthew 23, Mark 12, and Luke 20 of the same set of occurrences where Jesus is pronouncing the woes unto the Pharisees. And in that context, if you put these things together, a very interesting pattern of God’s judgment of those who oppress widows comes out.

It’s important to read the scriptures, of course, in context and to see all of what God is teaching us throughout them. Matthew 23:14: “Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites, for you devour widow’s houses and for a pretense make long prayer. Therefore, you shall receive the greater damnation.”

The woes placed upon the scribes and Pharisees—one of the specific woes or curses of God that Jesus repeats, and of course we’ve seen in the Old Testament, is for them devouring widows’ houses. It’s right after this that you have the incident. Well, let’s see—later in Matthew 23 in verse 37: “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee. How often would I gather thy children together, even as a hen gathereth chickens under her wings, and you would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.”

And remember, we talked about the meaning of the word widow in the scriptures as one made desolate. In the Old Testament, the same word is used to translate houses made desolate in the Old Testament as well as the word widow. And here is Jesus telling the scribes and Pharisees that you rob widows’ houses and your house is going to be made desolate.

It’s in that context also that he goes out and he’s in the temple and he sees the widow bringing in her mite into the box of the temple—who gives of all her substance to that temple, that she understands is the place of God’s residence among her. This is true religion on the part of the widow—to understand that her provision for care and for justice is in God himself. The widow deposits those—her all, that she had basically of her substance—into God’s house, the temple. And God says, “I’ll build that widow’s house,” then if she puts me first the way that widow put Elijah first in giving them food and then received blessings from God.

And Jesus says, “This woman is great. She’s given out of her need and out of her substance, not out of her excess.” But the Pharisees didn’t see that. They used that money for corrupt purposes. And they turned the house of God into a sham. And what was the result of that? It’s in the very same context in Matthew 24 then, and also as I said before in Mark 12 and Luke 20. In the same context, they begin to talk about, as they’re leaving the temple, the beauty of the temple. And Jesus says, “Not one stone will be left upon another. This house is going to be ripped down.”

The Pharisees have perverted the true house of God, made it into their own house as it were, trying to rob widows, and as a result of that, God makes their house desolate and brings upon them the judgment due to them for what they’ve done to widows.

The word of God declares that God is an active concern for the widow. To violate that concern—to act in disobedience to the requirements that God has placed upon us—demonstrates that we think we didn’t need that grace from God to begin with. We demonstrate our own debased nature, thinking that we’re something important and therefore have blessings.

Scriptures tell us that the description of Babylon the great, the whore of history, is that she says “I will never be widowed. I’ll never be—you know—my children never be orphaned.” And God says in the book of Revelation that she becomes a widow. Babylon represents an attempt to understand our blessing in the terms of natural privilege instead of recognizing the grace that God has shown to us who have been widowed, as it were, and he shows us his grace in making us recipients of his grace, and he becoming our husband and our protector and our guide.

We have to understand that we have to manifest that same sort of concern that God shows to us for the widow. If we do that, we’ll have long life and live. If we don’t do that, we’ll receive the curse of God upon us, making our own houses desolate because we’ve made the widow desolate.

There’s great blessing to restoration that God brings about for the widow. And there should be great blessings to us as a church as we seek to restore our widows and help them in whatever way we can help them in this church and in our community as well.

Isaiah 54—God talks about the blessing of his people. I’d like to close by reading the entire chapter. And remember that all three of those verses references we talked about earlier about the high priest’s wife widowed, divorced, and a harlot—all these things refer to the people of God as they’ve gone astray from him. And yet God restores them. And God restores them to a marvelous position.

[Reads Isaiah 54 in full]

“Sing, O barren, thou that did not bear. Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that did not travail with child. For more are the children of the desolate, from the children of the married wife, sayeth the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations. Spare not; lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes. For thou shalt break forth on the right hand, and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.

Fear not, For thou shalt not be ashamed, neither be thou confounded, for thou shalt not be put to shame, for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood anymore. For thy maker is thine husband. The Lord of hosts is his name; and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. The God of the whole earth shall he be called.

For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou refuse, sayeth thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy redeemer.

For this is as the waters of Noah unto me. For as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of thy peace be removed, sayeth the Lord that hath mercy on thee.

Oh thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted. Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children. And in righteousness shalt thou be established. Thou shalt be far from oppression, For thou shalt not fear; and from terror, for it shall not come near thee.

Behold, they shall surely gather together, but not by me. Whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy sake. Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy. No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment, thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.”

—

**Prayer**

Pastor Tuuri: Almighty God, we thank you for the truth of this passage before us. Almighty God, we thank you for your coming of Jesus Christ to keep the covenant and to become, as it were, both sides—the covenant keeper and the covenant maker.

Father, we thank you for yourself. We thank you for the restoration that you’ve accomplished in our life. And we thank you, Father, that you have taught us that this will continue throughout the entire earth. Help us be ministers of reconciliation and of restoration to those around us. Help us to understand that we receive grace from you with an open hand. Help us to go to the widow, to the stranger, and to the fatherless with that same open hand, demonstrating the grace that you have shown us and demonstrating that we believe that you are who you say you are in the scriptures.

Father, we thank you for yourself. Help us to act in obedience to all that you’ve commanded us to do this day. Help us to understand the basis for this being the finished work of Jesus Christ and him becoming our covenant of peace with you. We thank you for the many blessings you’ve given us in removing our desolation and building our foundation with precious stones. We thank you for the Chief Cornerstone, Jesus Christ.

We thank you, Father, for his kingship and lordship over us and for his loving concern for us. Help us to go forth from this service strengthened in our loving concern for the widow in our midst. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

—

Q2:

Questioner: In this particular form may be somewhat unique, but in the Old Testament the wife would receive a dowry upon marriage, and there’s good reason to believe that dowry would serve as a pension plan, as it were, in case the husband died. And in fact, Rushdoony talks about the fact that the first life insurance policies in this country were a direct result of Presbyterian missionaries who wanted to go out on the mission field, which the church thought was good, but they didn’t have a dollar to give to their wives. And so the life insurance system, according to Rushdoony, was started in this country as a modern way equivalent for the older system of dowry.

And so I think that in the Old Testament, if a person was walking in obedience to God’s law—which has to be the presupposition there—was a dowry for the widow, and she did have the same kind of pension system we might have today, depending upon the person she married, of course. That dowry would be, you know, bigger or smaller. And the same thing today: if a widow is married to an affluent husband and then he dies and she receives inheritance, she obviously is being taken care of in that respect.

Overall though, I think that, you know, the point you made is real good about the fact that the scriptures don’t make provision for a widow earner. And it’s obvious that the male-female distinction is real important in scripture for a lot of reasons, and one reason, of course, is to teach us the relationship of God to his people. God is always seen in terms of a male. God is always seen in terms of the male relationship between the male and the female.

In the church, God’s people are always seen as female. And so, even men in the church have kind of, you know, our relationship to God—we’re also in the position of being helpless like that widow. And so, all these things, I guess, is the way to put it—the relationship of God to his created order. I guess, of course, for us to have a special thought about the needs of a widow, right?

Pastor Tuuri: So in our society we have as many widow workers who may be in dire states as widows because of the basic equality of the finances and protection and all that of the sexes nowadays. I was wondering should we look out more for widows?

Well, of course, we want to live our lives and teach our children from the grid of God’s scripture. That’s our point of commandment. And so we want to understand those commandments in the light of the historical situation we’re in and apply it that way.

But God has specifically mentioned widows. And so in our household, we would teach our children specifically about the need to be on the alert to the needs of widows. Widowers that we may come in contact with might fall into a different category. For instance, it’s important, as I pointed out a couple weeks ago, that this idea of the widow—for instance—is separate from the idea of the poor. The concern for the widow isn’t just because she’s poor.

Even if she’s wealthy, there’s still a special concern for the widow, not based upon her poverty. Now, when she’s poor, then there are other things that come into account as well. But just the fact that she’s a widow without the protection of a man, God has caused us to have a special concern for those people. So it isn’t just based on economic considerations.

So if you have a widow, for instance, that you know of who’s poor, then you talk to your children in relationship and teach them about God’s concern for the poor—not for the fact that she’s a widow—for the fact that she’s poor. If he’s a widower and poor because his wife, you know, brought home the bacon, well, then there’s some other things you might want to teach your children about, but in relationship, concern for them that would be that way.

Q3:

Questioner: Jane—was she being considered a widow?

Pastor Tuuri: I’m not necessarily saying like she was a widow in her twenties. And maybe not. That Paul’s instruction to Timothy is that the younger widows—he says they should get married.

Questioner: You know?

Pastor Tuuri: Normatively the younger widows would marry. And the reason he puts for that—and there’s some interesting verses that we could spend a lot of time talking about—the how otherwise, he said if she devotes herself to Christ and then falls away and marries, she’s denied her faith almost—is what it seems to be saying.

I think what’s going on there is: let’s say you’ve got a woman, twenty-five, and she becomes widowed, and now she says, “I’m going to devote my life to God and I want to be celibate the rest of my life and serve God in a special way.” Those order of widows would—I think Paul is saying that realistically in five years, ten years, whatever, she may change her mind, and this calling that she’s taken upon herself, which is to be of perpetual duration, is now—she’s going to fall away from that calling.

And I think that those verses about the younger widows doing that is that kind of thing—falling away from a calling that they’ve been given by God—and so it’s seen in a very bad light. So the sixty years old isn’t a condition upon us and our concern for widows. It’s a specific condition upon the institutional church as to the type of widows it would put on its rolls to financially support.

Questioner: I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear. I didn’t. I was thinking twenty-five.

Pastor Tuuri: Okay. Through the through the forties to sixty—that may not be married at that age. Yes. Or may not want to, but may not. I mean, they may want to, but not just…

Well, you know, the other way to think about this, of course, is that when God says “if they’re sixty years old and they’re good faithful widows and you’ve got to support them,” he’s not saying you can’t support those who are forty to sixty. But he’s saying the church has no specific obligation institutionally in those cases as a corporate entity. The individuals of the church have obligations, and the church itself as an institution or as a body institutional setting could also be constrained to help out.

But remember also that there’s another provision in this whole thing that we’re going to talk about in a couple of weeks—and I keep saying that and I’m sorry for that—but it’s gleaning. The woman who is forty to sixty is going to be more capable of going out, and in the Old Testament scenario, gleaning in a field. Person, excuse me. Exactly. Ruth is an excellent example of this whole thing we’re talking about today. But they’re going to go out there and they’re going to be able to do that.

If a woman is over sixty, she may be less capable of going out and gleaning in that fashion. And there are modern equivalents to gleaning that we’re going to talk about in terms of—we all have areas of productivity in our households that we could let others take some of that productivity away. A real obvious example is like mowing the lawn, for instance. It saves us money to do that, but it’s kind of like something around the corner. It’s not our central vocational calling. It’s something around the corner of it. And we could, if a person is needy, let them mow the lawn and pay them to do it and let them glean that way.

We’ll talk more about that in a couple weeks, but that’s another reasoning for the differentiation of age.

Q4:

Questioner: Okay. Yes. For individuals handicapped—they paralyze the waist down. Well, I’m trying to think if there’s a specific—if there’s a specific, you know, we have specific groups about the stranger, the widow, and the fatherless. I don’t think there’s one specifically for handicap. You could—we could probably do a study in the scriptures about people who had physical handicaps and see ways in which God’s people related to them.

But it’s obvious that if they had a handicap that was in some way hurting their income-producing capability, we would have obligations in terms of their financial position. You would have the same thing going on there in terms of showing compassion to that person because of a handicap, recognizing that we’re handicapped in God’s sight as well. And he showed us compassion.

I, you know, I don’t know if this is a good example—several weeks ago, I was listening to the radio and J. Vernon McGee was talking about Mephibosheth and David. And Mephibosheth was clubfooted, and he began talking about how the people of God are clubfooted—no, we walk in the wrong way. We walk in sin.

Pastor Tuuri: And I suppose, you know, you’d want to think through all that, but there is certainly truth to the fact that we are spiritually handicapped with God. He restores us to a position of wholeness or health with him. And so we should be showing that kind of grace and concern to those who have physical handicaps as well.

Q5:

Questioner: Any other questions? Monty—it seems like the widow is a smaller group than a broad group of everybody taking in because they have to meet certain requirements. But also it seemed like the first son. That’s right. And we’re responsible to take care of the family. And the delinquency of the family, the widow, the fatherless, bringing up that son in that way would put some pressure on them in their older age. We see that George Washington, knowing that York died, the older son got the inheritance.

Pastor Tuuri: Hmm, well, in history of course, the whole reason for that is that the older son would use that inheritance to support the widow, bring that son up.

Questioner: That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. Maybe a little bit of back on their hands.

Pastor Tuuri: There is one other factor in that though, of course, and that is that the parents can disinherit, you know, an unbelieving son or daughter because after all, we’ve got to recognize the whole thing we’ve tried to stress this entire morning is a rejection of the idea of natural privilege or natural progeny being in a position of blessing. We have to discriminate on the basis of faith.

And another thing we didn’t do—a whole other area we didn’t talk about—is the levirate marriage. That widows had a provision for children in the Old Testament through relatives of the widow’s husband. And that point I was going to mention that too in what you’d said, Gordon, in terms of the concern for them in terms of protection and the requirements of those sort of things. God’s children are seen as a real important thing in scripture.

And I think when we begin to see a rebuilding of the idea of the family and the in our country, some of these things will become more clear to us as well.

Q6:

Monty: Another thing—like the inheritance goes to the widow, which the family doesn’t have to see benefit in our tests. So that the first family is punished for taking care of the widow, but the widow has the money.

Pastor Tuuri: Yeah. In the sense it cuts natural privilege, but it also cuts the family and their abilities.

Monty: Yeah.

Pastor Tuuri: Well, just—we probably should maybe have one more question if somebody has one before we go downstairs.

Q7:

Doug H.: Yes. That 1 Timothy 5:16 says that if there’s a believing woman that knows of widows in her family, she should be able to take care. Why didn’t they—Paul talk about a man or a son?

Pastor Tuuri: That’s interesting. Yeah, I noticed that myself and I didn’t study it, tell you the truth. Verse 16. Yeah. “If any woman who is a believer has dependent widows, let her assist them. Let not the church be burdened.”

To go outside the boundaries of the normal thought of—yes. Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting, isn’t it? I noticed that soon as I ran across it, but as I said, I didn’t really take the time to go off and study it. I’ll look at it this week, though. And maybe a couple of others could as well if we get some time and talk about it again next week.

—

**Announcements**

Pastor Tuuri: Any announcements or prayer requests?

Howard L.: One announcement. Howard, you want to announce or do you want me to go ahead? Howard will be graduating today from—is it University of Portland?

Questioner: University of Portland. Yes.

Howard L.: With his master’s degree in business administration. It’s an MBA, and it’s the result of more than three but recently three long years of working hard at nights and on the weekends and studying and preparing. And it’s a demonstration of Howard’s commitment to vocational calling that’s specifically what he’s doing it for. And it’s a great day of rejoicing, I think, for him. Probably too tired to rejoice after four years of hard work, but he’ll get around to it. So maybe you can congratulate him.

Pastor Tuuri: Any other announcements for prayer requests?

Questioner: What did he say? Wow. Yeah. Texas relating occasion to be with relatives that aren’t in the same mind. And I usually end up getting into discussions with everybody, including my Methodist, retired Methodist minister. And his wife is real involved in statewide anti-nuclear movement, and anyway, mixed background. When you—when will you be there?

Questioner: Next week Wednesday.

Pastor Tuuri: Okay. But it’s also been a really good time, and I really look forward to it. I just don’t want it to get out of hand.

Questioner: Sure.

Pastor Tuuri: Also, one other thing I might mention is that the reconstruction conference in Seattle—week from this coming Friday, I guess it is already. If there’s anybody who plans on going to that, could you let me know? And so, if there’s anybody who would like to go but can’t afford to go, please get in touch with me as soon as possible.

Any other announcements for prayer requests?

Gordon W.: [Not transcribed in original]