Dennis Tuuri

Today’s sermon is on rogation days or rogation Sunday, rogation tide. All of which we’ll explain in a few minutes. We’re going to focus on the latter half of what I’m going to read here, but I’m going to begin reading in Proverbs 22:17 and read through 23:11. You can follow along once we actually get to the section I’ll be dealing with on the handout or just follow along in your scriptures. This is the beginning at the very beginning of the middle section of the book of Proverbs.

So this very center, fourth section of seven—and this is the so-called words of the wise—and you’ll see as we read it in this opening verse. And so, really all of Proverbs, I think in a sense, is encapsulated in these 30 sayings of the wise. The first 10 of which we’ll focus on in today’s sermon. So, please stand for the reading of God’s word. Proverbs 22, beginning at verse 17.

Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise and apply your heart to my knowledge. For it is a pleasant thing if you keep them within you. Let them all be fixed upon your lips so that your trust may be in the Lord. I have instructed you today, even you. Have I not written to you excellent things of counsels and knowledge that I may make you know the certainty of the words of truth that you may answer words of truth to those who send to you?

Do not rob the poor because he is poor, nor oppress the afflicted at the gate, for the Lord will plead their cause and plunder the soul of those who plunder them. Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man, do not go, lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul. Do not be one of those who shakes hands in a pledge, one of those who assures for debts. If you have nothing with which to pay, why should he take away your bed from under you?

Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set. Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings. He will not stand before unknown men. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you and put a knife to your throat if you’re a man given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food.

Do not overwork to be rich because of your own understanding. Cease. Will you set your hearts on that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings. They fly away like an eagle toward heaven. Do not eat the bread of a miser, nor desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart is not with you. The morsel you have eaten, you will vomit up and waste your pleasant words.

Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words. Do not remove the ancient landmark, nor enter the fields of the fatherless, for their redeemer is mighty. He will plead their cause against you.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for work. We thank you for this created order. We thank you for the world. We thank you for our houses, for our grass, for our fields, for the boundaries of our property. We thank you, Lord God, for the created order. And we thank you for work with which you begin these series of sayings to the wise, focusing on the work that we should do. Bless us, Lord God, today as we attempt to understand these verses, particularly about the ancient landmarks.

Bless us to the end, Father, that we would indeed take an account of ourselves at this stage in the year and kind of look back on what we’ve done with what you’ve given to us and whether we’ve been good stewards or not. Understand the boundaries, understand the places you’ve given us to work and bless us, Lord God, as we consecrate our labors and ask you to bless our labors in this coming year and consecrate them for the service of King Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated. You can go online and get some nice little pictures of paintings of rogation days in the past. Just Google rogation day and I think if you do an art or pictures or paintings or something. But there’s some pretty cool stuff on there. I want to begin with a quote from David Gilmour. Gilmour was the lead guitarist for Pink Floyd. And last night I had him on the television—it was a broadcast of a concert that he did in Gdansk, Poland some months back.

That Charity and I were in Poland last year. We saw the flyers and stuff, you know, putting things up that David Gilmour’s coming to Gdansk. And so, it was fun to watch his concert last night. And it was ironic because I’m preparing—kind of going over my notes for the sermon like I do every Saturday night—and these lyrics come pouring out. He’s got a song called “This Heaven” and it begins by saying, “All the pieces fall into place where we walk these fields. And I reach out and touch your face. This earthly heaven is enough for me. So break the bread and pour the wine. I need no blessings, but I’m counting mine. Life is much more than money buys when I see the faith in my children’s eyes.”

Kind of interesting words and very appropriate. Things fall into place as he walks the fields where he lives with his child, and he sees the faith in the child’s eyes, faith in what we don’t know. These songs were always ambiguous, but for us, it’s a reminder of the importance of our children, generations, and the importance of the land that God’s given to us. It’s really much about what I’m going to be talking about today, which is rogation day.

What is that? Well, rogation day was a holiday, a church holiday, at least as early as the fifth century. So it’s Roman Catholic and you know, everything was back then, right? So what they would do was the three days or so before Ascension Day—remember ascension day happens in the middle of the week because of Easter and 40 days and all that stuff. So the three days leading up to it, including the Sunday, would be rogation tide and there’d be these days of rogation.

Rogation comes from a Latin word just meaning to ask. So they’re asking days is what we would call them today. And what they did was on rogation tide, you know, some churches just on Sunday, others through those days—they would go out in procession in church procession with the officials of the civil government as well—and they would mark the borders of the town or the parish that they were in. So you had civil and ecclesiastical leaders in procession. You know, you’d have choirs singing as you went along and you would go to the boundaries of that parish and you would go into the fields and ask for God’s blessings. You’d ask for God’s blessing. That’s why it’s rogation.

And at the same time, of course, you’re consecrating the purposes of the blessing to God. And I suppose maybe this is just before ascension day because Jesus’s first fruits and he rises up. I don’t know why they did it then. Maybe it was just the time of year—the springtime. They’ve planted now and they ask for God’s blessing as the plants grow and then the harvest and upon the whole parish.

Couple years ago here in Oregon City, the Oregon City pastors prayed the four corners of Oregon City, right? Some of you were involved in that. And that’s kind of like what this was. You’d go to the four corners, you’d go to the boundaries, you’d remember what they were, you’d pray for them, and you’d pray for everything in the context of those boundaries. Except that, as I said, it wasn’t just church people. It was the civil rulers as well.

And typically, a guy would give a homily based on a text, which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes. There were several texts that were used. So, the word of God, song, worship, procession, around the area. And this was what they did to ask for God’s blessing upon the coming year. And the idea was they’d remember the parish boundaries. This activity was picked up in Anglicanism in the English Reformation and they continued this holiday.

By the way, the Roman Catholic Church got rid of rogation days in 1970. So only recently are they kind of removed from the liturgical calendar. I think Anglicanism still has it in their Book of Common Prayer. I think there’s a prayer for rogation day or rogation tide. And in Anglicanism, they did the same sort of thing. But one thing that developed over the years was not only would they go in the morning and do the boundaries of the parish, but then they would also in the evening the father would take his sons out or maybe the whole family and they’d walk the four corners, the boundaries of their property.

Okay. So now we have this kind of—you know what happens in church becomes what happens in the home. So the church and the civil government is responsible to exercise dominion over its assigned borders. And that’s going to happen as the families exercise dominion over their particular assigned borders. You know it’s sort of like when we look at Luke 23 where in the middle of the day he breaks the bread with the disciples in a liturgical action. At the end of the day he just has a meal with them—with fish, a fish fry. You know this moves into us into the week, that moved him into the day. And so rogation day would be the same way. There’d be a kind of an ecclesiastical, symbolic thing going on but which would also turn into a family time.

Now the family time as they go actually in the parish itself—and I don’t know if this goes back to the fifth century or not—but in Anglicanism young boys were an important part of the deal because they could clamber through the brush and brambles and find where the boundaries were. So they were kind of—it was pragmatically they were a big part of what was going on—but more importantly, you know, was the idea that the boys are the next generation. So, it’s a way to impress upon the next generation the importance of where the boundaries are. Don’t, you know, steal his stuff and don’t let him come into yours. And more than that, ask for God’s blessing on your bordered area and work it. Be productive in the context of that.

In colonial times in America, this developed and was actually common. I, you know, it’s funny—Christine and I can’t remember where we read it, but when we first started homeschooling, you know, whatever it was 25 years ago or whenever it was, we read some book and Christine thinks it was a book on tools. I don’t remember exactly. It was on colonial life. And they mentioned this rogation day thing. And I thought, what is that?

And they said that, you know, the dad would take the son—the oldest son actually—and they would go to the borders, whether it was the four corners, it’d be like a tree or there’d be a post, and they would take the boy and knock him into the tree. And you know, boom—and actually in I think the Roman Catholic Church or Anglicanism they would whip the boys at times. Now it was a ceremonial whipping it didn’t hurt him and he was actually given a gift afterwards. The idea was for the boys—the next generation—to remember the boundaries to remember the four corners, remember where the boundary was.

R.J. Rushdoony—in my research for this I came across an article that Rushdoony wrote for the California Farmer in 1968—little one-page, two-page article. And according to him, they wouldn’t just bump him into the boundaries. If the boundary line was a river, they would dunk him into the river at that point. There’s the boundary, okay? And you’d come up and you’d remember. So, the idea was that rogation day was this time of asking for God’s blessings on the created order. It was a time for getting generational succession kind of in—the Anglican version of this was known as beating the bounds—and but in other words the bounds of the parish and you’d beat—you know people against them or you’d kind of just go out to them—and so it was the idea of asking for God’s blessing on the particular place that God’s placed you either as an individual family or as a church or as a city.

So you’d consecrate, you know, your family civil and ecclesiastical duties to God. And this would be done in the context, as I said, of generational succession. So, it’s a strange little thing, you know, but I thought when I read about it—Christine and I did 30 years ago—that’s kind of cool, you know, it’s kind of an agrarian deal, but still it’s kind of a neat tradition to get into of doing that.

And so this year I thought, well, I don’t want to get to ascension yet. That’ll be the fourth part of Luke 24. We’ll do that next week. So, I wanted to do this instead. Before we get to ascension, I wanted to do rogation to share this truth with you and the biblical foundations for it. Not for the idea of a specific procession, but the biblical texts behind it. The texts that were used—two of them we just read in Proverbs about moving the ancient landmarks.

The other text that would be used as the sermon text would be Deuteronomy 19, verse 14. “You shall not move your neighbor’s landmark which the men of old have set in your inheritance which you will inherit in the land that the Lord your God has given you to possess.” So there was a case law in Deuteronomy 19:14 and that would be a common text as well to preach on. Don’t remove the ancient landmark and they’d bump people into the landmark. Here it is. Don’t remove it. Remember it where it is.

Now you know the problem is in an agrarian culture and you got a boundary stone. You know the guy can come out at night, move the boundary stone, quickly plow his land, wherever that line was, and little by little, he can steal your property. So, there’s a literal application of this, but there’s, you know, figurative stuff going on behind it as well.

Interestingly, and we’ll get into this when we—my plan is to preach through Deuteronomy sometime this summer, beginning this summer on the 10 Words. And for those of you that are keeping track, this particular case law doesn’t come in the section on not stealing. It comes in the sixth commandment section, “don’t kill.” The case law just before this is about manslaughter or murder. And interestingly, the case law just after this is about witness—the requirement of witnessing and two witnesses.

So the idea is in that whole section that primarily deals with killing people inappropriately or you know either by manslaughter, murder, whatever it is—you have this verse in there about stealing your neighbor’s property. And you remember I’ve talked before about how in the scriptures property and life are a lot more interconnected than we like to think about it. So, you know, the land has a mouth, all that sort of stuff. So, anyway, Deuteronomy 19:14—that case law is one of the ones that would be preached upon.

Another text would be Deuteronomy 27:17. You remember that as we move to the end of Deuteronomy, there’s the covenant taking kind of symbolic thing going on—Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim—and they shout out the blessings and the curses and one of the articulated curses to be put upon the people is “cursed is the one who removes his neighbor’s landmark” and all the people shall say amen. So there’s the very simple thing: don’t move the landmark. If you do, it’s not just a minor offense—it’s a cursing offense—it’s a big deal. You know, and that’s one of the problems—it’s one of the reasons why we need sermons on rogation day again I think is because we’ve forgotten the importance of land and property in the context of the Christian faith.

So, these are the texts that would be used. Now, the word here for landmark, it’s an interesting word. It can be used for a four corner boundary, right? A landmark in the northeast, south, or west. So, it could refer to the four points of an area. It can refer to an actual boundary you set up—political boundary. It can refer to a river and it can actually also refer to a mountain that a mountain forms a boundary. And then it’s used a few times figuratively as well. And we’ll get to one of those times—a very important time—in a couple of minutes.

But those are the texts that would normally be used in addition to the text I read as the sermon text today. These are the words the wise. So I want to talk about these words of the wise a little bit. So there was this introduction we read. Now listen, these are the words of the wise. Really listen. Listen to these. They’re supposed to be on your heart. I think that might actually mean that if you’re going to memorize a portion of Proverbs, you should memorize the 30 sayings of the wise.

Well, actually, then there are further words of the wise—another five or six things after that—but that’s you know this goes from the middle of 22 through the end of 24. And if you’re going to memorize Proverbs, it says these are supposed to be on your tongue and on your heart. So the idea is these—these are a compilation. If you want to know Proverbs, this is the heart of it. Now, you need to know the rest of it, but this is the heart.

And there are 30 sayings. I won’t get into the technical Hebrew stuff going on, but one of the verses that I read in the introductory introduction to the words themselves that we just read—it’s translated in some places “haven’t I given you 30 sayings?” as opposed to “haven’t I given you excellent things?” And that seems to maybe be a better textual evidence for that. Plus, if you count them up, there are 30 in this section. So, these are the first 10.

And I think that there’s pretty clear boundaries that these are set up as three sets of 10—these 30 sayings of the wise. And after the introduction, which we read, then you have saying number one, which has to do with inferior superior relationships, right? “Don’t rob the poor because he is poor, nor oppress the afflicted at his gate for the Lord will plead their cause and plunder the souls of those who plunder them.”

So that’s the first one and it—you know, you may not agree with the way I’ve structured this section but as I meditated on this several years ago when I taught it at the day school here—when I meditated on these things—it seemed to me that the big focus in this opening 10 words is work, and it seems like it’s a recitation of the first four commandments. But emphasizing work instead of rest. Emphasizing the six days “thou shalt labor” section of the fourth commandment.

And it seems like these first three that lead up to this demarcated section have to do primarily with the father—our, you know, vertical relationship to that—and then our also our vertical relationship to people that have less goods than us. And then the next one has to do with the horizontal relationship to the son. “Make no friendship with an angry man with a furious man do not go lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul.” So you know the content’s important but directionally what’s going on is your fellow man. Now you got to be careful in relationships.

So you got vertical relationships and horizontal relationships. And the third one has to do with covenant making, right? “Don’t be one of those who strikes hands in a pledge.” So it governs pledges or covenant contracts. That’s spirit work. The spirit brings things together in covenant. And so you got this vertical dimension, horizontal dimension, then you got the whole covenantal dimension. You got Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that connects up with the first three commandments. But that’s not my topic. My topic is the fourth commandment.

And the fourth commandment, I think, is demarcated in verse 28. So people say, well, this is really interesting. We have verse 28, and then down in 23, we have verses 10 and 11. They say pretty much the same thing. Little different emphasis. Why is it repeated? Why? I think it’s repeated because God, it’s a boundary marker. He’s given us a section and I think that’s why it’s like that. One of the big problems in Proverbs are the chapter breaks. Of course, they’re not inspired and they’re really quite bad at the center of Proverbs and it messes us up because we don’t have the right chapter break.

So, the way I’ve laid out these sayings is that the landmark texts—the boundary texts—not moving them are, you know, the bookends that are drawing us to a center again and it’s repeated twice. So it’s repeated first in a more general sense. “Don’t remove the ancient landmark” and then in 23:11 and now this is on your handout laid out in this particular way verses 10 and 11 “don’t remove the ancient landmark.” Same command but then there’s an addition to it: “don’t enter the fields of the fatherless for their redeemer is mighty. He will plead their cause against you.”

There’s a four-cause put in when there wasn’t at the beginning. So there’s development. But they both prohibit theft, right? So, they’re prohibiting theft and as we’ll see the center of this and the rest of this section I think has to do with work. And so, they’re prohibiting theft at the as the boundaries for that.

One last thing is that last verse 10—you know, it forms an inclusion for sayings 4 through 10 that we just noted, but it also forms a conclusion to the first 10 of these 10 sets of sayings because the first one relating to our vertical relationships uses specifically the poor as the mode of cause. The beginning of wisdom is being nice to the poor—to your functional inferiors. And that was the beginning and then at the end the 10th one it repeats the landmark thing. So it does that but it also acts as a bookend now to the whole of the 10 sayings because it’s saying again don’t go into the fields of the poor.

So beginning and end of the first 10 has to do with poverty which I find you know interesting. Okay. So those are the—that’s these would be two of the verses that would be preached on rogation days and these verses really are set in the context of something that is really central to rogation day which is work and specifically work on the land.

Look—as and you got the handout. If not, just follow along in your own Bible. But verse 29 comes next. “You see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings. He will not stand before unknown men.” So this is about work. And out of these 10 sayings, this is the only positive one. The rest are don’t do this or be careful about this. This one says do this. Be excellent in your work. And the reason is that excellence in work will bring you before kings.

Do we want to convert kings? Do we want to, you know, see a world made better? Well, you know, preaching is probably part of that, but this says the focus on these first 10 words of the wise says the way to change the culture is to be good at your work. And if you’re really good at your work, you’re going to at least be friends now—at least have relationship with civil governors, whether it’s in your city or your county or your state or even in the nation if you are skillful in your work.

So right away rogation day and the texts that are linked to it in their context puts an emphasis upon our labor, our vocation, our work week, what we do tomorrow morning, right? That’s real important for reasons I’ll talk about in a couple of minutes, but I hope it’s kind of obvious.

The third—the next saying in this sequence verses 1, 2, and 3 of the next chapter talks about eating with somebody. Now you’re eating. “Be careful when you sit down with the ruler. Consider carefully what’s before you. Put a knife to your throat. See a man if you are a man given to appetite. Don’t desire his delicacies for their deceptive food.” So there’s a warning about eating with rulers. And then matching that after the next verse, next section is verse 6.

“Don’t eat the bread of a miser, nor does desire his delicacies. For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart is not with you.” He’s deceptive. So there are warning texts about eating here as we move to the center. Okay? And specifically, it’s about rulers and the miser. So again, money is kind of the deal here. And it’s just—it’s talked about skillfulness and work leading to speaking with rulers. And now it says, well, when you do that, be careful how you eat. And that takes us to the middle text, which is verse 4 of 23.

“Don’t overwork to be rich because of your own understanding. Cease. Will you set your eyes on that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings. They fly away like an eagle toward heaven.”

Boy, won’t we all know that last one? Huh? We think it’s just because we’re a horrible nation. Now, this is the way the world works. It’s not unusual in the history of mankind to have a bunch of money that you think is going to fuel your retirement and then it all goes away. That Proverbs at the center of the first 10 words of the wise, the thing what it wants a young man to learn is he’s going to be a successful older guy: “hey it’s not about money. Hey, money’s going to get wings and fly away. You cannot control money.”

Everybody knows that today. Everybody that’s got a 401k—about a third to a half of your money just grew wings and flew away. And we were surprised. Why were we surprised? Because we don’t know the words of the wise because we think somehow that our labor is primarily for money. And he’s at the very heart of this section, if I’m right, on vocation.

At the very heart of the section is a warning that vocation is not intended. It should not be your motive to make money. Your motive should be to be skillful in your work, influence governors, and your motive, I think, as well—because it’s placed in the context of this poor thing to the first and 10th sayings are about the poor. I think your motive should be to help people. Your motive is to work well at your work, change the world, which you’re supposed to do in Jesus.

And as a result of that, you’ll influence the nation or the city or the state. And instead of saving up money for yourself, you’re not supposed to be like this miser that’s talked about right after this. These things are sort of sequenced. You know, don’t be like a miser. Give it away. Give it away. Now, you don’t—you got to be smart about that. The poor doesn’t mean here a social class of people that have less money than you. It’s hard translating some of this stuff today to us because it’s not normal. We don’t live in a normal time.

A normal time, rich people steal things from the poor. We now live in an age where poor people are stealing things from the rich. Right? You know, the Tea Party—one of the slogans that I think maybe they used some of them, I’m not sure if they did or not, used to be, you know, “no taxation without representation.” And what people are saying now is we ought to have a new slogan: “no representation without some degree of taxation.”

If you got no skin in the game, you shouldn’t be able to vote for people. Because what you’re going to do when we hit the tipping point of 50% of the people paying no taxes and yet having representation in the halls of Congress—the continuing effort to steal from the rich and devour what they’ve done and put in place is going to be going to just cycle like crazy. Then that’s the world we live in.

Now I know it’s not totally that way. I know that rich people still manipulate things and lobbyists control. I know all that stuff. But I’m saying more and more what we have is, you know, people with no money being utilized by central planners like President Obama and Geitner and Bernanke and these folks, you know, being utilized by them and their vote and their pressure to actually steal—to move the boundary lines, right? She say, “No, no, this used to be yours, but it’s mine now.”

So, that’s where we’re at. But, but the text tells us work is important. It’s important for dominion and it’s important to be able to help people—deserving poor. The word used to be people that, you know, aren’t poor and aren’t starving because they won’t work. For other circumstances. So, that’s that’s a you know this is the broader context of these individual verses that would be preached on rogation Sunday. Those are the sort of texts that would be used at rogation Sunday’s sermons.

Well, so what? Why are we even talking about this? What’s the relevance to us? And I’ve got several points on your outline. What’s the significance of rogation Sunday to us? First, the significance of property and vocation. The heaven problem—that I’m astonished at this, but my Kindle read to me the other night the first chapter of a book by N.T. Wright answering John Piper’s criticisms of Wright. And so it’s a book on justification and the first chapter is primo. It is excellent—little whiny—but not, you know, it is really excellent, it’s quite good for various reasons.

And what Wright tries to say is well you know yeah we all believe in justification by faith, all that stuff. But there’s other elements to justification as it’s used in the Bible that Piper isn’t dealing honestly with or isn’t dealing with at all. He uses the illustration of a guy who through the accident of a lack of education thinks that the sun rotates around the earth. And so you have a chat with this man. He’s staying with you. And you have a chat with him one night and you get out books and tables and try to show them—it’s just a matter of perspective here. And you put books on the coffee table when you try—and he goes through these stages of being baffled, being a little resistive, kind of being amazed at certain points—the guy you’re talking to—and you think things are going good so you take your last glass of wine and go to bed.

And then about 5:00 in the morning the guy comes knocking on your door—says let’s go take a little walk. So he takes you out and it’s early morning and the sun is coming up slowly, you know, it’s the sky is orange and the guy, you know, is telling you—”Look, doesn’t the Bible talk about the sun going around the earth in Psalm 19? Isn’t this what we’re supposed to do? I know you got all your fancy dancy books and everything, but you know, this is really what it’s all about, isn’t it? What the Bible says.”

And then about that time, the sun actually comes up and lights up the whole body of water that you’re at. And you know what’s happening next? He grabs you by the sleeve gently. He doesn’t want to be harsh. And “don’t you see—this is what our eyes clearly tell us. The sun is moving around the earth.”

And Wright’s point is that you know there’s something being lost and one of the things he thinks that’s being lost in this ongoing discussions about—in his case new perspective on Paul justification—in our case Federal Vision and some other stuff—one of the things being lost came out to me the morning I—okay so that happened in the evening—this Kindle read me this thing—that morning I went for lunch—I went to the sesquicentennial national day of prayer meeting here in Oregon City.

And you know, I don’t want to criticize anybody. The speaker has done a lot of research in Oregon’s Christian history. Praise God. And he’s got a Bible from way back when—the circuit writer days—and all this stuff. Praise God. But I thought, you know, all he really spoke about was being soul winners and how these Methodist evangelists were soul winners. And the Indians, you know, prayed and they were—they won a lot of souls and, you know, in actuality they didn’t win many souls, number one. So I know that’s just not the case.

They’re Jason Lee died thinking that he was a complete failure. But what they did do—the Christian founders of this state—is they had—they set up marriage here. The first marriages, two marriages were held at the mission. So Christian family—family here is set up in a distinctively Christian sense. They Jason Lee was one of the main guys who and took the petition back to Washington to have Oregon become a province or becoming state eventually. So the civil government itself has at its roots Christian guys who are—see, so you got the Bible underneath the family—Bible underneath the state—and then Willamette University is actually, you know, it’s an old mission school. Before that it was to be a school for the Indian kids. It was Christian, explicitly Christian. The roots of education in Oregon are Christian—distinctively Christian.

The first day school, Christian day school for Indian kids and later for missionary kids and Christian kids. Now, why didn’t this guy talk about that? It’s the heaven problem. People think today, the church generally thinks, that this rogation Sunday thing is sort of stupid because why we’re here is we’re supposed to be soul winners. We’re supposed to be saving people and get them to heaven. Get the heck out of here. Heaven is the whole deal. That’s what we want to do. We all want to go to heaven. If we’re here, still, it’s only so we can get more people to go to heaven. We want to bail.

And the Bible says, “Whoa.” And he said, “This is—I know this is, you know, old hat to you here.” But the Bible says, “No, no, no. God—right says, you know, at the end of the day, the problem with the guy that sees the earth as the center of the universe is he sees—he can be akin to the guy who sees himself at the center of the universe. My salvation is what it’s all about.” No, the Son, the glory of God—that the Son represents. That’s what you’re rotating around. That’s the center—his glory, not your glory.

And when God saves us, he doesn’t save us just to, you know, create more Christians and then zip off to heaven. He calls us back. The second Adam brings us back to the place the first Adam was at. And we got the same job. We’re supposed to go plow the fields. We’re supposed to build houses. We’re supposed to beautify. Our work is what we’re supposed to be doing—how he do it in a Christian fashion and certainly we try to bring people to Christ—but that is not the goal. The goal is that God has given us an earth to transform and he wants it done. We want out.

So we’ve got this problem with heaven. Last year, you know, I preached on heaven. Is the intermediate state—it doesn’t happen eternally up there somewhere. End of Revelation: heaven comes here. Earth is heavenized. This is where it’s at. Jesus is coming back here, not to take us off to someplace else. Everything—the terminal point, the eternal point—is here. This has been the orthodox position of the Christian church since there was a Christian church, right? This is not some kind of new weird doctrine. The new weird doctrine is this “heaven thing” where everything’s about heaven.

And accompanying that—that heaven problem—has created people that don’t really give a darn about this earth really and certainly don’t think that the key to their success in what they do is vocation. It’s really bad. And I think this is one of the central messages that we have to convince our Christian friends of: is that heaven is an intermediate state and it’s about earth. Because otherwise earth is unimportant to them. They think we’re just saved to be saved. No. The sin offering is the beginning, only the beginning. Then we’re transformed. We ascend to heaven. We get a godly blueprint. Then we do the tribute offering and God requires us to go grow some grain.

And not just that, but to bring it back cooked—grilled, broiled, baked. We got to add value to it. See, the slugger doesn’t add value. That, by the way, is the matching section in this structure of Proverbs. The matching section to the guy that’s excellent in his work and moves kings is the fool that you’re not supposed to waste time with. That’s the—and I think it’s here because Proverbs wants you to know if you memorize these first 10: if you’re not trying to be excellent in your work, you’re a fool. You’re a fool.

So, rogation day is a reminder that this is important. You got boundaries. Those boundaries mean you got work to be done in the context of your particular little place in time. And that work isn’t some kind of secondary deal to you. That’s why God has saved you. He saved you to do the work, to exercise dominion, to extend the garden, to beautify this world. That’s why we’re here.

You see, so one reason we need to hear this rogation day stuff is the significance of property and vocation. You know, “oh, it’s all going to be burned up. Oh, really? Is it? Huh?” I think that fire is transformational, not just destructive. Is God going to burn up that tree that you plant—that Luther would plant? Well, you get the point. Property is important. It’s not all going to be destroyed. You know, your works will remain. The Bible says—I don’t know what exactly that means, but it says what you do here is important and has eternal significance.

So, property, land, right? We’re going to eat stuff there that if there wasn’t dirt involved wouldn’t be there on that table. The only way we fulfill the commandment of Jesus, the simple, gracious commandment, to eat bread and drink wine as if somebody at least has their head screwed on straight and knows they got to grow things and get down in the dirt and make things happen. So property and vocation are important and in fact as I said the words of the wise say vocation is what’s going to change the world, right?

We all think power politics—no, that’s not going to do it. Skillfulness and work. Okay.

Secondly, the dominion mandate. What we go about doing here is important to talk about on rogation Sunday and we have an earth day problem, right? So earth day is a counterfeit Christianity. So rogation is sort of like Christian earth day, okay? It’s like Christian earth day. It’s earth day that sees its root in the biblical call to exercise dominion, to beautify the world. Now there’s two ditches here. And a church that doesn’t give two hoots for the planet because everything’s about heaven, you know, number one, they’re not going to take good care of their property.

They’re not going to see the importance. They weren’t bumped at the corners when they were a boy and they grow up and who cares? Just let it run down. And the very end of the words of the wise—by the way, the further words of the wise—the four, five, six proverbs at the end of this section, at the end of chapter 24, preparing us for the kingship stuff in 25. The very last ones—it’s about the sluggard who lets vines overgrow his field on his fence. See, that’s the—that’s that’s the fool. That’s the slothful man. That’s the Christian church. We don’t care. Not that big a deal.

And God says, “It is a big deal.” So, one ditch is we fall into that ditch. We do, you know, we scrape open the earth and don’t give a rip about what happens afterwards. We extract out resources and we don’t think about it. Now, I think that is an overblown story. I think that most businessmen, certainly in America, are so have been so informed over the last 200 years by of the gospel that there’s a lot more stories about that than there are actualities about the harm done to the to the earth by people exploiting it.

But it’s an absolutely—it is an absolute sin to try to just reap the benefits of your land and not have a long-term perspective—rotation of crops for instance. I mean there’s all kinds—we there is a proper dominion stewardship of the earth and we don’t want to and we will fall into the trap of not doing that well if we don’t think it’s all that important. We just rip the resources out and let it be. We move on to the next hole in the ground.

But of course, the big—the big ditch that we’re all falling into these days is that every little thing that we do is analyzed and the idea of earth day has been cut off from its roots of exercising dominion. So the view of the false view, the deception of rogation day, earth day is all about man as simple caretaker. He doesn’t develop nothing. In fact, all the developmental stuff they want to get out of here. It’s why they’re—cut, you know, that’s the real opposition, I think, to fossil fuel. It’s not the fossil fuel and it’s not the CO2. It’s a worldview at place where they think that the world is better in its natural state. They’re fools.

The fool doesn’t roast what he takes in hunting. The fool refuses to acknowledge, “I’ve got a job from God to take this wilderness and make it into a garden. I got to change things.” They don’t want man changing anything. There’s a self-hatred involved on the part of the person who does haven’t come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. So, earth day is this counterfeit. Rogation day is a reminder: no, no, let’s see. We got boundaries. We got hedges. And that means that we should clean up the area that God has given to us. It means we take care of it, but it also means we develop it. We develop it.

So the dominion mandate is being restated on rogation day and that’s a good corrective to this earth day problem that wants to separate—agrarian terms—root and fruit. Right? So the fruit is, you know, the proper exercise of dominion. The root of that is submission to Jesus Christ and not being wise in the things of the world but being wise in what the scriptures teach. They want to cut that off and as a result their fruit actually looks quite different from what it should be. They’ve cut off the root, which is Christ. And as a result, they become, you know, people that just want all people off the world.

Well, “we’re polluters anyway, right? We exhale CO2, which is now officially a pollutant.” This is, you know, self-hatred. You know, it’s not something to be messed with. I remember, you know, Jim Jones and Guyana and all that stuff. I don’t think that can’t happen again. It will. Self-hatred.

Well, okay. So, we’ve got the earth day problem.

Third, why is rogation significant? The four corners. I mentioned how this word landmark or boundary can be used in a figurative sense. Several times it is. One place is Psalm 78, verse 54. “He brought them to his holy border, the mountain which his right hand had acquired.” Now, not just before that it says “he led them on safely so that they did not fear but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.” He’s talking about the exodus. Next verse after that: “He also drove out the nations before them allotted them an inheritance by survey and made the tribes of Israel dwell in their tents.”

So now he’s talking about the conquest of the land. So the holy border is Sinai. And so the church understands this and the church has traditionally in the context of rogation day said that there are these physical borders which are very important. We don’t want to minimize those or turn them into mere symbols. On the other hand, the Bible does use that same word as a symbol. And here in Psalm 78, a symbol for the law which was delivered at Sinai.

So the law has been seen by the church as also related to rogation day. It sets the borders of our lives, right? Says don’t do this. You can’t. It proscribes—keeps you from doing particular things. And actually this—prescription too—in terms of love. So a culture, a Christian culture that moves away from the law, moves away from God’s holy border. They move the ancient landmarks by rejecting God’s word as a law word to us. And as a result of that, they end up moving all kinds of other landmarks, too.

What do I have here? Here we have the investment problem. The investment problem—there’s no taxes anymore. There’s investments we’re making. There’s no spending. It’s all investments, investments, investments. As if the United States of America is a corporation that we all are freely entering in commercial transactions with, that they can then take that money and invest. They take it from us at force. Okay? And then they—so the spending isn’t an investment. We have this investment problem.

And what’s happened is once we got rid of the holy border of God’s law, Christian America—then you know, anything goes. And what’s going right now is the pyramid problem. You know, in Egypt, you only had significance if you were part of the pyramid. You had no individuality. Your individuality was subsumed in the pyramid. And at the top is Pharaoh. And what we’re moving toward quickly in this country, very quickly, is a situation where you only have significance if you’re part of the team. And by the way, you’re kind of a faceless part of the team because there’s 300 million of you. So you’re sort of like ants. You’re sort of like those little blocks in the pyramid.

The only thing that’s really important is that guy at the top and his men. That’s what’s going on. Why? Because the ancient landmarks have been moved. The family had a particular relationship to things it was supposed to do. The church has its defined set of borders that it’s supposed to engage in. The civil state had a defined set of borders. “This is what you’re supposed to do.” And what’s happened is in our day because the holy border—was been ignored or moved—all these other borders have moved as well. We’ve got nothing left to restrain anything.

Once the holy border of God’s law was removed, these institutions shift and change and inevitably that always leads to centralization. That’s what we’ve got going on. The centralization that we see is certainly culpable centralization. In other words, the civil government has a constitution. Rogation was also a constitution day in some parishes because the constitution is a set of borders on the civil government. And to a certain extent constitutions still work that way.

The reason we don’t have homosexual marriages—not because of the laws—it’s because of our constitution. The reason why Iowa ended up with homosexual marriage is their constitution didn’t prohibit it. Constitutions are still important. They’re not totally done away with but they’ve been reinterpreted and messed with—the ancient landmarks of the constitutions of a particular people have been moved. They’re still there somewhat, but they’ve been moved.

And because of that, the civil state grows increasingly more powerful in the lives of corporations. So, they’re making cars for you and they’re—you are in charge of your bank account and who knows what’ll be next. And I know they say “we’re only going to do this for a short period of time” and who knows, maybe they will. But it doesn’t usually work that way. It’s very hard for them to give back things they’ve controlled because remember they’re doing it because, you know, the marketplace is just no good. You can’t trust those people to do the right things.

In fact, they’re jerks. You know, it’s like this comment that our president made about the hedge funds not going along with the Chrysler deal. You know, that is moving the boundaries by leaps and bounds. I don’t know, you probably—it’s complicated, but not all that complicated. You had people like you—maybe somebody in this congregation—who bought money through an investment company, a 401k product you’re involved with—and maybe that company then turned around and bought bonds from Chrysler. So, you got private investment. And when companies go bankrupt, those are like the first holders. Those are the ones that have to be paid off first proportionately.

But what happened was in the arrangement for the Chrysler bank bankruptcy is that the companies being given—I think the the brokers lose 80 cents on the dollar or 90 cents on the dollar. Whereas what happens is the union and the government—the civil government, the federal government—is now in control of Chrysler after this thing comes out. They seized power away from people that own the company. That’s what they did.

I mean, it’s interesting to me that we sit around and say, “Yeah, the bank can do these stress tests. The government can do the stress tests on banks when we know that if the government has a desire to control banks, all they have to do is say you need a lot more money and they know the banks can only raise it by selling common shares, converting the preferred shares of the government to common shares.

Now, if you’re—you don’t know all this, that’s okay. Don’t worry about it. But understand that we live in a time when the ancient landmarks are all but destroyed. And what’s happening increasingly is that government runs more and more. Now, how do we do anything about it? Well, you know, part of what we do is we do our work. We do skillful work. Then we can stand before kings. It’s indirect. It usually is. But the point is—rogation day, constitution days—are significant and important because the Bible uses borders as symbols for law and institutional placements and restrictions.

And we now are in a place where all those—the boundary, law, God’s holy border—has been moved.

Let me read the last little page of Rushdoony’s comment on this rogation day. And this is written in 1968. “God’s law established a landmark for men to live by even as removing the boundary marks of a farm or a ranch rather produces confusion. So any alteration of God’s landmarks, his law, produces confusion and anarchy. Scoundrels in ancient Israel…” and he talked about people digging things up. Then he said this: “Today politics, it’s 1968, politicians and preachers are continually moving God’s landmarks and steadily destroying all moral boundaries and moral order. A National Rogation Day each spring would serve a good purpose if we could bump and dunk our straying politicians, preachers, and people and remind them of God’s boundaries.

If we don’t, God will. And God will rather—and his bumping and dunking is one of the toughest possible—is one of the—is one of the strongest possible nature.” That’s what’s going on. God is bumping us now. The difficulties we see are God’s showing us: “you’ve moved the landmarks. You’ve got to establish my holy border again.” And so I think that’s why it’s important to talk about rogation.

Then finally: passing the baton to men who know the quarters and boundaries, the missional problem. So we want to be missional. But what does that mean? Well, who knows what’s important in terms of what we believe. We don’t have boundaries. We don’t have landmarks. None of that stuff. Well, rogation day is about succession. It’s about getting the kids out there and bumping them into the boundaries.

And praise God that what’s going on in this church right now is certain young men who have a desire to be properly missional and to see the transformation of Portland, for instance—they now have decided to voluntarily bump themselves into the ancient borders of this church—the landmarks, the four corners—for instance, what is Christian Reconstruction? They’ve been going through that—talk about the sovereignty of God in relationship to evangelism, in relationship to our laws, theonomy, eschatology, postmillennialism, and apologetics, Presuppositional apologetics, for God’s word is declared, not being made excuses over—in which men are called to come to Christ through repentance.

So they’re doing that. That’s important. You know, at the end of the day, if the dad sees the son has disdain for the borders, guess what? He’s going to be written out of the will. Not going to pass the baton to that guy, right? That’s the way it is. It’s the same thing here. So, you got to know the borders. You got to know the boundaries. You got to know the things as Mark Driscoll says—we keep in this tight fist even as we keep a loose fist, an open hand rather—on the other end—to be truly biblically missional.

And then finally: adverse possession laws. You know, in this country, at least, and I think there’s some biblical basis—because you’re supposed to use your land and if you don’t use your land and your neighbor uses the land instead, after a number of years, in some states he claims adverse possession over your property—now it’s his property. And there’s something biblical about that, I think, because if you’re not going to use your land, you’re going to lose it. Use it or lose it.

Well, that’s what’s happened in our day and age. We’ve forgotten the importance of landmarks and God’s holy border and the actual physical work we’re supposed to do as the result of salvation and attached to it. We’ve forgotten all these things or we’ve rebelled against God and not believed him. And what has God done? Well, the enemy has claimed adverse possession over the stuff that we gave up on. That’s why we want to reach Portland long term. The enemy—by adverse possession—took over culture flowing out of Portland. Took over the media, took over the arts. You see, by adverse possession, we weren’t there to even fight it.

God’s brought it up. Adverse possession is kind of God’s deal to wake us up to our requirements.

Let me end with a David Gilmour song. He has a song called “Take a Breath.” “When you’re down is where you find yourself. When you’ve drowned, there’s nothing else. If you’re lost, you’ll need to run. You’ll need to turn yourself. Then you’ll find out that there’s no one else to make the moves that you can do.”

So Gilmour saw—and he says another line, “If I’m the one that threw you overboard, I also taught you how to swim to shore.” God’s thrown us overboard. He’s given much of what we live in the context of—by adverse possession—to the enemy. And he’s done it to wake us up. He’s done it to cause us to have this grace—you know, tough love. He’s done it. Thrown us into the water and start to drown so that we’ll find ourselves again—realizing the uncomfortableness of evil people adversely possessing what should be the churches and Christian families and Christian statesmen. That’s what’s driving us again now.

And it is, you know, in America—to follow once more the basic principles that are laid out in rogation Sunday. That’s why I wanted to preach child. It’s kind of the heart of really a lot of what I think is important for the ongoing reformation here at RCC.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, please forgive us for our failure to look around our property, to take note of it, to at a regular interval, to ask you for wisdom and how to improve it and bless it. Forgive us for our lack of days—attitudes toward the workplace if that’s been engaged in. Help us, Lord God, to remember that the key to dominion is being skillful in work. So make us, Lord God, have a desire for that. God, thank you for bringing the judgments of the adverse possessors of our day. Thank you for your bumping and dunking. We know it’s extreme. We know it’s hard for us, Father. You know that. But we thank you for it knowing that you’re waking us up to who we really are.

Bless us as we try to this week apply the lessons of rogation day. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen.