Law and Life

God’s Son, Israel

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Lesson: 27 of 39

Genre: Speech

Track: 138

Dictation Name: RR156P27

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

[Rushdoony] Our scripture lesson this morning is from the Gospel According to St. Matthew, the second chapter verses 13 through 15, and our subject, God’s Son, Israel. Matthew 2:13-15. God’s Son, Israel. “And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt: and was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.”

Our scripture this morning is a very important one. In a real sense, one of the climactic points of the Christmas story, and yet perhaps one of the least considered, the least studied aspect of the Christmas story, and yet it is important to understand and unlock a central key to the meaning of Christmas and the Bible.

The key in this passage is the quotation, “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.” This quotation is from Hosea, the eleventh chapter, the first verse, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.” What we have here is typology. Now, typology is well known but very commonly misunderstood because too often, the approach to typology is not biblical but neo-Platonic. Typology sometimes involves symbolism, but typology is not symbolism. In symbolism, something represents something else, but the symbol is not the reality.

To illustrate, one of the oldest symbols in history is the Owl of Minerva to represent wisdom. Now, an owl has no particular wisdom. The reason why the Owl of Minerva has been used to represent wisdom is that the owl has an old look to it, a rather thoughtful, pensive look, and so people from the early days assumed that the owl is a good symbol for wisdom, but this does not mean there is any reality to the symbol as wisdom itself.

To cite another very ancient symbol, the hammer and the sickle. They go back to pre-Christian times as a symbol of revolution. Now again, it is understandable how the hammer and sickle can be used to symbolize revolution, the hammer to destroy, the sickle to cut, but they can also be used just as well to symbolize work, because the hammer and sickle are better symbols of work and are more often used for it, but when you say “hammer and sickle,” no one thinks of work. It has come to symbolize something else, revolution, but there is no reality of revolution in the hammer in the sickle as such.

I think you see the point, where you have symbolism, something represents something else because it can suggest it, but it does not itself have reality. In typology, every phase of the type has reality in terms of that which it represents. In typology, we deal with God’s developing pattern in history. We deal with reality, not symbols and to reduce typology to symbols is to become neo-Platonic. For, in typology, all the factors are real. They are important in terms of a developing revelation in which every aspect has reality in terms of that which it represents. To reduce certain stages of typology thus to mere symbols is to destroy the meaning of God’s revelation, to destroy the continuity of revelation, and to convert typology from history to neo-Platonic emblems, to shadows on the wall of Plato’s Cave.

Now, as we examine this typology, “Out of Egypt have I called my son,” there are three aspects of this typology, but first we need to go back to Hosea 11:1. “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.” This is not symbolism. What God says here in Hosea is that he adopted Israel as his son. When Israel was still in Egypt, a slave, a fallen sinning people, God called them out of Egypt and adopted them to be his people so that the nation Israel became the adopted son of God, adopted, a son by grace, not by nature, but a son. God manifested his grace on them, his love, his instruction, his law and his protection, but Israel was a wayward and a prodigal son. The whole of the Old Testament story is of God’s grace, his mercy and his judgment of Israel and his son of adoption. Israel was thus, more than a symbol. It was God’s son by adoption, and yet also, a type of the natural son who was to come.

Thus, to understand scripture, we must see that Israel was adopted. It was grafted in. It became a part of the root, but then it was cut off because it was prodigal. It was wayward. It did not bear fruit unto God the Father.

Now, the second stage of this typology is Jesus Christ, the natural son of God, supernatural in birth. Like Israel of old, he went into Egypt for a time to be protected, but without bondage. The bondage of the natural son of God was the burden of being the new Adam, called to redeem his people from the worldwide Egypt of sin and the Fall. God called his adopted Egypt -- his adopted son, Israel, out of Egypt, but Israel carried Egypt, we are told, by Ezekiel 20, verses 6 through 9, into the Promised Land. Israel was not true to the Father. It did not seek to overcome the Fall, but to live in terms of it. But Jesus Christ as the sinless son of the new Adam, destroyed the power of sin and death. The adoption of Israel, the old Israel, as the son of God was {?}. The plague upon the firstborn of Egypt culminated the act of adoption. All the firstborn of the world, of the fallen world, were symbolically thereby sentenced to death in the death of the Egyptian firstborn, and God’s firstborn, Israel, was freed from this world of the Fall, delivered from bondage. The birth of Jesus Christ, the natural son, born to be {?} Israel, was miraculous also. Virgin born, with the songs of angels and a miraculous deliverance.

Now, the third phase of this typology is our adoption into Christ as sons of God. In Galatians 4 verses 4 through 7, St. Paul declares, “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” Old Israel was heir to the Promised Land of Canaan, heir because a son by adoption. Jesus Christ came, “appointed heir of all things, by whom also God made the worlds,” we are told in Hebrews 1:2. The new Israel, the elect people in Christ, are also heirs, but the heirship of Christ, being in all things and attended by the atonement, our heirship is also in all things.

Old Israel’s atonement, while real, was subordinate to Christ in a type of his work. New Israel’s atonement rests on the accomplished work of Christ who, when he yet himself purged our sins, “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,” according Hebrews 1 verse 3. Now, this point is important. God had first Israel as his adopted son. Then, Christ came as the natural son, and we, the people of God, redeemed in Jesus Christ, are the adopted sons by grace. Because of the typology and the reality of the sonship, of all three, there is a continuity between the three sons; old Israel as an adopted son, Christ as the natural virgin-born son, and new Israel as the adopted son by grace in Christ.

This means, therefore, that there is a continuity of both law and grace throughout the Bible. To deny grace is to deny salvation. To deny law is to deny heirship, but this is precisely what the antinomians do. There is a book being written, chapters of which are being published in process by Cornelius R. Stam, one of the most influential of the dispensationalist antinomians in this country. Now because Stam is making his thesis the denial of precisely what I’ve been talking about, he must consistently then, across the boards, deny all things in this typology. He must speak, as he does, of the impossibility of obeying the Great Commission. “Go ye into all the world and make disciples of all nations.” He declares that this is impossible because Israel has supposedly been set aside, even though scripture declares in Galatians 6:16 that it continues in Christ and his people, the Israel of God. Moreover, Stam says it would mean the fulfillment of Isaiah 2, verses 1 through 2, which he denies emphatically. Also, he writes, “If this were our commission, it would put us and our hearers under the law of Moses. This would take us back under a dispensation when water baptism was required for the remission of sins. This would indeed make the cross of Christ of non-effect.”

Now, this is strange language. Apparently, Stam believes that the cross of Christ was of non-effect during the Apostolic Age. Moreover, his interpretation of baptism is entirely wrong because baptism never remits sins. It sets forth the fact of Christ’s remission of our sins received by grace.

Now, Stam writes further concerning the statement, “preach the Gospel” in the Great Commission. “To ascertain the content of this Gospel, we may not anticipate revelation and find answer in the Acts or Paul’s Epistles. These were not yet written. The term “the Gospel” denotes prior reference. Therefore, we must consider the preceding context and ask ourselves what Gospel they had been preaching. When we do this, the answer is simple. They had been preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and our Lord was now sending them forth to preach this same Gospel.” Well, we would agree with that. For the king who had been crucified and was alive, raised from the dead to sit on the throne of David, and this is, in fact, what Peter preached under this commission. The Gospel of the grace of God is not revealed until years later.

Now, here dispensationalism comes in. We cannot preach the Gospel of Mark 16 today or Matthew 28, for the risen king was again rejected by his own nation and is a royal exile. Our message, unlike theirs, is an offer of reconciliation to Jews and Gentiles who have been alienated from God.

Now, this is a denial of typology and therefore, of the continuity of biblical history. It is a denial of history. Nothing in the Bible tells us of his supposed great change suddenly near the end of the Apostolic Age from the preaching of the kingdom, from the full responsibility to obey the law to suddenly a denial of the law, to a denial of the preaching of the kingdom, to a preaching of reconciliation and antinomianism. The only place this appears in any Bible is in the Schofield notes. Stam has no sovereign God, only at the feet of Christ whose lordship he denies. Although, over and over again scripture declares him to be Lord and Savior.

Moreover, scripture never tells us that the coming of the king and in the defeat and the retreat of the king. Israel’s rejection of Christ was not contrary to Stam’s the exile of the king, but the destruction and the exile of the old Israel. The only exile was of the Jews. Therefore, when God declares, “Out of Egypt have I called my son,” he declares that Christ, as a greater Moses, shall lead his people out of bondage into the Promised Land, into greater and world conquest, so that heirs of all things in Christ, they shall reign with him.

The birth of our Lord, thus, is a joyful work of victory. It declared the ordained continuity of grace and law, of God’s Israel by adoption. We who were strangers were grafted into the chosen tree and some of the old branches are broken off, according to Romans 11:17, so that God’s continuity and purpose are upheld. Having been called out of Egypt in Christ, to remain in Egypt, means to deny Christ and to be no member of the adoption of grace.

Thus, what this typology tells us is that God has a continuing purpose throughout the Bible. To undo the work of the Tempter, to overthrow the Fall, to lead his people into the Promised Land, to establish them in the glorious liberty of the sons of God. We have been called not into bondage, but unto freedom. It means, therefore, that the Christmas carols that have been written throughout the centuries are all in tune with the meaning of the birth of our Lord, for they cry out for the joy. Joy to the world because the Lord has come. Let heaven and nature sing. They declare that he is indeed Lord, King, Savior, ruler of all things, that indeed the world is a battle, but the end is assured, and therefore, the predominant note of the Christian must indeed be, he is Lord and Savior. We have been called by his grace into freedom, the freedom of God’s law and righteousness, the freedom of victory through the law word of God, whereby every area of life and thought is brought under his kingship and his sovereignty.

Thus it is that the Gospel as it tells us of our Lord’s birth, describing the fearful events, Herod’s hostility, the attempt of the world in the person of Herod to slay the Christ child, nevertheless says, as it takes him to Egypt and brings him back, that it might be fulfilled that was spoken by the prophet saying, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” Out of the house of bondage. Out of the house of slavery. Out of sin. Out of the tyranny of the world and its evil ways. This is the meaning of Christmas. By God’s grace we have been adopted into sonship. By God’s grace we have been called into freedom. By God’s grace, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us, even Jesus Christ, our Lord. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that we are children not of slavery, but of freedom, that in Jesus Christ we have been adopted and are the Israel of thy calling. O Lord, our God, make us ever mindful that, as Israel before thee, thine Israel’s grace we are princes before thee, called to dominion, called to exercise government in every area of life according to thy holy words. Bless us, O Lord, to this purpose and make us bold and confident in thy calling and of thy victory. O Lord, our God, we thank thee that Jesus Christ, thine only begotten son, is come, that we are thine by adoption in him. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now on our lesson? Yes?

[Audience member] This isn’t on the lesson.

[Rushdoony] All right.

[Audience member] In light of the fact that God predestines all things and yet there’s – there’s sin, can you say that God predestines sins, or how do you explain that?

[Rushdoony] Yes, certainly. Because God made us in his image, he created also the possibility of sin, because it is testing, it is proving, it is refining by fire. Now, sin is not the thing. It is a moral act. God created all things metaphysically. Now, in terms of the creation of man, the moral possibility of sin was very real, but even that was within the providence and the election of God. It’s a mystery but it’s what scripture declares and we accept it. Are there any other questions?

If not, I’d like to share something with you from a very, very fine magazine, Private Practice, The Journal of Socioeconomic Medicine for December 1974. This is edited by a friend who is one of our people on the Chalcedon mailing list, Lou Offa{?}, a very fine man. The title of an article which I think is especially choice is God Bless You, Ebenezzer Scrooge. Now, to understand this article, you have to realize, which very few people do, that Dickens, able writer that he was, was one of the great fathers of British Fabian socialism. His writings were, by and large, long tracts against the free market, against free enterprise, calling for government intervention, and so whenever he presented a businessman or an entrepreneur, he did so as unsympathetically as possible and one such unsympathetic presentation is Ebenezzer Scrooge. Well, recently, Dr. Thompson, who is a professor of economics at Fairmont Men’s College, decided to have his students do a project on Ebenezzer Scourge, to study the Christmas Carol economically. So, they went into the statistics that are in the Christmas Carol and they came up with some very interesting facts, because Dickens, in the process of writing it, did some reporting on conditions that wasn’t too bad.

Now, the fact is that, according to Dickens, Bob Cratchit was paid fifteen shillings a week. Fifteen shillings a week, thirty-nine pounds a year definitely put Cratchit in the upper half of the economic society of his day. So, Cratchit definitely was not one of the abused poor. Moreover, it would have been very definitely ahead of the average pay of Americans at the same time here in the United States. Another fact, the class, as they analyzed the situation, said that Cratchit was obviously a very timid and cowardly chap. He lacked imagination and initiative to be really successful on his own. Why else would an educated man be working for wages in that era of sprouting entrepreneurs? If he had been particularly good as a clerk, he wouldn’t have been afraid to ask for what he deserved. In other words, in terms of his background, education, the type of work he was doing, he could have commanded far more than the thirty-nine pounds a year that he commanded, which was still enough to put him in the upper half of the wage earners of Britain for the day. Because the type of work he did was in demand and he could have commanded definitely higher wages, so if Cratchit was doing better than he was, it was Cratchit’s own fault. There were many employers which would have hired him for more and he could have gone out and very easily made it on his own with the kind of skills he had.

On top of that, as he goes on to say, the Cratchits obviously, in spite of Bob Cratchit’s lack of initiative, were clearly fairly well off, because they could afford a Christmas dinner consisting of goose, pudding, apples and oranges, with a jug to wash it down. There seems little doubt that the Cratchit’s were better off than half the families in England.

And so, as they go through the story and analyze the various facets of it, everything points to the fact that, although Dickens works hard to make you bleed for Bob Cratchit, the facts that he report still make Bob Cratchit fairly well off and obviously, in a professional class where his income could have been very considerable. It is a delightful article and the magazine as a whole is quite superior. The sad fact is that under the leadership of Lew Rockwell, the magazine, while representing a very principle position, is also subjected to the most rigorous kind of criticism it has ever received. It has become highly unpopular.

Let us bow our heads now for the benediction. And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape