Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Consecration

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Consecration

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 104

Dictation Name: RR171BD104

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of them that fear Him. He also will hear their cry and will save them. Where two or three are gathered together in my name, saith the Lord Jesus, there am I in the midst of them. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy grace and mercy hast made us thy people. We give thanks unto thee for the blessings of the week past. We thank thee that, underneath all our experiences, day by day, are thine everlasting arms, thy sustaining grace, and thy mercy. Make us ever mindful of how rich we are in Christ, how unfailing His mercy and love is and has been. Give us therefore joyful hearts to praise thee as we ought. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is Exodus 29:29-37. Our subject for the third time: The Consecration. Exodus 29:29-37. “And the holy garments of Aaron shall be his sons' after him, to be anointed therein, and to be consecrated in them. And that son that is priest in his stead shall put them on seven days, when he cometh into the tabernacle of the congregation to minister in the holy place. And thou shalt take the ram of the consecration, and seethe his flesh in the holy place.  And Aaron and his sons shall eat the flesh of the ram, and the bread that is in the basket by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And they shall eat those things wherewith the atonement was made, to consecrate and to sanctify them: but a stranger shall not eat thereof, because they are holy. And if ought of the flesh of the consecrations, or of the bread, remain unto the morning, then thou shalt burn the remainder with fire: it shall not be eaten, because it is holy. And thus shalt thou do unto Aaron, and to his sons, according to all things which I have commanded thee: seven days shalt thou consecrate them. And thou shalt offer every day a bullock for a sin offering for atonement: and thou shalt cleanse the altar, when thou hast made an atonement for it, and thou shalt anoint it, to sanctify it. Seven days thou shalt make an atonement for the altar, and sanctify it; and it shall be an altar most holy: whatsoever toucheth the altar shall be holy.”

In these verses, provision is made for the succession of future high priests. We are also given more details concerning all consecrations.

The ritual took seven days, not because any part of it was long because, basically, it was not so, but because it was repeated daily for a week. It was an act of consecration, so that the daily repetition for a week stressed not re-consecration, but the purification of the altar as well as the priest, and this is stressed in verses 35-37. Because the priest and the altar came alike out of a fallen world, out of a profane realm, they needed to be set apart and sanctified for the Lord’s service. In terms of this requirement in the Christian era, churches which have been desecrated by invaders in the night, such as those who perform a black mass, or such invaders and disrupters of worship such as homosexuals and feminists, these churches are commonly cleansed and re-consecration. The premise is that sin is contagious, and the line of demarcation between good and evil must be maintained both morally and ritually. Annually, on the Day of Atonement, according to Leviticus16:17-18, there was a ritual of atonement for the altar, the priest, and the people.

There was also, as a part of the ritual of consecration, a holy meal that was comparable to a peace offering. None save the priests could partake of this meal. The premise for this was very carefully explained to the Corinthians, many of whom were Gentiles, by Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:12-14. He wrote, “If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless we have not used this power; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ.  Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar?  Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.” The priests, Paul says, lived off of certain gifts to the Lord, as well as their portion of the tithe. Being partakers of the altar gave them, he says, authority and power. These same powers and privileges belong, he says, to those who preach the gospel.

Moreover, St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12:35 declares that after apostles and prophets. Teachers are basic to the church and its ministries. Now this is a high ranking of teachers, after apostles and prophets. Teachers as here in the Greek, “didaskalos.” “Didaskalos, the nominative form, can be translated also as master, and rabbi. It has reference to the scholars of the faith. This means that men such as our Chalcedon staff members are, are in the biblical sense emphatically teachers, and are so to be supported by the faithful. An important aspect of the Christian ministry is lost when scholars are not seen as essential to it, but Paul says very plainly how important they are.

In verse 37, we come to a central to the meaning of holy, because the altar is, we are told, most holy. “Whatsoever toucheth the altar shall be holy.” This means that all things or person who touch the altar are God’s property. The altar signifies atonement, and to touch the altar means either redemption or death. In either case, a dedication to God was involved. According to George Rollinson, the reference in verse 36 should read, “Thou shalt cleanse the altar by making an atonement for it.” This original act of consecration was done by Moses. Verse 24 makes this clear, who was acting as God’s prophet and mediator. This occasion alone saw the use of the high priestly garments, except on the annual Day of Atonement. Otherwise, these robes remained for use at the next high priest consecration. Now, that is offensive to the modern mind. Very, very costly garments used once a year and then once in a lifetime. Because this was a God-ordained rite, the true consecration was also from God, not from the rite itself. True ritual points beyond man and time, and derives its validity and power from God, not from man.

In verse 36 again, the reference to cleansing the altar means to free the altar from sin. This idea is a difficult one for modern man, who tends to believe that he himself is good unless he robs or murders someone. Sin is seen, therefore, simply as an act, whereas scripture makes clear that it is much more. Before sin is an act, it is a condition. It is the nature of man and his world. In a fallen world, sin is inherent in the moral condition of all things. Not only is sin the condition of man and his world, but death is also. The evidence and precursor of death is sickness, and sickness is endemic to our world and affects all of us. The altar is freed from sin by consecration even as we are. It is equally wrong to limit sin to our environment as it is to limit it to man alone. Man cannot, however, blame his sin on the environment because the world is under a curse because of man’s sin. The altar, of course, was an inanimate object. But it was made of materials belonging to a fallen, sinful world. Like man, and like all the rest of creation, the altar must be transferred from a realm of sin to a realm of freedom under God, a realm signifying the fullness of the kingdom of God.

According to verse 34, any food from the rite of consecration which remained uneaten was to be destroyed. It could not be given to strangers, here meaning non-priests, but neither could it be eaten on the second day by the priests themselves. As John Gill pointed out, this meant that the priests were to live upon the daily provisions made for them. In other words, God’s servants are to be provided for. How seriously God views this can be seen in a very blunt, a very telling story in 1 Kings 7:8-16. Elijah, in a time of famine, is commanded by God to go and stay with a widow, Zarephath. He finds her on the brink of starvation, with only enough for one meal for herself and her son before they die. She had planned it for their last mean. Elijah commands that she prepare it for him, which she does, giving priority to God’s prophet over herself and her son. As a result, one of the Bible’s greatest miracles followed, whereby the widow and her son were preserved. Now such an incident is alien to a culture which is not God-centered, but man-centered. But God makes clear that his servants are to be daily provided for by His people. In Paul’s words, “even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.” That those who are teachers within the Christian fold rank after apostles and prophets. Now apostles and prophets are not continuing offices, which means that Paul declares that those who teach the premises of the faith are to be ranked most high. The question thus is one of focus.

In the modern world, we have a very warped focus. It centers upon man and the state, and the result has been the steady enslavement of man. Man gains neither courage nor wisdom by serving the state, only by serving God. Humanistic statism gives a false focus to man’s life. As a result, it warps man’s being. There’s an interesting fact about the priests and Levites, and the Levites were teachers. Because in the Bible, they were very, very poor, in times of faithlessness, because then people neither tithed nor sacrificed. In times of faith, the priests and the Levites flourished, as did justice and instruction.

Now there is an aspect to this rite of consecration which commentators have ignored for centuries. It so militates against our time and against the view of men now, they simply pass over it. During the seven days of consecration, the priests were to eat their communal meal by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, according to verse 32. This was to be done whether or not it was a time of plenty or of scarcity. But consider the implications of that. In our time, this would be considered offensive by many, many people. It would mean that there, in public view, under an awning, the high priest and the priests would be eating royally, where people could see them, where God ordained that people could see it. Could you imagine that today in an age of envy. What God has here ordained is an affront to man and his envy, a radical and total insult to the man of envy. God, however, requires that this excellent meal be served where all who were near the tabernacle could see it, and it was a time of importance, a time where there would be great throngs there. This was God-ordained. It was in defiance and in contempt for man’s sin of envy. But today, envy of anyone who is in a superior position or better off is routine. But God said, there had to be an open celebration of His bounty for His servants. In terms of 1 Corinthians 9:12-14, this means that Christian teachers, or scholars, ministers, missionaries, Christian school teachers, musicians, and others must be provided for if God’s blessing is to be with the people. And yet, the common attitude is that they are the ones who should sacrifice, get by with on less.

So, what we have here is an actual meal, and also an enacted parable, whose purpose it was to compel people to see life in terms of God’s purposes. God is not gentle with our sins. The whole weight of the law is that God is very blunt, and His judgment is very real upon sin, and here, we have the sin of envy openly condemned. God’s ways are past our finding out. They are in defiance of man’s sin. This passage, as I indicated, has not been dealt with for more than a couple of centuries. It tells us something about our age, that it tells us something as to why we need this passage, because we have come to the point where envy is legislated by law, and anything which works against envy is seen as supposedly morally evil. Men have made good evil, and evil good, and God’s judgment is upon all such. Let us pray.

Oh Lord, our God, thy word is truth and thy word speaks to our condition, to our sin, to our envy, to all that needs correcting. Give us grace to hear all thy word, every jot and tittle thereof, that we might be conformed to thy word, to thy requirements. Grant us thy spirit in ever increasing power that we may be changed, made whole by thy grace, cleansed of envy, and be filled with the spirit of community, grace, and love in Jesus Christ. In His name we pray. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Do I understand that there is a separate office for a teacher and its give to the church universal as opposed to say, and elder in a church local?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, Calvin was very, very strong on that point, and in the forthcoming Chalcedon report, there will be an article precisely on what Calvin held here, and it has been a area where the church has been derelict, increasingly so, so that today, those who are theologians are not theologians in any biblical sense. They are imitation humanist scholars for the most part, and they follow the accreditation standards and academic traditions of the world of humanistic universities. In my Necessity for a Systematic Theology, I dealt at some length with the failure of the seminaries at this point. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience] I was curious about your statement that the office of prophet was not a continuing one. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul seems to say that the gift of prophesy is one that should be sought after as being one of the highest gifts {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The word prophet is used in two senses, both in the New Testament and in the Old. It means those who, by the power of God and His Spirit, are enabled to speak for God, to give scriptures, to predict, and then it means those who are preachers, as in Elisha and his school of the prophets. So, in the New Testament, it at times refers to those who had a special office, like apostles, and were for a time only, and those who were preachers of the word. So, the context determines the meaning. These men, for example, in Elisha’s school of the prophets, as well as those in Samuel’s day, were not prophets in the sense that, say Elisha, and Elijah, and Isaiah were. They were preachers, and the same is true in the New Testament. We have a distinction there. Yes?

[Audience] Well, we live in such an organizational period. People think of teachers as connected with a particular school.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, it’s been reduced to an academic dimension, and the academic dimension is destructive. When it predominates, you have the reign of the nit-pickers and of those who want to limit relevance to what they consider important. As a result, you have studies now of the Middle Ages which eliminate the fact that it was Christianity which had the most powerful impact on that era. The same is being done to the Reformation era. It’s seen in terms of economics, politics, and other things as though the faith had no relevance to what happened. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee for thy word and we thank thee for thy saving power. We thank thee that it is thy will that shall be done, that the envy of men shall be confounded, that the malice of men shall be destroyed. Thy righteousness, thy justice shall prevail. Make us joyful in the things that are of thee, that we may all the days of our lives serve thee and rejoice in all thy ways. 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