Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Spirit-Filled Men

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Spirit-Filled Men

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 110

Dictation Name: RR171BG110

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Seeing that we have a great high priest that has passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us come therefore boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Let us pray.

We praise thee, O God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. We thank thee that all things come from thee, and in thy wisdom, thou dost overrule the worst that this world and man can do unto us, to bring forth good for us and for thy kingdom. Teach us, day by day, to walk in this confidence. Make us more than conquerors in Christ. Give us hope and joy as we face all things, knowing that greater is He that is with us and in us than he that is in the world. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Our scripture is Exodus 31:1-11. Our subject: The Spirit-Filled Men. Exodus 31:1-11. “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: and I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship. And I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan: and in the hearts of all that are wise hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have commanded thee; the tabernacle of the congregation, and the ark of the testimony, and the mercy seat that is thereupon, and all the furniture of the tabernacle, and the table and his furniture, and the pure candlestick with all his furniture, and the altar of incense, and the altar of burnt offering with all his furniture, and the laver and his foot, and the cloths of service, and the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons, to minister in the priest's office, and the anointing oil, and sweet incense for the holy place: according to all that I have commanded thee shall they do.”

Before we go into this text, just some of the incidental facts about it: The name Bezaleel means “in the shadow of God,” meaning under God’s protection. He was apparently a young man, and a great-grandson of Caleb, according to 1 Chronicles 2:18-20. He was a descendent of Judah. Aholiab was a name meaning “the father is my tent.” He was a Danite. His name implies clearly that God the Father is his protection and covering. In verse 2, “See, I have called my name Bezaleel.” The term virtually implies predestination, and this is a fact which cannot be overstressed. The enemies of Christianity have too often determined the agenda for discussion, and the subject of predestination has been restricted to election or to salvation or reprobation, and to freewill versus predestination, but we are here told that predestination also has to do with our abilities. Very specifically here it refers to skills in the arts. They are God-ordained. They are an aspect of our calling, so that God is more involved in our skills than we are. To restrict the doctrine of a calling, or of predestination to an ecclesiastical vocation is not biblical.

Now, this is a first reference to the Holy Spirit in relationship to man, and it is a key text in any doctrine of the Holy Spirit. According to verse 6, a number of artisans were called although only two were named. Bezaleel is chosen to be in charge of all the work and Aholiab is the foreman under him. According to Exodus 35:10 and also 25-26, a large number of men and women were called to do the work. Now, it is of a special interest and importance that their skills are called by God in his word “wisdom.” In Proverbs, the references to wisdom identify it with the spirit of God. All skills represent a form of wisdom, and all skills come into their own in the service of God.

Joseph Parker, more than a century ago, called attention to some very important implications of this text. He said that God builds everything with an eye to beauty. Therefore, he said, God would have everything built beautifully. Furthermore, not only will God build everything beautifully, His purpose is to have everything built for religious uses, which is not the same thing as ecclesiastical uses. Also, and very important, Parker said, and I will quote, “God will not have the building put up as an expression of mere sentiment, otherwise he would be assisting the cause of idolatry.” Moreover, as Parker pointed out, labor is churched and glorified in our text.

Now, in verses 7-11, we have a summary of things committed to these men for construction. Each of these items is very specifically described previously in earlier chapters. Thus, the conception was from God, the execution was by men. The modern doctrines of art see things differently. Conception is seen exclusively as the artist’s prerogative as well as the execution. According to the historian, John Larner, and I quote, “Until the later Medieval period, virtually all work produced by painters, stone masons, goldsmiths and woodworkers was undertaken under contract in response to the specific demand of a patron, whether an individual, a cathedral chapter, or a commune, the patron generally stipulated in detail the character of the work required from the artist. Paintings and sculpture were not made by men hoping, at some future time, to find a purchaser of their wares, but were created for one particular occasion and place.”

There was thus far more than the individual of the artist involved. There was the faith of the community, the wisdom or skill of the artisan, and the purposes of those who commissioned the work. In the modern perspective, the will of the individual artist is sometimes all that matters, not surprisingly, precisely as the artist in the modern era began to see himself as the priest and the prophet of a new age. He also began to lose relevance to the world around him. His art became an exclusively private vision. Those who are still governed by the greatest determinant, Christian faith, are still the most relevant. There is a difference between entering a Medieval church, for example, and a Frank Lloyd Wright building. The church has a universal meaning. A Wright structure, a personal, limited and sometimes quirky significance.

One of our problems with this text is that the Spirit of God is here very plainly associated with artistic skills which are called wisdom, but the common belief in our time associates the Holy Spirit with ecstatic utterances. This is not the common aspect of the Spirit’s work through men. Several generations ago, Gustav Oehler commented on the Holy Spirit with regard to this, and his remarks are very important, and I quote at some length, “God reveals himself in the heart of men by His Spirit, which as the Spirit of revelation corresponds to the cosmical in the same way as the word of revelation corresponds to the word of creation. As the principle of cosmical life, as the mighty divine force of all things, the spirit is the principle of the life of man’s soul, and every natural intellectual gift is traced back to it. Joseph’s wisdom, Bezaleel’s skill in art, and so on. In the Old Testament, the spirit’s work in the divine kingdom is rather that of endowing the organs of the theocracy for the gifts required for their calling, and those gifts of office in the Old Testament are similar to the gifts of grace in the New Testament, according to 1 Corinthians 12 following. In the Pentateuch, its working appears exclusively in this connection. The Spirit bestows on Moses and the seventy elders the skill to guide the people. Also to Joshua, and works at a later period in the judges, arousing and strengthening them, and comes on the kings who were called of God at their anointing. As the spirit of revelation, he produces in particular the gifts of prophesy and even imparts the ability to prophesy to the heathen Balaam, by which he is made an organ of the revealing God against his will. On the contrary, the spirit does not appear in the Pentateuch as the principle of sanctification in the pious. This is first spoken of in the Psalms.”

Now this is a very important statement, because in the modern perspective, the Holy Spirit is seriously limited, but it is clear that the Holy Spirit has a more general as well as a more specific place in our lives and in our world than is generally recognized. The doctrine of vocation or calling must be seen as essentially related to the Holy Spirit. We are therefore not alone. Whatever our gifts or vocation, however great or small, we are the instruments of the Holy Spirit. To limit the Spirit’s manifestations in our lives to dramatic or ecstatic experiences is to limit very seriously our relationship to Him. He is very much present in our daily tasks, and we have a duty to recognize His presence and power.

Just as the modern artist works out of himself in the totally personal frame of reference, so also the modern Christian too often works in a radically subjective context. He tries to limit the Spirit’s operation to the subjective sphere. Thomas Scott’s comment on this text a couple centuries ago reads, in part, and I quote, “The Lord confers His unmerited favors on whom He pleases, but the honor which cometh from Him is always attended with a work to be done, and to be employed by Him is indeed the highest honor and the noblest privilege.” A work to be done. This tells us the purpose of the Spirit’s gifts.

The gifts of the Spirit can be called an empowerment. In 1 Corinthians 4:6, Paul warns the churchmen of Corinth against being puffed up one for another, or one for or against another. Then, in the next verse, 1 Corinthians 4:7, we have Paul’s comment, a very devastating one, and I’m going to read it in both the Authorized version and Moffett’s version to bring out the force{?} more clearly. “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” Again, “Who singles you out, my brother? What do you possess that has not been given you? And if it was given you, why do you boast as if it had been gained, not given?”

But in the modern view, each man is a little god and creator, when our text tells us that the Holy Spirit is the source of our gifts, and neither we nor our gifts are an end in and of themselves. We are God’s creation for His kingdom purposes and there is, in Scott’s words, “A work to be done.” His gifts include a variety of skills, from sculpture to making incense or perfumes. It is across the boards in every area of life. All His gifts are in terms of His kingdom, and for glory and for beauty. Albert Camus{?} wrote, and I quote, “Since God claims all that is good in man, it is necessary to deride what is good and choose what is evil.” Well, as {?} commented to this, the modern artist has led the way in despising the beautiful and exalting the ugly. Because he denies the Lord of glory, his choice is a logical one. Restoration in the arts requires a return to a truly biblical Christian faith.

At the beginning of the modern era, there was a gradual separation underway of the arts and the artists from Christianity. Then, according to Michael Gill, who is not a Christian, and I quote, “The romantic movement began that severance of the innovative artist from the masses which has gone on every since.” First, the severance from Christianity, then the severance from the people, but this is not all. To quote Michael Gill once again, “Like society as a whole, artists have indulged in an orgy of destruction.” God’s world must be denied together with God, and a new world created. This temper was expressed very early by Picasso when he wrote on one of his most characteristic paintings, “Yo, el rey,” (I am the king.) This kind of art is in savage revolt against God’s order, and its art reflects this temper.

One aspect of this revolt is a militant hostility to all that scripture declares, and requires. Thus, what the Bible clearly teaches is that all our skills come from God, they are to be used for His purposes. They are gifts, an aspect of our very creation from the Holy Spirit. The world of modern art recognizes that fact and therefore, it has followed Camus{?}, rejecting the good, the true and the beautiful, anything that is of God, and this we fail to see although the enemy sees it.

At the Portland conference, I thought that John Lofton’s talk was especially telling because he pointed out how the conservative movement, with exceptions like Howard Phillips, a dramatic exception, is really anti-Christian. They are humanists and closer to the left than they are to us, by far, and Christians fail to see this. I had a letter just a couple days ago, a rather distressing one, from someone in South Africa, who said that the people who should be making a stand fail to realize that their ranks are divided, that very quietly a great many people from the top on down are working with the ANC and Mandela not because they like them, but because they like them more than they like Christianity, so a secret war against Christianity is underway. It baffles, it staggers the mind how people will do this sort of thing against their own future, but scripture tells us, “All they that hate me, love death,” and we see this. Whether in the arts, whether in politics, or the church, or any other sphere. Men will not have the gifts God gave them as from God, and so they will seek to undermine God in every kind of order that God establishes. As Camus{?} wrote, “Since God claims all that is good in man, it is necessary to deride what is good and choose what is evil. This tells you why things are happening in the Americas, in Asia, Europe, Africa, everywhere as they are. Men are choosing that which is evil. Choose ye God’s good this day and always. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank thee for thy word and we thank thee that all our gifts, our aptitudes, all that we are, is from thy hand, an aspect of thy predestination to be used for thy glory and thy kingdom. Make us mindful, day by day, that we are here to serve thee, to glorify thee, to rejoice in thee. Overthrow, we beseech thee, these lovers of death and confound them in all their ways. In Christ’s name, amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] There is a revival of realistic painting, you know. And a great many artists have turned against the abstract.

[Rushdoony] Yes, there is, and some of the art magazines are beginning to reflect this. There is also a great deal of hostility to this among the art dealers, so there is a civil war underway in the art world. Yes?

[Audience] You said it was limiting the Holy Spirit to restrict his activity to the extraordinary. Is it also limiting to exclude his operation in the realm of the extraordinary?

[Rushdoony] We cannot limit the Holy Spirit in any area, but as against the extraordinary, throughout the scripture the emphasis is on the day by day power and working of the Holy Spirit. In rare individuals, as in the prophets and in the apostles at times, we have the extraordinary working of the Spirit, but the emphatic point of all scripture is that is total and continued manifestation in our lives is that which we have to emphasize, and when we don’t put the primary emphasis there, we are distorting scripture. Any other questions or comments? We need to recognize, and perhaps on some other occasion we can go into it, that since Hegel, there has been a development of a humanistic doctrine of the spirit; guist as Hegel called it, which manifests itself in the modern state as the incarnation of the spirit of the world, and number of books have been written in the Hegelian vein developing this totally pagan concept of the spirit, and they have drawn on the Ancient Greeks, Romans, and others for many of their ideas as well as Hegelian and Marxists ideas. So, we do have a counter-doctrine of the sprit that has very extensively been developed. Let us now conclude with prayer.

For the gifts of thy Spirit, our Father, we thank thee. We thank thee that we are never alone, that all that we have and are is of thine ordination, thy predestination. Thou hast made us rich at birth, and thou hast given us an even more glorious destiny in Christ Jesus, in time and in eternity. Make us joyful in these things. 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.