Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Golden Calf I

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Golden Calf I

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 112

Dictation Name: RR171BH112

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh to you. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that thou who dost inhabit the heaven of heavens has chosen to make thy place in our lives, in our hearts, in our homes, and in our children. We give thanks unto thee for thy grace and mercy unto us. Day after day, thy mercies are new every morning. Make us ever joyful in thee, give us grace to serve thee with all our heart, mind, and being, and to know that greater is He that is with us and in us than he that is in the world. Our God, we thank thee. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is from Exodus 32:1-14. Exodus 32:1-14. The Golden Calf. The first of three studies of this particular subject. “And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the Lord. And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves: they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people: Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation. And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever. And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.”

This is one of the best known episodes in the Bible. It has provided men over the centuries with very apt images for describing the evils of their times. The golden calf, a bull calf, is a fertility cult object, and it is worshiped with sexual rites. We see this in verse 6 where we are told that the people, after eating and drinking, rose up to play. The word translated from the Hebrew as “play” can have an innocent meaning. It is a word for laughter, but it is also a word used in a sexual sense, as in Genesis 26:8. Isaac was sporting, or playing, with Rebekkah, his wife. It is here, in Exodus 32:1-14, clearly used in the fertility cult sense of sexual activity.

In time of stress, men have commonly turned to sex as an escape from the feeling of impotence. On April 20, 1906, a devastating earthquake struck San Francisco. Aftershocks terrified the entire Bay area. In Oakland, people expected a like disaster. According to Walter J. Peterson, then Oakland’s Chief of Police, he was ordered to open up the houses of prostitution on demand and he said, all day long and at night, men were lined up for blocks waiting in front of the houses. Fertility rites are man’s way of asserting that as against the powers of God and His universe. Man has links and controls over the potencies of nature.

On this occasion, Moses was gone for some time. The mountain quaked and lightening and thunder were all around the camp. The people’s recourse was to a kind of practice they knew in Egypt. Aaron, as next in authority to Moses, was confronted by a people who rejected Moses contemptuously and they said, “Make us gods, which shall go before us.” Give us a religion which will serve us, and better agree with our needs and experiences. Christianity, biblical faith, does not agree with us. It disagrees with our nature. It requires our surrender. Well, if Adam’s premise in Genesis 3:6 is correct and man is indeed his own god, his own source of law and morality and all definition, then religion is a human product, but if not, then we have to do with a living God.

Well, in terms of their humanistic premises, the Israelites would see their deliverance from Egypt, the plagues, the Red Sea crossing, and much more as a confluence of natural forces which favored them. I recall very vividly a soldier on leave during World War 2 describe an incident when he and others faced certain death. He screamed out in an intense prayer and promises to God. He alone was spared of all those around him. When asked if he were now a Christian he laughed, and he said he had been lucky and it was nothing more. Well, that was the attitude of Israel.

In all of this, of course, Aaron is a submissive accomplice. Nothing is said at all about any protest on his part. Not only is Aaron cooperative, but he apparently tried to blend the fertility cult worship of the bull calf with Jehovah worship, trying in his cowardice to salvage something. He called the golden bull calf their delivering god and in verse 5, refers to him as Jehovah. His assumption is that blending something of God in this evil will make it somehow less evil and somewhat good, which is a very, very false premise.

In verse 2, Aaron commands the men to bring him the earrings of gold used by their wives, their sons, and their daughters. For us, the inclusion of sons comes as a surprise. However, in many cultures, this was commonplace, because an earring was a mark of being under authority and boys were under authority to their fathers. Christian cultures have normally avoided this practice because the boy is not a slave and it is men slaves who wear earrings, but a future man of authority.

Well, we are told that they celebrated the new god, the golden calf, with offerings and then with sexual rites. Fertility cult rites stress man’s continuity of being with the powers of the universe, whereas the Bible stressed discontinuity. As Ecclesiastes 3:14 says, “I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever. Nothing can be put to it, added to it, nor anything taken from it, and God doeth it that men should fear before him.” Basic to the fertility cult is the insistence that the key to power is in man’s hands.

God tells Moses what is happening in the camp. The Israelites had earlier worshiped at alien shrines in Egypt, Joshua reminds them later. They had not been delivered because of their faithfulness, but because of God’s covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God describes Israel as a stick-necked people. The two words in Hebrew for stiff-necked mean obstinate and impudent of neck. Moses, as mediator, does not deny God’s charges. He was himself very familiar with Israel’s evil ways. Although God offers to make Moses a great nation in Israel’s place, Moses, in his answer, does not concern himself either with Israel’s welfare or his own posterity. Instead, Moses’ concern is with God’s covenant, and the covenant witness to an ungodly world.

In verse 14, the word “repented,” God repented, conveys to us in modern English an erroneous meaning. In Hewey’s words, and I quote, “The Hebrew word for repentance as used of God in the Old Testament does not imply that God makes mistakes and later acknowledges His error. The word conveys only the idea of grief or sorrow that leads to a different course of action.” It is of interest that, not only did Aaron make an excuse for what he had done, that there are scholars who have since made excuses for him also. Umberto Kasuto held that because images are forbidden in worship by the Ten Commandments, Aaron made not a golden calf, but a vacant throne for God, and then he made the calf to satisfy the need of the multitude to see at least a tangible symbol of the divine presence. For so able of a scholar as Kasuto, this was a very, very lame kind of statement. According to Hertz, Aaron was a lover of peace. He decided resistance was futile, and so he complied with the people’s demands. However, Hertz did add that this was no excuse.

In this episode, both the people and Moses are tested, and only Moses comes through as faithful. What was demanded by the people was some visible manifestation to provide them with a very, very present evidence of religion. We have a like demand in every age in every sphere. There are not a few who have made a golden calf of their church in order to have a visible evidence of power, but the state is usually the most common golden calf.

According to Deuteronomy 9:20, it was only the intercession of Moses that saved Aaron from God’s death sentence. Moses Abberbach has called attention to the fact, and he is a Jew, that this episode has been an embarrassment to Jews and some Rabbis have blamed this apostasy on the mixed multitude. That is, the foreigners in their midst. Supposedly, the number of these foreigners was 40,000-some people. However, these were small numbers against the two million plus Hebrews. Josephus never mentions this episode in his very detailed history, for fear apparently that the Romans would use it against the Jews. The Christians very early, however, made use of it against the Jews, as witnessed Stephen in Acts 7:41-52 a legitimate use, but many made illegitimate use. Some churchmen held that this golden calf episode invalidated the covenant with Israel, which is not true because it was immediately renewed. There were rabbis who used this story over the century to summon Israel to repentance. Israel they said, and Moses Abberbach was one, behaved like a shameless bride who plays the harlot within her bridal canopy. As I said, this story has been used over the centuries and applied to a number of eras in history. Well, the relevance of this story to our time is very, very clear as we shall see in the next two weeks. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank thee for thy word and thy patience with thy people then, and with us now. Thy saving power, thy mercy to mankind is all of grace, and we praise thee. We thank thee. Make us faithful to thy word, joyful in thy salvation, and ever-obedient in thy service. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] I hear some discussion these days, there has been I guess for many years about prayer changing God’s mind. This episode, and a later one in history of Israel suggests that prayer is able to change God’s mind. How do you reconcile that with God’s immutability or {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, there is an element of truth in that statement, however, the better way to phrase it is God changes things. It isn’t prayer per se, it is God, and the Reformed thinkers have objected at times at the prevalence of the Armenian phrasing because it shifts the power to change from God to man. We are commanded to pray. Now there is a difference between a command to pray, a duty to pray, and a belief that it is our prayer that is effectual. Let’s put it this way: As children we have a duty and an obligation of love to talk to our parents and to make our wants and wishes known. When we ask for something, it’s not our asking that brings something, but our parent’s judgment, their wisdom. So, there is a very important difference there. I think perhaps the best aphorism concerning prayer that puts things in a proper light is the one, “Why pray when you can worry?” You see? That puts the finger on it. Whether we get the answer we want or not, when we pray we are in communication with God, and we receive His grace even if we don’t receive what we ask for. But, the effect on us is a lasting one, whatever the answer, because we are in communication with God, in touch with His power and in His spirit.

So, we have a problem in our time in that with the law removed in the thinking of many, prayer has, in the minds of some, taken its place, and it cannot. Nor can the law take the place of prayer. You see, it’s not a case of either/or, but both. We are very definitely told some remarkable things about prayer. For example, “The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” Now it doesn’t say it prevails, but it avails. Now there’s a subtle difference but a very important one. There’s a world of difference between prevailing and availing.

Now, an interesting thing, too, in that verse in James is that we are not told it’s prayer by the gross. “Let’s get 500 people or 1,000 to pray from coast to coast, and maybe it’ll do something.” Well, it will, to those who pray if they truly pray, but the effectual prayer of a righteous man, singular, availeth much, and we are told of the tremendous impact of one man’s prayer, Elijah. Now, there’s a very important point in that verse, in James, because it’s usually misused, very grossly misused, because most people cite it when they’re trying to get something from God in terms of themselves, or in terms of the community, or the church. But what did he pray for? Judgment upon his own people. A drought. That’s what Elijah prayed for and he got it. So, this tells us something about prayer, it has to be God-centered. Elijah didn’t say, “Lord, I’ve had a hard life. I’ve been on the go constantly, I’ve never had a wife or children, I don’t even sometimes eat properly. Provide for me.” He didn’t do that. He prayed for a judgment on an ungodly people. I think one of the reasons for the impotence of a great deal of prayer in our time is that we don’t pray in terms of “Thy will be done.” What is God’s will, for an age like ours? Well, we need to pray for judgment on those who will not repent and who pursue their courses, and that those who will that He speedily bring them to a saving knowledge of Christ. You see, the focal point of prayer has to be “Thy will be done, thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” That’s thy the Lord’s Prayer begins with that prayer and it concludes, “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,” so prayer should begin and end with that God-centered emphasis.

I think the modern age brought in the prayer by the gross mentality and I think it has been a part of the democratic spirit. In other words, majorities vote in presidents and governors and congressmen. “Well, if we can get enough people to pray, if we get a majority or a sufficient number, maybe it’ll register.” But it isn’t like voting. The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. A righteous man. Well, the word “righteous” is the same word in the Hebrew that we have in English also as justice. It means justice or righteousness. So, what was the drift of his prayer? Let God’s justice be done. An apostate people worshiping other gods, an apostate people that shows nothing but contempt for God, that persecutes His servants. Judgment should come upon them.

So, this is the direction that prayer should have, and we certainly have a world that is ripe for judgment, and I think if we don’t have the mind of God as we pray in these things and in this age, we’re going to be under that same judgment, because we’re asking God to shower blessings upon our time, when it’s been the impotence of Christians and of the church that’s led to this crisis. I like the statement, I think Mark Twain reprinted it when the chaplain of the senate, this was more than 100 years ago, was asked how he could pray in the senate as chaplain, and he said, “I look at the senate and then I pray for the country.” Well, it would have helped if he had asked for judgment on the senate as well, because there was a particularly corrupt senate at the time. Are there any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience] The church I grew up in, we always had something called a congregational prayer, and it was when all the needs of the body were brought together, and I remember thinking, you know ,“This is really kind of boring, and it’s so long,” but I always understood how terribly important that was. Was that overstated then?

[Rushdoony] Could you repeat that? I’m not sure I . . .

[Audience] The church had, every Sunday, every service, both services, something called a congregational prayer where the church prayed as a body for all the needs and not just in the church but in the nation, too. And it was a long thing, and it was hard to sit still through it, but I remember thinking it was so very, very important that this body be praying together. Did I overestimate the importance?

[Rushdoony] No. Now, what, I think that’s important, and we used to, when we had a prayer meeting, have a type of prayer that is almost forgotten now, and I think it would be good to restore it for a few minutes at the conclusion of meetings or before our services when we begin formally in the new building. Bidding prayers, in other words, all the needs of the people are set forth whether verbally or on a piece of paper, and then when the time comes, about five or ten minutes, or longer as the case may be in the needs. Then the pastor says, “We have such- and-such a need in the congregation, let us all bow our heads in prayer for this, silently, and let so-and-so conclude with a minute prayer in conclusion. Then let us pray for this-or-that need internationally or nationally, or we have such-and-such sick persons.” In other words, everyone prays silently for a minutes, and then usually one of the elders concludes that particular petition with his prayer on that. And this type of prayer organizes and focuses the prayer on a particular need and on general needs, and I do believe that that time of bidding prayer, as it used to be called, needs to be revived. Yes?

[Audience] In the scripture that says, “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am,” what’s the distinction between someone praying on their own as opposed to corporately with two or more? Is there a distinction there?

[Rushdoony] The whole point of that is that Christ is with His people. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” The early church met in families, in homes. Their numbers were limited because they could not attract attention to themselves, they were an illegal organization. Ten or twenty in most small homes, it would be a larger home like that of Aquila and Pricilla, who were wealthy, that could accommodate more without attracting attention. So, our Lord makes clear that he is present wherever anyone comes together in His name, whether as an formal church or as an informal meeting. That does not mean that it takes the two or three to make a prayer valid. So, that has to do with the presence of God with His people when they are united either to worship Him or to do His will. Any other questions or comments? Well, we shall continue the next two Sundays with the golden calf episode, which is one of very, very great importance, because the, well, we’ll go into that in the next two weeks rather than touching on it ahead of time. Let us conclude now with prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee that thy word speaks to our every need, commands us, orders our lives, gives light to our feet, and provides us with the nourishment for our being. Make us ever joyful and faithful and obedient to thy word. And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape.