Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Golden Calf III

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Golden Calf III

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 114

Dictation Name: RR171BJ114

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. This is the confidence that we have in Him, that is we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. Having these promises, let us draw near to the throne of grace with true hearts in full assurance of faith. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord. In the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee and will look up. Let us pray.

O Lord, our God, we come into thy presence again, mindful of how great our need is, and how much greater thy blessings, thy patience with us, and thy continuing mercy. We pray, our Father, that thou wouldst undertake for us and give us strength, faith and courage to undertake for thee, to bring all areas of life and thought into captivity for Christ, that He may reign king of kings and Lord of Lords. In His name we pray. Amen.

Our scripture is Exodus 32:30-35. Our subject for the third and last time: The Golden Calf. Exodus 32:30-35. “And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses said unto the people, Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the Lord; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin. And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. And the Lord said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book. Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them. And the Lord plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made.”

The golden calf made by Aaron at the people’s demand was made out of the earrings of the women. In those days and until fairly recently, all women wore earrings, just as they wore hats, and it meant they were under authority, they were under the protection of a man. John Urquhart{?} calculated the amount of gold involved if only one million women in the camp contributed each two earrings at one eighth of an ounce aber{?}. This would mean seven thousand eight hundred and twelve pounds, or nearly three and a half tons of gold. This is why some of the earlier painters depict the golden calf as a towering and imposing image. More recent pictures as well as more recent scholars are determined to make it just a tiny thing because they refuse to believe there was that much gold in the camp, but all that we know about Antiquity tells us that gold was prized. Women commonly carried the family gold around their neck, on their belt, and in other ways, and the amount was considerable.

Israel was, no doubt, abashed by its sin, but because they did not take God too seriously, they did not take their sin seriously either. In spite of the daily manna, they had arrogantly chosen to revel in a fertility cult rite and practices. It is Moses who takes their sin seriously and fearfully. Will God set Israel aside? Will He deal with Israel as He dealt with Egypt? On the next day, as Moses prepared to again go up the mountain, he reminds the people that “ye have sinned a great sin.” Will God be ready to forgive them?

Moses recognizes that death is the penalty for sin, and he wants to cover Israel’s sin, to make atonement for them. Moses is ready to die in Israel’s place if God will accept him. If God will not forgive Israel, then, says Moses, take my life, because all I have done is then in vain. The reference to God’s book is to the book of the living, as in Psalm 69:28 or to the Book of Life in Isaiah 4:3. This is, in part, a metaphor for the world of living men, but there’s more to that phrase and we will come back to it. God does not answer Moses directly. He says simply, “Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.” This is the very same premise as in God’s statement to Ezekiel centuries later. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Sooner or later, all will pay for their sins. Those who participated and those who stood silently by.

By the time of the crossing of the Jordan, only two mature men remained of those who left Egypt forty years earlier; Joshua and Caleb. The rest had proved faithless and had died. The people had not changed. They had been taken out of Egypt as slaves, but slavery had not been taken out o their nature, and we see this over and over again in history among nations, and among churches. More than one church that is in apostasy has a separation, a division, and one party goes off to start a new church, supposedly pure. But as so often happens, they are so accustomed to the license in the old church, that they’re unwilling to be disciplined in the new. Israel, again and again, given the least opportunity showed its ingratitude and rebellion. Thus, where only 3,000 had been put to death, but step by step, one judgment after another would take its toll. The people were not told that this would be the case. As Joseph Parker observed more than a century ago about this incident, the thing nearest life is death. In the midst, in the minds of men, they are always in the midst of life. They don’t think of death. They see death as far away, something remote, but it is always a breath away.

Although God spares Israel from immediate judgment, He begins for the rest of the life of that generation to separate himself from them. His angel of the presence, God the Son, He says, will go with Israel. God the Father will then visit them only to judge them. In verse 35, we are told that the Lord plagued the people at this time, and this was one of a number of judgments to follow. [

Now to return to the Book of the Living or the Book of Life, which is referred to in verses 32 and 33. It has a very important meaning and we will now turn to that. The idea of a Book of Life is an ancient one and it has reference to a citizenship register. Those who are citizens in a country in Antiquity had their name entered in a register, in a roll, and to be blotted out to that was to be blotted out of life as far as their people were concerned, and it could mean death as well in some instances. Citizenship meant status and recognition as a person. It meant that a man was free, not a slave. To be a citizen meant the protection of the law in most countries of Antiquity, and the foreigner had no such assurance. In Israel, citizenship meant membership in God’s covenant of grace and law. It depended on faith and the covenant God, and obedience to the covenant law. To break the law meant destroying one’s covenant membership or citizenship.

American law still retains remotely this idea and that anyone who has on his record a conviction for a crime, thereby nullifies his citizenship. There are moves steadily to eliminate this fact. In fact, under Pat Brown, there was a measure on the ballot to eliminate the destruction of a convict’s status as a citizen. But, it did not succeed, of course. To be out of the Book of Life means to be God’s enemy and it means to be punished accordingly. Circumcision was, in those days, entrance into citizenship and now it is baptism. Entrance into the covenant, registry on the roll of the Book on the Living, or the Book of Life, requires the duty of law keeping and the duty of law protection. This is why antinomianism is a denial of the covenant.

In Antiquity, for example, as far back as Ur of the Chaldees from whence Abraham came, defending one’s country was the privilege only of free men. Only a free man, a citizen, had the privilege of being a soldier, because it was their realm and their freedom which was at stake, and they refused to allow anyone who was a slave to fight because they did not feel that he had as much at stake.

Violation of one’s citizenship, or in the case of God’s covenant, meant the forfeiture of one’s share in the land, or his life, or both. Now that brings up a very important point, which again we’ve abandoned. You could not own land in a country in Antiquity, and for a long time thereafter, unless you were a citizen of that country. No foreign ownership, except of an embassy.

Well, this fact makes understandable the times of Israel’s bondage to foreign powers, the Babylonian captivity, and the destruction of Jerusalem and Judea by the Romans in the war of 66 to 70 AD. They had destroyed their citizenship, and therefore, God drove them out of the land. This also makes clear why the nations of the world today are now facing a time of judgment and possible dispossession and death.

In brief, citizenship in the Bible was not nor is ever a right. It is rather a gift of grace. It requires obedience to the law to maintain it, and to abuse it is to invite God’s judgment. Philippians 3:20 in the authorized version reads, “Our conversation is in heaven from whence also we look for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ.” The word conversation there has lost its very ancient meaning, and it means “talking.” It has a remote meaning of communion, but its real meaning in the Greek and in the original, of the English, is “our citizenship is in heaven,” or our commonwealth is in heaven. It has reference to a kingdom and a realm, therefore to the king and a body of law. To be a Christian meant, in the early church, to be a citizen of the kingdom of God, a member of his covenant, and to have one’s name written in the Book of Life.

Again, this helps us to understand the architecture of the tabernacle and the temple, and of the early church. We have seen that the early church saw the sanctuary as a throne room for Christ the King, and therefore, from the earliest days, it had to be glorious and beautiful. The church building celebrated the glory of the great king, and the joyful privilege of citizenship. Christians were citizens of no mean city.

Moses, in saying, “Blot me out of the Book of Life if you will not forgive Israel’s sins,” was saying that he had failed if Israel failed. He had provided poor leadership, but this is wrong. It is wrong for leaders to assume that the failure of their people are their failures also, and this is a sin that parents are prone to. Their children can be a disappointment despite the finest upbringing. Self-condemnation is then wrong. God says each soul will be judged in terms of their own sins. None can blame their parents, but in this Freudian era, parents automatically feel “where did I go wrong?” Self-condemnation is the wrong.

God answers this by declaring the responsibility of each person for himself. “Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.” Personal responsibility is basic to the covenant and its law. As men and nations depart from God’s law, they also deny true responsibility. Strange concepts of liability then prevail, and environmental causes are seen as the reasons for crime. At the same time, citizenship becomes more and more empty of meaning, and church membership becomes a trifling matter. Then, the blotting time comes. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee for thy word. We thank thee that thy judgments are true and righteous altogether, that thou would cleanse the nations and the churches of all ungodliness, and thy kingdom will, in due time, stand in all its righteousness. Make us joyful in thee, and faithful in thy service. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now on our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] I’ve come across instances in my life, in the army and various places, where an individual who did something wrong, the entire group that he was in was punished, and conversely, if one individual wanted to step up and take the blame for the group. For instance, prisons {?} I was assigned to guard prisoners at one time, and I was told that if this prisoner escaped that I would have to serve his time, and a similar thing exists in the California penal code, that if a, for law enforcement officers, is this a, would you say that this is a, God’s law here, that you cannot assume another person’s guilt?

[Rushdoony] That’s a very important question. The practice you have referred to is a very ancient one. As far back as we go in Antiquity, we find that military laws said that if one person in a regiment had been guilty of something, everybody had to suffer, and the rationale has been that a military group is one body, and therefore, if they protect the wrongdoer, they are endangering not only the whole group, but the future of whatever cause it is, and so on that rationale, that the military group represents a single entity, this type of thing has prevailed and it has transferred into a few other areas, as law enforcement. So, the key point is, is it valid to think of them as one body? Well, there are grounds for that, where under exceptional circumstances, a group has to be viewed not only as individuals, but as a corporate entity, as one body. We have this in law. When a corporation does something, every shareholder suffers. If a huge penalty of, say a couple hundred million is levied against the corporation, so the point there is not to nullify personal responsibility but to enforce it, and to bring home to the corporate body the personal responsibility each have to make sure that the body functions properly. So, that’s the rationale behind that.

[Audience] Apparently with the environmental movement, the environmental is when it’s {?} corporate, heads of corporations who had nothing to do with, like an oil spill or something, I mean the guy that, I’m sure that runs Exxon would have preferred that the Valdez did not run aground and dump a lot of profit in the water, they want to put him in prison.

[Rushdoony] Well, what the environmentalists are doing is to destroy the concept of responsibility, because they are destroying the distinction between what in law has been known as Acts of God and Acts of Man. When you have a godly society, you recognize that there are certain things that are beyond control. We’re not perfect. We cannot have a total culpability because there are things that are, that happen that are beyond our control. So, that we cannot anticipate weather conditions or the failure of a Coast Guard, or the fact that the Coast Guard, as in Alaska because of the weather, its signals could not be seen, so you have an accident, that’s an Act of God. But when you deny God, you’re going to say the corporation or the individual is totally liable, and you allow for no accidents, and then you treat the individual as though, or the corporation as though they were God, as though they could be totally responsible for everything, but man cannot have a total responsibility because there’s too much he can’t anticipate. So, our responsibility is for our wrongdoing, not for what happens that we’re not responsible for. Do you get the distinction there?

[Audience] Willful acts of an individual, they’re wrong they’re comfortable, they can’t be transferred. {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. And with the modern environmentalism and the courts as well, they’re destroying that sense of responsibility. Oil spills, for example, such as in Alaska, the {?} cry over that, and there were conditions that made it impossible to blame anyone, and there’s no question with all the publicity, the captain of the Valdez did not have too good a chance for a fair trial, but when the evidence came out in the courtroom, and it was not much publicized, he was acquitted, and at the same time, nothing was told the public about the fact that the salmon catch there was a record one, and that there are many, many marine plants and animals that feed on oil, so that wherever there is oil seepage on the ocean floor, you’ll have all kinds of life attracted to that point. Oil is an organic substance, but all we were told was of the limited number of birds that died, or were injured, and the rocks that were blackened, and the rest was withheld from us. Yes?

[Audience] Were you trying to say that God was rejecting the idea of a human Messiah when He turned down Moses’ offer to die for the people?

[Rushdoony] I didn’t get that.

[Audience] Were you trying to say that God rejected the idea of a human Messiah when He turned down Moses’ offer to die for the people?

[Rushdoony] No, that doesn’t come into it, because when he says, “Take my life,” he is saying, “I have failed. If they die, I need to die. I have failed as their leader.” He was claiming too much responsibility. When he said he would go up to see if he could make atonement with God, to see in some way what God would require, 3,000 had been killed. What more would He want? What more should be done to make atonement? What sacrificed should be made? So, being blotted out was having his citizenship revoked also, because God had earlier said, “I’ll destroy them and make a great nation of you,” and now he was saying, “I don’t want to live if the people for whom I have done all this are not going to have a future,” but as it turned out, they did but it was their children who did, not they except for Caleb and Joshua. 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 that, by the grace of thy Son, Jesus Christ, we have a citizenship in heaven and our names are on the Book of Life. Make us joyful in our service, therefore, in the exercise of our citizenship to the end that thou mayest be served in every area of life. 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.