Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Altered Plan

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Altered Plan

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 115

Dictation Name: RR171BK115

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. It shall come to pass saith the Lord, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. Jesus saith to his disciples, I will pray the Father and He shall give you another comforter, that He may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it seeth him not, neither knoweth Him. But ye know Him, for He dwelleth with you and shall be in you. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father, we thank thee that thou art our Lord and our Redeemer, that thou hast given us the gift of the Spirit, that He may rule and direct us according to thy holy will, that He may comfort us and strengthen us in all our temptations and afflictions, defend us from all error, and lead us into all truth. Grant that we may be always steadfast in the faith, may abound in love and good works, and in all things serve thee as thy faithful servants, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our scripture is Exodus 33:1-11. Exodus 33:1-11. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Depart, and go up hence, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it: and I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite: unto a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way. And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and no man did put on him his ornaments. For the Lord had said unto Moses, Say unto the children of Israel, Ye are a stiffnecked people: I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee: therefore now put off thy ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee. And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by the mount Horeb. And Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp, afar off from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the congregation. And it came to pass, that every one which sought the Lord went out unto the tabernacle of the congregation, which was without the camp. And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tabernacle, that all the people rose up, and stood every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle. And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses.  And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door. And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.”

Our subject this morning is the altered plan, a very important one. A very important series of books could be written on the influence of various texts on our civilization. No one has attempted to do it. It would be a very major task that would take a generation or two, but this text would certainly deserve an important plan in such a study. We will come back to the meaning of that a little later.

We have in these verses, God’s humiliation of Israel. They had broken His covenant, and very flagrantly so. God would now renew that covenant by His grace and mercy, but without the same favor to Israel. The people were ordered by God to go into mourning for their sins, which they did, we are told in verse 4. They stripped themselves of all ornamentation. Verse 5 makes clear that this was at God’s command. The custom was to wear no ornamentation when mourning in order to indicate some loss, the cause of their sorrow, to indicate that something had, in effect, left their lives poorer. Certainly the loss of God’s signal favor was an impoverishment, but they had to be told that they had been impoverished by their sins. It was God’s order that led to stripping themselves of all ornamentation, whether it be earrings, or rings, or anything ornamental.

The tabernacle was still under construction apparently. The temporary tabernacle was now removed from the center of the camp, by God’s orders, to an area outside the camp. It meant that thereafter, anyone going to worship at the sanctuary had to leave the encampment. It meant a symbolic separation from Israel to the Lord. Thus, the renewal of the covenant, which we will come to in a couple weeks, meant a changed relationship. Israel was still God’s people, but the relationship was now stronger on the personal level. In fact, this temporary sanctuary is identified more with Moses than with Israel. In verse 7 we read, “And Moses took the tabernacle,” more literally it reads, “Moses took his tent.” Again, “and pitched it without the camp,” is “and pitched it without himself, without the camp.”

What Moses did was once called the original secession, a Scottish term. Moses, on God’s behalf, secedes from Israel. The generation of older Israelites who left Egypt are, in effect, excommunicated. They will die in the wilderness, and only Caleb and Joshua will enter the Promised Land. According to verse 11, Joshua remained in the sanctuary. It became his dwelling place, and he was its guard against profanation. Although Aaron and his sons were alive, not they but a non-priest, a man of war, was God’s guardian of the sanctuary. This is interesting. God now felt that His sanctuary had to be protected. Many of us can remember when many churches, in particular Catholic churches, were open twenty-four hours a day, for anyone to go to to pray. In most urban centers at least, that is no longer possible.

God’s partial separation of Himself from Israel was both a judgment on them for their sin and also an act of mercy. Had He remained in their midst, He would have destroyed them, according to verse 3. The angel of the presence would still go before them on their march to Canaan, but God was no longer the center of Israel. In due time, Israel was replaced by a new chosen people, Christ’s congregation. God underscores His separation in part from Israel by opening declaring His closeness to Moses. The cloudy pillar of God’s presence came to the sanctuary door as Moses entered. The favor given to Israel was now given to Moses, and God spoke to him and instructed Moses as His covenant man. As himself, the Israel God was still defending. All the people were witnesses to this changed status.

Now, to go back to the point I referred to at the beginning, the impact of this text on Christendom. We have to call attention, first of all, to the changed location of the sanctuary, from the center of the camp it was now moved outside of it. This is referred to in Hebrews 13:10-14, which reads, “We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” The no continuing city is Jerusalem in Jewish work, and Judah. Paul and the apostolic company in these words urge a separation from their Jewish brethren, from that community to the new city, the city of God, which is to come through Christianization. Today the church predominantly gives an exclusively heavenly reference to the continuing city, and this warps its meaning. The crucifixion was outside the camp, outside of Jerusalem, outside of Judah, outside of the temple. It was not only a crucifixion, but an excommunication of Jesus. What our Lord was cast out of, Paul says, we must separate ourselves from. Bearing His reproach, those which serve the tabernacle, he says, cannot legitimately partake of the Lord’s Table. Similarly, the Christian cannot remain within the camp which excommunicates Christ. This tells us something about the tremendous error of premillenialism, and its belief that Israel is still the chosen people.

To return to the location of the sanctuary, what God did her was retained in later history. The temple of Solomon was built on the edge of Jerusalem, outside the camp, at the location God ordered. This is true also of the rebuilt temple of Ezra and Nehemiah. It was true also of Herod’s temple which stood in our Lord’s Day. The original centrality of the sanctuary was set aside by God’s instructions to David and Solomon concerning the temple’s location. God was making it clear that, for a time, He was still using Israel. But His dwelling place was now outside the camp because of their faithlessness. And this is what God tells the church. That He is outside the camp, and our Lord says on the Sermon on the Mount, “If the salt loses its savor, its saltiness, it is good for nothing but to be trodden underfoot of men.”

The Christian countries over the centuries have bee abused for seeing themselves as aspect of God’s New Israel, which at times very false opinions, such as British Israelism, holding to a blood inheritance, have developed. The usual premise has been to see the life of a nation as required by God to manifest His kingdom.

Now, the impact on architecture and city planning was very great. The impact of what we’re dealing with right now. The church was located at the very center of the city or town, and it was made the finest building of that community. Very commonly, over the centuries, going way back into the Middle Ages, community meetings were held there. The community decided what to do in terms of city or village affairs, to repair roads and bridges, and so on and on. The church was both the center of worship and of government, with the French Revolution, the people of Vondee were very outraged that the Revolutionists in Paris felt that it was freedom for them to take all the government there, when they were used to determining it periodically in a meeting at the conclusion of Mass. This plan was developed also in Colonial America. Town meetings were held at the church, which was located at the town square. All this was done in terms of the original plan of Israel’s encampment, and the location of the sanctuary, in the center with all the tribes evenly divided on all four sides. The Christian community as the true Israel of God, looked to the Bible here for guidance as in all other things. New England called itself God’s New Israel, or Zion, because it sought to make central to all things the triune God and His word. The Medieval church had done this and so, too, did Protestantism.

But in time, alien faiths worked against this, and a number of false centers supplanted the church. Among these were banks, and in direct contrast to the church, banks for generations, and until World War 2, were built in the style of Greek temples. In many cities, such as San Francisco, these Greek temples, or banks, still exist. The same was true of political buildings, city halls, courthouse buildings, and bureaucratic centers. They all vied for centrality. So, too, did newspapers. In some cities, they build on a public square, or created one, to make their eminence notable. Colleges, step by step, ceased to be built around a chapel. All these variations in the designs of cities have an apt description in a line from William Butler Yates’ poem, The Second Coming. “Things fall apart, the center does not fold.” The modern city has no true center because it has no true faith. It is polytheistic and it is, therefore, losing all sense of law. Many rival faiths mean many conflicting kinds of law. This is very apparent today in the current views of capital punishment, abortion, homosexuality, and like issues. Many gods mean many laws, and continued warfare and oppression because of these conflicting laws. As a result, things fall apart. There is no center to hold them.

But this is not all. There is a design in the development of cities which has its ancient roots in continental Europe, and especially England, but which came into its own on the American frontier, especially the West. Instead of the town square with the church at the central location, towns came to be built, beginning with some English villages, on either side of a road, so that a small village or town would be strung out over some distance with no depth beyond that road. Only a handful of buildings stretched out over some distance. In some instances, a bar or two, and the town pool hall would be at the congregating center, but basically such towns had no center, and no focus. They were economic points for people passing through. At best, such places, when growing into cities, aroused superficial loyalties.

Meanwhile, the major urban centers became places of refuge for people seeking escape from a center in their lives, from family controls, and the church, so the appeal of the city was its provision of anonymity for sinning. Beginning in the 1920’s, a number of American writers gained prominence because of their contempt for small-town and church-oriented living. One of the most notable of these, venomous in his hatred of small towns, was Sherwood Anderson. The present degradation and lawlessness of urban life, therefore, has not been an accident. It is a product of a desire to expel the church and Christianity from centrality in the life of a people. Things fall apart. The center does not hold, because there is war against the center. Some churches still maintain an existence at the heart of the city.

In some instances, lawlessness is making their continued existence impossible. Then, too many city planners are trying to force out these churches, on the grounds that the property is too valuable for religious use, and should become commercial property. In other instances, they’re declaring them historical landmarks, which has the long-term affect of driving the people out, because they cannot improve the building, or renovate it or do anything. It has to be maintained as an historic landmark.

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to give an example of what was once the case, First Presbyterian Church, located at the city center, used to have a major daily ministry under Clarence Edward McCartney. Noon lunches in their cafeteria, and study sessions, attracted hundreds of people, several groups, often meeting at the same time, a stone pulpit at the front, facing the street, and once a week, before World War 2, the street was closed to automobiles at noon during the working week, and Dr. McCartney preached a brief sermon there relating the faith to life, sometimes to a thousand or more men. Many like evidences of the centrality of the faith once existed, but the city today is very hostile to them. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank thee for thy word, and we thank thee for its relevance to our everyday life, as persons, as communities, as cities, as churches, wherever we are. Open again the majesty of thy word to this generation, that all things may once again be conformed to thy word. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Of course the cities have gone even farther because now there are areas of almost military or extra-national embankments where the law doesn’t enter, doesn’t {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. That’s an interesting point. We had those international settlements in our cities in the last century, but whatever community it was that came in and took over an area, immediately made the church central. The Italian neighborhood would have a church. The Irish neighborhood would have a church at the center, either Presbyterian or Catholic, because most of the Irish immigrants became Presbyterian. In whatever the community, the center was the church, and that has disappeared in recent years, because everything in modern life militates against it, our education now militates against it, so things fall apart because the center has been an object of total warfare.

[Audience] The latest development has been racial enclaves.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and the racial enclaves are totally without faith, and in the black ghettoes for example, I have seen churches which have a high cyclone fence around them, and someone who opens the gate and stands guard during services, on Sundays and during the week, to keep any intruders from entering in to work havoc, and there will be a gate right in front of the church steps, a cyclone fence, to protect the church. This is becoming a state of siege in many cities. Yes?

[Audience] When you mentioned the layout of the towns, I remembered as a, when I first went into the Army and started traveling across the United States, having grown up in the western United States, I was used to the, you know, the long street, the small towns with shops on each side, and then nothing behind them. It was almost like a Hollywood set, {?} and then when I drove across the United States, across Highway 1 through the southern states, I was struck by the fact that every single town was almost a carbon copy of the last one. There’d be a city square with a courthouse, and these, you know, businesses and the town bank around the outside of them. That was it, and they all looked the same.

[Rushdoony] Yes. A lot of those older cities were still built with the idea of a center. The church was no longer the center, but they still had a center.

[Audience] It was the courthouse for the center.

[Rushdoony] Yes, the courthouse. I’ve been a witness in many such a courthouse.

[Audience] In Latin America, the church has been the center for three hundred years, in almost all the smaller areas. The new cities, like San Paolo, etc., are totally anonymous

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, this is why urban living is becoming warfare and siege because the center has been destroyed. A few books have been written on urban development and how urban development systematically broke up the solid enclaves of people like the Italians and the Irish in the some of the eastern cities, and the purpose was political because they usually had a congressman who became a power in congress because he had a sure district, but in the process, and perhaps that was also intended, they destroyed a cohesive community and scattered the people. The Catholic church lost a great deal of its power in the East with some of these urban redevelopment projects, and the conservatism of those communities. Yes?

[Audience] It time that creates new diasporas.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes. Well, the goal of a power state is to allow no power to exist except its own. In Rome, this meant that you could not have any kind of meeting without a state license, not only religious, but any kind of meeting, no organization without a state license, and the idea was to prevent any group from finding any cohesion apart from the state. Well, that worked as long as there was loyalty to Rome, but as they went from republic to empire, and corruption to corruption, and the army from being composed of the best of the Roman aristocracy to anyone they could drag into it, and the army became as dangerous as the enemy in some instances, then loyalty to Rome disappeared. Then it was “get what you can for yourself.” Yes?

[Audience] There was also the collision of different peoples.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes. The interesting thing is that a great many countries have been able, over the centuries, including Rome, to absorb a great many peoples and turn them into the most loyal people, until they lose their faith. When they lose what made them great, then anarchy sets in because the people are no longer assimilated. There’s nothing to assimilate them to, and that’s the problem with the modern city. There is no center, so they cannot assimilate the newcomers. When you realize how many people came in of very diverse backgrounds in the last century, and were assimilated so that there was a homogeneous character to this country prior to World War 1 in spite of all the immigrants, and an intense loyalty on the part of all these immigrants to America, the land of promise, and realize now, they come in and there is nothing to tie them one to another. There is no center. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, thou hast called us as thy people to restore again a center, to this country and to the world. The plan has now been altered for all things against our Lord, and thou hast called us to make Him again the center which holds all things. Make us zealous in thy service, faithful in all things, and we thank thee that thou hast assured us of victory. 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.