Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Covenant Renewed I

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Covenant Renewed I

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 117

Dictation Name: RR171BL117

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, in whom we live, move, and have our being, we thank thee that our times are in thy hands, that thy providential care is total, omnipresent, always with us yesterday, today, and forever. Give us grace, therefore, to take our eyes off those things that frighten us, distress us, perturb us, and walk in the calm assurance of thy government, of thine unfailing and providential care. Teach us, day by day, to take hands off our lives and to commit them into thy keeping. Grant that now we rest in thee, submit to thy word, and find peace in thy spirit. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is Exodus 34:1-17. Our subject: The Covenant Renewed, the first of two studies of the covenant renewed. Exodus 34:1-17. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest. And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me in the top of the mount. And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount. And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone. And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped. And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance. And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the Lord: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee. Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: but ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: for thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; and thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.”

In this passage, we see that Moses is again summoned up into the mount. This is for a purpose; the renewal of the covenant. With their apostasy, the covenant had been broken. Two new tablets of stone are taken to be reinscribed with the Ten Commandments, which are the summation of the covenant law. In addition to this, other laws are to be given on the mount. The Ten Commandments are not repeated here in the text, but ten other laws are given which deals with Israel’s false priorities.

These are first, in verse 14, only God is to be worshipped. Then in verse 17, second, no molten images are to be made of any god, whether the true God or false gods. These two commandments, of course, do echo the Ten Commandments, although they are more sharply pointed. Then third, in verse 18, the Feast of Unleavened Bread is to be observed annually for seven days. Fourth in verse 19-20, the firstlings of animals belong to God but the firstlings of man and of asses are to be redeemed. Then fifth, in verse 21, the Sabbath is to be observed. This again echoes the ten, in verse 21. Vintage and harvest feasts are to be observed, in verse 22. This is the sixth commandment. These have reference, I should have said, to verses 18 following, and that is the proper text. Then, vintage and harvest feasts are to be observed, in verse 22. Then, in verse 22, the seventh, all men must appear at the sanctuary before God three times a year. Then eighth, only unleavened bread could be offered with sacrifices. Then ninth, the first fruits must be offered to God at the sanctuary, in verse 26. Then again, in verse 26, the tenth of these particular commandments, a kid is not to be broiled in its mother’s milk.

Now, in all of these, God’s priority is brought into the routine of man’s life. The conquest of Canaan is promised in verse 11. In verse 9, God is asked by Moses to return to the camp. Moses confesses Israel’s sin and begs for restoration. God’s only answer is to declare first that He will perform great marvels for Israel. He will leave them without excuse. Then second, in verse 11, God promises that Canaan will be given to Israel. Nothing is said about a return to the camp by God.

Before this, in verses 5-7, we have a theophany, that is, an appearance of God. God appears and reveals His name, or nature, to Moses. Moses, in words, gives us that revelation. “The Lord, the Lord God,” or “Yahweh, Yahweh, God. He who is the eternal and self-existent one.” He begins by stressing His grace. He is “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,” we are told in verse 6. His mercy extends to thousands.

However, God is not only grace, He is also law and justice. His punishment not only falls upon those who break His law, but has historical consequences from generation to generation. What one generation does affects the next. Now, modern man rebels against consequences. He wants instant forgiveness and a clean slate. The origins of this are very deep in Antiquity, in Greco/Roman thinking, and in their modern formulation go back to John Locke, with his idea of the mind as a clean tablet; tabula rasa, and man has since imbibed the idea that you can wipe out the past, that you can start without the consequences of the past still being with you. But God does not permit this. The sins of the fathers, even when forgiven, do have consequences. The response of Moses to this is to worship God. He is still not sure whether Israel will be reinstated in the covenant, and in verse 9, he confesses Israel’s sin.

God then declares that the covenant will be reestablished, but God also says that He is a jealous God. He will not share His glory with false gods, nor permit any other covenant than His to stand. He will not give His approval to compromise. Therefore, any covenants or treaties with the ungodly nations must be avoided. Their evil cults must not be permitted within the covenant land. Their cultic objects can have no public standing.

As a consequence of this, there must be no covenants or treaties with ungodly nations or persons. This was once a very strict premise within Christendom. It is now all but forgotten. A covenant, or a treaty, means that both parties are bound by a common law, a covenant law, and no unbeliever can have a law in common with God’s people. A covenant is a law treaty. This is why, according to the Constitution and all international practice, a treaty takes priority over a constitution, or any other public law. It is a higher law, and that’s why treaties are so dangerous.

This particular law, which appears in several places in the Old Testament and the New, has an important place in American history. With the French Revolution, with European Deism and the general hostility to Christianity in much of Europe, the United States stood apart in George Washington’s day as a Christian republic. Washington was very strict about no foreign entanglements. In his farewell address, Washington invoked this well-known biblical law, something all the godly people then knew, and he warned against ungodly treaties or covenants. The importance of Washington’s position is now forgotten, but it held a religious power for some generations because American Christians believed in its biblical premises. It was out of this law, forbidding foreign entanglements with ungodly powers, that not only Washington’s farewell address came to be the foreign policy of this country, but it was an extension of this that led to the Monroe Doctrine, and to the Polk Doctrine, which was an extension of the Monroe. Both are now forgotten.

A covenant is compared here, in verse 15, to marriage and to treaties with ungodly people and it is called whoring. Marriage is, to this day, described as a covenant in most marriage services. Mixed marriages are banned in verse 16 as violations of God’s covenant. Every relationship must be made a part of God’s covenant and subjected to God’s covenant law.

Because of the covenant, Israel is told, “Thou shalt worship no other god,” in verse 14. This law is a part of the law concerning the covenant. It means simply, total faithfulness is required. In verse 17, we have a second law, “Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.” The reference is to the golden calf, and it is an obvious reference. But why this special mention? The Ten Commandments forbid the worship of graven images, not the making of graven images. In other words, it does not forbid painting or sculpture. It forbids the worship of graven images. Well, the mind of man always seeks loopholes in the law. That’s the primary work of many lawyers and many judges, and some have assumed that given the temper of later Phariseeism, that the same stress on technical details of the law prevails before Sinai. In other words, because it was graven or sculptured images which were forbidden as objects of worship, therefore, a molten or cast image was legal, and it was a molten or cast image that Aaron created.

This could have been a factor, but an ancient Jewish commentator, Soforno, made a very interesting point. He called attention to the fact that, in Antiquity, molten gods were made as talisman, in a variety of sizes, small and great. These talisman were cast at a particular hour when there was a conjunction of certain stars. They were made molten to make it possible for the various elemental symbols to be combined at a given moment. When so made, it was believed that these talisman had power to provide for certain needs to their owners, and this is quite likely in the case of many, many of the graven images of Antiquity, and, or rather molten, cast images. Such molten talisman supposedly linked man to the powers of the universe and gave him a measure of control over them. The use of talisman in many cultures rests on the belief in the continuity between God and man, and therefore, man’s power to control God. You find, in many cases, including cabalistic thinking, the whole of creation, God and man alike, are represented in the figure of a man.

Well, if heaven and earth, God and man are a unity, then the next step is to posit that there can be some control. The hands can refuse to do what they are commanded to do, or the hands can try to send a message to the brain and the feet also. The thesis, of course, was a very closely related one to fertility cults. After all, even when man’s mind is asleep, sometimes he reacts sexually. Therefore, it was assumed that the various parts of man’s body had an independence and could control the mind. Therefore, it was held, given this unity of heaven and earth, and of God and man, of things material and spiritual, man, by using the right formula, could control God. This is the premise of magic. It’s the premise of talisman. It’s the premise of a great deal of thinking, and basic to pantheism. It is an important aspect of all false religions, or virtually all. They very, very often, if not always, assume a continuity between the divine and the human. Because of that continuity, it is believed that man can exert pressure and control the divine.

Well, obviously this is a particularly evil form of idolatry. In the Bible, the discontinuity between God and man is basic. God is uncreated being. Man and all creation is created being. Man is a creature who, although made in God’s image, has as his components the dust of the earth, not some part of God’s being. Therefore, the name of the first man is Adam, which means “the red earth,” the top soil.

There’s one final point that needs to be made. In verse 3, when God descends to Sinai to meet with Moses, the mountain is off limits to all other men and to all animals. God’s presence makes the mountain sacred. Sacredness, or holiness, is a concept alien to modern culture. There are varying degrees of holiness in varying holy things. The people of God are called to be holy, although, of course, there are varying degrees of sanctification among believers. There are also holy places, sanctuaries for example, and holy things within a sanctuary. The older term “The Holy Bible” is less used now because holiness does not interest modern man. There are holy times and days, and so on. Nothing, however, is holy in and of itself. Holiness comes from being subject to and used by God and His purposes. Men and things are holy to the degree that they make themselves God’s property. In non-Christian thinking, especially modern thought, the emphasis is radically alien to holiness, because holiness is not intrinsic. It is derived from obedience to God, believing in God, the infilling of man by the Spirit of God, but perfectibility is what man and society do with themselves. So, the goal of humanistic thought, whether Marxist or non-Marxist, is the perfectibility of man and society. Man, by his own effort, amending, improving, and perfecting himself and society.

So, the notion of perfectibility which is so basic, that as Sam Blumenfeld was telling me this past week, that in the literature of human education, it is basic as an anti-Christian, an anti-holiness doctrine. Perfectibility is derived from man’s effort. Holiness, by man’s submission to the Almighty God. Between the two there is a vast difference. We do have the word “perfect” in the Bible, but it has a radically alien meaning to the modern term, and to the English word. In the Bible it means maturity. Maturity. So that when God commands, “Be ye perfect even as I am perfect,” be ye mature, grow in sanctification. Grow in your knowledge of the word. Thus, Israel is summoned to holiness. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank thee for thy word. We thank thee that thou hast called us to holiness. Because thou art holy, thou hast ordained that, by thy grace, we too shall be made holy. Bless us in thy service. Watch over us, protect us, make us faithful in thy service. In Christ’s name, amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson, or any comments? Yes?

[Audience] I guess I need a little bit of explanation here about man being created in God’s image. Does this mean that man is created in God’s image as God would appear if He had form, or does it mean the image that God, as God perceives man?

[Rushdoony] He is created in God’s image in terms of the communicable attributes of God. The incommunicable attributes of God, His omnipotence, His omniscience, His nature, His deity, are not communicable. But the Bible tells us that the basic aspects of God which are communicable and in terms of which we are created as righteousness, or justice, holiness, knowledge, and dominion, so that these are the areas where man needs to grow. Knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and dominion. The communicable attributes of God, so that when these are perverted, then man seeks knowledge in order to exalt himself. He seeks perfectibility as a substitute for holiness. He seeks injustice, or his idea of justice rather than God’s justice or righteousness, and he seeks domination over others rather than a dominion under God. So, the image of God, basically these things, these four things, is inescapable, but it is perverted in the ungodly and put to a perverse use. Yes?

[Audience] I missed your point in verse 3 where the flocks and the herd were excluded from Mount Sinai, but obviously the wild animals would still be there. What was the reason for the herds being kept from . . ?

[Rushdoony] Well, that would have indicated a casualness by man towards God’s presence. So, instead of allowing them to graze there, or feeling “it’s alright for them to go there,” they had to recognize a boundary. Yes?

[Audience] In the Lord’s Prayer, we’re advised to address God as “father.”

[Rushdoony] Yes, because the Lord’s Prayer is a prayer for His people, his disciples. So that we are to recognize that we are, by adoption, members of the household of faith and therefore, we begin by saying, “Our Father.” Not my Father, it is something we share with others, and so in saying “Our Father,” you’re communion and fellowship with all believers is set forth. Yes?

[Audience] Is the first fruit to be applied to a paycheck?

[Rushdoony] That’s the tithe, but of course, the tithe is off the top. The first fruits were symbolic of the whole, so that you took the first fruits off a tree, the first that ripened, the first grain, to the sanctuary, and it was a gift to the priest, and it signified that you would use the totality as God’s, that you would live for God in all your mind and being, and therefore, would use things under God. So the first fruits were of produce and of livestock, that sort of thing, and the tithe was of income. Now, very often the tithe was of produce. Well, even when you tithe produce, that would be ten percent of the harvest. But, the first fruit was still taken. It might be no more than say, a bushel basket of grain, or a sheaf, very often, of grain, and a basket of fruit, but it was one way of saying, “All things come from thee, O Lord, and of thine own we have given thee,” which of course is the offertory hymn in many churches. Yes?

[Audience] Verse 13, where God instructs Moses to “destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves,” were they tree worshipers?

[Rushdoony] Good point. The images there means statues, and the groves, yes. There were sacred trees, and a great deal of worship is associated with particular trees so that, let us assume there was a grove like the Mariposa giant redwoods, a particularly significant clump of great trees would be the center of worship, of nature, of the forces of fertility, and there would be fertility cult worship and sexual practices around the sacred grove. You find this all over the world. There’s scarcely a part of the world where this type of worship has not taken place, and there are some scholars who believe it is reviving among civilized men, among the environmentalists because some of their language approaches a worship of groves of trees, and they are ready to sacrifice almost anything to maintain those groves, and it’s not a concern for the environment as such. It’s a form of pantheism. You can tell these people how much replanting there is, how much of the United States is given over to forests. I gave some of the data in the last Chalcedon report, it doesn’t do any good because theirs is a religious premise. The extreme statement of that in one book a few years ago which was very influential by a professor, was that the human population should be withdrawn to the coasts, a thin line along the coasts, and all the interior of the United States restored to its original wilderness status, and that should be a sacred obligation on the part of modern man. Yes?

[Audience] If that were done, the Great Plains would turn into sand.

[Rushdoony] Yes. The buffalo were rapidly doing that, and the buffalo were destroying the forests more and more to the East, so that the coming of the White Man saved the forests of the eastern part of the country, and the South. Yes?

[Audience] The environmentalists, their greatest intensity seems to come on old trees, the oldest trees they can find. The oldest grove of trees they could find.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, that’s true.

[Audience] Rest of it doesn’t seem to matter {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Man is inescapably religious, and if he doesn’t worship the living God, he’s going to worship something else. So, we have all kinds of false gods in our time. The naturalistic variety now prevailed, but earlier in the century, men like Lenin were deified. There were hymns hailing Stalin which were totally religious in content.

[Audience] Well, it’s been a characteristic of all these dictators. They put up all these big posters.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] Fifty, seventy-five, a hundred feet high to make them bigger than life.

[Rushdoony] Well, Karl Marx actually said that, in one of his early writings, that it was necessary to abolish the idea of God, and of heaven and hell, but since men needed this, it was important to create a hell into which you could consign those who would not work for the worker’s paradise. So, the slave labor camps had, in Karl Marx’s a theological premise. There had to be a hell because, he said men need to believe that there’s going to a heaven on earth and a hell for those who will not cooperate to build that heaven. Well, they did marvelously well in building the hell but not the heaven. Well, if there are no further questions or comments, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that thy word is truth, and that paganism is doomed, because thy kingdom shall come and thy will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. Make us zealous in thy service, constant in obedience, and faithful in all 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.