Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Face of Moses

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Face of Moses

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 119

Dictation Name: RR171BM119

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name, for the Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting and His truth endureth to all generations. Let us pray.

O Lord our God, we give thanks unto thee for the blessings of the week past. We thank thee that our times are in thy hands and thou doest all things well. Give us grace to walk in this troubled world, with our hearts ever firmly fixed upon thee, upon thy word, and strengthened by thy Spirit. Grant that we be more than conquerors in all things. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is Exodus 34:29-35. The Face of Moses. Exodus 34:29-35. “And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him. And Moses called unto them; and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned unto him: and Moses talked with them. And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh: and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him in mount Sinai. And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a vail on his face. But when Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he took the vail off, until he came out. And he came out, and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded. And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone: and Moses put the vail upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him.”

This is a very, very sad account. We will return to that aspect later. Moses, after his long stay on Mount Sinai, where he received God’s revelation, came down from the mountain transfigured. We are told that the skin of his face shown. It reads literally, in the Hebrew, “shot forth beams.” Moses was radiating light in a powerful way. The Vulgate mistranslated this to indicate that he had horns, and Medieval works of art, and Renaissance works also, show Moses with horns. Michelangelo’s statue reflects this error.

Again, we have a contrast here with a golden calf episode. There, Israel shamed and degraded itself. Now, God glorifies Moses. He comes down from Mount Sinai transfigured. St. Paul, in 2 Corinthians 3:7-18 tells us that there was a dazzling glory about Moses, to use James Moffett’s translation of 2 Corinthians 3:7. Paul also tells us that a veil still covers the heart of all Israel, but whenever they turn to Christ, the veil is removed and the eyes of their understanding opened. Until the reaction of the people made obvious what had happened, Moses was not aware of what had happened to him, verse 29 tells us. We are told in verse 30 that the people were afraid to come near him, and this included Aaron. With his fear, Aaron was one with the people. Until Moses’ overpowering reflection of God’s glory faded with time, Moses covered his face before the people, but uncovered it within the sanctuary before God. The people had wanted to see. They wanted to have a visible God, or a visible image of God. They actually made a golden calf and called it by the name of God, but now they were afraid of God’s reflected glory, which they could see. All drew back from Moses, and in verse 31, we are told that he had to call them to come near.

According to Hertz, chief Rabbi of Britain some years ago, and I quote, “The people were the more deeply impressed by his message when they beheld the radiance of his countenance.” There’s nothing in the text to indicate that. The text tells us that they were afraid.

Moses’ reflection of God’s glory did not occur after his first stay on Mount Sinai, but after his second. Now this is an important fact. In the interval, Israel had been tested and had failed. It had plunged enthusiastically into depravity. Moses, too, had been tested, and Moses triumphed. He was now blessed and favored, and the difference between Israel and Moses was underscored. At the time of the golden calf episode, the difference was not clear. Now, the difference was dramatic. Israel, afraid of the reflection of God’s image in the face of Moses, and Moses, in his faithfulness, transfigured by God.

So, the glory was shrouded from Israel. Not only had God withdrawn His sanctuary from the center of the encampment to a place outside the camp, he had also revealed physically the separation and the line of division between Moses and Israel. It is interesting that, even in this century, that line has been drawn by someone. Sigmund Freud, who actually wrote a book trying to prove that Moses was not a Hebrew, and that Moses had imposed an alien faith upon Israel. It is interesting to see that verse 29 says, in the authorized version, or King James, The skin of his face shown while he was talking with him. Whereas, more accurately, as Rollinson pointed out, this should read, the skin of his face shown through his talking with him, with God. The reflection of the glory was not limited to the times when Moses spoke with God in the sanctuary or in the mountain, but was reflected through Moses. It therefore became Moses’ practice to wear the veil, the covering, when this occurred.

Now, I began by saying this episode, the glorification of Moses, is a sad affair. Why is this a sad account? It tells us something about Israel, and it tells us something about out time and every time. We are told by our Lord in John 8:4, that the Devil is a liar. There is no truth in him, and he is the father of lies. In Revelation 22:15, those outside Christ’s kingdom are described, “For without our dogs [homosexuals], and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murders, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.” There is a God-ordained line of discrimination, and this is not an arbitrary line. The old proverb illustrates the truth of all of this. “Birds of a feather flock together.” All attempts to force an equality of good and evil upon men in due time fails. Murders and pimps, for example, have no love of Bible study nor prayer meetings. That’s not where you find them. Equalitarians demand, when they talk about equality, as surrender by one group to the other. For us, as Christians, it is a certainty that heaven is not about to integrate with or surrender to hell. That in spite of all men may attempt to do, there is a line of division, and how much, how much men may try to obliterate it, it will assert itself. It cannot be destroyed.

Now, although we are not on the same level of Moses, as we grow in grace, that grace in us repels the ungodly. It doesn’t take long after we are converted to see that people feel differently about us. Moses, we are told, shot forth beams. We each, in our limited way, communicate to the world around us what we are and the world doesn’t like it. We don’t have to say anything. We don’t have to identify ourselves. They soon catch on and they resent it. They feel that it is an indictment of them. I’ve had people say that after they became a Christian, they were in an argument with somebody and the other person was doing all the arguing. They didn’t open up their mouth, didn’t have a chance to, and the other party says, “I can’t take all your judgmental ways.” Well, nothing has been said. But they sense the difference and they hate it. The men of Israel could not face Moses. The men of our age cannot tolerate the man of grace and justice, and this has been true age after age.

I recall, in my student days, a homosexual professor say in a lecture, it was totally extraneous to his subject, he dragged it in as he often did, things that would enable him to throw stones at Christians, but he said, “Nothing is more intolerable than virtue.” Some of the student laughed. Well, certainly this was true in his case. Virtue was offensive to him. Moses and Israel were now moving on divergent paths. Israel’s apostasy would only increase, and the older generation would die in the wilderness, while Moses, at his death, had the archangel, Michael, present to care of his body, according to Jude, verse 9. When God draws near, a polarization takes place, and this is what we are seeing in our time, a growing polarization. Everyone of us are a witness to that. The line of demarcation is being drawn. God drew it from all eternity. It is written into the structure of things. The world now, since Nietzsche, is determined to be beyond good and evil. It is determined to impose an equalitarianism of good and evil in which, of course, good is suppressed. A polarization is setting in. The glory of God, reflected in Moses, reveals God’s grace and law, his covenant. Moses reflects that glory by his faithfulness, by his obedience, and today, in our time, we are seeing the same thing happen. The line of demarcation, as we grow in grace, that line becomes more pronounced. The world sees it.

Now in contrast to this biblical perspective, stands the Greco/Roman ideal, and the Greco/Roman ideal is perhaps best set forth in Minerva or, as the Greeks called her, Athena. Minerva is the Roman name, Athena the Greek. She was a virgin goddess who sprang forth fully grown when her father, Zeus, had his head split with an ax. She represented abstract reason. As a result, Athena, or Minerva, was totally against war as irrational, and we have many followers of Athena now, who feel that nothing irrational can be countenanced. In her world of abstract reason, there was no original sin, only erroneous choices. Mistakes. There were no vestal virgins of Athena, or Minerva, because there was for her no merit or non-merit in virginity, only in right reasoning. There was no doctrine of sin in the cult of Minerva, and all sex was in terms of Athena or Minerva’s wisdom, irrational, and therefore, taboo.

Athens was named after Athena, and its philosophers exalted abstract reasoning. The Greeks carried this to the “nth” degree. We have, in our textbooks, a great deal about how much we owe to the Greeks for their science, but it was not Greeks who produced it, but Greek slaves who were then given their freedom. For a Greek citizen to do anything that was practical, was deemed degrading, so it was the slaves who were then given freedom in many cases and a Greek name, who produced the inventions.

Another aspect of Athena’s being, or non-being was the fact that, having sprung from the head of Zeus, she had no mother and was abstracted from the processes of life and of womanhood. She represented, therefore, the ideal, abstraction from the real world. Now it is interesting that, with the Enlightenment, as Greek thinking again began to control the Western world, all the prominent figures virtually, especially the philosophers, never married. The married philosopher in the modern age has been a rarity. The philosophy of any consequence, because it was something beneath the man of reason. Now this is totally alien to scripture. Wisdom in scripture is never abstract. It is practical. It is always identical with God’s justice, law, and covenant. It is open to man on all levels of life. According to Proverbs 8, wisdom cries out in the streets with few takers. Wisdom is inseparable from true life, whereas, the sin against wisdom means a love of death, according to Proverbs 8:36. Our Lord, we are told, is wisdom incarnate, and wisdom is practice. It is concerned with life, not abstractions. It means the closeness of a man to God, godly wisdom does, and it goes hand in hand with the transfiguration of man.

Moses is transfigured as he submits himself to God and God’s covenant law. The fact of his transfiguration cannot be abstracted from its context. In the transfiguration of our Lord, he is accompanied by Moses and Elijah, both men inseparable from God’s covenant, the covenant of law of grace. The transfiguration of Moses indicates the first stage of the transference of God’s covenant and its glory from Israel to God’s new Israel, the church. With the passing of Elijah, Israel, the northern kingdom, entered its final phase of apostasy before judgment. Just as our Lord’s rejection completed the separation of the southern kingdom, Judah, from God’s covenant, and faithless churches and nations had better take notice. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that thy glory is manifest in this world, and that whenever we are faithful to thy grace and to thy law, to thy covenant, thou dost work in and through us, and manifest thy wisdom, thy grace, thy mercy and peace in and through us. Grant that we always grow in thee, and the line of division between good and evil be strengthened and made more manifest and the cause of thy kingdom triumphant through us. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] I was told by a former convict who had a conversion in the middle of the night, that the following morning in the mess line, the guard came over and said, “Are you getting out today?” and he said, “No.” Well, the guard said, “Something happened to you.”

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, we used to have on our mailing list, and perhaps he’s still there, a prison guard who became converted, and the hospital administration drove him out finally. They could not tolerate him. Attempts were made in his life from both sides. They felt he was a standing indictment, and he didn’t say anything. He was a quiet person. Any other questions or comments? One of the things we need to recognize is that this line of division, this polarization is our hope. Otherwise, there would be an obliteration of all that is good in this world. So, as God polarizes things, we see the day of judgment, and the destruction of the ungodly coming closer. So that we need to rejoice as we see this polarization. God does not allow evil to triumph, and it is difficult because the hatred as this polarization sets in becomes much more intense, and the ungodly regard us as their way of striking against God, of lashing out against God, and they therefore, are always ready to do in the godly. Yes?

[Audience] It’s interesting that this passage comes just a couple chapters after that account of the end of Exodus 32 where Moses makes the plea for God’s people when they’re in such awful sin, really offers himself in the place of God’s people.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] Only one who really stands in a right relationship to God at that point.

[Rushdoony] It was the test of Moses, as the test of Israel, and Moses stood vindicated and triumphant, and God used him. Moses felt that what had happened was a disaster, and it was. But Romans 8:28 tells us that “God makes all things work together for good to them that love Him, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” So this was God’s way of preparing for the future, of separating from Himself those who are not to be His, and you must remember that till the fall of Jerusalem in the war of 66-70 AD, the temple was always outside the camp, and there was not a person in all of Israel or Judea who didn’t know why, so they had a witness of what their apostasy had cost them, and what it could cost them if they continued or increased it, and we are not without warnings in our own time. Well, if there are no further questions, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee for thy word. We thank thee that thy word is truth, and that thy glory is manifested in this world, in and through thy true church and thy people. Grant, O Lord that instead of dimming that glory, we stand firmly in terms of the grace and law it represents, that we become beacon lights of grace in a darkened world. 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.