Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Center

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Center

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 125

Dictation Name: RR171BQ125

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Thus saith the high and lofty one who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and revive the heart of the contrite. If thou shall seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find Him if thou shalt seek him with all thy heart, and with all thy soul. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee for thy preserving and loving care of us, thy mercies are new every morning. Day after day, O Lord, thou art mindful of us when so often we are heedless of thee. Give us grace to turn our hearts to thee, to know that thou art the author of all good, that all things come from thee, O Lord, and thou art ever merciful unto us who are ever in need of thy grace and mercy. Bless us this day as we give ourselves to the study of thy word, and grant, O Lord, that we grow in knowledge and in understanding. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is Exodus 37. Our subject, the first of four studies on the Center. The Center, the first of four studies. Exodus 37. “And Bezaleel made the ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half was the length of it, and a cubit and a half the breadth of it, and a cubit and a half the height of it: and he overlaid it with pure gold within and without, and made a crown of gold to it round about. And he cast for it four rings of gold, to be set by the four corners of it; even two rings upon the one side of it, and two rings upon the other side of it. And he made staves of shittim wood, and overlaid them with gold. And he put the staves into the rings by the sides of the ark, to bear the ark. And he made the mercy seat of pure gold: two cubits and a half was the length thereof, and one cubit and a half the breadth thereof. And he made two cherubims of gold, beaten out of one piece made he them, on the two ends of the mercy seat; one cherub on the end on this side, and another cherub on the other end on that side: out of the mercy seat made he the cherubims on the two ends thereof. And the cherubims spread out their wings on high, and covered with their wings over the mercy seat, with their faces one to another; even to the mercy seatward were the faces of the cherubims. And he made the table of shittim wood: two cubits was the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof: and he overlaid it with pure gold, and made thereunto a crown of gold round about. Also he made thereunto a border of an handbreadth round about; and made a crown of gold for the border thereof round about. And he cast for it four rings of gold, and put the rings upon the four corners that were in the four feet thereof. Over against the border were the rings, the places for the staves to bear the table. And he made the staves of shittim wood, and overlaid them with gold, to bear the table. And he made the vessels which were upon the table, his dishes, and his spoons, and his bowls, and his covers to cover withal, of pure gold. And he made the candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work made he the candlestick; his shaft, and his branch, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, were of the same: and six branches going out of the sides thereof; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side thereof, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side thereof: three bowls made after the fashion of almonds in one branch, a knop and a flower; and three bowls made like almonds in another branch, a knop and a flower: so throughout the six branches going out of the candlestick. And in the candlestick were four bowls made like almonds, his knops, and his flowers: and a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, according to the six branches going out of it. Their knops and their branches were of the same: all of it was one beaten work of pure gold. And he made his seven lamps, and his snuffers, and his snuffdishes, of pure gold. Of a talent of pure gold made he it, and all the vessels thereof. And he made the incense altar of shittim wood: the length of it was a cubit, and the breadth of it a cubit; it was foursquare; and two cubits was the height of it; the horns thereof were of the same. And he overlaid it with pure gold, both the top of it, and the sides thereof round about, and the horns of it: also he made unto it a crown of gold round about. And he made two rings of gold for it under the crown thereof, by the two corners of it, upon the two sides thereof, to be placed for the staves to bear it withal. And he made the staves of shittim wood, and overlaid them with gold. And he made the holy anointing oil, and the pure incense of sweet spices, according to the work of the apothecary.”

A couple of weeks ago, I cited Richard J. Clifford, who called attention to the nature of the temple in the ancient Near East. It was the center, the center of society, the center of learning and worship. It was the governmental center for all affairs, both public and private. It included also, as the center, things economic, cultural, religious, and political. There were differences from one country to another, but in all, the focus of life was religious, and so, too, was all authority.

Biblical faith centers on the living God. It is true religion as against the false faiths Clifford cited in his anthropological study. At one point, however, these false faiths were clearly ahead of modern cultures. In almost all cases, they recognized the necessity of a religious foundation for all things. Apart from that foundation, they recognized that authority would quickly erode. But, since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, we have seen a radical shift in the doctrine of the necessary foundation of social order. Baalism was a naturalistic faith, but it held that its concept of order was grounded in the nature of being. But was Darwinism, and science and pragmatism, in philosophy, religion, education, and politics. There has been a very rapid erosion of the infrastructures of life in society. The religious center and the source of law, government, authority and society has been denied. No longer do men see their faith as at the center of all things.

Well, the result is that the modern world has seen a radical shift in stability. This is symptomatic of things to come. Instability ends up in collapse. It is interesting that there is a major school of literary criticism now which calls itself deconstructionism. The interesting this about deconstructionism is that every scholar who is a deconstructionist defines that school of thought differently. Common meanings are gone.

For us, the attention given in Exodus to the sanctuary seem strange, because we are the products of a culture whose basic focus is on the miscellaneous, on unsorted accumulation of unrelated data. Now, the only place in the world that you do find unsorted and miscellaneous things is a dump, a garbage heap. There is no relationship there between one thing and another. But the elective system in education allows students to develop the dump heap type of education, to graduate without a focus or a direction.

Now in our chapter, Exodus 37, first in verses 1-9, Bezel eel makes the ark under the direction of Moses. This direction is referred to in Deuteronomy 10:3. Second, we are then told, in verses 10-24, that the table and the lampstand were made. Third, in verses 25-28, we are given a report on the construction of the altar of incense and other important furnishings and items. It’s obvious as you read through this chapter how much gold and silver were used. We’ll come back to that in awhile. Twice we’ll come back to that.

Now these detailed reports are not of interest to modern man because, for him, the center of life is not God’s sanctuary, but himself. This was implicit in ancient pagan religions. It has now become explicit in everyday life for people today. The center has been shifted from God to man. Because the ark was the most important single thing in the sanctuary, its construction was the work of the master artisan, Bezel eel. The most important task, in other words, was not delegated. Because he was in charge of all the work, every items is described as, in some sense, his work. Moreover, because it was God’s house, all things had to be built flawlessly. Just as there could be no blemished offering, there could be no blemished construction.

We are told that Aholiab’s work was that he was a cunning worker. That’s an old fashioned term. It meant that he was a deviser, an engraver, and an embroiderer. One scholar, Roy Honeycutt, took time to calculate the weight of the metals used, with metal cited just in this chapter. According to him, a talent weighed about 75.6 pounds, and a shekel, .403 an ounce, about a fourth of an ounce. There were three thousand shekels to the talent. Honeycutt’s conclusion was that there were 2,206.88 pounds of gold, 7,604.7 pounds of silver, and 5,352.45 pounds of bronze. Now there’s some difference of opinion as to the exact weight of the talent and shekel, but Honeycutt’s estimate is pretty close to the standard on most common evaluations. This means that the total metallic weight was thus 15,164 pounds and 3 ounces, a little more than 7 ½ tons of metal. This makes clear why the tabernacle was moved as little as possible. When it was moved, it was a major operation for the Levites who transported it piece by piece. We’ll come back to all that gold and the enormous wealth that was concentrated in the tabernacle, and later in the temple, but just this word before we pass on. This was commonplace in Antiquity. The temples were the depository of wealth, a great deal of wealth. Both wealth belonging to the faith and often wealth belonging to the king and to the state.

Now, given these things and the fact that the church very early took all this very seriously, we can see why, from the very beginning when the first churches were built, they were built after the example of the tabernacle and the temple. The churches, from the earliest days, were magnificent buildings. The church furnishings were rich in gold and silver, and they were designed and crafted with remarkable skills. Now that’s an amazing fact when you consider that they started building churches when they were an illegal organization, and very often, their properties, church properties, were seized by the Roman state, but it was regarded as dishonoring to God to do otherwise. God’s own words were available to vindicate splendor in the church. Less after the Babylonian captivity when the captives returned to Judea, and they were not great throngs, they were a few tens of thousands.

We read in Haggai 1:2 and 11 this indictment: “Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built.” In other words, we’re so hard up, we’re just starting. Why should we have to build the temple again. “Then came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet, saying, Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house (my house) lie waste?” Ceiled houses with beam ceilings. They are not as poor as they claimed. “Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord. Ye looked for much, and, lo it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the Lord of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house. Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands.”

Some of the people had returned from the Babylonian captivity and had begun the difficult task of restoration, but more attention had been given to their homes, some of which had beamed ceilings and were palatial, than to God’s temple. The temple remained in ruins. God therefore indicts them and tells them that he has sent drought to punish them for robbing Him of His due. He has plagued them also with discontent, so nothing satisfies them. Not until they recognize God’s centrality in all things would God bless and prosper them. The great and beautiful churches of the past were heavily influenced by our text, by the requirements of Exodus. The church was not only at the center of the community, geographically, it was also the finest and most beautiful building in the town or in the city.

The common objection to such costly and magnificent churches has been that the money spent in their construction could be better spent caring for the poor. This has been an often used argument over the centuries, but there are two things wrong with it. First, there is a very clear assumption that the care of people is more important than the glory of God. Well, this is an implicit humanism. From beginning to end, whenever the Bible speaks of God’s house, the emphasis is clearly on the necessity for only the finest construction. Like the furnishings, the buildings are to be for glory and for beauty.

Then second, the poor have been, throughout history, best cared for when major stress has been placed on the finest kind of church construction, and there’s an obvious reason for this. God commands that He be glorified in His house and in its construction, and also that we care for widows and orphans, the needy and the sick. Well, when men take God seriously, they’re going to take him seriously across the board, and today, the church is derelict in both spheres; towards God and man alike. If we do not render God His due honor, we will hardly obey Him when He commands charity toward man.

Baron von Trugel{?}, a very brilliant European Christian leader of almost a century ago, said that the essential character of Christianity is that it is irreducibly incarnational. Just as God became flesh in Jesus Christ, so our faith embodies itself in action, in charity, in lovingkindness one towards another, in buildings, in institutions, and in every area of life and thought. There is no area where God accepts second best. In the words of S.H. Hook, who is an anthropologist, and who was summarizing when he made this statement. What the essence of the faith of Antiquity and of the Old Testament and the New was about, he concluded by saying, those who live by the spirit, as Paul says, produce the fruits of the spirit. A vine does not produce grapes by act of Parliament. They are the fruit of the vine’s own life. So the conduct which conforms to the standard of the kingdom is not produced by any demand, not even God’s, but it is the fruit of that divine nature which God gives us as the result of what He has done in and by Christ. Man has made himself now the center of life, and this is throughout every area of modern thought. As a result, in every sphere of life, including all too often the church, a man-centered emphasis prevails. Well, the physical structure of God’s sanctuary is a witness on the one hand, to the necessity for a center for all of life and thought and on the other, the necessity to incarnate our faith in action, in life, in wood and stone, in construction and constructive activities in every sphere.

Finally, let’s go back to all that gold and silver that was in the tabernacle. Some say, “Why, when God is creator of all things by His fiat word, when heaven and earth and all things therein were made by His word, why is it necessary to give God such great wealth for the construction of His house? Why? When he needs nothing.” Well, that question, a very common one, betrays the false thinking of our age. Think about it. If a man is rich, does that acquit us of the obligation to pay him what we owe him? Can we say to the bank, “You have more money than I do. Therefore, the debt is invalid.” But that is at the heart of so much thinking as we approach God, and as we approach men and institutions. Are the oil companies successful and wealthy? Then they are evil. Are the corporations wealthy and powerful? Then they are evil. Are the insurance companies, sitting there with assets that are millions of dollars? Well then, let’s pass laws against the insurance companies. That’s the thinking that undergirds our age, and so especially when men approach God, their attitude is “What does He need? Why give anything? Why make His house splendid?” But does out need absolve us of our duties and our obligations?

Implicit in all such thinking is an absence of morality, and that’s exactly our problem today. In our time, need and equality have replaced morality and justice, because we have abandoned God in favor of ourselves as the center. This is why these chapters are not popular. They are not popular because they compel us as we read them to see how much gold and silver went into the construction of the tabernacle. A fantastic amount. Tons of precious metals, and that is an indictment of the modern world. That was a God who cared for the people who are ready to do that in every age. We have lost our concept of the center, the true center. God, His word and His work, and if we have made ourselves the center and the result is anarchy because, as the book of Judges declares again and again, “In those days there was no king in Israel and God was not on the throne for the people, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes,” and this marks our time. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank thee for this, thy word. We thank thee that, through thy mercy and grace in Jesus Christ, thou hast made known to us the true center of life. Give us grace day by day to build our lives more and more in terms of thy word, to know the center, to rejoice in thy centrality in all things, and to bring every area of life and thought into captivity to thee. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Was there any parallel, at the time, of a portable temple, so to speak?

[Rushdoony] That was, as far as I know, unique. Yes. Quite unique. An interesting thing, I think, is that Yates was sufficiently Irish. That is, he grew up in an Ireland that still had the old culture, so he could write a poem in which the key sentence is “The center does not hold.” In fact, that there was no center, that was the essence of the poem, but although he was not a Christian, he still was close enough to the old culture, a Christian culture, so that he could see that fact when no one else did. Are there any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, thy word is truth, and thy word is light and joy unto our lives. Give us grace to order all things in terms of thy word. Grant that, by thy Spirit, we move in terms of the center, that we in all things, know that thou art God and there in none other. Help us, O Lord, day by day to shape our lives in terms of thy calling. 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