Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

Entrapment

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: Entrapment

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 044

Dictation Name: RR171X44

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 unto all generations. Let us pray.

Oh Lord, our God, we thank thee that thy truth is the same yesterday, today, and forever, that thou art the eternal one. We thank thee, our Father, that in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, thy word endures, thy truth shall prevail, and Jesus Christ, our Lord shall indeed be king of kings and Lord of Lords. Make us faithful in His service. Make us zealous for thy kingdom, and make us joyful in thy victory. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture lesson is from Exodus 14:1-4. Exodus 14:1-4, and our subject: Entrapment. Entrapment. “And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn and encamp before Pihahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baalzephon: before it shall ye encamp by the sea. For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in. And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, that he shall follow after them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the LORD. And they did so.”

As we have seen, God’s particularity is offensive to the modern mind. When the modern mind is confronted by the miraculous in scripture and its particularity, the modern thinker rejects everything that is not naturalistic and equalitarian. The world of the university and of scholarship, of necessity, limits the areas of study. It says, “We will call this area history, and this area social institutions, and this are geography, and so on. But by delimiting things, if often falsifies things. The specialist in Old Testament will not look in things in New Testament and vice versa.

The various strands of thought which culminated in the French Revolution had a profound influence in more than political theory. They also affected biblical scholarship. The premise of the French Revolution, it’s slogan was “Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality.” This belief covered every area of life and thought, so when you’re talking about the French Revolution, you cannot limit yourself to history. You have to go over into biblical scholarship, and a great many other fields. You have to go into the area of the family, because the equalitarian impulse immediately came into the family. Children’s rights, which is widely promulgated today, is an aspect of this liberty, fraternity, equality motif.

The meaning of liberty for the French Revolution was essentially liberty from God, from Christ, from the church. Well, it is very easy to document the fact that the French Revolution very severely diminished freedom. It increased repression. It increased, on a massive basis, the murder, the execution of anyone who disagreed with the Revolution. It turned France into a prison, as has revolution done to one country after another. The leaders, however, believe then, as revolutionary leaders do today, that true freedom means release from the bondage of Christianity.

Two Jacobins, d’Herbois and Fouche, together with a commission created by the Revolution, issued an edict, which Otto Scott describes in his book on Robespierre, which declared, “All is permitted. Those who act in the revolutionary action. If you are for the Revolution, there are no bounds to what you do.” This meant that freedom became the exclusive possession then and since of those in power, in revolutions, who are thereby permitted to do as they please because what they did was right.

Fraternity meant wiping out all distinctions and compelling fraternization. After the French Revolution, a day of reconciliation, July 14, Bastille Day, was proclaimed. People had to love one another and to see that there were no differences between men. Otto Scott points out that the Revolution decreed that there could be nothing that set one person above another. So, all titles of nobility were immediately abolished, but the revolutionary leaders had university degrees and they refused to abolish those. All they did was to abolish any mark of distinction of anyone who was superior to them, in status.

Equality meant that all men other than the Revolution and its leaders, were equal, and none dare think otherwise. Property, money, and all other evidences of inequality on the part of some had to go. You were killed simply if you were better in any area than the revolutionary leaders.

The revolutionary thinking which developed in the 19th century pursued these goals. Not surprisingly, some such thinkers saw the future ideal society as an anthill or beehive society. More than one group took the anthill, and especially the beehive as their symbol. It became the vision of the perfect society. After all, there are workers, there are leaders, there are reproducers, everything. This kind of thinking began to seep into every area. As a matter of fact, to this day, the great Mormon symbol is the beehive. It’s their ideal.

Well, the beehive symbolizes a society which is depersonalized and totally equalitarian. These intellectual currents of the French Revolution immediately influenced every area of life and thought, including biblical scholarship. The supernatural in the Bible was immediately ruled out of order. Impossible, because it was not something accessible to all men equally. So it was called mythical. There could be no particularity in the ways of God. You probably all remember the Death of God School which began in the early 70’s. They don’t use the title anymore, but their thinking now underwrites a great many schools of philosophical thought. The interesting thing is that the Death of God School, as I pointed out before, never said there is no God. What they said is, “God is dead for us. We now will reorganize all society because God is dead for us and we will totally rule out any concern of His. Any law of His, any word from Him.”

So, the basic premise of modern thought has been precisely this: We will not consider any evidence as valid if it violates our premise of liberty, fraternity, equality. Therefore, the supernatural is out, therefore God is out, and no evidence pointing in that direction can be real.

In our century of course, John Dewey developed this kind of premise and applied it to education. He discarded Christianity, he condemned it, because it insists on an absolute, and ultimate particularism, an unequal and non-democratic division between good and evil, between right and wrong, between heaven and hell. This he set forth in his little book, A Common Faith, his Yale lectures in 1933 which are still in print. God for Dewey had to be, and I quote, “A union of ideal ends.” Ideal ends set by man. In other words, only a God created by man could be real for Dewey. “No true God could distinguish,” he said, “between saints and sinners, the sacred and the lost.” Thus, very logically Deweyism led to no failures in school, passing everyone and no true report cards.

Now, given this mentality as it approaches the Bible and Exodus, the plagues of Egypt, and the miracle of the Red Sea crossing, this mentality refuses to recognize or admit the validity and truth of the biblical account. It will offer, as intelligent, all kinds of ridiculous things like, a sandstorm was the pillar of cloud, a volcano the pillar of fire. Who ever heard of a moving volcano following people for forty years? They had to hold the biblical account to be non-historical because it presupposes first, a God whose ways are not equal to all men, and second, a God who is the governor and determiner of history, whereas the modern mind insists that only man is.

Yesterday, when Dorothy and I were book shopping, we picked up a new book written by a physicist whose thesis is that science is what physicists make it to be. There is no reality until they say so. And they cited some umpire as one of whom said, “I call it as it is,” but another umpire said, “There is nothing until I call it and say so,” and they held that to be the premise of physics. Reality is what they say it is. What, in their minds, they conceive and determine it to be. Now, this is the logical end of Descarte. “Cogito ergo sum,” I think therefore I am, and all reality is what my mind says it is. Kant pursued this to its logical conclusion and said, “It is not our minds conforming to the objective reality out there. What is out there is not important, it is what our minds conceive to be that is the only true reality, and now, this is the logical conclusion as developed in physics. Therefore, the Bible cannot be true. Therefore, the miracle of the Red Sea crossing is impossible because we didn’t determine it.

Well, that offense of scripture appears in Exodus 14:1-4 as well as everywhere in the Bible. In these verses, God tells Moses to give Pharaoh his last opportunity to reveal his evil heart. He is to turn and take a route which would seem to indicate confusion, that they were losing their way. With the Hebrews gone, a vast compulsory labor force of hundreds of thousands of men was gone from Egypt. They would have to replace it if they couldn’t go out and conquer, and they were weakened by the plagues, with their own people. This was not a loss, this free labor, which either Pharaoh or Egypt welcomed. It meant that Egyptian forced labor was the only alternative.

All these calculations were very much in the minds of Pharaoh and his people. Because God ordered Israel to take a route which seemed to indicate confusion, it gave Egypt the opportunity they wanted. Israel’s God apparently was no longer guiding them with certainty. Now they could strike them. The cites listed are partly known and unknown. The Egyptian name Pihahiroth means Region of the Salt Marshes, and Baalzephon means Baal of the North. Migdol means watchtower, so it was a military outpost. Pharaoh’s conclusion: They are entangled in the land, means they are wandering in confusion, they do not know which way to go.

The Egyptians had border fortresses, they had watchtowers in different areas, and as a result, they were well-informed as to what the Israelites were doing as they were trying to leave Egypt. The word translated as “entangled” can also mean perplexed. They had earlier travelled somewhat southward, and now were turning northward. Here again we encounter a problem from the perspective of modern scholars. What God was doing is to the modern mind entrapment, entrapment. In the name of fairness nowadays, we are not supposed to give evil men the opportunity to reveal themselves and thereby, receive their just punishment. Entrapment means giving a criminal an opportunity to do his work and thereby to be caught. The criminal, when caught, cannot be identified in court as a habitual criminal, as a man who may have a record of convictions for murder, rape, or theft. He must be given a protection against entrapment, which his victims do not have, and he must face trial with a jury and judge ignorant of the fact that he is a professional and habitual criminal. This is considered equality. The criminal is free to entrap his victim, but the law cannot entrap him. This is modern justice.

God however, gives us an opportunity to reveal ourselves. In fact, this kind of testing is routinely God’s way. Often the greater the responsibilities God plans to give to a man, the more rigorously He may test him and trap him, humble him, and in various ways prepare him for his responsibilities. But this is resented by equalitarians. In the name of their virtue, equality.

We see high school and university education increasingly promoted for all, and the results are destructive for both the school and the students. Education becomes a farce. We are actually seeing university graduates who cannot read. God’s particularism is offensive to the modern mind for this reason. With the Enlightenment, the Magnificat of the Virgin Mary was banned by some royal courts for this very reason, and it is again out of favor. It’s losing its place of importance in the church. Let’s see what the Magnificat says. It’s in Luke 1:46-55, “And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; as he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.”

The Magnificent celebrates God’s particularity. Mary alone, of all the women in the world, is singled out for the virgin birth. God scattered the proud and mighty in the imagination of their hearts. He puts down the mighty from their seats, and exalts them of low degree. Can you realize why the kings in the era of the Enlightenment forbad the use of this? He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away. Again, the amazing particularity of God. Man can do that, but not God, and his particularity to Israel. He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy. All this is by God’s grace, His particularity, not because of man’s deserving.

Well, in these equalitarian days, the exodus account is not popular, and the Magnificent is no longer as important to men as it once was, but the good news is this: It is as important as ever to our God, and He is as particular in His ways and His mercies to us as He was in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Moses, of David and of the virgin Mary. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee for thy grace. We thank thee that in thy mercy, thou hast made us the objects of thy loving kindness, and that now and throughout all eternity, we are thine. That we have the blessing of eternal life, eternal youth, and eternal joy. How great and marvelous thou art, our Father, and we thank thee. In Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] With regard to what you were saying about the affect of the kind of liberty {?} it occurred to me in our own time there’s an unprecedented emphasis on rights, that we have more prisons and more people in prison that ever before.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and you yourself have been the target of this modern liberty. If you had been an atheist, it would not have mattered to Associated Press, but the fact that you’re a Christian meant that liberty didn’t belong to you, only to the ungodly. That’s the meaning of liberty, fraternity, and equality. I think George Orwell put it very nicely in Animal Farm. “All pigs are equal but some pigs are more equal than others.” Yes?

[Audience] I think of a sign I saw in the office of a law firm from the Supreme Court in the State of Montana where I work. The sign said, “A law is what we say it is,” it may be related to this other fact.

[Rushdoony] Yes, the law is what we say it is. Yes, it has to be manmade. Even the world now has to be a human construct. It began with Descartes, and was clearly stated in Kant and now the physicists are opening stating it. Any other questions and comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that the world is not what man may say it is, but what thy sovereign word made it to be. We thank thee that we live and move and have our being in thee, that our times are in thy hands who doest all things well, and so we praise thee and we magnify thy holy name. 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