Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Salvation of the Lord

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Salvation of the Lord

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 045

Dictation Name: RR171Y45

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. Our help in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. The hour cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Let us pray.

Oh Lord, our God, we come unto thee who art the ruler of all things, rejoicing in thy government. Rejoicing in the certainty of thy justice, knowing that thy will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. Teach us, therefore, our Father, patience in the face of all things, that we may wait on thee confident in thy justice. Confident in thy mercy and grace, in thy salvation. Bless us now as we give ourselves to the study of thy word. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from Exodus 14:5-14. Our subject: The Salvation of the Lord. Exodus 14:5-14. “And it was told the king of Egypt that the people fled: and the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned against the people, and they said, Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us? And he made ready his chariot, and took his people with him: And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them. And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel: and the children of Israel went out with an high hand. But the Egyptians pursued after them, all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army, and overtook them encamping by the sea, beside Pihahiroth, before Baalzephon. And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they were sore afraid: and the children of Israel cried out unto the LORD. And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness. And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still , and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever. The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.”

It is the inclination of fallen man to have posited God and a religion which conforms to man’s reason and the natural world. Such a faith is always resentful of any intrusion into the realm of time and history by God, because it asks no more of God than to provide the inspiration or idea while man provides the action. For God to act in history means, first of all, that He moves against evil men and nations. Through supernatural action, all these forces are defeated, and God sets them aside. While superficially this seems to be a most desirable action on God’s part, but men are not comfortable with it because, second, God’s actions in history are a contradiction to the adherence of a natural and a rational religion. For God to act in history means that the decisive determiner of all events is not man, but God. It means that whether God works in a supernatural intervention or a providential ordering of events, God is the Lord of time and history, not man.

As a result, all biblical events from creation through the resurrection are regularly given a naturalistic interpretation. This is done by scholars because only so can man retain his priority, and keep God in His imagined place. It is man who must be the determiner, or the world of nature at the least.

With the Israelites gone, Pharaoh and the Egyptians began to regret their decision. The plagues took second-place, if any, to the fact that they now knew that they no longer had the forced labor levies of the Hebrews. Give the fact that there were 600,000 adult men in Israel, these were no doubt the major labor levies used by Egypt. It meant that the Egyptian was probably spared from the labor levies. Now their replacement would have to come from the ranks of native Egyptians. This would have greatly altered Egyptian life, and it would have weakened the place of Pharaoh. As a result, so many were ready to say, at this point, “Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us?”

As the Egyptian forces drew within sight of the Hebrews, we are told that the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord. We know what the content of their cry was, because we know their cry to Moses, that we are told. They declared, first of all, that “Were there not enough graves in Egypt that you had to bring us out into the wilderness to die?” Then second, they said, “Moses, you are at fault. We told you, ‘Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians.’” And third, they believed they were better off as slaves of the Egyptians than being killed in the wilderness. Israel displayed a very marked lack of faith, and this is an important fact. They were the chosen people. It helps us to understand what a chosen people are.

Since then, the church has been the chosen group, and more than one nation, in the past twenty centuries, has been chosen by God for very important and particular blessings. To be chosen does not imply merit on the part of a people or person, or nation. It rather means grace on God’s part. But, sadly, chosen peoples, Jews and Christians, have seen their chosen-ness as indicative of a special merit on their part. For this sin, Israel was set aside. God reminded them long before Christ through the prophets. “I could have chosen the Ethiopians, I chose you. Out of my sovereign grace, not because of your merits.” Many Christian nations and groups may be set aside also, and have been, for presuming that their God-given mercies and privileges constitute a hereditary virtue on their part. When a chosen people becomes arrogant, it is evidence of a lack of grace and of an impending judgment.

The Israelites now had mountains on two sides, the sea on a third, and the Egyptian army on the fourth. It was a bind. That all that God had done for them, and the plagues on Egypt was now forgotten. Moses’ words to them at this point are magnificent. “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever. The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.” Moses is telling them, “If you have any commonsense after what you’re going to see shortly, you will keep your mouth shut forever.” It didn’t work though. Ingrates remain ingrates.

R. E. Clements, one scholar, has very wisely noted a fact here that modern men prefer to overlook. First, because of a blanket condemnation of all wars and second, an unwillingness to think seriously of a strictly just war. But in Clements’ words, and I quote, “It was a basic feature of Israelites’ understanding war that it was a sacred activity in which God participated. Primarily, such holy wars were defensive, although not exclusively so, and required special regulations to ensure the proper dedication of Israel’s soldiers, and to ensure all credit for the victory was accorded to God, to whom all the spoil was devoted.” Israel was being pursued by Pharaoh and his charioteers, and Israel panicked.

Scholars tend to see the miraculous Red Sea crossing as the miracle which causes them problems, and which they find difficult to believe. But really, the amazing fact here is what perhaps we can call the miracle of unbelief, if we can speak of a lack of faith as a miracle. Israel had witnessed ten amazing and miraculous plagues on Egypt. This was more than enough evidence of God’s grace and power. Failure to trust in such a God was clearly evidence of an amazing lack of faith and vision.

Joseph Parker’s comment here, about a century and a half here, was excellent. He said, and I quote, “Did the miracles as here reported actually occur? Why not? You can only be puzzled by a miracle when you are puzzled by a God.” If our idea of God is faulty, then our expectations of life will also be faulty. They will be in error. Then we will view God with humanistic eyes. Either He will withdraw from history and allow man to prevail, or He will cater to human expectations. If God is no more than an ideal or an inspiring impetus, then fallen man’s will prevails in time and history. Logically then, might will be right. The tyrants of history will determine its agenda and course. This has been the usual outcome of reducing God to the status of an idea. Evil men then see their idea as more logical and necessary, and in our time, we have seen the steady stripping of all that points to God from history.

I was reading last night of what in the early years of the last century was one of the most influential proclamations issued, but we don’t hear about it now. Its influence in art and society, in the sciences and everywhere was enormous. A group of scientists came together and they issued a proclamation saying that everything spiritual, everything religious had to be stripped from the sciences, from history, from art, from everything, and only that which was from physics, physical existence, could alone be considered as real. They were quite melodramatic about it. They wrote the proclamation and signed it in their own blood, each of them, and it was a sensation throughout Europe, and began to influence art and society, and of course, societies. It had an influence on the romantic poets, too. It turned them, opening, against Christianity.

If God has given some capacity to act in history by philosophies and theologies, it is often only in order to make Him the great resource for man. God is in the bail-out power, the one who rescues man when man has troubles in his courses of action. In such views also, man dominates history, and God acts as a paramedic ambulance service to rescue man. God, however, is not governed by man’s needs, but by His sovereign purposes. His plan for us covers time and eternity, and His grace and wisdom exceed our man-bound hopes and plans. Hence, we are commanded, “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. The Lord shall fight for you and you shall hold your peace.”

One final point with regard to Israel’s emotional response to the approaching Egyptians, their panic. It is a mistake to assume that this was a normal reaction. Some time I’d like to see a history of emotional expression made and published. We too often assume that it is a biological reaction, emotionalism. It is no more biological than adolescence is biological. It is a cultural fact. Emotionalism and panic, in a time of crisis, are the reasons of a people who have had too much security, and slavery is a form of slavery.

Years ago, when I went to the Indian reservation, many of the old Indians were still alive who could remember seeing their first white man come over the mountains. The Indians lived, most of them, in small bands. They would come together periodically and then there would be a group of hundreds, but when you live by hunting, an Indian band could not be all together because there would never be enough game in a given area for hundreds of Indians, or a thousand, to come together and live together. So that while annually perhaps, or periodically they came together briefly, most of the time it would be one or two, maybe three families, a band of twenty, twenty-five, thirty that would move around, men, women, and children hunting. Scattering out over a vast territory that would be considered more or less the territory of their people. This kind of living had its hazards, because they were also then vulnerable to another band of Indians who would be hostile, who could wipe them out and take what they had, because resource were limited because of their primitiveness. I heard many stories by old Indians telling me about those days, and as the small band would move from place to place, the elderly Indians, men and women, the grandparents, would have a task. It would be teaching the children by storytelling, telling them how they lived, telling them how they did things, and this would be their education. And this one old man told of how his grandfather had told him what to do in a crisis, what to do under attack, and on one occasion, late at night they were attacked in the middle of the night, and this boy quickly crawled into an animal hole and pulled branches and twigs over the opening, and stayed there until morning. When he came out, everything that their little band had was taken, including clothing. His father was the only one alive, and he was near death, and his father told him what to do. “Remember what your grandfather taught you.” That boy survived for days in fall weather, out in the cold, never making an outcry, because that was not possible if you lived under those circumstances. You didn’t have the luxury. Whenever he approached a small band, he would make sure the wind was in his face so that he would not be smelled by the dogs, until finally he found a group that spoke his dialect, and joined them.

In a world of danger and threats, that man and his generation could not afford emotional responses. People who are overly secure because of wealth or slavery can indulge in emotionalism. Our small children can also be very emotional. It is a product of security as well as immaturity. Israel’s emotional and faithless reaction had to be put to the test. It had to be broken. They had to be disciplined before entrance into the Promised Land was possible. Let us pray.

Thy word is truth, oh Lord, and thy word is a light to our feet and a lamp upon our way. We rejoice in thy word and we pray, our Father, that as we face the breakdown of the world around us, we may be stronger by thy word and by thy Spirit, and enabled to stand and to be more than conquerors. In Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Along the lines of that security intervening courage, I notice more and more on the television news the emphasis on funerals. You know, the only time the Christian churches ever get on camera now is when there’s a funeral.

[Rushdoony] Yes

[Audience] And we’re spending a great deal of time mourning the dead. The wall that they put up on Washington on the Vietnam thing, is simply a big tombstone, and never does there seem to be any talk about taking action against the criminals or danger in any areas.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that is a very interesting point and an important one, and we’re going to be touching on that in part next week, because the greatest emphasis ever placed by any civilization on death is by ancient Egypt, and it was a static society. So, when any society puts a disproportionate emphasis upon death, it stagnates, it denies progress, it doesn’t look to the future. And Egypt, to this day, all the monuments of Egypt are connected with death, and this unfortunately is a growing tendency. The same kind of inordinate emphasis on death took over old China, and led to its death. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Lord and our God, thou hast declared that thou shalt fight for us, and thou hast ordained all things from the creation of the world to all eternity. Give us grace, therefore, to trust in thee, to wait with quietness of heart on thy word and work. To act where thou dost order us to act, and in all things, to know that thou art on the throne, and that thy kingdom shall prevail. Bless us, oh Lord, in thy service. 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.