Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

God’s Honor and Glory

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: God’s Honor and Glory

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 046

Dictation Name: RR171Y46

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. Our help in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of them that fear Him. He also will hear their cry and save them. Where two or three are called together in my name, saith the Lord Jesus Christ, there am I in the midst of them. Let us pray.

Oh Lord, our God, we give thanks unto thee that thou art closer to us than we are to ourselves. That there is no place, no time, no event from which thou art absent. That thou dost work in and through all things to accomplish thy holy purpose, and we are thine instruments. Make us joyful, make us grateful in thy providential ways, that in all these things we may work with all our heart, mind and being in terms of thy purpose, and rejoice in thy ways and know that they are altogether righteous and holy. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is from Exodus 14:15-22. Our subject: God’s Honor and Glory. Exodus 14:15-22. “And the LORD said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward: But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea. And I, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them: and I will get me honour upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I have gotten me honour upon Pharaoh, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen. And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them: And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night. And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.”

One scholar, Robert L. Kate, has said of Egypt, and I quote, “Few nations in the history of the world seem to have been as concerned with tombs, death, and funeral practices as was Egypt.” Ancient Egypt has left us some very remarkable monuments to its dead. It was therefore, an ironic statement by the Israelites to Moses, “Were there no graves in Egypt that you brought us here to die?”

Now the funeral practices of the various nations are an interesting commentary on their preoccupation and their faith. We have everything from a fear of the dead and their bodies, to extremes of care and a very morbid preoccupation with the dead. In many cultures, as that of ancient Gaul and the Roman and Merovingian eras, the dead were regarded as unclean. Graves were in isolated and remote places. This was common to many peoples. The American Indians not only buried the dead in out of the way places, and not in a graveyard, but took steps to prevent the ghosts of the dead from following them and finding their families. But with Christianity, and with the Old Testament, a major reversal took place, especially with the church. The dead were buried in or near a church, in a church yard, because they were all regarded as saints. That is, recipients of God’s grace if they were Christians. The Christian dead were not feared but were honored, and their graves were treated with respect.

Now cultures with ancestor worship, such as ancient China and Rome, also honor their dead but they honor them only because they must be placated, feared, and worshipped. The dead were thus a burden on the present. What Christianity did with their church yards, and its respect for the dead, was very, very important. As Edward James wrote of the Franks, and I quote, “From the Carolingian period onwards, the dead could be brought within the community.” Now this is a very important fact. No where else in the funeral practices of any people do you have that same fact. The dead, brought into the community in terms of the future. In terms of a common faith and a common goal.

The sense of history which marks Christendom is a sense of community with the dead as fellow members of Christ’s church. There are two segments of the church: the church militant and the church triumphant. They are both together in Christ, and they have an essential unity and a goal from past, present, to the future, and into all eternity.

Now, while Protestants rightly regard the doctrine of the intercessory work of the saints as erroneous, Protestantism cannot descent from the premise, namely that the community of the living and of the saints in heaven, one with another in Christ, is basic to our faith. This concept of community produces a radically altered view of time and history and is the father of historiography. The Bible is the first real book of history, and when people depart from the faith, their sense of history begins to disappear. History is now a disappearing subject. It is no longer taught as history, but a part of social science, a means of controlling the future and peoples. This sense of history that comes from the biblical view of the dead, the sense of community with the past and with the future, is very important.

There was a very interesting, in fact a startling fact which I encountered when I was among the American Indians, the Paiutes and the Shoshones, over forty years ago. The older generation of Indians included a few who could remember their first contact with a white man, and who lived in roving bands and used bows and arrows. Their memories of the past were sometimes very astonishing, and where a remote location not seen for many, many years was concerned, precise. But their account of the succession of time was not so clear. What happened in their grandparents’ time and many generations before had no clear dividing line in their minds. It was all a part of a common past. A flat, not a linear era.

But the interesting this is that those who became Christians tended to see the past sequentially and less flatly, because the Bible gives men a pattern, a direction and a purpose to history which is now being lost. As a matter of fact, the thinking of the humanist is alien to this. The Communist state is to be timeless. The Great Society, and the Great Community of Dewey the same way. Like a beehive or an anthill, without history, and when you have that, you not only lose your sense of history, but you lose any regard for the dead. So, like the ancient Franks, men again see death as polluting, their interesting in history is minimal, because their sense of community with the dead, with their past and with their future under God is gone, because they have no faith.

Now the reaction of the Hebrews to the pursuing Egyptian forces was one of sheer terror. The Hebrews numbered six hundred thousand men. The Egyptian forces, although armed and trained, were no where near that, but they were the finest of Pharaoh’s fighting men. The Egyptians were then a slave people, and at this point had very few weapons. They had no experience in combat and were not yet a cohesive force, and so they cried out, “Where there not enough graves in Egypt that you brought us out here to die?” Moses was faced with a terrified people and an Egyptian army. He apparently began to pray very earnestly to God, and God cut him short, saying, “Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.” You don’t reason with a terrified mob, you order them.

God is impatient also with prayer where action is needed, or where prayer is not accompanied by action or works. God then commands Moses at the appointed time to lift up his rod to divide, or make a valley, in the sea for Israel’s passage. Meanwhile, the pillar of cloud moved behind Israel, and the night was so darkened by it that the Egyptians could not move and thus, they made no attempt at a night attack. We are told that this pillar represents the angel of God, the presence of God with His people. They had thus, God as their protector, and as a light to them while darkness to Egypt.

God declares His intention to gain honor or glory over Pharaoh by this coming judgment. The word translated as “honor” or “glory” means “heavy, weighty,” and it means an important and major victory or power, and God’s honor and glory are manifest in mercy or in judgment.

Now judgment is an inescapable fact of history. Where men will not serve God’s justice or apply it, God then moves in judgment against those men and nations. Justice and judgment cannot be evaded, and if deferred they become all the more severe. According to R.L. Honeycutt, and I quote, “The Lord’s deliverance demanded trust, which expressed itself in quietude.” God, having chosen the way they should go, would now provide the deliverance. The route seemed to be a foolish one, but it was God’s ordination for His purpose.

We are then told that when Moses stretched out his rod over the Red Sea, two things happened. First, God divided the waters miraculously. The statement in verse 22 that “the waters were as a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left,” means that the water stood as a wall. The waters on either side were a protection. Second, we are told that all through the night, a strong east wind dried out the sea floor to make it passable. Had this not been the case, the two million Israelites and their livestock would have found the sea floor impassible.

All natural forces are God-created, and they serve God’s purposes. To assume a contradiction between the natural and the supernatural, is not a biblical premise but a modern one. It presupposes a dualistic world order in which two alien powers exist, rather than a theistic creation which totally serves the creator God. Those who insist on a dualism between the natural and the supernatural view the narrative as mythical. Those who believe in the God of scripture know that there are no problems with Him, as God reminded Abraham, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”

God’s presence, in a very supernatural way, was given to Israel at this point, and thereafter in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire, manifestations both of the Angel of God. In Genesis alone, there are several accounts of the Angel of God. Prior to the incarnation, the Angel of the Lord, from time to time, was the visible presence of God to the Son. In many cases, and in this instance as well, the appearance of the Angel of the Lord is associated with judgment. Cornelius Van Til wrote, and I quote, “The kingdom of God must be built upon the destruction of the enemy.” This enemy is God’s enemy. If we force our categories of thought onto scripture, we in effect rewrite it to become our book, our own self-revelation, not God’s. Van Till said of Greek philosophy, and I quote, “The god of the Greeks should be taken as evidence of the fact that the noblest product of fallen man’s thought is idolatry. In their gods, the Greeks indirectly worshipped themselves.”

All too much preaching, and biblical commentaries by scholars, and theology manifest this kind of idolatry. God’s revelation is re-interpreted to become man’s self-revelation and wisdom. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 1, made clear of that. “The preaching of the cross to them that perish is foolishness, but unto them which are saved it is the power of God.” Verse 17 is rendered by the Berkley version, “I will get me honor upon Pharaoh,” that sentence is rendered “Through Pharaoh, through his armed forces, his chariots, and his horsemen, my honor will be sustained.” The power and the wisdom of men will be shattered and God will establish very clearly His purpose in history. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that thou art the same yesterday, today, and forever. That all things are in thy hands, and that thy purpose prevails. We rejoice that what was done in the time of Moses is being done in our day, and the Pharaohs of this world are being confounded. Our God, we thank thee. In Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Well, it’s true that Old Testament is history, but it’s also true that they don’t mention time, they don’t date their history, and the Christian era dates history with the incarnation and from then on we’ve kept track of when these things occurred.

[Rushdoony] Well, the Old Testament has its own system of dating. It’s dated in terms of genealogy and the reign of kings.

[Audience] Well, in that sense all the old narratives dated by the names of the kings.

[Rushdoony] Yes, except that none of them are accurate, and while historians don’t talk about it, they use the Bible basically for their chronology and for their dating, because it’s the only one that is trustworthy.

[Audience] Why won’t they talk about it?

[Rushdoony] They don’t want to admit its accuracy.

[Audience] Where is the accuracy? And what, I’ve never seen a single reference to the reign of a particular king in the Bible to any particular period in history.

[Rushdoony] That’s right, they don’t anymore. Newton was among those who worked on that, and Usher and others. However, their chronologies rely on the biblical chronology, and a few years back, one scholar at the University of Chicago wrote on the dating, in the books of Kings, and vindicated it very thoroughly, but not in any terms of any interest in the Bible, but basically in terms of establishing a better knowledge of history, generally, because here, you had very careful records kept.

[Audience] Well, it interests me because the French Revolution attempted to eliminate Christian dating, and decided to begin the Year One with itself again.

[Rushdoony] Right.

[Audience] But there is still resentment over the fact that our date, 1989, dates from the crucifixion.

[Rushdoony] Or from His birth.

[Audience] Or from His birth.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, now, increasingly, more and more publishers are abandoning A.D. and B.C.

[Audience] In the United States.

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, some books abroad are now beginning to do that.

[Audience] But we started it.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and it’s, some of the presses that are church-oriented that have gone along with this, too. Now they say B.C.E. and C.E., Before the Common Era and the Common Era.

[Audience] Yes, they want to eliminate the word “Christ” altogether.

[Rushdoony] Yes, they are trying to eliminate everything about Christianity. Studies of the Medieval era now don’t even refer to the church, just to the culture generally as though it was unrelated to Christianity, and we have a vehement school in this country, some of whom are in churchmen, and church-related colleges who are insistent that Christianity had nothing to do with the formation of this country, and it was never a Christian country.

[Audience] Maybe it was a Hindu country.

[Rushdoony] [laughs] Yes, that’s a good answer. But, the sense of history is going and these people are cutting the ground out from their own profession, which they treat cynically enough so it’s not surprising. But historiography disappears when you have a faith that denies the validity of history and seeks to overthrow history. Any other questions or comments?

[Audience] The cloud is not the same as the pillar of fire?

[Rushdoony] No, there were two. Pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, which at different times were in the front or in the back, in terms of defending them or of guiding them. Yes?

[Audience] After the tabernacle, when the pillar and the cloud appeared over the ark of the covenant, was it no longer before and behind them?

[Rushdoony] Good question. The, It became the glory or presence of God within the tabernacle. Now, that was its essential place after the tabernacle was built. Well, if there are no further questions, let us conclude with prayer.

Oh Lord, our God, we thank thee that by the grace thou hast manifested through Jesus Christ unto us our lives have meaning, and we know the past, present, and future according to thy word. Make us truly grateful for those who preceded us. Grant that the world be not more empty because we have been here, but that we add to that which must be done. We thank thee that all thy promises to us in Christ are yea and amen. Our God, we thank thee. 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.