Leviticus; The Law of Holiness and Grace

The High Priest and His Calling

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Lesson: 51

Track: 51

Dictation Name: RR172AB51

Date: Early 70s

Let us worship God. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him.

Let us pray.

All glory be to Thee oh God who does rule all things, and in Thy sovereign wisdom has ordained all things that come to pass. We thank Thee that Thou art giving a body to evil that it might be cast off forever, that it might be revealed in all its horror and grossness and that we Thy people shall be vindicated by Thy judgments. Give us grace to serve Thee boldly in a holy confidence, glad that we have been called to Thy service. Now hear us, our Father, as we commit ourselves afresh unto Thee. Grant that we behold wondrous things out of Thy Law. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is Leviticus 21:10-15, Leviticus 21:10-15, “The High Priest and His Calling.”

“10 And he that is the high priest among his brethren, upon whose head the anointing oil was poured, and that is consecrated to put on the garments, shall not uncover his head, nor rend his clothes;

11 Neither shall he go in to any dead body, nor defile himself for his father, or for his mother;

12 Neither shall he go out of the sanctuary, nor profane the sanctuary of his God; for the crown of the anointing oil of his God is upon him: I am the Lord.

13 And he shall take a wife in her virginity.

14 A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, or an harlot, these shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife.

15 Neither shall he profane his seed among his people: for I the Lord do sanctify him.”

We come now to the rules for the high priest, and the high priest of course, is a type of Christ. All the high priests from Aaron until our Lord’s time were so-to-speak, stand-ins, filling an office temporarily, prohibited from acting on their own, independently of the Word of God, because they represented not themselves, but the one who was to come, Jesus Christ. He is the representative of God—God incarnate, and of life in God. In John 14:6 we read that our Lord declares that He and He alone is “the Way, the Truth and the Life and no man cometh unto the Father but by Christ.” There is no life, no truth, no salvation apart from or outside of Him. This is the central fact of our faith against which the ungodly continuously rail. They want man to say that his way and any route that man devises should be acceptable to God.

Because the high priest was the forerunner of Christ, he was separated to life, more than any other; more than other priests, more than all believers. He could not take part in any funeral. As the representative of life, he could not recognize death as a power, of something to weep or to mourn over. And so he was forbidden to depart from the sanctuary or step outside, even for a moment during the service, because he had heard of a death in the family. He represented Jesus Christ.

Now our Lord did attend three funerals. He broke them all up. He broke up his own. The young man by the roadside who was being taken for burial, He resurrected from the dead, Jairus’s daughter and Lazarus who’d been death three days and buried. He destroyed every funeral. He was life incarnate. John 1:4 tells us, “In Him was life and the life was the light of men.”

In verse 10 we are told three things; three things which define the High Priest. “And he that is the high priest among his brethren, upon whose head the anointing oil was poured, and that is consecrated to put on the garments…” Is first, from among his brethren, though chief. The high priest must be the representative of men and also of God. And Jesus Christ is truly man and truly God, not symbolically as with the high priest, but actually and hence totally efficacious. Second, he must be called and appointed to his task. The anointing oil is poured over his head to symbolize this fact. And third, the high priest must be consecrated and must make atonement for his people. All the high priests until Christ performed a ritual that symbolized the atonement that was to come. Christ alone is the efficacious high priest, who as both high priest and victim, takes upon Himself the death penalty for all His people and destroys for them the power of death by His resurrection.

The office of high priest points beyond itself to God. Jesus made this clear concerning Himself and His incarnation. He declared the Son can do nothing of Himself but what He seeth the Father do, for whatsoever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. In other words, the determination of all things in history, including the work of the high priest, is from eternity, not from time, and this has been the great battle of the ages, the warfare beginning in the Garden of Eden, the attempt of the creature to say we will determine all things from time; we will not allow God to determine things from eternity. And God must serve us, not we him. Now if you want to hear that gospel, a false gospel of how God should serve man, listen to most of your television evangelists. This is the essence of their gospel and this is why they are being confounded.

This determination from eternity, not from time, applies in every sphere: priestly, prophetic and kingly. A century or more ago, Ehler rightly observed, “The administration of justice is, in virtue of the principle theocracy only an office of the divine judgment. The judgment is God’s. To seek justice is to inquire of God. He who appears in judgment comes before Jehovah and thus is to be explained, whether it be that these expressions point to the God who rules in the administration of justice that it is He who is the source.” Thus, what is important is that it is not the office, nor the officer, but the divine function under God to which men are called. To cite Ehler further, “In virtue of the principle of the theocracy, all the powers of the State are united in Jehovah, even when the congregation acts, it is in His name. He is first the lawgiver. His legislative power, He exercised through Moses. The fundamental law given through Him is inviolably valid for all time. As God’s covenant with His people is eternal, so also are the covenant ordinances. They are as the expression frequently runs, everlasting laws and statutes for Israel and the future generations. The Pentateuch knows nothing of a future change in the Law, nor of an abrogation of it even in part, only the attitude of the people toward the Law was to be different in the last times.”

Now, here is Ehler, writing about a hundred fifty years ago, stating that the Law is valid for all time. And the only change will be that in the last days, men will live more by it than ever before. And no one thought when Ehler wrote these words that it was at all unusual, anything remarkable, because over the centuries, except in periods of decline, this was the premise. Only since the rise of Dispensationalism, which has infiltrated all churches, has this been forgotten.

In verses 11 and 12, we have a very telling aspect of this law. The high priest on receiving word on the death of his father, normally the relative he is closest to, must not stop his work or leave the sanctuary. In brief, this tells us life must go on. Even more, the emphasis is on the necessity of his calling as against personal grief. To allow personal grief to deflect him from his task is thus lawless. God’s calling must take precedence over human feelings.

Now while the case of the high priest is an extreme instance, it has a requirement for all of us because we are a royal priesthood, and the priority of God’s calling in the lives of all of us is required of us. And our Lord makes this very clear when He says in Matthew 10:37-42,

“37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

38 And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.

39 He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

40 He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.

41 He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward.

42 And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.”

Now in verse 10, it says that the high priest when there is mourning, is not to take part in it, and it specifies it: “…he shall not uncover his head nor rend his clothes.” The rending of clothes is a familiar image. It was to say, in effect, ‘I am ruined,’ and was common in antiquity and several cultures. The other verse—the other part of this verse—“he shall not uncover his head,” is translated by many, including the Berkley version as ‘he shall not let his hair hang loose.’ He shall not lair—let his hair, lang—hang loose! (I’ll get it right sometime, but I won’t continue trying now.) We would say in modern English, that his bars a hippie-style of hair. In Israel, letting the hair hang loose was the style of a leper, the style of a leper.

Now, it is interesting whether through knowledge or some kind of sense of affinity, the hippie movement picked up the leper’s style. And sought to make itself self-consciously (in this respect) lepers in the eyes of established society, in the eyes of their parents, their relatives, they sought to make themselves lepers.

In verses 13 following, marriage is very strictly governed. The high priest must be married to a virgin. His wife can have no alien loyalties, nor compare him to any other man. Langey summarized the matter very clearly and {?} when he said, “The families of the priests were so intimately associated with their own proper personality that something of the requirements for the priests themselves must also be demanded of them. This rests upon a fundamental principle of fitness and is again repeated in the New Testament in regard to the Christian minister in I Timothy 3:11, 12 and Titus 1:6.”

Julius Caesar, a notable Roman degenerate, held that Caesar’s wife ought to be above suspicion. What God’s Law requires here of the high priest is different. The stress is not on being beyond reproach. That is taken for granted. Rather, it is upon being a helpmate, one who brings no alien experiences to her calling to work with God’s high priest. Some have seen the part of his verse, “…he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife…” to mean wedding a girl of the tribe of Levi, someone reared in the culture of a priestly calling.

Now, the point is an important one, because the more important a man’s calling is in terms of the kingdom God, the more essential is the compatibility of his wife to that calling and to the strains, the duties and responsibilities it imposes. The importance of a wife in a marriage is determined by her husband’s work and her relevance to it. Similarly, the more important a man’s calling, the more deleterious a wife can become by importing alien standards and demands into the marriage.

Closely related to this is verse 15, “…neither shall he profane his seed among his people, for I the Lord do sanctify him…” To profane one’s seed is by unsuitable marriages. The covenant man is warned against all such unions. Thus, Proverbs 12:2, 4 reads, “2 a good man obtaineth favour of the Lord: but a man of wicked devices will he condemn.” “4A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.” And then we have a verse both repeated in Proverbs 21 and Proverbs 25:24 (apparently at this point, God felt it was important to say this twice). “It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman and in a wide house.” Now these verses give us a very interesting perspective. The man of wicked devices is condemned by God, and the word has a legal framework. God passes judgment against such a man. But this is not the case with a bad wife, as in these verses in Proverbs. God does not bring quick judgment on her. This is why she can be so dangerous, and why God warns us against bad unions, because such a woman can profane a man’s seed.

Now this is all very important because we are told emphatically that we are a holy priesthood, that we are the representatives of life in this world, that the people around us, no matter how capable and intelligent they may be, do not represent life, but a living death. And as the representatives of life, our concerns are to be with life. I regularly get stacks of information from people who want to enlighten me about all kinds of groups and conspiracies and so on. And about individuals—these mailings come with the demand that I circulate them, or write about them, or use them. Just Friday I had a copy of a new newsletter on AIDS exclusively and I was told I could reprint it and circulate the whole thing to everyone on my mailing list. But our concern is life. The Lord of Life, not death. We are not representatives of death. We know that God’s judgment is upon the world. We know that God in a number of ways is judging the world. We know that it is not just AIDS, nor economic disaster, but in every sphere, the men who move outside of our Lord are facing judgment. Their own lives condemn them. “All they that hate me love death.” Scripture states that very clearly. We are to present life, the Lord of life, because we have a priestly calling. Let us pray.

Lord, Thou hast summoned us to be Thy people, to be representatives of life, a holy priesthood. Make us mindful, Lord, that we represent not ourselves, but Thee and Thy kingdom, Thy Law, Thy justice, Thy peace, and Thy warfare. Make us bold, faithful, and strong in Thy service. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

[Audience] Would you speak to the concept of God’s {?} man, how are we to distinguish that concept from the Christian doctrine of Divine Providence and blessing?

[Rushdoony] Yes, Divine Providence doesn’t move to bail us out of our problems, but to further God’s purpose and His kingdom, so that Divine Providence cannot be seen in ego-centric terms. I used to know a, someone back in the 30s who was an extreme Pietist. And he saw everything as having relationship to himself, so that if a train were delayed, it was because God was serving him thereby for his purposes. Nothing happened except in relationship to him. Now that’s not Providence! Providence orders all things in terms of God and His kingdom, and we are to see our place in Him and His kingdom and His providence; so we don’t make the focus ourselves and our salvation.

Just as these Pietists insist that the goal of the Gospel is their salvation. That’s the beginning—it’s the ABCs of the Gospel. Our Lord says seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice, so there’s a totally different focus. We have a man-centered one against a God-centered one. And today, the weakness of the faith is due to the fact that it is man-centered. Never before have supposedly Bible-believing Christians been so numerous in a country and yet so impotent. Normally, if they’re a very small minority, they begin to control, because they are the ones that have the moral force. So Providence is God-centered, and when we are God-centered, our lives find God’s Providence to be glorious. Our weakness, all of us, is that we can get overly-absorbed with ourselves.

Yes.

[Audience] Has there ever been a civilization before that broadcast only its own defects and the virtues of its enemies?

[Rushdoony] This has happened a number of times, yes. All you have to do is to read the Roman historians like Tacitus, who idealized the Germans, because they were far enough away that nobody would know much about them, but who in reality at that time were a thoroughly degenerate people. And dug up every bit of scandal he could on the Caesars and on Romans of any consequence. And that was the style. Tacitus did it best and was remembered, but that was the Roman style. That also happened in Greece, and that has happened in every culture when it reaches appoint or its vitality is gone, the health and healthy group has lost its health. So we’re seeing something today that has been common again and again in history.

[Audience] So it’s part of the alienation of intellectuals.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Remember at the end of the Middle Ages, it was the intellectuals of the Church who went overboard in defaming the Church. Boccaccio was a priest. So, too was Erasmus. All the great critics of the Church were churchmen. And a good way of silencing all these critics, which indicated how weak their stance was, was to reward them. Erasmus wound up a Cardinal.

Yes.

[Audience] In, ah, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite, who were avoiding ceremonial uncleanness are presented in a negative terms, I’d like you to comment on that with regard to what we have in direction to the {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, our Lord was the Good Samaritan in a sense. He was regarded as an outsider because He came from Nazareth. And the saying was, ‘can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ It was a place for hicks. They were not aware of, most of them, of His birth in Bethlehem. But anything from the North was regarded as, ah, incapable of any stature or standing.

The Pharisees had tried again and again to maintain a mission among the Northern peoples of Israel. One man stayed in a community, as I recall it, 10 or 12 years and didn’t make a single convert. Well, one reason for it was that, uh, they were so contemptuous of them. This was the stance of the priests and the Levites. They had about as much chance of converting anyone in Galilee as, say, um, hard-core Southerner who regards all Yankees as damn Yankees has of making New Englanders into pro-Confederate people today. They were just too alien, too hostile, too much outside, too censorious.

And of course, they were the great opposition to our Lord. If there could be any salvation of Israel, of Judea, it had to come from their ranks. Just as, for example, the media today feels that there is no wisdom except from their ranks and the ranks of the intellectuals. Anything from outside their ranks has to be damned. Now, this was the kind of attitude that marked them.

Well, how could those people help someone in need? Our Lord portrays someone in physical need. He meant also spiritual need. Here were the people hungry and thirsty for the Gospel and very few historians deal carefully enough with the data to tell us how many of those Judeans became Christians—a very large percentage! Both those and the Diaspora and those within Judea as well as those within Galilee, so that for the first century and longer, the Church was essentially a Jewish church—Jewish Christians. Some of them became very hyper-critical and withdrew into two cults that died out. But when our Lord in that parable says that the priest and the Levite passed the other way, he was describing exactly what was happening. They couldn’t speak to the people in Galilee. They looked down on them so! There was no way they could have any word for them. But someone from the outside, as it were, who was looked upon as a despised person, like a Samaritan, they would have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus Christ, He is the one who did have the valid ministry.

Any other questions or comments?

Yes.

[Audience] What’s wrong with the Mormon’s doctrine of {?} of the priesthood?

[Rushdoony] What’s wrong with the Mormon continuation ostensibly, of the priesthood?

Well, first of all, they do not accept Christ as their redeemer. They believe they become gods through obeying the rules of their own priesthood. Second, the priesthood of Aaron ended and Christ is now the great High Priest. The temple was desecrated, the veil of the temple rent in twain, not even the Jews attempted to revive temple worship and the sacrificial system. It was dead. But Mormonism believes it has a priesthood, and it believes it has a continuation of the apostles in their twelve apostles, headed by the chief apostle, all of which has no roots in history, nor in the Bible.

Well, let us conclude now with prayer.

All glory be to Thee, oh God who has called us to be members of Jesus Christ, to be the representatives of life in our time. Make us strong in Thy service, and bless us and cause Thy face to shine upon us and prosper us as we serve 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.