Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Passover

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Passover

Genre:

Track: 13

Dictation Name: RR181G13

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Thus saith the Lord, Ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart. Jesus said Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we come to thee hungering and thirsting after righteousness, for the earth is filled with the iniquity of men, with their evils, their injustices, and their vain imagination. Grant, O Lord, that thy will may be done, that we may see thy righteousness. Make us a people of justice, strong in thy service and ever faithful to thy word. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is Numbers 9:1-14. Our subject: The Passover. Numbers 9:1-14. “And the Lord spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying, Let the children of Israel also keep the passover at his appointed season. In the fourteenth day of this month, at even, ye shall keep it in his appointed season: according to all the rites of it, and according to all the ceremonies thereof, shall ye keep it. And Moses spake unto the children of Israel, that they should keep the passover. And they kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the first month at even in the wilderness of Sinai: according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so did the children of Israel. And there were certain men, who were defiled by the dead body of a man, that they could not keep the passover on that day: and they came before Moses and before Aaron on that day: and those men said unto him, We are defiled by the dead body of a man: wherefore are we kept back, that we may not offer an offering of the Lord in his appointed season among the children of Israel? And Moses said unto them, Stand still, and I will hear what the Lord will command concerning you. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If any man of you or of your posterity shall be unclean by reason of a dead body, or be in a journey afar off, yet he shall keep the passover unto the Lord. The fourteenth day of the second month at even they shall keep it, and eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They shall leave none of it unto the morning, nor break any bone of it: according to all the ordinances of the passover they shall keep it. But the man that is clean, and is not in a journey, and forbeareth to keep the passover, even the same soul shall be cut off from among his people: because he brought not the offering of the Lord in his appointed season, that man shall bear his sin. And if a stranger shall sojourn among you, and will keep the passover unto the Lord; according to the ordinance of the passover, and according to the manner thereof, so shall he do: ye shall have one ordinance, both for the stranger, and for him that was born in the land.”

Some years ago, Charles R. Erdman summarized the meaning of the Passover and the Lord’s Table in these very telling words: “The feast of Passover was the type and counterpart of the sacred supper of our Lord. Each points backward to a past deliverance and forward to a greater deliverance to come. Passover commemorated the rescue of Israel from bondage in Egypt and looked forward to the redemption of the world to be wrought by Christ. The sacrament recalls the redeeming death of our Lord, and looks forward to the completed salvation to be accomplished when He comes again.” The Passover normally occurred on the anniversary of the Exodus. Therefore, some Christians have observed it over the generations annually, once a year, at the season of the atonement and resurrection. Under Hezekiah, the passover observance was changed to the second month, because both the people and the priests were unclean and needed time for repentance and cleansing themselves, so that it was possible, in the case of need, to defer or alter the date. Participation in the Passover was mandatory for all who were in the covenant, except for those on a journey or those ritually unclean, or those unprepared. All others were cut off or excommunicated for failure to observe it. It constituted a denial of salvation. Hezekiah’s postponement of the observance thus had instruction and preparation in mind.

In verse 14, we see that strangers, or foreigners, were allowed to participate in the Passover. These were believers in various nations who made pilgrimages to the sanctuary, and this text provides for their reception. Later in Israel’s history, we see references to these peoples as in Psalm 87 and 1 Kings 8:41-43.

The passover celebrated salvation and therefore, life. To be cut off from the passover, to be excommunicated, meant to be cut off from life. It meant also separation from the community. It was excommunication. Now that word means very little to most people now, because excommunication has become incidental and peripheral to modern life. Moreover, when it is used, it is for infraction of church rules more than a violation of God’s law. Two factors in the modern world militate against the efficacy of excommunication. First, the use of this power has too often been ecclesiastical rather than theological. It has been church-centered rather than God-centered. While a church is a very important part of the process of excommunication, its place is instrumental rather than determinative. The criterion is not the church’s law but God’s law.

Then second, excommunication is separation from the community, and where community does not exist, there can be no efficacious excommunication humanly speaking. Neither can there be communion, because there is no community. It all goes together. The modern state rests on neither blood nor faith. That is, neither on a racial basis in most cases, nor in a theological or creedal foundation. The governing factor is not a community, but the state. This results in a shattering of the communal ties between men. The social bond now rests, not on faith but on work, that is on business, union, or job ties, or on recreation, a common interest, for example, in sports. Excommunication cannot function in a fractured society and that’s why it has virtually disappeared, because the important ties which bind men together are gone. No man is now a social outcast, if he is excommunicated. Excommunication is gone because true communion is gone, true community is gone, and to reestablish the one, you have to have the other.

The community of the covenant is constituted by the covenant law and its rights. The law gives us the form of the community. The people have been brought into being by God’s electing and redeeming act. God’s law defines them as a justice people, a nation dedicated to righteousness, in having community in that fact. The law provides a people with their moral backbone, the absence of any strong character for good in modern peoples, manifests itself in the absence of God’s law. It is replaced with self-will and self-indulgence. To be left out of the community was once a very serious matter. For this reason, those who through no moral fault but because of contact with dead bodies were ritually unclean, raised a question to Moses: “Should they be excluded?” Moses turned to God for an answer. The response from God was that all who were ritually unclean or who were on a journey afar off, could observe the passover a month later.

In our text, one form of ritual uncleanness is cited, and there is, of course, no moral dereliction in caring for a dead body. Now this is both an historical incident and it is also case law. If something which is not morally defiling bars a man from the passover, how much more so does moral and theological waywardness bar a man?

Too casual a readiness to partake of the passover and communion is an offense. Some churches have required confession to a priest or examination by a session or a consistory as a prerequisite to communion. Without concerning ourselves with the manner of admission, self-examination, or some form of confessional. The point is that scripture sees partaking as something of a restricted manner yet necessary. No moral perfection is required by any means, but rather faithfulness and growth in sanctification. The prerequisite therefore, is that there must be a community in the covenant and that community must be in terms of God’s law.

The statement concerning excommunication reads, “Even the same soul shall be cut off from among his people.” In James Moffett’s version, this reads, “That person shall be outlawed from his kinfolk.” Now this stress is an important one, because a separation from one’s community begins in the family. To be separated from one’s parents, husband, wife, or children means being cut off from our basic community. Nothing is harder nor more devastating than this. Excommunication begins in the family because it is the essential center of all community. We have this, of course, only now in two groups. We have it among the orthodox Jews and we have it among the Amish, where a family member cannot even be spoken to if excommunicated. Some churches forbid communion services outside the church and except on stated occasions. Others provide communion for the sick and for elderly people who are housebound. Now, the biblical justification for providing it for the sick and those who are housebound, shut-ins, is in verses 10-12 of our text. If a traveler can have a later passover service, why not the sick?

We have to remember that the passover celebrated atonement. It was the Feast of the Atonement, and therefore, its essential meaning was life. Neither the passover nor the Lord’s Table can be tied to a mystical or spiritual experience, or emotions. It is the remission of sins followed by our regeneration, which communion and the passover celebrate. We are, by virtue of the atonement, God’s new humanity, a new human race created by the Messiah to take over His kingdom, to take over the world. It must begin, therefore, with the atonement. It must then have a community where people care for one another, and this is why the deacon’s offering, historically, has been so basic to the communion service over the centuries, as it was in Calvin’s Geneva. It’s almost a meaningless thing now, but it meant that the community cared for its own. It meant that welfare was not in the hands of the state, but in terms of scripture, in the hands of the deacons and of the church.

That was what communion was about. It was the establishment of a community and the furtherance of a community. This is why Erdman’s comments are so relevant. This sacrament looks back at the great atonement event, and it looks ahead to our great victory as a result of it. The power of sin is progressively broken. The community of God is established with all its responsibilities, and before the end, the last enemy, de3ath, is destroyed. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank thee for thy word. We thank thee that thou hast made us a new creation in Christ, but O Lord, our God, the community of thy people is now broken and fragmented. Thy people no longer are members one of another, and divisions, and bitterness, and backbiting prevail. Heal us, O Lord. Make of thy church the world over a community once again, that they might partake without sin, and that they might be indeed thy new humanity upon earth. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Well, today we are supposed to have a political community.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and a political community has been the dream of men since the Tower of Babel, and it did not work then, and it does not work now. But this has been the goal, and in the modern world, well, in Europe since the time of Christ, it has progressively been an attempt to create a political community in imitation of the church, and to replace the church. This is why you find that in many a situation, including our supreme court, judges wear black robes. These are modifications of priestly garb, because they are the new priests, or high priests, of the new church, and because the dream is a political communion, you increasingly have, in the belief of many, that everyone should vote. We have been moving towards that progressively in the last couple of centuries. There have been efforts to extend the vote again to those who have been deprived of it by reason of crime, in other words, convicts, and also the dream of requiring every person to vote, so that it would be not voting in terms of feeling that one should because it’s a responsibility, but to require everyone to vote because only then, supposedly, will the fullness of community be established. So, the state is, in the modern age, very definitely, an imitation church, and this is why we are going to see the state move increasingly to destroy the church of Christ, because it does recognize that there is a radical line of division between the two; the true church and a false church. Yes?

[Audience] Well, the stress is on voting, but not on who you vote for.

[Rushdoony] Yes, because the state is good. If the state is good, it doesn’t matter for whom you vote. IN other words, this is a replication of an ancient controversy within the church. The Donatists said that if you were married and it was later demonstrated that the priest was an ungodly man and not truly a believer, or if you had communion or if you were baptized by such a priest, then your marriage, your communion, your baptism all were invalid, and you had to start all over again, and the controversy lasted for a few centuries in the early centuries. After the time of Constantine, it began. The conclusion of it was that the Donatists lost. It was insisted upon by the orthodox that it did not depend on the man, but on the fact, “Was it in the name of the trinity? Was it in terms of the orthodox faith? Was it in terms of a true church?” The particular person could not invalidate it. Well, that doctrine crept, in the late Middle Ages, into the state, beginning in France, and it is very much a part of the implicit thinking of statists ever since. Namely that, it could be that this and that politician, or this and that candidate is bad, that he is a rotter, and even that a very sizable percentage of the members of congress are the same. Still, the state is good, and the state as holy church invalidates all these things by its grace. So, anytime you see something like this within civil government in the modern age, you know it’s been borrowed, and they are going to try to vindicate their position in terms of ancient battles fought and won within the church.

In terms, you see, of civil government, you and I would be Donatists. We think they are all corrupt because of the taint that is there and of course, because of their anti-Christian character. Are there any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, thou hast given us a great task to do, a great cleansing work to be performed, but we thank thee that thou hast promised that thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us, that all things thou dost command us to do, thou wilt empower us to perform. Then give us grace, our Father, as we confront the immensity of the task of looking not to ourselves and our littleness, but to thee and thy greatness, and to move forward in faith. 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