Systematic Theology – Covenant

Breaking the Covenant

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: 18-22

Genre: Speech

Track: 18 of 22

Dictation Name: 18 Breaking the Covenant

Location/Venue:

Year:

Our subject in this second session is Breaking The Covenant and our scripture: Exodus 32:26-29. Breaking the Covenant, Exodus 32:26-29.

“Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said,”

This is when he came down from the mountain, and saw what was happening.

“Who is on the Lord's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.

27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.

28 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

29 For Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves today to the Lord, even every man upon his son, and upon his brother; that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day.”

Now earlier we read as Moses came down from the mountain top in verse nineteen:

“ And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.”

Winfield has said and I quote:

“The bible does not conceive of a law code without a covenant at its base.” Unquote.

For the bible, all law is a covenant, therefore, we are forbidden to make a covenant or a treaty with an ungodly person or power. Either a national treaty or a personal marriage because then we are involved in an alien law. The Bible does not conceive of life itself apart from God’s covenant.

All of man’s life, his world, his relationships are to be governed by the covenant law. Covenant and law are inseparable. A covenant is a treaty of law. We have seen that when God makes a covenant He gives to the covenant man life and a name. Covenant clothing is also given. This past Sunday we studied the covenant clothing and the significance, and the meaning of the tassels or fringes as an outward mark. Numbers 15:37-41, a faith must be manifest in the totality of our lives, it must make a difference in everything that we are and that we do. But we have also examples in scripture in covenant making of the role of clothing therein. For example, we read in 1 Samuel 18:3-4:

“Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.

4 And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.”

Now it is important to understand the meaning of what happened here. Jonathan made the covenant, Jonathan made it because he was the greater party, very clearly. David could not have initiated a covenant with a superior. As a result, Jonathan as a prince made it with David. David was the son, the younger son, of a rancher in the Bethlehem area. He was not on the level with the king and the king’s son. When Saul had proposed to give him his daughter Michal as a bride David at first refused not because he did not want her but because he said there is no way I am worthy, I cannot provide a dowry in other words befitting such a girl and so Saul to get rid of David and also to set up something that would sound like a reasonable dowry that David could achieve hoping he would be killed in the process of getting it, said get me so many foreskins of the philistines.

Now, Jonathan initiated the covenant. When he did it meant also that at the same time he clothed David. He stripped himself we are told immediately and gave him not only his clothing but also his armor. We are clothed by our parents when we are children. We as men clothe our wife and our children as the head of covenant is our responsibility. This is why Calvin and the council of Geneva held that a man had abandoned his wife if through alcoholism or some other sin he was not supporting him, it was a desertion of his covenantal responsibility. And so David as the lesser party in the covenant was clothed by David. Now this meant that he made David a member of his household. That he was now going to protect David even if it cost him his life and he did, defending David even to his father, King Saul. On one occasion more than one occasion Saul’s anger blazed out against his son, on the one occasion in 1 Samuel 20:30-31 we read:

“Then Saul's anger was kindled against Jonathan, and he said unto him, Thou son of the perverse rebellious woman, do not I know that thou hast chosen the son of Jesse to thine own confusion, and unto the confusion of thy mother's nakedness?

31 For as long as the son of Jesse liveth upon the ground, thou shalt not be established, nor thy kingdom. Wherefore now send and fetch him unto me, for he shall surely die.”

What had Jonathan done in making a covenant with David? He had made him a member of his family, he had made him his heir. His eldest son so to speak and this is why subsequently David took over the care of Jonathan’s family.

And Saul knew that he had been set aside by God but he hoped that at least his line would inherit, his concern was not the wrath of God against him but the perpetuity of his line on the throne and keeping his wives from falling into David’s hands. Jonathan’s act was therefore as the governing party in the covenant. It was a princely act, it was an aspect of making the covenant. Thus David was in a sense doubly an heir by God’s anointing and by Jonathan’s covenant. Now the New Testament has much to say concerning the heirship of people in the covenant. Over and over again the scripture speaks about our status as heirs. Such verses as Romans 8:17, Galatians 3:29, 4:7, Ephesians 3:6, Hebrews 6:17, James 2:5, Titus 3:7 and many, many other verses. We are told that we are a royal priesthood and heirs of the kingdom of God. In antiquity every kind clothed his sons and all those who were his friends he made his princes members of his household. Buckler, a church historian of some years ago, was a great scholar in the nature of kingship in biblical times and he has demonstrated how important that concept was, the king clothed his own. When he gave your clothing it was a sign that he had entered into covenant with you. He also ruled over you. You were a child then of his household. Only God as the covenant lord therefore can rule over us, can give us a law, and clothe us. So that we are to look to Him in all things and to his care trusting in Him because He is the covenant Lord. Gideon refused the kingship at one point saying I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you, the lord shall rule over you.

It means that we accept the rule of God when we are covenant men and we trust in His rule. Scripture speaks of it as a compromise of the faith when Israel accepted human kings. All things therefore must be done in terms of the covenant law. We are to be under the covenant with all our heart, mind and being. A covenant is binding on both parties and when a greater party binds himself to a lesser and especially when God binds Himself to us and says I am ready to die for you and does through God the Son, then we dare not at any point break His covenant law word. Now, in bible times whenever a covenant was broken the document was destroyed. This is a practice that was very prevalent throughout the world and has had at least within my lifetime when it was a public ceremony when a church was built and a debt was paid to have a ceremony burning the mortgage. When a contract was ended the document was to be destroyed. We know for a fact that the legal term for breaking contracts in Babylon was to break the tablet. Since the contracts were inscribed on tablets they were broken, this was the general practice. Thus when we read that Moses as he saw what was happening, the pagan worship of the golden calf, of fertility cult worship, and the naked fertility dances his anger waxed hot we are told and he cast the tablets out of his hand and break them beneath the mount. Now every now and then someone will preach a sermon about Moses’ problem with his temper [laughter] and he broke the tablets that God wrote on because he was out of sorts, that man. He was angry and righteously angry but when he broke the tablets he did not break them simply out of anger but because the contract was now broken.

They had to be broken! Israel was breaking them. It was a legal act, it was a necessary act. He would have been judged if he had not done so and he certainly knew that God took it seriously, God had made a contract once with him requiring him as his covenant man to circumcise his children and we are told that because his wife prevailed over him and he refused God met him on the way to kill him and Moses immediately had to rectify the wrong he had made, he had to circumcise his children and to send his wife back until she was ready to be obedient. When a man broke a covenant he had to face two things, the destruction of the contract and his own destruction. But the golden calf from that apostasy we see first the destruction of the tablets and second the destruction of the leaders. Three thousand of them approximately we are told were immediately killed and notice, first of all Moses summoned the men to his side, who is on the Lord’s side, let him come unto me. Who is ready to stand with the Lord and to renew the covenant? To execute the offenders in the name of the Lord, the king. It was to be a legal judgment by God. They were to be on the Lord’s side, they were to be the Lord’s agents, this is why he next told them that they were to consecrate themselves and with a single exception this, it is a term normally used for the consecration of priests, they therefore had a religious function. God’s covenant had been broken and God who had been ready in that covenant to give His life for His covenant people required the life of those who had broken His covenant.

And as a result they were consecrated to go forth and execute the judgment of the covenant. Then he was told that they were to pay no attention to relationships, whether they were brother or companion or neighbor or friend, they were to kill them, every leader of this apostasy. Every leader of this crime against God’s covenant. The reason of course is in the very nature of the covenant. Jonathan the superior, the prince, the heir to the throne, stripped himself of his clothing and his armor, he made himself defenseless, handed it to David, that’s how a covenant is made by superior to a Lord, it’s an act of grace, but it binds the lesser person. Similarly when God the Almighty ,the creator of heaven and earth enters into covenant with man and says I will strip myself of all my glory and come down as a human being the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and I will in the person of God the Son, the incarnate one, give my life for my people. Then we too must either obey Him or be destroyed by Him for to break the covenant is to be broken. Broken by the Lord of the covenant. This means therefore that the covenant and the covenant law must govern us totally, we are bound by this book and cannot live and shall not live and must not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. His law must govern us totally as individuals, as churches, as nations, as businessmen, whatever we are and whatever we do. If we break God’s covenant God will break us.

This is what it means to be in covenant with God: we will be broken if we break the covenant. We will be blessed and we will be made great and our names will be written in heaven and we will be heirs of all things if we are faithful to the Lord of the covenant. Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] The whole of mankind was committed by covenant to God in Adam and therefore the whole of mankind is to be judged by God. No one can escape His judgment. Now we are doubly in covenant with God, once having been broken in Adam now made afresh in Christ. This is why when our Lord speaks of Israel when He sent out the seventy He said of the cities that refused to hear Him that it would be worse for them in the day of judgment then for Sodom and Gomorrah. Because their covenant privileges had been far greater, therefore their judgment would be all the greater, hence we are told judgment begins at the house of God. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Exactly.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. You see because ours is a covenant relationship faith means that we accept Him, His word, His government, and our response be one of faithfulness, obedience. The sad fact today of course the great doctrine of justification, justification by faith in the sovereign grace of God has been so perverted that it has come to have an antinomian content and you actually have people saying that if you once go forward and say yes to Jesus He’s duty bound to take you to heaven even though when you walk out you might say that on second thought I don’t believe a word of it, you may be an adulterer, an atheist, a murderer but if you once said yes to Jesus He is bound but you are not.

Now that’s a fearful thing to do, it’s a perversion of scripture, it’s giving so to speak priority and a kind of omnipotence in sin command, but that’s the way the doctrine of justification is interpreted today. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, Professor Norman Shepherd at Westminster Theological Seminary was fired because in his statement of the doctrine of justification he said that it was manifested, our justification was manifested in works. By their fruits shall ye know them, faith without works is dead, and he was persecuted for that, tried again and again before presbytery, won the trials but he was still discharged by the seminary board at the recommendation of President [unknown]. Now that tells you the extent to which these pernicious doctrines have become prevalent. Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us conclude with prayer. Our Lord and our God dismiss now with Thy blessing, give us traveling mercies on our homeward way, a blessed night’s rest and joy in Thy service day by day. Make us ever mindful that we are members of the covenant and heirs of Thy kingdom. And we have a great name in Jesus Christ and that through Him we are more than conquerors. Our God we thank Thee in Jesus’ name, Amen.