We should never stop marveling at God’s willingness to interact with human beings. One of the most profound ideas of Hebrew and Christian theology is that God is personal.
He is not an immovable force, a power, or an unknown Creator. Instead, God is One who, in his greatness, is willing to personally relate to human beings about the problems of humankind.
In yesterday’s article, we saw how Israel sinned by making a golden calf and worshipping it.
Today’s passage moves to Mout Sinai and considers the interaction between God and Moses.
God’s conversation with Moses is typical of God’s very personal interaction with humans.
The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely;
“They have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ”
The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are.
“Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation” (Exodus 32.7-10).
Israel’s Problem
During recent prayer times, I have been focusing on Psalm 46.10 which says, “Be still and know that I am God.”
The New American Standard Version translates this, “Cease striving and know that I am God.”
The problem the Hebrew people had was they were unwilling to be still or to cease striving. In other words, they were unwilling to surrender their self-centered desires to God to know that He alone is God.
Instead, they took matters into their own hands, like we so frequently do, and built a substitute for God that they could control.
As stiff-necked people, they were unwilling to wait for God or surrender to Him. Instead, they were willing to bow down and worship a golden calf.
How often are we like that? Unwilling to cease striving to achieve our self-centered will, to be still, and wait on God’s work. Rather, we bow down before our own best idea on how to get what we want.
The Israelites abandoned God. Consequently, God turned to Moses and said, “Your people,” instead of “My people.”
Whenever we turn away from God, we separate ourselves from Him with very serious results.
Intercession
What God said to the prophet Jeremiah provides a snapshot of Moses’ powerful prayer life, as depicted in Jeremiah 15.1.
God told Jeremiah that even if Moses and Samuel stood before Him, He wouldn’t listen. This is a negative statement, but the positive side is that Moses was a powerful man of prayer.
We see evidence of this in the next passage where Moses prays and asks God to have mercy upon the people.
But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
“Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’?
“Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.
“Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’”
And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people (Exodus 32.11-14).
A Lesson for Us
Moses is an excellent example of intercessory prayers as we’ve seen. What can we learn from him?
Here are a few thoughts that I suggest we consider.
(1) Love and Prayer: Real prayer stems from love.
If we love other people, we’ll identify with their needs and their concerns. Loving God and other people is the first step in praying.
(2) Alignment with God: I’m convinced that God used this encounter with Moses on Mount Sinai to align Moses with His purposes. Moses’ prayer reflected God’s desire for the nation.
Moses fulfilled what Jesus taught in the Gospel of John.
“If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).
Notice what Jesus said: First, we abide in him. This means we’re living in a close relationship with him. For his words to abide in us means that we are aligned with his will and his desires.
When this is the atmosphere of our prayer, we can be assured our prayers will be answered.
God worked with Moses to get him to that place, and it is God’s will to do the same with us.
(3) Boldness in Prayer: Moses’s example and God’s word in the Book of Hebrews encourage us to be bold and confident in our intercession.
Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16).
We know we can come before God with our concerns and petitions because we have a loving Father who wants to answer the needs of His children.
(4) Spiritual Partnership with God: Henry Blackaby often refers to Moses as an example of someone who had an opportunity to experience God.
One of the ways we can experience God is to join with Him in praying for the things we believe are on His heart.
This interaction is one of God’s great gifts to His children, and we should take every advantage to be a part of it.
YouTube Video
Rudy Ross, Whispering Danny, and I discuss this passage on YouTube today. It is on the Bob Spradling channel.
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