Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Prayer from Exodus 32–34
This is a very long passage. Instead of reading the whole thing right away, I would like to read parts of it as we work through those parts. I invite you to turn now, first of all, to Exodus, chapter 32. I shall begin by reading verses 1–14.
We emulate what we admire, of course. This is true in fashion. It’s true sometimes in the forms of speech we adopt. It’s true the way we decorate our houses. It may be true in terms of styles of worship. It’s true even in forms of piety and spirituality so that we tend to emulate those patterns to which we have been exposed, especially if we think highly of them.
Therefore, if we are to reform our praying, what we really must do is hold in very high regard the examples in praying that scripture itself gives, then we will learn to reform our praying by the Word of God. I’m sure that that is part of the impetus behind this series. That is, if we are to reform our praying by the Word of God, we must hold in very high regard the examples of praying that are found in the Word of God. This evening, we listen in to four of the prayers of Moses.
We begin in Exodus 32:1–14.
“When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’
Aaron answered them, ‘Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing and bring them to me.’ So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’
When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, ‘Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.’ So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go down, because your people whom you brought up out of Egypt have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
I have seen these people,’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.’ But Moses sought the favor of the Lord, his God.” Here is the prayer: “ ‘O Lord, why should your anger burn against your people whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and 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 wipe them off the face of the earth’?
Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’ Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.”
This is the Word of the Lord.
1. Moses intercedes for the people.
This is the first of four prayers in these chapters. Look at the kinds of arguments Moses advances. It’s a remarkable prayer. First of all, he appeals for God’s own glory. He is afraid what people will think, not least the Egyptians, whom God has already defeated.
If God proves to be strong enough to save the people from physical dangers but not strong enough or attractive enough to capture their hearts, will the enemy say, “Oh, yes. God might be one big capable dude up there who can wipe out armies and open up a dead sea, but when it comes to actually capturing the hearts of the people, well quite frankly, the gods of the nation seem more attractive, you know? He’s not all that strong after all, is he”?
Moses actually raises the specter of God losing face, God becoming sullied in his glory. “What will the Egyptians say?” In other words, it is an appeal that whatever God does he will act in such a way that God will retain his glory, that God will be glorified. Further, Moses wants to be sure that the goodness of God’s motives are protected. Why should the Egyptians say, “It was with evil intent that he brought them out”?
Oh, it’s one thing to be a powerful God, you know? Open up dead seas and knock off Egyptians and muck up their chariots. It’s one thing to be powerful, but are you good? There are some people who think of God as merely powerful, and, therefore, he has to be propitiated with things that we offer him. A few prayers a day, a few more sacrifices, a few more sacrificial offerings of one sort or another to somehow make God favorable to us.
Obviously, God hadn’t been stroked enough, so he went bad tempered on them. He’s a bit nasty when he has a bad hair day. “Do you really want to be thought of like that, God? Do you want the people to say you actually duped them? It was with evil intent. You snookered them, God. Is that what you want them to say?” So once again, Moses is appealing to God’s reputation. His reputation as not only powerful but as good.
Then he says, “Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel to whom you swore by your own self.” In other words, remember your own covenantal promises. Then he adds further, “And after all, yes, there is a sense in which you could say I brought the people out, I am Moses, but in the most fundamental sense, let’s be quite frank, I didn’t do anything. You brought them out. They’re your people. You chose them. You brought them out. Are you going to stick with them?” Now, isn’t this a remarkable prayer?
Then at the end of it, we read: “The Lord relented and did not bring on the people the disaster he had threatened.” Now what shall we make of that kind of prayer? Does this mean that God has bad-temper days that he turns away from, provided his people stroke him appropriately or mouth the right sort of prayer? Like a really bad-tempered ruler, if only the secondaries can come along and stroke him appropriately then maybe he’ll turn around and be good.
If that’s the reading of the text, then there’s a sense in which Moses comes out here a little better than God himself. There are voices today that try to present that picture of God, saying that is the God of the Old Testament, all right. Yet as you read through these chapters you quickly discover that there is another element side by side with this voice. You don’t want to lose this voice. We’ll come back to its force in a moment, but one French theologian I know has it exactly right when he says these chapters portray the most amazing extreme tension.
Let me show you what he means. Here in this part of these three chapters, God responds favorably to Moses’ intercession, but in the third prayer we’ll see, God says something else that is very stunning. Chapter 33:19. God promises to pass all of his glory in front of Moses. “And I will proclaim my name the Lord in your presence.” Then God says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”
The apostle Paul picks up that quotation, of course, to prove that God is utterly sovereign in the choices he makes in this regard. You can’t twist God’s arm into being nice. That’s why this theologian speaks of tension here. On the one hand, God responds to the request of his favored people. On the other hand, he insists he is sovereign and he’s going to do it his way, thank you. How do you deal with that? Let me come at this another way.
Have you ever participated in a debate amongst Christians along these lines: Is prayer effective? Does prayer change things? In an ABF group, an Adult Bible Fellowship, or a Sunday school class, one group starts saying, “Well, of course, prayer changes things. Otherwise, what’s the point of praying? I mean, why not just say, ‘Your will be done, amen’? That sort of covers it, doesn’t it? It’s indistinguishable from fatalism. Of course prayer changes things.”
The other side says, “Whoa. Wait a minute now. The God who ordains all things such that not a sparrow falls from the heaven without his sanction, the God who is so sovereign that not a hair falls from my head without his decree, the God who chooses people from before the foundation of the earth.… You turn him on and off by your prayers?”
Do you know what the problem with those debates is? The problem with those debates is the way the question is set up. The way it’s cast, the person who is praying is introduced as an independent agent. There is God, planning on doing things his way, and then this Christian is introduced as an independent agent who comes along and either does or does not influence God to change his mind.
Are we ever that completely independent? Is it not the case, in some sense, if I do pray diligently that God will do things? He is already there before me. He has called me to himself. He has induced me to pray. He has given me a heart to pursue him. If I don’t, biblically speaking, isn’t that already a mark of rebellion?
Let me introduce you to some more of these Old Testament texts and then two or three New Testament texts that speak of praying and interceding with God in this respect. Begin now with Amos 7. I will introduce you to several texts very quickly.
Amos 7: “This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me. He was preparing swarms of locusts after the king’s share had been harvested and just as the second crop was coming up when they had stripped the land clean, I cried out, ‘Sovereign Lord, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!’ ” In other words, Amos sees this vision of the judgment that is going to fall, so he cries out in this way. “How can Jacob survive? Forgive!” “So the Lord relented.”
Verse 4: “This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: The Sovereign Lord was calling for judgment by fire; it dried up the great deep and devoured the land. Then I cried out, ‘Sovereign Lord, I beg you, stop! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!’ So the Lord relented. ‘This will not happen either,’ the Sovereign Lord said.”
Verse 7: “This is what he showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord asked me, ‘What do you see, Amos?’ ‘A plumb line,’ I replied. Then the Lord said, ‘Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer. The high places of Isaac will be destroyed and the sanctuaries of Israel will be ruined; with my sword I will rise against the house of Jeroboam.’ ”
In other words, at this point, as in Exodus 33, God says, in effect, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” At this point, he draws a line under it and says, “No more. Judgment falls.” There are individual narratives like that in the Bible, too, aren’t there? Do you remember Samuel praying for Saul until God finally says, “No more, Samuel? Stop praying for him. I have rejected him.”
Think of 1 John 5:16 and following. If we see a brother sin, we’re supposed to pray for them. The Lord will then heal them, and so forth. On the other hand, if they sin a sin unto death.… I think the epistle as a whole explains what that is … then you’re not to pray for them. That is, a person may be in this grievous state of apostasy such that you stop praying for them because judgment is sure to fall. It is an astonishing statement.
Now come to another Old Testament passage. This one is in Ezekiel 22. In this chapter, God details Jerusalem’s sins. At this point in the book, you will doubtless recall, Ezekiel is with the first batch of exiles 700 miles away on the banks of the Kabar River, and Jerusalem has still not fallen. It is going to fall. You’re only about 4 years off from its destruction, but most of the Jews were thinking, “Jerusalem can’t possibly fall. God won’t let the city down. After all, this is the city of the great King. This is the place of his temple. He won’t let the city fall.”
Back in Jerusalem, Jeremiah is saying, “There is so much wickedness here, the city will fall.” And off with the exiles, Ezekiel is warning, “Don’t pin your hopes on physical Jerusalem. It is going to fall.” Here God details the sins of the city. He comes to the end of the chapter, and we read in verse 30: “I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none.”
Do you hear that? He is looking for a man to plead with him. That’s what it means to “stand in the gap before me so I would not have to destroy them.” He is looking for such a person, and he couldn’t find a single intercessor. He couldn’t find a Moses. In fact, in chapter 34, God goes on to criticize the so-called “shepherds of Israel” who, without exception, are fleecing the flock, but they don’t care for the sheep.
They want all the positions of power and authority, they want to be prophets, priests, and kings, but they don’t care for the sheep. The proof that they don’t care for the sheep is they do not intercede before God. “I sought for a man to stand in the gap before me for my people, but I found none. So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign Lord.”
In other words, the God of the Bible is simultaneously presented as, on the one hand, utterly sovereign. He raises people up. He will have compassion on whom he will have compassion. On the other hand, we would say today, interactive. That is, personal. He’s not merely some fatalistic power.
He interacts with his people. He holds them accountable to intercede, and because that’s the very structure of the way he’s built a covenantal relationship, when they do intercede he responds to them. Unless what they ask for is beyond the point where he himself has determined judgment must fall.
It’s not as if God is taken by surprise and is now letting his anger get away with him. No, no, no, no. It is part of this total package that brings together all of God’s attributes at once. His sovereignty, yes, but his personal love and his interrelationships with his own people and his covenant faithfulness and the promises that if they repent and turn again he will yet heal and forgive their land.
All of this comes together in one massive package so that when I pray and intercede before God, it is God calling me to do so. It’s not as if I’m giving God suggestions he wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. If I don’t do it? God help the people. “I sought for a man to stand in the gap before my people, and I found none.”
God is a God who interacts with us. Along the lines of his own covenantal promises and faithfulness, he calls us to pray. Let me ask the question again.… Does God change his mind? Does prayer change things? Well, yes and no. No, if you mean that somehow God was absolutely determined from before the foundation of the world to go this way and then because I, Don Carson, gave him a suggestion he says, “Oops, I hadn’t thought of that. Okay, I’ll go this way.” Or basically, “I’m one hard-hearted case, but because you’ve pled with enough tears, you’ve wept enough, okay. Okay, I’ll go this way.”
If that’s what you mean, that’s not the God of the Bible. It just isn’t. On the other hand, does prayer change things? Well, yes, of course. For God has ordained the means as well as the ends, and the means include intercessory prayer with tears, with persistence, perseverance. Do you remember Jesus’ own parable regarding the woman who sought justice from an unjust judge? If the unjust judge listens to her, how much more do you not think the righteous judge will listen to the cries of his people?
God has ordained that is the way it will be. Because he does not want us merely to be robots claiming faith when actually it’s nothing more than confidence in fatalism? He wants us to trust this God and come to him as a child to his father and say, “Father, Father. Have mercy.” God hears from heaven.
There is perhaps one more thing I should draw your attention to in this first prayer. It’s the nature of the sin. It’s idolatry. They make an idol. In one sense, in Aaron’s mind, it is a kind of syncretism. That is, a mixing together of the worship of Yahweh, the covenant God, and of idols. The shape of a calf from the gods of Egypt.… Apis was the god in question … so that on the one hand Aaron is still saying, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.”
He’s still using the Lord’s name, and the people are saying, “Yes! Yes! These are the gods who brought you.” Does that mean that for some of them the Lord looks like this calf, looks like Apis? In any case, the result is idolatry. Idolatry is simply the displacement of the God who is truly there by someone or something else. That’s all it is.
That’s why Paul can say that covetousness is idolatry. That is, if you want something badly enough then for you that’s god. That’s why idolatry is, in a sense, much more fundamental than law breaking. Don’t forget, at this point the Ten Commandments hadn’t been given. The whole of the Mosaic code had not yet been given. That’s what Moses was up on the mountain to get, but already there was idolatry from Adam all the way to Moses.
Paul points out the same thing, does he not? He says that’s why death reigns from Adam to Moses. It is the displacement of God. The de-Godding of God. The stripping of God of his deity. These people make their own gods. Of course, we can do that in our own way. We may not take off all our earrings and cast them into some little Apis, but whenever we lust with all our heart for something that God disapproves or that is adjacent to God, or whenever we want a domesticated God with all the trappings of the God of the Bible somehow …
We still use his name, but at the end of the day when we say “Your will be done” what we really mean is “Your will be done, provided it’s my will first.” The name of the game is idolatry, and God hates idolatry, for what idolatry means is the de-Godding of God.
2. Moses wishes himself accursed for his people.
His second prayer is found in chapter 32, verses 15–35, especially verses 31–32. It’s worth taking the time to remind ourselves of the context. We pick up at verse 15. “Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back.
The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting …” Because he was with Moses as his assistant. “… he said to Moses, ‘There is the sound of war in the camp.’ Moses replied, ‘It is not the sound of victory, it is not the sound of defeat; it is the sound of singing that I hear.’
When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain.” In other words, they had so de-Godded God, that God’s will, God’s determination, and thus God’s Law was broken in principle, so he broke it in its symbolism.
“And he took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it. He said to Aaron, ‘What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?’ ‘Do not be angry my Lord,’ Aaron answered, ‘You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, “Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
So I told them, “Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.” Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!’ Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughing stock to their enemies. So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, ‘Whoever is for the Lord come to me.’ And all the Levites rallied to him.
Then he said to them, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: “Each man strap a sword on his side, go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.” ’ The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, ‘You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers and he has blessed you this day.’
The next day Moses said to the people, ‘You have committed a great sin, but now I will go up to the Lord. Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.’ ” Now the prayer, verse 31. “So Moses went back to the Lord and said, ‘Oh, what a great sin these people have committed. They have made themselves gods of gold, but now please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.’
The Lord replied to Moses, ‘Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. Now, go. Lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.’ And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made.”
Let us be quite frank. This passage is not a popular one in contemporary cultural outlook. The God of genocide. Doesn’t this sort of passage in the Old Testament warrant the kind of extreme views that you’re finding playing out right now between Muslims and Jews in Israel, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip? Each side believes that God has sanctioned them, and so at the end of the day what you get is endless machine guns and more genocide.
What we really have to do is abandon the God of the Bible or just take those passages of the Bible that present him as a bit of a softy. What these passages do is give us a bad picture so we have a good model of what to reject, and then we’ll come to, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Look upon a little child,” and all we’ll all live happily ever after.
Even those of us who come from Christian backgrounds and know that that can’t be right, there’s something wrong with this reconfiguration of the biblical text; nevertheless, we read a passage like this, and we say, “Yes this is the Word of God, I believe it’s the Word of God, but, quite frankly, this is embarrassing.” Except we’re not allowed to say it out loud. We just think it. How should we come to grips with these passages?
Let me suggest one of the most important things to think about in this respect. A lot of people try to configure the Bible this way: In the Old Testament, God is a God of short fuse and great wrath. In the New Testament, God is a God of love, great patience, and final forbearance, reconciling the world to himself.
So we simply say, “That’s the Old Testament,” and then, of course, you don’t have to worry about it, because, “We’re under the new covenant, aren’t we? We’re, sort of, if not better than they are, at least considerably more privileged, thank you.” Yet the more closely you read the New Testament the more you discover that doesn’t quite work either.
For in the New Testament, who is the figure in the New Testament who introduces to us the greatest numbers of new descriptions of a terrible hell? Jesus. Then, of course, the New Testament, likewise, has these horrendous passages that speak of the wrath of God and finally some passages like this from the Apocalypse. Here is Revelation 14, toward the end of the chapter:
“Still another angel, who had charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, ‘Take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the earth’s vine, because its grapes are ripe.’ The angel swung his sickle to the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia.”
Do you see the image there? In the ancient world, in great vineyards, they had these huge stone vats with little holes at the bottom and stone channels collecting the juice. People took the grapes and threw them into this vat, and the servant girls kicked off their sandals, wrapped up their skirts, and started squishing down the grapes. Then, of course, the juice squeezed out the little holes, went off through the channels, was collected in stone bottles, and out of that eventually came the wine.
Now people are being thrown into the great vat of the winepress of God’s wrath such that their blood, as they are trampled, rises to the height of a horse’s bridle for a distance of 200 miles. That’s the imagery. You want to convince me that the God of the New Testament sort of is a softy? Make all the allowances you like for the fact that this is imagery, this is still what the Bible says, and it’s only one of many passages like that.
Do you know why we think the Bible presents God as a little softer in the New Testament than in the Old? I’ll tell you why. Because most of us have a greater fear of war, famine, and plague than we have of hell. We read the Old Testament pictures of war, famine, and plague, and we’re scared. We read the new covenant pictures of hell, and we think, “Oh yeah, we’re safe from that,” or else we don’t really believe it deep down. It’s metaphorical or something.
The fact of the matter is as you move from the old covenant to the new covenant, you do not move from severity to grace. What you find, rather, is that as you move from the old covenant to the new covenant you find that the wrath of God, the holiness of God, are ratcheted up in their intensity, and the love of God, the grace of God, are also ratcheted up in their intensity.
After all, the God of the Old Testament is presented as a God of grace and love, isn’t he? After all, he is slow to anger, abounding in mercy. He is full of checed, as we’ll see a little father on. He will not always chide. No, no, no. “As a father pities his child, so the Lord pities those who fear him. He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust.” That is the God of the Old Testament, but for all of the biblical passages that speak of God’s mercy, nothing compares with the clarity of God’s mercy in the cross.
As you move from the old covenant to the new, the pictures of God’s holiness and severity are ratcheted up, and the pictures of God’s mercy and grace and tenderness are ratcheted up. They barrel through Scripture until finally they collide in the cross itself. What we must understand is that God hates idolatry, and, whether in temporal judgments in Old Testament terms or eternal judgments with the clarity of the New Testament, he holds us to account.
Moses understands well and truly that unless the Lord forgives, there is no hope. What the people here need, you see, is not a good psychiatric counselor. It’s not their alienation from the leadership that is the fundamental issue. It is not short-term memory loss so they have forgotten what God has done from the past. If they just hear a whole lot of expository preaching then they’ll remember a little better, and they won’t do it again.
No, the fundamental thing that the people must have is God’s favor. They must have God’s forgiveness, or they have nothing. Moses understands that. That’s why he prays as he does. “What great sin these people have committed!” Notice he does not say, “Well, Lord, it wasn’t really that bad. I mean, after all, it was only for a little while. I came down the mountain pretty fast. It was just one calf. I mean, it could have been a whole bunch. They might have had the Ra god represented, not just the Apis god. After all, they’re better than some of the bad guys out there in the desert.”
You see, Moses does not try to minimize the sin in the slightest. “Oh, what a great sin they have committed! They’ve made themselves gods of gold, but now, please, forgive their sin.” Moses understands that what we must have is the forgiveness of God or we have nothing, and we must remember always that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not first and foremost about us finding ourselves (although it helps us to find ourselves) or horizontal relationships well established in the church (although the gospel properly working out in the church does enable and empower men and women to love each other across races, across genders, across ages).
Above all, what the gospel does is it reconciles us to God. It brings forgiveness. That’s what the gospel does. Moses may not yet have had a full conceptual grasp of what we mean by the cross of Christ, but he understands that unless God forgives, you have nothing. Nothing. Then he goes one stage farther, “And if you will not forgive them, then blot me out of the book you have written.”
Now it’s not that that was a realistic request. God goes on to say, “That’s not going to happen, Moses. The one who is guilty will be condemned. I’m not going to wrap you up with them.” The very fact that Moses could say that says something about his heart, does it not? You find something similar in Paul, do you not?
In Romans, chapter 9, when he says, quite transparently, though he knows on one level it’s a vain request, “I could wish myself damned. I could wish myself accursed for my kinsman according to the flesh.” Do you know what Toronto needs? It needs Christians who so love non-Christians that they intercede for them before the Lord. Lest God should say, “I sought for a man, I sought for a woman among them at Knox to stand in the gap before me for my people, and I found none.”
To intercede in such a way that, in fact, they’re saying, “Will you not have mercy on us in this city? This is a greatly sinning city, but will you not forgive? If not, then count me among them. Blot me out too.” That’s what Toronto needs. Let me tell you, in the context of the local church, it’s pretty hard to fight about worship styles if there’s that kind of passion throughout the congregation for lost men and women.
3. Moses prays for himself.
He understands that his ability to stand and withstand depends utterly on knowing God better. We won’t go through the entire chapter, but we discover in chapter 33 that Moses meets with God at this place called the Tent of Meeting.
This was before the tabernacle was built, so it was some precursor to the tabernacle pitched outside the camp. We pick up then in 33:12, “Moses said to the Lord …” This is a kind of dialogue prayer. “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me.”
Because, you see, the condition of Moses going was that he would be permitted to bring Aaron, and now Aaron is compromised, so Moses feels completely alone, rejected, and abandoned. “Who’s going to go with me now, God? I’m stuck here.” “You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so that I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”
What I must have is your will and your way such that my heart overflows with obedience toward you and reverence. I must know you. “The Lord replied, ‘My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’ Then Moses said to him, ‘If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?’ ”
You see, God had said earlier that he would send his angel now with the people, but he himself would no longer live amongst the people. He would no longer do that. He would send his angel. But now Moses says to him, in effect, “Yes, but if you’re not living amongst us, if your presence is not with us, how are we distinguished from any other group?” Our cult? Our religious practices? Our heritage? Our genes?
Whenever you find a so-called church of Jesus Christ where, quite frankly, the presence of God is not powerfully there, what distinguishes that group from any other social religious group? Moses comes right to the heart of the issue, doesn’t he? God replies, “I will do the very thing you have asked because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”
So in a few chapters, when the tabernacle is finally built, God lays aside his threat, and it is built right in the midst of the 12 tribes, with three in the north, three in the south, three in the east, and three in the west. God had threatened he might not do this because he might lash out in his holiness and consume them, but God condescends to dwell in the midst of this sinful people, and thus go with him. “Then Moses said, ‘Now show me your glory.’ ”
Do you hear what Moses is asking for? When your whole universe is falling apart, when you cannot see how you are going to survive, when cancer threatens, when you are facing loss, when your people are being bombed out in some corner of the world from which you spring, when you are facing the most amazing depression, as mortgages crumble around you and your own children walk away from the Lord and you do not to whom to turn.… What do you need the most? You need to see God’s glory.
You need to see God for who he is. That alone will stabilize you. If someone is dying, the last thing you need to do is say, “Oh, it won’t be too bad now. It won’t be too bad. I’m sure the Lord may yet heal you.” We’re all going to die eventually. What sort of comfort is that? “We’ll just give you another short of morphine.” Yes, thank God for morphine in times of real, real pain. Yes, thank God. Do you know what you need the most? You need to see the glory of God. You need to see God for who he is, because that relativizes everything else.
He is the God who is your Maker. He is the God who is sovereign. He is the God who loves you. He is the God who has displayed himself across history for the protection and good of his own people. You need to see God as he is, and Moses understands that in this perilous situation, what he must have above all else, if he is to lead the people, is a renewed vision of God, or he has nothing.
After Moses’ prayer, “Show me your glory!” God replies, quite remarkably, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence.” So you remember the event in chapter 34, don’t you? Moses is hidden in a cleft of the rock, the Lord goes by and intones some words, then Moses is permitted to peep out and see something of the trailing edge of the afterglow of the glory of God.
Here, Moses prays for himself, and he understands that his ability to stand and withstand depends utterly on knowing God better. Whether in the local church, in your family, in personal devotions what you must pursue above all is knowledge of the living God … not exegetical skills, although they contribute to it … knowing God.
4. Moses prays for God’s presence among the people, in blessing or in judgment.
This prayer is found in chapter 34, beginning in verse 6. In this remarkable appearance of God before Moses, God goes by and intones, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Yet, he does not leave the guilty unpunished.”
Isn’t that remarkable? This extreme tension once again. He’s a forgiving God, and yet still punishment must be exacted. This extreme tension. “ ‘He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.’ Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshipped.”
He prays, “Lord, if I have found favor in your eyes, then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance.” In other words, whatever else, Moses begs for God’s presence among the people, whether in blessing or in judgment. Do you hear that?
You can only understand Moses’ prayer when you see the immediately preceding verses. God has just said, “I am the gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, and I am the God of holiness and truth, and I do not let sin go unpunished.” Moses says, “O God, take us! Whether in mercy or in wrath, take us. To whom else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
This is equivalent to Peter’s remark in John, chapter 6? Here then is intercessory prayer that is massively God-centered, and even when we do not know if God purposes to bring us what we think of as good and comfort or as discipline, “To whom else shall we go?” He is God. Our hope is in him. You find these cries again and again in both the old covenant and the new, do you not? “We do not know what to do,” the Old Testament writers cry, “but our eyes are upon you.”
Now one more step and we’re done. Before we leave these three chapters, let me remind you of five themes that we’ve woven together here. I’ll just list them:
1. The tabernacle.
The Tent of Meeting. After all, that’s what Moses was going up to the mountain to get. Not only the Ten Commandments but all the instructions about how to build the tabernacle and all the sacrifices that come from it, the Day of Atonement, and all of that. That’s what he was going up to get, and that’s what he goes back to retrieve. That is what the people were rejecting, and that is finally what will come to them: the tabernacle.
2. The glory goodness of God.
Moses cries, “Show me your glory,” and judging by God’s response, God’s greatest glory is displayed in his goodness.
3. Abounding in love and faithfulness.
There is this lovely expression, which occurs again and again in the old covenant and shows up again in the new where God is intoning what he is like to Moses as Moses hides in this cleft of the rock. “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger …” Then the NIV has, “… abounding in love and faithfulness.”
Abounding in checed ‘emeth, in Hebrew. In love and faithfulness, in covenantal mercy, in covenantal grace, in covenantal love and faithfulness. Utter reliability. It’s why the word is sometimes rendered as truth. Grace and truth, because God’s reliability is found also in his words. When he speaks, he’s reliable too.
4. The Law was given in grace.
Then, of course, there’s the giving of the Law in this context. This is the giving of the Law that was first rejected, and God gives it again in grace.
5. No one can see God’s face.
Did you notice that little bit that I skipped in chapter 33? When God promises, “In my sovereignty, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion, but you can’t see my glory in full blaze. You cannot. You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
Five themes: tabernacle; glory goodness; the expression, “abounding in love and faithfulness;” the giving of the Law; and the fact that no one can see God’s face. They’re interwoven throughout these chapters, aren’t they? Do you know what? Those five themes come together in one place in the New Testament, just one; namely the opening verses of John’s gospel, the prologue, verses 14–18.
John 1:14–18. There we’re told, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” There’s the tabernacle theme. The ultimate meeting place between God and human beings was not finally that tabernacle in the Old Testament or the temple that replaced it but, finally Jesus, the ultimate tabernacle, the ultimate meeting place between God and human beings. John goes on to say, “We have seen his glory, the glory of the unique One from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Then he plays with this glory theme all through John’s gospel so that when the first miracle is performed at Cana in Galilee, the people who brought the water, they saw the miracle, but the disciples perceived the glory. That continues until you get to chapter 12, when it becomes clear that ultimately God’s glory is displayed in Christ on the cross. He is glorified by being held up in ignominy, odium, and shame because, you see, where is God most glorified? In his goodness. “We have seen his glory, the glories of the Only-begotten, full of grace and truth.”
That expression itself, “full of grace and truth.” That’s John’s translation of the same expression. Do you want to see the full-orbed demonstration of God’s graciousness and his utter reliability? Come to the gospel, which brings together all of the strands of the Old Testament and sees them in glorious climax in Christ Jesus. Then he goes on to say in chapter 1, verses 16–17, the Law was given by Moses, as was here. “The Law was given by Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
Oh, the Law was a gracious gift from God, and it came through Moses, but grace and truth par excellence, as much as they were displayed in some preliminary way to Moses, they came through Jesus Christ. Then that verse ends up, “No one has seen God at any time,” which harks back to this verse, “But the unique One, himself God, he has displayed him, he has narrated him.” In other words, Jesus is presented as the one who manifests God to us.
No one has seen God, but we have seen Christ. We have seen his glory. It’s why a little later Jesus can say, “Have I been with you such a long time, Philip, and have you not yet known me? He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Of course the glory of God, even in Christ, is somewhat veiled. The eternal Word becomes a human being, and that human being does not have a face that glows or a halo around his head or some bright visage that scares people off. He’s a man! A Jewish man in the first century, caked with dust from the dirty roads.
But one day, the glory will be revealed. One day, in Christ Jesus, the glory will be revealed in unshielded splendor. Like John in the final visions of the Apocalypse, we will fall before him and his face will shine with untarnished glory. We will fall before him as one gazing before the sun, and we shall see. Until then, we understand what the apostle Peter meant when he says, “Whom having not seen, yet you love.”
In faith, we press to the day when we will see him face to face, understanding that he is the God full of grace and truth. The great meeting place between God and human beings. The one to whom we address our prayers in intercession for ourselves and for those around us in the city of Toronto. God have mercy on us, amen.
