Word of Encouragement (11/09/2022)

And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. (Num. 21:7)

What is amazing (and not so amazing) is how sinful we can be. We saw that again and again in the Israelites in the wilderness and all their complaints despite all that the LORD had done for them. But what is even more amazing is God’s patience with them. Despite the Israelites’ childish and superficial confession of sin, the LORD delivered them from the vipers by ordering Moses to make a bronze serpent and lift it up so that whoever looked at it would be healed.

How could God accept such a defective confession of sin? We know how offended we get when someone acknowledges his mistake without his heart in it. But let’s think about this: if He didn’t, what would happen to us? Who of us can give the kind of confession that is acceptable to God? How sincere do we have to be? Can we ever be sincere enough in our sorrow for our sins? Do we fully understand how offensive our sin was to God?

But how can God accept anything that is not perfect? Here, let us remember why God relented. It was not because of the sincerity of the Israelites’ confession; it was because Moses prayed for them! He was indeed a meek person. This whole affair started when the Israelites came to Moses and Aaron and spoke against them, attacking their character and attributing a malicious intent to them, accusing them of deceiving them to kill them when they had worked so hard for them! On this occasion, Yet, Moses was ready and willing to intercede for them when they came to him and pleaded with him to pray to the LORD on their behalf. Maybe his anger melted away when he saw the venomous snakes biting the people and many people dropping dead all around him.

But this only begs the question. For sure, the LORD designated Moses as the covenant mediator between Himself and the people. So, the LORD listened to Moses’ intercession and relented. But did God listen to his prayer simply because he was the mediator? What if his prayer was not sincere enough? Just because God answered his prayer, should we think that it was good enough? But Moses was a sinner just like us. How could anything he did be acceptable to God regardless of how sincere he was?

You know the answer, don’t you? The reason that God heard Moses’ prayer was the same reason that He hears our prayers—the merit of Christ’s righteousness, by the authority of which we pray. Of course, Moses did not pray “in Jesus’ name”. But his faith in the LORD and His promises (particularly concerning the Messiah to come) connected him to Jesus Christ. That is why the Westminster Confession of Faith says, “The justification of believers under the Old Testament was, in all these respects, one and the same with the justification of believers under the New Testament” (11:6). Because we pray in Jesus’ name, we can be most certain and confident that God will hear our prayer and answer us according to His goodness and love!

Does this mean that we don’t have to be sincere in our confession of sin or petitions? Of course not! If we are only interested in having a business transaction with God, we will try to do the bare minimum to get what we want. But can we do that with the One, who loved us to the point of giving His life for us? Does He not deserve our utmost sincerity when we interact with Him?

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