Word of Encouragement (09/20/2022)
When God told Moses that He would wipe out the people of Israel for their sin of worshipping the golden calf, Moses had been making many petitions. As the LORD responded favorably to his requests, he became bolder and bolder in his petitions. Prior to this petition, Moses asked the LORD to show him His glory! When the LORD responded that He would do so, he proceeded to make his final request with this petition.
We can be greatly encouraged by this in our prayer life. The more we interact with God and the more we get to know His will (through His Word and through prayer, by which we “digest” the Word), we can be more confident and bolder in our petitions for the kingdom of God. Our prayer is connected to our knowledge of God, not only in content but also in “size,” as it were. If our view of God is small, we will only pray about “small” things. But if our view of God is great, what we pray for will be enlarged and expanded: “Thou art coming to a King, / Large petitions with thee bring, / For His grace and pow’r are such, / None can ever ask too much.”
What was the final petition Moses asked of God? “O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us....” The golden-calf incident showed that God’s presence among His people was not something to be taken for granted. God’s holiness is real. Sin is real. The two are incompatible. Moses recognized that: “...for it is a stiff-necked people....” If so, what hope was there for the LORD to go in the midst of Israel?
Moses pleaded, “...pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.” But on what basis? Notice how he began this petition: “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord....” He was petitioning as Israel’s covenant representative. Paul says in 1 Cor. 10:1-2, “...our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea....” As Israel’s covenant representative, Moses had to plead for them. He succeeded in turning God’s wrath away and saving his people from annihilation. But he also knew that mere survival as a nation was not what Israel needed. Even possessing the promised land and settling in it as a free people was unacceptable to him if the LORD did not go with them, for he tasted the goodness and glory of the LORD.
This was a hard ask. The only plea Moses had was that he had found favor in God’s sight because of God’s mercy. And God graciously granted this petition. But there is an undeniable tension in this interaction. Can the incompatibility between God’s holiness and Israel’s sinfulness be resolved simply by Moses’ plea for God’s favor? Consider the setting. Before Moses offered this petition, the LORD commanded him to prepare two tablets of stone for the inscription of the Ten Commandments because Moses broke the original set out of anger when he witnessed Israel’s idolatry. Think about the irony: Moses asking for God’s favor with the Ten Commandments in his arms! God cannot arbitrarily grant forgiveness. If Moses’ plea worked, it was because the future atoning work of Christ was being applied here to make his plea acceptable in God’s sight.
This interaction reminds us that we should not take God’s presence for granted—not because we don’t know when He will threaten to leave but because Jesus sacrificed so much to ensure it for us. We should not sin (especially, intentionally) but do good. When we sin, we should be quick to confess in the name of Jesus Christ and turn away from our sin by the power of Christ’s righteousness.