“But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God: ‘Lord, why does your anger burn against your people you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and a strong hand? Why should the Egyptians say, “He brought them out with an evil intent to kill them in the mountains and eliminate them from the face of the earth”? Turn from your fierce anger and relent concerning this disaster planned for your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel – you swore to them by yourself and declared, “I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of the sky and will give your offspring all this land that I have promised, and they will inherit it forever.”‘ So the Lord relented concerning the disaster he had said he would bring on his people.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever prayed for someone else? I suspect you have. Nearly everyone has. That motion of spiritually looking up is hardwired into our programming. It takes real effort over time to turn it off. So, let me phrase that slightly differently. Have you ever interceded for someone else in prayer? This goes a little ways beyond merely praying for them. It’s easy to say a quick prayer for someone who is hurting and then go on about the rest of your day. Interceding is when we stand in the gap between them and God and make ourselves a passionate advocate for their interests. When God was ready to bring apocalyptic judgment against Israel because of their sin, Moses interceded for them. Let’s talk about what we see unfolding here.

Like I said yesterday, this whole section is interesting because we find the characters all switching roles. Normally, God is the one being gracious and we are the ones insisting He bring judgment of some kind. Consider the story of Jonah. When God spared the city of Nineveh in response to their repentance, Jonah was furious. He had made himself a nice little spot to watch the fireworks and destruction, and then the whole show got cancelled on him. Here, though, God was ready to launch the fireworks, and Moses is the one talking Him down.

Let’s look quickly at how He does that. This little passage has a beautiful literary form. It is in an A-B-A’-C-A” pattern. The A parts all have to do with God’s anger. The B and C parts give reasons why He shouldn’t act on it. Moses asks God why He is angry (A), calls God to turn from His anger (A’), and then God does relent from the actions He declared He would take in His anger (A”).

The first reason Moses gives has to do with God’s reputation. He had gone to all the trouble of bringing Israel out of Egypt and revealing Himself not merely to them, but to the whole world as a great and powerful God. We know this because when Israel finally arrives in the Promised Land another forty years after this, people are still talking about it. When they go to sack the city of Jericho, the two spies who go case the place first meet with Rahab who tells them that the people are terrified because of what their God was reputed to have done to the Egyptians. So, given that, why would God want to destroy the people in His anger and throw away the reputation He had gained for Himself. He was known as a good and gracious God who was passionate for His people. Destroying them would shift that reputation over to make Him like all the other gods who didn’t really care about their people.

The second reason Moses gives is once again connected to His reputation, but this time it has to do with His promise to the patriarchs. He reminds God that His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel was to make a great nation from their descendants. He had promised to give their descendants the land of Canaan forever (we can talk another time about how we should understand the concept of “forever” there). If God destroyed the people now, how was He going to keep that promise? Of course, God wasn’t really going to renege on this promise at all if He brought the intended destruction on Israel. He had told Moses that He would create a nation from His descendants instead. Well, Moses was descended from the patriarchs just like the rest of the people were. His plans wouldn’t be changed in this event, they would merely be delayed, but Moses’ passion for the people is on point all the same.

In the end, God listens to Moses, and doesn’t destroy the people. The hero saves the day. This, however, just forces us to ask a really uncomfortable question. Did Moses really get God to change His mind? Is God that fickle? I mean, I’ve been really angry before with my kids and my wise and beautiful bride has talked me down. Maybe you’ve experienced something similar. But if God was talked down like I have been, that makes Him not much better than me. Is He really? If Moses hadn’t prayed for the people, would they have really been toast?

The equally uncomfortable answer to that very last question at least is that we don’t know. The text doesn’t say. Like we talked about last week, this is one of those places where our understanding of the character of God is going to have a profound impact on how we process what we are seeing here. If we understand God’s character as other than it actually is, we are not going to be able to make much in the way of positive sense out of this passage.

So then, what do we know about God’s character? Well, we know that He keeps His promises. The descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel (or Jacob) were always going to inherit that land because God promised them they would. Multiple times. That promise shapes the second part of the Genesis narrative more profoundly than pretty much any other single idea. It was the driving force behind the whole Exodus journey. God was beginning to fulfill His promise to them through their descendants. And while, yes, starting over through Moses would have technically left Him still fulfilling it, merely at a later date, that kind of a switcheroo wasn’t what any of the people had in mind. I would argue that while God would have absolutely brought some kind of judgment on the people for their sins, and perhaps a more grievous judgment than He actually did, the total annihilation of the people was never actually His plan.

We also know that God is just. Not all the people participated in this grand rebellion. At the very least, the members of the tribe of Levi seem to have kept themselves apart from it as we will see later on in the chapter. From how the narrative takes shape as we keep reading it, it appears that this covenant-breaking rebellion was something that only a relative handful of the people participated in. Those who participated in it were going to face judgment. Those who didn’t, were not. In fact, by the time we get to the end of the chapter, we find God Himself telling Moses that only the participants would face consequences for their rebellion against Him.

One more thing we know about God that must be factored in here is the fact that He is loving. He is merciful. God always responds to repentance. We see that again and again and again throughout the Scriptures. When judgment has been declared and people repent, God relents from that judgment and doesn’t bring it either at all or at the very least on that generation. After King Manasseh and his son, King Amon, and their horribly evil reigns, God decreed the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah. Then Josiah became king. He was good and faithful and led the people in a movement of national repentance. Through a prophet God assured Josiah that while He was still going to bring the judgment the people had earned, He would not bring it during his reign.

When the Israelites learned about the judgment God had planned for them, they were likely to repent. That’s pretty much how we always respond to assurances of judgment. As a kid, when you got busted by your parents for doing something wrong and were threatened with cataclysmic judgment, you probably begged and pleaded and repented of everything you had ever done in order to avoid it. The people would almost certainly have repented if judgment was announced on all of them. And if they had done that, from the pattern we see displayed across the rest of the Scriptures, God would have relented in some form or fashion.

For better or for worse, though, the people never had to do that because Moses interceded on their behalf. He prayed for them. Well, he did more than pray for them. He put himself squarely in the gap between God and the people and advocated on their behalf. And I can’t help but wonder if this wasn’t the outcome God was angling toward all along. He was still developing Moses as a leader; as the kind of leader who was going to be able to successfully get the people through forty years in the wilderness. If he didn’t have enough passion for this people, a passion that measured up to God’s own passion for them, he wasn’t going to make. You can’t lead a people you don’t love for very long.

God wasn’t just putting on a show of anger, and He really did mean to bring consequences on the people who so flagrantly violated the covenant they had made with Him, but He spoke with an extra stern voice, so to speak, in order to prompt Moses to passion for the people. God’s rage was righteous, and His wrath was just, but like we also said yesterday, He was doing two things at the same time. And one of those things was developing Moses as the kind of leader who could shepherd His people in the hard years ahead of them. Thankfully, we don’t need a leader like Moses to shepherd and guide us any longer. We have the ultimate upgrade in Jesus who stands in the gap for us just like Moses did for Israel, but even more effectively, not to mention permanently.

Here’s where all of this lands for us, though. Moses had a passion for the people he was leading. For what people in your life do you have a similar passion? Who is it that you would be willing to stand in the gap between them and God and intercede on their behalf? Are you doing that for anyone? If not, why not? Is it a lack of love on your part? Too much laziness? Selfishness? Busyness?

There are two people who need this, and they may not even know it. The first is the person being prayed for. God moves in response to the prayers of His people. He does this in ways that are consistent with His plans and character, although not always precisely matched to the subject of our prayers. The other person is us. Prayer that is effective is prayer that draws us into a closer relationship with God, not merely prayer that sees the object of its aim accomplished. Because of this, praying passionately and fervently for another person brings us into God’s presence over and over and over again. That presence changes us. It makes us more reflective of Him in more ways than we can count. This was certainly the case for Moses. The more and harder he prayed for Israel, the more reflective of God’s character he became. What prayer accomplished in Moses life it can accomplish in ours as well if we will commit ourselves to it. So then, who are you praying for? Who are you really interceding for? If you don’t have someone, or perhaps even several someones, it’s time to fix that.