Joel Brooks: I invite you to open your bibles to Exodus chapter 32. Exodus 32. We're going to be looking at intercession tonight, which apparently is really needed. I I am, I'm not the most technological technologically savvy person. I recently just got a smartphone.
I've already felt myself dumbing down since I've gotten it. And so I just, somehow synced up my Google Calendar with my phone. I'm not really sure how it all works. And so I've been putting the weeks, what I'll be preaching on ahead, and so this has just been intercede. That's what it had on the calendar.
And today, keep getting messages from Google and my phone saying, intercede now. Intercede now. Intercede. And I I like all day, and I keep thinking, okay, I will. I will intercede now.
Chapters 32 through 34 are some of the most practical and theologically rich chapters in all of the Bible. And let me just tell you, there were times when I was going through this, I kind of felt like Moses, in which you needed to to remove your shoes because you were treading on holy ground. Because here you get such a clear picture of who God is, who we are, and what our response to Him should be. And this is gonna be one of the reasons we are lingering in this section for a while. Last week, we focused on the sin of the people in 32.
Tonight, we're going to look at Moses' intercession. Next week, we're going to look at election. Then we're gonna look at God's name and his glory. There's there's a lot in here. I actually don't know how far we will make it tonight.
We'll read chapter 32 beginning in verse 9. And the Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff necked people. Now therefore, let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them, and I may consume them in order that I may make a great nation of you. But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, oh, Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand. Why should the Egyptians say, with evil intent did he bring us out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth.
Turn from your burning and anger, and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants to whom you swore by your own self and said to them, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven. In all this land that I have promised, I will give to your offspring and they shall inherit it forever. And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. Pray with me.
Our father, we ask that you would open up this this text to us, your word to us, bring clarity to it. Lord, I pray you would open up our hearts and our minds to receive what you would have for us this evening. Lord, your words are life and we need life. And so I pray in this moment at this time my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us.
We pray this in the strong name of Jesus, amen. So tonight, we look at intercessory prayer. And before we get started, I need to just kind of let you know that I am somewhat of a expert on prayer. I actually took a class, 2 classes at Beeson Divinity School on this. And my professor, he was he was so gifted and also so old, he had actually, at one time, hired CS Lewis.
That is how old he was. But I went through this classes, so I literally have my masters in prayer. So you are in good hands. Actually, I I struggle with prayer, likely the same as you struggle in prayer. And that's one of the reasons I love this text so much is because it really walks us through how are we to pray.
What is prayer? And we need to learn how to pray. The church as a whole, has lost much of prayerfulness that defined it in centuries past. And now with all of the media that we have, I would, I would call that the age we're in is really the the age of theology. It's the age of scripture because you have so much information accessible to you.
You you can look up any ancient father. You can look up any any theology. You can listen to any sermon on podcast. There are dozens of good pastors out there with good blogs that you can go to. All of this information, the scriptural knowledge is at your fingertips.
But what about prayer? Is is prayer getting its rightful focus? And too often our Bible studies and our podcasts and our blogs and everything, they have they've actually crowded out this important aspect of getting on our knees before God in prayer. And and instead of giving us fuel to pray, a lot of times these things just kind of clutter clutter up our minds and our time, and we don't have time to pray. And listen, it is true that you cannot pray properly, you cannot pray effectively unless you have a good theology.
But it is equally true that there is no good theology that will not lead you to prayer. Perhaps, you grew up in a church like I did, in which you would have prayer meetings, Wednesday night prayer meetings that would last an hour long. And and by prayer meeting, I mean you have 15, 20 minutes of fellowship, talking around. Do you have another 30 minutes of sharing prayer requests? Everybody goes around in a circle or something and, you know, it it would range from some ants, sick parakeet, you know, or, a lot of the unspokens.
You remember those? Unspoken. I've got an unspoken. Prayer. Everybody has unspoken.
Why do you even come if you're just gonna give unspoken prayer requests? But then if somebody look at their watch like, ah, gosh, we we only got 5 minutes left. How about I just close us in prayer? And, and so you do that and then we would have our hour long prayer meeting. And that's often what I grew up in the church, thinking prayer was.
But what does the Bible say that prayer should look like? Let's look at the text. Last week, when we were looking at 32, chapter 32, we saw how the people had fallen into sin. They fell into idolatry. While their mediator, Moses, was up on the mountain with God, they were down below bowing down to an idol.
And God looked at their sin, and he he says, idolatry is adultery. It is you breaking your marriage covenant with me. It's it's you not liking who I am, and instead, you fashioned me and what you want me to be. And you love that, and you seek satisfaction in that, and that is adultery. And so so like a jealous husband, God, God's heart first breaks and then gets really angry at his people.
And and his anger was going to destroy them, absolutely would have destroyed them if Moses had not stepped up and interceded in this prayer we just read. Psalm 106 talks about this story, and it says this. They made a calf at Mount Sinai and worshiped a metal image. They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God, their savior, who had done great things in Egypt, wondrous works in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.
Therefore, he said he would destroy them, had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to turn away his wrath from destroying them. Intercessory prayer is standing in the breach or standing in the gap between a holy, righteous God and his anger, standing in between that and a sinful people deserving the wrath of God. And this is what Moses does, and had not Moses done this here, make no mistake, the people would have been destroyed. So let me just say as clearly as I can, Moses's prayer had an effect on God. God did not destroy these people because Moses prayed.
And I realized that a statement of that can can make many Calvinists, like myself, just a little bit uncomfortable. But don't worry, it didn't make Calvin uncomfortable. It didn't make Moses uncomfortable. It doesn't make God uncomfortable who has this story written for our instruction, but prayer, Now, at this point in Moses's life, he's got a pretty good theology. He's absolutely convinced of the sovereignty of God.
There's no doubt in his mind concerning election. He knows out of all the people in the world, God just picked Abraham, and God's he he didn't just pick Abraham like we would pick people to be part of a kickball team or something back in PE. You know, you look for the person with the qualities that you want, the biggest, baddest kid that's going to get you to win the game. That's that's not how not how God picks people. He just picks according to His own sovereign will, not according to anything that person has done.
And so God just said, Abraham. And he picked Abraham. And then God just picked Israel. And Moses, so he understands things like election. He understands God's attributes, that God is all powerful, that God is all knowing, that he knows both the present, the past, and the future.
He knows what will be because God has declared what will be. Isaiah 46 says, I declare the end from the beginning, from ancient times and things not yet done, saying, my counsel will stand. I will accomplish all of my purpose. Moses knows this. And he knows that God is completely self sufficient and is perfectly righteous and holy, and that God hates evil.
He even knows that that God doesn't change, that God's plans are unchangeable. And this actually leads Moses into prayer. The fact that God's plans are unchangeable. He knows things like 1st Samuel 15, God is not like man that he should change his mind or lie or repent. He knows Isaiah 46 that God's counsel will stand.
What God has spoken, He shall bring it to pass, period. No debate about it. What God has decreed will happen. His plans are unchangeable. They are fixed before there was time.
They're written in stone. They are covered in cement, covered up with, metal, put in a vault. There is no way to add to them or take away from them. They are eternal and they will happen. Moses knows this.
Yet that theology pushes Moses in to ask God to change his mind. As a matter of fact, Moses actually appeals to the fact, God, you always do what you say. Therefore, I don't want you to do what you just said you were gonna do. That's what he says. I mean, look at the text.
God has just said he wants to destroy all of Israel. So in order to change God's mind, he reminds God of his promises that he made to Abraham. Look at verse 13. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants to whom you swore by your own self, and you said to them, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven. And all this land that I promised, I will give to your offspring and they shall inherit it forever.
And the Lord relented from the disaster that He had spoken of bringing on His people. So Moses actually has the audacity to tell God that he needs to remember something. Alright? I I walk on, you know, have to tread carefully if I ever ask my wife, did you did you remember your keys? Did you remember to turn this off?
Because nobody likes to be told that they might have forgotten something. But here, Moses is telling God, do you remember? Do you remember what you said? Of course, God remembers what he said. But Moses reminds him, he says, you made a promise to Abraham.
You need to keep your word, God. You need to keep that promise by not killing Israel now. So the question is, how how can Moses do this? How can he appeal to the fact that God always keeps his word as a way of telling God to now do something different than what he had just said? And first, I want to acknowledge that there is a tension in this text, a very well placed good tension here, one that God put in there for us to wrestle with.
And the way I see it is this. Although Moses sees God's plan revealed here, he doesn't know the full extent of God's plan. He doesn't know the end of his plan as it is unfolding. And so he doesn't know what role he has as this plan does unfold. And as he's thinking about the situation, he begins to realize, I think my role is one of mediator.
The destruction of Israel might not be God's last word. He very well might have put me here for such a time as this to intercede on their behalf. And actually, we see that in the text. We see it in verse 7. Says, and the Lord said to Moses, go down, for your people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves.
Now let me ask you, why would God Why would God send Moses down to the very people he was just about to destroy? But he sends his prophet. He sends his mediator to be with these people. He only does this because his judgment is not fixed yet, and you're actually going to see this story play itself over and over and over throughout the Old Testament, in which God sends a prophet to an evil city declaring absolute judgment. So he declares judgment, but then he sends a prophet to declare it and the people repent and God relents.
The most famous story is, of course of Nineveh, in which the Ninevites were very evil people. God, he said, I'm going to utterly destroy you. I'm going to wipe you off the earth. And and instead of God just doing that, he has a funny way of doing that. He actually gets Jonah, who doesn't want to do the task, and he gets Jonah, swallows him up in a fish, comes vomits him up on the shores of Nineveh to make sure he gets there and sends Nineveh to the people who's like, alright, you're all gonna perish.
And then the whole city repents. Says even the animals repented. I mean, they they covered themselves with ash. And what we see is God was working in the hearts these people repentance while He was also declaring judgment, and He sent a mediator. He sent a prophet to them.
It's a common pattern we have in the old Testament and Moses see a stepping up to his role of mediator here. Moses prays according to God's plan, and God relents according to his plan. Yet we believe that God would never have relented if Moses had not been put there by his will to pray. Have you ever noticed just I mean, as we're going through Exodus, have you noticed how much Moses has changed as we've gone through chapter by chapter? I really love the progression of Moses.
So you you start over here, you know, in Exodus 3, when Moses meets God at the burning bush. You remember how he was then? Alright. Well, first God, he appears in a burning bush. It's a gentle image.
There's nothing frightening about this little burning Bush. It tells Moses, remove your sandals. He removes his sandals. But Moses is really, really kind of scared and Moses doesn't like what God is telling him. And it's like trying to make up excuses.
Don't send me, don't do this. I don't want I don't want this task you have given me. So so a God who's not angry, who's just gently speaking to Moses, Moses is kinda scared and doesn't want to do the task. Now, we come over here, and Moses has seen what God can do when he's angry. He just saw how God has obliterated Egypt.
And now he he sees God once again angry because his people has broken his covenant. They have committed adultery, and he says, get out of the way, Moses. I'm going to destroy them. And there's thunder and there's smoke and and there's the clouds and there's lightning, and Moses is there. And this time, Moses goes, over my dead body, God.
You will not destroy these people. I mean, what what a change in Moses as God is growing up, growing him up in this role of mediator and what it means for him to pray. Moses has changed a whole lot. Now, let me ask you, Has your understanding of God led you to pray like this? Has your understanding of God acted as fuel for you to pray or has your understanding of God's justice, his sovereignty, his eternal decrees instead led you to kind of a indifferent prayer where you could pray things like, will your will be done, but it's more of a prayer of resignation than a prayer of faith.
And you don't push in and stand in the gap and say, God, no. You will not pour judgment out on these people. Real theology leads to real prayer. And I hope you see how Christ like this prayer is. We see Jesus here.
If you take a step back and you look at the story as a whole, look at the image here. The very mediator whom the people rejected is now ascended and is the only person standing between a angry god and a sinful people. He's the only one keeping the wrath of God being poured out, this mediator that was rejected by the people. This is so Christ like. This is the gospel.
This is Moses pointing to a greater Moses. We gotta move on. This intercession of Moses was successful. God relents. He doesn't obliterate Israel here.
This then emboldens Moses to pray for more. Actually, we're going to see this several times. He intercedes, God answers. So he intercedes more, God answers. So he intercedes more, and his intercessions keep getting bigger and bigger.
And so in verse 30 we see Moses interceding again. Look at verse 30. Says, the next day Moses said to the people, you have sinned a great sin, and now I will go up to the Lord. Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin. So Moses returned to the Lord and said, alas, this people have sinned a great sin.
They have made for themselves gods of gold. But now if you will forgive their sin, but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written. But the Lord said to Moses, whoever sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you. Behold, my angel shall go before you.
Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them. Now Moses's previous intercession only prevented God from immediately destroying the people, but but the people are still sinful. So so what's gonna prevent God from destroying them in the future? Moses knows atonement needs to be made. Now this idea of atonement is very new here.
In chapter 28, we were introduced to the idea of atonement. And when God was giving instructions about how you can make atonement for sin, he he set up a sacrificial system, and he says you get a unblemished lamb, and you kill the lamb. And so the sin or the wrath that should have gone on you for your sinfulness now goes on this unblemished, unspotted lamb. That's what, that's what atonement, how it was set up. So Moses says, I'm going to go and make atonement, But notice Moses doesn't bring any animal with him.
He doesn't bring a lamb or an ox or a calf, but he does bring a sacrifice. Moses goes up there and he offers himself. He offers himself as a sacrifice. Blot me out of the book. God doesn't outright, you know, just tell Moses, that's a really bad idea.
You know, it's a bad for a lot of my time. That's bad. No. Essentially, he says, Moses, you can't carry the weight for that. I'll judge each person according to their sins.
And basically, Moses, you've got sin. You can't carry the weight of other people's sins. It's not a bad idea, but you're not the one. You're not the one. When Moses offers up his own life for this sacrificial at home and he obviously he points us to Jesus.
He obviously points us there. But he also points us to how we should pray. We see Paul praying this way in Romans 9. We'll look at that next week when Paul says, oh, if I could only be accursed in order that God would save my people. What he's doing here, this is just another way of saying, God, do whatever it takes to save these people.
Do whatever it takes. If if you have to have all of my money, you take all my money. If you have to have all of my time, take all my time. If you if you need all of my gifts, you take all of my gifts. If you need even my life, take my life.
Do whatever it takes to forgive and to save these people. Spend my life freely for that cause if that's what's required, Lord. I mean, I I I've I've got to confess too often, I I'm not willing to give up an hour of TV or an hour of sleep for this cause. And here, Moses is saying, do whatever it takes, even if it's my life, whether by life or by death, I am yours, Lord. Well, God listens to Moses here and and he responds to Moses with these words we find in the next chapter, verse 33 or chapter 33.
Let's look at the first four verses. The Lord said to Moses, depart. Go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt, to the land to which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, to your offspring, I will give it. I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Pesites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff necked people.
When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned. The Lord responds to Moses. His prayer of atonement, and he says, okay, okay, Moses, all right. Not only will I not kill you and all the people, I'll give you what you want. You can have your land flowing with milk and honey.
You can have it all. You can have everything you have ever wanted, Everything you used to dream about when you're back in Egypt, and you were starving, and you were slaves, and and all you did every day was just make bricks over and over, and you had that one thought, you had that one dream that maybe someday I can find rest. Someday I will go to a promised land. I'm gonna give you that one thought that kept you sane. You can have it.
You could go to a land that you'll be free from oppression, where you can relax, you can eat, you can drink, you can live out the rest of your days in prosperity. Now, I'm gonna give you everything except for this one thing, I won't go with you. I won't go with you. I mean, just stop and ponder that offer. Just ponder it.
He is offering everything they ever wanted minus His presence. Heaven on earth minus His presence. How do you think you would respond to such an offer? Actually, how do you respond to that offer? The people respond by saying, when they when they heard this, they call it a disastrous word and they mourned.
Getting everything they ever wanted minus God was a disastrous word to them. Years back, I took my oldest and middle child, Caroline and Natalie, to the zoo all over breakfast, all during our time of breakfast. We were talking about the zoo. It was fun Friday. That's my day off.
And, so I'm telling them about the sea lions and the hippopotamuses and all the the geriatric animals that were at the Birmingham Zoo. If you if you've ever been there, they they hardly move. We've been there 10 years, and I've never seen an alligator move. I don't even know if they were real, But my kids are getting really excited, and I tell them we're not even going on the train. And, so as we pull up to the zoo, I just pull up to the front, and I unlock the door, and I say, okay, y'all get out.
I'll come back, and I'll pick you up in a couple of hours. And they're just, I wouldn't do that. Some of y'all y'all showed no surprise whatsoever. I really would not do that. That's in line with what you do.
I'm not that bad of a parent. But my my kids were shocked, and they're like, no. They they just had this freak out. No. Because it wasn't the zoo is what they were looking they were looking forward to just spending time with me.
That's what fun Friday is about. They just want to be with their dad anywhere, doing anything. And they can't enjoy the zoo unless I'm there with them enjoying it. And the people of Israel have come to this same point. God, you you could take us here and you could drop us off and you could let us, you know, say, have free reign.
Do whatever you want, but but what we want is you. And we can't enjoy any of that unless you are with us. An angel won't do. We need your presence with us. Israel's come a long way.
Deep down in their hearts, all they want is God. Nothing else matters. Now, do you know what the biblical word is for getting everything you want minus God? Everything you want minus God. The biblical word for that is hell.
And more and more, the American dream is actually beginning to look like hell, in which we pursue, and we pursue all these things, but God's not even part of the equation. This is a disastrous word. Does it feel like a disastrous word to you or does it feel like a great deal? All you have to do is look at the cross to see that this is a disastrous word, that this is, this is hell. This is still judgment that God is giving.
On the cross, when, when, when Jesus is hanging on the cross of all the things that he could be yelling or screaming or complaining about, he doesn't say, my friends, my friends, they have left me, or my hands, they hurt, or my feet, they hurt, or my head, you know, with the crown of thorns, or my back of all the lashings, that's not the source of his pain. What he does cry out is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? God's presence leaving is the wrath of God being poured down on him. That is when Jesus experiences hell. If you were given everything you ever wanted minus God, would that be appealing to you?
Well, this disastrous word leads Moses to once again pray, to once again press in. We're gonna look more at this next week, but let's just touch on it now. Look at verse 15 chapter 33 and Moses said to him, if your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here for how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us so that we are distinct? I and your people from every other people on the face of the earth.
And right here we get to the heart of intercession. What intercession is really about in which Moses is saying, God, the only thing that matters is your presence with us. That's it. The only thing that matters is whether you are going to be with us or not. The only thing that makes us different than every other people group here in the world is the fact that you are with us in our midst.
We don't have that. We have nothing. And remember this, when we are called to intercede on behalf of others, when we are to pray on their behalf, because what do we usually ask for when we pray? Do we ask for things like their health, for good jobs, for guidance, for good relationships, help them find a good spouse, or do we plead, God, will you just be present in their lives? No matter what what else they get, no matter what else they accumulate, that that could come, go, it doesn't matter.
But, God, will you be real to them? They need to have you in their lives. That's the heart of intercession. This past Friday, Lauren and I were going to visit a church, some church members who were in the hospital. So we're going up the elevator to the 3rd floor, and a lady gets gets on.
And she looks physically and emotionally spent. She's probably close to 50 years old. I mean, she just, she looked bad. And, she goes, could I, nevermind. Would you, nevermind.
I just never mind. It was awkward. And she had pushed 2. We went up to 2 and it opened. She didn't get out.
Close. And she goes, do you mind if I go up with you all to the 3rd floor? I'm like, alright. And, so went up on the 3rd floor and we got out, and she goes, I I I really don't even know why I'm talking to y'all. I only know who you are.
I don't know why I'm talking to you. But I've been here for 5 weeks with my mom, and I've just spent. And she goes, I'm so embarrassed. She goes, do y'all have $1 I can have to get out of the parking lot? No brainer.
My wife, she says, actually, we'll give you that, but can we just spend some time in prayer for you right now? The woman looked at us strange. She goes, yes, yes. So we just gathered around her and we just prayed. And my wife, she just prayed God's presence to be real to her, God's presence in her life.
You could tell this lady was just melting. My wife does this all the time. I mean, it's amazing. We could be, we were at Yellowstone one time, and we're in a, where they're selling souvenirs, and my wife is just getting some little souvenir, and she looks at a lady behind the cashier, and she goes, you're having a rough day, aren't you? The lady just breaks on crying.
She goes, do you mind if I pray for you? And she goes, will you please? And so my wife gets behind the counter and just starts praying for this woman, praying that God's presence would be real in her life. The mailman, not making this up, comes over. He's walking with a limp, so Lauren asks, you know, bit by a dog.
All right. Do you mind if I pray for you? Can I pray for you? Pray is not not really for healing there, but praise that he would know God. These opportunities are around us everywhere.
Everywhere if we will open up our eyes to stand in the gap and intercede for the people around us. And I want to give us an opportunity to do that now. So before we sing, I'm gonna ask where y'all are. If you wanna, you know, huddle up groups of 8 to 10, wherever. It's kinda hard with pews.
Make it work. But just take time to intercede for those who might not know the Lord. Pray that God would be present in their lives, that judgment would not fall. So take some time to stand in the gap.