Whose People?
Opening Prayer
Lord, You always deliver on what You promise.
Read 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.”
2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 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, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” 6 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.
7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 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, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 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.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 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. 13 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.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Meditate
“For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God” (2 Cor. 1:20).
Think Further
The fivefold “brought… out of the land of Egypt” (1,4,7,8,11) focuses the narrative’s dynamic twists. What does past deliverance mean for the present and future, for Israel and the world? The people are afraid, for Moses has been gone for a long time (Exod. 24:18). Their desire for something tangible and immediate has its echoes today: fear is powerful, and “we tend to idolize the things (or people or systems) that we place our trust in to deliver us from the things we fear” (Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God).
God’s words to Moses are sarcastic: they are “your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt” (7). The way forward is to start afresh with Moses (10). How many leaders would relish the opportunity to leave a difficult situation and start anew! No, says Moses, they are “your people, whom you brought out of Egypt” (11). His appeal goes further, based on God’s name and his sworn purposes. The exodus happened with great power and a mighty hand (Exod. 3:19; 13:3; 14:31), the only way to deliver the Israelites and to cause the Egyptians to “know that I am the Lord” (Exod. 7:5). Moses says that if God gives up on his people, “Egypt will continue to recognize the Lord as powerful, but also as evil… Moses’ appeal is based upon the promise that the Lord seeks to make himself known as a God who is both powerful and good” (W. Ross Blackburn, The God Who Makes Himself Known, 171). Further, God has already promised greatness to Abraham and his descendants, bringing blessing for the nations.
Moses’ intercession (he “stood in the breach” before God, Psa. 106:23) vividly exemplifies prayer based on identification with God and his revealed purposes, not only for his people but for the nations—and so also in solidarity with his “corrupt” and “stiff-necked” people (7,9). It encourages persistence and hope, because God keeps his word.
Apply
How does your understanding of God, his name (reputation) and his purposes for the world shape your intercessory prayers?
Closing prayer
Lord, You have delivered all of us from Egypt. Keep us straight as we follow You in the wilderness.
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