70 - An Object Lesson in Intercession

Exodus 32:7–8 And the LORD said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. 8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ”And the LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. 10 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.”

Exodus 33:1–3 The LORD said to Moses, “Depart; go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give it.’ 2 I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 3 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.” 

Exodus 33:12–16 Moses said to the LORD, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ 13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” 14 And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16 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?”

Deuteronomy 9:25–29 “So I lay prostrate before the LORD for these forty days and forty nights, because the LORD had said he would destroy you. 26 And I prayed to the LORD, ‘O Lord GOD, do not destroy your people and your heritage, whom you have redeemed through your greatness, whom you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 27 Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not regard the stubbornness of this people, or their wickedness or their sin, 28 lest the land from which you brought us say, “Because the LORD was not able to bring them into the land that he promised them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to put them to death in the wilderness.” 29 For they are your people and your heritage, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.’

I read the passage in Deuteronomy 9 today, and the other passages above immediately came to mind. This is one of the most remarkable seasons of intercession recorded in the Bible, from the time that Israel abandoned God while Moses was receiving the 10 Commandments to the full restoration of His acknowledgment that they were His people and that His presence would go with them. I have highlighted in bold and with underlining some of the key passages. 

Note that God was ready to destroy Israel for their egregious sin. God disowns them. He calls them Moses’ people, and says that Moses brought them up out of Egypt. Moses’ first season of intercession prevented that outcome but God then said His presence could no longer go with them, so Moses prayed again to secure His continuing presence. Let's review the arguments that Moses deployed in this process:

• He reminds God that He purchased Israel - they are His people and His heritage and He brought them up from slavery. They are not Moses’ people in this way, and Moses did not redeem them!

• He placed His Name on them. If He isn’t with them any more, the nations around will say that God wasn’t powerful enough to deliver them, or that He was fickle (loving them one moment and hating them the next). God’s reputation was irrevocably joined to His people. Would He let His Name be dragged through the mud?

• See His reference to Abraham, Issac and Jacob. Remember that God promised them their descendants would inherit Canaan. Will God be unfaithful to that promise? 

• Note also how important it was that the people should be distinct from the nations, and how that could only be the case if God was with them. Moses argues it would be better for him not to go up from that place than to go up without God’s presence making both him and the people of Israel distinct.

And so the Lord listened to Moses and did for him what he had requested. Israel was not destroyed and God’s presence was with them, to take them into their inheritance.

Many of the arguments Moses used may be translated from the Old Covenant to the New, and from Israel to the church. He has placed His Name upon us and we need His presence with us to distinguish us from the world. 

Can you see how (in all reverence and awe, and from sincere hearts) we can use the same kind of prayers for blessing on the church that Moses used on behalf of Israel?

Can you see, too, how gracious God is to allow Himself to be approached like this by one of His Creatures, and to grant the prayers that were offered? It’s amazing!

69 - The Penmanship of Our God

Revelation 3:12 The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.

Yesterday we thought about the fact that God has books in which various things are recorded. We meditated on the honor of being born into God’s New Jerusalem and having our new birth recorded in the Book of Life.

Today I read the passage above - part of the letter to the church in Philadelphia that was dictated by the risen and ascended Christ and written down by John during his exile on the isle of Patmos. My eyes were drawn to the phrase that I have underlined. I started to realize that God Himself does a lot of writing in Scripture and (of course) that it is always important! So I thought we could spend a few minutes on this subject today, beginning here and working our way to other instances of writings specifically attributed to God. 

In the passage above, Jesus is speaking of the reward He will give to members of this church that has only a little power and yet has patiently endured through affliction. It is so typical of our God to enable us to do something for Him, and then to reward us for doing it! It was by His Spirit in them that they had endured, but out of His generous heart He declares here that there will be blessings for them as a result! 

Solomon set up two bronze pillars in the Temple in Jerusalem. They were there as monuments rather than for structural support (1 Kings 7:21-22). They were given names: “Jachin” (from a word meaning “He will establish”) and “Boaz” (from a word meaning “quickness”). It was not unusual in New Testament days for stately pillars to be erected in honor of Roman emperors and other prominent individuals, and for these to bear inscriptions - presumably about the ones being honored. In the same way, Jesus says that He will make the one who conquers in the church at Philadelphia a pillar in the heavenly temple. They themselves will form permanent and enduring monuments to God for His amazing grace through which they endured and triumphed. Accordingly, Jesus will write an inscription on them comprising the name of His God, the name of the City of His God (the church) and His own new name, because they belong to God, to the church and to the Son forever. We should be encouraged to think that Jesus will surely do the same to us when we endure trials and afflictions for Him! Now think again about our meditation yesterday, when we considered God writing our names into His book. And here today, we have Christ writing God’s name, the name of the Church and His own name onto us! There is a wonderful reciprocity here! 

I have quite a lot of books in my library and I enjoy not only reading them myself but lending them out to others. I try to mark each one with my name to show that it belongs to me. I also write the name of each book into a catalog of all the books in my library. Each book is mine and they belong to a collection that is identified as mine. I think that is in some way reflective of what we are seeing here, and it is amazing! Since God is doing the writing in both cases, He is recording something permanent and irrevocable, which the imagery of the pillar also suggests.

I am sure there are many more instances of the writings of God that we could look at, but one more is worth thinking about here, because it is related.

When God gave Moses the Ten Commandments at Sinai, He inscribed them on tablets of stone. His own words, written by His own hand onto something hard and enduring. Those commandments were at the heart of the Mosaic Covenant but Israel found that they were unable to keep the Law because of their sin. Rather than giving life, all those commandments could do was to condemn the participants in that Covenant system. So God introduced the New Covenant, and when God announces it through Jeremiah, He says emphatically that it will not be like the Old one. For the purposes of this study, there was one very significant difference:

Jeremiah 31:31–34 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

God now inscribes His law on the hearts of the participants in this Covenant. Paul indicates that those who have this law written by Christ on their hearts are an open letter that anyone can read (2 Corinthians 3:2-3). Their hearts and therefore their lives are clearly changed. 

Can we tie these reflections together? I think so.  If God has written your name in the Book of Life, He has also written His law on your heart. Your life will show that you belong to Him. By His grace you will live in a way that honors Him, and He will reward you by making you an eternal monument to His grace, on which Jesus will write His Father’s and His own name on you forever, together with the name of His Church!