On The Eagle's Wings

Exodus 32:14 "So the LORD relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people."

How is it possible that God's mind was changed by Moses interceeding for the people? Can we, through appealing to God, have an impact on others or does the He do what He will do regardless of our prayers? Obviously if we believed that prayer was of no effect we would not pray. I also know that effectual prayer requires that I surrender myself to the Holy Spirit, so that I am really only a vessel through which He intercedes.

I present on the altar before Him, that which is of the perfect Lamb in me. Romans 12:1 says "present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing." This isn't about placing my old flesh man before Him to babble it's own selfish requests. No! I must go before my Father in the name of Christ. Remember Jesus said, "Whatever you ask in My name, it will be given to you". Asking in Jesus 'name' means to ask in His "character and authority". Whatever I ask in the character and authority of Christ, that my Father will hear and grant.

Moses in this account from Exodus 32 is acting as a 'type' of Christ. It is hard to imagine God 'repenting' or 'relenting' as if He needed to turn from evil as we do. Certainly He is not in sin and need not repent. But God in seeing His children worshipping the golden calf, expresses His anger in saying "Say to the children of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people. I could come up into your midst in one moment and consume you." Why?

I have found that in all things, including Biblical history, God is teaching us something about our relationship with Him. Relationship is about unity. He desires to become one with His Bride (Eph 5) and His purpose it to purifying her in order to present her holy before Himself that He might make eternal love to her.

It was the holiness of God in the midst of a wicked people would be their death, for who can stand in His presence but He who has clean hands and a pure heart? (Ps 24) When our sin gets between us and our heavenly Father there is, of necessity, a consequence that comes upon us. It is not His hatred for His people, or uncontrolled anger, that makes His wrath burn against them, but it is His divine Love that manifests through His wrath to discipline rather than utterly destroy those who have completely turned from Him. The wages of sin is death!

If we were able to approach our Father satisfied with our sin-laden lives and find great comfort there, He would cease to be God! Sin is diametrically opposed to His nature and the two repel each other. No man can love his own life and be devoted to God. "Whoever loves his life will lose it, and whoever loses His life for My sake will find it."

It is, in fact, our very salvation that our perfect Father will repent or relent from His wrath at the intercession of His own heart. In this case Moses was expressing, in his intercession for the people, not the desires of his own heart, so much as he was appealing to the very heart of God Himself, in order to preserve His own beloved.

It is mind boggling for us to conceive of a God who is vehemently opposed to our sin and at the same time longsuffering and merciful toward us.Is this a case of Moses changing the mind of a raging God? Or is this a picture of a perfect Father wrestling within Himself in a divine conflict between the force of His own Holiness and the power of His heart of mercy? Moses, acting as intercessor, was merely reminding the Father of the other side of His very own heart, His mercy. Were He to come into the midst of the people, they would have been comsumed, not because of God's anger, but because their own sinfulness would have caused them to drop dead in His holy presence.

God has built into His creation natural consequences for sin. The most impressive of those consequences being that we cannot come into His presence without dying to ourselves and without having repentant hearts. It is His mercy that draws us and His holiness that perfects us, His immense love being manifested through both. God has never and will never inflict pain and suffering on His children without a redemptive purpose.