Standing in the Gap

Introduction

Last week as we looked together at the beginning of the events recorded for us in Exodus 32-34 we ever so slightly brushed against a major doctrine of the Christian faith. This morning, as we begin our time together we are going to look more closely for just a few moments at this specific doctrine before we jump into our text for today. As you may recall, these events began at some point while Moses was still meeting with God on Mount Sinai. Moses and the people had gathered prior to Moses going back up on top of the mountain under God’s command for the purpose of ratifying the covenant that was to be made between Yahweh and His people. As we discussed last week, this covenant was one that really began in the garden with Adam, was restated with Noah, Abraham was reminded of this covenant, as were Moses and the Hebrew people at the foot of the mount. The essence of the covenant was that God would be their God and they would be His people as long as they obeyed all that He commanded them.

The doctrine that I am referring to is the doctrine that is defined in different ways, it is called Total Depravity, Total Inability, and Radical Corruption to name three. IT is the teaching that is displayed in Scripture that says that in our natural, unconverted state, the nature of humanity is without ability of coming to a saving knowledge of Christ. We cannot understand God or the things of God. We are, as Paul describes to the church in Rome, “even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” or to the church at Ephesus, “dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all also formerly conducted ourselves in the lust of the flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were BY NATURE children of wrath, even as the rest.”

The reason that I am circling back around to do more than just brush by this teaching is that it lies at the core of our understanding of who we are and the situation we are in, just as the Hebrews were in at the base of the mountain. There was nothing that they could do, no work that they could accomplish, no sacrifice that they could make that would make them right before God. They had yet to have the sacrificial system be implemented and even if they had, it was designed for accidental sins, not blatant violations of the highest magnitude, which is what was occurring. They had broken the first commandment, Exodus 20:3 ““You shall have no other gods before Me.”

God’s response to their blatant violation was to pronounce judgement on them, but even as He pronounced judgement He declared mercy. As we enter the text this morning we are going to be looking specifically at verse 11-14, however, we will back up and read from verses 7-14. There is much to see here in Moses’s response to God, his intercessory prayer on behalf of the people, so with out further delay, please turn in your bibles to Exodus 32 as we read verses 7-14, and having found your place,...

Text

...Please stand for the reading of God’s Holy, Inerrant, Infallible, Sufficient, Authoritative, Complete and Certain Word...

Exodus 32:7–14 LSB

Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, “Go! Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. “They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf and have worshiped it and have sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!’” And Yahweh said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, they are a stiff-necked people. “Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may consume them; and I will make you a great nation.” Then Moses entreated the favor of Yahweh his God and said, “O Yahweh, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a strong hand? “Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, ‘With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your burning anger and relent concerning doing harm to Your people. “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and You said to them, ‘I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your seed, and they shall inherit it forever.’” So Yahweh relented concerning the harm which He said He would do to His people.

Our prayer this morning is adapted from “The Valley of Vision: A Christian’s Prayer”:

Mighty and Merciful God, as we bow before you this morning, Lord, ten thousand snares await us, both within ourselves and within this world, defend us, O Lord. When sloth and indolence seize us, grant us views of heaven. When sinners entice us, turn their enticement sour in our mouths; When worldly and fleshly pleasures tempt us, purify and refine us; When we desire possessions of this world, help us to see the richness we have in You; When the vanities of this world would trap us, keep us from falling into new guilt and ruin. Lord, help us to recall the dignity of the spiritual freedom we find in You and let us never be too busy to attend to our souls, never be so engrossed with the time here and now as to loose sight of the reality of eternity, in all these things Father may we not only live, but grow towards You. Form and shape our minds to the right notions of religion, that we may not judge of grace by our own thoughts, nor measure our spiritual growth by the efforts of our natural being. Lord, may we seek after an increase of divine love towards You, may we have unreserved submittal to You will, extensive benevolence toward our fellow man, much patience and fortitude of our souls, a heavenly disposition, and a concern that we please You in both our public and private life. Draw on our souls the very features and characteristics of Christ, that You would take delight in every feature for we are Your workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, Your letter written with the pen of the Holy Spirit, Your soil, tilled and ready for the sowing then the harvest. Father we ask these things in the blessed name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.

Moses the Mediator, or Moses the Elder

As we have worked through much of the book of Exodus we have focused in on and recognized the various types or shadows that we have seen portrayed and we have discussed the fact that Moses is a type or shadow of Christ. We have seen, in several places, how scripture describes and depicts Moses as a mediator between God and man, serving as a foreshadow of what Christ would become, the one, true mediator. We also see in this passage and in others how Moses can be a type that depicts the leadership and the responsibilities of the leadership of the church. I want to briefly mention this here and deal with it so that as we move forward, hopefully, you can see how he serves in both of these roles throughout this passage.

Although the passage itself is written as if it were a conversation, much like sitting face to face and talking with someone, we know that this is not exactly what was happening, we know this because to look on the face of God for any of us before we are glorified would mean death, God himself tells Moses later Exodus 33:17-23

Exodus 33:17–23 LSB

Then Yahweh said to Moses, “I will also do this thing of which you have spoken; for you have found favor in My sight, and I have known you by name.” Then Moses said, “I pray You, show me Your glory!” And He said, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of Yahweh before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.” But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” Then Yahweh said, “Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand there on the rock; and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by. “Then I will remove My hand, and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”

So we know that Moses is not sitting down, across a table from God, having a conversation, rather what we are actually seeing depicted for us here is a prayer, in fact it is a specific type of prayer called a prayer of intercession. Intercessory prayer is prayer that is prayed on behalf of another party by someone intervening or mediating between the two parties. It is the type of prayer that Elders pray for their flock. The 1689 Confession of Faith, Chapter 26, Paragraph 10 states:

Confessing the Faith: The 1689 Baptist Confession for the 21st Century XXVI. The Church

The work of pastors is to give constant attention to the service of Christ in His churches in the ministry of the Word and prayer. They are to watch over the souls of church members as those who must give an account to Christ.

This references Acts 6:4 ““But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the service of the word.”” and Hebrews 13:17 “Obey your leaders and submit to them—for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account—so that they will do this with joy and not with groaning, for this would be unprofitable for you.” both of which detail that it is the responsibility of the Elders of the church t o pray over and to keep watch over the souls of those within the church.

It is a much less effective version of that which Christ does on our behalf as He continually intercedes on our behalf, as our Mediator before the Father. So as we look together at this prayer, it is necessary to see that Moses serves as a type that foreshadows the one, true Mediator between God and man, the Lord Jesus and in a much smaller way, serves as a type that foreshadows the role that the leadership within the church serves the people of God as we pray on their behalf before God.

“Relent”

Secondly, before we dive into the heart of the text, we need to have an understanding before we approach the text of the meaning of a specific word involved in this passage. The LSB translates this word as relent. The most common translations, however, of this word are “change your mind” or even “repent”. The issue that we have here is that these words create a two-fold issue. First, they pose a theological issue in that they seem to be stating that Moses asked and God responded in a manner that at odds with His nature. When we talk about the many attributes of God we understand that these are essentially defining God for us. At all times and in all places He is all His attributes. He does not stop being Holy or Loving when He is being Wrathful. God is all of these things all of the time. In fact there is only one attribute of God that is ever elevated to the highest level in all of scripture and that is His Holiness. We are familiar with Isaiah’s vision in which the Seraphim around the throne cry out to one another “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty”. One of those attributes of God that we see defined in scripture is His immutability, or His inability to change. The importance of this attribute, just like all of His other attributes, cannot be understanded. For God to be Holy, for Him to be truth, for Him to be Sovereign, then He must be immutable, He must not be able to change. Where God able to change then all of the promises of God would also be subject to change, if those promises where subject to change then we lose the foundation upon which we stand, because if God can change, then He is not true truth, and His word can change.

Consider: 1 Samuel 15:29

1 Samuel 15:29 LSB

“Also the Eternal One of Israel will not lie or have regret; for He is not a man that He should have regret.”

The word translated regret here is a word that can also be translated as “change His mind”

Malachi 3:6 LSB

“For I, Yahweh, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.

Hebrews 13:8 LSB

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

James 1:17 LSB

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.

The second problem that this creates is when we take this passage, and others like this when Moses goes before God on behalf of the people, and we treat them incorrectly, then we not only end up with a bad understanding of what is happening here on Sinai, but we also develop a bad doctrine of prayer. We being to see prayer as a method that we use to bring about the changes that we want in the world around us. This particular topic can be very challenging to those of us who have grown up in church where the teaching around prayer has been less than robust and it is often filled with error. We also need to take great care in that we do not see this as a cause to NOT pray for people, circumstances and situations. Inevitably the question becomes that if our praying does not change God’s mind, why pray.

Fundamentally prayer is a means, that is a to say it is a way or a method, and in this case it is a way or a method for God’s people to commune with Him. It is a way to come before Him, to make our petitions known, to lay bare the desires of our heart, to lift up those people and situations with which we are concerned, not in an effort to change God or have God change His mind. The Baptist Catechism (also known as Keach’s Catechism) question 105 is “What is prayer?” to which it gives the response “Prayer is an offering up our desires to God, by the assistance of the Holy Spirit, for things agreeable to His will, in the name of Christ, believing, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgement of His mercies. Similarly, the Young Baptist’s Catechism asks the same in Question 72:

The Young Baptist's Catechism: A Beginner's Guide to the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 The Lord’s Prayer

Question 72. What is Prayer?

Answer: Prayer is an offering up of our desires to God (a), in the name of Christ (b), with confession of our sin (c) and thankful acknowledgment of His mercy (a).

Scripture:

The word that is used here, that is translated as relent and repent and change His mind also contains the understanding of an action done in mercy, of grace being displayed. As we work through this passage, it is necessary that we see that the thread God began in the final words of verse 10 “and I will make you a great nation” which started the display of mercy and grace, continue both through Moses’ prayer and God’s response in verse 14.

The Manner of Approach

Before we learn from Moses’ words to God in prayer we need to first learn from Moses’ approach to God. There is an extremely interesting phrase in the Hebrew that is translated for us “entreated the favor of”. What we see here are three separate and distinct words in the Hebrew. The words translated “the favor of” literally mean “before the face of God”. Simply put the action that is happening is happening before the face of God. This is however, extremely important. Consider the statement that God made in verse 10 “Now then let Me alone”. We see from Moses’ response that he does not, in fact let God alone or leave Him be, it could be said that he specifically stood firm in God’s presence, literally before His face. Secondly, the statement from God suggests that Moses alone was the single thing standing between God and the people, the full statement helps to illuminate this, “Let Me alone that My anger may burn against them and that I may consume them”. Moses was standing in the gap. In Ezekiel 22:30 we read ““And I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the breach before Me for the land, so that I would not bring it to ruin; but I found no one.” This is God describing that He has looked for one to stand in the gap, to intercede on behalf of the people, and this is what Moses is doing… in fact this is what Moses has done; Pink writes:

Gleanings in Exodus Chapter 60: The Typical Mediator

But for Moses they were surely lost: he only stood between the holy wrath of God and their thoroughly merited doom. What would he do? When menaced by the Egyptians at the Red Sea, Moses had cried unto the Lord on their behalf (14:15). So, too, at the bitter waters of Marah he had supplicated Jehovah for them (15:25). When at Rephidim they had no water, yet again Moses had cried unto the Lord and obtained answer on their behalf (17:4). When Amelek came against Israel, it was the holding up of Moses’ hands which gained them the victory (17:11).

Then we consider the word entreat. The English word entreat means “to ask earnestly, to implore, to beg” which is fantastic translation but again there is something loss in moving from the Hebrew to the English because this word is also defined as “to be regretful, or sorrowful; lacking in strength and vitality; grieved”. This word then not only describes the action that Moses is taking, but the manner or attitude with which he takes it. He comes asking earnestly but he does so in attitude and stance of one who is regretful, sorrowful, placing himself on the mercy of God, not for himself, but on behalf of a people that God had just called stiff-necked. How can we not see this as imagery that points us forward to the One described in these beautiful words from Philippians 2:8-11

Philippians 2:8–11 LSB

Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God also highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The Content

Seeing that Moses comes before the face of God in humility, earnestly asking let us make our posture the same as we come before God earnestly in prayer but even as we come before God in the same manner as Moses we need to consider the content of the prayer that Moses prayed. We see three distinct appeals by Moses to God in this prayer. We see that He appeals to the grace of God, the glory of God and the faithfulness of God.

The Grace of God

Exodus 32:11 “Then Moses entreated the favor of Yahweh his God and said, “O Yahweh, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a strong hand?”

This is an appeal by Moses to God on behalf of the people that is rooted in the grace of God. Notice the subtle change in language from God’s response in verse 7. There we have the people described by God as being “your people, whom you brought up”; Moses lifts them up before God not as his people, but as God’s and appeals to the mercy and grace which God has already shown to His people by delivering them from bondage in the land of Egypt. As we have worked through this book we have seen God’s hand of mercy on the people, recall the words from Exodus 2:24–25 “So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And God saw the sons of Israel, and God knew them.” amd again in Exodus 3:9–10 ““So now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me; and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them. “So now, come and I will send you to Pharaoh, and so you shall bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.””

It was not that the people of Israel deserved the deliverance of God, in fact, as we analyze scripture we see that the Israelites, for all of their groaning, have desired on multiple occasions to return to their former life, their former worship, in which many of them had incorporated the gods of the Egyptians in their worship practices, the supply of food that was met by the Egyptian overlords. These people were, quite frankly, the exact opposite of a people worthy of redemption… but then again, aren’t we all. We opened up being reminded of the truth of our very nature, that we are sinners, not because we sin, but because that is our very nature, we do sin, but we do so BECAUSE we are sinners.

The people, redeemed from bondage in Israel, were done so according to righteousness. There has to be satisfaction of justice, for the people of Israel, that satisfaction was made on their behalf by the Passover lamb who was slain having its blood shed and then applied to the door post and lintel. It is not different for us. Yes, those of us who have faith in Christ have had Christ’s righteousness given to us but it came at the cost of His shed blood. Romans 3:23–24 reminds us of two great truths and paints this picture for us clearly “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;” and that redemption was only by the blood of Christ, shed on Calvary’s cross who now stands as an advocate for us before God, 1 John 2:1 “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;”

The Glory of God

The second appeal to God is on the basis of His glory, verse 12 reads; Exodus 32:12 ““Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, ‘With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your burning anger and relent concerning doing harm to Your people.”

As you should recall the entire work of the 10 plagues was done to decimate the pantheon of Egyptian gods and display God as the only one to whom true glory and honor belonged. This work demonstrated that He alone was mighty and worthy. Moses’ claim here in his question regarding the Egyptians is as Pink, quoting Dennett, writes:

Gleanings in Exodus Chapter 60: The Typical Mediator

“Spite of their shameful apostasy, the plea of Moses was that they were still Gods’ people, and that His glory was concerned in sparing them—lest the enemy should boast over their destruction, and thereby over the Lord Himself. In itself it was a plea of irresistible force. Joshua uses one of like character when the Israelites were smitten before Ai. He says ‘the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt Thou do unto Thy great name?’ (

Ultimately ALL THINGS are for the glory of God. Later, through the prophet Ezekiel, God says in Ezekiel 20:9 ““But I acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among whom they lived, in whose sight I made Myself known to them by bringing them out of the land of Egypt.” Just as He declares in Isaiah 48:9–11 ““For the sake of My name I delay My anger, And for My praise I restrain it for you, In order not to cut you off. “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. “For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.”

Moses’ petition on behalf of God’s glory was not unlike Christ’s own when He prayed in John 17:1 “Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You,” the work of Christ, the prayer of Christ was on the basis of the glory of God. If you will recall from my reading of the questions found in the catechism earlier that it said “Prayer is an offering up our desires to God, by the assistance of the Holy Spirit, for things agreeable to His will,” AW Pink is helpful when he writes:

Gleanings in Exodus Chapter 60: The Typical Mediator

Here is one of the prime secrets in prevailing prayer. Just as bowing of the heart to God’s sovereign will is the first requirement in a praying soul, so the having before us the glory of God and the honor of His name is that which, chiefly, ensures an answer to our petitions. “Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (

The Faithfulness of God

So we see Moses entreating before the face of God, appealing to the glory of God, the grace of God and lastly the faithfulness of God, verse Exodus 32:13 ““Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and You said to them, ‘I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your seed, and they shall inherit it forever.’””

Notice Moses does not base his appeal to God on the Israelites. No words of God, I know these people seem as idiots, as rebellious, as stiff-necked but really they are good, in fact, they are enough, You get them, don’t You, God… These are the cries of so many today, they want God to forgive them, so long as they do not have to change. They want a soft Christianity that demands nothing of them in return, they want a God who caters to their self-aggrandizing needs. But that is not Moses appeal, His appeal doesn’t try to sugar coat the actions of a stiff-necked, disloyal, undependable people, rather it is based on God Himself. This is nothing more than the laying of the promises of God at His feet, not in an effort to coerce but to reverently, humbly and confidently asking as David did in 2 Samuel 7:25 ““So now, O Yahweh God, the word that You have spoken concerning Your slave and concerning his house, establish it forever, and do as You have spoken,”.

This is what it means to lay hold of the promises of God and standing on the reality that He is ever faithful… Numbers 23:19 ““God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not establish it?”

The Response

Which brings us back to the response of God, we have dealt with this somewhat previously in our discussion of the word translated relent. We know that God did not change, all of this was in accordance with God’s purpose and plan, as one theologian puts it:

Gleanings in Exodus Chapter 60: The Typical Mediator

There never has been and never will be the smallest occasion for the Almighty to affect the slightest deviation from His eternal purpose, for everything was foreknown to Him from the beginning, and all His counsels were ordered by infinite wisdom. When Scripture speaks of God’s repenting it employs a figure of speech, in which the Most High condescends to speak in our language. What is intended by the above expression is that Jehovah answered the prayer of the typical mediator.

But note the grace displayed in last words, “His people”. God has determined to display His mercy and grace to the people of Israel throught the intercession of the mediator Moses, who was imperfect and was only a foreshadowing of the perfect mediator to come. The display has now been perfected in the Lord Jesus, but only to those who come by faith in Christ.

Conclusion

As we come to the close of this passage, the weight of what we have seen cannot be overstated. Israel had shattered the covenant before it was even fully delivered, proving the doctrine of total depravity—that the human heart is incapable of loving God apart from His grace. Like the Israelites at the foot of Sinai, we too are born rebels, unable to rescue ourselves or to make a single offering that could satisfy the demands of a holy God. And yet, into this desperate scene steps a mediator. Moses stands in the breach, interceding on behalf of a stiff-necked people. His pleas appeal not to their worthiness, but to the grace, glory, and faithfulness of God. This prayer of intercession does not change the immutable God; rather, it unfolds His eternal purpose to display mercy through a mediator.

Moses points us forward to the greater Mediator, Jesus Christ, whose own intercession secures the salvation of all who believe. At the cross, Christ stood in the gap, bearing the wrath we deserved, so that God might be both just and the justifier of sinners. His blood speaks a better word than Moses’ prayer, offering true reconciliation to all who come by faith.

The question that remains is intensely personal: if the Holy and unchanging God has provided the only Mediator who can save, will you continue in your own strength, or will you come humbly to Christ, trusting His perfect intercession on your behalf?

Closing Prayer

Merciful Father, we bow before You in awe of Your holiness and the immutability of Your purposes. We confess that, like Israel, our hearts are prone to wander and quick to rebel. Yet we rejoice that in Your steadfast love You have given us a Mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ, who stands before Your throne and pleads for our souls. Teach us to pray as Moses prayed—with humility, with boldness, and with confidence in Your promises. Keep us from thinking that our prayers manipulate You, and instead help us to see them as communion with the God who never changes. Strengthen our faith to rest in Christ’s finished work, to trust Your sovereign plan, and to glorify Your great name in all things. May Your Spirit draw us nearer, sanctify our desires, and conform us to the image of Your Son until that day when we behold Your glory face to face. In the name of Jesus, our perfect Mediator, we pray. Amen.