A Kingdom of Priests (12)

 Intercession (7)

"Now therefore, I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight…

 

“I pray You, show me Your glory!” (Exodus 33:13, 18)

 

Moses desired to not just know the works of God, he also wanted to know the ways of God; and in desiring to know the ways of God Moses desired to see the glory of God. Yes, there is indeed a glory in knowing the works of God, but there is another glory in seeing the ways of God. The act of the Cross of Christ is glorious, the heart of God that is manifested in the Christ of the Cross is inexpressible.

 

Can the works of God be separated from the ways of God? Of course not. Can our understanding of the ways of God and the acts of God grow and mature? Of course they can. Children often only see the acts of their parents, without ever growing to know their parents. The same can be said in all relationships – we can see what a person does but not see who the person really is.

 

The Psalmist tells us that God “…made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel” (Psalm 103:7).

 

Paul desired to “know Him and the power of His resurrection and the koinonia of His suffering” (Phil. 3:10).

 

Jesus came to reveal the Father to us, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth…No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him know.” (John 1:14, 18)

 

“Jesus said to him, Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who as seen Me has seen the Father…” (John 14:9).

 

The desire that Moses had, to know the ways of God, to see God and His glory, would have two fulfillments; the first would be an immediate fulfillment in Moses’s own life, the second would be a greater fulfillment with the Incarnation – what Moses desired for himself would have a greater fulfilment in our own lives…assuming that we also desire to know Him deeply, to know not just the acts of God but also the ways of God, and not just the ways of God but the Way of God (John 14:6).

 

Do we know Him, or do we simply see His acts? Are we spectators or are we knowers?

 

I meet few professing Christians who speak as if they know the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In fact, I have hardly ever met professing Christians who talk to me of Jesus; they talk of church, of programs, of music, of preachers and pastors, of a "Christian" worldview, but they seldom talk to me of Jesus. Most of the Sunday school sessions I’ve endured, and most of the small groups, have been places where Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit are spoken of as strangers, as a God who has been read about but never really known. People will talk about the works of God, but hardly ever of the ways of God, hardly ever of knowing God.

 

How can this be? How can this be with people who have been “going to” church for decades? What have we done? How is it that this condition does not appear to bother us?

 

As we will see with Moses, knowing the ways of God enables us to move into a dimension of intercession not available to us if we only know the works of God.

 

Well, I’d like to write a bit more now, but we have a hurricane coming our way and I’d better post this while I still can.

 

Love and blessings…Bob

 

 

 

A Kingdom of Priests (11)

 Intercession (6)

Continuing to reflect on Exodus chapters 32 – 34:

 

“Aaron said, ‘Do not let the anger of my lord burn; you know the people yourself, that they are prone to evil. For they said to me, Make a god for us who will go before us…’” (Exodus 32:22 – 23a).

 

We are, I think, all prone to idols. While we may see our individual propensity to idols at times, there are other times we need to mutually guard one another – in fact, if we aren’t living in accountable relationships in which we warn one another of idols, I don’t see how we can make this pilgrimage. We cannot ascend this mountain by ourselves, we must be roped to one another, we must warn one another of danger.

 

Most idols look good, they appear very very good. Many idols start out as good, even instruments of blessing and salvation – consider the bronze serpent in the wilderness. We make Nehustan’s (Num. 21:6ff; 2 Kings 18:4) out of anything and everything. As I write this I’m thinking of having coffee with an acquaintance a few years ago, he brought a book about leadership to give me. His large church had latched onto this book and its approach to leadership and had made it the center of its focus, teaching, and preaching.

 

Whatever the merits of this book may have been, it did not merit the absorption of a congregation - only Jesus Christ merits our absorption. Why were the pastor and church leadership excited about this book? Because it promised results – pragmatic results are what we normally look for, they are what we have become addicted to, they are what we need to achieve in order to sustain our churches and our ministries; visible results have become our validation – not the centrality and worship of Jesus Christ. Let me say again, most idols look good, religious, and promise results.

 

Will we be like Aaron and acquiesce in idol worship, even teaching people to make golden calves? Will we go along to get along?  

 

Note this statement in Exodus 32:25, “Now when Moses saw that the people were out of control – for Aaron had let them get out of control…” Responsible leadership, a responsible priesthood, does not give people what they want, it gives them what they need – and that is a continuous focus on the True and Living God.

 

The people said to Aaron, regarding Moses (32:23), “Make a god for us who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

 

Could it be that this is our attitude regarding Jesus Christ? Could it be that, since His ascension into heaven (Luke 24:50 – 51; Acts 1:9 – 11), we have been functionally saying, “For this Jesus, we do not know what has become of Him?” Have we made idols that make sense to us; success, entertainment in the form of lyrics that focus on us and not Christ, personal comfort, marketing our wares instead of sacrificially witnessing for Jesus Christ? The epistemology of this world and age instead of Biblical – Holy Spirit illumination (1 Cor. 1:16 – 2:16; John 14:16 – 17; 15:26 – 27; 16:13 – 15)?

 

Are we a priesthood that is faithful to our Great High Priest, our Lord Jesus Christ? Or, are we as Aaron, giving people what they want and teaching them to make idols?

 

A Kingdom of Priests (10)

 Intercession (5)

As we continue to consider the intercessory life of Moses, and work toward yet another pinnacle of his intercession for God’s People, there are more things to be seen in Exodus chapters 32 – 34. These three chapters provide a foundation and a framework for a life of intercession and intercessory prayer, yielding glory and riches in our Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, as I hope we will see, they provide a great Cornerstone in intercessory living and praying.

 

I hope you will make these chapters a subject of meditation and allow them to soak you and bathe you, and then seep out through the pores of your skin into your daily living – may they become the fragrance of our daily lives in Jesus Christ.

 

Here are some observations to incorporate into our ponderings:

 

“Then Yahweh smote the people, because of what they did with the calf which Aaron had made.” (Exodus 32:35). While Moses’s intercession prevailed with God earlier in this chapter, for God did not destroy all of Israel and He did not make a great nation out of Moses (32:9 – 10); there was nevertheless accountability, there were nevertheless judgmental consequences for those who had sinned. Judgment belongs to God and not to us, punishment (whether given or withheld) belongs to God and not to us, to be forgiven by God does not mean that we are absolved of the temporal consequences of our sin – these consequences may be mitigated, they may be held in abeyance, or we may experience in them in full, these are things beyond our control or full understanding. We are called to be intercessors, not arbiters.

 

“Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, ‘Depart, go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, To your seed I will give it.’” (Exodus 33:1). As we noted previously, Moses appealed to Yahweh’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exodus 32:13) as he pleaded with God for Israel. Now we see God referring to this same covenant. What can we learn from this?

 

Scripture is one of the two great foundations of intercession, the other, as we shall see, is the character, essence, Nature of God as revealed in Scripture. When we know God’s Covenant, when we know His promises, then we can appeal to Him on the basis of His Covenant and promises; that is, we can intercede with God on behalf of others according to His Word. Informed intercession is intercession imbued with the Bible, with the Word of God. Just as a wise lawyer appears in court before the judge with a knowledge of both  statutory law and common law, so the wise intercessor appears before the Throne of Grace and Mercy with an understanding of God’s Word and His Ways.

 

Also compare 33:1 with 32:11. In 32:11 Moses says to God, “…Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt…” While in 33:1 God says to Moses, “…you and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt.” Whose people are they? Well, of course they are both God’s people and Moses’s people – are not God’s people our own people? And should not our people be God’s people? God’s people may not be such that we want them, and they may be such that it appears that God does not want them – but at the end of the Day God is faithful to His Covenant and so ought we to be too. Just as we didn’t choose our natural family, we can’t really choose our spiritual family.

 

In Exodus 33:7 – 11 we see that Moses had a “tent of meeting” that was “outside the camp” in which “Yahweh would speak with Moses…face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend.” Do you and I have a “tent of meeting”? Or does the preponderance of our spiritual life take place “within the camp”? Do we have a special place where we commune with God?

 

Jesus tells us that we ought to enter into our closets to commune with God. This does not mean that we shouldn’t have public fellowship with God, for we are called as Christ’s Body, but it does tell us that there is indeed a place in our lives that ought to be sanctified as a Holy of Holies and not for public display. Make no mistake, the fruit of this intimate communion should be public, but the intimacy that produces the fruit is experienced in places known only to the Father and His sons and daughters…in the invisible.

 

Many of us have the propensity to substitute religious activity for communion with God. We think that doing the work of God is the same as intimacy with God, we think that “ministry” is the same as koinonia with God and with one another. We deceive ourselves in this thinking, and vocational ministers are especially susceptible to this self-deception; I write from experience. Vocational ministers can be so busy with the “work of God” that they fail to experience deep relationship with God; when this happens, is the “work of God” really the work of God? Is it not something of our own doing, our own making, our own sustaining?

 

Jesus says, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (John 6:29). He says, “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The work of God is that we believe – we must believe in Christ the Son before we can “do.” We must abide in Jesus Christ if we are to bear fruit, for apart from Him we can do nothing.

 

We must learn what it is to leave the crowded camp and to go away to our Tent of Meeting and commune with the Holy Trinity. Yes, there will always, always, be activity to engage us within crowds of people, within congregations, within communities – and we can become addicted to this activity, our egos can come into play, we can think that we are indispensable to everyone…even to God. We can think that if we were to leave and go away to the Tent of Meeting to spend time with God that everything will fall apart – and the more we buy into this deception, the greater its hold will be on us. Perhaps even worse, this is what we will model for others.

 

Where is your Tent of Meeting? Perhaps a chair in a room in your home? Perhaps a special walk in the woods? Maybe the seashore? Your front porch early in the morning?

 

Of course we can take our Tent of Meeting with us, for wherever we go our hearts go with us and it is within our hearts, our souls, our minds that we meet with the True and Living God.  

 

Are we modeling the Tent of Meeting for others? For our congregations, our families, our friends, our neighbors? Or…are our lives declaring that it is not really necessary to know God in the Tent of Meeting…that activity is what really matters, that it is up to us to sustain the work of God, that if we were to spend time with Him in the Tent of Meeting that everything else would fall apart? Are we confusing ourselves with God?

 

Many years ago I arrived rather early in the morning to see a pastor and his wife. They were glad to see me and made me comfortable in their living room and brought me coffee. Then the husband said to me, “Brother Withers, please excuse us. We have not yet had our morning prayers together. Please be comfortable and we will be back.” With those words they retired to their bedroom, to their Tent of Meeting.

 

This occurred around 1969 and, as you can see, I still remember that morning. This husband and wife set and example for me…what example am I setting?

 

What about you?

A Kingdom of Priests (9)

 

Intercession (4)

 

“On the next day Moses said to the people, You yourselves have sinned a great sin; and now I am going up to Yahweh, perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.

 

“Then Moses, returned to Yahweh, and said, Alas, this people has sinned a great sin, and they have made a god of gold for themselves. But now, if You will, forgive their sin – and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written!” (Exodus 32:30 – 31).

 

Our Intercessory Life in Jesus Christ, the call of the holy and royal Priesthood which has been placed upon us in Christ, is that which impels us to offer ourselves in Jesus Christ in place of others, it causes us to cry out with Moses, “…and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written.”

 

Who can bring about such things other than the Holy Trinity living within us…living within us as individuals and within us as the Body of Jesus Christ?

 

This Intercessory Life is to be manifested in both our prayers and our daily living – it is to be heard in our words and witnessed in our actions; the heavens and the earth are to kiss each other in unity, harmony, and expression.

 

Consider and compare Paul with Moses:

 

“I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could pray that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of mf brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh…Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.” (Romans 9:1 – 3; 10:1).

 

Do you think that if we loved others as Moses and Paul that we would be reluctant to tell others the Good News of Jesus Christ? Do you think that if we loved others as Paul and Moses that we’d be an introverted people, obsessed with our own happiness and temporal desires, intent on self-preservation? Or would we be a people living Christ’s Intercessory Life?

 

Jesus said, “Take my Life for their life.” Moses said, “Take my life for their life.” Paul said, “Take my life for their life.” What are we saying? How are we living?

 

Now let me make what may seem at first a quite outrageous statement, we are making a grave error if when we read what Moses said, “…perhaps I can make atonement for your sin,” and think, “Well, that isn’t for me to do, only Jesus can do that.” This is an error and it is a repudiation of the holy and royal Priesthood that we are in Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest, for He calls us to participate in His Priesthood, and this means, in some Way, participating in His Atonement not only as those who are the recipients of the Atonement, but also as those who participate as priests and offerings – we mediate the Atonement, in Christ, to others as we serve as priests and sacrifices.

 

Consider Colossians 1:24, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.”

 

Now I think that to get a glimpse of what Paul is saying is akin to hearing words which it is not lawful to utter (2 Cor. 12:4). To attempt to speak of what Paul is saying and experiencing is akin to the Levites uncovering the holy things of the Tabernacle while in transit and therein profaning them. What I mean is that we really can’t explain everything in our life in Christ; we can’t explain or define the Trinity, or the Incarnation, or the Atonement, or the Eucharist; nor can we explain or define Colossians 1:24.

 

However, this does not mean that they cannot touch us and that we cannot touch them, for we are called to Life in the Trinity, and this Life is ineffable, numinous, and majestically transcendent. When we speak of these things we speak in awe, acknowledging both their transcendent glory and the limitations of our speech and vision.  

 

We are called to experience the “koinonia of His sufferings” (Phil. 3:10). This means that we drink His cup of sufferings, that we are “conformed to His death” as we are also “conformed to His image” (Phil. 3:10; Rom. 8:29). Paul writes of our “suffering with Him” and of our being “glorified with Him” (Rom. 8:17).

 

In one of the Grand Paradigms of Scripture, 2 Cor. 1:3 – 11, we see our call to intercessory living, “But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer…”

 

Perhaps there is a sense in which we can measure the faithfulness of the professing church, or conversely its apostasy, by our measure of intercessory living in Jesus Christ.

 

What do you think?

A Kingdom of Priests (8)

 

Intercession (3)

 

In some respects, the record of Moses and Israel in the Wilderness is a record of Moses’s intercession for the People of God. Moses is an image of our Great Intercessor, our Lord Jesus Christ, who not only laid His Life down for us, but who also lives, constantly making intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25). It is this Image, the Image of the Firstborn Son, that we are called to be transformed into – and this includes living an intercessory life and a life of intercessory prayer.

 

In Exodus Chapter 32, in response to Israel’s making an idol in the image of a calf, we read:

 

“Yahweh said to Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people. Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation…

 

“Then Moses entreated Yahweh his God, and said, O Yahweh, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?...

 

“Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and 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 descendants, and they shall inherit it forever…

 

“So Yahweh changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.” (See Exodus 32:9 – 14).

 

What can we learn about intercession in this passage? What do you see? Are there some foundational intercessory principles in Exodus Chapter 32?

 

Consider verse 10 when Yahweh says to Moses, “Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation.”

 

How did Moses respond? Was Moses excited about the idea that God would make of Moses a great nation? That Moses and his descendants, his seed, would supersede the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? What an opportunity to rid himself of these people who didn’t appreciate him and the call that God had placed on his life. What an opportunity to be exalted by God. What an opportunity to do things “the right way.”

 

Don’t we get tired of others getting in the way of God? Of our purpose and destiny? Of our agendas?

 

How might we have responded? How would we have been tempted? How did Moses respond?

 

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

 

What kind of question is this for Moses to ask God? “Why are you angry?” O come on Moses, just look around you, just think back to all the trouble Israel has given you (and there is more to come!). These people, whom God has delivered from Egypt, and whom God desires to bring into the Promised Land, have made a golden idol and are worshipping it even as you and God speak, and you are asking Yahweh why He is angry? Are you crazy? Do you not “get it”?

 

But Moses is not thinking about his own honor or glory, he is thinking about God and God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – Moses is thinking about God’s Covenant and God’s glory. Moses has not forgotten that when Yahweh first appeared to him at the burning bush that He appeared to him proclaiming, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6).

 

And so in Exodus 32:11 – 12 Moses appeals to God’s glory and testimony and implores God, “Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people.”

 

Then in Exodus 32:13 Moses appeals to God’s Covenant, “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel [Jacob]…” Moses is saying, “Remember the burning bush, remember how You revealed Yourself to me. Don’t consider me or my descendants, don’t think about making a great nation of my people – these are my people – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are my people, these worshippers of a golden idol are my people. You have given me to them as Your servant and their servant and I will not abandon You, Your glory, or Your Covenant…and I will not abandon them.”

 

There is yet more to come regarding intercession in Exodus 32, and we’ll pick this chapter back up in our next post. For now, consider that Moses was seeking the glory and honor and testimony of God, and the welfare of God’s People, before Moses’s own glory and honor. Moses put the interests of God and God’s People before his own, or we could say that Moses’s interests were at one with God’s interests and the welfare of God’s People.

 

Moses was attentive to Yahweh’s revelation of Himself at the burning bush as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – and as Jesus points out, this meant that God is not the God of the dead but of the living. Moses saw himself in communion with God and the People of God – the transcendent People of God – how else could Moses “see” the things he saw, and be obedient to the heavenly vision and commission?

 

As the call of Jesus Christ makes clear (Mark 8:34 – 38), those who follow Jesus Christ give up their lives for Him and others – there is no middle ground. The cult of “me first” leadership that prevails in much of the professing church is pagan and represents apostasy – it represents false shepherds and prophets and priests and elders making merchandise of the People of God. Intercessory leadership is not expecting to be served, but to serve and to give our lives as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:25 – 28).

 

Let us not to be so foolish as to speak of leadership or leadership principles unless our conversation is rooted in the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ.

 

As Moses demonstrates, intercessory living is seeking the glory of God and the welfare of His People as our Way of Life in Jesus Christ…for indeed, this is the Way of Jesus (1 John 3:16).