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?