Scripture Daily

Context No. 1286 of 4322 · Numbers

Context · Reflection

Numbers 14:11-19: in context

11The LORD said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? How long will they not believe in me, for all the signs which I have worked among them? 12I will strike them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.” 13Moses said to the LORD, “Then the Egyptians will hear it; for you brought up this people in your might from among them. 14They will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that you LORD are among this people; for you LORD are seen face to face, and your cloud stands over them, and you go before them, in a pillar of cloud by day, and in a pillar of fire by night. 15Now if you killed this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of you will speak, saying, 16‘Because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the land which he swore to them, therefore he has slain them in the wilderness.’ 17Now please let the power of the Lord be great, according as you have spoken, saying, 18‘The LORD is slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, forgiving iniquity and disobedience; and he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation.’ 19Please pardon the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your loving kindness, and just as you have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.”

After the people refuse to enter the promised land, God is ready to strike them with plague, disinherit them, and make of Moses a greater nation. But Moses intercedes, and the shape of his prayer is instructive. First he appeals to God's reputation: the Egyptians and the nations will hear of it, and if you destroy this people, they will say the LORD was not able to bring them into the land. Then he appeals to God's own self-revealed character, quoting God's words back to him: the LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression. Pardon this people, he pleads, according to the greatness of your steadfast love, and as you have forgiven them from Egypt until now.

Moses' intercession is a model of how to plead with God, because it does not appeal to the people's worthiness at all, they have none, but to God himself. First, Moses appeals to God's name and reputation among the nations: your glory is at stake here; do not let the world conclude you could not keep your promise. He pleads for the people by pleading for God's honor. Second, and most beautifully, Moses prays God's own character back to him. He takes God's self-description, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity, and holds it up: this is who you have said you are; now be that toward this people. He does not tell God anything God has not already revealed about himself; he simply asks God to act according to his own nature. That is the deepest ground of all intercession, not the merit of those we pray for, but the character of the God we pray to. When we have nothing good to say about the ones we plead for, we can still appeal to who God is, slow to anger, abounding in love, forgiving. Moses pardons no one; he asks God to be the God he has revealed himself to be. And God relents.

When I intercede for people who have no worthiness to plead, can I do what Moses did, appeal not to their merit but to God's own revealed character, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and ask him to be who he has said he is?

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