I SUPPOSE that I need not say that this verse speaks after the manner of men. I do not know after what other manner we can speak. To speak of God after the manner of God is reserved for God, Himself, and mortal men could not comprehend such speech. In this sense, the Lord often speaks, not according to literal fact, but according to the appearance of things to us, in order that we may understand so far as the human can comprehend the Divine. The Lord’s purposes never really change. His eternal will must forever be the same, for He cannot alter, since He would either have to alter for the better or for the worse. He cannot change for the better, for He is infinitely good–it were blasphemous to suppose that He could change for the worse. He who sees all things at once and perceives at one glance the beginning and the end of all things, has no need to repent. “God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent,” but, in the course of His action, there appears to us to be, sometimes, a great change, and as we say of the sun that it rises and sets, though it does not actually do so, and we do not deceive when we speak after that fashion, so we say concerning God, in the language of the text, “The Lord repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people.” It appears to us to be so and it is so in the act of God, yet this statement casts no doubt upon the great and glorious Doctrine of the Immutability of God.
Speaking after the manner of men, the mediation of Moses worked this change in the mind of God. God in Moses seemed to overcome God out of Moses. God in the Mediator, the Man Christ Jesus, appears to be stronger for mercy than God apart from the Mediator. This saying of our text is very amazing and it deserves our most earnest and careful consideration.
The language of God was very stern, and well it might be after all that He had done for that people! When the song of Miriam had scarcely ceased. When you might almost hear the echoes of that jubilant note, “Sing you to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider has He thrown into the sea,” you might quickly have heard a very different cry, “Up, make us gods!” And, in the presence of the calf that Aaron made, the same people blasphemously exclaimed, “These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” Such a prostitution of their tongues to horrid blasphemies against Jehovah! Such a turning aside from the Truth of God to the most gross of falsehoods, might well provoke the anger of a righteously jealous God!
It is noteworthy that Moses did not lose himself in this moment of trial. We read at once, “And Moses besought Jehovah, his God.” He was undoubtedly a man of prayer, but he must have been continually in the spirit of prayer, or else I could conceive of him, at that moment, falling on his face and lying there in silent horror! I could imagine him flying down the mountain in a passionate haste to see what the people had done–but it is delightful to find that he did neither of these two things–rather he began to pray! Oh, Friends, if we habitually pray, we shall know how to pray when praying times become more pressing than usual! The man who is to wrestle with the angel must have been familiar with angels beforehand! You cannot go into your chamber, shut the door and begin a mighty intercessory prayer if you have never been to the Mercy Seat before! No, Moses is “the man of God.” You remember that he left us a prayer, in the 90 th Psalm,bearing this title, “A prayer of Moses, the man of God.” There is no man of God if there is no prayer, for prayer makes the man into “the man of God.” So, instinctively, though startled and saddened to the last degree, Moses is on his knees, beseeching the Lord, his God.
This, then, is the scene I have to bring before you, and my first observation shall be that NOTHING CAN HINDER A TRULY LOVING SPIRIT FROM PLEADING FOR THE OBJECTS OF ITS LOVE.
This terrible accusation from the mouth of God, spoken as God would speak it, must have impressed Moses greatly with the awful character of Israel’s sin, for, farther on, we find Moses saying to God, “Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold.” It has happened to you, I suppose, as it has to me, that in the sight of a great sin one has almost hesitated to pray about it. The person sinned so wantonly, under circumstances so peculiarly grievous, transgressed so willfully and so altogether without excuse that you felt thrust back from the Mercy Seat and from pleading for such a sinner! But it was not so with Moses. Idolatry is a horrible sin, yet Moses is not kept back from pleading for its forgiveness. It astounds him–his own wrath waxes hot against it–but still, there he is, pleading for the transgressors!
A second thing that might have hindered Moses was not only the sin, but the manifest obstinacy of those who had committed the sin. Moses had it upon the evidence of the heart-searching God that these people were exceedingly perverse. The Lord said, “I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiff-necked people.” Poor Moses had to learn, in later years, how true that saying was, for though he poured out his very soul for them and was tender towards them as a nurse with a child, yet they often vexed and wearied his spirit so that he cried to the Lord, “Have I conceived all this people? Have I begotten them, that You should say unto me, Carry them in your bosom, as a nursing father bears the sucking child, unto the land which You swore unto their fathers?” He was crushed beneath the burden of Israel’s perversity, yet, though God, Himself, had told him that they were a stiff-necked people, Moses besought the Lord concerning these obstinate sinners!
Perhaps it is an even more remarkable thing that Moses was not hindered from praying to God though, to a large degree at the time, and much more afterwards, he sympathized with God in His wrath. We have read how Moses' anger waxed hot when he saw the calf and the dancing–do you not see the holy man dashing the precious tablets upon the earth, regarding them as too sacred for the unholy eyes of idolaters to gaze upon? He saves them, as it were, from the desecration of contact with such a guilty people by breaking them to shivers upon the ground! Can you not see how his eyes flash fire as he tears down their idol, burns it in the fire, grinds it to powder, strews it upon the water and makes them drink it? He is determined that it shall go into their very bowels–they shall be made to know what kind of a thing it was that they called a god!
II. Now I introduce to you a second thought, which is that NOTHING CAN DEPRIVE A LOVING SPIRIT OF ITS ARGUMENTS IN PRAYER FOR OTHERS.
It is one thing to be willing to besiege the Throne of Grace, but it is quite another thing to get the ammunition of prayer. Sometimes you cannot pray, for prayer means the pleading of arguments, and there are times when arguments fail you–when you cannot think of any reason why you should pray. Now there was no argument in these people, nothing that Moses could see in them that he could plead with God for them–so he turned his eyes another way–he looked to God and pleaded what he saw in Him!
Then Moses goes on to mention, in the next place, that the Lord’s name would be compromised if Israel should be destroyed. He says, “Why should the Egyptians speak and say, For mischief did He bring them out, to slay them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth”? If God’s people are not saved, if Christ does not see of the travail of His soul, the majesty of God and the honor of the Redeemer will be compromised. Shall Christ die to no purpose? Shall the Gospel be preached in vain? Shall the Holy Spirit be poured out without avail? Let us plead thus with God and we shall not be short of arguments that we may urge with Him.
Moses goes on to mention that God was in Covenant with these people. See how he puts it in the 13 th verse–“Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own Self, and said unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of Heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it forever.” There is no pleading with God like reminding Him of His Covenant! Get a hold of a promise of God, and you may pray with great boldness, for the Lord will not run back from His own Word–but get a hold of the Covenant and you may plead with the greatest possible confidence! If I may compare a single promise to one great gun in the heavenly siege-train, then the Covenant may be likened to a whole park of artillery–with that you may besiege Heaven and come off a conqueror! Moses pleads thus with the Lord–“How can You destroy these people, even though You are angry with them, and they deserve Your wrath? You have promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that their seed shall inherit the land, and if they are destroyed, how can they enter into Canaan and possess it?” This is grand pleading! But what bravery it was when Moses dared to say to God, “Remember Your Covenant and turn from Your fierce anger, and repent of Your thoughts of evil against Your people”! O Lord, teach us, also, how to plead like this!
You see, it is, “I and Your people.” This is the glorious conjunction of Christ with us as it was of Moses with the children of Israel! And, Brothers and Sisters, we never prevail in prayer so much as when we seem to link ourselves with the people for whom we pray. You cannot stand up above them, as though you were their superior, and then pray for them with any success–you must get down by the side of the sinner and say, “Let us plead with God.” Sometimes, when you are preaching to people, or when you are praying for them, you must feel as if you could die for them, if they might be saved, and if they were lost it would seem as if you, too, had lost everything! Rutherford said that he would have two heavens if but one soul from Anwoth met him at God’s right hand, and, doubtless, we shall have the same, and we have sometimes felt as if we had a Hell at the thought of any of our Hearers being cast into Hell! When you can pray like that, when you put yourself side by side with the soul for which you are pleading, you will succeed! You will be like Elisha, when he stretched himself upon the Shunammite’s son and put his mouth upon the child’s mouth, his eyes upon the child’s eyes, his hands upon the child’s hands and seemed to identify himself with the dead child. Then was he made the means of quickening to the lad! God help us to plead thus in our prayers for sinners!
If you and I know how to plead for sinners, there is no reason why we should not succeed, for, first, there is no reason in the Character of God. Try, if you can, to got some idea of what God is, and though you tremble before His Sovereignty and adore His Holiness and magnify His Justice, remember that He is still, first and foremost, Love. “God is love,” and that love shines in all the Divine attributes! It is undiminished in its glory by any one of them. All the attributes of God are harmonious with each other and Love seems to be the very center of the circle. Let us never be afraid of pleading with God! He will never take it ill on our part that we pray for sinners, for it is so much after His own mind. “As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way, and live.” The Character of God is infinitely gracious, even in its Sovereignty. It is Grace that reigns, therefore let us never be afraid of pleading with the Lord! We shall surely succeed, for there is nothing in God’s Character to hinder us.
I will go yet farther, and say that there is nothing, even, in God’s act to hinder us from pleading with success. If God has begun to smite the sinner, as long as that sinner is in this world, I will still pray for him. Remember, how, when the fiery rain was falling upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and the vile cities of the plain were being covered with its bituminous sleet, Zoar was preserved in answer to the prayers of Lot? Look at David–he was a great sinner, and he had brought upon his people a terrible plague, and the destroying angel stood with his drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem–but when David saw the angel, he said to the Lord, “Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly: but these sheep, what have they done?” So the Lord was entreated for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel. Why, if I saw you between the very jaws of Hell, so long as they had not actually engulfed you, I would pray for you! God forbid that we should sin against any guilty ones by ceasing to pray for them, however desperate their case! My text seems to me to put this matter with astonishing force and power–the evil which God had thought to do was prevented by the intercession of His servant, Moses.
IV. I had many more things to say to you, but I must leave them unsaid and conclude by reminding you, in only a sentence or two, that NOTHING IN THE MEDIATION OF MOSES CAN MATCH OUR GREATER INTERCESSOR, THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.
Remember, Brothers and Sisters, that He not only prayed and willingly offered Himself to die for us, but He actually died for us. His name was blotted from the book of the living–He died that we might live. He went not to God saying, “Perhaps I may make Atonement for the guilty,” but He made the Atonement and His pleading for sinners is perpetually prevalent. God is hearing Christ at this moment as He makes intercession for the transgressors! And He is giving Him to see of the travail of His soul. This being the case, nothing ought to prevent any sinner from pleading for himself through Jesus Christ! If you think that God means to destroy you, yet go and pray to Him, for “The Lord repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people.” Thus may He deal in mercy with you, for His dear Son’s sake! Amen.