30 More Days... Day 4

Ex. 17:4  So Moses cried out to the LORD, saying, “What shall I do with this people?

Deut. 9:25  “Thus I prostrated myself before the LORD; forty days and forty nights I kept prostrating myself, because the LORD had said He would destroy you.
Deut. 9:26 Therefore I prayed to the LORD, and said: “O Lord GOD, do not destroy Your people and Your inheritance whom You have redeemed through Your greatness, whom You have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
Deut. 9:27 Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look on the stubbornness of this people, or on their wickedness or their sin,
Deut. 9:28 lest the land from which You brought us should say, “Because the LORD was not able to bring them to the land which He promised them, and because He hated them, He has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.”
Deut. 9:29 Yet they are Your people and Your inheritance, whom You brought out by Your mighty power and by Your outstretched arm.’

What can we say? However hard you might think your job is Moses had it tough. Leader of a people ... sure ,but often as I look at all his experiences I wonder who would want the job. And, I guess, the fact of the matter is that Moses really hadn’t wanted the job either. But it was what God called him to do. God told him, go to Egypt, speak to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go, bring my people out of Egypt. Moses said, I don’t speak well, why would anyone listen to me and you must know someone else to send instead. In the end God sent, Moses went and the struggles with Pharaoh were only the beginning of what Moses would experience in service to God and this people.

There was more than once that Moses was at a loss to know what to do with this people. Exodus 17 is only one example. If you remember, the people were without water and they came to Moses to complain to him about this.

Why is it you have brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?

It doesn’t seem to matter that they are free. They seem to have forgotten God’s miraculous plagues and protection in Egypt. The Red Sea seems to have escaped their recollection (where they had more water than they wanted). It hasn’t been the first time that “no good deed has gone unpunished”. Now, here they are again. We have no water! Moses this is your fault. Moses is in fear for his life... “the people are ready to stone me”. In the middle of all this we still see Moses’ heart as he cries out to God for this people. “What shall I do with this people?” It is not just concern for himself. He is concerned for their well-being and that they “know the Lord”.

We also see God’s heart in His answer. Go stand on the rock in Horeb. God says that He will stand there before him. Strike the rock! Hence, we have one of the many pictures of Christ being struck for the salvation of the people. God takes their sin upon Himself and the rock is struck. The life giving water flows.

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink...” Jesus says.

God provides, the people see that God truly is “among them” and Moses glorifies God with his cry for the people and his obedience.

It is not just here but there are many times throughout Moses’ “career” that he intercedes for a “stiff-necked” and backward people. We see this time after time. In the passage in Deuteronomy Moses recalls several occasions that God was ready to destroy the people or broke out against them. God even once tells Moses that He will make a better and stronger nation out of him and his descendants. But Moses’ response is to fall before the Lord in prayer and intercession so that God’s anger will be turned away. We see that at one time he even spends 40 days without food or water in intercession for the people and for the glory of God to be made known. Not just for the people but also to the surrounding nations that they wouldn’t malign the Name of God.

We see here God’s heart in prayer. That we should cry out and intercede for people that they may realize God’s presence, that He would be glorified and that they should be forgiven and turned away from sin.

In human terms, Moses had every reason to say enough. Forget this people. They don’t deserve grace or any of the good things of God. They are stiff-necked and stubborn and hopeless. Yet, Moses cried out instead asking God to show him what to do and for the salvation of the people. So often we want to give up on those who most need and least deserve God’s grace. But, really, doesn’t that describe all of us? And often God puts us in a position where we could throw up our hands and give up without hope, or we could come to Him with all that we really can do ... pray.

Prayer Request
*That God would establish His Church here in Slovenia and especially in Maribor. That we would be able to see people come to worship God in Spirit and truth. That God would raise up a strong, vibrant Church that loves God’s Word, that is focused on Him, that worships and obeys God, that reaches out, that prays and that is a light to the world around it.