Moses: An Example of Prayer — Evan Schaible

Exodus chapter 32. The other day, Brother Nathaniel and I were looking at Acts chapter 1, and the word in there that Jesus says, You shall be my witnesses. It really has been bearing witness in these last few weeks with exactly what Giancarlo said, because that word witnesses is actually the same word used for martyr.

So Jesus isn't saying, You shall be my witnesses. He's saying, You shall be my martyrs. Saying, You shall be my martyrs. It's a serious thing. And there is a time coming, the Bible clearly says, we're not going to be raptured before all the trouble hits.

We're going to go through the tribulation if we're alive at the time. No such thing as a pre-tribulation rapture. The time is swiftly approaching, and we're all going to be tested. But consider it joy, the testing of your faith.

It will be a fiery trial. I just want to begin by briefly saying that if you didn't come here tonight to meet consciously, consciously, with this in the forefront of your mind, you're not going to meet God to leave.

I'm serious. Because if you didn't come here tonight to meet with God, you're a saver of death to the meeting. Now, I want to address the issue of prayer, especially in the life of Moses. And I think that apart from Jesus Himself, that Moses is the greatest example of prayer that we have in all of Holy Writ, all of Scripture.

Moses as an Example of Prayer

And it's dangerous to make sweeping claims upon Scripture, but I think that it's a well-grounded claim. And I think that tonight we'll see how that Moses truly is, not just intercession, but truly is the greatest example of prayer, the whole spectrum of it.

And our principal text is going to come from Exodus 33, in most of the chapter. We're just going to go through verse by verse a lot of the chapter. But I want to start with Exodus 32, starting at verse 30.

Let me open up and read it here. It says this.

It says, Let's pray. Father, we just come before You now, and we thank You that You've already come before us. We thank You, Lord, that You saw fit to come here. You saw fit to speak to Your people, of things to come, as Your Word says.

Lord, and we just look to You this night. And Father, I pray that we could be as this spear that pierced Your Son's side, that we could come and enter into Your very heart. Show us what is on Your mind, Lord.

Speak through me now, I pray. Don't let my words drop to the ground, Father, but let these words that come forth tonight be Your words, and Your words can never return void. So open our hearts, we pray, to receive what You have for us this night.

Show us the depths of prayer. Show us how close we can actually come to You, and how much we can actually know You. And Lord God, I pray, I agree with Brother Josh when he said, Take us to a new level.

Take us to a deeper depth and a higher height and a wider width, Lord. Show us more of Your face. Show us more of Your favor and bring us on. Lord, we just pray it for the glory of Your Son and in His name.

Knowing that if we come together as touching this thing, You will do it. So we come and ask You, Father, glorify Yourself in our midst and let Your Word come forth tonight. Let Your Word be spoken here, Father.

Lord, I almost just want to stay and pray, but Lord, I pray, speak tonight. Don't let us go away unchanged. Don't let us go away unchanged. Show us Your glory. Show us Your glory. And come, Holy Spirit, have Your way in each and every one of our hearts tonight.

Let us go forth blazing with love. And we thank You in Jesus' name. Amen. Now we find this incident directly proceeding Moses' descent from Mount Sinai. Aaron, though a priest, had fallen into some vicious rebellion.

He not only fell into this gross idolatry, but succumbed into the pressure of the people when they said, Make us gods which shall go before us. And as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what has become of him.

You can almost hear them patronizing Aaron in the very tone of the Scripture. So Aaron, he said to the people of Israel, Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.

Out of this ornamentation, the man Aaron fashioned a calf and declared to Israel, He said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of Egypt. Now these ornaments mentioned are traditionally known to be emblematic of spiritual things.

And also, said to be the emblems of divine protection. The choicest of these emblems was likely a gold plate inscribed with the name Jehovah. When Aaron commanded these ornaments to be taken off and used to make this idol, imagine thousands of God's people taking this beautiful gold plate off and throwing it into a melting pot to make a golden calf.

The very name of God being melted down. Not only that, imagine these people, when they removed these ornaments, they also forfeited the symbol of protection and they forfeited the very protection of God Almighty in order to transgress against Him.

All of this is rooted in one sin as the people entreated their priest Aaron that he would make a wicked statue. And the fear of man always carries with it grave consequences. The fear of man itself is idolatry and will always lead to more idolatry.

Aaron, a priest chosen by God, fell because of this one simple yet rebellious act. And the last one it's conceived brings forth sin. And the wages of sin is death. We can see the vileness of the sin by the reaction of God when He says, Go, get thee down for thy people which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves.

They have turned aside again out of the way which I commanded them. They have made them a molten calf and have worshipped it and have sacrificed thereunto and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

I have seen this people and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore, let me alone that my wrath may wax hot against them that I may consume them and will make of thee a great nation. Now God told Moses verbatim, word for word, the words of the wicked, rebellious, stiff-necked people of Israel.

Nothing escapes the ears of the Lord of Lords. He that made the ears, shall he not hear? God then says, I have seen this people. He that made the eye, does he not see? And how true are the words of the psalmist.

They say, How doth God know? And is there knowledge in the Most High? But David asks the question that truly needs to be asked. He says this, Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? For they call not on the Lord.

And God is not the one who lacks knowledge, but rather those who live in rebellion. And it seems as though Israel unconsciously had this mindset of saying, Surely the Lord doesn't know. But the Lord saw they were stiff-necked people and He longed to let His wrath pour upon their heads and they deserved every drop of it.

Moses Pleads the Covenant Before God

And here we get an amazing insight into the prayer life of Moses. And Moses, he was prone to often argue with God, not with contentious battle of the wills, but rather an intelligent and thought out debate of why God should do this or why God should do that.

And this is an amazing form of prayer and it deserves our investigation. Moses said in response to God's burning anger towards His people, Lord, why doth Thy anger or Thy wrath wax hot against Thy people which Thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?

Wherefore should the Egyptians speak and say, For mischief did He bring them out to slay them in the mountains and to consume them in the face of the earth? Turn from Thy fierce wrath and repent of this evil against Thy people.

Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, Thy servants, to whom Thou sworest by Thine own self and said unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and all this land which I have spoken of will I give unto your seed and they shall inherit it forever.

Now right away we can see a difference in the prayers of this man, Moses, in the prayers of the modern prayer meeting. Moses comes inquiring, asking of God what's on God's mind, what God is thinking and why God has done a thing rather than bringing him a shopping list.

He doesn't ask for anything other than an answer to this dilemma that was directly facing him. He asks the Lord why His anger is burning against His own people. He doesn't stop there. He goes on to say, Wherefore 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?

He challenges God. He asks Him why He would cause reproach to come to His own name. The Egyptians were just pillaged by plagues and plundered by the people of Egypt as they left the land. And if God were to strike them down here in the mountains and the Egyptians would throw the reproach at God, God would suffer the reproach and Moses used this as the basis of his prayer.

And in the light of that argument, he then offers up his supplication to God. He says, Turn from thy fierce wrath and repent of this evil against thy people. And then Moses says something truly amazing to God.

He says, Remember. It's an amazing thing when a man calls God to the remembrance of his own covenant. It's not only amazing, but it's dangerous. Moses, he needed to have a close bond to his God. And he did.

He was obedient. But Moses says, Remember. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, or Jacob. He says, It is thy servants to whom thou swearest by thine own self. And not only did Moses call the covenant to God's remembrance, but he also called the foundation of the promise to his remembrance.

God didn't only swear this thing. He swore it by his very self. Why? Because he could swear by nothing greater. Nothing higher. God can't be unfaithful to himself. Now already, the applications are becoming clearer and clearer.

But what was the result of this powerful and thought out praying? The Scripture says that the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people. I'm not going to sit here and get into the theology of this.

But it must be remembered that Moses has not yet seen the camp. Moses has been at the top of the mountain. He didn't yet see the rebellion of the people. He didn't see that all the people on the face down at the bottom of this mountain were committing this wickedness.

And he had prayed this, a most powerful prayer, based solely on the Word of God. And this type of praying is not accomplished in the realm of emotionalism. It's not accomplished in the realm of intellectualism.

It's not accomplished in the realm of tongues or any of these false assumptions that we think requisite powerful prayer. Now, intellectualism is good if it's used rightly. Emotions are good if they're used rightly.

Tongues are definitely good. But these things aren't what make powerful prayer. And this type of praying and this power in prayer comes from two things. One, tearing in the presence of God. And two, a deep and active knowledge of God Himself.

We can never hope to have any power in prayer. We can never hope to have any knowledge of God if we never tear in His presence. And you know, often, people's tongues start going and their lips start flapping before their knees even hit the floor.

And that's a danger to talk and talk and talk and talk. You might pray for a half hour, say a million words, get up and go up through your day, and you wonder why God doesn't move. Because you spoke to Him, but never let Him speak to you.

You never took in what He had for you. And you don't want God to go where you are. You want to go where God is. And sometimes the most powerful times of prayer can be when we say nothing and simply be still and know that He is God.

A .W. Tozer was accustomed to stay on his face for five hours a day, every single day. And you say, well, he was a pastor. Yes, but he was the pastor of the largest Alliance church in the country. So, if you say you're too busy to tear in the presence of God for five hours, look to A .W. Tozer.

Five hours a day, but yet, how did he do it? He sacrificed sleep if he had to. He'd stay up all night if he needed to, just like Jesus did. But you cannot claim you're too busy. There's a modern liberal pastor.

I really like one of his quotes. He says, you're too busy not to pray. If we don't have a living knowledge of the living God, we can never hope to prevail in prayer. If we don't have a living knowledge of the living God, we can't tear you in His presence like that because you'll fall asleep or you'll get bored.

Or you'll want to go do something else and your mind will wander because if you don't know God, you won't want to tarry there. You won't want to be in His presence. And if His presence doesn't come, it might convict you and you'll get up and run away.

And this knowledge, this knowledge of God, comes from a knowledge of His Word first and foremost and what He has done on our behalf that we might come boldly before Him. If we don't know the covenant promises, then we cannot plead them before God as Moses did.

And how can we truly come to God believing and not wavering if we don't truly know the workings of the covenant of grace, the inner workings, the deep things of God? How can we plead in this way before God if we don't understand by what this covenant and its promises are built upon?

And if we truly don't understand the depths of Christ's work on the cross, the blood shed for us, the wrath He absorbed for us, the glorious resurrection, then how can we know how to say as Moses, You've swore by Yourself.

Salvation is of the Lord. And this type of prayer is both intellectual and emotional. I was in Montana one time. We were preaching at a campus there and we stopped at a four-square church there in the area.

Great brethren, great brethren. But we were in a prayer meeting, the kind where you all sit in a circle and put a chair in the middle. And people come and they get prayer. People getting filled with the Holy Spirit and they're praying for healing and whatnot and anointing each other and everybody would go in the middle.

Well, I was sitting off praying with my legs crossed, just like now. And I was praying. And Eli, my friend, went in the middle of the circle and this lady turns to me and she looks me square in the eyes and says, You need to stop thinking.

And I thought about that. I didn't really think too much there. I just kept praying. I thought about that later on. Didn't take her advice, obviously. And I realized the fact that if we turn off our minds in prayer and just get on our face before God and just, as it were, pray from our hearts.

There's modern movements today that teach this all wrong. Just clear your mind and let come out what comes. That's very dangerous. You open yourself up to many things. Demons, especially. Because if you turn your mind off and aren't thinking things through, you're opening up yourself to very, very bad things.

And that's why this prayer must be intellectual. It must be thought out like Moses's. Moses didn't just go up to God and start rambling. He thought about what he said to God. Because if you don't think about what you say to God, you're in danger there too.

Because imagine you're going before God, saying something outrageous. God answers your prayer and then you wonder where it came from. Prayer must be thought out and fully engage our minds as well as our hearts.

We must love God with all of our mind as well as entrust to Him all of our emotions. If prayer does not move us emotionally, then I would submit to you that a checking of your heart and our hearts is in order.

Now we must worship in spirit and in truth with mind and emotion and we must never let our guards down. Because in meetings, especially like meetings tonight and like amazing meetings that I've been to here.

Well, I've been here. The devil's just as present as God is. He's just looking for somebody to let their guard down so he can swoop in there. And the next thing you know, you're in a bondage that you don't know where it came from.

There's some area of your life then that you're not in control of for some reason. Maybe you fall asleep when the anointing gets heavy or something else. But that's why. That's why. Now if prayer doesn't move us emotionally, then we should check our hearts.

We must worship in spirit and truth. And all of this praying and all of this pleading and all of this arguing must be done by faith. See, Moses had no other evidence of the rebellion of Israel than what God had told him.

Now you see, we must not look for any other evidence than the very promises and words of God. Martin Luther said this, There's no greater insult to a holy God than to not believe His promises. Now after this great victory of prayer, the Scripture says, Moses turned and went down from the mount.

And in his hands, he carried the tables of stones. And the tables were the work of God, the Scripture says. And the writing was the writing of God graven upon the tables. Moses was going to present these wonderful commandments to the people of Israel.

Far off in the distance, they could hear the people of Israel shouting. And Joshua said to Moses, There's noise of war in the camp. How quickly can we fall into the error of mistaking the sounds of war and the shouts for mastery for the frivolous revelry of singing to idols.

Too often people can fall into false pretenses in regard to prayer and make this awful mistake. There's movements within Christendom that make awful mockeries of prayer and worship. They have spiritual mapping.

They'll send you holy miracle water. They'll tell you to lay your hands on the television and you'll be healed. And people are deceived and they mistake the cries of war for singing to idols. The emotionalism that I mentioned before can draw people into this blunder.

False views of God can do so as well. If we don't spend the time we ought to in the Word of God and in the presence of God, then the heresies and movements that surround us can easily sweep us up. We may never know it.

But Moses, the one who knew God in such an intimate way, said it is not the voice of them that shout for mastery. Neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome. But the noise of them that sing do I hear.

And who are they singing to? Certainly not God, but that idol they had built. Moses' anger waxed hot against these people and he tossed the tables of stone to the foot of the mount and they broke to pieces.

Then we have the mighty drama of the calling of the people of Israel to the Lord's side and the slaying of those who remained rebels. And 3 ,000 fell by the sword that day and everyone deserved what they received.

Intercession and Substitution in Moses' Prayer

And now we come to our text. The basis of all true prayer. It says, And it came to pass on the morrow that Moses said unto the people, Ye have sinned a great sin, and now I will go up unto the Lord, perhaps peradventure.

I shall make an atonement for your sin. And Moses returned unto the Lord and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin. And if not blot me, I pray thee out of thy book which thou hast written.

And this scripture shows us the foundation of Moses' prayer. Here we see a similar heart to that of Paul who says that he could wish himself that he were a curse for his brethren. This is the basis of true prayer.

A desire to take the very place of the person prayed for if it were possible. Moses said he was going up the mountain that if possible he could make an atonement for their sin. He had already determined that he would be that offering made to God for the necessary sacrifice.

As God says later, that whosoever sins against me will I blot out of my book. Moses pled with God. This people have sinned a great sin and they made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin.

And it seems as if Moses here cuts off mid-sentence knowing Moses had the prophecies. Knowing that one day God would send salvation. Knowing that these people knew that. And also knowing that these people in the light of that knowledge rebelled anyhow.

But Moses cuts off mid-sentence it seems. This man continues and he says this,. And if not, blot me I pray thee out of thy book which thou hast written. Moses went to offer himself in the place of Israel.

And this is the heart of praying. This is the heart of his praying. The depths of passion he had for his people. It's an interesting thing that Moses, he never made it to the land of Canaan. The people were spared.

It's debatable whether or not God did truly answer the prayer of his servant here. But nevertheless, we see the heart of all true prayer. And this is also a beautiful type of the atonement that our Lord would make on Calvary's cross.

Going up that hill in order to offer himself in the place of the people of God. To bear the sin of many. And make intercession for the transgressors. He stood in our place as God's people. And that's what an intercessor does.

But the topic of intercession is not our focus, our primary focus tonight. But just rather prayer in general. And the heart of all prayer is the disposition of an intercessor. And that's the disposition of giving up your very life if it would gain the answer to your prayer.

But this Moses had a friendship with God that as far as I know, no one in our day has. And if even one person had this closeness to God that Moses would have, we would have a revival that would shake this earth.

If just one man had this relationship to God, a revival stirs, starts and stays in the very person of God. The deep knowledge of who he actually is. Not in theory. Not in practice. Or not but in practice.

Not in experiment, but in experience. Andrew Murray says this,. The divine life within us comes from God and is entirely dependent upon Him. As I need every moment of fresh air to breathe and the sun every moment of fresh sends down its light, so it is only in direct living communication with God that my soul can be strong.

The man of one day was corrupt when the next day came. I must every day have fresh grace from heaven, and I obtain it only in direct waiting upon God Himself. Begin each day by tearing before God and letting Him touch you.

Take time to meet God. We are in very grave danger of being labeled a mystic if we begin to seek after God Himself. People who are misinformed or simply misunderstand always give derogatory labels to those things they misunderstand.

I remember when I first, since I have been saved, this passage of scripture in Exodus 32 and 33 has burned on my heart. And I have always probed into how God and Moses can speak face to face, but yet nobody can speak to Him face to face because anybody who sees His face will die.

Those mysteries have been burned upon my heart since my salvation. And I used to... We have a message board, Jesse Morel and me and Eli and Miles open our outreach, our message board. And I used to post these things about union life, about being united to God and this closeness and knowing God and how we should yearn after it.

And I'd always be called a heretic and a mystic. And the thing is... And then you talk about guys like... Or women like Madame Guillaume, guys like Meister Eckhart. And they say, Oh, those guys are Roman Catholics.

And they forget that those people got kicked out of the Roman Catholic Church because they sought God. But to be a mystic is to be one that seeks after experience with God. Yea, God Himself. And to pray this precious prayer, the mantra of modern Christian mysticism and ancient Christian mysticism, Oh God, come feelingly near.

Come feelingly near. Now that's not saying that you base your theology on feelings or you base truth on feelings, but that you want God to come near so badly that you get on your face and cry out to Him.

Come feel... Let me know that You're here to be as the people on the road to Emmaus. Do not our hearts burn within us. And this was the disposition of Moses in the 33rd chapter of Exodus. Let's read in that 33rd chapter.

Seeking God's Presence and Glory

Verses 9 -23. And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle. And the Lord talked with Moses. And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door.

And all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door. And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again unto the camp. But his servant Joshua, that son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.

And Moses said unto the Lord, See Thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people. And Thou hast not let me know whom Thou wilt send with me. Yet Thou hast said, I know Thee by name. And Thou hast also found grace in my sight.

Now, therefore, I pray Thee, if I have found grace in Thy sight, show me now Thy way, that I may know Thee, that I may find grace in Thy sight, and consider that this nation is Thy people. And he said, My presence shall go with Thee, and I will give Thee rest.

And he said unto him, If Thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence. For wherein shall it be known here that I and Thy people have found grace in Thy sight? Is it not in that Thou goest with us?

So shall we be separated, I and Thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth. And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that Thou hast spoken. For Thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know Thee by name.

And he said, I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before Thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before Thee, and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.

And he said, Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see my face and live. And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me, and Thou shalt stand upon a rock, and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put Thee in a cliff of the rock, and will cover Thee with my hand while I pass by.

And I will take away mine hand, and Thou shalt see my back parts, but my face shall not be seen. Now, the first thing that we begin to see is the fact that the people knew that there was something different about this man.

He departed from the people. He went outside the camp and entered into the presence of the Lord. The seal of God's presence, the pillar of smoke, would descend, and all the people knew that God was there.

If we ever hope to truly know God, we'll have to separate ourselves from the people. The noise and ruckus of the world will drown out God's voice in gentle prompting He gives our hearts. The great example of this is Jesus Himself.

He was given to whole nights of prayer, nights of agony, nights of strong crying and tears, nights in the garden with droplets of crimson blood falling to the ground. The Scripture says of our Lord, He would tread the winepress alone.

No one there to comfort Him as in the end even His Father forsook Him on the tree. He came to His own and His own received Him not. The very ones for whom He was smitten smote Him and spit in His face.

He was derided and taken without the camp, seen by most as a malfactor destined to die the death of a criminal. The cross is a symbol of rejection. There's not a single man on this planet that did not flee from Jesus and reject Jesus except for a few that were at the foot of that cross.

He bore the reproach of sinners as they chided Him and hurled insults at Him because they were ignorant of who it was that hung on that tree. That the Son of God might sanctify His people, He suffered without the gate and shed the sanctifying blood.

Let us go, therefore, unto Him without the camp bearing His reproach, says the Scripture. If we ever hope to grow in grace and to know the One we claim to love, we must be willing to suffer. When you try to go on with God and follow the shepherd's voice, the goats will ridicule and even the misguided sheep will lead you into the ditch they have fallen into.

No one will support you when you give yourself to God without reserve. Think of the crowds that derided our Lord as He was drug from the city to the Mount of Crucifixion. This man, God in the flesh, bruised, bloodied, broken, being shoved down stairs, laughed at, spit upon, being cast into the dust over and over again.

And why? He suffered this agony in order to hang on a cross for the sin of God's people. We are to bear His reproach. We are to walk the narrow path and suffer the reproach of this world as they see us as malfactors, criminals, the scum of the earth.

They'll see us as a liability to society, unprofitable, worthless men and women who look to some invisible man and forget the things of the world. If we yearn after God, we will without a doubt suffer persecution.

The Bible says all who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. In an age that tells us knowing God will make us rich and respected, we can too easily lose sight of the narrow path Jesus walked.

And that road to Calvary, that road to Calvary, I believe, is the picture of the narrow road that all Christians walk. Honored to people of God, willingly carrying their cross upon their backs, suffering the reproach and rejection of even their dearest friends, all with one goal in mind, dying on that cross they carry in order to bring life to God's elect.

Our Master tread that way. Should not the servant tread it still? When we give ourselves to prayer, we begin to walk this road. With prayer comes power because when we truly know God, nothing can come against us.

And when this power and boldness comes, the world will hate us. But we are to take comfort because it first hated Jesus. And if we are to be perfect, we are to be like our Master. It's not a hard thing to separate ourselves from the people of the world.

The hardship comes when we must separate ourselves from the people who claim to be Christians. Jesus suffered the greatest torture and opposition from the religious people of His day. There's nothing new under the sun and the same holds true for us today.

When I was first saved, I went to a megachurch, a Lutheran megachurch, believe it or not. They never preached the Gospel and I came and got radically saved. Saved under Leonard Ravenhill's preaching and Parris Reedhead's preaching and Tozer's preaching and all of these guys that God so mightily used.

So I came to this Lutheran church. Okay? Religion with two messages, holiness and revival. Two of the messages that religion hates the most. They don't want revival, they'd lower the offerings. They don't want holiness, so would that.

They'd lower the offerings as well. So I came to this pastor because my family was great friends with the pastor's family. And I would always be bringing... I'd handwrite out the Ten Commandments of Revival from Ravenhill's book.