36 SELFLESSNESS

While Moses was on the mount, receiving the law from God, there were those among the people that were contriving how to break the laws they had already received. A plot of rebellion broke out against the Lord and was presented to Aaron who had been entrusted with the government in the absence of Moses. Verse 1 says, “When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’” Moses was on the mountain in obedience to God, but his long absence may help us see the danger for a leader to be away for a long time from those he or she leads. If we have people for whom we are responsible, we need to stay with them. Probably the rebellion began with a few, while many who would never have thought of it if it had not been put it into their hearts were brought to follow their mistaken way. Soon such a multitude were carried down that stream of popular opinion that the possible few who abhorred the proposal now did not dare to oppose it. A little fire can start a big problem. They may have been tired of waiting to start toward the promised land. They thought themselves detained too long at mount Sinai even though they were very safe, well fed and well taught. They were impatient to be going forward. They had a God that stayed with them and showed His presence with them by the cloud, but this would not serve. They must have a god to go before them; they are for hastening to the land flowing with milk and honey and cannot stay to take godly instruction along with them. But in reality we must first wait for God’s law before we enjoy His promises. He who truly believes does not hurry.

Aaron responds with this instruction recorded in verse 2, “Aaron answered them, ‘Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.’” We do not find that he said one word to discourage their proposal; he did not reprove their foolishness, did not reason with them to convince them of its sin and futility, but seemed to approve the motion and showed himself willing to humor them in it. One would hope he designed, at first, only to make a joke of it, and, by setting up a ridiculous image among them, to expose the motion and show them the folly of it, but not so. Aaron makes or causes to be made a calf as verses 3 and 4 say, “So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” Having made the calf in Horeb, according to Ps 106:19 they worshipped it. “At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped an idol cast from metal.” Aaron further humored them by making an altar which they did not request so they could worship the golden calf and proclaimed a feast to the honor of it.

God expresses His displeasure against Israel for this sin, and His intention in justice to cut them off in verses 9 and 10, “‘I have seen these people,’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.’” God reveals the true character of this people: They are a stiff-necked people, unapt to come under the yoke of the divine law, governed as it were by a spirit of contradiction, averse to all good and prone to evil and obstinate against the methods employed for their cure. The righteous God sees, not only what we do, but what we are, not only the actions of our lives, but the dispositions of our spirits and keeps that in mind in all His proceedings. He declares what was their just desert—that His anger would be hot against them so as to consume them at once and blot out their name from under heaven. Forty years later when Moses rehearsed this event as recorded in Deuteronomy 9:14, he said that God said, “Let me alone, so that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.” Sin exposes us to the wrath of God; and that wrath, if not canceled by divine mercy, will burn us up as stubble. It would be fair if God let the law have its course against sinners, and then cut them off immediately in the very act of sin; and, if He would do that, it would be neither loss nor dishonor to Him. “Let me alone . . .” God fairly offers Moses that, if he would not interfere in this matter, God would make of Moses a great nation, that either in process of time God would raise up a people out of Moses’ descendants, or that he would immediately by some means or other bring another great nation under Moses’ leadership so that Moses would be no loser by Israel’s immediate ruin. If Moses had had a narrow selfish spirit, he would have agreed with this offer; but he prefers the salvation of Israel before his own promotion or that of his own family. Here was a truly selfless man  . . .  a true leader. God tempts Moses not to intercede for them: Therefore, “let me alone”  What did Moses do, or what could he do, to hinder God from consuming them? When God resolves to abandon a people, and the decree of ruin has gone out, no intercession can prevent it. How does the selfless Moses respond to this idea? In this story we see that God put a weighty honor and high value on the power and significance of prayer, suggesting that nothing but the intercession of Moses could save them from ruin, that Moses might be a demonstration of Jesus’ ministry of prayer and that the value and results of Moses’ intercession would be more clear to us readers.

Moses earnestly intercedes with God on Israel’s behalf as verses 11-13 say, “But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. ‘Lord,’ he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, “It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth”? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.”’”  Moses pleads with the Lord his God. If God would not be called the God of Israel, yet he hoped he might address him as his own God. What interest we have at the throne of grace we should improve for the congregation of God and for our friends. Now Moses is standing in the gap to turn away the wrath of God as Psalm 106:23 says, “So he said he would destroy them—had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to keep his wrath from destroying them.” He wisely took the hint which God gave him when he said, Let me alone, which, though it seemed to forbid his interceding, actually encouraged it, by showing what power the prayer of faith has with God.

In such a case, God wonders if there be no intercessor as Isaiah 59:16 says, “He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm achieved salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him.” His prayer ‘Turn from your fierce wrath’ may not be as if he thought God was not justly angry, but Moses begs that God would not be so greatly angry as to consume them. He wanted the sentence of judgment and destruction to change into the sentence of judgment and correction.”

Moses fills his mouth with arguments, perhaps not so much to move God, as to express his own faith and to stir up his own fervency in prayer. He emphasizes God’s interest in them, the great things He had already done for them. God had said to Moses They are your people, whom you bought up out of Egypt; but Moses humbly turns them back to God again: “They are your people, you are their Lord and owner; I am but their servant. You brought them out of Egypt; I was but the instrument in Your hand; that was done to effect their deliverance which only You could do.” Being God’s people was a good reason why He should be angry with them for setting up another god, yet it was also a good reason why he should not be SO angry with them as to consume them. It is natural for a father to correct his son, but unnatural for a father to destroy his son.

See the power of prayer; God allows Himself to be persuaded by the humble believing urgency of intercessors. See the compassion of God towards poor sinners, and how ready He is to forgive. He gives other proofs besides His own oath that He has no pleasure in the death of those that die. He not only pardons at the repentance of sinners themselves, but spares and gives them a break at the intercession of others for them. Moses, having corrected the people has executed justice on the principal offenders, but is dealing both with the people and with God. Firstly, with the people, to bring them to repentance as verse 30 says, “The next day Moses said to the people, ‘You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.’” Secondly, he intercedes with God for mercy. This selfless man makes an astounding statement in pressing his prayer.  It is similar to what Paul says in Romans 9:3, “For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race,” Moses returned to the Lord, not so much to receive further instructions but to make intercession as verse 31 says, “So Moses went back to the Lord and said, ‘Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold.’” And in very 32, “please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.”” This is powerful intercession, Jesus did the very thing Moses and Paul spoke about. He did take the curse and Moses and Paul are like-minded when they prayed this way. This is self-sacrificing, self-effacing, self-denying selflessness. Yet God seems to be well pleased with that attitude.

That is selfless leadership, caring more for others than for one’s self. That is the example Moses leaves us with in this lesson.