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'Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .' From around the globe the heavenly Father is addressed in the languages of earth. The prayer that Jesus taught begins where prayer must begin - with the true and living God. The Bible is God's Word; it is his story of his work in bringing rebellious men and women back to himself. It tells, not of man's seeking a lost God, but of God's seeking lost men. The Bible does not present an art of prayer; it presents the God of prayer, the God who calls before we answer and answers before we call (Isa. 65:24). In the biblical history, prayer is not introduced as a separate spiritual discipline: it rises as man's answer to God's address. God speaks to Adam; Adam speaks to God. In the Book of Genesis we find conversations between God and Abraham. Indeed, Abraham bargains with God, begging God's pardon for his insistence, but respectfully pleading his cause (Gen. 18). The richness of later revelation about prayer never does prejudice to this simple reality: prayer is personal address to a personal God: 'Our Father, which art in heaven. . . .'
Christian devotion has been tinged at times with forms of mysticism that reverse the biblical pattern. In the place of the triune God of Scripture, revealed in Jesus Christ, such mysticism substitutes an impersonal Absolute, an abyss of non-being into which the devotee is plunged and absorbed. Prayer as personal intercourse with God is then merely tolerated - for those of limited spiritual competence. Not prayer, but samadhi is sought: a consciousness transformed by absorption. The adept does not adore the personal God, he becomes the impersonal All. [1] The techniques that prepare for such an experience feature repetitive sounds, sights, or actions. Analytical thought is mesmerised to favour intuitive awareness, a relaxed state in which one's consciousness of individual identity is suspended. [2]
Mysticism seeks to alter the mental state of the mystic. Prayer seeks communion with God. To be sure, the praying Christian is transformed. Prayer plunges into agony and soars in ecstasy, but it does not seek the heights or depths of experience. It seeks the Lord. The delight found in his presence is offered to his praise.
I. PRAYER ADDRESSES THE PERSONAL GOD
A. God's glory is personally revealed
Prayer, like all worship, is always a response to God's revelation of himself and his will. To call upon God's name one must first know his name; it is God who takes the initiative by making his name known. God reveals himself by his deeds; he also makes his name known directly by his words. In both, God is revealed as personal. In his words he both promises and proclaims his deeds. The wonder of both his words and his deeds evokes the response of adoration.
1. In his works
God reveals his power and wisdom in the created universe. 'The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands' (Ps. 19:1). Creation itself forms part of God's address to man. Psalm 147 beautifully joins the word of God that spreads the snow with the word that reveals his laws and decrees to Israel. Yet the God who speaks to his people is exalted above his creation, the work of his hands (Ps. 57:5). The thunder of God's power in creation affects the response of prayer in a double way. First, because God has all power, he is able to act in answering prayer. The thunderstorm of God's appearing described in Psalm 18 is his response to the cry of his afflicted servant. Second, the creative power of God shows the awe and reverence with which he is to be addressed and worshipped. God is not submerged in the cosmos, but greater far than all that his word called into being. We may not find a visit to the zoo a devotional experience, but God brought awe to Job with a close-up look at the hippopotamus and the crocodile. Job learned that his complaints had been addressed to a Creator whose power and wisdom surpass all understanding (Job 40,41).
God's royal power appears in his control of history as well as of nature. 'The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the LORD stand fast forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations' (Ps. 33:10,11).
The prophet Elisha prayed that God would open the eyes of his servant to see the chariots of fire that surrounded the besieging troops of Syria (2 Kgs. 6:17). Those who oppose the purposes of God are always outnumbered and overpowered. The prophet can pray with confidence to God as the Lord of history, and can proceed to capture those sent to take him captive.
The deeds of God that both invite and answer prayer are, above all, his deeds of deliverance and salvation. God hears the cry of enslaved and oppressed Israel, and declares to Moses in the desert that he has come down to deliver them and bring them to himself (Exod. 3:7,9). The exodus deliverance is God's answer to the groans of his chosen people. Yet here, too, God's answer both exceeds and precedes their prayer. Enslaved Israel is far from praying effectively for deliverance: the cry that comes to God is more the groan of affliction than the plea of faith. Moses, embittered by his own abortive attempt to champion the cause of Israel, is far from seeking God's commission to deliver them. Rather, he angers the Lord by his reluctance to accept the charge that God thrusts upon him. God promises deliverance because he would be faithful to his own promises, the promises that he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exod. 3:6,13,16).
With the patriarchs, too, the initiative was God's. It was the Lord who called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees and promised to bless him and make a great nation from him (Gen. 12: 1-3). Abraham does pray for a son, but only after so many years have elapsed that he begins to despair of the promise years later, Abraham prays, not for its fulfilment, but its abandonment. He actually laughs at the promise of God (Gen. 17: 17). The notion of Sarah's bearing him a son in their sunset years has become ludicrous. Abraham would have God recognise the limitations of the situation and settle for a reasonable solution. Sarah is hopelessly childless, but Hagar, her maid, can and has borne to Abraham a son. Abraham therefore prays, 'Let Ishmael live before you!' God promised too much and should settle for reality! In God's own time the impossible promise is fulfilled; Isaac is born. Sarah, who, like Abraham, had laughed in unbelief, laughs in another way: 'God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me' (Gen. 21:6). The marvel of God's work so far surpasses the expectation, indeed, the imagination of Abraham and Sarah, that only laughter can express the absurdity of divine grace. Isaac, 'Laughter', is a name that memoralises the overwhelming wonder of the saving work of God. Mary, promised a yet more amazing miracle, is reminded by the angel of the assurance given to Sarah: 'No word is too wonderful for God!' (Gen. 18: 14; Luke 1 :37). [3]
Prayer, in the biblical context, is always response to the God who has made himself known. Further, it is a reverent response. The wonder of God's works in creation and salvation demands adoration: 'It is the LORD!' Prayer is antithetical to magic. God is not to be manipulated nor his power exploited. He cannot be summoned like the genie of Aladdin's lamp. Rather, it is he who does the summoning. Exiled Jacob, fleeing from his brother's wrath, is met by the Lord in a dream; his vow is an awed response to the promise of the God who has spoken to him (Gen. 28:16-22).
2. In his name
Worship begins in the godly line of Seth when men 'call upon the name of the LORD' (Gen. 4:26). In the most basic sense, calling on God's name means uttering his name aloud, addressing him by name. God's name, then, has significance. In the USA, 'handle' has long been a slang term for 'name'. Knowing a person's name gives us a 'handle' in addressing him. For that reason some tribal cultures have kept an individual's 'real' name a secret so that others could not gain the control that knowledge of a name affords. In revealing his name to men, particularly to sinful men, God shows the wonder of his grace. He makes himself addressable, opens the door to prayer, provides a bond that calls to fellowship. In the patriarchal period described in Genesis, God's disclosures of himself are linked with a series of divine names: ’el ‘elyôn, 'God Most High' (14:22); ’el ro’î, 'You are the God who sees me' (16:13); ’el šaday, 'God Almighty' (17:1); ’el ‘ôlam, 'the Eternal God' (21:33); yehowâ yirch, 'the Lord will provide' (22: 14); ’el elohê yisra’el, 'God, the God of Israel' (33:20); ’el bêt-’el, 'God of Bethel' (35:7). These names are often associated with places, and with altars set up to worship God in the name that was revealed. This series of names leads to the disclosure of the covenant name, Yahweh, when God calls Moses at the burning bush (Exod.3:14f.).
Taken in context, and sometimes elaborated by qualifying statements (e.g. Gen. 14:22), these names present powerful and dramatic witness to the attributes of God, attributes that are decisive for the address of prayer. They teach us that God is the Creator of heaven and earth; nothing is hid from his sight. He has all power, and can intervene at will in the world of his creation to accomplish his purposes of grace. Although he is eternal, he identifies himself as the God of Israel, forming his own name upon the name of his servant. His name is made the seal of his promises. He not only sees, he 'sees to' the desperate needs of those who trust him. His purpose of salvation is rooted in his own nature: he is the 'I Am' who is self-determined and sovereign in his plan to redeem his people.
As the people of God respond in worship, they 'magnify' the name of the Lord (Ps. 34:4; 69:30): that is, they rejoice in what God's name reveals about his nature and at the same time pray that God will be true to himself. The prayer, 'Hallowed be thy name' marks the very pinnacle of devotion. It asks not merely that God's name might be hallowed on earth in the doing of his will. Far beyond that, the prayer reaches to heaven: it asks that God hallow his own name, that God be God in all the wonder of his being.
3. In his presence
Prayer responds to God's revelation of himself by deed and by word. Yet there is a dimension of depth in that revelation. God does not merely speak and act; he is present. Prayer is steeped in the awareness, often an awe-filled awareness, of the presence of God.
The immediacy of God's presence is sometimes symbolised by attending phenomena: the darkness that surrounds him, or the cloud through which his glory shines. God is represented as coming in the cloud and speaking from it. An awesome flame, shining like lightning out of deep darkness, represented the presence of God to Abraham. [4] These symbols of God's immediate presence show the contrasting truths of God's infinite transcendence and his immediate appearing. The heaven of heavens cannot contain him (1 Kgs. 8:27); he fills heaven and earth (Jer. 23:24). For him to regard the heavens and the earth would be to humble himself (Ps.113:6). Yet this is what he does. 'For this is what the high and lofty One says - he who lives forever, whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit . . ." '(Isa. 57:15). No physical fire can reveal his holiness (Heb. 12: 18). Even the wind that splits the rock cannot adequately express his power, yet he can reveal his presence in a whispered word (1 Kgs. 19:11, 12). The personal presence of the Lord is dramatically revealed in the appearance of his Angel. In the Angel God appeared to Abraham; in the Angel he led Israel through the wilderness. The Angel of God's presence bears his name, and is to be feared and obeyed as the Lord (Exod. 23:21), for, indeed, it is God who appears as the Angel. The immediate presence of the Lord is also expressed by the phrase, 'the face of the Lord' (Exod. 33: 14, 15). Isaiah speaks of the exodus deliverance of Israel by the 'angel of his face' (Isa. 63:9). [5]
The very expressions used to describe God's self-revelation show that the initiative must come from him. Man cannot ascend into heaven to look upon the face of God, nor can he build a temple-tower to bring God down to the box of his religious specifications. This was the sin of the builders of the tower of Babel. Rather than calling upon the name of the Lord, they sought to make for themselves a name, and to build a tower that would establish communication with God on their terms. The phrase that describes the tower of Babel (the top reaching to heaven) is repeated in a different context when God reveals himself to Jacob at Bethel (Gen. 11 :4; 28: 12). The stairway of Jacob's dream is set up by God, not by men; it is God who takes the initiative. He descends the stairway to stand beside Jacob in the dream and to repeat the promises that he had made to Abraham. [6] By God's initiative his presence is made known. Jacob marks the spot as Bethel, the 'house of God', exclaiming, 'Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it!' (Gen. 28:16).
When Jacob returns to the land of the promise after his long exile in Haran, God again takes the initiative in revealing his presence (Gen. 32). Jacob fears the encounter with his offended brother Esau, but he is taught to fear rather his encounter with God. The threat comes, not from the encampment of angels that meets him as he enters the land, but from a single antagonist who challenges him: the Angel of the Lord. The desperate wrestling match that follows should be understood as trial by combat: an ordeal in which Jacob prevails even as he is crippled by the touch of the angel. Jacob emerges as the lame victor: he has seen the face of God and has prevailed to receive the blessing (Gen. 32:28, 31; Hos. 12:4). [7] The deep mystery of this incident is illumined by its fulfilment in Jesus Christ. The touch of the Angel on Jacob's thigh has reference to his descendants. [8] The stroke of judgment falls upon the Seed of Jacob; it is the Suffering Servant who is smitten of the Lord, but who strives with God and wins.
Jacob's struggle reflects his prayer recorded earlier in the chapter (Gen. 32:9-12). He confesses his own unworthiness, prays for deliverance from Esau, and claims the promise of blessing that God had spoken at Bethel. Jacob's victory is by faith: in his crippled condition he is no match for a human adversary, much less the Angel. Yet he clings with desperation to the Angel, claiming the promised blessing. When the Angel asks Jacob to release him because the dawn is breaking, we are not to understand that the Angel feared the dawn. The danger was to Jacob: the danger of seeing, in the light of the morning, the face of the One who was none other than the Lord. This is clear from Jacob's words after the encounter. He calls the place 'Peniel' ('the face of God') because in the dim light he saw God's face and yet escaped death.
Can Jacob's wrestling with the Angel be made a model for prayer warriors of the new covenant? Certainly not if it is torn from its context in the history of redemption, and therefore from its fulfilment in Jesus Christ. It is Christ who delivers us from the judgment threatened at Peniel. His loud cries and tears have prevailed for us (Heb. 5:7). He has endured the ordeal that accomplished our salvation, the ordeal of Gethsemane and Calvary. God's revelation at Peniel teaches the grace of his plan as he intervenes to bless the heir of the promise. Yet Jacob is not just an actor in a sacred drama. His fierce grip on the angel expresses his desperate faith. In that respect Jacob, like the host of saints surveyed in Hebrews 11, bears witness to us. We have received 'the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ' (2 Cor. 4:6). That light is the supreme blessing of grace. The prayer of faith lays hold of that gift with a persistence that will not be denied (Lk. 11:8; 18:5).
The Apostle Paul, who laboured in the gospel and suffered agony in persecution (Phil. 1:30), also agonised over the churches he had planted (Col. 2:1-3). He did so, not in fretful anxiety, but in prevailing prayer. Epaphras, in the company of the apostle, wrestled in prayer for the saints in his home church at Colosse (Col. 4:12).
B. The response of prayer is personal
The personal form of God's self-revelation requires a response that is supremely personal. Prayer is not a magical formula to be repeated, but the personal communication, awed and adoring, of the redeemed creature who stands in the presence of the Saviour God.
1. Prayer by persons in God's image
In prayer the creature addresses the Creator. Prayer therefore requires dependence, but it also requires access, the possibility of communication between the creature and the Creator. The image of God in man provides the ground for both. God created man in his image; clearly man is a creature. He is like God as his image-bearer, but he is not divine. In the creation story of Akkadian mythology the god Kingu is executed for planning rebellion; mankind is fashioned from his blood. [9] In contrast, the biblical account declares that man is created by God from the dust of the ground. Mankind is 'Adam' as formed from ‘adamah, the soil (Gen. 2:7; 5:2). As Paul says, 'The first man is of the earth, earthy' (1 Cor. 15:47). Likeness is not identity. The divine inbreathing that gave life to Adam did not impart deity. The Lord 'forms the spirit of man within him . . .' (Zech. 12:1). [10] In spirit as in body, man is God's creature. It is the tempter who holds out the false promise that Adam and Eve can be as God (Gen. 3:5).
Yet the creation account in Genesis sets man apart as made in God's image (Gen. 1 :26, 27). Because of that distinction, mankind is given rule over the rest of creation. Adam names the animals, but none is suitable to be a companion for him. Adam, God's image-bearer, is God's representative on earth; Adam and Eve are to serve God as rulers of creation. God's image relates mankind not only to the created world, but also to one another. Human life is precious in God's sight because of the dignity of God's own image (Gen. 9:6). Yet, above all, the divine image relates man to God. Adam, formed in God's image, may be called a son of God (Luke 3:38). Luke's genealogy reminds us that Jesus is the Son of God as the second Adam; in him the image of God marred by sin is restored and renewed. But Jesus is more than mere man; he is God the Son, the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15; 3:10; 2 Cor. 3:18). The image of God that is restored by salvation is the image of the divine Son (Rom. 8:29). The incarnation gives meaning beyond all imagining to man's creation in the image of God. Christ is the very brilliance of the Father's glory, and we are transformed from glory to glory in the same image (2 Cor. 3:18; Heb. 1:3).
Human personality cannot be understood or expressed apart from the fundamental reality of the image of God. [11] Only as God's image-bearer can man have both freedom and purpose without contradiction. Prayer expresses both. In the midst of the created cosmos, man is called to prayer, not only to praise God for his marvellous works, but also to further his will and design in creation. Consider the amazing boldness of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples. They may call God their Father and ask that he hallow his own name; they may seek the accomplishment of his will on earth as in heaven. God stands in no need of counsellors; he requires no support or encouragement to unfold the mystery of his will. Yet God's grace so draws creatures of dust to his side that they may join with him to seek his sovereign purposes. Union with Christ enables us to seek with him the fulfilment of his Father's will.
On the other hand, the image of God puts the seal of God's possession upon those whom he has made. When the enemies of Jesus confronted him with a catch question about paying taxes to Caesar, Jesus asked to see a denarius, a Roman coin. The image and inscription on the coin were Caesar's. Jesus said, 'Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's' (Mt. 22:21). That answer cut through the trap that was laid for him, but it did much more. The coin was Caesar's, for it bore his image. We are God's for we bear his image. God's image in us is also his claim on us. Prayer gives to God what is his. The boldness of the Lord's prayer is matched by its humility, its simple dependence on the heavenly Father. Nothing magnifies the grace of God more than the realisation of the privilege that grace gives. The more the image of God is restored in us the more personal becomes our relation to him, and the deeper our devotion.
2. Prayer by the whole person
Because God's image makes man to be man, prayer involves a response that has no parallel in human experience. Personal relations on the human level are necessarily partial. A man relates to his wife in a way that differs from his relating to a business partner or to a chance acquaintance. We sustain roles that can express only partially our own personhood. In relation to God, however, we are 'naked and pinned down' (Heb. 4:13). Our masks are gone, pretence is useless: the relationship is not partial, but total. All that we are stands related to our Maker and Redeemer.
Worship is overwhelmed by the presence of God's being and glory. When the seraphim cry 'Holy, holy, holy' in God's temple, every utterance springs from a fresh perception of the glory of the Lord sweeping over them like the waves of the sea. But the redeemed taste a greater glory. Our awareness of God our Creator is inexpressibly heightened by our sense of the presence of God our Saviour. John Newton, once a 'slave of slaves' and of sin, knew that wonder: 'Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me . . . .' To the boundless wisdom and power of God there is added the depth of his mercy and the height of his love (Ps. 103:11; Eph. 3:18-19). David tasted it; he added to his psalm of deliverance from Saul the opening exclamation, 'I love you, a LORD, my strength' (Ps. 18:1; cf. 2 Sam. 22:2). David's experience has been deepened for us by the coming of the Lord, but his cry is still ours.
In the presence of the Lord prayer spirals from faith to faith, from blessing to blessing. The more aware we become of the One to whom we pray, the more we are drawn to seek his face; the more we seek his face, the more aware we become of the inexhaustible riches of his grace (2 Cor. 3:18).
C. The response of prayer is effective
The pattern of prayer that is assumed and described in the Bible is grounded in God's own nature, his saving work and word, his gracious presence. This biblical theology of prayer gives answer to objections that are often raised against the practice of prayer. The assumptions of rationalism still underlie popular liberal thought. The physical universe is conceived as a machine governed by the laws of causality. It grinds on inexorably; it would be foolish to think that so insubstantial an entity as a whispered prayer could affect its course. Strangely, this view of nature is often supported by an appeal to God's laws. A liberal preacher, rejecting the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, defends his unbelief eloquently:
Brought up as we have been in an atmosphere charged with scientific methods and presuppositions, it is hard for us to share the physical interpretation of the event. The God we know is not a God who reverses his laws and we find it difficult to imagine that he who decreed that dust is the beginning and end of man's material existence should in this instance reverse that declaration. [12]
No doubt the deistic conception of God's relation to creation has long outlived the Newtonian physics with which it was so closely linked. No doubt, too, equally un biblical views could be associated with more recent physical models. [13] Our views of the cosmos tend to bear suspicious similarity to the cultural context in which they are constructed. [14] The profound simplicity of biblical teaching has no difficulty with God's ability to answer prayer. Through the prophets the Lord calls upon men and women to call upon him: he will show them great and wonderful things that they could not imagine (Jer. 33:3). By the prayers of his prophets God restores the dead to life: nothing is impossible for God. The real difficulty is not with the nature of prayer; it is with the nature of God. Given the God of the Bible, answers to prayer are no problem.
The strength of the biblical answer to that difficulty seems to create another. If God is Lord and Sovereign, if he takes the initiative, if he accomplishes his will in heaven and in earth, why pray? Will not God carry out his purposes without our requesting that he do so? Since we do not know how God will accomplish his plan, would it not be better to leave everything in his hands? Is not prayer presumptuous meddling, offering God unnecessary advice? If the first difficulty misses God's power, the second misses his goodness. The plan that God will accomplish is a plan that includes the dedicated participation of his creatures. For this purpose he has made man in his image and is restoring him in the image of his Son. As Jesus prays for those the Father has given him, he is fulfilling the will of his Father (John 17). Our prayers, too, are part of the great sweep of God's plan for his people. God's sovereignty does not rob history of significance; to the contrary, it is God's plan that gives human history meaning. We do not know how to pray as we should, in the light of God's purposes. But for that very reason his Spirit who dwells in us makes intercession according to the will of God (Rom. 8:27).
II. PRAYER ADDRESSES THE COVENANT GOD
A. Prayer in the bond of the covenant relation
1. Prayer is grounded in God's covenant
Reflection on the personal quality of prayer has already brought us to consider that God is personally present as Saviour, not just Creator. The fellowship between God and man that existed in the garden of Eden was broken by human sin. Paul in Romans describes the progressive apostasy of mankind. Men gave God up, and God gave men up to the consequences of their sin (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28). Human lostness consists of both alienation and guilt. Men and women wandered away from God and sought out idols: they are lost like sheep on the hills. They also defied the will of God to serve their own lusts: they are lost like doomed criminals under sentence. Yet God in mercy did not abandon lost mankind to the justice of his judgment. Rather, he revealed his purpose for salvation. God's remedy is both 'to seek and to save that which was lost' (Lk. 19:10). That pattern of God's saving work, climaxed in Jesus Christ, was already evident in the Old Testament. From a lost race scattered and doomed by the resurgence of sin after the flood, God sought out and called Abraham. He promised to bless Abraham and to make him a blessing. In faith Abraham went to the land to which God directed him. There God sealed his covenant with Abraham by taking an oath (Gen. 15:17-21; 22:16; Heb. 6:13-18). Clearly, God's call to Abraham focused on the promise that God made, and to which he swore. Abraham was made the heir, not merely of the land, but of the promise of blessing, blessing in which the nations of the earth would share. By his covenant promise God also put his claim upon Abraham.
The heart of the covenant that God made with Abraham was the relationship that God established. He would be God to Abraham: in that relationship was both God's claim and his promise.
I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you (Gen. 17:7).
Abraham is called to walk before God, to keep the way of the Lord in righteousness and justice. His obedience is to manifest the relationship created by the Lord's taking knowledge of him (Gen. 18:19), a relationship received by faith (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4).
The relation established by God provides the access of prayer. Abraham prays to God about his childlessness, claiming God's covenant promise (Gen. 15:2,3). Because of his relation to God, he intercedes for others. God says, 'Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?' (Gen. 18:17). Abraham prays for Sodom so that his nephew Lot may be spared. He prays for Abimelech, even though Abimelech's problem has been occasioned by Abraham's own failure. Abraham is a prophet whom God hears (Gen. 20:7, 17).
Moses, like Abraham, prays on the basis of the covenant relation God has established. Appearing to Moses at the burning bush, God identifies himself by his covenant with Abraham. He hears the cry of enslaved Israel because they are the descendants of Abraham, to whom God bound himself (Exod. 3:6). God claims Israel and demands that Pharaoh let his people go: 'Israel is my firstborn son . . . Let my son go, so he may worship me' (Exod. 4:22, 23). God leads Israel his son out of Egypt to enter into covenant with him at Sinai.
2. Prayer pleads the covenant relation
The importance of the covenant bond for prayer appears vividly when Israel rebels against the Lord. Even while the covenant ordinances are being given to Moses on the mountain, Israel is sinning in the worship of a golden calf. Moses intercedes with God for Israel, pleading God's cov'enant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exod. 32:13). He argues the honour of God's name: what will the Egyptians and the Canaanites say if God destroys the people that he delivered from Egypt? (Exod. 32:12; Deut. 9:27-29; Num. 14:13-16). Above all, Moses calls upon God to remember his own mercy and the faithful love that he has toward his own. God has bound himself to Israel by the strong cords of his own covenant love, his hesed (Exod. 34:6; Num. 14:18). [15]
The intercession of Moses for rebellious Israel shows both the claim and promise of God's covenant. God's covenant claimed his people for himself, God's promise showed the meaning of that bond: not only what God would do for Israel, but what he would be: their God, dwelling in their midst. After Israel's worship of the golden calf at the very foot of Mount Sinai, God judged the idolatrous nation: many died. He then threatened to cancel the plans for the building of the tabernacle. The tabernacle was to be God's tent, his dwelling among the tents of Israel. But now God said that it was not safe for them to have his dwelling in the midst. Instead, he would go before them in the Angel of his presence, drive out the wicked inhabitants of Canaan, and give them the land as he had promised. No tabernacle need be built for his dwelling; rather, God would appear in the cloud of glory at the door of a tent pitched outside the camp. In that tent Moses and Joshua would be sheltered to meet with God. It was a tent of meeting, not of God's dwelling. God would not be present in the midst of the camp.
Moses and the people responded with grief and dismay. Moses cried, 'If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here' (Exod. 33:15). The whole point of the journey to Canaan would be lost if God's presence in the midst were lost. God was not simply liberating a people to give them a homeland: he was leading them to a place of fellowship, to a land where he would 'set his name' at the place of his dwelling among them (Deut. 12:5).
What plea would Moses use to seek the restoration of God's original purpose? He could not promise improved performance on the part of Israel. His only hope was to cast himself on the rich mercy of God, and to plead his promises. God had professed to know Moses by name, that is, to choose Moses as his son and servant. Let Moses, then, know God by name: 'Teach me your ways so I may know you . . . Show me your glory' (Exod. 33:13, 18). God granted the prayer of Moses. He passed by before Moses so that his glory might be seen, and he proclaimed his name to Moses. He is Yahweh, the I Am, who declares, 'I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion upon whom I will have compassion' (Exod. 33:19). Moses cannot look upon his face and live, but he can hear his name proclaimed: Yahweh, the God who is full of grace and truth (Exod. 34:6). John alludes directly to this passage in the introduction to his Gospel. He reminds us that, while no man has seen God, the grace and truth that was promised through Moses was given in Jesus Christ (John 1:14-18). In him God has finally tabernacled among his people, and the prayer of Moses is answered: they see the glory of the Lord. When Philip echoed Moses' prayer, Jesus answered, 'Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father' (John 14:9).
The name of the Lord, freshly proclaimed, became the basis of Moses' prayer. [16] He pleads that God will go in the midst of the 'stiff-necked' people, 'forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance' (Exod. 34:9). To turn aside the threat of God's removal from the midst of Israel, Moses could appeal at last only to God's willingness to reveal his own nature as the God of the covenant and of hesed. Not Israel's devotion to the Lord, but the Lord's devotion to Israel is the plea of Moses the intercessor. Significantly, Moses does not pray that Israel may be given the inheritance of the land, but that Israel be made God's inheritance. Having seen the glory of God, Moses seeks the glory of God. The glory of being God's possession is the greatest blessing of his people. The tabernacle was built in the midst of the camp, a symbol of God's claim and blessing in Christ (Jn. 1:14).
Those who are brought into covenant relation with God plead his mercy and cast themselves by faith on his grace. At the same time, their relation to the Holy God requires of them the obedience of those who have been made the people of God. To have God as your God is to live before him. The presence of God opens the door of prayer; it also opens our lives before him. Ceremonial cleanness, the core of the levitical ordinances, symbolises the reality of God's presence among his people (Deut. 23:9-14). The people are to be holy, as God is holy: the ceremonial law symbolises that moral purity (2 Cor. 6:14-7:1; Num. 19).
Continued
This essay first appeared in Teach us to Pray: Prayer in the Bible and the World, D. A. Carson (ed.), (Baker/Paternoster, 1990), 136-76, 336-38 and is used here with permission. No part of this essay may be copied or transmitted in any form without the permission of the publishers.