We pray to the One who is faithful, even when we are faithless
A sermon for September 11, 2022Â (Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost)
Scripture for consideration:Â Exodus 32:7-14
There is a tension inside of parents. Parents want their children to be good, to behave well, to do well. You have a godly desire for them to live productive, well-directed lives. You are upset when your children do things wrong, when they run away from you, when they do the opposite of what you know is good for them. At the same time, the core of a parentâs character is unconditional love. A parent will be there always for them, will never abandon them. A parent will search and strive and keep reaching out if ever children wander off or lose their way, intent on holding them close again in love, embracing them with forgiveness.
God describes himself to us as a parent to us; he is our Father. There is something of that same tension within Godâs heart and in his Word to us. God has a righteous desire for rightness, obedience, and well-ordered lives for us. The Ten Commandments serve as a summary of the Law of God, his plans and principles for us. But law alone is not the essence of who God is. Above all, Godâs love for us and promises to us always will be paramount. Godâs essential character will not let him turn away from unconditional love, commitment, and caring for persons he has called to be his own. Even when we are not âgood children,â when we are like prodigal sons who run off and squander our inheritance from our Father in âdissolute livingâ (Luke 15:13), our Father is waiting and watching for us every day, filled with compassion. Hi is ready to run and put his arms around us and welcome us home the moment we come back to him (cf. Luke 15:20).Â
Mount Sinai (via Wikimedia Commons)
Today (in consideration of this Sundayâs Old Testament reading), we ponder what happened when Moses prayed on behalf of Godâs people, and we hear that God âchanged his mindâ in response. This happened when the people of Israel were gathered in the southern Sinai Peninsula, at the base of Mount Sinai. Just three months prior, the people had exited Egypt amid astonishing signs and wonders and miracles that God enacted to deliver them from slavery. But when Moses was up on the mountain receiving teaching from God for forty days, the people lost faith. They reverted to the sort of worship they had seen in idolatrous Egypt. They crafted a symbol, something like the Egyptian bull god Apis, a sacred cow, an image of fertility and strength. The LORD God, who had delivered Israel from Egypt, was angry at their apostasy. He announced to Moses that he was ready to destroy them and start over, making a new nation out of Moses and his descendants. Moses, whom âthe Lord used to speak to ⊠face to face, as one speaks to a friendâ (Exodus 33:11), spoke back to God and said, âNo, you donât want to do that.â Moses asked why God would turn his power against the Israelites when he had promised to carry them forward as his people. âRemember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants,â Moses said. âYou swore to them by your own self, saying to them, âI will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants.ââ (Exodus 32:13). Moses reminded God of his own character, his own promises, his own ultimate goal of gospel and mercy. At that, we are told, âThe Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his peopleâ (Exodus 32:14). Â
This is amazing, isnât it? Do you sense the conundrum in a statement like, âThe Lord changed his mindâ? Havenât we been taught that the heavenly Father âdoes not change like shifting shadowsâ (James 1:17 NIV)? And regarding the path of our lives, we confess that âall the days that were formedâ for us were already written in Godâs book âwhen none of them as yet existedâ (Psalm 139:16). So, if God knows all things in advance, how can he have had one plan in mind and then changed plans? How is it possible that God was intending to end his relationship with the people of Israel, and then, in response to Mosesâ prayer, turned around and âdid not bring on his people the disaster he had threatenedâ (Exodus 32:14 NIV)?
Well, that is the wonderful mystery of prayer, isnât it? It also reveals something of the wonderful mystery of Godâs being and how he deals with us. God already knows what is best for us before we ever utter a single prayer, and assures us that he has foreseen the whole plan of our lives (cf. Psalm 139). Yet he also urges us to pray and promises that he responds to our prayers. Pondering a deep mystery of God such as this makes us say, âSuch knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain itâ (Psalm 139:6). It is true that God knows all things, and therefore knows in advance all that will transpire in our lives. On the other hand, it is also true that God hears and responds to our prayers, even changing the course of history in reply to the prayers of his people. We do not try to reconcile this logical paradox; rather, we acknowledge that Godâs knowledge is far past our understanding.
Itâs good that there are two differing perspectives in how God deals with us, because Itâs not just Israelâs idolatry with the golden calf that deserved Godâs punishment. Scripture says, âThere will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evilâ (Romans 2:9), and, ultimately, everyone is guilty of evildoing. âThere is no one who is righteous, not even oneâ (Romans 3:10). Yet the same God who handed down the law that holds the whole world morally accountable also is full of mercy for us sinners. This is indeed a happy contradiction! Godâs gospel (good news) stands opposed to his law of judgment. If it were not so, we would all be condemned forever. But God makes this promise to us:
Let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. âŠ
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:7-9).
The higher wisdom of God goes above and beyond rules that say, âThe person who sins shall dieâ (Ezekiel 18:2). God provides an answer to his own demands from the depths of his own mercy.
At a later time in the history of Israel, when the people were about to be carried away to Babylon for 70 years of exile, God instructed the people to pray for a return home. Godâs knowledge of their future included the prayers they would offer to him. âFor surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exileâ (Jeremiah 29:10-14).
Notice that Godâs plans for us that look into the future include also plans that we will pray and he will respond to our prayers. That doesnât mean that our prayers are all pre-scripted, as if God has programmed us like computers. Think bigger than that. No matter how many options or scenarios there may be, there is nothing of our lives that is outside of Godâs awareness, including our prayers and all the different possibilities of our actions day by day.Â
The Christian church father Augustine commented on our freedom to act (and to pray) fitting within Godâs overall knowledge of all things: âOur wills themselves,â Augustine wrote, âare included in that order of causes which is certain to God, and is embraced by his foreknowledge. For human wills are also causes of human actions, and he who foreknew all the causes of things would certainly among those causes not have been ignorant of our willsâ (quoted from City of God, Book V, chapter 9). Thatâs complicated, I know, but did you catch what Augustine was saying? Godâs knowledge and will is so vast and all-encompassing that every possible change of direction by us, or every petition of prayer we might offer, is included. Our God is not small!
September 11 (via Wikimedia Commons)
As Christians, we are not fatalists. We do not believe that God has pre-chosen every detail of our existence in such a way that all we are doing is going through mindless motions. We are not Godâs puppets; we are his people. In a prominent confession, Lutheran theologians rejected all notions of fatalism. âWe reject and condemn as contrary to the standard of Godâs Word the delirium of philosophers who . . . taught that everything that happens must so happen, and cannot happen otherwise, and that everything that man does, even in outward things, he does by compulsion, and that he is coerced to evil works and deeds [such as] robbery, murder, theft, and the likeâ (Formula of Concord, Epitome, Article II). If you take a fatalistic view, then you would have to blame God for the behavior of the Israelites in worshiping the golden calf, as if he made them do that. Or you would have to blame God for the actions of the terrorists that caused so much destruction on September 11th twenty-one years ago, as if God willed for them to do that. In a history classroom at a religious college, on more than one occasion, I had to correct students who wanted to say the Holocaustâthe massacre of Jews and others hated by Hitler and the Nazi regimeâmust have been Godâs will because God is in charge of everything. That sort of thinking is an atrocity in itself and an affront to Godâs character. âGod is loveâ (1 John 4:8). âGod cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no oneâ (James 1:13). When human beings do evil things, we do that of our own accord. Persons are tempted by their âown desire, being lured and enticed by it; then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sinâ (James 1:14-15).
Do not assign death and destruction and harm and calamity to the will and desire of God. Moses knew God cannot do evil. So, when God denounced how stiff-necked and unfaithful his people were, and said, âLet me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume themâ (Exodus 32:10), Moses said, âNo, Lord, thatâs not who you are.â The goal of God is never our destruction but our salvation. He is patient with us, ânot wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentanceâ (2 Peter 3:9). Think of someone like Paul, who had been such a self-righteous Pharisee, âa blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violenceâ (1 Timothy 1:13). But God showed him mercy, redeeming him from his ignorance, outpouring on him an overflow of faith and love in Christ (1 Timothy 1:14). Think of how Jesus described Godâs intent and purposeâlike a shepherd who will keep seeking and not give up on even one lost sheep, like a woman cleaning every corner of the house in search of just one lost coin (cf. Luke 15:1-10). Emmy Kegler, in her book, One Coin Found: How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins (2019), describes Godâs loving purpose toward us well. She writes: âWe too are lost and dusty coins. We have gone unnoticed, rusted from othersâ indifference, misspent and misused, and our friends and leaders did not see our neglect. But God, in big and little ways, has picked up a womanâs broom and swept every corner of creation. God, in big and little ways, has tucked up her skirts and flattened herself on the floor, dug through dust bunnies and checked every dress pocket. God has found us, dustier and rustier and without any luster, and held us up to the light to say: No matter how you rolled away or what corner you were dropped in, you are mine.âÂ
We may wander. We may roll away. People near and dear to us may go astray, may lose faith and begin worshiping other things rather than staying true to God. But God remains faithful to us and to them. Even âif we are faithless, he remains faithfulâfor he cannot deny himselfâ (2 Timothy 2:13). God invites us to pray to him (Psalm 50:15, Ephesians 6:18). He invites our prayers in response to whatever is going on in our lives and in the world around us. And he promises he will respond to our prayers. We pray with confidence that prayer indeed can change things, for God has promised: âIf you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, âMove from here to there,â and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for youâ (Matthew 17:20).
We have a God whose character is anchored in a desire to rescue, to help, to save, to forgive. Our God invites us to be in conversation with him, to ask him to change his mind when we or others have sinned much âand indeed deserve only punishment.â Though âwe are worthy of nothing for which we ask, no have we earned it ⊠we ask that God would give us all things by graceâ–and he does. Let us keep calling on God in prayer, asking him to remember his gospel promises. Like Moses prayed boldly even when his people were at their worst, we will keep on praying to our God âboldly and with complete confidence, just as loving children ask their loving father.â
(Quotations in final paragraph from the Small Catechism, cf. Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 1163, 1164). Â
Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
