Daily Thought

Moses had gone up into the mount to commune with God. He was rather longer than expected and the people feared he may have died. Consequently, they persuaded Aaron to authorize the collection of gold in order to build an object to worship - a golden calf. Once the gold was melted down and the calf made, they celebrated at an inaugural ceremony, much to God’s displeasure.

Meanwhile, up on the mountain God shared with Moses His thoughts about what had happened. He described the people to Moses as ‘thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt’. He tells Moses precisely what they had done; and underlines their stubbornness by their recurring failure to respond to His leading. God tells Moses that He will destroy the people but honour His promise to Moses himself; indeed, He would expand it by making him into a great nation.

The anger that Moses felt was reserved for the people, but before God he argues against this proposal, while rejecting glory for himself. He asks, ‘Why?’. He reminds God that they are indeed God’s own people and that it was He who had brought them out of bondage. He also indicates that such an act would give the Egyptians grounds for rejoicing at the ultimate failure of the great escape. He pleads with God to be faithful to His promises.

These people had made life difficult for Moses and had rebelled against him, yet he is selfless in his approach. God had saved them - so why destroy them? Why give the enemies of God occasion to rejoice? God, Moses claims, must be consistent with His promises to generations of His people in earlier years. We are told that God repented of the evil. This is not to say, however, that He changed His mind, nor indeed that He had regretted something He had intended to do, but simply that He embarked on a different course of action to that He had earlier suggested as a possibility.

We note that our prayers do not alter God’s purpose, but help, in fact, to facilitate it. Here Moses reflects the character of his God and in our prayers, we should do the same. We need to know where God stands on a matter, to see it as He sees it, and pray earnestly that, despite failure, God’s original purpose should be worked out. It will be.