He does not want to go home after daycare. During those hours, he experiences the nurturing care of women — that mothering touch that makes a little boy’s world go round. He cries when it’s time to leave. He stammers to leave the maternal — a second language in which he was born fluent — when he has to go back into the home of two men. The “married” men are openly promiscuous with other men. One pretends to be more effeminate than the other, but effeminacy (the boy knows by experience) is a gross and cruel substitute for the gloriously feminine.

He is trapped with men who “gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” (Romans 1:27). Men who did not keep that penalty to themselves. They took the little boy directly from the hospital room to live in the lust-filled, wrath-stamped house of two men despising God and his design.

The little boy clings to his Christian auntie whenever she comes, she tells us, and cries when it’s time for her to leave his house, a house full of testosterone, aberrant desire, and a cheap mimicry of both fatherhood and motherhood. The boy, despite his catechizers, knows the real thing from the fake. He knows what it is to be held by the real, soothed by it, cuddled and made to feel secure in the safety of its arms.

The men who took him are “expecting” their second any day now.

What’s Wrong with the World?

A true story like this should anger us, fracture our hearts, and bend our knees to pray. What is wrong with the world?

What is wrong with the world? Paul gives us an answer in Romans 1:18–32: Mankind is at war with its Creator. Each generation has its own way of saying to the Father and his Son: “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2:3). Or with Pharaoh, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice?” (Exodus 5:2). Romans 1 takes us behind the scenes for some context to desperate times.

Here we learn that fallen man, timid little creature that he is, dares not make eye contact with the Almighty, so he suppresses the truth about God to continue, all too happily, in his filth (Romans 1:18). A popular form of suppression today is atheism. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” — and he does so because “they are corrupt” and “do abominable deeds” (Psalm 14:1). And those deeds do not wear masks and quarantine. Man denies God to practice and continue practicing homosexuality, as one of many rebellious ways, and then adopts children into his perversity.

But the grandeur of this world leaves ruined man without excuse (Romans 1:19–20). He, even he, lives within a masterpiece — God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). The great artist signs his name everywhere to be seen. Man quivers within heights and depths he cannot explore, in a cosmos more expansive than his imagination. Man’s brain (which is hostile to God apart from grace, Romans 8:7–8) surpasses a computer. His cells contain baffling intricacy. And yet his love for sin makes modern man shrug and call himself an atheist. His religion says that all came from original nothingness, from the great I Am Not. Claiming to be wise, he has become a fool.

The old watchmaker analogy highlights the absurdity of explaining nature by mere nature. If that atheist man finds an iPhone in the woods, he will always conclude someone must have left it there. That it was made. Chance did not design it. The passage of time cannot take credit. Though an Apple, it did not fall from a tree. Yet he lives and moves and has his being in the wide world of complexity that towers the iPhone as the heavens above earth and yet he says it all came from impersonal, unintelligent forces. They are without excuse.

Fattened by Sin for Slaughter

Unregenerate men of all sexual professions do not see God because they do not want God. They would pin him up and nail him to a tree again if they could. “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19). As criminals want no All-Seeing Judge, so natural man chafes at the God who reminds him that man is no god and is not good. How dare God tell us what to do with our bodies? How dare he tell us what to do with our babies? How dare he tell us what marriage is? How dare he!

So sons of Adam reject God. They do not render him the honor due his name, or thank him for his goodness and mercy (Romans 1:21). Instead, they offer the Almighty insults and spit upon the hand of their Benefactor. As a madman who pulls out his teeth to throw them at the sky because he hates the moon, men harm themselves in their rebellion. They become useless in their thinking, and their foolish hearts are darkened (Romans 1:21). Deny God, and you deny reason, deny sanity, deny goodness, deny beauty, deny life. One becomes a spiritual Nebuchadnezzar — nails grow as talons, he stoops to eat grass like an ox — though he may live in a lake house, drive a fancy car, and be thought charming by this God-hating world.

He is at war with God, and God is at war with him. He is under the wrath of God, a wrath that is just now preheating (Romans 1:18). He has exchanged God for images, and now God gives him over to suicidal sinfulness: to the lusts of his heart, to impurity, to the dishonoring of his own body (Romans 1:24). He bowed before idols and prostituted God’s truth, so God brings him to grassy plains where he will grow fat for the day of slaughter.

Bloodshed of Toddlers

God has given these two men up to dishonorable passions, to commit “shameless acts with men” (Romans 1:27). And then they conspire to adopt what God has forbidden them by nature. And then the delirious powers that be place kids in their “home” to be hit by the shrapnel of this skirmish with God.

And this is what God’s judgment does: Like striking a wasp’s nest, it incites man’s stinging left and right.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (Romans 1:28–31)

Who do these “haters of God” envy? Deceive? Slander? Murder? Themselves, others, and sometimes, children.

Rebellion against God becomes a wildfire. Wickedness is never satisfied to keep to itself; it mutinies. It enlists bedfellows. It stirs up and demands compliance. It slithers and has scales, takes over school systems and adopts children. And it co-opts those who know better: “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:32). These know such sins beg for God’s capital punishment, but instead of imploring them to repent — as love would dictate — they instead applaud them for their courage and “authenticity.”

Flee the Wrath to Come

God’s reality is inflexible. His law is perfect; his rules are true and righteous altogether. The Judge of the earth shall do right, and this is a terror for all here who despised his mercy, despised his designs for love, sex, and marriage, despised his day of salvation, and despised his crucified Son.

Today, dear reader, is the day of salvation — seek King Jesus. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. He has made a way, with his own blood, for you to be received. Are you a vast sinner? Have you murdered, taught false doctrine, adopted children into an abominable union before the Lord? Your wicked life is a wide opportunity for God to display the fathomless depths of his compassion and the eternal power of Christ’s sacrifice to forgive you. The terrorist of the church, the blasphemer of God, and murderer of Christians wrote,

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:15–16)

Look to this great example of mercy to give confidence to receive your own. Abundant pardon for abundant crimes. There is enough mercy for all who come.

Seek the Lord while he may be found;     call upon him while he is near;let the wicked forsake his way,     and the unrighteous man his thoughts;let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,     and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:6–7)

Jesus Christ has a throne of grace for the repentant, and a seat of terror for the impenitent. What is wrong with the world? Man’s sin. What alone is right with the world? Jesus Christ — his person, his redeeming work, and his church of redeemed sinners. He shines in the darkness, and still the darkness has not overcome him.

When I was about five, my dad invited me and my older sister into his home studio for fun. Like most of the musicians and producers in Nashville, he had a basement room outfitted with everything you need to make a decent demo: a dark soundproofed booth with a mic and stool, another room with a soundboard, and a thick glass window in between — for giving the “thumbs up” sign between takes.

He let me try first. I stood in the tiny room and sang along to the track playing through an enormous pair of headphones. In about three minutes, I was losing interest. I began to complain that the headphones were squeezing my ears, and my dad let me go back to playing.

Then it was my sister Sophie’s turn. And apparently, this was the day my dad discovered Sophie’s voice.

What did they work on? I didn’t hear it until a few weeks later when my parents had friends over for supper. My dad mentioned the session they’d done, and our guests wanted to hear it. Everybody sat down in the living room, but for some reason, I didn’t go in.

I stood in the hallway outside as the track began and Sophie’s voice burst into the air.

Even at seven years old, her voice was clear, powerful, and controlled. My little stomach flipped. I cringed outside the door as the guests reacted. My dad modestly turned the volume down after the first minute. Why had I left the studio? Why did I quit so quickly? Why didn’t I see that it would lead to Sophie being shown off while I was left standing out in the hallway?

Wishing Against Others

The smell of foam insulation in a recording booth would become very familiar to me in years to come. My dad did a great job of including all his kids in the music of his life. He invited his daughters onstage with him regularly during church concerts.

Later, he used connections to get us all jobs working as session singers for children’s projects — allowing us to save for future cars or colleges. He produced and paid for me to record a CD of jazz cover tunes when I was fifteen, and was always uniquely supportive of my voice — even if I knew it was more idiosyncratic and less powerful than Sophie’s. She was compared to Mariah Carey, I was compared to Billie Holiday, my younger sisters were later compared to The Wailin’ Jennys — and my dad managed to be a fan of all of it.

But when I look back, I’m shocked to recognize this moment as the earliest flowering of envy in my life. Peering back through the decades, I can see my five-year-old self standing in the hallway. The impulse of her heart is unmistakable.

I wished my dad would not play the CD. I wished the CD had been scratched or mislaid. I wished her voice didn’t sound like that. I wished the guests weren’t around to hear it.

In fact, I wished the glory of her voice was banished out of existence.

Inequality and the Eyes That Matter

The glory of a voice like Sophie’s is a deliberate gift from the God of glory. He stamps all of his creation with this glory — though mankind has a double portion.

Man, who is made in the image of God, has been “crowned with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:5). His glory is borrowed, reflective, derivative. But it’s real. And because it’s real, his fellow human beings — all of whom have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images” (Romans 1:23) — are moved to respond to it. Even in small amounts. Even in the temporary forms we find in our fellow creatures.

The glory of charisma, of competence, of intelligence, of beauty, of artistic talent, of wealth, of relational security — these all give us a sensation of brushing our fingers against the locked door of heaven itself. And we must respond, whether in admiration, in enjoyment, in worship, or (like the five-year-old Tilly) in horror and hatred.

There’s a name for that horror and hatred: envy.

Humblest of Pleasures

The strength of our horror over the glory of others corresponds to the strength of our appetite. We not only want to enjoy glory — we want to be enveloped in glory, to assume some part of it into ourselves.

This desire can be good and creaturely. In a discussion of heaven’s glories, C.S. Lewis shared that he’d always been uncomfortable with the idea of “an eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17) waiting for us in heaven. What kind of glory could this be? he wondered. Fame, like the vain kind you seek among your peers? He felt it was impossible to desire glory and also be properly humble, until something clicked for him:

Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years, prevented me from understanding what is in fact the humblest, the most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures — nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure of a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator. (The Weight of Glory, 37)

Mankind was made “to glorify God and enjoy him forever” (in the words of the Westminster Catechism). But this process could never leave man unchanged. He was also made to be glorified himself — crowned with the glory of his Father’s eternal pleasure in him.

Small Heart of Envy

One of our most basic needs is to be looked upon by the Eyes That Matter, and told, in the Voice That Matters, “Well done, good and faithful servant. . . . Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21). It’s not enough to look on his glory; we want to be let inside. We want to be transformed, to be resplendent, to be strong enough to revel in his glory without shame. We were designed to see pleasure in the eyes of our heavenly Father.

Here’s the connection to my five-year-old self. Like a second Cain, I reacted in sinful displeasure when my sister got a “Well done” from my earthly father. I couldn’t handle hearing another praised by our father, because envy operates in a zero-sum world. Envy believes the lie that God’s universe is one of essential scarcity.

“Envy believes the lie that God’s universe is one of essential scarcity.”

The envious heart is too small. It can’t fathom a God who is limitless in his expressions of pleasure and overflowing love. Our fallen minds truly believe there’s not enough of his plenty to go around. This means that if someone else was given a portion of borrowed glory (a glorious talent, beauty, skill, job, or intimate relationship), then there must be less left for me.

What Can Quench Envy?

It’s not just little girls in headphones who hunger for glory. All of us seek beauty and light and fame in our free moments — watching our shows, listening to our songs, shopping for wedding photographers, hiking the lake trail, entwining our souls-in-bodies with other souls-in-bodies, posting our updates, kissing our children, and tucking ourselves into a booth at the local craft beer place for deep conversation. We are glory-seekers, sniffing the wind and watching the horizon. Let a thing whisper, however falsely, however faintly, of our God and Father, and we will run after it.

After all this seeking, how can we believe the good news when it comes? It’s too good to be true; it’s too much to bear:

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:9–13)

“The envious heart can’t fathom a God who is limitless in his expressions of pleasure and overflowing love.”

We’re in the hallway outside, fuming that another child of God was given glories we weren’t. We’re wondering if the love of the Father will run out before we walk into the room, if he’ll look at us like Isaac looked at Esau and say, “He has taken away your blessing” (Genesis 27:35). We can’t imagine what kind of glory would make it okay.

What glory could take away the sting of being poor while another is rich, of being single while another is married with children, of giving our best to make mediocre paintings while someone else’s effortless eye creates a masterpiece?

Envy Will Drown in Glory

There is, however, a glory that will swallow up the sting of inequality (though it has not promised to take away inequality itself): this light has given us the right to become children of God. And this is the glory that can work such wonders:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

The pleasure of the Father will overtake us and swallow up all else — pleasure because of what Christ did on our behalf, pleasure because we’ve been reworked into his glorious image from the inside out. We now look like Christ — his glory will one day envelop us and transform us. It has begun even now:

We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Envy doesn’t stand a chance. In the final day, it will be swallowed up in glory. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

It is one of the most audacious, and awe-inspiring, moments in all of Scripture.

In the wake of Israel’s shocking rebellion against God — blatantly violating the covenant God just made with them — Moses humbly dares to mediate between God and his people. At the climax of his intercession, and his careful yet determined dialogue with the living God, Moses makes what is perhaps the greatest, and most perceptive, petition a creature can of his Creator.

And it is, after all, a prayer — a modest yet bold request, made by man, to God Almighty: “Please show me your glory.”

That this is, in some sense, a special moment is plain. We do not stand in Moses’s sandals. We are not prophets called to mediate a covenant, nor do we live under that Sinai pact. Yet Moses’s prayer still functions as a model for the godly after him. It will not be the last prayer in Scripture for a sight of God’s glory, and rightly do the faithful echo it today. What might we who are in Christ learn about our own prayers from the amazing sequence of Moses’s pressing into God in Exodus 32–33?

Can and Will God Forgive?

Before wrestling with the prayer itself, we need to first acknowledge Moses’s haunting question: Could and would God forgive the people such a horrific breach of the covenant? Moses was not yet sure. He heard stories of his forefathers, encountered God at the bush, and witnessed the plagues in Egypt and the rescue in the Red Sea. Moses knew a powerful God who had delivered his people, but would he also forgive them?

At first, it looked like he wouldn’t. When God first informed Moses, on the mountain, that the people had “corrupted themselves,” by making and worshiping a golden calf (32:7–8), God had said, “Let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. . .” (32:10). As Moses began to plead that God withhold destruction, it was far from clear that any relationship of peace could be fully restored.

God did relent of immediately consuming the people (32:14), yet the covenant remained broken. Although Moses went down the mountain, confronted the people in their rebellion, burnt the calf, disciplined the people (32:15–20), and oversaw the purging of the three thousand who led in the rebellion (32:21–29), Moses knew this did not restore what lay shattered. The next day, he returned to meet God on the mountain.

What drives Moses’s sequence of prayer in Exodus 33 is the question he begins to ask in 32:32: Can and will Yahweh forgive? Will God restore the relationship, and dwell among them, after they had worshiped the golden calf? And as we will see, God draws prayer out of Moses, and then moves to answer Moses’s question, in a way far more powerful, and memorable, than if there had not been an unfolding, developing, deepening relationship with God.

Moses, Teach Us to Pray

Exodus 33 begins with God declaring to the people that even though he will give them the land promised to their forefathers, God himself will not go up among them (33:3). They mourn this “disastrous word.” They want him, not just the promised land. They humble themselves before God, taking off their ornaments “from Mount Horeb onward” (33:6).

Even though the people heard this disastrous word, however, Moses continues to enjoy remarkable favor with God. In a tent pitched far off from the camp, God speaks with Moses (33:9), and verse 11 comments: “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” This sets the scene for Moses’s remarkable intercessory prayer in 33:12–18.

“In prayer, we respond to God. . . . First, we hear his voice in Scripture; then we access his ear in prayer.”

Observe, then, at least three lessons Christians today might take from Moses’s otherwise inimitable prayer.

1. Prayer responds to God.

The living God takes the initiative. He first announced to Moses the people’s breach of the covenant (32:7–10). And he revealed his enduring favor on Moses, prompting the prophet to reply. So too for us. We don’t just “dial up” God in prayer when we so wish. First, he speaks, as he has revealed himself in his world, and in his word, and in his Son, the Word. In prayer, we respond to him in light of his revelation to us. First, we hear his voice in Scripture; then we access his ear in prayer. We pray in light of what he has promised.

2. Prayer pleads God’s reputation and glory.

When God announces to Moses the peoples’ sin, and the intention to destroy them and start over with him, Moses’s reflex is to lean into God’s own reputation. This is a good reflex. “Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’?” (Exodus 21:12).

Moses prays for God to turn from righteous anger and relent “from this disaster against your people,” for God’s own name’s sake. Moses does not plea the people’s worth — or their humanity, made in God’s image — but God’s choice and word. He chose them as his people.

“At the bottom of prayer to a God like ours is our longing for his face, not merely the provisions of his hand.”

Today we are in good company to pray for God’s own reputation in the world, and to take notice of, and pray, God’s own promises back to him. God loves for his people to pray in light of what he’s said to us, to make our pleas in response to his promises. And praying for his glory not only concerns God’s reputation in the world, but also, and most significantly, our own knowing and enjoying him. At the bottom of prayer to such a God is our longing for his face, not merely the provisions of his hand.

3. Prayer can be incremental and sequential.

We might even call Moses’s prayer “dialogical.” It is striking how relational his process and sequence of prayer is in these chapters.

At the heart of the “dialogue,” reverent as it is, is whose people the Israelites are, a topic God introduces and draws Moses into. First, to Moses, God calls them, after their sin, “your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt” (32:7). Then God introduces the surprising tension of his ongoing favor on Moses. God will consume the people and “make a great nation” of Moses (32:9–10). This favor, combined with calling the nation “your people,” presents Moses an invitation to reply in prayer.

Moses asks to know more about this God — “please show me now your ways” (33:13) — to discern whether God will forgive his stiff-necked nation. And Moses meekly, but importantly, appends this to this first plea: “Consider too that this nation is your people.” God answers positively, though briefly: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (33:14). The short reply invites Moses to press in further, for the sake of the people. His “me” moves to “us.” He pleads for “I and your people”; then again “we . . . I and your people.” Moses identifies himself with the people, asking that God’s favor on him extend to them.

Prayer, by human persons to the living and personal God, is far more than transactional. It is relational, and often incremental, with measured, humble boldness. God leads us, like Moses, into prayer. We make our requests. He answers in time. We learn more of him, which leads us to ask to see more of him.

‘Show Me Your Glory’

Moses’s prayerful dialogue with God has become more and more daring — slowly, one incremental plea at a time: Don’t consume your people (32:11–13). Please forgive your people (32:31–32). Show me your ways (33:13). Count the people with me in my favor with you (33:15–16). And now, most boldly, “Please show me your glory” (33:18).

This short but daring plea will be Moses’s last. He will not speak again until 34:9, when he finally completes the plea for forgiveness he left unfinished in 32:32.

In Exodus 33:19, God begins to respond:

I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. (Exodus 33:19)

Moses receives his full answer, however, a chapter later in Exodus 34:7 with another revelation:

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. (Exodus 34:6–7).
The driving question has been answered, and so Moses bows in worship and prays with confidence, “O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us . . . and pardon our iniquity and our sin . . .” (34:9). Having prayed, and seen the glory in God’s declarations about his character, his goodness, his mercy, his grace, Moses is confident that God will grant forgiveness and renew the covenant.

Christ, Our Moses

For Christians today, any Moses-like leveraging of God’s favor we know to be firmly grounded in his favor on Christ. More significant than our echoes and imitations of Moses is the fulfillment of his intercession, and final mediation for God’s people, in Jesus.

We may indeed glean some categories and concepts from Moses’s prayers. Yet, as we come in Christ to Exodus 32–33, we identify not only with the prophet, but with the people. They are “stiff-necked.” Rebellious. Deserving of divine justice. Desperate for mercy and grace. But in Christ, we have one far greater than Moses who intercedes for us, leveraging his own perfect favor with God on our behalf.

Jesus, our great high priest, “has passed through the heavens,” and calls us to “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, [to] receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:14, 16). And he does so not only as new-covenant mediator and intercessor, but also as the very one in whose face we see the glory of God. What was unique in ancient Israel — speaking to God “as a man speaks to his friend” — is offered to all who are in Christ.

God now invites us to come to him as Father, and to come to Christ as husband — the deepest and nearest of human relationships — not to make requests, get what we want, pivot, and go back to life apart from him, but to come closer, and nearer, through prayer, and discover again and again that he himself, in Christ, is the great reward.