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.

I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one. (Ezekiel 22:30 NIV)

I do not have a “life verse,” or even a favorite Bible verse. That is not a criticism of those who enjoy such blessings; it may even be a confession that in some domains I have a short attention span. But I would find it easier to list a hundred (or a thousand!) verses that have shaped my life in some significant way than to list one that can claim exclusive influence.

Often these verses have come to me at a well-defined period of my life, and have consequently “spoken” to me with particular clarity and unction. For example, when in recent years I’ve engaged in evangelistic preaching in a hostile context, I’ve often pondered Psalm 36:1 (NIV): “I have a message from God in my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

From my days as a seminary student, I’ve often pondered Revelation 19:6–7 (NIV): “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.” Doubtless I join millions of other believers in listing Lamentations 3:21–24 (NIV): “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’”

Yet one verse in particular played a significant role in my calling to vocational ministry.

Will I Wish I Had Given More?

At the time I was studying chemistry at McGill University, and enjoying the work well enough. For a few months I found myself in Ottawa, in a chemistry lab operated by the Canadian federal government, focusing on air pollution. I was thoroughly enjoying my life and labor.

At the same time, I was devoting some of my energy, especially on the weekends, to helping a friend plant a new church a little farther up the Valley. It was not long before I began to wonder if I should be considering vocational ministry. I could not shake off a chorus I learned in Sunday school:

By and by when I look on his face —Beautiful face, thorn-shadowed face —By and by when I look at his face,I’ll wish I had given him more.

Of course, I understood, even then (more than fifty years ago), that some people are called to be chemists, others teachers, workers in waste management, and so forth: for them, the “more” of the chorus includes such vocations. But still, I could not erase that chorus from my mind, and the sense that “more” for me was leading somewhere else.

Standing in the Gap

In September of that year, on a Sunday evening back in my home church in Montréal, I heard a missionary to Haiti, one Richard Wilkinson, give an address on Ezekiel 22:30 (NIV), where God tells the prophet, “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one.”

And my whole being cried out in response, “Here am I! Send me!” (see Isaiah 6:8). The context of Isaiah 6 shows that Isaiah’s volunteering was simultaneously the product of contrition and of presumption; I certainly did not escape the latter.

Nevertheless, that sermon based on Ezekiel 22, where God testifies that he looked for someone to “stand in the gap” before him but found no one, was one of the providential pieces that God used that year to direct me away from chemistry and toward vocational ministry.

How Might the Verse Apply to Me?

I come from a Bible-reading home. We kids were early taught to pay attention to context. As I read God’s words in Ezekiel 22:30, it was clear to me that he was not promising wrath to sinful Canadians in the 1960s, but was threatening wrath on Judea about six centuries before Jesus: that was when no one showed up to “stand in the gap” before God so that he would not have to destroy his covenant people.

“God seeks someone to intercede with him on behalf of his sinful people today.”

To apply it to myself, I implicitly deployed an argument by analogy: just as God sought someone to intercede with him on behalf of his sinful people more than two and a half millennia ago but found no one, so too God seeks someone to intercede with him on behalf of his sinful people today.

Will he again find no one? It is a powerful appeal. I found it so as a young man, and still find it so today.

Standing Through Prayer

Many more years of Bible reading have brought me to think about a number of additional textual details.

Almost two decades later, I heard another preacher expound Ezekiel 22:30 and some related passages. This too occurred during a Sunday evening service, but the location of the church was in Cambridge, England. The preacher was Theo Donner, originally from the Netherlands. After securing a doctorate at Cambridge, he and his Scottish wife went to Medellin, Colombia, as missionaries, where they have served with distinction ever since. The sermon to which I am referring was delivered during one of his periodic sojourns back in Cambridge.

I do not remember all the points he drew from the text, but I recall how he focused our attention on several relevant passages. On the one hand, when the covenant people confess their sin to Samuel — the sin of wanting a king so as to be like the pagan nations around them — Samuel reassures them that “the Lord will not reject his people, because the Lord was pleased to make you his own.” Then Samuel adds, “As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you” (1 Samuel 12:22–23). In other words, intercessory prayer on behalf of the people of God was part of Samuel’s calling.

On the other hand, a different dynamic is disclosed in Amos. When God threatens catastrophic judgment, Amos intercedes with the words, “Sovereign Lord, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!” The biblical text goes on, “So the Lord relented. ‘This will not happen either,’ the sovereign Lord said” (Amos 7:2 NIV; cf. 7:5–6 NIV). But eventually, God declares, “I will spare them no longer” (Amos 7:8 NIV). The time for intercessory prayer has passed.

Elsewhere, we are told that Samuel is not even to mourn over Saul, once the Lord has rejected him (1 Samuel 16:1). In other words, Ezekiel 22:30 is just one passage that depicts the complex web by which God orders the lives of his people through God-mandated (or even God-forbidden!) prayer. For those drawn to meditate on the mysteries of providence, there is much grist for the mill in Ezekiel 22 and parallel passages.

Standing in the Darkness

Next, the preceding verses of Ezekiel 22:30 show that the sins and failures of the people were widely distributed.

The princes conspire together to “devour people, take treasures and precious things and make many widows within her” (Ezekiel 22:25 NIV); the priests “do violence to my law and profane my holy things” (Ezekiel 22:26 NIV); the officials “are like wolves tearing their prey; they shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain” (Ezekiel 22:27 NIV); the prophets “whitewash these deeds for them by false visions and lying divinations. They say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says’ — when the Lord has not spoken” (Ezekiel 22:28 NIV); and the people “practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice” (Ezekiel 22:29 NIV).

“The need to stand in the gap before God is as urgent now as it was six hundred years before Christ.”

That is the context of darkness in which God declares, “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one.”

There are many biblical passages in which God seeks out and appoints prophets, priests, kings, apostles, gospel heralds. In the context of Ezekiel 22, however, God is looking for an intercessor who by God’s own appointment blocks God’s way, as it were (not unlike Moses in Exodus 32–34).

With this verse, set in the context of Ezekiel and in the context of my own life, God challenged me to think more carefully and prayerfully about what he wanted me to do with my life. And the need to stand in the gap before God is as urgent now as it was six hundred years before Christ.

Audio Transcript

What is the easiest step of love — a step so easy, you can accomplish it before you even get out of bed in the morning? Today, we find the answer in an unsuspecting context. The answer comes in an old sermon from John Piper on 1 Timothy 2:1–4. And it happens to be my favorite Piper sermon to turn to when geopolitical tensions become evident in the world, as we have seen a lot of in 2022.

The sermon is an early one, preached back on January 20, 1981. In fact, it was preached just two days before the Iran hostage crisis came to an end — also the same day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the new president of the United States. There was a lot of national and international news in the air when Piper preached this sermon on 1 Timothy 2:1–4. In this context, the apostle Paul was eager for Christians to hold to the faith with “a good conscience” (1 Timothy 1:19).

And to that end, as Paul explains, Christians should entertain a global view of reality. It’s why Paul urges these early Christians to offer

supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings . . . for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1–4)

For individual Christians, these prayers for kings, prayers for the leaders of nations, are essential to us keeping a clean conscience and not shipwrecking our faith. That’s an incredible claim, connecting our awareness of, and love for, the globe’s rulers to our own perseverance in the faith. Here’s Pastor John to explain how it all works.

A good conscience is a conscience that does not condemn us for what we do and that approves of what we do do. Did I say that right? It does not condemn us for what we do and approves us for what we do. That means, therefore, that the reason Paul is saying, “You’ve got to have a clear conscience in order to maintain faith” is that if we do things that our conscience constantly condemns, what’s going to happen is something like this — this is the way my experience works, anyway. See if yours doesn’t also.

If I fall into a habit that my conscience condemns, my conscience starts to say to me, “Piper, all that talk about trusting Christ and hoping in God is a lot of hot air, because if you really trusted in Christ and hoped in God, you wouldn’t go on breaking your conscience like that.” And therefore, conscience starts to bore holes in the belly of the ship of faith, and it starts to sink, and your confidence in the reality of your own conversion starts to melt away, because you’re constantly acting against your own conscience.

Either one of two things is going to happen. Either we confirm the genuineness of our faith by changing our behavior and plugging up those holes of conscience, or we go on and we show that our ship of faith was never seaworthy in the first place, and we sink into unbelief and blasphemy like Hymenaeus and Alexander did (1 Timothy 1:19–20).

Keeping the Conscience Clear

Therefore, Paul’s charges to Timothy to hold to faith and maintain a good conscience are tremendously important commands or admonitions, and anything that Paul can say that will help us maintain a good conscience ought to be welcomed with open arms. I think that’s what he does in 1 Timothy 2:1. Since you must keep a good conscience in order not to make shipwreck of faith, therefore, I urge you, first of all, pray for all men.

Now, in order to see why it is that failing to pray for all men will give us a bad conscience and jeopardize our faith, I think we have to ask, What is it that, for a Christian, pricks his conscience in relation to other people? The answer to that, of course, is clear from the whole Bible. All of God’s instruction is summed up in two commandments: love God with your whole being, and love your neighbor as yourself.

In other words, anything that a Christian does, or leaves undone, that is unloving, will give him a bad conscience — or ought to give him a bad conscience if it’s not seared. Now, with that as a foundation, I think it starts to become clear why we must pray for other people in order to keep a clean conscience and so not make shipwreck of faith.

I see three reasons why prayer for other people is of first importance. That’s what I’m after to explain: How come he says prayer is of first importance in keeping a clear conscience and not making shipwreck of faith?

Prayer Helps Others with God’s Power

First, prayer taps the power of God on behalf of other people. I could try to help you as a pastor. You could try to help your neighbors. You could try to help Ronald Reagan, Governor Quie, Mayor Fraser, without praying for them, and you might do a little good, and judged from a limited perspective, you could do perhaps much good in the world’s eyes. But the little good that we could do without praying isn’t worthy to be compared with the great good that God can do if he, in response to our prayer, starts working on behalf of another person.

“The first thing you do for a person, if you love them, is ask God to work on their behalf.”

So if we want to do what’s best for people, if we really love them, then I think of first importance will be to pray that God work for them. The first thing you do for a person, if you love them, is ask God to work on their behalf. Of course, the way that God answers that prayer is almost always going to involve your labor of love on their behalf, but what can be accomplished through prayer is vastly more than you could accomplish without prayer.

Prayer Is the Easiest Step of Love

There’s a second reason why I think it’s of first importance to keep our conscience clear through praying for other people. It’s the easiest step of love. You don’t even have to get out of bed to pray for kings and all those who are in high positions. It doesn’t take any great physical strain, no great financial output. Of all the forms that love can take, prayer is probably the easiest. You just get down on your knees and rest and talk to the Lord about what you want him to do for other people.

Isn’t it true that if we are unwilling to do for other people what is easiest, then it’s very unlikely that we will be willing to do what’s hard on their behalf? Therefore, it makes sense, doesn’t it, that Paul would begin by saying, “Of first importance, if you want to love other people, is that you pray for all men.”

Prayer Goes Farther in Its Effects

The third reason why I think it’s of paramount importance is that prayer reaches farther than anything else in its effects that we can do. Before there were those satellites up there going around the earth, we could send a live television program from coast to coast, but we couldn’t send it, could we, all the way around to the other side of the world live? But now, if we want to get it to the other side of the world live immediately, we send it away from the world, and then it comes back to the world. Pretty simple. Get it live immediately.

“Prayer reaches farther in its effects than anything else that we can do.”

I think that’s a beautiful picture of the efficacy and extension of prayer. Without prayer, we can have an influence on a limited circumference of people, we can work hard and try to do good for them, and if we wait long enough, maybe by osmosis, our influence will spread all the way around the world. But God’s influence is everywhere and immediate. Therefore, doesn’t it make sense that first of all, if we want to help other people, if you want to bless the most people in the shortest amount of time with the most blessing, it just makes sense that you’d start by going to the satellite, going to God?

When a broadcaster wants to get a message to the greatest amount of people in the shortest amount of time — you can be sure that’s going to happen today if those hostages are released before this service is over, or before we meet tonight; we’re all going to know about it because of those satellites. If a broadcaster wants to do that, isn’t it interesting that, paradoxically, to get the message quickest this way, he sends it that way? That’s what we should do for other people. To bless them quickest this way, we should look that way first, up to God.

Pray for All People

If we would not make shipwreck of faith, but rather keep a clear conscience, therefore, we must pray for all men because of these three reasons:

Prayer taps the power of God for other people.
Prayer is the first and easiest step of love.
Prayer reaches farther in its effects than anything else that we can do.