Intercessory Prayer

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 19, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 24.

Intercessory Prayer.

MOSES was eminent as an intercessor. Seldom is there a record of his praying for himself. Perhaps it was because he was a distinguished type of Christ, the great mediator and intercessor, that we find him so often supplicating in behalf of those in distress or danger. The point to be noticed is, that he had special power in this respect. For whomsoever he prayed, an answer of mercy came. Thus when Pharaoh was suffering under the successive judgments of God, and, at each step of the discipline, agonizingly besought Moses to pray for his relief, Moses did so, and secured the withdrawal of the plague. When the Israelites went forth from Egypt, his imploring cry for deliverance from the pursuing monarch, divided the Red Sea for their safe passage. And so, on each fresh emergency of their life in the desert, his constant petition brought the needed relief.

The culmination came, however, on those two solemn occasions, when the life of the whole nation was at stake, because of their rebellion and ingratitude toward God, and sentence had apparently gone forth against them for their destruction, together with almost a prohibition to Moses to intercede for them. Thus when they worshiped the golden calf at the very foot of Sinai, where the second commandment had been thundered in their ears, God said to Moses (Deut. 9:14): "Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they." Here was everything to discourage petition in their behalf. The people deserved destruction; God seemed to have decreed their doom; Moses was apparently bidden not to pray against it; and provision was made to fulfill the pledges to Abraham and the other patriarchs, by raising up out of the posterity of Moses himself the promised nation. Thus reverence, fear, faith, and personal ambition might all be said to withhold Moses from intercession. But love for those threatened with death triumphed over every other consideration, and he had such confidence that God would not be displeased with prayer which came from a self-sacrificing and compassionate spirit, that even when three thousand had already fallen (Ex. 32:25-32), he went up to the mount, and said: "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now if thou wilt forgive their sin [do so]; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written." And he fell down before the Lord, fasting and interceding for forty days (Deut. 9:18), till, as he writes it, the "Lord hearkened unto me at that time also."

The other occasion, equally noteworthy, was that of their refusal to enter Canaan, on the report of the spies, when, as Moses records the occurrence (Deut. 9:23-29): "I fell down before the Lord, forty days and forty nights, as I fell down at the first; because the Lord had said that he would destroy you." At this time his three arguments were, that God after having done so much for his people, and borne so long with them, should not now destroy them; that he should show mercy for the sake of his pious servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, their fathers, and not regard simply the sin of the present generation; and that he must not furnish occasion for the Egyptians to think that he was unable to carry his people into the promised land. And again he succeeded. The case stands as a monument of the value of intercessory prayer, and should encourage Christian patriots to pray for their country, and pious souls to pray for the reviving of religion in a time of declension, and every saint to pray for sinners in danger of perdition.

In all this, Moses is a character of special interest, because he was a type of Christ, the great Intercessor, who "is able to save them to the uttermost, that come to God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them." We read in the epistle to the Hebrews, that "Moses verily was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after."—W. W. Patton, D. D.