Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2398
“And the LORD repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people.” Exodus 32:14.
I SUPPOSE that I need not say that this verse speaks after the manner of men. I do not know after what other manner we can speak. To speak of God after the manner of God is reserved for God, Himself, and mortal men could not comprehend such speech. In this sense, the Lord often speaks, not according to literal fact, but according to the appearance of things to us, in order that we may understand so far as the human can comprehend the Divine. The Lord’s purposes never really change. His eternal will must forever be the same, for He cannot alter, since He would either have to alter for the better or for the worse. He cannot change for the better, for He is infinitely good—it were blasphemous to suppose that He could change for the worse. He who sees all things at once and perceives at one glance the beginning and the end of all things, has no need to repent. “God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent,” but, in the course of His action, there appears to us to be, sometimes, a great change, and as we say of the sun that it rises and sets, though it does not actually do so, and we do not deceive when we speak after that fashion, so we say concerning God, in the language of the text, “The Lord repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people.” It appears to us to be so and it is so in the act of God, yet this statement casts no doubt upon the great and glorious Doctrine of the Immutability of God.
Speaking after the manner of men, the mediation of Moses worked this change in the mind of God. God in Moses seemed to overcome God out of Moses. God in the Mediator, the Man Christ Jesus, appears to be stronger for mercy than God apart from the Mediator. This saying of our text is very amazing and it deserves our most earnest and careful consideration.
Just think, for a minute, of Moses up there in the serene solitude with God. He had left the tents of Israel down below and he had passed within the mystic circle of fire where none may come but he who is specially invited. And there, alone with God, Moses had a glorious season of fellowship with the Most High. He lent his listening ear to the instructions of the Almighty concerning the priesthood, the tabernacle and the altar. And he was enjoying a profound peace of mind, when, all of a sudden, he was startled. The whole tone of the speech of the Lord seemed changed, and He said to Moses, “Go, get you down; for your people, which you brought out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.” I can hardly imagine what thoughts passed through the great leader’s mind! How Moses must have trembled in the Presence of God! All the joy that he had experienced seemed suddenly to vanish, leaving behind, however, somewhat of the strength which always comes out of fellowship with God. This Moses now needed, if ever he needed it in all his life, for this was the crucial period in the history of Moses! This was his severest trial, when, alone with God on the mountain’s brow, he was called to come out of the happy serenity of his spirit and to hear the voice of an angry God, saying, “Let Me alone, that My wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them.”
The language of God was very stern, and well it might be after all that He had done for that people! When the song of Miriam had scarcely ceased. When you might almost hear the echoes of that jubilant note, “Sing you to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider has He thrown into the sea,” you might quickly have heard a very different cry, “Up, make us gods!” And, in the presence of the calf that Aaron made, the same people blasphemously exclaimed, “These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” Such a prostitution of their tongues to horrid blasphemies against Jehovah! Such a turning aside from the Truth of God to the most gross of falsehoods, might well provoke the anger of a righteously jealous God!
It is noteworthy that Moses did not lose himself in this moment of trial. We read at once, “And Moses besought Jehovah, his God.” He was undoubtedly a man of prayer, but he must have been continually in the spirit of prayer, or else I could conceive of him, at that moment, falling on his face and lying there in silent horror! I could imagine him flying down the mountain in a passionate haste to see what the people had done—but it is delightful to find that he did neither of these two things—rather he began to pray! Oh, Friends, if we habitually pray, we shall know how to pray when praying times become more pressing than usual! The man who is to wrestle with the angel must have been familiar with angels beforehand! You cannot go into your chamber, shut the door and begin a mighty intercessory prayer if you have never been to the Mercy Seat before! No, Moses is “the man of God.” You remember that he left us a prayer, in the 90th Psalm, bearing this title, “A prayer of Moses, the man of God.” There is no man of God if there is no prayer, for prayer makes the man into “the man of God.” So, instinctively, though startled and saddened to the last degree, Moses is on his knees, beseeching the Lord, his God.