Have you ever watched someone you love walk away from God? Maybe it’s your child who grew up in church but now wants nothing to do with Jesus. Maybe it’s a friend who once prayed with passion but now lives like God doesn’t exist. Maybe it’s someone who sits in this room right now, someone who still shows up on Sunday but whose heart is far from the Lord. What do you do when the people you love turn their backs on God? Do you write them off? Do you wash your hands of them? Or do you pray?
Moses faced that crisis on a scale we can barely imagine. Forty days earlier, the entire nation of Israel stood at the foot of Mount Sinai and heard God’s voice thunder from heaven. They promised to obey everything He commanded. They sealed the covenant with blood. They said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” Forty days later they’ve melted down their jewelry, shaped it into a golden calf, bowed down to worship it, and declared, “This is the god who brought us out of Egypt!”
God was ready to destroy them for it. Yet Moses didn’t walk away, he prayed for them. And in his prayer, we discover a pattern for how to intercede when God’s people sin. But before Moses could pray effectively, he had to see sin the way God sees it. God didn’t soften the blow or sugarcoat the rebellion. He showed Moses exactly how far Israel had fallen. And if we’re going to pray as Moses prayed, we need to see what Moses saw. Listen to how God describes what happened:
Exodus 32:7-8 NASB Then the LORD spoke to Moses, "Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. 8 "They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it and have sacrificed to it and said, 'This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!'"
God doesn’t use soft language or vague descriptions when He spoke to Moses. He called their sin exactly what it was. And the first thing we learn about praying for rebellious people it that…
We must grasp how serious rebellion is.
They Corrupted What God Had Made
Sin is not only breaking a rule; it is striking at God. It contradicts His Holiness, despises His Goodness, opposes His Will, and resists His Grace. Notice the precision of God’s diagnosis. The verb “have corrupted themselves” means to do something that ruins what was meant to endure. This was no small mistake or passing failure. It the kind of sin that threatened to unravel everything God had just begun among His people. Sin always un-makes what God makes. Their loyalty to the Lord had “quickly turned”. What God spent forty days revealing, they abandoned in forty days. Their fall wasn’t a slow drift but a sudden collapse.
They didn’t construct some hastily fashioned clay figure, but a carefully crafted, metal-overlaid image designed to impress. Then they bowed in submission, worshipping it as though it possessed divine authority. They credited the dumb idol with the mighty deliverance of Yahweh Himself. They chose a young bull, the Egyptian symbol of divine power and virility, revealing that they were still Egyptian in their imaginations. God speedily took Israel out of Egypt, but it took much longer to get Egypt out of Israel. They wanted a god they could manage rather than the living God who demands worship on His terms alone. So look at what God calls them:
Exodus 32:9 NASB The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.
They Revealed a Stiff-Necked Heart
When God says “I have seen this people,” He is not claiming to have just discovered their rebellion. He is not learning but declaring, “I know exactly what this people is like.” His assessment cuts to the root: they are “obstinate,” literally “stiff-necked.” The image is agricultural, a beast of burden that refuses the yoke, an animal that resists every attempt to guide it. Being “stiff-necked” is not a momentary twitch but a posture of the soul. The neck grows stiff where the heart grows proud. Idolatry is pride made visible. This is not a description of a single act but of a settled disposition, a character trait, a pattern of resistance to divine authority.
The golden calf was not the disease but the symptom. The real problem was a stiff neck, a heart that would not bend to God’s will. Their outward behavior flowed from the direction of their hearts. When we pray for the rebellious, we must grasp this. We are not merely asking God to correct bad choices or modify wayward behavior. We are asking Him to break the stiff neck, to soften the hardened heart, to create in the rebel what they cannot create in themselves, a spirit willing to submit to His lordship. And how does God respond to such deep-rooted rebellion?
Exodus 32:10 NASB "Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation."
They Deserved Consuming Judgment
God’s anger would not simmer but burn with consuming intensity. This is His settled, patient, and moral opposition to everything that destroys what He loves. When the Bible speaks of God’s anger burning, it does not describe emotional volatility but moral clarity. His wrath is not irritation; it is the precise response of righteousness to evil. In Deuteronomy 32:32 God says, “A fire is kindled in My anger, and burns to the lowest part of Sheol.” In Psalm 90:11 the psalmist asks, “Who understands the power of Your anger and Your fury, according to the fear that is due You?”. In Nahum 1:6 the prophet cries, “Who can stand before His indignation? Who can endure the burning of His anger?”.
This fire burns because God cares. We are watching holiness confront betrayal. Indifference is the opposite of love. When God’s anger burns, He is not losing His temper, He is defending His glory, His covenant, and His people. The same love that delivered Israel from Egypt now refuses to make peace with the idols of Egypt. The Lord is “slow to anger,” but when His anger comes, it is the perfect energy of love opposing the ruin of sin (Numbers 14:18).
God declared His intent to erase Israel and begin fresh with Moses, effectively making him the new Abraham. Was this threat genuine or just for show? God was not making an empty threat. It is a rhetorical way of saying “Here is what I will do unless you intervene.” His threat expresses His holiness against sin but also invites Moses into His plan for dealing with it. Moses grasps the severity of the situation; he does not minimize the sin or offer excuses. He does not say, “Lord, they’re new believers” or “They didn’t understand what they were doing.” When sin looks small, we pray small. When sin looks infinite, only the Infinite God will do. So, he appeals to something greater than Israel’s failure, just as…
We must appeal to God’s character and promises.
Moses’ intercession is a study in biblical prayer. He makes no defense of the people’s conduct or plea leniency. Instead, he builds his entire case on the foundation of God’s own character and the certainty of God’s sworn promises. His prayer unfolds in three movements, each one grounded not in Israel’s merit but in the Lord’s nature. When Moses opens his mouth to pray, he starts where every true intercessor must, with God’s relationship to His own people.
Moses Appeals to God’s Redemptive Work
Exodus 32:11 NASB Then Moses entreated the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
Notice the subtle but significant shift in Moses’ language. In verse 7, God said “your people, whom you brought up.” But Moses counters in verse 11 with “Your people whom You have brought out.” He refuses to take credit, instead, giving the honor back to God. That’s not evasion; it’s faith. Yes, Moses led them out of Egypt, but only as God’s chosen instrument. The work and the glory belong entirely to Yahweh.
The logic Moses employs is powerful. Why would God invest such “great power” and display such a “mighty hand” only to nullify the outcome? Why perform signs and wonders to redeem a people from Egypt if He intended to obliterate them in the wilderness? Moses appeals to the coherence of God’s purpose. The exodus was not a divine whim but a deliberate act of redemptive power. To destroy Israel now would be to render that redemption meaningless.
This teaches us how to pray for those who have wandered. We appeal to God’s plan to save, not their performance. When we pray for others, we remind the Lord of what He has revealed about His saving work. For the prodigal who belongs to Him, we plead, “Lord, finish what You began.” For the one who has never known Christ, we pray, “Lord, awaken the heart You alone can give life to.” We do not know who will respond, but God does. Those God has chosen are His, even before they turn and believe. That truth keeps us praying with confidence and compassion, because every soul we intercede for may yet prove to be one of His.
Having reminded God of His saving acts, Moses now pleads for the honor of God’s name before a watching world.
Exodus 32:12 NASB "Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, 'With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth'? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people.
Moses Appeals to God’s Global Glory
Moses is concerned for God’s reputation in the world. If the Lord destroys Israel in the wilderness, what will the watching nations conclude? The Egyptians will interpret the exodus as a setup, a cruel divine trick. They will say that Israel’s God lacked either the power to complete what He started or the goodness to preserve His people. To the Egyptian mind, death in the wilderness would seem like the Lord had brought them out only to slaughter them where no one could intervene.
Moses is not trying to corner God with public-relations concerns. He is not protecting God’s reputation. He is longing for it to be rightly recognized. He is pleading for the world to see God as He truly is, faithful, powerful, and merciful.
That’s how we pray for stiff necked people. We are not trying to save God from embarrassment; we are joining His desire that His glory be seen and His mercy known. We say, “Father, let Your name be honored. Let Your character be recognized for what it is, steadfast in love, abundant in mercy, unshakable in righteousness.” And even when our prayers seem unanswered, when the person we’ve prayed for still resists grace, we can rest knowing that God’s glory has not been diminished. Whether in mercy or in judgment, His name will be vindicated. We are not protecting His reputation; we are aligning our hearts with His revelation.
Moses Appeals to God’s Covenant Oath
Moses knows that God’s glory is bound up with His faithfulness. The nations must see His mercy, and His people must trust His promise. So Moses turns next to the covenant itself.
Exodus 32:13 NASB "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"
Moses’ final appeal rests on the strongest foundation of all, God’s own promise to the patriarchs. He says, “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.” These were the fathers of the nation, the men God first called to walk by faith. To Abraham, God promised a great family, a homeland, and blessing to all nations through his descendants. Isaac and Jacob inherited that same covenant. When God swore by Himself, He bound His name to those promises. When people want to prove they’re serious, they’ll often swear on something sacred, “I swear on my mother’s grave,” or “I swear to God.” We do that because our words feel fragile, and we need something to back them up. But God has no one greater to swear by, so He swore by Himself. Hebrews says,
Hebrews 6:13 NASB For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself,
That same oath was the ground of Moses’ confidence. The God who swore to Abraham would not abandon his descendants now. Moses is holding God to His word, not irreverently, but trustingly. He knows that if God were to destroy Israel now, it would appear as though He had abandoned the very plan He began with Abraham. So Moses prays, “Lord, You made these promises & bound Yourself by Your own name. I believe You will keep them.”
This is the heart of prayer for stiff-necked people. We do not plead their worthiness but God’s faithfulness. We say, “Lord, You are faithful even when hearts are faithless. You have promised to preserve a people, to finish redemption, to bring many to glory. For the sake of Your unshakeable word, have mercy, Lord, restore the straying and awaken the lost for Your glory.”
When our prayers rest on God’s character instead of human merit, and on His promises instead of our persuasion, we stop trying to manage the outcome. True intercession ends not in control but in trust.
We must trust God’s merciful heart.
Exodus 32:14 NASB So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.
This verse troubles many readers. Did God actually change His mind? Was He indecisive, or did Moses somehow talk Him out of something He really intended to do? We need to think carefully about what Scripture reveals.
The verb translated as “changed His mind,” can also mean to relent, to have compassion, or to be moved with pity. But God does not change His mind the way we do, by learning new information, regretting a mistake, or revising plans that failed. Scripture itself closes that door.
Numbers 23:19 NASB "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
1 Samuel 15:29 NASB "Also the Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind."
God’s unchanging purpose is described in human language we can understand. When Scripture says He “changed His mind,” it’s showing us His mercy unfolding in time, not indecision or new discovery. We always let the clear statements about who God is explain the stories about what God did. His nature doesn’t change, even when His dealings with people do. From our perspective, it looks as if God relented because Moses prayed. But from God’s eternal perspective, He always intended to spare Israel through Moses’ intercession. The threat was real; had Moses not prayed, judgment would have fallen. Yet the prayer was also part of God’s plan. He ordained both the warning and the plea, both the means and the end.
This is the mystery of providence. God governs His world, in part, through the prayers of His people. Our prayers are not theatre; they are instruments. They accomplish what God has purposed before the foundation of the world. Yet they are never independent of His sovereign will, they are woven into it. When we intercede, we are not changing God’s mind; we are stepping into the very means by which He carries out His mercy.
God’s Mercy is Not Permission to Keep Sinning.
We need to be clear about what verse 14 actually means. In showing mercy God chose not to wipe out His people and start over with Moses. But mercy didn’t mean there were no consequences. The people still faced judgment for their sin. Three thousand died that day, and later a plague came on the camp. God’s mercy was real, but it wasn’t cheap. His forgiveness lifted the sentence of death, but it didn’t remove the need for discipline.
And that matters for how we pray. When we ask God to show mercy to someone, we’re not asking Him to pretend their sin never happened. We’re asking Him to correct, not crush, to heal, not ignore, to bring them back, not leave them where they are. God’s mercy always aims to restore people to Himself. It never gives permission to keep running away. His mercy is powerful, but it’s holy. He will forgive, yet He will also do what’s needed to bring His people back to obedience.
God Delights to Show Mercy When His People Pray According to His Will
The last words of verse 14 are easy to miss but carry deep meaning. God changed His mind about the harm He said He would do to His people. Notice that He still calls them “His people,” after their sin, their idolatry, their rebellion.. The relationship was damaged, but it wasn’t destroyed. God stayed faithful even when they were not. He kept them, not because they deserved it, but because His faithful love never quits.
All through Scripture, we see God respond to the prayers of those who walk with Him, not people seeking their own gain, but people who care most about His honor and His will. Moses didn’t pray to protect himself. He prayed that God’s name would be honored, God’s promises would stand, and God’s people would be spared. And God was pleased to answer that prayer.
We serve a God who loves to hear His people pray. He isn’t reluctant or stingy with mercy. He doesn’t give in after enough begging. He delights to show compassion when His children come with hearts that trust His goodness and cling to His promises. God has chosen to work through the prayers of His people, and He finds joy in answering faith-filled prayer. That’s not a reluctant God; that’s a God who delights to show mercy. Yet in Scripture, mercy always flows through a mediator. Israel’s hope rested on Moses standing between the guilty and the holy. Our hope rests on someone far greater.
Moses’ Intercession Points to Jesus’ Perfect Work
Moses stood between the people and God’s judgment, but even his prayers had limits. He could ask for mercy, but he couldn’t take away their guilt. He could remind God of His promises, but he couldn’t keep those promises himself. Moses shows us the shape of mercy, but not its full power. He points ahead to Someone greater, Jesus Christ, who didn’t just ask for mercy but won it for us through His own death and resurrection.
Jesus is the true High Priest who always lives to speak for His people.
Hebrews 7:25 NASB Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.
Jesus’ intercession is different from Moses’. He didn’t simply ask God to forgive; He took our punishment and rose again.
Romans 8:34 NASB Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.
Jesus’ prayers succeed because He is both God and man, the only One who can bring sinners back to God. He doesn’t stand before the Father hoping for mercy; He stands there showing the mercy He already paid for with His own blood. When we pray for others who have wandered, we pray in Jesus’ name and on the solid ground of what He has already done. We don’t wonder if God might be merciful, we know He has already proved His mercy at the cross. That truth gives us courage to pray with confidence, not in our words, but in Christ’s finished work.
Who needs you to pray for them? Maybe a child who’s turned away, a friend caught in sin, a believer whose heart has grown cold, or someone who’s never trusted Christ at all, whose heart is still hard toward Him. How will Moses’ example, and Jesus’ greater work, shape your prayers? Will you see sin as God sees it, or minimize it? Will you plead someone’s goodness, or appeal to God’s grace and promises? Will you rely on your own effort, or trust the heart of God revealed in Jesus Christ? That is the pattern before you, and the invitation is open: will you intercede?
Conclusion
When God’s people sin, we don’t give up on them or excuse them. We do what Moses did, and what Jesus still does for us, we pray. We take sin seriously. We lean on God’s character and His promises. We trust His merciful heart. And we rest in this confidence: our prayers reach a God who delights to show mercy, who stays faithful even when His people are not, and who has given us the perfect Intercessor, His Son, whose prayers never fail.
The God who listened to Moses is the same God who sent His Son to the cross. The God who preserved Israel in the wilderness is the same God who preserves us by His grace today. The God who heard Moses’ cry is the same God who hears ours. So let me ask you plainly: Who needs you to pray for them? A child who’s walked away? A friend caught in sin? A believer whose heart has grown cold, or someone who’s never trusted Christ at all? Will you intercede? Or will you watch them drift and do nothing? And if you are the one who has drifted, hear this: God’s ear is not closed because He is cruel. It is closed because you are still trying to come on your own terms. There is only one way to approach Him, through Jesus Christ, the Mediator He has provided. If you will turn from your sin and trust Him, your first prayer will be the one He always hears: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’ And from that moment on, you will have an Intercessor whose voice is never ignored.
