Question: What’s an Often Overlooked but Crucial Element of Godly Leadership?

Answer: Intercessory Prayer

Text & Context: It is one of my all-time favorite chapters in the Bible and is the historical basis for one of my favorite hymns. It is Exodus 33. The context is simple: Aaron, Moses’ brother, while Moses had been with God for 40 days and 40 nights on the mountain (Ex 24:18), had collected gold from the people of Israel and fashioned a golden calf. Idolatry 101. The people who had been miraculously delivered from Pharaoh’s Egyptian armies, now confessed of idols: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (ex 32:4b). Moses, of course, is furious with the people. And God is too. Why? Because God hates sin. He knows it corrupts the very nature of people. And Moses is God’s man. Moses, though a sinner himself, is God’s vessel, God’s man for the mission. God tells Moses, “Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people” (Ex 33:3).

There was a tent of meeting where God would speak with Moses. A pillar of cloud would abide over the entrance to that tent when God was speaking with Moses so that the people would know of God’s presence and of God’s mediator, Moses. Moses would plead with the Lord for God to show more of his glory to Moses: “Moses said, “Please show me your glory” (Ex 33:18). What did God do? God placed Moses standing in a cleft of the rock, and God covered him so that he (Moses) would not be consumed by God’s glory, and God passed by, so to speak, to teach Moses (and the people by extension) who God is (Ex 33:20-23). It is a spectacular and stunning scene in history.  

Encouragement & Where Godly Leadership Matters: How does this apply to those who are trying to lead in godly and good ways? Here are 5 principles:

• Recognize that only God can change a person’s heart/nature (as then, so now).
• Recognize that God has his people in place as examples of salt and light amid idolatrous cultures (as then, so now).
• Recognize that idolatry always brings with it its own costs (wandering, self-destruction, consequential judgment).
• Use the opportunities God gives us to redeem the time rather than squander it.
• Remember God’s ultimate mediator was not Moses but Christ who bore the wrath so that we might live for him in our day.

For anyone curious about the hymn I referenced, it’s “He Hideth My Soul” by Fanny Crosby, the refrain of which reads:

He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock,
That shadows a dry, thirsty land;
He hideth my life in the depths of His love,
And covers me there with His hand,
And covers me there with His hand.

Moses prayed on behalf of those he led and also for himself. God had his intercessor. May we look to him in repentance and faith.