Pray the Word with David Platt is a resource from radical.net.

Exodus chapter 32, verse 14.

And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.

This is one of the most theologically baffling and personally awe-inspiring and encouraging verses in all of the Bible.

So just to make sure we've got the context behind Exodus 3214.

At the beginning of this chapter, God's people have formed a golden

calf and are bowing down and worshipping it and indulging in all kinds of idolatry and immorality

while God is meeting with Moses on the mountain, giving his law to him and to his people.

And God says to Moses back in verse 7, go down for your people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.

They've turned aside from the way I commanded them.

I've made for themselves a golden calf and have worshipped and sacrificed to it.

And God says, I've seen this people.

Behold, it's a stiff-necked people.

Now, therefore, let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them, and I may consume them

in order that I may make a great nation of you.

So God is saying, this people deserve my judgment, and I'm going to pour out my wrath

upon them for their sin. Verse 11 says, but Moses implored the Lord His God and said, oh, Lord,

why does your wrath burn hot against your people?

And he calls on God in the verses that follow to be gracious and to save his people not to pour out his wrath on them, to spare them.

And in response to Moses' intercession, verse 14, says, the Lord relented from the disaster

that he had spoken of bringing on his people.

Oh, do you realize what just happened?

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