How to Motivate God
In our study of Isa 37:3-6, I was struck with how Hezekiah motivated his request to the Lord for help against Assyria, and with the rich precedent for his request.
How do we motivate our requests for God’s intervention? We often plead the dismal condition we face, and ask that God in his love would intervene. Our focus is on ourselves, our needs, and God’s attitude toward us. All of these have their place, but Hezekiah’s example can teach us a much more fundamental principle for motivating God in prayer.
Hezekiah has just received an ultimatum from the king of Assyria, by way of his messenger, who bears the title of Rabshakeh (originally, “chief cup-bearer”). Assyria demands Jerusalem’s surrender, and Rabshakeh assures the population listening on the wall that the Lord will be no more able to defend Judah than the gods of other nations have been able to defend their nations.
Hezekiah sends representatives of both the palace and the temple to Isaiah to ask him to pray for the nation. He motivates his request (37:4),
4 It may be the LORD thy God will hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master hath sent to reproach the living God, and will reprove the words which the LORD thy God hath heard.
His plea to the Lord is based on Assyria’s blasphemy. He does not ask for blessing for himself, but for the Lord’s reputation. Let’s trace some other examples of this motive in Scripture.
Moses used this plea effectively on two occasions to turn aside the Lord’s anger from sinful Israel. The first was when the people constructed the golden calf.
Exo 32:11-12 And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? 12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.
The second was when the spies brought back an evil report of the land.
Num 14:11-16 And the LORD said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them? 12 I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they. 13 And Moses said unto the LORD, Then the Egyptians shall hear it, (for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them;) 14 And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: for they have heard that thou LORD art among this people, that thou LORD art seen face to face, and that thy cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest before them, by day time in a pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night. 15 Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, 16 Because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness.
Deu 9:26-28 contains another record of the same prayer.
When the nation was defeated before Ai, Joshua used the same plea:
Jos 7:8-9 O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies! 9 For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt thou do unto thy great name?
Joel instructs the priests how to deal with the judgment of a locust plague:
Joe 2:17 Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?
We also have God’s own testimony that this motivates his gracious acts toward Israel. In Ezekiel, he recalls their idolatry during the exodus:
Eze 20:8-9 But they rebelled against me, and would not hearken unto me: they did not every man cast away the abominations of their eyes, neither did they forsake the idols of Egypt: then I said, I will pour out my fury upon them, to accomplish my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt. 9 But I wrought for my name’s sake, that it should not be polluted before the heathen, among whom they were, in whose sight I made myself known unto them, in bringing them forth out of the land of Egypt.
When God promises Ezekiel to regather Israel in the future, this is the motive he cites:
Eze 36:19-22 And I scattered them among the heathen, and they were dispersed through the countries: according to their way and according to their doings I judged them. 20 And when they entered unto the heathen, whither they went, they profaned my holy name, when they said to them, These are the people of the LORD, and are gone forth out of his land. 21 But I had pity for mine holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the heathen, whither they went. 22 Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went.
And in the song of Moses, it is his general motive for sparing Israel throughout her history:
Deu 32:26-27 I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men: 27 Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the LORD hath not done all this.
This theme continues into the New Testament. Three times Ephesians 1 (vv. 6, 12, 14) Paul reminds us that Father, Son, and Spirit have engaged in our salvation “that we might be to the praise of his glory.”
In everything he does, God’s primary concern is not with our comfort or security. It is with his glory.This orientation would be completely wrong for us as creatures. The Lord Jesus, whose life serves as the best example we have for how we should live, said, “I seek not mine own glory” (John 8:50), in keeping with Solomon’s advice, “so for men to search their own glory is not glory” (Prov 25:27). (The verse in Proverbs is difficult; see Waltke’s exhaustive note in the New International Commentary supporting substantially the traditional reading.) We would consider a person whose values were completely focused on his own glory as hopelessly vain and stuck-up. Yet the Bible unabashedly presents God in just this way.
This is another instance of a principle that appears often in the Bible, and that I hope to expound in future posts, that God as creator is not subject to many of the moral standards that he places on his creatures. In Scripture he presents himself as arbitrary (Isa 12:4 “doings”), cruel (Isa 13:9), presumptuous (Isa 26:10), proud (Isa 2:10), terrible (Jer 20:11), and angry (Ps 7:11). Here he is seeking his own glory. All of these actions are sinful for us.
Having an accurate understanding of God’s distinctive character as the creator, separate from his creation and not answerable to it, is crucial to our lives in this world.
- It teaches us to fear God and live in complete submission to him.
- It warns us against these behaviors in our own lives, since we now recognize them as a claim to deity, and understand that if we adopt them, we are guilty of usurping God’s place.
- It assures us of our salvation, since we now understand the purpose for which God has saved us. If he were to let us fall, his glory would be diminished.
- In the immediate context of our passage, it shows us how to present our petitions to God. If we want to be successful in our intercession, we should align our thinking with this great principle, and, like Moses, Joshua, Joel, and Hezekiah, plead God’s honor and glory.
July, 4th 2010 at 2:45 pm
I enitrely agree with the core premise of this: God is simply not subject to man’s evaluation – even by the very same standards by which He evaluates us. It certainly answers the great philosophical question of the so-called “problem of evil/pain,” or why God would allow so much suffering, etc.
Interestingly, contemporary works (such as those by Dawkins and Hitchins) purporting to debunk the plausibility of a deity tend to predominantly focus on variations of an old argument that God cannot exist because, if He did, He would be a real jerk. So not only does this involve judging God, but also making the illogical leap that a negative assessment therein somehow equates to metaphysical impossibility!
However, this fact does present something of a paradox for the notion of supplicative prayer: Why should we ever pray for anything specific, if all we should want is for God to be glorified? Are we to presume that we can know better than God what would glorify Him? Even the standard boilerplate disclaimers such as “…if it be Your will,” etc., seem to implicitly boast such insight (albeit hedgingly).
Taking it a step further, I’ve started to cynically suspect that all men (even Christians) may in this life remain hopelessly incapable of truly desiring anything but our own self-interest – and thus praying under any other guise might just be kidding ourselves. For example, praying for God’s guidance in making some life decision, or interpreting His word, strikes me as typically a veiled attempt at legitimizing whatever beliefs or decisions we’ve already decided (albeit subconsciously!) that we wish to reach anyway.
Still looking for a solution to this…hey, maybe the Catholic notion of pre-scripted and highly generic prayer was on to something after all. 🙂
July, 6th 2010 at 7:05 am
Ken,
Thanks again for your perceptive comments. People who say, “I couldn’t possibly believe in a god like that” remind me of the legend about the ostrich, that thinks it can escape a threat by burying its head in the sand so that the threat is not visible. I believe this behavior is apocryphal on the part of the ostrich, but unfortunately, very real on the part of many people. If God really is the stern, arbitrary, self-centered character revealed in the Scriptures, and also the all-powerful creator, the wise approach is surely not to try to believe him away, but to learn as much as we can about what he requires of us, and strive with all our might to submit to it.
This insight might modify your suggestion that this view of God makes supplicatory prayer meaningless. On the contrary, God commands us to supplicate him (e.g., Ps 50:15, “Call upon me [imperative] in the day of trouble. I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me”). In line with the principle in the previous paragraph, the prudent person will honor his commands to pray, even if we don’t fully understand the logic.
But I think there is a deeper logic at work here. My title for this post is a bit facetious. God knows all his works from the foundation of the world (Acts 15:18). Prayer is much more about changing us than it is about changing God (though there is a deep mystery in the role of prayer in God’s providence that I won’t try to sort out, at least not here–Deut 29:29). Wouldn’t you agree that the frequent exhortations to call on the Lord, and the pattern of framing our request around his glory rather than our comfort, form a pedagogical program designed to bring our thoughts into line with his?
July, 9th 2010 at 12:33 am
Hi Van,
Thank you for the insightful feedback. I do find your suggestion about the purpose of supplication to be eminently plausible and worthy of much consideration, although I fear at this time I posess far less certainty on the matter. And while all Christians seem to agree that supplication is at the very least permissible, I’m not entirely confident that it’s “commanded,” as there appears considerable good-faith non-consensus regarding when scripture’s imperative phrases are or are not intended as something short of absolute commands (e.g. an alternate permissive form, or to an implicitly targeted audience, or even perhaps that awkward category of stuff God “wants” but supposedly doesn’t quite require…).
Regarding the nature of God, we wholly agree that man is utterly without right to ever judge or challenge Him in any way – no matter what His traits may be. However, I have far less conviction about what those particular traits actually are. I must confess some instinctive discomfort to characterizing Him in any negative terms (NOT because this would make Him any less worthy of our submission, of course, for your ostrich analogy is well taken!), as well as how to reconcile it with competing classical Christian understandings of God. Perhaps Aquinas’ via negativa was a partial solution…
On broader level, your reference to Deut. 29:29 reminded me of your essay on “secret things,” which I found brilliant and frustrating at the same time. As your own skillful analyses so often illustrate, the bible’s intended content can be quite far from what strikes me as a “plain” or superficial reading (indeed this is one of the strongest critiques of Protestantism’s call for individualized/private interpretation). Hence, either I’m exceptionally dense (a serious proposition), or nearly all of scripture seems to be about “secret things.”