Throughout my life, I've increasingly found that reading Scripture in public isn't just about feeding our own spirits and minds, but about rehearsing the mighty acts of God for God's glory. So let's think together about Exodus 32 11, but first we're going to need some tea. But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? At first sight you might not realise just what a powerful and indeed dramatic prayer this is. Moses is worried of course because the children of Israel have just made a golden calf, while he was up the mountain receiving God's instructions, instructions for the tabernacle which was to be built for God himself to come and live in it. And while Moses was away, Aaron and the people had made this golden calf and Moses comes down and he's furious. But of course it's God who is particularly furious because this is an absolute travesty, a total denial of everything that has happened in him bringing the people out of Egypt and everything that is going to happen that God wants to dwell among his people. And Moses here is specifically responding to what God had said a few verses earlier. Verse 7, the Lord said to Moses, go down at once your people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt have acted perversely. And this is what they've done and I'm just going to wipe them out and that's it. And Moses is responding directly to that. Moses says, O Lord, why does your Rothburn hot against your people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt? In other words, Moses is saying, no, no, this wasn't my idea. I never wanted to do this in the first place. It was all your scheme because you had made promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and you fulfilled those promises. You brought up your people with a mighty hand and a stretched out arm and it's your reputation God that's on the line. And God basically says, yeah, you're right. I love that whole sequence. It's a vivid example of the kind of prayer you sometimes find in the Psalms where the Psalmist is coming and shaking God by the elbow and saying, wake up, we're in trouble. Come on, do something. But this is particularly a form of prayer which resonates right on through into the New Testament. The idea of reminding God what has happened, his mighty acts in history, supremely his mighty acts in Jesus and his death and resurrection and then the mighty acts pointing forward to what God intends to do. We are caught up as Moses was caught up in the middle of the sequence. This is what God has done. This is what he's promised he will do. And when things go wrong as they do again and again and when we sin like the children of Israel sinned, then even if God might in theory have wanted to say, that's it, I'm done. I'm not coming with you anymore. We can and should pray like Moses prayed. This is what you have done. He looked back to the Exodus. We look back in Jesus to the final Exodus, the great moment when Jesus died at Passover time and then rose again to launch God's new creation. And we say, Lord, this is what you have done in Jesus. This is what you are now doing by your spirit in your people. And this is where you are taking us to the time when your whole creation will be redeemed. Therefore, O Lord, come with us despite the fact that we are sinners, despite the fact that we are muddled and mistaken so much of the time. That's why I love this prayer because it not only takes me straight back to Moses and the time of the Exodus and one of the most vivid and dangerous moments in that story, but also takes us forward through Jesus and on into our own day. It's a prayer which, suitably adjusted, we can make our own in numerous settings. It's typical of the way the Bible teaches us to behold the mighty acts of God and to allow our prayers to be generated from within that great story.