When God Wanted to Start Over With Moses

Twice in Scripture, God tells Moses He is ready to wipe out Israel and start over with him. The first time is at the golden calf (Exodus 32:10), and the second is after the spies’ rebellion in Numbers 14:12. Both times, Moses stands in the gap and pleads for mercy.

It would be foolish to think that the all-knowing God truly needed Moses to talk Him out of judgment. Instead, God was drawing Moses into His own heart. These moments were not about testing God’s patience—they were about training Moses’ compassion. God was teaching Moses what divine love feels like.

GOD INVITES MOSES INTO HIS HEART

When Moses cries, “Blot me out of Your book if You will not forgive them” (Exodus 32:32), he is not speaking from human emotion alone. He is touching something of God’s own grief and longing for His people. In that moment, the heart of heaven flows through a human being.

Moses’ intercession shows us that God does not want distant servants but intimate partners—those who will carry His love even for the undeserving. In shaping Moses’ heart, God was revealing His own.

PAUL FEELS THE SAME BURDEN

Centuries later, the apostle Paul experiences the same holy anguish. He writes, “I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh” (Romans 9:3). Like Moses, Paul is carried into the depths of God’s love for Israel. This is not theological detachment—it is intercession born from identification. God allows His servants to feel His heart so they can pray from His perspective.

THE HISTORICAL BACKDROP OF ROMANS

Paul wasn’t writing in a vacuum. The believers in Rome were largely Gentiles, and many had turned against the Jewish people—there is a reason. Around 49 CE, the Emperor Claudius had expelled the Jews from Rome. When they were allowed to return later, tensions rose between Jewish and Gentile followers of Yeshua. Some Gentiles had developed a theology while the Jews had been exiled that God was finished with Israel—that the Church had replaced her. This is the beginning of replacement theology. It did not take the enemy long to begin to try and turn the new Gentile believers against the Jews, who had introduced them to the Gospel.

Into that climate, Paul writes Romans 9–11 to reveal God’s unchanging heart for His people. He pleads with the Roman believers to see Israel not as rejected, but as beloved for the sake of the fathers (Romans 11:28). Just as Moses once interceded for Israel’s survival, Paul intercedes for Israel’s restoration—urging the Gentiles to join him in that same compassion.

INTERCESSION IS GOD’S INVITATION

Both Moses and Paul show us what it means to share in God’s redemptive love. True intercession is not convincing God to be merciful—it’s being invited into His mercy. It is God placing His own yearning within us so that we pray, not from duty, but from divine empathy.

When we pray for Israel today, we step into that same partnership. We ask God to let us feel what He feels—His covenant faithfulness, His longing for His people to know Him, His desire to fulfill every promise. Prayer for Israel is not a political act or an abstract theology; it is joining the intercession of Moses, Paul, and ultimately Yeshua, who gave His life so that mercy could triumph.

When God said, “I will start over with you,” He wasn’t hoping that Moses would take him up on his offer—He was inviting him to reflect His own love for them. And that invitation still stands for all who would stand in the gap today.

When we first visited the Brownsville Revival, Steve Hill invited a child up on the stage. God had used Steve to preach to millions of people, sharing the gospel. People came to Brownsville from all over the world. But that night, he chose my daughter Sharon, who was probably eight years old. He was trying to demonstrate that children are selfish in and of themselves.

He gave her a Hostess cupcake. Then another. Then another. Then he dumped a whole bag of them all over her. And then he asked her what she wanted to do with him. He assumed that she would like to keep them. But instead, she said, “Can I share them with my sisters?” It ruined his illustration, but touched his heart. Suddenly, the two of them began throwing cupcakes into the audience.

I was proud of my daughter that night, and that is how God wants us to be. Not thinking about what is best for us, but what is best for his kingdom and those within his kingdom.