Hands Raised in Victory and Judgment

Exodus 17.8-16

I remember the first time I ever saw a kid being actively mean to our daughter Zadie on the playground. She must have been about two years old. And I saw a kid walk up behind her and just give her a shove on the back; she fell right over onto her face.

I saw red. I jumped up, and I ran to my baby, and I didn’t shove the kid back like I wanted to (“See how you like it!”)…but oh, I wanted to. I did tell him no, and gave him a super menacing look—I wanted it to be clear that if you mess with my baby girl, you mess with me; and I’m a lot bigger than she is.

That’s sort of what we see in our passage today, except of course it goes much further.

God showed the people of Israel that he was their Rescuer, after liberating them from slavery in Egypt. Then, in the text we saw last week, God showed that he was their Provider, by miraculously providing them with food and water in the desert. In this text, we see God reaffirm his role of Israel’s Protector. But in fact we see something else as well, something even more significant: we see God displaying once again his right and his role as Judge.

This seems like a simple passage, and on the surface, for the immediate story, it is. However, if we take it in the context of the larger story of the Bible, we find that there’s more going on here than we might first imagine.

God Fights for His People (v. 8-13)

So we’ve just come out of this cycle we observed last week. Israel needs something, they quarrel with Moses about it, Moses brings the need before God, and God patiently provides for the need. In the verses just before this, God tells Moses that he will stand on the rock at Horeb, he tells Moses to strike the rock, and water comes out of the rock to give the people enough to drink.

We’re not exactly sure how much time has passed when we see them again in v. 8, but we should keep their general mentality in mind. So far, their mentality has been fear for themselves, and discontent with Moses’s leadership. That mentality will be stretched almost to the breaking point starting in v. 8.

8 Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. 9 So Moses said to Joshua, “Choose for us men, and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.”

Now, who was Amalek? Amalek was the leader of a people group who lived in the northern Sinai peninsula. We know that the people of Israel are descended from Jacob, Isaac’s son—the man through whom God chose to extend his promise to Abraham. According to Genesis 36, Amalek is a descendant of Esau, Jacob’s brother. So the people of Israel and the people of Amalek were distant cousins.

In this text we don’t have any details about how they came to fight against Israel or why, but we get a little more information later on in Deuteronomy 25.17-18:

17 “Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, 18 how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God.”

So there we see the how and the why: Israel’s camp was very big, over 2 million people, they had been walking in the desert for a while now and were tired. Amalek came and attacked the easiest prey, Israelites at the very back of the camp—those who were weakest and defenseless. And they did it, we see at the end of v. 18, because “they did not fear God.” There may have been other reasons as well (maybe they wanted supplies or riches, because Israel took a lot of wealth out of Egypt with them), but the ultimate reason they did it is because they didn’t fear God.

So when Moses finds out that Amalek is attacking the back of the camp, he turns to a guy we see mentioned here for the first time: a man named Joshua. Joshua would soon become, in a sense, Moses’s right-hand man; he would be the man to take Moses’s place after he died.

Moses comes to Joshua and tells him to choose some men and go out and fight Amalek.

It’s hard to overestimate what a daunting order this would have been. The last time an army came against them, it was the army of Egypt, and God didn’t let them come near Israel. He kept them at a distance while Israel crossed the Red Sea. How disappointing would it have been to hear that God wasn’t going to do that this time, that they would have to go out and fight?

In addition, Israel had never fought anyone. They’ve been slaves for the last four hundred years. They had no army; they didn’t have armor or chariots or training. Maybe they had some weapons, but they were by no means heavily armed. Basically Moses is telling Joshua to go around the camp and say, “Hey, you look tough. Come with me. Do you have anything sharp? Grab it.” And this ragtag group of men are going out to fight an army.

Now while Joshua and his “army” does this, what is Moses going to do? He’s going to go up on a hill with two men, and with God’s staff in his hand. That’s all he says.

If the people of Israel thought it was hard to trust Moses’s leadership before, imagine how hard this would have been for them.

But Joshua is faithful; he does what Moses says. He goes out and starts gathering men, and Moses goes up on the nearby hill with his brother Aaron and a man named Hur. (We know almost nothing about Hur except that he was from the tribe of Judah, and he was the grandfather of Bezalel, whom God would later choose to build the tabernacle.) And what happens is extraordinary. V. 10:

10 So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. 11 Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. 12 But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. 13 And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword.

Now I want to address a common misconception before we go any further, because I assume that a lot of you will have thought of this already, if you read the text this week.

One of the most common mistakes people make when they read this passage—and it’s a mistake I myself made for a very long time—is to imagine that it’s about prayer. As long as Moses’s hands are raised (in prayer, we think), Israel wins; when he lowers them (when he stops praying), Amalek wins. Raising hands is an image we often associate with prayer.

Obviously, prayer is a vital part of the life of God’s people. We need to pray, and to “pray without ceasing” as Paul said (1 Thessalonians 5.17), because the norm that God has established is to accomplish his will through the prayers of his people. So I’m not saying prayer isn’t important.

But prayer isn’t the focus of this text. Prayer is never mentioned in this passage; Moses never says he’s going up on the hill to pray.

What is mentioned is what is in Moses’s hand when he lifts it up: the staff of God. In v. 9, Moses told Joshua: “Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.” This staff was the staff which Moses first used before the Pharaoh, to convince him of God’s power. It was the staff with which Moses had struck the waters of the Nile so it turned to blood; it was the staff with which he struck the rock in the previous passage, so that it gave the people water. This staff wasn’t a magic wand, but it was often used as a symbolic picture of God’s power and authority.

Look at v. 11 again:

Whenever Moses held up his hand [singular], Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand [singular], Amalek prevailed.

Which hand was he holding up? Presumably, given what he just said in v. 9, he was holding up the hand in which he held the staff of God. Then v. 12:

12 But Moses’ hands [plural now] grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.

Why both hands now? The text doesn’t say explicitly, but my guess would be, the hand holding the staff got tired, and he needed both. Have you ever tried to hold anything up over your head for a long period of time? Anyone who has tried to hold a baby and drink a cup of coffee at the same time knows the struggle. After a while, your arm gets exhausted.

So the point here isn’t why Moses’s hands are lifted, but what he’s holding when he lifts them: the staff of God. As long as God’s staff is raised against Amalek, Israel is victorious.

Now I said the point of this passage isn’t prayer; what is the point?

The point is twofold. First of all, by sending Moses to the top of the hill with his staff, and by showing that Israel’s victory depended on Moses’s holding that staff up, God is showing the people, in perhaps the clearest way he has so far, that Moses is the man God has chosen to lead Israel.

They need to get this in their heads, because they are regularly quarreling with him over the state of things and their exit from Egypt. Moses is the man God has chosen for this particular job.

But at the same time, as we see here, Moses is just a man. He’s not a god. He’s weak. His hands get tired. He has to sit down and have his brother and a buddy help him keep his hands holding that staff up.

So the second thing God wants to make clear is that even if he has chosen Moses to lead the people, Moses is not their savior; he is not their protector or provider. God is. That’s why it’s referred to as “the staff of God” in his hand. It is not Moses who is giving Israel the victory when the staff is raised; it’s God.

For the first time, the people of Israel are required to fight to defend themselves. And they are woefully outmatched and unexperienced. So what a blessing it must have been to discover that in fact, they weren’t the ones doing the real fighting. God was fighting for them. God was giving them the victory.

And through God’s power, represented by the upraised staff, Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword (v. 13).

God Judges His Enemies (v. 14-16)

I know that this is going to be difficult for some people to hear—we love the first part, that God fights for his people, but the idea of God having enemies, and actually judging those enemies, is harder to swallow. And yet, that’s exactly what we see here. V. 14:

14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” 15 And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord Is My Banner, 16 saying, “A hand upon the throne of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”

So the first thing God tells Moses is, “Write this down.” It’s the first time (unless I’m forgetting something) that we see a reference to Moses writing down an event that has transpired. He’s to write it down in a book and read it to Joshua, presumably that he might pass it on to the people and to future generations. What is he to write down? “That I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”

Now this would happen eventually, in the sense that the culture of the Amalekites has been lost to history. They continued to be enemies of Israel in the future, were eventually defeated by Gideon and Saul, and finally destroyed completely during the reign of Hezekiah. God did what he said he would do.

But why is his judgment on Amalek so severe? We didn’t see God say the same thing about Egypt, even though they had enslaved the people of Israel for centuries. Comparatively speaking, what Amalek did was bad, but it wasn’t bad as that.

God’s judgment on Amalek is so severe because it’s not just about Amalek: it’s bigger than just this one people.

This was, in a certain sense, the beginning of a new era. Israel wasn’t a people when they arrived in Egypt; they were just a family. As they grew and became a people, they were subjected to slavery in Egypt, and this is the first time in centuries that they are finally free. This is the first time that Israel, as a people, has any kind of autonomy.

And this is the first time a foreign people stood as enemies of God’s free and chosen people—and by extension, enemies of God himself.

So the question is, what message does God want to send through this event? How does God respond to those who rise up against him? He responds by judging them.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen it this kind of thing, this conflict between someone who is “with God” and someone who is not “with God.”

There’s the conflict between Esau and his brother Jacob, the one through whom God chose to extend the promise he made to Abraham.

There’s the conflict between Cain and Abel, when Abel’s offering was acceptable to God and Cain’s wasn’t.

From the very beginning, those who are with God are set upon by those who are not with God.

And it isn’t limited to the past. The struggle between God’s enemies and God’s people would continue on in the future. Babylon versus Israel. Rome versus the church.

And then, in a larger sense, the world versus the church. Jesus told his disciples in John 15.18-19:

18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

God’s people will always be set upon by those who are not his people. It’s the people of God versus the people of Satan.

That might seem harsh, but Jesus clearly said in John 8.42, 44:

If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here… 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.

Whether we know it or not, we are all one or the other: children of God or children of the devil. If we are not the people of God, we are by default his enemies.

And that is what Amalek proved by attacking Israel. We don’t know what they knew about the Israelites before coming after them, but according to our text they weren’t just attacking this particular people group; when they attacked Israel, they were attacking God. Moses says in v. 16 that their hands were lifted against the throne of the Lord. (Note: The Hebrew here is obscure, and often translated as “my hand is lifted to the Lord’s throne,” or something to that effect. But again, the context of the passage does not indicate prayer, but rather God’s judgment against the Amalekites, so the more likely reading is “their hands were lifted against the throne of the Lord...”) And this is why the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.

This is a simple and difficult fact that we see all throughout Scripture: when our hands are “raised up” against God, in defiance of God, in rebellion against him, God’s hands are (figuratively speaking) raised up against us in judgment.

Now if that were the end of the story, of course this would be the most depressing sermon ever, and it would barely be worth preaching, because even God’s people would over and over again position themselves as enemies of God. Or rather, they would claim to be the people of God and act like his enemies. They would forget him. They would disobey him. They would worship other gods.

And the same is true for each of us. Left to ourselves, every human being who ever lived is an enemy of God and persists in raising our hands against him. We want to be our own gods, we want to be our own masters, and if someone tells us that the God of the Bible is the one true God who has authority over our lives, we want to reject him because no way am I going to give someone else control over my life.

Left to our own natures, we are all God’s enemies, and we are all subject to God’s judgment. And that judgment isn’t merely a defeat on the battlefield; God’s judgment is eternal.

That alone is difficult to preach. Preaching isn’t just speaking publicly about what is true; preaching is celebrating what is true, through its proclamation. If all there was to say was that we have rebelled against God and will be judged by him, it would be hard to celebrate.

But the story isn’t over. Moses was just a man; he couldn’t keep his hands up on his own, to ensure victory for Israel. But as Tim Chester wrote (I’m paraphrasing), one day, centuries later, there would be another hill, and on this hill, another man, a man with God’s own authority, would lift up his hands. But this time, he wouldn’t lift up his hands to give judgment; he would stretch out his hands to receive it.

Remember we saw earlier that one of God’s goals, in putting Moses on that hill with his hands raised holding the staff, was to show incredulous Israel that Moses was the man he had designated to lead them. God does the same thing with Jesus: he puts Jesus on display for all to see, giving them everything they needed to know that he truly was the Son of God, that he truly was the Savior whom God had sent. But Jesus’s sign of authority does not come through military might; it comes through sacrifice.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, had all authority to dispense judgment on his enemies—including his own people, who had rejected him. But instead, he took the place of his people and received the judgment we deserved when he was crucified. And three days after his death, he was raised to life again, proving that God’s judgment against his people was definitively given.

So that is the situation, even as it stands today. Those who turn away from their rebellion, submit to God and place their faith in Christ are declared righteous, saved by Christ’s sacrifice. God’s judgment has been rendered against us, and it will not fall on us, because it fell on Christ.

But those who persist in their rebellion against God do not have the luxury of that assurance. Jesus said in John 12.46-48:

46 I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. 47 If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. 48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.

So what do we do? Moses gives us a clue; in v. 15, it says that Moses built an altar and named it “The Lord Is My Banner”. A banner was a military object; it was a kind of flag that served as a rallying point, the place where the soldiers would gather when the battle was over, the place they looked toward to remind them why they were fighting.

For God’s people, the banner is no flag; the banner is God himself. He is the point we run to. He is one we gather around. He is the one we direct our lives toward.

Conclusion: Christ Our Banner

So faced with this remarkable text, how are we called to respond?

Firstly, we are called to recognize that on our own, we are enemies of God, and subject to his judgment. And if we persist in our rebellion against him, his hands will be forever lifted up in judgment against us.

Secondly, we must see that God loved the world so much that he provided a way to not receive his judgment. Jesus Christ lived our life and died our death; he was judged in our place.

Thirdly, we must see that in such a situation, the only response that makes any sense is to turn away from our sin and turn to Christ, to the Lord our Banner, and place our faith in him, and direct our lives toward him, and learn to be like him.

And fourthly, we must see that as we struggle to grow to be like him, the Lord fights for us. He doesn’t just fight for our salvation; he fights for our holiness. He fights to make us like him.

So whether you’re a Christian or not this morning, take heart. It is possible for every person here this morning to leave this place with a single focus, a single rallying point in front of their eyes, and to leave knowing that the God who created the universe, the God who should by all accounts judge us, instead loves us, and fights for us.

Turn to him—maybe for the first time, maybe again. Turn to him; run toward the Lord Your Banner, and let him win.